 Let's breathe together in a moment of centering silence. And now let's join our voices in our in-gathering hymn, number 1023. The words are printed in your order of service. Good morning. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a place where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical and social issues in a safe and accepting environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for healing and transformation in the world. My name is Beth Binhammer and on behalf of the congregation, I'd like to extend a special welcome this morning to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you are on your spiritual journey we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers and old comers are encouraged to stay for fellowship after the service, drink coffee, gather in the library and your questions about this society will be answered by members of our staff and lay ministry. This would be a good time to turn off all electronic devices if you haven't done so already. We do have a tour guide available at the end of today's service. Richard Miller will meet with any of you who would like to take a tour of this facility, this lovely facility. Meet right over there by the windows after the service. We welcome children to stay during the service, but if that's difficult for the child or for you, the grown up, there's a lovely sound proof room right over here, Child Haven and the Commons, where you can hear the service and still see what's going on in here. I'd like to acknowledge those individuals this morning who are helping this service run smoothly. Our sound operator this morning is Mark Schultz, thank you Mark, a lay minister is Anne Smiley. Our greeter this morning was Mary Elizabeth Kunkel, Usher Doug Hill, Wally Brinkman, Hospitality this morning, otherwise known as coffee, by Jean Hills, and we thank... And tea also, sorry, coffee and tea, we don't want to be exclusionary, all right, for you tea drinkers. So please note announcements in your red floors order of service, there are no other special announcements today so I will just say again welcome, we hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. Are big enough for us to live a life in. We need and wonder of purpose and venture of toil and tears. What are we, any of us, but strangers and sojourners for lonely wandering through the night time until we draw together and find the meaning of our lives in one another. Having our fears in each other's courage, making music together and lighting torches to guide us through the dark, we belong together. Love is what we need to love and be loved. As we gather today may our hearts be open and what we would receive from others let us give for what is given still remains to bless the giver when the gift is love. And if you will rise now in body or spirit to join in our words of affirmation which are printed in your order of service. May unity and peace abide within us. May wholeness and joy touch our hearts. May kindness and compassion fill our universe and reverence fill our days. May we see the light that shines in all. And before we join together in song if you'll take a moment to turn and greet your neighbor. Be seated. And I'd like to invite Anne to be a little closer for our story. Kathy come forward and sit on the floor. You were getting up, I thought maybe you were going to come on down. Hello. All right well I have a story for us today that I'm going to tell you the part of it that I know. My friend Paul told me this story. And then I'm going to see if we could come up with some different options for how this story could have gone. So not too long ago there were four neighbors who were living together in peace and harmony. They like to get together to play, to sing, to have a barbecue in their backyards. And in fact they grilled out so often that one of the neighbors built a grill permanently into the backyard. Now these friends always like to eat the same thing, burgers. Now some of them were hamburgers and some of them were burgers that were made with yummy beans and sweet potatoes. But they were all round and they all smelled great when you put them on the grill. Some folks put cheese on there, some just put lettuce or tomato and they felt good about the fact that they could each do their own thing and everyone could eat their burger however they wanted. Now all was well until one day the neighbor with the grill got a job in another city and had to move away. As they waved goodbye the remaining friends were really sad because they knew that nobody would ever be able to replace that neighbor. Now a few days later somebody new moved in. The others watched carefully as she brought in all her things. They were delighted when that first night where did she go right out to the grill and she started warming up the coals and they thought, perfect she's going to fit right in. But what was that she was putting on the grill? It wasn't a round burger. It was something soft and kind of flabby and when you cooked it it made the smell that the neighbors all said, everybody ran into their houses and locked their doors. The new neighbor came around to invite everybody over and you know what they did? They pretended they weren't home. They called each other on the phone and they said, we got to get rid of this new neighbor before those stinky smells pollute the whole neighborhood. I know. They decided that they would build fences in their backyards. Fences so high and so tall that those smells could never reach over them. Fences so high that the son couldn't get into the neighbor's house or in her yard