 You know, we have sure but I guess only in, like, the next year. I mean, yeah, 12 percent of all kids, you know. Yeah. Oh my God. I got it. I got it. I got it. Oh, you got it. No. No, I'm kidding. No, I'm kidding. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. I got it. So you give it to the kid? Do you give it to the kid? All this big? Dad is not a simple kid. No. I see some smiles this morning. Good morning and welcome to the first Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a place where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical and social issues in a safe and accepting environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual. As together we seek to be a force for good in the world. And here's something I've been wanting to say for a very long time. My name is Steve Goldberg. No, but really. For those of you who don't know me, I'm James Morgan and I've been a member of this congregation now for about six months. And I want to thank you all deeply for your acceptance and for your welcome. And for allowing me to feel at home here and at peace, so thank you. And I remember this. On behalf of the congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are, we celebrate your presence here among us. New commas are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library, which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium, to bring your drinks and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministers will be on hand to welcome you. Now, I remember him doing this too. See these little things right here? They're called cell phones. And we would like to turn those off so that we won't be disturbed for this next hour, which I assure you will be very informational. So please turn off your cell phone and electronic devices. Experience guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service. So if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house, please meet near the large glass windows on the left of this auditorium, which would be right over here to my right. We welcome children to stay, or as I like to say, our young scholars during the service. Please remember that it is often difficult for those in attendance to hear in this lively environment. And our child haven and commons are excellent places to go when you or your child needs to talk or move around. The service can still be seen and heard from those areas. Okay, so volunteers, wonderful people. That's how I got here this morning. So I'd like to acknowledge our volunteers this morning, our sound operator Mark Schultz, lay minister and Smiley, Greeter, Lynn Scobey, Usher, Samuel Bates, Ryan Cook, Elizabeth Barrett, and I am Smiley again. And then we also would like to acknowledge Karen Updike. Please note the announcements on the Red Floor's insert in your order of service, which describe upcoming events at the society and provide more information about today's activities. Our announcements for this morning, we have our worship volunteer training is happening here in the auditorium immediately at the end of the service. There is an insert in your order of service that describe the four ways you can help. People acknowledge about, knowledgeable about each area would be here to show you how easy it is to volunteer in these positions. I'm encouraging some of you to get up here, it's going to be fun. If everyone volunteered once every three or four months, we would never need to ask again. So please stay after service and become a part of the important crew that helps our services run smoothly. Our second announcement this morning is about the adult education offering Odyssey. An inquiry into values and ventures begins this Tuesday. Today is the last day to register. Were anyone interested in beginning the process of composing a personal memoir, this may be for you. The initial session is intended to be instructional with three more sessions in November for sharing discussion of participants, 20-minute odyssey. Visit the adult education table in the comments for more information. Now here's the good part. We all get to sit back and relax and listen and enjoy and let our hearts be open and share with one another. And so again, I thank you and I thank you again for the opportunity to be here. Into this time and this place, we bring our hunger for awakening. We bring compassionate hearts and a will toward justice. Into this home of spirit and heart, we bring the courage to walk on after hard losses. Into this home of love and hope, we bring our joy and gratitude for ordinary blessings. In its shelter, may we know ourselves, who we are and who we can be. And may we find ourselves and know ourselves to be loved and to be blessed. If you will rise now in body or spirit to join together in our affirmation for our chalice lighting, it's printed in your order of service. To face the world's shadows, a chalice of light. To face the world's coldness, a chalice of warmth. To face the world's terrors, a chalice of courage. To face the world's turmoil, a chalice of peace. May its glow fill our spirits, our hearts, and our lives. And before we join together in song, if you'll take a moment to turn and greet your neighbor, please be seated. Today we continue our service with a precious moment in any congregation's life, the right of dedication. This is a time when we who are gathered here have the privilege to welcome four young children into our family and religious community. Today it is our cherished assignment to welcome and pledge our care to Alyssa Renee Brookheiser, Annalie Mae Lindberg, Oscar Lewis Lindberg, and Soren Charles Lindberg. Today all of us gathered here are more than casual witnesses to life's gifts and nature's marvelous creations. We all are being invited to share the joy which these parents take in their child and enter more fully into their lives. I believe in my heart that I speak for all of us when I say we are deeply grateful for this privilege. We continued with this time-honored ritual because children our present delight. By them we are reminded of life's small joys and wisdoms. They are the heirs of the work that we have