 Please join me in a moment of centering silence. Please remain seated as we sing our in-gathering hymn, number 360, and the words are written in your order of service. 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 are 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 beverages 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. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would welcome visiting with you. Experience guides are generally available to give building tours after each service. So if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition to our National Landmark Meeting House, please meet John Powell on this side of the auditorium, your left, after the service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service. However, because it is difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment, our child haven back in that corner, I see some people back there already, and the commons out behind the auditorium are excellent places to go if your child needs to talk or move around, dance, sing, whatever. The services can still be seen and heard well from those areas. This would also be an excellent time to turn off any devices that might cause a disturbance during the hour, especially cell phone ringers. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. This morning, David Bryles is our sound operator. Tom Boykoff is our lay minister. Mary Elizabeth Conkel was your breeder. Usher's include Nancy Daly, Marty Hollis, Gail Henslin, Dick Goldberg, and Liza Monroe. So I guess we're back to fall and people are engaged and I am very, very happy to see it. Plenty of ushers today. Hospitality, folks making coffee and lemon water, whatever, back in the kitchen are Jackie Toberlin and Biss Nitschke. Celia Boliard was in charge or is in charge of our pulpit palm care today and and Smiley is watching after the orchids. The floral offering is from our alliance. And as I said, John Powell is planning to give a tour. Please note the announcements in your red floors insert to your order of service. There's information here about things going on today and this week and and soon upcoming at the society and I have a couple of things to mention specifically. Each year our seventh grade compass point students survey the congregation about their beliefs. This year's survey focuses on our seven principles. Students will be in the commons area following service and will hand out surveys for you to please complete. Please support their questioning minds by participating in this survey. One last thing next weekend and I'm so excited is art in the right place. And for the first time the sale will be held on Saturday as well as Sunday. With 47 artists and a wide variety of beautifully made items you'll want not to miss. The art fair runs from 10 to 6 on Saturday and 9 to 4 on Sunday. You may want to arrive at FUS Extra early next Saturday so you can shop before services begin. 15% of the artist sales go to our children's religious education program. So you'll be supporting local talent and our children's programs. And I would encourage you to look for anybody like me who has a little paper sticker that says look what I got at the art fair because I bought this beautiful necklace a couple years ago and I love it. So hopefully there's some other people with samples too. And now again welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. These are the days that have been given to us. And so let us rejoice and be glad in them. These are the days of our lives. Let us live them well in love and in service. These are the days of mystery and wonder. Let us cherish and celebrate them in gratitude together. These are the days that have been given us. Let us make of them stories worth telling to those who come after. I invite you to rise and body your spirit for the lighting of our chalice. Please join me in reading the words of affirmation printed in your program. To face the world's darkness, a chalice of light. To face the world's coldness, a chalice of warmth. To face the world's terrors, a chalice of courage. To face the world's turmoil, a chalice of peace. May its glow fill our spirits, our hearts and our lives. And now on this fine 30th day of October, please turn to your neighbor in exchange with them a warm greeting. Please be seated. And I would invite any children who are present to come forward for the message for all ages, superheroes, spooks, angels, whoever you are. Well, let's see. I don't see any Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump masks here. How many of you who are up here are old enough to vote? You may not be old enough to vote, but I bet that some of you know what's going to be happening a little more than a week from now, a week from Tuesday. What do you know? The election. And who's perhaps the most important person that we're going to be electing? Well, the president. Let's keep this nonpartisan up here, okay? And we cannot, we cannot vote for Barack Obama, can we? No, because he's had two terms and so he can't run again for the president of the United States. So in January, there's going to be a completely different person in the White House and leading our country. Now, because the election is just around the corner, I wanted today to talk about another president whose birthday was 281 years ago. And that was John Adams. And John Adams was our second president, the second president of the United States. And he was also our first Unitarian president, the first of five Unitarian presidents. And so I want to share with you a little bit of information