 Is it still the same problem in the case of the board? It's reordered. It's a reformer. It's the same. It's a lot of different. That was one of the most popular. Okay. Just because you're in the middle of it, you're in the middle of it. In that area, you're not going to fool with that plan and kind of being out with the dust, you know, and seeing it. Yeah, but I don't want to take this as a problem. I'm just going to ask them to take these issues and put it into the board. They have to take these issues. It's not something you can do. It's not anything you can do. That feels pretty nice. Yeah. Then what happened in the school ooh. Oh, yeah. Is it still young enough? Yeah. That's not the end of a school time, that the uses of the school are deserve higher education. I'm relieved. Okay. You should go on holiday. I think graduation will be better. Yeah, oh yeah. Do it. Are you yet? Oh yeah. It does, and actually it's a lovely exciting day to announce because we, because I need to get up for relief right now, probably. Oh, am I not? And it's giving you which, there's a picture. Oh. Did it get to you? I'm following. I've got it. Bring it in. Oh, so far. Got it. Thank you. Thank you. Good. Yes, please. Okay. That's the real answer. Okay. That's the real answer. Okay. Can you say that that's the rule of the West Bank? And I was just wondering, that was a good meeting. So what's the reason you didn't get invited to this? That's fine. That's fine. That's not going to happen. I hope that's going to happen at any moment. So, do you have a streamer? No. Do you have a streamer? No. Do you have a streamer? No. Do you have a streamer? No. Do you have a streamer? No. Do you have a streamer? Yes. Yeah. There you go. There you go. Okay. What do you do? I'll do a water streamer. Okay. You don't do that anymore. Okay. So if you're company would just put it on you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah So you will level up a little bit, won't you? It takes a village. I'd like to invite you into a moment of centering silence. And now please remain seated and join us in singing our in-gathering hymn found in your order of service. Good morning and welcome to 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 Tim Corden and on behalf of the congregation I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you are on life's journey, we celebrate your presence with us. Visitors are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour and after service look for people carrying teal, stoneware, mugs. They are people who are knowledgeable in First Unitarian Society, our programs in community life, and they look forward to the chance to speak with you this morning. You can also stop by our information table outside the library where you can find more information about upcoming events and programs. In this lively, acoustical environment it can become difficult for those in attendance to hear what's going on. So we just want to remind you that there's a child haven back there and the commons behind us if anyone needs to talk or move around. The services can still be seen and heard from those areas. We do have hearing assistance devices. If you should find the need for those, please ask one of our ushers. This would also be a good time to remind you to turn off any electronic devices that might disrupt the service. Experienced guides are generally available to give building tours after each service, so if you'd like to learn more about this sustainably designed edition or national landmark meeting house, please meet near the large glass windows after the service. I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help this service run so smoothly. Musicians are Dan Broner, our greeters are Pamela McMullen. I should say greeter. Our sound operator is David Brilis. Hospitality is Sandra Plisch and Bliss Nitschke. And our tour guide is Rose Detmer. I guess we don't have anyone at the book table. Please note your announcements in the red floors insert inside your order of service, which describe upcoming events of the society and provide more information about today's activities. And here is a special announcement I'd like to draw your attention to. The music director search committee is beginning the process of finding our new music director and they want to know your thoughts regarding the music program and its roles here at FUS. There is a table set up for you to visit after each service today. Please feel free to stop by and discuss your thoughts or fill out a note sharing your ideas and wishes. Our pulpit guest is no stranger to First Unitarian Society. Having served as our social justice coordinator, my predecessor for several years, now the executive director of the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice, Becky says that she is passionate about connecting people to each other and the power we share when led to act on our own beliefs. She has found that people of all faiths and backgrounds share commitment to fairness and the dignity of all workers. Becky started working in restaurants at the age of 14 in her hometown of Louisville, Kentucky and managed a retail store before entering a career as a social worker in social work and teaching. Ultimately, her desire to work on core causes of poverty rather than symptoms led Becky to be trained in community organizing by the Interfaith Coalition of Worker Justice's national affiliate Interfaith Worker Justice. Over the years, Becky held several roles with ICWJ, field organizer, acting director, board member. She has led a Black Friday Walmart rally and a successful fight to protect local living wage ordinances. After several years as the coordinator of social justice programs here at FUS, Becky returned to ICWJ last January. She is the director of the Madison Workers' Rights Center as well and serves on the board of Madison Area Urban Ministry and the Stewardship of Public Policy Committee of the Wisconsin Council of Churches. Becky has a spouse and two teenage children. Her favorite thing about living in Madison is paddling in Wisconsin rivers and lakes. Thank you and welcome back, Becky. Our opening words this morning are from the late British novelist and social commentator, George Orwell. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of a mysterious authority and he has this firm conviction that they will never allow him to do this or that or the other. Once when I was hot picking, I asked the sweaty pickers who earned something less than six pence an hour, why do you not form a union? I was told immediately that they would never permit it. Well, who were they? I asked. No one seemed to know, but evidently, they were omnipotent. I invite you to rise and body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. Please join me in the words of affirmation as Tim Corden, our social justice coordinator, lights the chalice. Kindle this single flame as a symbol of unity in diversity to underscore the love and longing that make us one despite our many differences. We also kindle this light as a beacon of hope for those whose lives are darkened this day, who suffer from uncertainty, poverty, or sorrow. Let this small flickering fire be for us an emblem of the divine spark which animates us in the pursuit of our noblest aspirations. And now on this fine Labor Day Sunday, please turn to your neighbor and exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. And at this time I would like to invite any children in our midst to come forward to join me for the message for all ages. I see some shaking of heads back there. We do not want to come forward and be exposed to all this, but I would love to have some company. And since it is for all ages, anybody who's a little older can also accompany them. Hey, here we go. So are any of you getting ready to go to school? Nobody's quite school age yet? Not quite there yet? You're four. I think they've got four K kindergarten. You're six. So you're probably going to be going to school. Probably some of you are going to be going to school. Probably some of you have been to school. I would hope. Yeah, and some people have already started school this fall, right? Well, you know, 150 years ago, which is even longer than I've been alive, a lot of kids didn't go to school at all. Because for many kids, 150 years ago, they had to go out and work instead of going to school. And these children, and probably some of them were your great, great, great grandparents, they did really hard work when they were kids. They worked in factories and they worked in fields. And they weren't paid very much at all for what they did, maybe just pennies. And often their parents who worked weren't paid very much either. And if anybody got sick or if they got injured, then they might lose their job and not be able to make any money. Or they might just have to go hungry until they could go back to work again. Well, this was not a very fair system. And a number of the people who owned the big factories and owned the big farms became very, very wealthy, got really rich, had lots of money, because they paid their workers, many of them kids, hardly anything. So as you might expect, eventually the people doing all this work, they got kind of angry about this. They got fed up and so they began talking to each other and they said to themselves, you know, if these people that employ us don't start paying us more money, then we are going to stop working. We are going to go out on what they call a strike. And if no work was being done and the factories were silent and nobody was out in the fields, well then those rich people that owned those factories in those fields, they wouldn't make any money either and they wouldn't like that very well, would they? Well, these workers created, they got together and they created what are called unions and these unions were groups of workers and they all worked together to support their interests and these unions 150 years ago were led by some very smart and very brave people and one of the most famous of those union leaders was a woman named Mary Harris Jones and she was born 180 years ago in the country of Ireland. Now Mary Harris Jones came to Canada when she was a teenager and she went to college and she became a teacher and then she moved to the United States and for two years she taught kids in Michigan but then she got married and she had four kids and she moved to another city, Memphis, Tennessee but then something really bad happened. There was a really bad disease called yellow fever that swept through Memphis, Tennessee and her husband and all four of her children died from yellow fever. They didn't have powerful medicines like we do today that can cure people but Mary Harris's husband had been a union organizer and after her family were gone, Mary Harris Jones decided that she was going to become a union organizer too and she joined a group called the Knights of Labor and she began organizing strikes but then the people that owned the factories in the fields began to fight back and the police were actually on their side and so many of the strikers that Mary led were arrested and they were shot at and sometimes they were even killed but Mary didn't stop because she believed that all working people deserved a living wage and so she continued to organize these strikes and she found out that it was particularly effective that it was really powerful if she would organize the wives and the children of the men who were out on strike to go out and demonstrate on their behalf and this was so successful that when she was put on trial in West Virginia in 1902 for organizing all these women, the prosecutor who wanted to throw her in jail said there sits the most dangerous woman in America she crooks her finger and 20,000 contented men walk off the job now in the year 1900, one out of six of all children in the United States didn't go to school they were working instead of going to school and this really bothered Mary Harris Jones and so she began organizing these kids who were working in the linen mills, the cloth mills in Pennsylvania and then three years later in 1903 she organized this children's crusade and accompanied by hundreds and hundreds of children she marched all the way from Philadelphia to the president of the United States' hometown in the state of New York and she demanded that the president come out and talk to all of them and that president was named Theodore Roosevelt and he refused, he wouldn't talk to any of them but this march of the children