done and are doing. They will build upon the foundations that we lay. They are the yet unwritten chapter in our story. We promise to our children and their parents our love and support. A listening ear and a helping hand. We pledge to them a community of openness. A place where their beliefs, their doubts, and their questions will be received with gentleness and respect. A place of challenge where we continue to point to the ever open road of possibility. We pledge to give them roots. A tradition to pass on and a place to always come home to. So if our parents will now come forward with their children. And if the congregation will please rise and join in the pledge of dedication that is found on that insert in your order of service. For the gift of childhood, whose innocence, laughter, and curiosity bring hope, joy, and new understanding into our lives. We lift thankful hearts. We welcome Alyssa, Anali, Oscar, and Soren into this spiritual community and extend to their parents our love and support in the joys and challenges of caregiving. As these children grow, we will share with them our insights, our values, and our dreams. That they may enjoy the rich benefits of our religious heritage. Okay, now this could be a tricky one. If all of the grownups could sit down and all of the kids stay standing. And we let you self select. All right, where are those kiddos? Wave to me so I can see you. Okay, thanks guys. In the coming years, Alyssa, Anali, Oscar, and Soren will become a part of our religious education program. They will be playing and learning with all of you. So to all of you, I ask this really important question. Do you promise to be true friends to them? Playing with them, teaching them about our community, and showing them kindness and care? If so, please say we will. Thanks guys, please be seated. And now to those who have brought their children before us, Emily Brookheiser and Kevin Hayes-Burchler, Ben and Britta Lindberg. As caregivers, it is your privilege and obligation to provide an environment both of security and challenge in which these young souls will grow. Do you commit yourselves to promote their physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being? Will you respect as well as protect these children and bestow your love as a free and unmerited gift? And do you also reaffirm your commitment to support and care for one another, as partners in life and in parenting? If so, please say we do. Did you all hear that too? Several are among us today who bear a special relationship to one of these children, if you will please stand as your names are read. With Alyssa, grandparent Susan and Wendell Brookheiser, grandmother Shannon Hayes, Uncle Todd Hayes-Burchler, and big sister Laura. With Annalise Soren and Oscar, grandparents Ginny, Don, Meg, and Bill, also Elizabeth Hathaway, and here with us in spirit is Charlie Olson. So to all of you, I now ask. I love that grandpa's getting in the spirit, grandpa's waving to us. Do you take upon yourselves the privilege and responsibility to nurture, defend, and support the inherent worth and dignity of this child or these children to whom you bear a special relationship? Will you encourage them to grow in freedom and in spirit and to always seek the truth? And finally, will you help them to grow in love for the larger human family? To love and respect the larger community of life to which we all belong. If so, please make this sacred promise by responding, we will. Thank you, please be seated. In the act of dedication, we use the symbolism of water as a sign of our common heritage. There is no suggestion here of a washing away of inherited sin. These children came into the world with the limitations natural to our species, but they arrived innocent. Water here stands for vitality. It is the essence of life and the foundation of being. Its use here reminds us of our common bond with all embracing ever sustaining nature. This is also the water of community. The waters of the world gathered at our annual water communion service. It's use here reminds us of the ever sustaining and embracing love of community. All right, you first, madam. Ben and Britta named this child. Annalie May Lindberg, we dedicate you in the name of truth, the promise of love, and the fellowship of this society. May you be granted clarity of thought, integrity of speech, and a compassionate heart. Okay, name this child, Soren Charles Lindberg. We dedicate you in the name of truth, the promise of love, and the fellowship of this society. May you be granted clarity of thought, integrity of speech, and a compassionate heart. And name this child, Oscar Lewis Lindberg. We dedicate you in the name of truth, the promise of love, and the fellowship of this society. May you be granted clarity of thought, integrity of speech, and a compassionate heart. Emily and Kevin, name this child, Alyssa Renee Brookheiser. We dedicate you in the name of truth, the promise of love, and the fellowship of this society. May you be granted clarity of thought, integrity of speech, and a compassionate heart. As a token of their dedication, we give to each child a rosebud, fragrant symbol of beauty, promise, and love. This rose has no thorns symbolizing the better world we would love to give to our children. And while we know that the world is not all together as lovely as these flowers, we hope that the children will recognize the beauty and the goodness which does exist, that they will grow in wisdom and compassion, that they will add their own beauty to the world. Alyssa, Annalie, Oscar, and Soren, as this flower unfolds in all its natural beauty, so may your life unfold. And also as a remembrance of their dedication, we give to each child a blanket, a gift from the members of our shawl ministry program. When you see this blanket, may you be reminded of the warmth, the support, and the love of this community for your child and your family. The big sister got one at hers. I remember when you got yours. Today, we have dedicated these children. May we also dedicate ourselves this day as we contemplate the miracle of new life, as we renew in our hearts a