about John Adams and the Adams family. So John Adams, the future president, was the oldest of three sons. And like most Americans 280 years ago, he grew up on a farm. And his father, who was also named John, was a farmer. But Father John was also very well educated and very respected by his neighbors. He held a very important position in the church that his family attended. And he also held a number of public offices in the town that they lived in, including one that would be kind of like our police chief today, was called the Constable. Now, John Adams, when he was growing up, was a little bit afraid, not of his father, but of his mother, Susanna, because she was known to have a pretty terrible temper. And when John got into some mischief, his mother could get really mad at him. But his father was more easy going, and he really admired his father. And although his father was constantly telling John, you know, you need to work hard, John, well, he wasn't that hard a worker when he was a kid, and his father didn't push him too hard. So after a while, though, because John was pretty easy going about his schoolwork, his parents started to get a little bit worried that maybe he was letting his talent go to waste. And so one day his father came to him and said, John, what would you like to be when you grow up? And John replied, Dad, I want to be a farmer just like you. Well, his dad had higher ambitions for him, better plants. And so the next day, he took his son out into the fields to work with him. And he worked young John, who was only ten years old at the time, just as hard as he would have worked any adult. And that night, young John came home tired, and all of his muscles were aching, and just covered with dirt from the fields. And his father said, well, John, do you still want to be a farmer? He thought he had taught him a valuable lesson about how hard it was to be a farmer, but John looked at him and replied, yes, I think that's what I want to do. Well, John really didn't like farming all that well in the first place, but he was a very stubborn young man, and he did not want his father to think that that experience had caused him to change his mind. But after that experience with that hard work, he did begin to study harder, and after a while, just a few years later, he had made good enough grades that he could go to Harvard University to study law. And so he studied at Harvard, and he became a lawyer, and he was very successful in practicing law. And in the beginning of his practice, he met a young woman named Abigail, and they got married, and they had five children together. Now, the unfortunate thing is that John didn't see a whole lot of his children when they were growing up, because his law practice took all of his time, and then he got involved with politics, and he was gone at meetings most nights. And then he held some offices that caused him to be gone from their home for years at a time. And during those years when he was gone, Abigail wrote him 2,000 letters to try to stay connected. Well, John Adams played a very major role in the American Revolution. He worked to free our country from British rule, and then he actually wrote the treaty in 1783 that ended the Revolutionary War. And because of these contributions, these good things that he did, our country elected him as our first vice president. And who was the first president? George Washington. You're right. So there was George Washington was the president, and John Adams was the first vice president. And after George Washington retired, then John Adams was elected our second president. Yeah. A true fact here, our first president allowed slavery. And actually, so did our third president, who was Thomas Jefferson, and a few others besides that. But anyway, back to John Adams. With the end of his presidency, he retired. And he went home to Boston. And he and his wife enjoyed life at home, really, for the first time since they'd been married. And their daughter came to live with them with her children. And so they had the grandchildren in the house. And they really, really enjoyed helping to raise the grandchildren. John Adams lived to be 91 years old, to be a very old man. And he died on July the 4th, Independence Day, 1826. But he was alive long enough to see his oldest son, John Quincy Adams, elected the sixth president of the United States. So there were two Adams who became president of the United States. And by the way, Abigail, John's wife, had some pretty strong political opinions of her own. And she always was willing to share her opinions with her husband. And so when John and the other founding fathers were busy drafting the Constitution that set all the rules about how our government works, Abigail wrote to John and said, John, remember the ladies. Remember our interests as women, which, of course, they didn't do. And so it was 130 years before women could actually cast a ballot, could vote, or run for public office. But if she were alive today, Abigail Adams would probably be very, very delighted. And why is that? Because for the first time in our nation's history, we might just elect a woman to be president of the United States. So don't hold your breath. But late next Tuesday, we may have our answer. Thank you for listening. And we're going to have a little change in our order of service. And we're going to have the kids go ahead and go to their classes now and have our meditation after they have exited. So have fun in your classes, folks. And I invite you to be seated and join me now in the spirit of meditation. As October