 Let's please all join in a few moments of centering silence. Now please remain seated as we sing our in-gathering hymn which is number 389 and the words appear in your order of service. 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. Modern 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 entire congregation I would like to extend a special welcome to any visitors who may be with us this morning. We are a welcoming community so whomever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers and everyone else is invited 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 folks are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would be welcoming to visit with you and discuss any of your questions. These guides are generally available after the service but I'm not sure if we have one today. So if you are interested in learning more about this auditorium all of our sustainably developed structure and the old meeting house please come up here after the service to your left and we'll see if there is someone who will volunteer to come and give you a tour. And I'm just not sure if there's anybody here for this service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of our service however because it is difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment. Our child haven back in that corner and the commons outside this auditorium are excellent places to go where you may see and hear the service in case your child would like to talk, move around, sing, dance, whatever she wants. You may go there and be comfortable. This would also be a good time to turn off all devices, all noisemakers of any kind that might cause a disturbance during the hour especially those pesky cell phone ringers. So please check those now and turn them off. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. Mark Schultz is handling sound for us at this service and Smiley is our lay minister. Our greeters were Becky Dick and Tom Hine and our ushers are also Anne Smiley, Elizabeth Barrett and Rich and Katie Bielfus. Our hospitality, making the coffee and some yummy hot chocolate that I had in between our services are Jeannie Hills and John and Allison Mix. I'd like to give special notice to the fact that our gorgeous flowers this morning are from Linda McAfee in memory of Patricia Leonardo and in honor of their 27th anniversary which would have been on February 23rd. Please note the announcements in the red floors of your order of service which describe upcoming events, current things going on at the society and provide more information about today's activities. We now have a special announcement from some of our youth group members. We're here to talk about personal care items drive we're doing. We're hosting a personal care items drive for Briar Patch Youth Services the weekends of March 4th and 11th and 12th and Briar Patch provides services to the area's runaway and homeless youth. It is estimated that every night 300 youth go to bed homeless in Dane County. The following items are currently needed, deodorant, feminine hygiene products, foot powder, chapstick slash lip balm, packs of Kleenex enhanced sanitizer. In addition, the following new clothing items are requested. Men's and women's socks, plain black or white t-shirts, winter gloves, hats and thermals and men's and women's underwear sized medium through extra large. Gift cards to Walgreens and Target are also appreciated. Look for the collection boxes as you enter the building. For questions, please contact Linda at LindaM at FUSMadison.org. Thank you. Again welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. As we gather this day, may a spirit of compassion enter our hearts and be with us in the hard hours. May we find the courage to be kind. May a spirit of unity help us to enter into the pain of our neighbors, giving us the strength to walk where they walk, that we might speak a gentle word along the way. May a spirit of love enlarge our sympathies toward all. May we be generous of heart that we might forgive and be forgiven. May a spirit of thanksgiving lead us toward gratitude for hands that serve for those who give and for those who receive. Spirit of life may we walk together this life's journey and in treading the path as one may we be made strong. Spirit of the universe help us to face the mysteries of this life and bless us this holy day. And if you will rise now in body or spirit to join together in the affirmation printed in your order of service. We gather this hour as people of faith with joys and sorrows, gifts and needs. We light this beacon of hope, sign of our quest for truth and meaning in celebration of the life we share together. And before we join together in song, if you'll take a moment to turn and greet your neighbor. Please be seated. If you woke this morning with a sorrow so heavy that you need the help of this community to carry it. Or if you woke with a joy so great that it simply must be shared, now is that time. The sharing of joys and sorrows is our time in the spirit of acceptance and support. To share with one another some special event or circumstance that has affected your life for the life of a loved one in recent days or weeks. As you share, please remember that our service is broadcast on the internet so those listening are not limited to the people in this room. So for the next few minutes, anyone who wishes is invited to step to the front of the auditorium, light a candle using the microphone that Anne, our lay minister, has. Briefly share with us your message. You may also come forward to wordlessly light a candle and if you can't come to the front for any reason raise your hand and Anne will bring the microphone to you. I have a sorrow to share which was the unexpected death in her sleep of my sister Hathaway Brooks on January 30th. I'm