 to invite you into a few moments of centering silence and seated and join in seeing our in-gathering hymn found in your Order of Service, 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 Elizabeth Barrett and I've been a member here for 21 years and I'm teaching children's religious education for the first time this year. On behalf of the congregation I'd like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation so whoever you are and wherever you are on your life's journey we celebrate your presence among us. Visitors are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service. Feel free to stop by our information table outside the library where you can find more information about our upcoming events and programs. In this lively acoustical environment it can be difficult for those in attendance to hear what's happening. So we remind you that our child haven and commons area are excellent places to go when anyone needs to talk or move around. The service can still be seen and heard from those areas. We do have hearing assistance devices available. Please see one of our ushers if that would be helpful for you. This would be a good time to turn off all electronic devices that might disrupt the service. Experience guides are available to give a building tour after each service so the guide today is Pamela McMullen. You just meet over here on the left by our glass windows and you can see you can learn more about our sustainably designed addition and our National Landmark Community House. I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. We have quite a number of people helping. So greeters upstairs, Mary Savage and Claire Box. On sound is David Briles. The ushers are Bob and Paula Alt and Anne Ostrom. Our lay minister is John McGevan. Hospitality we've got Nancy Kossiff, Biss, Nitschke, and Bob and Lucy Lasseter. All four of them. Let's see. So oh please stop by and visit the book table if you like. We have some fabulous books that are for sale. Please note the announcements that are in your order of service and I have two special announcements. So here's the first one. In June we will say goodbye to Reverend Michael Schuler and in August we will begin a two-year period of interim ministry. Are you interested in knowing more about the purposes and process for selecting an interim minister? What are your questions, concerns, hopes, and dreams about our upcoming time with an interim minister? The board and the interim minister search task force are eager to hear from you. Members of the task force will be available in the commons after this service and they look forward to talking with you. And if you want to dive deeper into this issue you can come to the gay boy living room for one of two sessions being offered by the board and the task force. So the first sessions this afternoon, 1.30 to 3.30, and the next one will be Tuesday, February 27th, 6.30 to 8.30. And if none of these times work for you, we'll keep watching the red floors for other opportunities. So the other announcement, da-da-da, has to do with this magnificent chalice, the symbol of our free faith. You see this sitting here? Those two large circles represent the Unitarian and Universalist parts of our living tradition. This is the official general assembly traveling chalice. Now, you may know this. General Assembly is our annual Unitarian Universalist Conference, convention, celebration, policy meeting, spiritual revival, and much more. I've been 14 times and oh my gosh, I can't wait to go again. So each year, this chalice, it travels around the region that's hosting General Assembly and individual congregations can sign up to get it, to have it visit. So I was the one who contacted, I contacted Reverend Kelly Crocker, Karen Armina, James Reep, Sandy Ingham at Prairie, and I said, let's get this beautiful symbol. So we got it. So it was at Prairie last week, this time we get it. Next week goes to James Reep, then I have to send it to Louisville. That's over there. Yeah, all the way over there. So I want you to put General Assembly on your calendar. It's going to be Kansas City this year. Kansas City, Missouri, June 20th through the 24th. I encourage everybody to attend, especially if you've never been. March 1st is when registration opens for housing. You just go to uua.org. Now, if you need a scholarship, March 1st, all the scholarship registrations open. So you can apply for scholarship. Now, I especially urge everybody who is ages 13 to 35 to look for a scholarship because they have ones that are just for you. Only for, you know, we older people cannot get those specific scholarships. So I'll be around after service with some information about Kansas City. Thanks. May today's service stimulate your mind, touch your heart and nurture your spirit. Come together once again on holy ground. For that place is holy, where lives are renewed, where wounds are healed, where hope is rekindled. In the busyness of our days, we pause to examine our lives, to refresh our spirits, to renew our souls, and to rejoice together in the freedom and love we share. And I invite you now to rise in body or spirit and join together in the words of affirmation as we light this magnificent chalice. From the events of our lives come the songs of our hearts. From the struggle to survive comes the melody of hope. From broken places of the spirit come our anthems of praise. From the deep silence of the soul comes the solace of peace. From the offerings of love come new shapes of the divine. From the community we share comes the promise of tomorrow. In silent witness to these truths we pause to light