 and welcome to the First Unitarian Society. I'm Kelly Crocker, one of the ministers here, and my colleague, Roger Birchhausen, and I are joined today by Drew Collins, Linda Warren, Heather Thorpe, Daniel Karns, Steven Gregorius, the Mortensen family who will be sharing a piece of their FUS story, and the Bergeson Galoon family who will lead us in our chalice lighting. We are so glad to have you joining us virtually today. Though not together here in this cherished gathering space, we remain tied together through the bonds of community and affection. Here in this community, we gather to grow our souls, connect with one another, and embody our UU values in our lives, in our community, and in our world. We hope you will join us in the virtual coffee hour immediately after today's service. The information for that will be on your screen again after the postlude. And I invite you now to join in a moment of silence to center yourselves and bring yourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. Opening words come from Gwen Matthews. Feel that? Each breath, every inhale, exhale, we are living, breathing, connected. We are the whole, complete, beautiful selves that we were born to be. Feel that? In your bones, in your muscles, in your heart, and your blood. That is the extraordinary you. The you who was born for this time, this place, this moment. Feel that? The struggle, the worry, the pain, the loss, the grief. It is still you. You are still whole, complete, beautiful, extraordinary. Feel that? And we invite you now to join in the chalice lighting by lighting a chalice or a candle in your home as the Berguson Galoon family leads us in our words of affirmation. We come together every week bound not by a creed, but by a belief. That how we are in the world matters. We light this chalice in the knowledge that love and not fear can change this world. Prize in body and your spirit, precious day. When I was young, I lived in a city that was mean and hard and ugly. Its streets were dry as dust, cracked by heat and cold and never blessed with rain. A gritty, yellow wind blew constantly, scratching round the buildings like a hungry dog. Nothing grew, everything was broken, no one ever smiled. The people had grown as mean and hard and ugly as their city. And I was mean and hard and ugly too. I lived by stealing from those who had almost as little as I did. My heart was as shriveled as the dead trees in the park. And then one night, I met an old lady down a dark street. She was frail and alone, an easy victim. Her bag was fat and full. But when I tried to take it from her, she held on with the strength of heroes. To and fro, we pulled that bag until at last she said, if you promise to plant them, then I'll let go. What did she mean? I didn't know or care, I just wanted the bag. So I said, all right, I promise. She loosened her grip at once and smiled at me. I ran off without a backward look, thinking of the food and money in the bag. But when I opened it, there were only acorns, so green, so perfect, and so many. And I understood the promise I had made. I held a forest in my arms and my heart was changed. I forgot the food and money. And for the first time in my life, I felt lucky, rich beyond my wildest dreams. I slept with the acorns for my pillar, my head full of leafy visions. And in the morning, I began to keep my promise. I planted beside roads on roundabouts, among rubble ruins and rusty railings, by train tracks, tram lines, and traffic lights. In abandoned parks and gardens, laced with broken glass, behind factories and shopping malls, at bus stops, cafes, blocks of flats, I pushed aside the mean and the hard and the ugly. And I planted, planted, planted. Nothing changed at first. The gritty wind still scratched the parched, cracked streets. The people scowled and scuttled to their homes like cockroaches. But slowly, slowly, slowly, shoots of green began to show. Trees, first here, then there, then everywhere. People came onto the streets to see. They touched the leaves in wonder and they smiled. They took tea together by the tiny trees. They talked and laughed. And pretty soon, they were planting too. Trees and flowers, fruit and vegetables in parks and gardens on balconies and rooftops. Green spread through the city like a song, breathing to the sky, drawing down the rain like a blessing. But by then, I was already far away, planting in another sad and sorry city. And another, and another, and another. And then, last night, in a lonely alley, a young thief fought me for my bag of acorns. I smiled and made the old bargain, knowing how a heart can change, knowing that my planting will go on. We warmly invite you to attend today's Stewardship Cottage Meeting at 11.30, which will feature a conversation on planned giving as well as information about our current Stewardship campaign. We hope you will join us. The link is the same as coffee hour, and you can find that on our homepage, fussmedicine.org. Today, we are especially grateful for the Mortensen family who is joining us to share a piece of their FUS story and what this community means to them. Hi, everybody. We are the Mortensen's. This is Indi May and Summers and Ruby. This is Juno and I'm Emily. And we wanted to share with you what we love about FUS. One thing that's really important to us is that we used to live in Madison, but then last year we had to move at the beginning of the year. And although the pandemic hasn't been fun and it's been really hard for a lot of people, one really special thing for us is that we have been able to still be a part of FUS. We can attend church on Sundays. We can watch it on a different