became so famous that it caused this national stir about kids working in factories and the whole climate began to change and child labor laws were put in place these children by the way were carrying banners in that children's crusade that said we want to go to school, not to the mills well by this time Mary Harris Jones was presenting herself to the public as mother Jones and she referred to all the men and the women and the kids that she worked with as her children she was the mother Jones to all these workers and she looked like anybody's gentle grandma but she was really a feisty spirit she was a fighter and she spent time in jail and she kept on working at all this organizing until she was in her 80s and finally Mary Harris Jones, mother Jones, died at the age of 93 and she is buried at Union Miner's Cemetery in Mount Olive, Illinois and if you go down the interstate, I think it's interstate 55 you can see a sign outside of Mount Olive that says this is the birth place where Mary, mother Jones, now rests and every year there is a festival in Mount Olive that is celebrated in her honor Mother Jones Day so that's a little story about someone that you may not hear about in your history books but someone that was very important in helping kids to be able to go to school rather than having to do hard work when they're little so thank you for listening and now we're going to sing you out with our next hymn which is 318 I think there's some ice cream for you later today our next reading is from James Baldwin's book The Fire Next Time specifically it's from the first essay in the book My Dungeon Shook which is an open letter addressed to Mr. Baldwin's nephew primarily on racism I hear the chorus of innocents screaming no, this is not true how bitter you are but I am writing this letter to you to try to tell you something about how to handle them for most of them do not yet really know that you exist I know the conditions under which you were born for I was there your countrymen were not there and haven't made it yet your grandmother was also there and no one has ever accused her of being bitter I suggest that the innocents check with her she isn't hard to find your countrymen don't know that she exists either though she has been working for them all their lives and from the same book these innocent people have no other hope they are in effect still trapped in a history which they do not understand and until they understand it they cannot be released from it they have had to believe for many years and for innumerable reasons that black men are inferior to white men many of them indeed know better but as you will discover people find it very difficult to act on what they know to act is to be committed and to be committed is to be in danger that letter first appeared in the progressive here in 1962 oh good so our next reading is more contemporary still on the subject a bit of grandmothers the next reading is by a local poet Araceli Lopez Esparza it's from this awesome by the way anthology I didn't know there were Latinos in Wisconsin which is edited by our own poet laureate Oscar Mirellis another poet I recommend so we dedicate this reading today to this woman Miss Esparza's grandmother Zephyrina Lopez who turned 94 years old last week Senora Lopez migrated here in 1924 as a child with her family of migrant farmers her own children and grandchildren now include six college graduates Senora Lopez is a lifelong devoted Christian as well as a retiree of the UW humanities building janitorial crew and here is stained glass windows by Araceli Esparza first they destroyed our church to put up a new building all they kept were the stained glass windows I remember a time when I used to walk up Park Street to get to church each Sunday I asked Abuelita why do we have to walk she would tell the story about how she and Tia walked all the way from our hometown in Mexico to San Juan de los Lagos and how she had to carry my fat baby cousin almost the whole way if I was lucky we would have donuts after church and go to the Eagles store on the way back La Iglesia, the church, was special for me Sister and Padre always had a smile for me the kitchen walls had Aztec drawings, paintings, and frames that held old pictures of those who came before me in gym I watched with envy and pride the Avila brothers do their dances I had me Primera Comunión and Quince there I would run and hold my breath when I passed the Comunión Place just in case un espíritu malo wanted to come in I remember hiding under the pews so unless you are a person of color growing up Catholic in Madison you might not understand or maybe you do but they aren't closing the doors on a building they're closing the doors on our culture our espacio, our space, our meeting place my stained glass windows again my name is Becky Schiegel I am the Executive Director of the Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice of South Central Wisconsin and First Unitarian is a long time partner and leader in worker justice and for that we thank you and I also want to thank you to Michael and to Kelly for inviting me into your pulpit and Tim for the lovely introduction thank you it's wonderful to be back here today with you guys I've missed a lot of you but then I also see a lot of you out in the community standing up for justice for four years I was blessed to serve as this congregation's social justice coordinator and as we journeyed and learned together these words came up often the inherent worth and dignity of every person this is of course the Unitarian Universalist First Principle and it's a value we also share in the coalition so the worth of every person it's been easy for me to say but when I find myself deeply reflecting on that word I am profoundly struck that it really is a difficult concept because implied here is a concept of equal worth or perhaps some baseline of what we're all worth what does that mean in action I wonder some regard, some respect, some modicum of decency or certain intrinsic rights what am I worth? what are you worth? I'm really concerned these days when I hear and read public arguments solely stated solely in terms of the economic impact of a certain decision in fact I was appalled recently to hear even an