 Please join in a moment of centering silence, so we can be fully present with each other this morning. Now let's get musically present with each other by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. That always sounds better with the Meeting House Chorus helping us out. Good morning everybody and welcome to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society where independent thinkers gather in a safe nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud member of this congregation and the proud owner of a brand-new haircut and it is my pleasure to offer a special and happy hello to those of you watching or listening at home and a warm welcome to any guests, newcomers, or visitors. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find it's a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we usually offer a guided tour after every service. Just gather over here by the windows and we'll take care of you. Although today we might not have a tour since we have a parish meeting instead, which I'll talk about in a moment. Speaking of taking care of each other, this would be a great time to silence all those pesky electronic devices that you simply will not need for the next hour. So thanks for taking care of that. And as you're doing that, I'll remind you that if you're accompanied this morning by a youngster and that young companion would rather enjoy the service from a more comfortable and private space, we offer a couple alternatives. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium and then some comfortable authentic Frank Lloyd Wright seating in the commons right outside the doorway. The service is brought to us today as it is every weekend by a wonderful team of volunteers whose names you are going to hear and someday we could read your name if you join that team and if you volunteer. I'm sure that they would appreciate your help and you would appreciate the notoriety of having your name announced from this microphone. The names we are about to announce include on the sound system, Maureen Friend, thank you Maureen. Thank you to Anne Smiley for being our lay minister, to Pam Winnie for being our greeter upstairs, to Patricia Becker, Doug Hill, and Don Lamb for being the ushers of this unruly crowd, and to Chip Quaddie and Gene Hills for hosting the hospitality and coffee, and to Nancy Webster for generously donating the flowers that you see behind me. Just a couple announcements before we begin the service. The first announcement is that immediately following today's service at approximately 12.15 p.m. we will have our parish meeting right here to talk about a financial update and some other issues that I know you're going to want to get involved with and understand. But the first thing to understand is that at 12.15 you get to enjoy a wonderful buffet lunch served by the world-famous food haulers. So you're all invited to the parish meeting immediately after this service today. And speaking of days, the cabaret countdown continues, 90 days until April 22nd, Friday evening, where this entire facility will be transformed into one huge musical talent show as well as food and wonderful fundraising auctions to support an organization we all love so well, First Unitarian Society. The last announcement involves something that you're about to witness and it includes the children from our religious education program parading their banners and helping us see the essence of what they've been learning and discussing and experiencing in their religious education program. So you'll have a chance to see some colorful banners. You'll have a chance to see the kids and their instructors. You'll have a chance to hold your applause until the end, which we ask you to do. And as you see these young people parading, remember, this is the next generation of independent thinkers here at First Unitarian Society. So I know you'll want to applaud them warmly after the parade is over. So end of the announcements, please sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I know that you will find it will touch your heart, stir your spirit and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here and we're glad that the parade of the religious education program banners is about to begin. Let's go. Our opening words are from the 20th century novelist and poet D.H. Lawrence. This is what I believe that I am I and that my soul is a dark forest and that my known self will never be more than a clearing in that forest and that gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self and then they go back again and that I must have the courage to let them come and to let them go. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. Please join me in the words of affirmation that are printed in your program this morning. An energetic spirit, openness to new possibilities, intentionality of purpose, widening circles of caring, deepening commitment to personal growth, which leads to faith in action. These are the marks of a healthy, spiritually alive congregation. Let them be marks of ours as well. And now on this fine January morning, please turn to your neighbor and exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated. Once a month, we generally set aside a few moments at the beginning of the hour for the sharing of joys and sorrows. The time for members and friends and even visitors to our congregation to relate to the entire gathered community, some special event or circumstance that has