day if Sunday doesn't work. And the girls have also been able to do their RE classes, which are so amazing. So the girls drew some pictures of things that they love. So we have this one. I don't know if you can see it very well, but this picture is of FUS. Come here, Juni. And what Ruby wrote on it is, this is what FUS means to me. She wrote happiness and love. And those are her teachers up at the top. And then Juni, hi. This one is from Indie Mae and Summers. And this is another picture of FUS. Very colorful there. And what Indie Mae wrote is she wrote, I love the stories. That's what she loves in her class. I did not explain the tiles in the paint. So the tiles are striped just like the roof at FUS. Right? Yeah. Okay. Okay. What's the paint? Okay. So there's the door and the steps and the paint of FUS, which we love and miss very much. So thank you all for what you do at FUS and for letting us still be a part of it. Bye-bye. In a little bit, I'm going to share a poem about Easter. But first, I should acknowledge that sharing a poem about Easter with two weeks left in Lent is, well, it's not Orthodox. At this point in the arc of the story, Jesus hasn't even entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. There's a sense of foreboding in the story, but it's not clear how it's going to end. Well, I'm going to jump ahead anyway to Easter, and it's a good thing as Unitarian Universalists were not Orthodox. But actually, I'm not going to completely jump ahead. The poem I'm going to share has a fair amount of the Good Friday stuff, at least around the edges. The poem acknowledges the presence of shipwrecks, getting lost and sneering and complaining, the abyss, ruts, disasters, and just the plain old mundane. So in fact, sharing the poem now is not actually contrary to Easter. Easter makes no sense without the hellish parts of the story that come before the resurrection. Easter comes out of the ashes of dashed hopes, broken dreams, terrible suffering, horrific human actions, and even death. Well, Easter is tricky terrain for Unitarian Universalists. Many of us really struggle with this one. As a result, many Unitarian Universalists skip most of the difficult Good Friday parts of the story and jump right to Easter as a symbol of the new life that abounds in the spring. Daffodils, chicks, eggs, let's make this another feel-good holiday just like Christmas. Even when it's not Easter, a lot of us bring a fair amount of baggage from our religious paths with us when we come to services. Sometimes I visualize what it might look like if that religious baggage we bring with us was actually literal baggage. I picture baggage just luggage piled up around us in the worship space. On Easter, though, we wouldn't be able to fit all that baggage in the auditorium where we meet. We would have to let it spill over into the commons, into the CRE classrooms. There's so much baggage that we'd have to park some of it in the landmark building and in the nursery school and in the Isom House. And heck, we might even have to rent some space at the VA hospital for Easter weekend for our baggage. That's a pretty good image, right? Okay, now I'm ready to share the poem, even though it's not Easter yet. I think we're prepared now. The poem is called Easter Exalted and it's by the beat poetry forerunner, James Broughton. Shake out your qualms. Shake up your dreams. Deepen your roots. Extend your branches. Trust deep water and head for the open, even if your vision shipwrecks you. Quit your addiction to sneer and complain. Open a lookout. Dance on a brink run with your wildfire. You are closer to glory leaping in abyss than upholstering a rut. Not dawdling, not doubting. Intrepid all the way walk toward clarity. At every crossroad, be prepared to bump into wonder. Only love prevails. Enroute to disaster insist on canticles. Lift your ineffable out of the mundane. Nothing perishes. Nothing survives. Everything transforms. Honeymoon with big joy. Wow, I really love that poem. Broughton must have too because later in his life, he sometimes actually went by the name Big Joy. So this poem is, as the title suggests, all about Easter. The late Unitarian Universalist Minister Forrest Church observes a book he wrote as he was struggling with cancer that ultimately would kill him. He wrote that Easter is about the spiritual rebirth of Jesus' followers. And more importantly, it's about what he called a saving transformation as available to us today as it was to the disciples in the Easter story. So what does Forrest Church mean by this? Well, he asks us to think about the contour of the story for Jesus' followers. On Palm Sunday, Jesus triumphantly enters into Jerusalem. His followers are brimming with hope. He really is the Messiah, a new era marked by justice and mercy and inclusion and love that cornerstones of his teaching is about to dawn. And within a week, it all comes crashing down. Jesus is betrayed by his friends, arrested, humiliated, tortured, subjected to a sham trial, condemned, and executed in a breathtakingly cruel way. And he struggles in all this, like a human being would struggle, not like some impervious divine entity. He cries out on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I thirst. He isn't superhuman. He's a vulnerable, suffering, lonely human being who feels abandoned. Some triumphant new age. This is not the ending his followers expected just a week earlier. So they scatter in terror. They must be thinking, will I be the next one to be arrested and put through such hell? Peter, one of the most faithful of them, denies Jesus three times. Hiding in terror, his followers must