 I invite you now into a moment of centering silence. A moment to turn our hearts and minds toward the people of Paris. A moment to turn our hearts toward love and compassion for all those impacted by hatred and violence, and toward all those who are grieving today, and toward our dream of becoming a world of justice and peace. And now, if you will remain seated and join in singing our in-gathering hymn, number 1009. The words appear in your order of service, and we will sing it through twice. Good morning. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to any visitors who may be with us this morning. We are a welcoming congregation, so whomever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library, which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal-colored stoneware coffee mugs. They are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experienced guides are generally available after each service, and I do know that Richard Miller is available to give a tour today. If you would like to learn more about the sustainably designed addition or our National Landmark Meeting House, please meet near the large glass windows on your left of the auditorium. Immediately after the service, and Richard will meet you there. We welcome children to stay for the duration of our services, however, because it is difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment. There is a child haven back in that corner, and the commons outside the auditorium are excellent places to see and hear if you and your child need to retire so your child can talk or move around. Also, this would be an excellent time to turn off all electronic devices that might cause a disturbance during the hour, especially cell phone ringers, please. I now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. For this service we have Mark Schultz on sound and Smiley is serving as our lay minister. Elizabeth Barrett is our greeter. Our ushers are Doug Hill, Karen Hill, and Wally Brinkman. And making coffee back in the kitchen and some hot chocolate for your enjoyment during our social hour is Sharon Scratish. Please note the announcements in the red floors insert in your order of service, which provide information about activities at the society and particularly about today. Speaking of which, FUS volunteers of all ages are important to the Road Home, a family shelter program. There will be a Road Home Information Session. Oh wait, I'm sorry, this was between services. I'm not supposed to read it now. If you weren't there, you missed it and you may get more information by contacting the resource, I believe, in the order of service and you may contact them and still become involved, even though I have no idea when the training is. Okay. Join us for the annual Thanksgiving potluck dinner at FUS on Thursday, November 26, right on Thanksgiving at 2.30pm. Please plan to spend the afternoon with FUS members, their families and friends and dinner will be served at around 2.30pm. Please contact our organizer, Donna Kangliosi, to talk about what you can do, bring and offer to this gathering. Her information is available at the welcome information table in the commons, which is just to the left of the doors. My left. Our left. Next Sunday is the annual Thanksgiving food drive. You can find more in the red floors under the big turkey. There's information about the food drive and the Thanksgiving dinner. One more thing. Attention young adults looking for relationship and community. The FUS 20s and 30s group is looking to foster new leadership and new forms of connection. As a beginning step on this journey, the 20s and 30s group will be hosting the authenticity games on Thursday, November 19. It will be just like the hunger games, except the goal is to get to know one another and have fun. So actually nothing like the hunger games and no murder in mayhem. But arbitrary points will be awarded. Silly prizes will be given out and snacks and drinks will be provided. We hope to see you there in the Gables on November 19 at 7pm. And I think that's all the announcements, particularly the one I wasn't supposed to read. So again, welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. Welcome to this place of possibility. This is Love's Hearth, the home of hope. A shelter for questioning minds and compassionate hearts. When we gather here, we stop. We pause. We center ourselves. We free ourselves from the compulsion of projects to finish, work to be done, things to accomplish. We leave ourselves alone for a time. When we gather here, we journey deep down into that quiet center where no voice is heard. We live for a brief time on an island of peace. We understand the world from a quiet center. Here is the center of the world. In this fragile moment is the culmination of all that has been and all that will ever be. Here in our grasp in this moment is the center of the world. And if you will rise in body or spirit to join together in our words of chalice lighting, which are printed in your order of service. And if you will join in by reading the italicized portion. As the kindling of this chalice calls us to community, let there be light. As the flame of this chalice reminds us of our dreams, let there be light. As the glow of this chalice encourages us to hope, let there be light. And before we join together in song, if you'll take a moment to turn and greet your neighbor. And if there's anyone who'd like to come forward, come on up. Berkeley shoes. I like them. The carpet here. What honey? We're all going to sit on the carpet. Have you ever gone camping inside a house? Sounds like my kind of camping. Was there a bathroom? My kind of camping. Wow, at your home and at a campground. Used a pillow for a rock or a rock for a pillow. Well, our story today is from a whole bunch of books that I really like. There are books about Poppleton. Do you know Poppleton the pig? I really like Poppleton. And this is a story about when Poppleton decides to go camping. So in spring, Poppleton decided that he was going to sleep outside at his house in a tent. And all of his friends thought that this was really silly. Because why would you want to sleep outside when you have a house and a warm, comfy bed? His neighbor, Cherry, too, worried that he was going to get really, really chilly. And Gus, the mail carrier, told him that he was going to catch pneumonia. Pneumonia. It's when you get really, really