lighting a candle today for a long time member of FUS, Helene Burns, my mother who passed on Valentine's Day. My name is Jeremy Janke and I just celebrated a full year sobriety and I just want to light this candle for the still suffering addict and alcoholic that's out there. Jake Blaszczyk, I have both a joy and a sorrow and the first joy is a candle lit for our chalice group and it's including Tom who they have been in such a support through the last couple of months of turmoil. And the other is sort of a sorrow for a good friend of mine and my best man at the wedding who is now undergoing treatment for lung cancer and is quite positive about it because it was caught in an early stage. Oh yeah, a mixed one. Our daughter Emily is moving to Orlando, not Orlando, Oakland. I'm in denial yet. She's moving to Oakland and it's both a happiness and for me sort of a mixed. I'm Robin. I have a joy which is also a gratitude. Music has always been a part of my life since I was very young. My family is all very musical and it's circling back into my life after somewhat of a hiatus. So just singing that last time I was really overwhelmed with the joy and gratitude to sing now together. This is our hearts own song, so a gratitude for music. Allison and I have a joy also to share this morning. Not many people get to celebrate 94 years strong on the planet and her mother, Hathaway Hassler, today is 94. Happy birthday, Hathaway. And if you'll light one last candle for all those joys and all the sorrows that live in the fullness of our hearts. And as we rise in body or spirit for our next hymn, which is in the teal hymnal, our children and teachers may leave for classes. First reading an ancient tale. Kisa Gautama was a beautiful young woman who worked in a booth selling flowers. A young man arrived one day and fell in love with her at first sight. They later married and had a son. The days slipped by very fast as she watched her little son grow and learn. Almost before she knew it, he could run and he could talk. She loved him more than anything in the world. She loved him when he was obedient and when he was stubborn. She loved him when he laughed and when he cried. But one day the little boy suddenly became very sick. Even though his parents did everything they knew how to do for him, the little boy did not get well. Kisa Gautama could not believe her little boy was really dead. She thought his sickness had only put him to sleep. Some kind of medicine would surely wake him up. So she wrapped the little body in its sheet and lifted him up in her arms and carried him to her neighbor. Please my friend, she begged, give me some medicine that will cure my child. My good woman, I cannot give you anything, but I know a man who can help. Go to Buddha, he said encouragingly. He can always help. So she hurried to the home of Buddha and stood before the great man and said, I am told that you can help people in trouble. Please give me medicine that will cure my child. Buddha looked tenderly at the anxious mother. He knew the child was gone. He said to her, you must help me find the medicine. Go and bring me a handful of mustard seed. Surely I can easily find that, she said. Do as I tell you, said Buddha, but remember this. The mustard seed must come from a home where no one has ever known grief or loss, or it will be of no use. Believing she could find the mustard seed in some house where no one had ever died, Kisa Gautama thanked the Buddha and went back home. She gently laid her child's body on his little bed and went out alone to find that handful of mustard seed. First she went hopefully to her neighbor. Have you a handful of mustard seed? Buddha says it will cure my child. Certainly I have mustard seed. I would gladly give you a handful and more. Thank you so much, but before taking the seed I have to ask a question. Has anyone ever died in your house? Oh Kisa my dear, have you forgotten? Our dear grandfather died here just a little more than a year ago. Then your mustard seed cannot cure my child, she said sadly. Hopefully she went on to another house. She went from door to door to every house in the village asking for a handful of mustard seed. When she asked the question, has anyone ever died in this house? One said our oldest son died here ten years ago, but we still miss him. Another said both my grandparents died in this house. Another my husband died many years ago. At every door it was the same. Someone would say good woman why remind us of our sorrow? How can you expect to find a house that has not known grief? Don't you know that the living are few but the dead are many? At last tired and discouraged yet aware now of the universality of our sorrows. Kisa Gautama returned home to bury her son with great sadness and immense love. And our second a poem from Nancy Schaefer. Once he said an odd thing. Forgiving begins with someone sitting near. Later he said it isn't for the one who did the herding, it's the other one who needs it. One day without warning he wept. I sat close. He told an old hurt in half sentences and single words like stones he was coming upon new. Like tree limbs broken, which he needed both arms for hauling aside. A half dozen times that summer we sat. He weeping, hauling out stones, gathering limbs. I near. The stones got smaller, his sentences longer. He said it's the crying part I couldn't do by myself. And later he said I feel cleaned out a tired smile. Still later he said I think I've done it. Made a kind of peace he meant. He slapped his palm hard against mine, laughed and slapped his palm again. Thank you Linda and the chime choir. I told them at nine o'clock I've always thought that chime choirs are kind of magical. I'm not sure how it all comes together. So thank you for that bit of magic this morning. Twenty years ago when