feel overcome by fear, bitter disappointment, isolation, and hopelessness. And just about every one of them must feel terrible about how they abandoned their leader in his time of need. And it's at that desolate moment that the key twist in the story happens. Slowly, with Jesus' women followers in the lead, the last shall be first, he preached. They realize that all is not lost. Maybe the first hints of this are remembering Jesus' teachings about forgiveness. Maybe some of them start to wonder if that message of forgiveness might even apply to them. Perhaps a little desolation slips away as they begin to forgive themselves. And then they remember his teachings about love. God is love. That was the heart of his message. That teaching they realized, that teaching was not crucified and buried. It's still there in their hearts, tender, fragile, but alive. So they start feeling love for themselves and their fellow disciples. They remember that Jesus even applied that teaching to his enemies. Probably not today, but maybe someday, they will even be able to find some love for the Roman authorities and those who did their bidding. So their friend and their leader is gone, but now they understand that his teachings remain. The forgiveness and the love that he showered on them is still alive in their hearts, in their memories, in their spirits, and maybe even in their actions. And there you have it. Jesus' gift of love triumphs over death. Where is thy victory? O grave? Nowhere. Oppression and death and destruction cannot ultimately kill love. Not now. Not ever. Thus it has always been in Selma, in Soweto, even in Mrs. Howard, even in Auschwitz. In the Easter story, the gift of love transcends the power of death and destruction and hate. Forest Church puts it this way. Jesus suffered, wept, forgave, and died. His followers failed, scattered, wept, found forgiveness, lived, reborn of his death, children of his undying love. For him and for them, even after death in his love, Jesus lived on. In his disciples' hearts, he reigned as never before. Jesus lived within them, not simply among them. That, Forest Church writes, is the essence of the Easter experience. A transformation occurred. Jesus was reborn in their hearts. Death was the occasion, loved the medium, and forgiveness the catalyst. Let me just say that last line of his again. It's incredible. Death was the occasion of transformation, love the medium, and forgiveness the catalyst. Well, I invite you to completely disregard the story if you have never felt disappointed in yourself or others, if you have never felt alone or abandoned. I invite you to just ignore the story if you have never wept in grief or despair. Disregard this if you, if you have never had fear, grip, your heart, and your soul. Forget about this if you have never awoken in the middle of the night filled with anxiety and not been able to go back to sleep. But if you felt any of these things ever, then the story might have something to teach you. And so we come to big joy. Easter is an opportunity to open ourselves to big joy, to shout hallelujah to wear fancy hats and eat delicious treats. It's a day to dance on a brink, to run with our wildfire. Yes, there's an abyss right there in front of us, and maybe we are closer to glory when leaping the abyss than when we're upholstering a rut. Be prepared to bump into wonder, even as you face your mistakes in the fact of death. Get ready, get ready to say yes to life. Only love prevails. Nothing perishes. Nothing survives. Everything transforms. Honeymoon with big joy on Easter. Even better, honeymoon with big joy every day, not just Easter. Well, this last thing, honeymooning with big joy every day sure isn't easy. Saying yes to life is not always easy. Some days it even feels impossible. I'm guessing that a lot of us have had maybe more of those days in this past difficult year than usual. I've been thinking about this weekend as we struggle with yet another mass shooting this one, reeking of misogyny and racism. I've been thinking about this as the birthday of my dear friend who died of COVID last fall came on Friday. He probably got COVID when he went to a Walgreens store last fall to get a flu shot. Others in the store were not masked even as COVID was running wild in Appleton. Although he had a bad lung disease, his death was among those hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths. If we only had had good leadership, if we had only all cared about one another in the common good. Grief, anger, even the abyss have been there for so many of us through this past year of COVID in a beginning reckoning with racism and insurrection and now yet another mass shooting. Many of us, especially those marginalized communities, have had one hell of a lent and it's gone on for more than a year. I can feel light at the end of the COVID tunnel but it's not over. In any way, the point of the Easter story isn't really to wait until everything's hunky-dory, everything's copacetic to see big joy. It's to try to make big joy in our space for big joy in our lives now, right here, even when that feels impossible. Saying yes to life is a spiritual practice. Practice, as in we make mistakes and then we practice some more. Practice is in we can get better at this. Sure, some days we are not able to honeymoon with big joy but we can try, or at least we can say, well I'm going to try again tomorrow. We can try to practice seeing the light even on those days when the clouds gather overhead. We can look anew for the new sun beginning to rise. I invite you into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our community within