and they thought if they were lucky maybe she would just move because her house would be dark and her grass would turn brown and then perhaps a burger person would move in. So the neighbors put up these crazy fences. Fences the size of skyscrapers and it prevented even the tiniest beam of light from squeezing through and then they waited. Now unfortunately they couldn't use the grill anymore because these big fences were there but at least they didn't have to smell that stinky smell. Now they were in such a hurry to put up those fences that I don't think they really thought it through because first of all they were not very attractive and the other neighbors began to complain then they were so humongous that you couldn't ever paint them and so they just looked worse and worse and they were so heavy they began to sag until one day ka-plop, boom, they all fell down and the neighbors came out of their houses to see what had happened and they said oh no what if the new neighbor was hurt? Well she wasn't hurt, she was gone, they hadn't seen her since the day she moved in so for all they knew she could have moved out years ago. And the neighbors realized that they did get what they wanted but they weren't really happy about it and they wondered if those fences might have been a big mistake. So what I'm wondering is if you could help me come up with something different they could have done that first day instead of building skyscraper fences, humongous fences, what could they have done instead of humongous fences? They could move, instead of getting her to move they could move. That is definitely a possibility, yep. Winnie, do you have any idea of something else they could have done? Emma could tell us instead they could move a little farther away from the stinky smell that's right, circulate the air, what's something else they could have done besides trying to chase her away? What do you think? Elizabeth, yeah. That would have, have you ever looked at something and said there is no way I'm ever going to eat that and then you tasted it and it was actually kind of good? We had that this week with broccoli, Owen said no way and then he ate it and he ate all of it and he ate all of mine and he ate all of his fathers. He didn't eat his brothers because his brother wouldn't try it in the first place but Owen really liked it so they could have tried the Flabby stuff. Do you know at nine o'clock somebody said what they would have done was make a big bowl of mac and cheese and bring it over to her house and if they didn't like the Flabby stuff they would have eaten mac and cheese. So the way to world peace apparently is through mac and cheese. And we are in Wisconsin so that makes sense. Right, they could have gone over, they could have tried it, they could have, they could have brought other things, the miracle of side dishes, right? They could have maybe brought her a burger, yeah, do you have an idea? They could have planted flowers and smelled the flowers instead of a fence. That's right. Well you know what, thank you for helping me figure out what we could have done instead. Yeah. All right, we are going to rise and body your spirit and we are going to sing you out to summer fun and we hope you have a great time today from Jeffrey Lockwood. Melody, one of the sweetest, kindest, gentlest women I've ever known suffered terribly because of me. Her profound distress was difficult to watch both because she was such a decent person and because I was the source of her pain. Melody was a student assigned to help me in my graduate school research and while engaged in the repetitive mundane tasks that so often go into science we would share our views of the world and in this way she came to discover that I had not been saved. As a devout Christian she felt obligated to do everything in her power to bring others into the fold but I was not just another unbeliever, I'd become a friend. So her sense of duty was even more compelling. She was nearly desperate to keep me from walking into the fires of hell and the impending spiritual disaster was made all the more tragic because I had consciously chosen this path to perdition. Melody invited me to lunchtime Bible studies which I gently declined. Finally I felt so bad about her anxiety for my fate that I went along but it was like throwing a life preserver to a drowning man who refuses to grab the ring because he thinks he's out for a pleasant swim. I know she prayed fervently for me and I wish sincerely for her happiness. In the end she graduated and married a wonderful person so it seems that at least my wish for her happiness was granted although I suspect she did not soon forget her drowning friend. I have often been in Melody's position. As a professor I have spent a great deal of energy trying to convert other people. There was the lazy but gifted student whom I wanted to turn into a scholar, the overconfident colleague I wanted to turn into a doubter and the cynical administrator I wanted to turn into an idealist. Outside of work there was the despairing friend I wanted to turn into an optimist and the happy go lucky friend I wanted to turn into a realist. But they all to a person refused to reach out for my life preserver. Some even seemed happy while the pounding surf of mistaken perceptions and the crashing waves of unrealized potential washed right over them. I agonized over their fate and lamented their failings. I suffered for them. At least I suffered until I finally realized that I was trying to convert the wrong person. The essence of happiness lies not in changing colleagues into people I can respect, students into people I can value or friends into people I can love. The task is instead to turn myself into a person who can respect, value and love others. I'm still working on it. So every once in a while I still feel compelled to save others. But at least now when I attempt to rescue I don't stand on the deck of my ship and throw a flotation device. I jump in after them. That way I begin to understand that treading water on your own can be more meaningful than wearing someone else's life jacket. What appears to me to be drowning may just be a pleasant swim. And sometimes I find that being tossed by their waves is preferable to the navigational certainty aboard my own ship. 13th century mystic Jalaliden Rumi, it's been on my mind a lot lately and it goes like this. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense. These words have been on my mind as I have noticed an increase in the number of people requesting pastoral counseling sessions. Now people call Michael and myself all through the year, but there's been an interesting and somewhat different trend in the past few months. Whereas people usually desire a conversation because they're struggling in a relationship whether parent, partner, child, or they're considering a life change. The people calling recently were calling about a struggle they have, not with a relationship with a particular person, but rather with their relationship with our current political climate and what it is doing to their psyche and or their soul. So if you too have been feeling this tension and upset inside of yourself, know this. You are not alone and it is definitely not your imagination. Our country is more polarized than ever. I am sure if I stopped now and asked you for examples of the polarization present in our world, examples in which sides are taken, lines are drawn, and people stop listening, we could spend the rest of the morning telling our stories of disconnection, heartbreak, animosity, and fear. The pattern of polarization is so ingrained in our public process and increasing in our relationships that it is hard to avoid. The Pew Research Center released findings that over the past 25 years, Americans, if you take us as one big whole, haven't really changed all that much. But the values of our political parties have. Years ago, when they started this research, people who identified with either of the parties answered questions about things like immigration or the environment pretty much the same way. Today, one could use those same questions as a litmus test for party affiliation. We now have much broader differences by party on these issues. In 1987, 93% of Democrats, 86% of Republicans, said their needs to be stricter laws and regulations to protect the environment, pretty close. Today, 93% of Democrats still feel that way, but 47% of Republicans agree. And the percentage of Democrats today versus then who say they support efforts to improve the positions of the poor and disenfranchised, even if it means preferential treatment, is up almost 20 percentage points. So the Pew Research Center says that both parties have gone through what could be called a purification process, making them smaller and more ideological than ever. And according to some who refuse to claim a label of liberal or conservative Democrat or Republican, the political life of the nation has degenerated into such a polarized, partisan battleground that the extremes of both left and right dominate the scene, the center doesn't hold anymore, and the country is becoming ungovernable. Our national discourse has become one of open animosity. There's no censoring anymore. Our presidential debates, as you know, devolve time and again into screaming matches where moderators would interrupt candidates and ask them to stop because no one could hear or understand a thing being said. And I don't see it improving between now and November 8th. One of the most concerning pieces for me that I've heard in my conversations is a dangerous leap that is being made in our own thinking regarding those who hold differing viewpoints than our own. Not only are their positions on policy issues bad and wrong, but they are bad and wrong, and they and their beliefs are ridiculous, and there has to be something inherently wrong with this person if it is what they truly believe. We no longer consider the opinion objectionable, we also consider the person obnoxious, intolerable, and unacceptable. These are the politics, as Parker Palmer has said, of the brokenhearted. When all our talk about politics is partisan and polarizing, we loosen or sever the human connections on which empathy, accountability, and democracy itself depend. Why does this matter? How is it harmful? If you look at the political landscape, you have those debates that turn into ugly name calling and the only reason that we watch is to be entertained or horrified by the spectacle. We aren't watching to have our perspectives informed or broadened. We aren't learning anything new. We are tuning in to see the latest installment of a circus. There are rallies filled with hateful speech that lead to deadly violence. We are losing trust in those elected to govern. We are reaching a level of cynicism and suspicion that is detrimental for all of us. This seeps into our civil society, in our relationships with family and friends, to the rather calm, unfriending of someone on Facebook because you just don't want to see those posts anymore, to no longer calling family or friends because you don't want to hear it, to heated arguments over the dinner table that cause ongoing