environmental justice advocate arguing that Foxconn ought not to have the right to change the direction of a stream because of the financial impact on the state change the direction of a stream so then this week we waited for the end of DACA everyone's familiar with what's going on with that that's the deferred of action on deportation to the 800,000 young people who arrived in our country as children and with DACA have been able to work and go to school without hiding a group of elected officials pleaded their case recently with these numbers $460 billion and $3.4 billion those numbers represent respectively first how much the dreamers have contributed to their communities in the last five years and how much their employers would pay to replace them I am thankful for those officials I am I'm thankful that they stood up and I pray that they continue but still I wonder how did they add up how much those young people have contributed to their communities our communities and are we to measure our worth by what it would cost our employers to replace us and I have to say there's a little self-consciousness in that you are my former employer and this is my replacement what's the dollar figure of what you have contributed to your community in the last five years so earlier I read the poem stained glass and in that poem the poet grieves the loss of her church to her family and her community to me it spoke of the worth of self-determination we are reminded how often certain communities do not get to choose what we as a whole tear down in their lives or what they might build up as it turns out in reaching to the poem I was gift poet I was gifted with the story of Senora Lopez which I shared with you with her picture right and in fact I was gifted with a lesson because frankly I'll admit if you ask me when I picture a janitor I was not picturing this elderly grandmother her abuelita perhaps she was not this lovely wise woman of 94 when she was cleaning the humanities building how much was she worth then so I want to add some language to that question and I'm going to do this two ways equal opportunity mysticism so first in my tradition we're told that we cannot see the face of God directly Moses had to have a chat with a burning bush because he couldn't just look at God right we cannot take in the hugeness of the creator but we can look at the creation to get a glimpse and we know that the rest is there okay let's do that now in the pop science version there's been a lot of excitement about the sun right and you can't look straight at it you got to have the little glasses but even if we have a peek at it we aren't really seeing what the actual sun looks like right but we can Google it if you haven't and see the NASA's version it's so much more beautiful well I believe that our poet's grandmother was there to see in that younger version of herself and that when you or I interact with anyone today we can't possibly see their whole worth though imagining that we are seeing a piece of all creation or perhaps all the life connected to them might help so let's look at doing worker justice on this Labor Day weekend and I'm thrilled Michael gave you great history on it which is awesome can I get you now to try out a little vow with me are you willing to do that? okay repeat after me it goes like this the next time I am in a conversation about great injustices I will not put the blame or the solution on the presidency that's right this year for Labor Day unlike last Thanksgiving I do not wish for you to get out a placemat that teaches you how to talk to your relatives about he who wants us to talk about him if you want to do something about honoring the worth of every worker then I want you to move on to talking about three things in every conversation you have about economic justice wages, safety, unions these are the basic protections that we have at work that we've been losing for some time wages, safety, and the right to collective activity and folks I'm not wanting to put aside some of the national things that are going on I want us to control the narrative we need to talk about wage theft more wages are stolen when a worker isn't paid at all or at less than the legal minimum had to work on a break misclassified in terms of how much they should be paid or just simply not given their last check things like that regardless of why a worker walks into our own Madison Workers' Rights Center they are overwhelmingly likely to be experiencing wage theft and people I talk to are overwhelmingly likely to underestimate how much this happens and to overestimate how much we're doing about it now, assuming legal wages how do we determine how much should be legally paid for work should we set the low bar on wages that lowest that a business can afford because this is often what we are saying yes, well many of us say no we've developed some language about what strikes the difference between slavery and employment we might consider the ability to pay for food housing and clothing we call this a living wage well overall in Wisconsin it's calculated to be like ten dollars and a half but all the way up to over twenty three dollars if that adult has one child to support but our minimum wage in Wisconsin and nationally is still seven dollars and a quarter you might say we are three to fifteen dollars short of the difference between our employment and basic human worth and I need to repeat one thing about lowest the business can afford please challenge that narrative I'm going to give you a drastic example this congregation employs about twenty people somewhere in there what if Michael decided that for most productivity we need to chain one ankle of every employee to their cubicle would you stand for that what if Michael told you it made them more productive it saved the congregation money and you know we're hurting for money that's the best we can do would you accept it of course you wouldn't this is silly this is ridiculous I beseech you to bring some of that outrage into the idea that we can accept that people can work for something that does not allow them food and housing minimum wage also has a color nationally black and Latino people are much more likely to earn less than fifteen dollars an hour and then there's