sense of wonder and joy. May we be stirred to a fresh awareness of the sacredness of life and the divine promise of childhood. May we pledge to build a community in which all of our children will grow surrounded by beauty, embraced by love, and cradled in the arms of peace. May we pass on the light of compassion and courage, and may that light burn brightly within us all. If you'll join me now in welcoming these children. And if you will rise and body your spirit to join in our next Tim, number 338, and as we do that, our children and teachers may leave for classes. Please be seated. Feeding today from Vanessa Southern. The school supply section of any store draws me like a moth to a flame. I no longer need spiral bound notebooks or number two pencils or a new lunch box. I'm not sure why I'm drawn to these things, since my most recent academic endeavor is years in the past already. But I do have a theory. For so many years standing in those aisles, I could believe that my past did not determine my present. For so many years standing in those aisles, the present was full of possibility. Entire worlds of knowledge and adolescent adventure, growth and change were possible in the year I was preparing for. Would I finally master Spanish? Learn I was a whiz at physics. Fall in love with Dante. The one who wrote long ago, or the one sitting next to me in class. Perhaps I would come into my own that year, like some rare flower too long in the bud. At the beginning of the school year, everything seemed possible. Now that I am older, there is the danger of losing that sense of possibility, of thinking myself an old dog whose tricks might be modified around the edges, but never really significantly changed. There is the danger that you and I start to think that it is practical to live our lives into our limitations rather than press up against them. That we confuse resignation with maturity. That we give over wild rides of the mind or the spirit to the young. But it is never advisable to hang up the knapsack of adventurous, expectant living for long. Maybe this is why I like school supplies. Here is this world that says in color and crisp white paper that all is new and all things are possible again. A post-script, a woman was seen at Staples last week. Her eyes settled on a marbled blue fountain pen. When asked why she bought it, the woman told the clerk she needed a river of ink to ride into the new year. He said he didn't quite understand what she meant, but he'd seen this behavior in this season in these aisles before. Heart worshipper, lover of leaving it doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come yet again, come. These are the words from the 13th century Persian philosopher and poet Jalaladin Rumi. And they are the inspiration for the beautiful song that our choir just sang. Thank you for that. The version of Rumi's words, which was adapted into that song in our hymnal, is actually missing something that is an essential part of Rumi's original piece. Even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, it doesn't matter. Come yet again, come. Even those who have broken their vows, who have fallen short in some way, are welcome here in this place, in this community. This evening at sunset Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins at sundown. It ushers in a 10-day period of introspection known as the days of awe. That culminates in Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Rosh Hashanah is, according to tradition, the anniversary of the creation of Adam, the birthday of the whole human race. It is a feast of beginnings. It is a recognition and celebration of our interconnected humanity, its universal flaws, and its universal possibilities. Yom Kippur is a day of fasting and intense self-reflection, the last chance to make amends before the book of life is sealed for the New Year. This is a time to acknowledge one's shortcomings and mistakes, to take responsibility for one's errors and make amends, a time to reckon with who we are and who we have been, and to resolve once again to learn and grow into the people we wish to be. It is also a time to offer forgiveness to those who have disappointed us. Part of this process of cleaning the slate on Yom Kippur is the Khol-Nidra prayer, a term meaning all vows. We are absolved of all vows and promises we have made in the past year. We are released from them all, and we forgive ourselves for all that we have not done, all the vows we broke or did not keep. My colleague, Elia Kemler, tells the story of a rabbi who wanted to teach his congregation about the meaning of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, in a way that they wouldn't soon forget. So on Rosh Hashanah, he gave out clear plastic bags and potatoes to everyone in the congregation. During the service, the rabbi asked the members of the congregation to sit there and think about every person they had not forgiven. He asked them to think about every incident, every insult or hurt or grudge that they had not forgiven, that they hadn't let go of, that they still thought about and worried about that they were still hanging onto anything they felt wronged by and to take a potato for each one of those things and put it in their sack. Not just the grudges they were holding against other people, but the grudges they were holding against themselves, all those ancient shames and secrets, all the failures and mistakes and sorrows they had never forgiven themselves for. The rabbi told them to put a potato in the bag for each one of these as well. He asked them to be honest and to be gentle and kind to themselves and to each other about the number of potatoes they had in their bags. No judging, no commenting, no shocked expressions or raised eyebrows allowed. You can imagine that some people had a pretty full bag of potatoes. Some people even had a second or a third bag. Then the rabbi asked them to carry their bags of potatoes around with them during the next 10 days, leading up to Yom Kippur. He asked them to carry the bags everywhere they went like those high school courses where you take an egg or a baby doll