strife. Does it have to be this way? We know this great democratic experiment of ours is dependent upon our engagement with one another on matters that are important to all of us. I found some wisdom for us today from two very different sources, a colony of ants and Abraham Lincoln. Harvard expert on ants, Edward Osborn Wilson, published a book called On Human Nature. He said that out in the fields, when ant colonies grow so large that there isn't enough food to feed all the ants, they go to war with nearby colonies. The war continues until so many ants die that there's enough food left to feed the survivors. Wilson suggests that like ants, human beings form colonies. For example, we are all in a colony called the United States, a sub-colony called Wisconsin, one called Madison, one called the First Unitarian Society and perhaps the most important sub-colony for all of us, our family. Wilson said that like ants, we fight when we believe that the resources necessary for our colony's survival are threatened. When it comes to government policies, we do not ask what's in it for me, we ask what's in it for my group, my tribe, my colony. Justifications people give for their aggressive acts such as religious differences or political differences are in Wilson's view of veneer that covers the real reason, the perceived fear of death of the colony due to scarce resources. Wilson would argue that when humans believe that we have enough, we speak about the inherent worth and dignity of all people on the earth. However, he would argue, when we believe we are running out of the resources necessary for our survival, phrases such as all are created equal and justice, equity and compassion in human relations become less important and are replaced with talk about personal responsibility and fending for yourself. In times of perceived scarcity, we focus on supporting our tribe, our colony. Now in contrast to this colony mindset, we find the example of Abraham Lincoln. Joshua Schenken, a book called Lincoln's Melancholy, discusses Lincoln's own journey with depression and how his need to preserve his life by embracing and integrating his own despair and his own joy made him uniquely qualified to help America preserve the union. Because he knew sorrow and he knew delight intimately, knew them as inseparable elements of everything human, he refused to split north and south into good guys and bad guys. A split that might have taken us closer to national destruction. Instead, in his second inaugural address delivered March 4th, 1865, a month before the end of the Civil War, Lincoln appealed for malice toward none and charity for all, animated by what one writer called an awe-inspiring sense of love for all who bore the brunt of battle. In his appeal to a deeply divided America, Lincoln points to an essential fact of our life together. If we are to survive and thrive, we must hold its divisions and contradictions with compassion lest we lose our democracy. So how do we do this? How do we decrease the polarization? It requires an ability to see the situation as the other side sees it. Or as Lincoln might tell us, we have to stop seeing good guys and bad guys. If we want to influence another person, it helps enormously to understand their point of view and feel the emotional force with which they believe it. This goes against our evolutionary programming, which encourages us to focus on the facts that support our view and demonize the people with whom we disagree. One thing we can do is increase the number of personal relationships we have with people of different perspectives and make an effort to truly listen to them and not debate them. Establish good human relationships with people. Be curious about their positions and why they hold them. What do they hold sacred? This makes it harder to demonize someone else when they strongly hold a belief antithetical to your own. This is tough work. Now I have a friend who is married to a wonderful man, a great husband, an amazing father who unfortunately in my view is completely off the mark when it comes to politics. I mean completely. He votes for people I think are destroying our country and especially our state, and he makes remarks to try and start political arguments because he's well aware that our views couldn't be farther apart. So when I was there a month ago, I tried something different, a little experiment. I tried to find what we have in common. Not engaging in the discourse that leads to debate and disagreement, but finding what it is that we share. We both love our families. We both love our kids. We want to give them a world to grow up in where they feel they can have a future. So instead of engaging in the regular who is the best candidate for president conversation, which I can guarantee never ends well, I said, sounds like you're pretty frustrated with the whole process. And he agreed that he was. I said, I am too. I feel like I don't have any good options, an option I can really wholeheartedly feel good about. He said that was the way he was feeling as well. Then I went out on a limb and said, you know what, it scares the heck out of me and I worry about the kids. And he said, I completely agree. How do we fix this? And then we went on to have an open, honest, heart-rending conversation about the world we want to give our children and what it would take to get there. This was a special moment, and it may never happen again. In 15 years, it happened once. Sometimes all efforts to decrease polarization will fail because others are convinced that we threaten their survival and nothing we do will