ends and autumn's last adamant leaves are whipped from their branches by the galloping wind, as scarves and caps come out of storage once again and storm windows replace the screens that once invited summer into our homes. As squadrons of geese set out for southern destinations and earthbound squirrels hastened to provide against the dire straits of winter, at such a time as this, do our thoughts return to things past, to life retreating, and to life that is no more. A piece of us is never quite prepared for winter, never really reconciled to departure and to death. Long into November, our hearts protest summer's passing. The end of warm days and fragrant nights, shirt sleeve strolls along lush lake and river banks. And likewise, on this weekend before all souls, images of old dear companions who once graced the summer of our lives, crowed in upon our memories. Let us not be hasty to push them out again. Let us not be charry of the sadness and the regret that their presence evokes. May these brave and lovely spirits live again in our tender thoughts for our recollections attest to their enduring importance. They prove that death and distance are powerless to sever the bonds that connect truly loving hearts. Now I would have us recall those members, former members, and friends of First Unitarian Society who have died within the past year. These are their names. Sally P. Hansen, Mara McDonald, Pete Krueger, Wade Shuddy, Louise Crook, Ruth Hursko, Patricia Leonardi, Laura Smale, Ori Lauchs, Martha Figueroa, Frederick Gooding, Jr. Let us continue on in a moment or two more of silent meditation. Peace be with them and with us all, amen. The first reading is very much in the spirit of all souls. It comes from a collection of essays by the physician Rachel Naomi Raymond, who has spent a good deal of time working with people in hospice. And she's also been a professor at the University of California Medical School at San Francisco. She says that most years I give a lecture entitled Meaning to the Second Year Class at the UCSF Medical School. About halfway through the hour, I suggest that my students reflect for a few moments and then find an image, an image that symbolizes for them what the practice of medicine means to them personally. And then we spend the remainder of the hour talking about it. But one year near the end of the hour, a student volunteered that he must have done the exercise wrong, that he hadn't been able to come up with a symbol. Instead, he remembered a phrase of music going through his head, a phrase that he recognized from Beethoven's Third Symphony. Deciding to pursue his statement a little further, I asked my student when he had last heard the Third Symphony. He looked at me steadily. His eyes became sad because the Third Symphony had been played four weeks ago at the funeral of a friend who had died in a motorcycle accident. The class became very still. Well, what have you learned from your friend's death? I asked. My student paused. He missed his friend terribly, he said. And several times during the past weeks, he had picked up his phone to call his friend to share something with him, and then he would remember. And each time he remembered, he would feel the loss acutely. And he had not thought about it in so many words, but his friend's death had shown him that no one can ever be replaced. Every life is unique. Every life is precious. He sat for a moment in silence on the verge of tears. I guess this is the bottom line for me, he told us. If this were not so, then none of the stuff that we are learning would matter to me at all. And so we all sat together and thinking this over. And in the silence, many of us recognized that this was the bottom line for us as well. Now, when I was small, Naomi Raymond says, there was a week when the whole country knew that every life is irreplaceable. It was many years ago, as I recall, well, and for a week, rescue teams worked to bring her out. And this was the time before television, but radios, radios were playing everywhere, in the stores, in buses, everywhere, even at school. And strangers out on the street would stop and ask each other, any news? And people of all faith traditions were praying together for this young child. And as that rescue effort went on, no one asked if the child had a parent who was a professor or a cleaning woman or was the child of a wealthy family or a poor family. No one asked whether the child was black or yellow or brown or white. Was that child good or naughty, smart or slow? Because in that week, everybody knew that these things, these externalities didn't matter at all, that the importance of a child's life had nothing to do with these. And without saying this aloud, we all knew that there was also nothing personal in this. Not only was that human life of great value, but we recognized that our lives were of equal value. If we ourselves had fallen down that well, the thoughts and the prayers of the whole country, they would have been with us, too. So if on the occasion of someone falling down a well, we all knew this, well, then we must have known it all along. This dramatic crisis had simply allowed us to remember something that had always been true. But then the rescue was completed. The little girl was safe and everything was forgotten. You know, it's really surprising how easy it is to forget that every life matters and that we are each of a kind, each one worthy of unconditional love. The second reading is a poetic selection from the Native American poet, Joy Harjo. She's a member of the Creek tribe out of