sick in your lungs. You have a hard time breathing. So they were worried the cold was going to give him pneumonia. But Poppleton, he didn't listen to any of them. He just kept putting up his tent in the front yard and his friends would walk by and they would shake their heads. Everybody shake your heads. And then they rolled their eyes. Roll your eyes. Oh, you're really good at that. Roll your eyes. That's good. So Poppleton just kept going with his tent. And at night he brought out all of his quilts and he brought out lots of pillows. He remembered pillows and he brought out a journal and a pen and some really good books. So for a little while he read and for a little while he just thought and then some of the time he just paid attention. And long after everyone else was asleep and the world was dark, Poppleton was still awake. Now in the morning he went back into his house. He made a cup of cocoa and buttered toast, his favorite breakfast. And then he went to find his neighbor Cherry Sue. So he brought Cherry Sue out to the tent and he showed her this beautiful yellow flower that had opened up while she was sleeping and while he was paying attention. And then he sang her songs of insects that he heard singing at night when she was asleep and he was paying attention. And then he tried to make funny faces, the faces that he saw in the moon as it moved through the sky while she was sleeping. And last he drew her pictures that he saw in the stars. As he watched the stars move and sparkle and he had never noticed them that way before. He was really excited to share with Cherry Sue all that he had learned. He realized that he really, really liked the night. Then Poppleton went back inside, pulled down the blinds, pulled his covers up to his chinny chin chin and he slept in his bed all day long. And everyone who passed by and saw the blinds pulled down, shook their heads and rolled their eyes and said, that Poppleton is pretty ridiculous. All except for Cherry Sue. And the next night she was in the tent with Poppleton so that they could pay attention together. Have you ever paid attention to something that closely? You could watch a flower open, Amalia? The little dipper, the big dipper? Uh-oh. Did you run into something or were you okay? You were fine. Yeah, one more. You had pneumonia ones. Well, I'm glad you are better. Yeah. Right. That's what we've been thinking about. Uh-huh. Mm-hmm. So you watched the lunar eclipse and that was the one that had that super lunar eclipse in the blood moon. That one was great to pay attention to. And James is saying at the same time they were watching that, he watched the stars and he saw the little dipper. Well, we are going to turn and pay attention now. The teen choir is going to sing for us. And then when they're done, we'll go out for our classes. Your classes. Tation in the woods to do. Peaked as did my back to say nothing of my soul. My heart was closed. I could not hold the abundance of life. My ears could not hear the sounds of spring. My mouth too full of words to speak. My hands too full of words to do. I took myself away for a walk in the woods which surrounded my cathedral and my shrine, my prison and my workhouse. The air was cool, but not cold, rare and refreshing. The birds had found voice and the sky was blue, interrupted by clouds adding depth to my view. The ground was now firm underfoot. Green was forcing its way everywhere. Colors, gold and blue and rose competed for attention. It was too beautiful to bear. Life was too intense, too good, too beautiful to be believed. Yet there I was on a walking meditation in the woods. And this story from Victoria Stafford. One morning on my way to a monthly professional meeting, I was companioned on the southbound highway by a man in a pickup truck who was brushing his teeth as he drove. He was in the fast lane, I was in the other one, and we were both traveling at about 65 miles an hour. During sharing time with my colleagues, I confessed that this metaphor is an apt one for me in the fall. Compared with the real or imagined lethargy of summer, September is the fast lane. Suddenly there are deadlines again, lots of them and appointments and events. School starts, everyone leaves for college. For some reason, every major road and artery downtown is being repaved at once. It is a time of year when if you want your teeth brushed at all, you'd better do it while doing something else of equal import. It is a time of year when the sound of typing fills the background of phone calls because the person on the other end is writing letters or answering emails while you talk. I understand the impulse and I deeply sympathize. After all, I was the one finishing a muffin in my lap when my hygienic fellow traveler passed me on the highway. But I know that brushing while you drive is bad religion. Doing almost any two things at once is bad religion. Rushing is bad religion. And so as the leaves turn and the apples ripen, I resolve again to notice and I bid you to notice too. I resolve again to go more slowly, to do one thing and then another, to watch the sky and hear the geese and greet them as I do everyone I meet, one by one by one. There are hawks to see now on the southbound side and sumac flaming red. There are skunks, porcupines, the shadows of deer and a tender fog that hugs the mountains. All of this just off the exit heading west. I'll brush my teeth some other time. And if you could rise now and body your spirit for our next hymn number 352. Tale tells the story of two Buddhist monks who were on a journey to a distant monastery when they came to a river. There on the banks sat a young woman. I beg you, she asked, could you carry me across? The current is strong today and I'm afraid I might be swept away. The first monk remembered his vows never to look at or touch a woman and so without so much as a nod, he crossed through the heavily flowing currents and soon reached the other side. The other monk showed compassion and bent down so that the woman could climb upon his back to cross the river. Although she was slight, the current was strong and the rocky bottom made it a difficult crossing. Reaching the other side, he let the woman down and went on his way. After some hours journeying down the dusty road in silence, the first monk could no longer contain his anger at the second for breaking their vows. How could you look at that woman? He