our beacon of faith. And before we join together in song remembering that it is cold and flu season, turn and say hello to your neighbor. Be able to go on that ferris wheel. He had been pregnant for a long time. So he and his uncle waited in line for 40 minutes. That's a long time for a 10-year-old to wait, or even a 56-year-old to wait. And finally it was his turn. He was bursting with excitement. And so the ferris wheel came down and they invited him to get into that cage that you sit in, and he looked into that empty cage, and he looked up at that really tall ferris wheel, and he froze with fear. He said, I don't think I want to go after all. No, not so much today. And sometimes life is like that. Sometimes life gives us a chance to do something that we're ready for, and we jump right in, and off we go. And other times life gives us a chance that we're not quite ready to grab. And what to do with a chance is going to be the subject of our book, our story today. In this story, chance looks like a golden butterfly, but I want you to use your imagination to think about what that chance might be. It could be the chance to make a new friend. It could be the chance to do something kind of scary. It could be the chance to perform in front of hundreds of people. Any kind of thing that your imagination can imagine. So here we go. I'm going to start the book. One day, I got a chance. It just seemed to show up. It acted like it knew me as if it wanted something. I didn't know why it was here. What do you do with a chance? I wondered. It fluttered around me. It brushed up against me. It circled me as if it wanted me to grab it. I started to reach for it, but I was unsure and pulled back. And so it flew away. I thought about it a lot. I wished I had taken my chance. I realized I had wanted it, but I still didn't know if I had the courage. When another chance came around, I wasn't so sure, but I decided to try. I went to reach for it, but I missed and fell. I was embarrassed. I felt foolish. It seemed like everyone was looking at me, and I decided I never wanted to feel this way again. So after that, whenever a chance came along, I ignored it. And the more I ignored them, the less they came around. Until one day, I noticed that I hadn't seen the chance in quite a while. It was as if they had all disappeared. I started to worry. What if I don't ever get another chance? I know I acted like I didn't care, but the truth was I did care. I still wanted to take a chance, but I was afraid. And I wasn't sure if I would ever be brave enough. Then I thought, maybe I don't have to be brave all the time. Maybe I just need to be brave a little while at the right time. I realized it was up to me. I promised myself that if I ever got another chance, I wasn't going to hold back. If I got another chance, I was going to be ready. Then on one seemingly ordinary day, I saw something shining far off in the distance. Is it possible? I hoped. Could this be my chance? I had to find out. I ran as hard and as fast as I could toward it. I don't know how to explain it, but the second I let go of my fears, I was full of excitement. It wasn't that I was no longer afraid, but now my excitement was bigger than my fear. As I got closer, I could see that this was a really huge chance. But this time I was ready. As it came by, I reached out and grabbed it, and I held on with all my might. It felt so good to soar and to fly and be free. I now see that when I hold back, I miss out. And I don't want to miss out. There's just so much I want to see and do and discover. So what do you do with a chance? You take it because it just might be the start of something incredible. So sometimes our fear is like this really wise voice inside of us saying, oh no, don't do that. That's not safe. You got to listen to that voice. That's an important voice. And sometimes our voice or the voice of fear inside of us is telling us that we shouldn't try something that we really could try, that we just need to be a little bit brave enough to try. Because if we try it, then that will help us to grow and to learn and to know ourselves better. And that's an important voice to listen to. And sometimes it's really hard to know the difference between the two voices of fear. And that's when it's a really good idea to talk to an adult who can help you to understand what that fear is really telling you. Sometimes I hope that in your lives you will have the chance to listen to the voice that tells you to take an opportunity, run with it, and that that will help you to grow and learn and know yourselves well and will give you a life of lots of great adventures. For now, the adventures, you're already class. So thank you very much for joining us for the story. Really appreciate it. It is delightful to see all of you today. My name is Drew Kennedy. I retired after 28 years from the First Unitarian Society of Milwaukee three and a half years ago. And so I'm just a little ahead of Michael. And I got to tell you, at least for me, retirement is like I died and went to heaven. It's, it's joyful. Anyway, so I'm delighted to be here. Michael and I had a custom, some of you will recognize, of exchanging pulpits. So I've had the privilege of speaking from this, one of the greatest of our pulpits in the Unitarian Universalist Association for quite a few years for about 30 years. I've been coming back and forth. And so it's delightful to be back here. One small matter. When I retired three and a half years ago, the congregation published a book of my sermons. It's called, what's it called, Playing Soccer with Buddha. And I brought a few, I have