change that perception. But there are ways to increase the movement toward depolarization. This conversation never would have happened without that understanding that we are in this together. Despite our illusion of independence, we are profoundly interdependent and that includes everyone regardless of political ideology. We have to stop with the binary thinking. There are no good guys and no bad guys, no I'm right and you're wrong, no one truth with the rest being false. Can we get to a place where we value otherness? Our differences can remind us of that ancient tradition of hospitality where we open our hearts to the stranger with the understanding that there is much we can learn from the other. And then become comfortable with doubt. Vaklav Havel famously said that he would rather have a beer with someone who's searching for the truth than with someone who's found it. Now, Havel was a man of firm convictions and he started a revolution based on them. He was not talking about being passive. He was not talking about giving up your voice or ignoring your own beliefs. He was advocating against a certitude that breeds contempt for one's opponents and transforms the desire for authentic engagement into a need to lecture and point out the error of your ways. In today's polarized environment, doubt is seen as weakness, but the opposite is true. Doubt often supports true convictions based on realistic foundations and it gives us the ability to empathize and connect with the other. And with that we find the ability to hold tension in life giving ways. Our lives are filled with contradictions from the gap between our aspirations and our behavior to observations and insights we cannot abide because they run counter to our convictions. If we fail to hold them creatively, these contradictions will shut us down and take us out of the action. But when we allow the tension to expand our hearts, they can open us to new understandings of ourselves and our world, enhancing our lives and giving us the opportunity to enhance the lives of others. We are imperfect beings who inhabit an imperfect and damaged world. The genius of the human heart lies in its capacity to use the tension to generate insight, energy, and life. A. Powell Davies, Minister of All Souls Unitarian Church in Washington D.C. from 1945 to 1957, wrote these words and they are some of my all-time favorite. I become more and more certain as the years go by that wherever friendship is destroyed or homes are broken or precious ties are severed, there is a failure of imagination. Someone is too intent on justifying himself or herself, never venturing out to imagine the way things seem to the other person. Imagination is shut off and sympathy dies. If we know what it is that makes other people speak or act as they do, if we knew it vividly by carefully imagining all that may lie behind it, we might not quarrel, we might understand. Often we could heal the wounds, but even where that is not possible and of course we have to admit that is not always possible. Even where fuller understanding only leaves us rather sad and helpless, it would still give us the power to be kind, to act, yes, but still to be kind, to go on being kind. In a world being torn apart by hatred and fear, be brave enough to make honest human connections. Remembering that we're all in this together. Doubt, wonder, question, hold the tension and allow it to open your heart, speak your truth with love and compassion and go on being kind. Again and again, go on being kind. Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there. And I now invite you into the giving and receiving of the morning's offering, which you will see is shared with mentoring positives. You can find out more about their good work in your order of service, and we thank you for your generosity is and sorrows written on our hearts. We come together to find strength and common purpose, turning our minds and hearts toward one another and seeking to bring into our circle of concern all who need our love and support. This week we hold in our hearts Randy Trent, who's suffering from pancreatic cancer. He has two young children and his wife, and we hold them all in peace. Teresa Stabo and her family, her brother Mark Stabo died of what is believed to be an aneurysm on June 6th, this after battling lung cancer and a congenital heart defect. We are holding all the victims of the attack on the pulse nightclub in Orlando last night. And we join with James Morgan in his hope that we all conquer our fear of the other face our strengths and pass on our courage. And we hold the joy of James Robinson Goodman, who was born on Wednesday to his parents, Sarah and Sean Goodman. Yay, they are all doing well. And we are very, very glad that he is here. May we remember that we are part of a web of life that makes us one with all humanity and one with all the universe. May we be grateful for the miracle of life that we share and the hope that gives us the power to care, to remember and to love. And if you will rise now embody your spirit for our closing him number 121, stretch step by step in our own time at our own pace. As our beauty unfolds and our hearts open, we become gentler and more compassionate, yet brighter, more empowered and fearless. We have been holding on, holding back, playing small, hiding our light under a bushel. Enough of that. It is time to let go. We are needed now, all of us, all together. All of us answering a call to be who we are to the fullest, to make a difference, to give it all we got. Blessed be, go in peace and please be seated for the post loon.