affected your life or the life of someone close to you in recent days or weeks. General announcements, news items, and partisan appeals are not appropriate during joys and sorrows. And so for the next few minutes, anyone who wishes is invited to step to the front of the auditorium, light a candle in one of the two candelabra to my right or to my left, and then using the microphone provided by Anne Smiley, our lay minister, share your name if that feels comfortable as well as a brief message. Please note that our services are webcast, so listeners are not restricted to the people sitting in this auditorium. You may also step forward and wordlessly light a candle of commemoration and then simply return to your seat. So now I would open the floor for the sharing of these important matters in the life of our community. My name is Michael Watkes-Bomir, people are dying in our lives. It's the first wave of this sort of thing that we've experienced just reaching the age of 60. Disconcerting doesn't begin to cover it too soon. I'm Doug Thurlow, and this is for my mother Barbara, who is a lifelong Unitarian, or Universalist for many years before Unitarian, and for very many years she was a church administrator at the Unitarian Church in Augusta, Maine. So she passed recently and this is for her. Hello, my name is Gwen Harmon. I've lost two long-time friends in the last couple of months, so I'm still thinking of them, and I've passed now a year's anniversary, I guess, of my own daughter's death. So, I agree with the gentleman that said, think things are going too fast, and I told my remaining daughter that I did not want her to die before I did. I'm very pleased to announce that my daughter, Isla George, was born two months ago today, and I'm very grateful to be back out in society. This is my first time back here since she was born, and I was thrilled to be back. Hi, my name is Ellen Roney, and I like this as I think about my daughter's struggles. Hi, my name is Scott Lotus, and I'd like to light a candle for my grandfather today in West Virginia, who was the central father figure in my life, and I also like this candle for my mother and uncle who are attending to him now, and what are likely his last weeks and days. Hi, I'm Kathy Niebuhr Leithrup, and my mother just turned 91 this couple days ago, and I know it's her positive energy, she calls it prayers, that helps save my daughter and Richard's daughter. Thank you. And if you will write light one more candle to signify all of those joys and sorrows that may have occurred to you as others were speaking, and we hold those with equal concern in our hearts. And now I do invite you to rise once more and body or in spirit as we sing our next hymn, number 128. All that is our love. Please be seated. It has been our pleasure for the past two weeks to have as our guests, persons involved with the UW Odyssey program, and there has been a table out in the commons describing the work that they do. And we have also been pleased that Emily Auerbach, the director of that program, has recruited people from the Odyssey program, alumni, to assist with our services. And so this morning we welcome Renee Robinson, who's going to be sharing with us a powerful poem by the late Maya Angelou. It is a pleasure to be here to stand before you to recite Maya Angelou's Still I Rise. You may write to me down in history with your bitter twisted lies. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? Cause I walk like I've got oil wells pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tide. Just like hopes springing high. Still, I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken, bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops weakened by my soulful cries? Does my heartiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard? Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines digging in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words. You may cut me with your eyes. You may kill me with your hatefulness. But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise that I dance like I've got diamonds at the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame, I rise up from a past that's rooted in pain. I rise. I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, welling and swelling. I bear in the tide, leaving behind nights of terror and fear. I rise into a daybreak that's wondrously clear. I rise, bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave. I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise. I rise. Members are also rehearsing for our All Music Sunday at the end of March on Palm Sunday, actually. So they're leaving for yet more work this morning. So we appreciate all of your efforts. Powerful poetry, powerful music, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The reflections are inspired, at least in part, by a conversation that I had a number of months ago with a gentleman who spoke a few moments ago, Michael Buttmas-Bomier. And we were talking over a number of different topics, and this is what emerged. I'm not sure it's exactly what Michael had in mind, but we'll see. Ralph Waldo Emerson, yes. A graduate of Harvard Divinity School, ordained as a Unitarian minister in 1829. He immediately accepted a call to the Second Unitarian Congregation in Boston, Massachusetts. But then over the course of the next three years, Emerson became increasingly disenchanted, both with his work in the parish and the movement he