and beyond First Unitarian Society. Today's offering will be shared with the UW Madison Odyssey Project. Odyssey takes a whole family approach to increasing confidence through reading, writing, and speaking. It has empowered over 500 low income adults to find their voices and begin to earn college degrees. Odyssey includes programming supporting the children and grandchildren of adult students and students who are incarcerated. Here is a look at the Odyssey Project. I always wanted to go to school but I knew I didn't have the money or the resources. I was like free school, bring it on. Free meant the barrier wasn't there so now that I could be and do what I wanted to do. The natural thought that we have is you have to be rich to go to college so most people don't even think about college as being an option in the first place. I was pretty miserable. I didn't really fit in with anybody. I dropped out. I was homeless for a bit I mean just living on people's coaches. I'm a father of five beautiful kids and just the obstacles that were placed in a way of trying to raise a family at the time prohibited me from going back to school until I found the Odyssey Project. We can invite friends over just because you didn't have anything and then you're hungry. We were the ones that people said couldn't didn't want it. Couldn't do it. They don't want to read any Shakespeare. Like what do we want to do? Odyssey, if you don't know is just an amazing program. It's a year long course in Humanities so we studied Plato, Socrates Frederick Douglass, Emily Dickinson the list goes on. So that instilled in me a validation that I could be a lifelong learner. Even when we got into Plato, you would hear people kind of like I don't know Plato, but I played this out in my life. Being in that class for a lot of people was the first time they ever felt like they were smart. We had people from all different walks of life that everybody was hungry to learn. Like everybody was eager to listen. Returning to school in my 40s while my older kids were still in high school I believe it inspired them so I have three college graduates. The way you talk to your kids was going to be different. The way you encouraged them was going to be different. Odyssey Junior is wonderful. I mean a lot of the times I would not know. I wouldn't be able to come to school. I wouldn't be able to attend regular classes without having child care for my children. Thank goodness Odyssey does offer that. I come to class, my children go to class, we have a ball, they look for it to Wednesdays every week. Mom is it Wednesday yet? Is it Wednesday yet? So here I am in a role as a teacher of Odyssey Junior and I was so deeply inspired by the team of teachers that conduct the classes for the adults that I feel like I can give back and hopefully I can have an impact on the youth just like they had an impact on me. Before I took the Odyssey class I was more reserved and like more introverted I guess. And one thing they really do a good job with is helping you discover your own voice. The Odyssey program has given me strength, belief. I have belief in myself that I can conquer anything. I'm going to college. Really changed the trajectory of my life and sparked the artistry back in me made me believe that I was able to attain in a career as an artist. It's been all days singing the praises of the Odyssey project because you know there's school but this transcends school so we had all these amazing learning opportunities but we finished you inherit a family supported and love. Odyssey project epitomizes the Wisconsin idea like nothing I've ever saw. The sky is the planet. You will see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website FUSMadison.org. You will also see our text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. The care of the congregation in grief and anger is again a person with a gun has committed another mass shooting atrocity. Misogyny, racism, easy access to weapons once again bring terror particularly this time to the Asian American community. This community who have so keenly felt the terrible impact of racist rhetoric coming from some of the supposed leaders of our nation over this past year. Our hearts break. We light a candle this morning in honor and in memory of the victims in support of their loved ones and for all who feel even more afraid and vulnerable today. And we light a second candle for the Wisconsin 7. We light a candle for the Wisconsin 7 activists who stopped eating on March 4 and are now in the 17th day of their water only fast demanding that the governor's funding proposals for climate justice, equity, green jobs and lead pipe removal be kept in the 2021-23 state budget. May they be safe and healthy in the coming last days of their hunger strike. What we are willing to do for climate justice and for creating a livable planet for those who come after. And we light a third candle of gratitude for Eva Wright who expresses her heartfelt thanks for the prayers and good wishes as she recuperates from the installation of a new pacemaker. Eva reports that this is one of the really little ones embedded in the chest actually the size of a pill. Eva we wish you continued healing, good healing in these coming days. And then finally we light a last candle that represents the unspoken joys, concerns and sorrows that we bring with us today. There is a love May you keep your hearts open to the possibility that big joy is there even in the difficult, even in the painful, even in the mundane. May you keep looking for ways to say yes to life. May you keep looking for the new sun beginning to rise. May you go in peace.