Oklahoma. Remember the sky that you were born under. Know each of the stars' stories. Remember the moon, know who she is. I met her in a bar once in Iowa City. Remember the sun's birth at dawn. That's the strongest point in time. Remember sundown and the giving away of the light. Remember your birth, how your mother struggled to give you form and breath. You are evidence of her life and her mother's life and her mother's life. Remember your father as well. He is your life, too. Remember the earth whose skin you are. Red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth, brown earth. We are the earth. Remember the plants, the trees, the animal life who all have their own tribes, their own families, their histories. Talk to them, listen to them. They are alive poems. Remember the wind, remember her voice. She knows the origin of the universe. And remember that you are all people and all people are you. Remember that you are this universe and the universe is you. Remember that all is in motion. All is growing is you. And remember that language comes from this. Remember the dance that language is, that life is. Just remember. One of my earliest memories is of an automobile ride along the Rock River on Illinois Route 2. And rounding a curve on that particular highway, this massive concrete monolith rising 48 feet above the bluff on which it stands, suddenly comes into view. And the solemn figure gazes out over a landscape that his people had once claimed as their own. Now, although the sculptor, Laredo Taft, bestowed the name Black Hawk upon his creation, it actually bears little physical resemblance to that local 19th century Native American warrior chief. But the exploits of that sock leader, that's what inspired Laredo Taft in his creative enterprise as he sought to capture his subjects indomitable spirit. And indeed, even as a three-year-old in that car, I was powerfully struck by my first glimpse of that silent sentinel. Now, Black Hawk, as some of you probably know, played a minor role in the history of Madison and the Four Lakes region. In 1832, retreating from advancing American forces with the remnants of his tribe, Black Hawk pitched camp near Pheasant Branch before moving further west. Battle with the Americans was joined at Wisconsin Heights a few days later, and there Black Hawk showcased his strategic abilities, holding a much superior force at bay as the women, children, and elders of his tribe continued their trek toward the Mississippi and hopefully toward safety. In the end, however, the exhausted Indians were overtaken near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Bad Axe Rivers, and hundreds of tribe members were killed, Black Hawk himself was taken prisoner. Years later, in the autobiography that he dictated to an Emanuensis, the defeated chief described his treatment at the hands of his captors. He said, we are now confined to the barracks, forced to wear the ball and chain. This was extremely mortifying and altogether useless. Were my captors afraid that I would break out of the barracks, that I would run away, or was this punishment that was inflicted upon me, was it ordered? If I had been taken you prisoner on the field of battle, I would not wound your feeling so much knowing that a brave war chief would always prefer death to dishonor. In the dedication to that same autobiography, the aged Black Hawk addressed General Henry Atkinson, who had earned his grudging admiration as a just and honorable soldier. May the great spirit shed light on your path, he said. May you never experience the humiliation that the power of the American government has reduced me to. What seemed to bother Black Hawk the most about his fate was not defeat, for in that struggle, he knew that he had acquitted himself well. Rather, it was the assault upon his dignity that rankled him the most. That's what humiliation is really all about, isn't it? Our English word derives from the Latin dignus, which literally means worthy. As a defeated adversary wearing the ball and chain, Black Hawk was made to feel unworthy, a person of no account, a person without merit. And reviewing that history, that story, I was reminded of a recent conversation that I had with Everett Mitchell, now a Dane Coutty circuit court judge. And I asked Everett a few weeks ago how it was going, how he liked his new position. And he very quickly expressed a concern about the way that defendants in his courtroom were handled by jail staff. Why should they all be brought into my presence in shackles? He asked. Well, there are clearly some safety issues here to be concerned about, but in order to spare prisoners, particularly nonviolent offenders, further humiliation, Everett Mitchell hoped that shackling might become the exception rather than the rule in Dane County judicial proceedings. Now, the first of our Unitarian Universal principles clearly addresses this issue. It admonishes us to affirm and promote the inherent, the inherent dignity and worth of every person. There are those two words again, side by side, dignity and worth. From an etymological standpoint, as we've already seen, they are very closely related. To retain a sense of dignity is to feel that your life counts for something, that it has some concrete value. It suggests in terms of Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative that each of us deserves to be treated as an end in ourselves and not as a means for fulfilling someone else's purposes. Now, one of the most effective ways for breaking an individual spirit is to progressively and brutally strip