served, which at the time left him very little room for personal spiritual expression. Writing to his brother Charles, Emerson noted that up to that point he had written and delivered 146 sermons. How many, but not one. Although something less than orthodox, the Unitarianism of the first half of the 19th century was still in many respects respectable, traditional, and conservative. Preachers were expected to be cultivated and scholarly, but not especially original. Like all good Protestants, Unitarians looked almost exclusively to the Bible for inspiration and edification. For the young Emerson, who was not yet 30 when he tendered his resignation from Second Church, for Emerson the relationship was far from satisfactory. Increasingly he felt hypocritical as if he were leading a false life. And so cutting ties after three years was an immense relief, and he celebrated his liberation with a short poem. I will now live out of me. I will not see with others eyes my good is good, my evil ill. I would be free. It was a big risk that he took. Ralph Waldo Emerson was not born into wealth. His father was also a minister, and he was trading a secure, prestigious, and remunerative position for an uncertain future. But henceforth he had resolved to live life completely on his own terms. Now Emerson had already begun keeping journals, journals in which he copied passages from his wide-ranging reading, passages that struck him as profound or significant. And these were accompanied by half-formed but potentially fruitful ideas that had occurred to him in the course of his investigations. The young minister's love of reading and writing persisted unabated. But without a pulpit, how could this passion translate into a livelihood? Fortunately Emerson's spiritual crisis coincided with the rise of the Lyceum lecture circuit, which proved to be the perfect vehicle for his prolific pen. In the years that followed, Emerson became a sought-after public speaker, able to expound on a wide variety of interesting subjects. He was quite successful. He had found his niche, but then in 1838 he was invited to address the graduating class of his alma mater, Harvard Divinity School. He accepted the invitation. He seized the chance, recognizing it as a golden opportunity to instruct a new generation of unitarian clergy in the virtues of fresh independent thinking. Let me admonish you to go alone, he told the graduates. Refuse the good models, even those which are sacred to the imagination of men. Dare to love God without mediator or veil. Yourself, a newborn bard of the Holy Ghost, cast behind you all conformity. At Harvard, Emerson dilated at length on the shortcomings of the historic church and of conventional preaching. Since leaving the ministry he had become increasingly convinced that the ultimate locus of religious authority lay within the individual. And so in another place he wrote, the hero is a mind of such balance that no disturbance can shake his will, but pleasantly and as it were merrily he advances to his own music. The reaction to Emerson's Divinity School address came swiftly. Speaking for the unitarian establishment, Andrews Norton, perhaps the most formidable intellect of his generation, Andrews Norton dismissed the young upstarts arguments as an insult to religion. All true Christianity, Norton said, must appeal to the Bible, its recorded miracles, the church and its established authorities, or it is not worthy of the name Christian. There can be no intuition. There can be no direct perception of the truths of Christianity, Andrews Norton scoffed. Ralph Waldo Emerson was no provocateur and he was deeply mortified by this particular sermon's critical reception. And that controversy in 1838 made a lasting impression demonstrating to Emerson the lengths to which society will go to bring unconventional and original thinkers back into line. Self-reliance, perhaps his most notable and oft-quoted essay was a direct result of and a rejoinder to the rebukes that he had received. Now Emerson insisted even more strenuously that ultimate authority resides here with the individual. I remember, Emerson wrote, an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued advisor who was want to importune me with dear old doctrines of the church. And on my saying, what have I to do with the sacredness of traditions if I live wholly from within, my friend replied, but these impulses of yours they may come from below rather than from above. I replied, they do not seem to me to be such. But if I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil. No law can be sacred to me, but the law of my own nature, the only right is what is after my own constitution, the only wrong is what is against it. Ralph Waldo Emerson's influence on our own self-understanding has been considerable, even if his essays don't make for gripping reading these days. As Americans, we have prided ourselves on being independent-minded, no longer beholden to ancient institutions, hereditary nobles, authoritarian religions like our more deferential European cousins. And so accordingly, the citizens of the United States have, in significant numbers, been drawn to populist anti-establishment politicians like Andrew Jackson, William Jennings Bryant. And moreover, native religious movements, Christian science, free will, Baptist, Pentecostal, Freethought, they all place a high premium on personal insight, personal inspiration. And Emerson himself spoke very highly of Quakerism, considering