or a bag of flour everywhere you go to learn about the responsibilities of parenting. The rabbi asked them to carry their potatoes to work and on their errands, into the barber shop and the hardware store, the supermarket, the dentist's chair. He asked them to lay the bags down with them in bed at night to bring them into the bathroom, take them into the shower, put them on the passenger seat in their cars, eat with them on their laps at the dinner table or in a restaurant and then to bring them back. I want you to really feel the weight of what you are carrying. A lot of the members of the congregation did it because they wanted to understand. They wanted to learn the lessons of letting go in a new way. I suspect they yearned as perhaps many of us do to be free from all that hurt. They longed to be able to relinquish something. They wanted the lesson to work. You can imagine what those 10 days were like. You can imagine how heavy those potatoes must have gotten, how awkward and uncomfortable the potatoes were, especially in bed and at the dinner table. You can imagine the energy, the effort it must have taken to lug those things around everywhere. And of course, by the end of 10 days, neither the bags nor the potatoes were in great shape. They'd been going in and out of the shower and the rain and the car and time was taking its natural course. So the congregation returned, somewhat worse for the wear 10 days later with these ripped, dirty bags of slimy, rotting potatoes. I am guessing you are ready to put your potatoes down, the rabbi told the congregation, passing around a huge garbage bag. Let the potatoes go, he told them. Toss them away. Every hurt, every slight, every bitterness put it all down. And amidst much triumphant yelling and hooting and hollering, the bags of potatoes were hurled into the trash. This is precisely the power and the promise of Yom Kippur as I understand it. Every year we get this new chance to throw away our rotting potatoes. Every year we get this new chance to put down the weight of the hurts and the grudges and the miseries we have accumulated and are lugging around. Every year a new chance to set down those burdens. Burdens were so accustomed to carrying that we don't even notice them anymore. A chance to define yourself no more by your failings or by the failings of others. It's a new year and a new opportunity to practice the art of letting go and opening ourselves to the realm of possibility. Mark Bellatini wrote an adaptation of the Colnidra prayer that goes like this. Let's set it all down, you and me. The disappointments little and large, the frustrations. Let's open our fists and drop them. The useless waiting, the obsession with what we cannot have, the focus on foolish things, the pinwheeling worry that wears us out, the fretting, throw it down. The comparisons of ourselves with others, the competition as if domination was the best name we could give to God, the cynical assumptions, the unspoken shelved anger, toss it. The inarticulate suspicions, the self-doubt, the preemptive self-dumping, the numbing bouts of self-pity sink them all like stones. Like stones in a pool of silence. Let's drop them like hot rocks into the cool water and when they're gone, let's lay back gently and float, float on the calm surface of possibility. Let's be supported in this still cradle of the world, newborn, ready for anything. This is the power and the promise of letting go of all that is holding you back. You can become a newborn, ready for anything. At times it's very hard to imagine letting go. We may have come to define ourselves by these worries or frustrations, judgments, doubts. Letting go takes courage and trust that doesn't always come naturally. It takes great faith in ourselves and others to step into the realm of possibility. Perhaps the first step is being honest in answering two questions. First one, what are the stories we tell ourselves that limit our possibilities? What do you tell yourself? What are your stories that limit your possibilities? And what are the I can'ts that we tell ourselves to keep our lives small? What are you telling yourself that you can't do? And when you answer those questions, you might have to move on to a third. Am I willing to try even if I fail? Rosalind Carter said you must accept that you might fail. Then if you do your best and you still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, you don't branch out, you don't try, you don't risk. I love that there is a giant sign in one of the hallways of Sam's school that reads mistakes are proof that learning is happening. If you are not making mistakes, if you are not failing at times, then your dream isn't big enough. These teachers are telling the kids that failure is a possibility and a sign that you are learning and growing. That mistakes are okay. That even if you have broken your vows a thousand times, you are welcome here. Perhaps in times such as ours, times of great upset, violence, rage, angry speech and hateful acts, a time when we feel that the world could indeed be spinning out of control. Perhaps in a time such as this, a sense of openness to possibility can be our greatest asset. I recently read the story of a woman named Alina Hanson, a woman who learned about letting go on a life or death level. In a relatively short period of time, Alina had been attacked by a bear, lost her home in a fire and broke her back in a horseback riding accident. She created a blog to write about her life. She says, as a way of healing and staying out of the lands of regret and bitterness. She recently wrote, when you have lost everything, when you have been forced to let go, eventually you can find a sense of peace and an opening to new life. You say to yourself, well, this is happening because all you have is right now. Your choice is to fight it and be miserable or carry the anger like a weight on your back or you can let it go. Look for what comes next, hope and be free. We need to notice where we are holding back. Notice what we're clinging to and let go. This can be a scary act. To release those barriers that keep us separate and offer