them of their dignity. Pile humiliation upon humiliation. And that is precisely what U.S. military staff utilizing the advice of professional psychologists said about doing at the notorious Iraqi prison Abu Ghra'id, until, of course, those abusive practices were exposed and summarily discontinued. In recording his own experience as a prisoner at Auschwitz, Primo Levi, an Italian Jew, a professional chemist, said that that prison, that concentration camp, was designed to strip residents of every last vestige of their humanity. And the object, he said, was to beat us down physically, emotionally, spiritually until, as he put it, the veneer of civilization had been completely removed. Well, Primo Levi, for one, resisted. And he said, through it all, we still possess one last power and we must defend that with all the strength we have to the very last, and that is the power to refuse our consent. But he didn't always feel that way. He was inspired in his resistance by a friend and a fellow prisoner. This man had been a soldier and he watched as this soldier would go out into the prison yard every morning and wash himself with the camp's dirty water without the benefit of soap, with no towel to dry himself with. Steinloch was the soldier's name and he would scrub his face and his upper body thoroughly and then dry himself with his outer jacket. And as he watched him, Primo Levi originally said to himself, what's the point of that? If I were to be given a few extra minutes between revelry and work, I'd take it easy. I'd just enjoy a few moments of idleness. But then he had this insight and he said to himself, we must certainly wash our faces without soap, with the camp's dirty water, not because the regulations say we must, but for dignity's sake, for propriety's sake. We must continue to walk erect without dragging our feet, not in homage to Prussian discipline, but simply to remain alive, to not begin to die. And with that passage, Primo Levi suggests that life itself may be contingent upon our ability, even under the most deplorable, humiliating conditions to preserve our dignity, to walk erect, to retain some shred of our original humanity. Short of that, we're simply marking time until death carries us away. It's an interesting proposition to ponder. Unitarian Universalism's first principle states that dignity is intrinsic to our nature, that we possess it, each one of us, as a birthright. It is not something that we are obliged to earn, although it does require some effort on our part to maintain it, to preserve it. No one gives us that dignity, but people can, in fact, take it away from us. In this respect, dignity is not at all the same thing as pride, which is contingent on some form of personal achievement. And the Chinese sage Confucius didn't even think that two sentiments, pride and dignity, were compatible with each other. The wise man, he said, has dignity without pride. The foolish man has pride without dignity. What's the source of this peculiar sensibility, one that we humans seem to possess exclusively? Well, we observe certain animals, perhaps the cat and dog in our own house, and we might remark to ourselves sometimes, hmm, that cat carries himself with dignity. But then we have to ask ourselves, does it matter to that cat? Does it matter to a dog or an eagle? I rather doubt it. As animals, we have a lot in common with other members of the animal kingdom, particularly the mammalian kingdom. But dignity may be one of those traits that is unique to acutely self-conscious beings such as ourselves. In any case, it does seem to be a universal or near universal quality of our humanness. We have these two people from radically different cultures, Black Hawk and General Atkinson, but they recognize the importance of dignity and it became the basis of their sympathy and their mutual regard. Where does it originate? Where does it come from? Judaism and Christianity attribute our sense of dignity to the Imago Dei, that metaphysical spark of the divine that God bestowed upon human beings at the creation and that sets us apart from all other sentient life. But that's not the only explanation. Other cultures, the ancient Greeks, Buddhists, have come up with alternate explanations for this intrinsic attribute. Dignity's source isn't obvious, it's not clear. But that's not the point. In order to avoid confusion, I want to be clear about the context in which I want the term to be understood. When we use the word dignity in common speech, we often use it to refer to the behavior of highly cultivated gentle men and gentle women. The dignified person carries him or herself with confidence, perhaps even with an air of condescension. A person of dignity, a person of such stature, may well refuse to engage in certain pedestrian activities because as they put it, it is beneath my dignity. But for present purposes, we should not so construe this word. And the examples that I have just cited represent an excess, a super-arrogation of dignity. But the fact is we are all meant to enjoy a measure of dignity as an aspect of our core humanity. It is one of those attributes that defines us as a person that convinces us, as Rachel Naomi Raymond suggested, that our lives, each one of our lives, does count for something, is irreplaceable. Even at an early age, we begin to recognize when we have been affronted, when we are humiliated. I remember as a child, those few times when I was punished for some misdeed. Fortunately, they were rare. Or when I was subjected to criticism or when a joke was made at my expense. I remember