it to be the ultimate Protestantism because it privileged individual inspiration and insight. Now, interest in Emerson's thought has waxed and waned over the decades, but in recent years, it seems increasingly to have come back into vogue. And this is partly a consequence of certain scandals that have further damaged the credibility and eroded the authority of traditional institutions. And so we all know that today, trust in government, in the established church, in corporations, in healthcare providers, even in science, is at or near an all-time low. And as a result, a substantial number of Americans have been drawn today toward political insurgents like Ted Cruz, the man most despised by his Senate peers, and Bernie Sanders, who originally ran for the U.S. Senate as a Democratic Socialist and an Independent. It doesn't end there. Many of us ingest supplements and adopt diets that are based on our own private research on certain hunches rather than a physician's advice. We forsake faith communities intending to blaze our own idiosyncratic spiritual path. As consumers, we opt for products that advertisers promise will set us apart and make us seem special. As Andrew O'Hare has observed, these days everybody gets to pick and choose their own beliefs, their experts, their own evidence. It is something like the crisis of meaning that Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw in the 19th century when he proclaimed that God was dead. The foregoing is relevant to our own lives and to our self-understanding for two reasons. First, the confidence that we place, a high value that we place on private insight and self-reliance can lead to some rather serious problems. On the other hand, such confidence can, at other times, provide the resolve that we need to stand up for what is right. Knowing the difference can be tricky. The second point to consider is whether the Emersonian ideal is really attainable. How much of our thought is truly original? To what extent are the conclusions we reach and the decisions we make arrived at freely, independently, probably far less than we would wish to think? But back to the first point. Recent developments attest that the exercise of private judgment isn't always advisable, nor is it particularly profitable either to ourselves or to the society at large. Opportunistic politicians trading on the low repute of America's traditional institutions pander to the audience, telling listeners, you are the American people, you know best. And thus, if a person wants to stake out a position on climate change, immigration, the harvesting of fetal body parts, evolution, wants to stake out a position that flies in the face of the facts, hey, it is your God-given right as an American. You can believe anything, no matter how foolish. Individualism, David Callaghan says, individualism has thrived in a society where old institutions are on the defensive, and the new individualism, he says, has emerged within a social order that does little to counterbalance its worst effects. Our mainstream media contributes to the problem by routinely suggesting that all opinions are equal and that fair and balanced means giving credence to perspectives that are at best dubious and occasionally just plain wrong. A lot of what passes for informed opinion on television is anything but informed. But in the absence of fact-checking or in-depth analysis, Americans in significant numbers continue to cling to rather nonsensical notions. And disconfirming evidence, it's easily ignored. When challenged, media mavens can simply change the channel, search the internet for a site that reassures them that their instincts were right in the first place. And it certainly doesn't help that so much disinformation and so much deceptive data has been circulating of late. Stanford University's Robert Proctor has coined a term for this. It's called agnotology, a neologism. Agnotology is a combination of the words agnostic and ontology. He defines agnotology as, quote, the study of willful acts to spread confusion and deceit usually for the purpose of selling a product or winning a favor. Agnotology is most effective when the public really doesn't understand the concept or an issue, which means that vested interests can exploit that ignorance to their own advantage. Tobacco companies that downplayed the dangers of smoking. Fossil fuel firms that dispute the data on climate change. Politicians who exaggerate the threat of Muslim or Hispanic immigrants. These are examples of agnotology at work. And ultimately this serves to reinforce people's confidence in their own personal biases by suppressing important and vital evidence. Now fortunately there is another and more positive side to the story. For there are indeed occasions when it is vitally important to stand by and to act upon one's convictions. And so earlier we heard in the service this powerful expression of self assertion by the late poet Maya Angelou. You may shoot me with your words. You may cut me with your eyes. You may kill me with your hatefulness, but still like air I'll rise. And one could cite other examples of individuals whose passion for truth and justice proved stronger than the conventional wisdom and the customs that may have prevailed at the time. James Baldwin, Malcolm X, Shirley Chisholm whose quotation is on the front of your program, Tony Morrison, all of them refused what Emerson called the good models. Each in his or her own way exposing