I was beginning ministry a colleague said, you know after all these years memorial services have become my favorite part. More than weddings I just love a good memorial. At that time I had no idea what he meant. What would cause him? Been in the ministry over 40 years in all those years what would cause him to choose moments of grief and loss over moments of great joy. As his absolute favorite. Twenty years later I remember the moment when I was preparing a memorial service and I thought oh now I get it. Yes weddings are glorious they are a moment of life and love and joy and memorials are as well. They are celebrations of all a person has brought to this life. I have looked around during a service to see tears streaming down the faces of those gathered even as they laugh at a hilarious story. And I've been struck by the full realization that the life we are so terribly sad to see end. This precious life is an incredible joyful gift that we will never lose. We are privileged to honor them in their wholeness and to walk the journey of grief with those who loved them. What I have found on this journey is that there can be great discomfort and distress when we discover someone is grieving. Grief is not a welcome guest at most doors. Grief is the companion of love to be sure. As Khalil Gibran wrote when you are sorrowful look again in your heart and you shall see that in truth what you are weeping for has been your delight. Sorrow comes where love abides. This is true but sorrow is a hard companion. In her book companion through the darkness Stephanie Erickson says grief is a tidal wave that overtakes you. Smashes you up into its darkness where you tumble and crash against unidentifiable surfaces only to be thrown out on an unknown beach bruised and reshaped. Others say it is like a vast and lonely plain or a constant ever present ache. However you describe it it is not easy to speak of or to share. Stephanie Erickson later went on to say grief shoves away friends, scares away others and rewrites your address book for you. Grieving is a normal and healthy part of life and it can last a lifetime. We may want to push these painful emotions away because we believe or we may have received the message that we really ought to be over this by now. Have you ever noticed how we give artificial time limits to grief? It was your spouse you get one year. A child maybe two. A parent how old were they 90s were they ill okay how six months. People call time and again to come in and talk because they are overwhelmed by the power of their grief. It's been a year they'll say why am I not better? Why does this pain linger? Why am I suddenly shocked when I see something that reminds me of them and it all comes flooding back even after all this time. No one at work understands they'll say my friends think I'm losing my mind. I really ought to be past this by now. In a wonderful book called The Little Paris Bookshop, author Nina George gives us the gift of what she calls the herding time. This passage is in the voice of Jean Perdue who is the owner of a floating book barge and he's writing a letter to a friend about his own 20 year grief. My friend Sammy left me with one final scrap of wisdom. She gave me a hug as I sat there staring at the sea and counting the colors and whispered very quietly to me. Do you know that there's a halfway world between each ending and each new beginning? It's called the herding time. It's a bog. It's where your dreams and worries and forgotten plans gather. Your steps are heavier during that time. Don't underestimate the transition between farewell and new departure. Give yourself the time you need. Some thresholds are too wide to be taken in one stride. Truly we were made for joy and woe. Our emotions are not foreign invaders that storm across the calm waters of our inner seas. They are precious gifts of our nature. They give us the capacity to connect. They are essential to who we are as human beings. And whether they are the joyous ones or the painful ones, they must be recognized and honored and welcomed in. For what happens when they are ignored? I found wisdom on that very question from one of my favorite places, a children's book. And since we shared our joys and sorrows today with our children, which I love because it's a very visible way of showing them. In this place we honor our joys and our sorrows. I thought I would share this story with you all instead. And because I love the pictures, you get those too. It's called there's no such thing as a dragon. Billy Bixby was rather surprised when he woke up one morning and found a dragon in his room. It was a small dragon about the size of a kitten. The dragon wagged its tail happily when Billy patted its head. Billy went downstairs to tell his mother, there's no such thing as a dragon said Billy's mother. And she said it like she meant it. Billy went back to his room and began to dress. The dragon came close to Billy and wagged its tail. But Billy didn't pat it. If there's no such thing as something, it's silly to pat it on the head. Billy washed his face and hands and went down to breakfast. The dragon went along. It was bigger now, almost the size of a dog. Billy sat down at the table. The dragon sat down on the table. This sort of thing was not usually permitted, but there wasn't much Billy's mother could do about it. She had already said there was no such thing as a dragon. And if there's no such thing, you can't tell it to get down off the table. Mother made some pancakes for Billy, but the dragon ate them all. Mother made some more, but the dragon ate those too. Mother kept making pancakes until she ran out of batter. Billy only got one of them, but he said that was all he really wanted anyway. Billy went upstairs to brush his teeth. Mother started clearing the table. The