blurted out. How could you touch her, let alone carry her across the river? You have put our reputation at stake. The second monk looked at his companion and smiled. I put that woman down way back there at the riverbank, but I see that you're still carrying her. This tale is ancient and timeless because it points to a very real struggle in our lives. Learning how to live in the here and the now when most of the time our minds and our attention firmly rooted in the future or the past. We live in these spaces without the realization of all that we are carrying with us. Like that first monk, there's much that we still carry way past the time that we needed to set it down or let it go. It seems like everywhere you look these days you're being asked to come into the present to pay attention, to be here now. Ram Dass, beloved spiritual teacher, wrote the famous book with that title in 1971. In it we find the story of his journey of transformation from Dr. Richard Alpert to Ram Dass. And we hear his exhortations to learn how to live in this moment. How to be truly present for our lives. This moment, this precious now he tells us isn't something you can put off to some hoped for future and it isn't allowing ourselves to get stuck in the past. It's an acknowledgement that we don't want to live our lives as a flashback and we can't fast forward through the difficult or the painful or the boring moments to get to the really good parts. It's the realization that this is the only moment we have and the place to be if we're to be fully and authentically human. Educator and author Matt Dewar shared in a recent TED Talk the story of a time in his life when he was 17 and he was spending time with his grandfather who was in the final days of life. He recalls watching his grandfather's struggle with his mortality and confronting the reality that he had an infinite amount of time left to him. He remembers the day when he walked into his grandfather's room and he found the elderly man sitting in his favorite chair staring out the window and weeping. He asked his grandfather if he was okay and when the answer was no, he was quick to ask if they needed to call the doctor or someone else for help. No, said his grandfather. I don't need medical help. What I've realized is that I have lived 84 years and I don't know what this life is about and I don't have time enough left to fix it. After his grandfather's death, Matt found an old black and white photograph of his grandfather fishing in Florida when he was probably in his early 20s. In the picture he stands tall and proud at the end of a pier. Behind him the Atlantic Ocean stretches on and on into the horizon. The Florida sun is beating down on him and the look on his face makes it clear that he's right there in that moment living life nowhere else he would rather be. And as Matt stared at that photograph he became disoriented by the contrast between the youthful man in the picture and the image he held in his mind of his weeping grandfather. The more he looked at the photo the more he couldn't reconcile how one reality became the other. What happened in between? Where was the disconnect? Any one of us can have one of these moments with a childhood photograph. I have one of my own. It's an image of me when I was about five. My father decided to take a photography course for fun and he had to do a portrait. So what he did was me lying on my back on this bright red and pink zigzag afghan that screams it's the 70s and he told me funny jokes and stories and I have the biggest smile on my face and all is right in the world and that moment is the only one that matters. This is a gift of childhood. I notice the disconnect when I'm with my own kids. They're in the present, fully aware, fully alive with their attention on one thing and one thing only. I'm a million miles away remembering something that I believe went wrong and trying to figure out how to fix it or million miles ahead planning for the coming week. They notice the disconnect. When Sam was really small and he would be telling me something Mom, I need you to listen and I would throw out a, I am honey, I'm listening and he would come over and put those little chubby baby hands right on my cheeks and he would squeeze them and look in my eyes so we were almost nose to nose and he would say, no mom, listen I need you to listen to me. My small child could easily tell that my body was present but my mind was somewhere else. This happens to us all the time. Right now you might be thinking about an interaction you had with another driver on the way here you might be thinking about a child or a friend who was in crisis you may be anxious about what will happen in the unknown future you might be thinking about how much you have yet to accomplish today and you're hoping that the service doesn't run long you might be wondering if anyone is noticing this about you and you might be judging this or that about someone else Gloria Steinem once said I've always had two or more tracks running in my head the pleasurable one was thinking forward to some future scene imagining what would be planning on the edge of some fantasy the other played underneath with all two realistic fragments of what I should have done there it was in perfect microcosm the past and the future coming together to squeeze out the present which is the only time in which we can be fully alive these past and future tracks have gradually dimmed until they are rarely heard more and more there is only the full glorious alive in the moment caring for everything sense of right now I wish that I could stand here and tell you that I have the magic formula that I've mastered this skill of staying in the present yet most of the time I live in the land of debating the past and attempting to predict the future this means as Mark Twain said so well I have lived through many terrible things in my life some of which actually happened so we live in the past and we live in the future and we wish time away we say things like I can't wait until this week is over I'll be happier next month next year when school is done when the project is complete when the house is clean when the kids are grown on and on and on until the day comes when all we wish is to have those hours, days, years we wished away back and available to us we are distinguished from other living beings by this ability to remember the past and project into the