just a few left. If you're interested, they're $15 and come find me. Okay, today, for our topic, for our theme, I'd like to invite you to join me as together. We think about how we ought to live our lives in light of the fact that life is precious. Indeed, in light of the fact that all of us sooner or later will die. So for our reading, let me start with a poem first published in 2007. It is called, If You Knew and it is by Ellen Bass. Ellen Bass is a poet and an author who teaches at Pacific University in Oregon. And one small thing before I begin this poem, poetry is often difficult to understand, especially when it's being read to you, perhaps. So I invite you to just go with the flow, get what you can, leave what you don't know what I'm talking about aside. Just go with it. So if you knew, what if you knew you would be the last to touch someone. If you were taking tickets, for example, at the theater, tearing them, giving back the ragged stubs, you might take care to touch that poem, brush your fingertips along the lifelines crease. When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase too slowly through the airport, when the car in front of me doesn't signal, when the clerk at the pharmacy won't say thank you. I don't remember that they're going to die. A friend told me she'd been with her aunt. They just had lunch and the waiter a young gay man with plum black eyes joked as he served the coffee and kissed her aunt's powdered cheek when they left. Then they walked half a block and her aunt dropped dead on the sidewalk. How close does the dragon's spume have to come? How wide does the crack in heaven have to split? What would people look like if we could see them as they are soaked in honey, stung and swollen, reckless, pinned against time? This concludes our reading. We should just stop right here. There is a belief out there shared by many of us, I suspect including me, that there is in at least some respects a right way to die, a preferred way, a relatively at least good way. That said, each of us may have slightly different visions of it. For some of us, we may want to go in a twinkling like that, like the woman, the aunt on the sidewalk in the poem, or with, say, a sudden heart attack or a ruptured aortic aneurysm. According to this vision, ideally, we die peacefully. Best of all, perhaps in our sleep with no suffering, no advanced awareness, no regrets, boom, we're gone in a twinkling. Others, like myself, picture it differently. The right way to die, the good death as I see it, would be such that ideally I'd be given some warning. I'd get a little time to pack my bags, to count my blessings, to say some goodbyes, but not for too long. We definitely don't want to linger, right? Another aspect to consider when thinking about what might contribute to achieving a relatively good death has to do with issues of control, such as the durable power of attorney for healthcare and our living wills. We hope to be able to make decisions about how much medical intervention there will be, how much pain relief, whether we will die at home or in the hospital, and sometimes even who, hopefully, will be at our side. Now, when it comes to dying, it's been my experience, at least, over 40 some years of ministry that often things do work out pretty well. Sometimes exceedingly well, surprisingly well. And that's a lovely thing to be told. Many times, however, with death as in life, perfection eludes our grasp by a significant measure. Our best laid plans sometimes come to not. There are so many variables so hard to control. Dying is difficult to choreograph. For example, dying at home sounds like a great idea to most of us. 70% of Americans say they want to die at home. But we sometimes, I think, fail to realize just how challenging the work of dying can be for our loved ones. Because dying at home is not always easy. For one thing, almost everyone eventually needs some significant physical and medical care, either from a family member or from paid help, which can be both difficult and expensive to arrange. Bathing, feeding, dressing, helping in the bathroom, keeping track of all the medications, talking to the various doctors and nurses and social workers, renting hospital beds and other equipment, keeping up with all of the paperwork, the insurance and so forth. All of this can be physically and emotionally exhausting. As some of you, I suspect, know only too well from your own personal experience. So many of us, in fact, despite our initial instincts, perhaps, ultimately may find that there is considerable practical wisdom in finding a good nursing home or a good assisted living residence that will take care of the bulk of the physical needs of the dying or frail family member so that the family members can be actually freed up to do the loving and to do the care and to try to address the varied emotional needs of the dying and the family members at hand. So this may be something to consider. Inevitably, too, raising questions about how we want to die raises questions about how we ought to live. Dr. Rachel Raymond, who is an experienced and wise counselor for those with chronic or terminal illnesses, tells the following story. She writes, at a crowded party, a woman in her 30s, upon hearing what I do, told me how much she resented all this talk about the right way to die and about death as being meaningful. Her husband had died young of cancer three or four years before, and she still was unable to think about it without anger. As the cocktail party swirled around us, she told me that it had been terrible, just terrible. As therapy after therapy had