the ugly racist underbelly of American history and American culture. Likewise, Rachel Carson, James Hansen, E.O. Wilson. These three jarred the scientific world with claims concerning pesticide poisoning, climate change, biological determinism respectively. And Alan Turning, the World War II code breaker, godfather of the computer age, immortalized in the recent film The Imitation Game. These four went out on a limb to promote their views and those views have despite all opposition stood up to scrutiny. And we are indeed fortunate to have individuals of that caliber who trusted themselves enough to push their ideas to the forefront of their disciplines. Trust in self and confidence in their own insights serve them well, can serve us well at times. And yet such deep substantial trust can also make it hard for us at times to adjust our outlook, to alter our opinions, even when it makes eminent sense to do so. Emerson was himself quite resolute and quite unreceptive to any form of correction to repeat a statement that he made earlier. If I am the devil's child, I will live then from the devil. No law can be sacred to me but the law of my own nature. That which is right is that which is after my own constitution. That which is wrong is against it. I hope we could all agree that that's just a tad extreme. Suggesting, as it does, the wholesale rejection of social accountability. We need to be careful, William Siegel wards, for many of these inner guides seem to speak at random, giving wrong or unhelpful advice, even leading the seeker astray. Jane Austen, the great British novelist, chimes in, what wild imaginations one forms where the dear self is concerned and how sure to be mistaken. Austen's point is a good one, for when it comes to the dear self, we are often mistaken. We imagine that we arrive at our opinions independently through intuition or rational deliberation. We've had ourselves on the back for making these free autonomous decisions, somehow imagining that the better angels of our nature have informed our choices. But as Siegel says, care is called for here. For what psychoanalysts call the id or the shadow, that also affects our thinking and our behavior. And that darker side of human nature is highly susceptible to manipulation by outside forces. Commenting on fascism's powerful propaganda machine after World War II, Eric Frome wrote that we humans have become prey to a new kind of authority, automatons who live under the illusion of being self-willing individuals. The Stanford philosopher René Girard has also raised questions about our independent thinking. He says quite often we human beings fall under the sway of our magnetic desires, this natural tendency to imitate and to embrace what others are doing or modeling or what they want. Girard argues that when we choose an idea or a commodity, it's not necessarily for its intrinsic merits, but simply from our observations that others want it to. We are imitative beings par excellence, and our wishes and values therefore are often not our own. They are something put into our heads from the outside. And all of this suggests, Emerson notwithstanding, that no one really dances to his or her own tune. Yes, we may enjoy a modicum of autonomy, but for the most part we are creatures of our physical and social environments, relational beings, as it were. In one sense, this is really good news, sobering, but good, because it means when we are wrong, when we are misguided, it's like placing a wager on a slow horse. We stand to lose a little money, but hey, our ego can remain intact. If there's a better horse in the stable, we can bet on that horse in the next race. We must always be willing to go back to the drawing board, revisiting the positions we have previously staked out, and there is nothing diminishing about that, because for the most part, our convictions are socially constructed to begin with. Let them go. It's also helpful to have someone trustworthy who can look over our shoulder as we consider and reconsider our options. As the Buddhist teacher Marina Kaplan suggests, we need the help of an external guide to provide a mirror for that which we resist seeing, but which is absolutely necessary for us to know. And that is one of the functions that an open and inclusive faith community such as this one can provide. An iron string. Trust thyself, Emerson said. That's the iron string. But you know what? An iron string is really hard to bend. An absolute trust in self. That can prove to be just as rigid, just as inflexible. And so in maturity, I have found it useful to take my convictions seriously, while at the same time holding them lightly. And that tension can prove to be uncomfortable at times, but it's a tension that we can learn to live with. Blessed be I. And as mentioned earlier, our offering today will be shared with the Odyssey Project. And I hope you will be generous on their behalf this morning. Please rise in body or in spirit as we sing together our closing hymn, number 293. May our tongues refuse to speak when we are tempted to express hasty or harsh opinions, when we would elevate ourselves to the judgment seat to weigh the acts and the thoughts of others. When challenges do come, may we act with a sense of humility and a realization of our own limitations. Let us do our duty with intelligence, patience, thoroughness, our opinions tempered by sympathy, tolerance, and ever broader vision. May it be so. Please be seated for the postlude.