the illusion of control to just let the passionate energy of the possible surge through us and connect us to one another and all that is. The great dancer, Martha Graham, once said that there's a vitality and an energy that is translated through you into action. And because there's only one you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other person and it will be lost. The world won't have it. It's not your business to determine how good it is or how valuable or how it compares with others. It's your business to keep it yours clearly and directly to keep it open. On Yom Kippur, we not only ask forgiveness for the ways in which we aired in our actions, but we ask forgiveness for our inaction. When did we allow fear and indifference to stymie our courage? When did we accept the story of our limitations instead of pushing through to find our power? When did we shy away from the open door of possibility because we were afraid to step through? There's only one you in all of time. And if you hold back your gifts, your love, your passion, the world will not have it. Lay down the burdens, let it all go. Do not doubt your goodness. Do not doubt your power. Push through the stories of limitation and step through the door into the possible. In the coming 10 days, our building will be full of the prayers, the music, the laughter, and the tears of congregation, Shireishimayim. While there are many pieces of these holidays done at home, coming together in communal prayer and worship is vital. Why? Perhaps it is because they know the truth that possibilities are enhanced when we have a common vision and we do something together. We are better, stronger, richer when we are together. So I'll leave you today with another of Mark Bellatini's adaptations of the Khol-Nidra. We vowed not so long ago to live lives that added, not subtracted. We promise not so long ago to live lives that matched our words, lives not hard and brittle with anger, but soft with letting go. We made an oath not so long ago to live lives that reached for the stars and did not consist of strings of little disappointments or fragments of the shattered dreams we once used as mirrors to see how good we looked. The days have flown by quickly and they will flow quickly in the year to come. Circumstance, stress, brokenness come to all. It's the human condition. And thus I say before the witness of the blue sky bending above and before the nodding blue chicory flowers of early autumn still growing below and before the clear eyes of children not yet born, children who will inherit the world from us, that all the vows we will make not long from now, all the promises we will make, all the unspoken oaths we will declare are hereby canceled, annulled, voided and made unbinding. We are free not to promise to be good, but simply to get on with loving one another. We are free not to vow great transformations but to engage life with tenderness and understanding and outpourings of kindness. We are free not to swear oaths of everlasting loyalty and righteousness, but to continue to be generous to each other, to ourselves and to the common good. At the start of this new year, we begin again in love. And I invite you now into the giving and the receiving of the weekend's offering. You'll see that our outreach offering recipient this weekend is a Grace Hospice Care. You can read more about their work in your order of service. And we thank you for your generosity. We come into this community of life and love bringing with us the joys and the challenges, the struggles of the past days and weeks. We bring all this here to be shared with one another, to lighten our burdens, expand our joys, know that in our pain and in our gladness, we are never truly alone. This week we share the gratitude of Margie Marion for the staff at Group Health who took quick emergency care in a critical asthma event in her family. And we share her thanks that that all worked out well. We also hold all those cares and concerns that live quietly in the tenderness of our hearts. For the beauty that surrounds us this day, brilliant skies, pale asters, dogwood leaves veined with purple, smells of leaves and dark earth preparing for rest, may we be thankful. For places of peace and strength, sanctuaries of holiness, communities of caring, times of listening, silence, may we be thankful. For what we have to be held and shared, wisdom, warmth, love mysteriously reaching another being, may we today and always be thankful. Blessed be and amen. And if you will rise now in body or spirit for our closing number 323. Remind you of the worship training that will happen immediately after the postlude, ushers, greeters, hospitality, coffee people, the sound system, these are all vital roles to make our services work week after week. And as James said, if everybody did it once every few months, we would never have to beg again. So if you are interested in willing to fill any of these roles, we promise to be done by 1030. So if you've got kids in classes, you'll be done by then. Just move up to the front. We've got wonderful people at each station to help you learn how easy it is to fill these roles. Our benediction from Rabbi Jack Reimer. Now is the time for turning. The leaves are beginning to turn from green to red and orange. The birds are beginning to turn to storing their food for the winter. For leaves, birds and animals turning comes instinctively but for us, turning does not come so easily. It takes an act of will for us to turn. It means breaking with old habits. It means admitting that we have been wrong and this is never easy. It means starting all over again and this is painful. It means saying I am sorry. It means admitting that we have the ability to change. These things are terribly hard to do. But unless we turn, we will be trapped forever in yesterday's ways. So may we turn from callousness to sensitivity, from hostility to love, from pettiness to purpose, from envy to contentment, from limitation to possibility, from fear to faith. And may we turn toward one another for in separation there is no life. Blessed be and amen and go in peace.