failed, he, her husband, had become increasingly withdrawn and rejecting, lashing out at everyone and rebuffing the efforts of all those around him to be of help and comfort. He had blamed everyone for his suffering and for the lack of fulfillment in his life. He had spoken bitterly about the choices he had made and reproached his friends and family for allowing him to make them. Despite all those around him, eventually, he had died alone, distantly surrounded by abused people whom he had wounded deeply. She had cried and cried about it. The pain was less now. But even after all this time, she could not find any sense of meaning in his death, and she could not forgive him. Raymond continues, no one shares a story like this in such a setting unless they are in pain. My heart went out to her. I asked her what she had learned personally about death from this terrible experience. She paused and she looked at me for a long moment. And then with great passion, she said, I have learned that I do not want to die this way. Yes, I said. So how, how do you need to live? She looked at me puzzled. How do you need to live to be sure that you do not die this way? I asked again. As we continued to look at each other, it seemed to me that she looked past me for a moment, making eye contact with something intensely personal. Then she reached out and touched my hand and turned away into the crowd. Some months later, Rachel Raymond continues, I received a note from her telling me that my question had caused her to think about her timidity and her fears. There were many things she had left undone. She wanted to open her heart to certain people. She had not done it because she feared rejection. She had been asked to do several things at work that felt quite wrong to her. She had not refused to do those things or left her job as she feared she would be unable to find other work. She had a considerable artistic gift and had dreamt of studying and becoming a painter. She had not done this either because she was afraid to fail at it. In short, she knew. She knew absolutely that she was not living in a way that was true to herself but had not known where to find the courage to do things differently. My question had changed that. I am not going to die the way my husband died. She told me once is enough. So that's Rachel Raymond. So the question here I think is how do we need to live before we die? Or turning this around, perhaps the conclusion to be drawn is if we want to die well, first we have to live. One of my Unitarian Universalist ministerial colleagues, the Reverend Victoria Safford, looks at these interrelated issues of dying well and living well through the prism of an obituary notice and a tombstone epitaph. Safford writes, in a cemetery once, an old one in New England, I found a strangely soothing epitaph. The name of the deceased and her dates had been scoured away by wind and rain, but there was a carving of a tree with roots and branches, a classic 19th century motif, and among them the words, quote, she attended well and faithfully to a few worthy things. And quote, at first, this seemed to me a little meager. Yeah, a little stingy on the part of the survivors, but I wrote it down and have thought about it since. And now I can't imagine a more proud or satisfying legacy. Again, she attended well and faithfully to a few worthy things. Every day, Victoria Safford continues, I stand in danger of being struck by lightning and having the obituary and the local paper say for all the world to see, she attended frantically and ineffectually to a great many unimportant details. Yes, indeed. Is that the laughter of recognition or what do we have here? Yeah. So, Safford continues, how do you want your obituary to read? Quote, he got all the dishes washed and dried before playing with the children in the evening. Quote, she balanced her checkbook with meticulous precision and never missed a day of work, missed a lot of sunsets, missed a lot of love, missed a lot of risk, missed a lot, but her money was in order. Or quote, she answered all her calls, all her email, all her voicemail, but along the way, she forgot to answer the call to service and compassion and forgiveness first and foremost of herself. Quote, he gave and forgave sparingly without radical intention, without passion or conviction. Quote, she could not or would not hear the calling of her. How will it read? How does it read? And if you had to name a few worthy things to which you'd attend well and faithfully, what I wonder would they be? That's Victoria Safford. So again, the question I think here is how do we want to live? Our days are not done yet. We still have some time. So how do we want to live? To what are we well and faithfully attending? And to what shall we well and faithfully? I'm reminded of another story. This is a Buddhist story. I first read this story in a little book that I fondly remember buying in a crammed little bookstore in the old part of Kathmandu in Nepal. I was on sabbatical. This was 2004. And I ended up reading this story high up in the beautiful Himalayan mountains where I was trekking for a couple of weeks. I find this story to be an encouraging tale. But as you'll see, it's a severe tale, a tale celebrating at the very least the sometimes indomitable human spirit. The spirit of one in this case who indeed knows how she wants to live. The tale goes like this. There once was a Buddhist nun known as Rionan who was born in 1797. She was the granddaughter of the famous Japanese warrior Shinjin. Her poetical genius and alluring beauty were such that at 17 she was serving the Empress as one