incarceration and right here is where I just say if you have not watched the documentary 13th you need to ask him he'll set you up in a recent online conversation and this is where I'm talking about why conversations matter I was in an online conversation with other non-profit professionals and someone asked about using prison labor for her organization to save money for like their printing and things like that and when there was pushback about how the actual workers in that scenario were going to be making about a dollar fifteen hour someone argued that the pay for the prisoner would be equivalent if you took into account room and board and security what is the worth of an incarcerated worker see that's a tough one for us sometimes right so wages now safety worker health and safety is something I fear that many of us take for granted the department of labor has long relied on the education of employers and even more so on the education of the actual employees to spot fix and or report health and safety hazards the grants that support that education are being cut drastically and then this year congress reversed two things one the requirements for business to disclose and correct serious safety violations in order to get the largest federal contracts they don't have to fix it anymore and then they rolled back even health and safety record keeping requirements for all businesses meanwhile the national minimum is still seven dollars and a quarter and so jobs that are nine ten maybe twelve are considered good-paying paying jobs for workers of any color and these jobs we need to pay attention to actually because they're often in warehouses and they're what used to be union jobs and now more often than not they are temporary or what they call agent supply jobs like there's a temp agency actually hiring the workers temporary workers allow for our fast-paced economy and when you put it together with this varied and on-call scheduling for low-age workers they allow restaurants retail manufacturing and construction to bring in more people when they need more and not have them when they don't what is wrong with this right we do not want to pay someone for sitting idly well what's wrong with that is that they invest nothing in these folks and by nothing I mean yes the kind of kindnesses that make you loyal to where you work but also benefits and most importantly I think proper training the kind that saves lives that is we're noticing that temporary workers are literally dying on the job either because they weren't trained on equipment or because they have no leverage in complaining about the lack of safety equipment they are expendable and sadly they know it so I met with a room full of such workers in a church basement last week in rural Wisconsin 25 of them we're gonna meet again we're looking for maybe 50 next time what Michael was describing you years ago is still happening right now it's a good way to use your church by the way they are these workers these particular workers describe to us that they are inadequately trained on the equipment and they have high production standards that are absolutely uniform regardless of their physical ability to attain them they work long shifts and they are told when they can go to the bathroom even if there aren't enough bathrooms to go around there's your 10 minute break give it a try they are told they'll get raises that don't come and if someone quits they're told to do the job of two and if you don't like it you can leave this is said to them so regularly that they laugh about it they have to laugh because then they tell us they know that they are not actually humans to their employers sometimes this is greed on the part of the owners or shareholders and sometimes I think this is our fault Amazon and welcome to the neighborhood Amazon right Amazon and that's not the company I was talking about it's much more local but Amazon's notorious for using temp workers in its warehouses and running them ragged around like worker leaflets or recruitment materials say that you'll be working walking 10 miles in one shift at brisk paces around the warehouses people die there and not because of safety violations but because many are not in the shape to be working with this 12 miles at that pace every day and temp workers don't have health care so meanwhile I think we all need to do some of what you guys do best right here we need to keep promoting mindful intentional living as the sustainable, desirable way to do life so that we aren't promoting that speedy capitalism at all cost life that fuels this way of being it's a big task I know but we can change the narrative one act at a time the next time we hear or read a news story in which individual worth isn't even considered we call or we write in I read an article that sort of horrified me recently it lumped freelancers in with temporary workers in something called the contingent workforce and by lumping thusly the article was able to quote millennials as enjoying the flexibility and work life balance of their flexible schedules now compare this with the workers I met this week who don't even have control of going to the bathroom are both types of workers worth the same dignity immigration is tied in with both wages and safety undocumented immigrants overwhelmingly work in low wage activities in particular farming and other food protection construction and the maintenance of our buildings and lawns at least half of all us farm workers are undocumented do you know that at least half though many have been here for many years and low wage workplaces are where wage theft unsafe workplace conditions and other labor law violations are common undocumented workers are less likely to report the hazards to file complaints or even to report their injuries this then emboldens the oppressive bosses who simply threaten to call immigration we see this every day at the workers right center and a fearful workplace is a danger to us all we must start connecting these dots for everyone around us so wages safety and that brings me to unions because again Labor Day is a celebration of the labor movement we just moved I'm happy to say we just moved ICWJ into the Madison labor temple we're bringing we're going closer in relationship with