dragon, who was quite as big as mother by this time, made himself comfortable on the hall rug and went to sleep. By the time Billy came back downstairs, the dragon had grown so much he filled the hall. Billy had to go around by way of the living room to get to where his mother was. I didn't know dragons grew so fast, said Billy. There's no such thing as a dragon, said mother firmly. Cleaning the downstairs took mother all morning, what, with the dragon in the way, and having to climb in and out of windows to get from room to room. By noon the dragon filled the house. Its head hung out the front door, its tail hung out the back, and there wasn't a room in the house that didn't have some part of a dragon in it. When the dragon awoke from his nap, he was hungry. A bakery truck went by. The smell of fresh bread was more than the dragon could resist. The dragon ran down the street after the bakery truck. The house went along, of course, like the shell on a snail. The mailman was just coming up the path with some mail for the Bixby's when their house rushed past him and headed down the street. He chased the Bixby's house for a few blocks, but he couldn't catch it. When Mr. Bixby came home for lunch, the first thing he noticed was that the house was gone. Luckily one of the neighbors was able to tell him which way it went. Mr. Bixby got in his car and went looking for the house. He studied all the houses as he drove along. Finally he saw one that looked familiar. Billy and Mrs. Bixby were waving from an upstairs window. Mr. Bixby climbed over the dragon's head, onto the porch roof, and through the upstairs window. How did this happen? Mr. Bixby asked. It was the dragon, said Billy. There's no such thing, mother started to say. There is a dragon, Billy insisted, a very big dragon. And Billy patted the dragon on the head. The dragon wagged its tail happily. Then even faster than it had grown, the dragon started getting smaller. Soon it was kitten size again. I don't mind dragons, this size, said mother. Why did it have to grow so big? I'm not sure, said Billy, but I think it just wanted to be noticed. Thank you for indulging me. I love that one. Our emotions are much like the dragon in that story. They just want to be noticed. And when we ignore them or try to say that they don't exist, they only grow larger and larger until they seem to be taking over our lives or carrying us away with them. Yet when we are able to notice them, to maybe pat them on the head, to say, oh, this is sadness, this is anger, this is grief, and we can see them for what they truly are. They become what they are and we can learn how to work and live with them. It is easier to embrace what we like to think of as the positive emotions, joy and love and gratitude. The Dalai Lama along with Daniel Goldman wrote a small work called Destructive Emotions and I picked it up thinking, yes, this is going to give me the answer I need. It's going to tell me how to get rid of those destructive emotions. I was wrong. What the Dalai Lama says is that the path away from inner warfare is not to think of our emotions as positive or negative, but to be open to all of them. What makes our negative emotions become destructive, he says, is our own refusal to give them their proper place in our hearts. Or to think of it as room, he says, this being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival, a joy, a depression, a meanness. Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. So what I wonder is how we become a community that can hold all. How do we become a community where it's not only safe to bring our celebrations, but also a place where it is safe to fall apart. Because it feels to me that we come to community when things are going well and we care that happiness or contentment, but then we do that falling apart peace in silence and loneliness. I believe community and this community especially needs to be together through thick and through thin, in the valleys and on the mountaintops. A place to turn when we are in the valley and a place safe enough for us to call out for help. Maybe we need to sign upstairs right at the front door that says, bring your vulnerability and your hurts, bring your struggles and your losses. Make no apologies for your grief. Join us when things are fantastic and join us when things have gotten really bad. For together we can lighten the load. Or perhaps we want a more poetic way to say that. And so maybe we hang this poem by Naomi Shahib Nye called Shoulders. A man crosses the street in the rain, stepping gently looking two times north and south because his son is asleep on his shoulder. No car must splash him. No car drive too near to his shadow. This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo, but he's not marked. Nowhere does his jacket say fragile, handle with care. His ear fills up with breathing. He hears the hum of a boy's dream deep inside him. We're not going to be able to live in this world. If we're not willing to do what he's doing with one another, the road will only be wide. The rain will never stop falling. Maybe we can learn how to affirm to one another that we need not suffer in silence. Maybe we can affirm that we are willing to do what he's doing for each other, that we're here for a lifetime, loving and supporting one another with no artificial time limits applied. Here for the joy and here for the mourning, forming circles of love and support and saying to each other, this is not the end of the world. It's the end of one world with many other worlds possible. We will mourn the ending of one world with you, even as we anticipate the joyous worlds to come. Here you need not suffer alone. Here our grief is supported and shared, loved right along with our joys, for there is healing and redemption in our togetherness. So