of the ladies of the court. Even at such a youthful age, fame, admiration and wealth clearly awaited her. However, the beloved Empress died suddenly and Rionan's hopeful dreams vanished. She became acutely aware of the impermanence of life. It was then that she desired to study Zen Buddhism so that she might seek happiness, not from fame or money or the outer material things of this world, but from the inner riches of life. Her relatives disagreed, however, and practically forced her into marriage with a promise that she might become a Buddhist nun after she had born three children. Rionan finally agreed to the marriage. Before she was 25 she had fulfilled her agreement. Then her husband and her relatives could no longer dissuade her from her desire. She shaved her head, took the name of Rionan, left her family and started on her pilgrimage to become a Buddhist nun. Rionan came to the city of Ido and asked Tetsukyu to accept her as a disciple. At one glance the patriarchal master rejected her because she was too beautiful. Rionan then went to another master, Haikyo. Haikyo refused her for the same reason, saying that her great beauty would only make trouble. Still determined, Rionan then obtained a hot iron and placed it against her face. In a few moments her beauty had vanished forever. Her beauty gone, Haikyo then accepted Rionan as a disciple. Commemorating this occasion Rionan wrote a poem on the back, significantly I suspect on the back of a little mirror translated it said, in the service of my empress I burned incense to perfume my exquisite clothes. Now as a homeless beggar I burn my face to enter the world of Zen. Knowing how she wanted to live, Rionan then enjoyed many years of Dharma practice as an esteemed Buddhist nun. Coming to realize an exquisite beauty within, far greater than her previous external, friends, none of us, none of us knows how or when we will die or exactly how or when our loved ones will die. Moreover death itself is arguably one of the last and greatest mysteries of life. It awaits us all, each and every one. While we and our loved ones must surely lay responsible for our plans, we should harbor few illusions when it comes to dying the right way or having a good death. Make our plans, yes of course, and let us help our parents or children and other loved ones to make their plans too. But ultimately I suspect that the true underlying secret of dying well is living well, including being ever present or at least as much as we can to the preciousness of our remaining days and attending well and faithfully to at least a few, so may it be. And I now invite you into the giving and receiving of the morning's offering, which you can see in your Order of Service is shared with Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice. You can find out more about their good work in your Order of Service or at the table that's directly across from the atrium doors, and we thank you for your generosity. My name's Maureen Muldoon, and I'd like to share with you my husband Scott and I moved to Madison in August of 2011, and while FUS wasn't our first Unitarian Universalist congregation, it was where we decided to sign the book. There's something satisfying about laying down roots and making someplace your home and pledging to a higher cause. I want to share with you why we give to FUS. For me, listening to and making music has always been a spiritual experience, and being part of a Unitarian choir began as a devoted high school student at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Buffalo in New York. Singing has been such an important part of my life that I gave up going to youth group, which met during church. When I came here, I decided to volunteer as a youth group leader to make up for that. I even got to go to a regional conference, and the teens are truly creative, and it was a wonderful experience to be right in there with them. However, my main commitment has been with the Meeting House Chorus, and I've been part of this group almost the entire time that I've been here, and my husband Scott even joined us for a semester. We have tried different chalice groups. I volunteered for coffee in early days, and even tried to greet on Sundays as Abel. There are many different ways to find a place here. In addition to singing, Scott and I were active for about three and a half years with a group called Spirituality with Spirits, much like Theology on Tap. We found another couple who was eager to make friends and still friends with them today, and thankful for the community that we have created from that. Most recently, I have gotten involved with the FUS governance process, and I joined a committee or task force to recommend a plan for an interim minister, and they are currently meeting. We'll have an interim minister soon. I also joined a new member task force that came out of the growth task force, and currently we're deciding on our new music director, and being part of that process has been incredible as well. Scott and I find stimulating conversation from the monthly topics presented each Sunday, and we're interested to see where we'll go in the next several years. Won't you join us and consider supporting through your own pledge to FUS? Thank you. Thank you, Maureen. And if you will rise now in body or spirit for our closing hymn, number 164. Friends, may life bless us and keep us. May the light of life shine upon us and shine out from within us, and be gracious unto us, and bring us peace. For this is the day, this is the one wild and precious life we are given. So let us all find a way to rejoice and to be glad in it.