labor unions than ever before we know that we must not let go of unions though we will certainly continue to shape and redefine them today the growing face of unions is more ethnically and gender diverse than ever and whether we call it unions or co-ops or something else collective worker action is responsible for the rights we have today and collective worker actions still in place for workers consider another member of our national network the coalition for a mockily workers some of you have picketed perhaps with them with me downtown this organization of farm workers in Florida has developed a fair food program that has transformed what were slave like conditions for them and because of their actions major national grocery stores and fast food chains are signing on paying the resulting sense of them to make sure that these folks have access to shade and a bathroom are paid decently and actually could leave the job if they wish they didn't have this before and so just as a side for those of us interested in that movement Wendy still won't sign on and the information is on the UUA website and that brings us back once again to self-determination self-identified groups of people facing oppression including groups of workers telling us what they need and what they want and we can hear we can follow and we can learn what is needed from us so let us recall my other reading from earlier James Baldwin's words to be committed is to be in danger what are we being called to risk when we are professing that we are committed to seeing truly seeing the worth in everyone being arrested having less money is it living less comfortably or for some of us is the risk being wrong being ineffective who is worth that risk to us so it's easy to feel hopeless I know but there is actually in hope in taking that risk and committing deeply to each other have you noticed that it's the very dreamers who are at risk of deportation because they are DACA kids that are continuing to speak out and their courage, their story inspired many of you to make calls this week yes and we've seen some turnaround and I just want to tell you this one example that really talks about changing this narrative when the Tennessee Attorney General announced his office was dropping its support of ending DACA and that they now prefer legislation to protect the dreamers he said the human element of the program should not be ignored so let's do this just for today, for Labor Day one more thing I'll leave you with take a deep breath with me and let today's words and all the responses because as I talk you're thinking you're feeling let all of that sink into your body think this how much am I worth whatever I have done today or last year whatever I'll produce next week that is not my worth and then look around and think of the work of this room of beautiful people, this community how much are they worth and then think of your employees here and everywhere else in your life I want you to think of all the people whose work you have encountered this week and all the people you will encounter today and tomorrow let us try to carry this one question into all our encounters this week as we eat the food, drive the highway, open the package let us think what is every worker worth Becky and it is now time for the giving and receiving of our offering and as your program indicates 100% of your gifts this morning will be dedicated to the work of the ICWJ please be generous this place we bring our whole and occasionally our broken selves we carry with us the joys and the sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where these might be received we would pause now to acknowledge an entry in our cares of the congregation book from Teresa Stabo I am hopelessly smitten with my first grand child Hank Tio Shimp so congratulations to Teresa and then in addition to that joy I would at this time share a brief meditation that was composed by the president of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association within the past week she writes with the deluges in Texas in Louisiana and in India, Nepal and Bangladesh we are deluged by stories of death and loss stories of fear and trembling and devastation and suffering falling upon so many especially the most vulnerable in the name of all it is sacred and holy may we hold in our thoughts this day the rescued and the rescuers the dead bereaved the people and the pets and the wild creatures struggling to survive in the troubled waters may aid and comfort be sent and received by those in desperate need may we come to understand that we are a part of this story as well and in this moment our part is to enact love in whatever way we can as volunteers benefactors who refuse to turn away or to retreat into our own safe and untroubled spaces we are one people sharing one earth with choices to make about the chapters still to come may we choose the way of love compassion and justice blessed be and amen I'm sure that many of you have already contributed to the relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey if you have not you can visit our website to find a direct link to the Unitarian Universal Service Committee or outside in our comments today T.K. Browning will also assist you in making contributions for hurricane relief and so by virtue of our brief time together today may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded please join me now in our closing hymn please be seated for the benediction and the postlude we close with these words from the late Irish poet and spiritual may the light of your soul bless your work with love and warmth of the heart may you see in what you do the beauty of your soul and may the sacredness of your work may it bring light and renewal to those who work with you and to those who receive your work may your work never exhaust you may it release wellsprings of refreshment and inspiration and excitement may you never become lost in bland absences and may the day never burden you may dawn find hope in your heart approaching your new day with dreams and possibilities and promises may evening find you gracious and fulfilled may you go into the night blessed sheltered protected may you find your soul calm consoled and renewed by your work blessed be and amen