those occasions, but I don't remember the details. The substance of those experiences faded from my memory. It underpinned myself. I wasn't all that secure in myself to begin with. I lacked autonomy. I was largely dependent on others, on my elders. And so I needed to regularly be reassured about my standing, my worthiness in the world. But barring early experiences that are truly traumatic, that cause one to have serious doubts about their worth, I and all of us will enter our adulthood with our dignity more or less intact. But even as adults, we remain at risk, don't we? A reversal of our financial fortunes. A health crisis. A development that suddenly reduces us to a state of dependency. Any of those things can cause any one of us to lose our sense of worthiness. And in our own culture, with its unforgiving ethos of rugged individualism, people who suddenly find themselves needing to accept public assistance are made to feel inadequate, even shameful. Because the application process itself, as many have said, leaves one feeling demeaned. And dignity. Dignity is also harder to maintain as each and every one of us grow older and less and less able to make autonomous decisions, satisfy our own needs. Elders who have transitioned to assisted living facilities or to nursing homes, become especially susceptible to despondency because they must increasingly rely on others in order to subsist. With dependency, older adults often express the fear that they have become a burden, a drag on other members of their family's lives, conceivably an object of their resentment. For each of us, Wendy lost beta rights, there is a limit to the amount of surrender that we are able to countenance without losing ourselves completely. You know, a certain amount of reciprocity seems to be required if a person is to hang on to at least a piece of their dignity. Because if you're always on the receiving end, if you never have an opportunity to return the favor, you're no longer gonna feel like a real person. Old age is particularly difficult, Simone de Beauvoir once said, because it feels so alien. How do I become this different person and yet still remain myself? That's the rub. Now there are practices that we can employ to protect our dignity, to protect other people's dignity as well. So say we are functioning, cast into the role of a caregiver, providing regular assistance to an infirm relative. Well, the first thing we can do is we can avoid making a fuss over them, providing our assistance as unobtrusively as possible, as cheerfully as we can, because that reduces the possibility that the recipients of our good offices are going to feel ashamed. You know, there's a central premise of practice in Judaism. It's called the performing of mitzvots, good deeds. But there are helpful and unhelpful ways Judaism teaches in which that should be done. If you are going to do a good deed for someone, do it in a way that uplifts them rather than debases them. And there are other ways in which we can help people to uphold their dignity. Residents of nursing homes who are simply given a potted plant to take care of remain more alert, more cheerful than those who are deprived completely of any caregiving responsibility. Appreciative listening, that can also help, signaling to an otherwise dependent individual that their accumulated experience, that their hard-won wisdom is still useful, that it still can give me something valuable to hang on to. And then more generally, Donna Hicks of Harvard University is a scholar who has written extensively on dignity and the important role that dignity plays in negotiating our relationships. And she points in particular to two principles that are crucial here. Acceptance and inclusion. In practicing acceptance in our interactions with others, we meet and we commune with them as equals. We treat them neither as superior nor inferior to ourselves, regardless of their religion, their race, their ethnicity, their sexual orientation, their class, their disability. We try to accept them uncritically for who and what they are reminding ourselves that when we judge people by those criteria, we are calling into question their inherent sense of dignity. Acceptance. With inclusion, Hicks invites us to go a step further, opening ourselves to deeper relationships, taking concrete steps to demonstrate to those who may be different from us that they truly belong, that they deserve a place in our city, our neighborhood, our schools, and our faith communities. This is how we continue to dignify them, to assure them of their intrinsic work. And then finally, we can also help to remember and help each other to remember that whatever fate has done to cause us to doubt ourselves, that dignity is always and ever our birthright because too often, we forget that. And in forgetting, we lose the opportunity to lead lives that are truly and uniquely our own. Remember Joy Harjo writes, remember that the son, the moon, your mother, your father, the earth itself once worked very hard to bring forth the one inimitable and admirable you. Blessed be Adam and man. And today's offering will be shared with the Mellow Hood Foundation about their good work in one of our more troubled neighborhoods. Please be generous. I invite you to rise once more in body or in spirit as we sing our closing hymn number 303. And now with gladness in accomplishment and with perseverance in life's adventure, we push onward, onward with respect to our yesterdays, onward with praise for today, onward with hope for tomorrow. Please be seated for the post-lute.