to do this, to create a community of healing and redemption, we each need to do our own grief work. It's part of the process of creating meaning in life. As the Catholic theologian Henry Nowan said, when we become aware that we do not have to escape our own pain, but that we can mobilize it into a common search for life, our very pain is transformed from an expression of despair into a sign of hope, both for ourselves and each other. When we walk through our own valleys, we can then find the fullness of life, the preciousness of this moment, of every moment, no matter what we are feeling. We can see it as a chance to connect, a chance to give comfort, a chance to accept a gift of compassion, to become a midwife for someone else's grief, helping them to give birth to their sorrow and helping them to live, because sometimes it's the crying part we can't do alone. And then we can live into those wise words of Howard Thurman, I share with you the agony of your grief, the anguish of your heart finds echo in my own. I know I cannot enter all you feel, nor bear with you the burden of your pain, I can but offer what my love does give, the strength of caring, the warmth of one who seeks to understand the silent storm-swept barrenness of so great a loss. This I do in quiet ways, that on your lonely path, you may not walk alone. When it comes to the losses in our lives, there are times when there is no getting over it. We go through it and we are changed by it. Grief is more about transformation than transcendence. It is doing the work of finding meaning in the absence of explanation. It is finding healing when we will never find a why. We must remember that we need not, we cannot do this work alone. Sorrow comes where love abides. Love is grief's advanced party. Forest Church knowing he was dying wrote these words, my heart has been broken again and again and again and for that I am overwhelmingly thankful. Without love, all this, all the beauty, all the pain, without love this would never have been possible. May we be brave enough to make it so. I now invite you into the giving and receiving of today's offering Our outreach recipient this weekend is Planned Parenthood. You can find out more about them in your order of service and we thank you for your generosity. And this year I'm honored to be one of the three co-chairs for the 2017 annual campaign. I'd like to tell you a little bit about why the First Unitarian Society is of such importance to myself and my family and why we continue to be active pledgers and partners with this organization. My wife Connie and I did a bit of shopping around for a church in the mid-80s after we moved back to Madison we were gone for a couple years. I was raised in a Methodist church. My wife was raised in a congregational church, both of us in Fort Atkinson. And when we came back and started shopping for a church we attended several different churches, UCC church, Methodist and a few others. And one Sunday we both walked out of a church service almost simultaneously saying to each other I'm really tired of hearing how bad we've been all week. Hence the hunt was on. Michael Shuler was new to the society about the time we started attending and after a few Sunday visits hearing his very interesting and thought-provoking talks we didn't feel the need to search anymore. Our young daughters grew up in this society and the religious education program. We, Connie and I, also grew up as our social consciousness and awareness of the need for the voice for the society, I'm sorry, the voice for this society projects continued to evolve. At the earlier service today after listening to the youth group talk about the donations they're looking for for Briar Patch, my family was sitting here and I told the youth group last night at the service that my daughter Katie met her husband through the youth group program. She's married to Justin Woodward, a lot of you know Roz Woodward and Roz is a grandson as we do, Max is six years old. So we're a proud three generation Unitarian growing family. I hadn't really thought about that until I was getting ready for this talk. So over the last 30 years we've been very active on a variety of levels in the society including teaching RE programs. I was involved with coming of age program for a couple of years. My wife and I have both been on committees and just being here. Some years more than others. And in our near retirement years we both are still committed to the purpose, the outreach, the warmth, the discussions and the soul of this society. When I was asked to be a co-chair my immediate response was yes. I think I surprised the person that called me that they got a yes that quickly. And as this campaign moves on in fact there's an information table in the lobby today. You're welcome to go and ask questions. We even have some pledge forms. You'll be getting a mailed personal pledge form. It should be arriving fairly soon. But as the campaign moves forward I encourage all of you to consider the reasons you are here today. Thank you. Thank you Dave. Yes. You made somebody's day that day. That's for sure. And if you will rise in body or spirit for our closing hymn number 1002. Know the hope that is not just for some day but for this day. Here, now, in this moment that opens to us hope not made of wishes but of substance. Hope made of sinew and muscle and bone. Hope that has breath and a beating heart. Hope that will not keep quiet and be polite. Hope that knows how to holler when it's called for. Hope that knows how to sing when there seems little cause. Hope that raises us up through the sorrows. Hope found in the arms and hands and eyes of those around us. Hope found not some day but this day, every day, again and again and again. Blessed be, go in peace and please be seated for the postlude.