future over millennia we have developed this amazing thinking brain but this way of thinking can be a double-edged sword consider for example the zebra that runs for its life when it's chased by a lion but once the chase is over it shivers and it quickly returns to grazing on the savannah this would not be the case for us because we would need to think, analyze, fantasize, predict and anticipate these new brain capacities cause us to spend half of our day dwelling on how terrible it would have been if the lion had caught us we might run all kinds of images and fantasies through our minds which are terrifying and then we worry about whether something similar might happen tomorrow what if we don't spot the danger next time what if our loved ones are out there what if, what if and it's the downside of this new amazing brain indeed we might be so caught up in those terrifying stories we tell ourselves we might be so distracted that the next time the lion might have quite an easy dinner so here's what we need to remember we are more than that which has happened in our past and our interpretations of it we are so much more than our plans and our anxieties about the future learning how much more we truly are requires that we experience ourselves in the present now one of the reasons we distract ourselves from this moment is that life is at times painful suffering exists and there are days when we just can't face it it's easier to distract ourselves with screens or long to-do lists or retail therapy or anything that will keep ourselves from feeling the pain the discomfort, the negative feelings but as the psychologist Carl Rogers wisely said the curious paradox is that when I accept myself and my life just as it is then I and it can change when we resist or push away or try to ignore this moment whether full of joy or pain it will only return again and again and movement or growth isn't possible the key is to learn how to hold ourselves our very experiences, all that we are all that we have done, our choices, our actions all of who and what has brought us to this moment hold this in a cradle of compassion and kindness the call to presence is a call to the recognition that the only moment we have is now and that we have to make the most of it whatever it is Matt Dewar tells us that what he learned from those days with his grandfather is that we have to learn how to harness the passing of time instead of hiding from it and learn how to use its passing as an opening to ourselves as a means of finding well-being we do this he says by becoming aware of the moments when we are truly here aware of the focal moments the moments that bring into focus the meaning of your life moments in which the distance between who we are and who we want to become shrinks notice these focal moments and intentionally create the space the time, empty time in your day to allow the room for more and more of these moments to happen what is worth your precious time what is central and what is peripheral what is your life about and how can you spend more of it more of your time truly being in it when we open ourselves to the present moment we open our ability to be responsive, creative live with less grasping, less judgment and less fear we learn how to look on our own lives and the lives of others through a lens of kindness we recognize that change is the only constant and we can be at peace with change and with growth then we can tap into that well of wisdom that lives inside every one of us then our ability to enjoy and appreciate this one amazing life you are blessed to have then that can truly happen so I'll leave you with this poem from Roger Keys it was inspired by 18th century paintings of a Japanese artist named Hokusai Hokusai says, look carefully he says pay attention notice he says keep looking stay curious there is no end to seeing he says look forward to getting old he says keep changing you just get more who you really are he says get stuck accept it repeat yourself as long as it's interesting he says keep doing what you love he says every one of us is a child every one of us is an ancient every one of us has a body every one of us is frightened every one of us has to find a way to live with fear he says everything is alive shells, buildings, people, fish, mountains, trees everything has its own life everything lives inside you he says live with the world inside you he says it doesn't matter if you draw or write books it doesn't matter if you saw wood or sit at home and stare at the shadows of the trees in your garden it matters that you care it matters that you feel it matters that you notice it matters that life lives through you contentment is life living through you joy is life living through you peace is life living through you he says don't be afraid turn and face the life before you look, feel let life take you by the hand let life live through you and I now invite you into the giving and receiving of today's offering it's an outreach offering that is shared with Dry Hooch Madison you can find out more about them in the Order of Service and we thank you for your generosity from our separate joys and struggles we gather here to find the peace and the strength and the hope that comes with sharing our celebrations and our sorrows with others today we hold in our hearts our bruised and hurting world and our hearts broken again by senseless violence we send our prayers today to Baghdad, Beirut, Lebanon and Paris and to every nation in which terror threatens and hearts grow numb may we choose to see the goodness in a world fraught also by evil may we refuse to allow anger and fear to barricade themselves within us and may we make time and space in our lives and in our hearts to count our blessings and give thanks may we each be led into lives of deeper gratitude deeper compassion, deeper mercy and deeper peace may we be together for a moment in silence to acknowledge and lift up all that lives in the sacred quiet of our hearts and if you will rise now in body or spirit for our closing hymn which is number 350 patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language don't search for the answers which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything live the questions now perhaps then someday in the future you will gradually without even noticing it live your way into the answer blessed be, go in peace and please be seated for the postlude