 Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. My name is Kelly Crocker and I am one of the ministers here. Today I'm joined by my colleague, the Reverend Kelly, Asperuth Jackson, the worship team of Drew Collins, Linda Warren, Daniel Carnes, and Stephen Gregorius. The vision of First Unitarian Society is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our Unitarian Universalist values in our lives, our community, and our world. For those here with us in person, it is a joy to be with you here in this space. We ask that you leave your mask on for the whole time that you're here with us in the building and that you do not sing along with the hymns, but we do encourage you to hum. Immediately following the postlude, we ask you to meet us outside. And after today's service, I am thrilled to tell you there will be coffee. So Kelly and I will be really looking forward to seeing you out there today. And if you're the parent of a child in our religious exploration program, children are picked up across the parking lot at the Landmark lawn. For those joining us virtually today, we're glad to have you with us. We hope you will be able to join us for our virtual coffee hour following our 11 a.m. service. And the information for joining can be found on the homepage of our website, fussmedicine.org, as well as on the slide, that will be seen again after today's service. Next weekend will be our annual All Souls Remembrance, and we would love to include the names and photos of your loved ones that you would like to remember. So you can find more information in the red floors about submitting those names and photos to Reverend Kelly AJ. And I invite you now into a moment of silence as we center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together again in community. Each day provides us with an opportunity to love again, to hurt again, to embrace joy, to experience unease, to discover the tragic. Each day provides us with the opportunity to live. All that we have ever loved and all that we have ever been stands with us on the brink of all that we aspire to create. A deeper peace, a larger love, a more embracing hope, a greater generosity of spirit, a deeper joy in this life we share. This day is no different. This hour no more unique than the last, except maybe today, maybe now, among friends and fellow journeyers, maybe for the first time, maybe silently, we can share ourselves. And I invite you now to join in the words of affirmation as we light our chalice. Welcome to this place of possibility. This is Love's hearth, the home of hope, a refuge for minds in search of truth unfolding, ever beautiful, ever strange. Here compassion is our shelter, freedom our protection from the storms of bigotry and hate. In this abode may we find comfort and courage. Here may our sight become vision to see the unseen, to glimpse the good that is yet to be. This little light of mine, I'm gonna let it, let it shine, let it shine, let it. Let's sing together our opening hymn number 12, old life that maketh all things new. Those worshiping in person are invited to hum. Gladness from the heart to heart, step before... I'd like to tell you a story from a very long time ago in China. The story is so old that it is said it took place before the first emperor of China was even born. So once there was a thief who was determined to steal something of great value so that he could live comfortably off of the wealth he could make by selling whatever it was going to steal. And he broke in one night to the home of a very wealthy person who understandably, of course, had a lot of things of great value in the house. But when he entered the courtyard of the home, he saw that there was a great iron bell so large that he couldn't even get his arms around the front of the bell fully outstretched and much, much taller than he was himself. Now you have to understand that in those days just the iron that made up that bell, just the metal that it was made out of all by itself was probably the most expensive thing, the most valuable thing, the thing that was worth the most money in the entire house. Because iron was pretty rare commodity in that place and in that time and you could make a lot of things out of it. You could make good tools, you could make dangerous weapons and you could make armor out of it and so the thief realized he didn't even need to go into the house. He had found what he was here to steal and that was this bell. But a problem occurred to the thief. The bell was much taller than he was and much wider than he was and so it was a lot heavier than he was. How on earth was he going to get this bell out of the courtyard and somewhere else where he could sell it and make a tidy profit? Well, he decided that he would think about this and come back later. So he went home and he thought about it some, how am I going to get that bell for myself? He thought, well, I can't move it all at once so I'll have to break it up into pieces and then, then I can take it away. So he got a very large hammer, the largest hammer he could find and he snuck back into that courtyard again and he ran as fast as he could and sort of get some momentum up and slung the hammer at the bell and hit it very hard. I mean, he did a good job swinging that hammer. But of course, you know what happens when you hit a bell with a hammer? It makes a pretty loud noise and it was so loud that he, well, at first he thought he'd try and throw his arms around it and just, you know, quiet the bell down. But that didn't even do anything. It was still shaking and shining and making such a racket that he couldn't, he couldn't abide it himself and he put his hands over his ears. And he realized he was going to have to come back later because someone must have heard that bell and this was a big problem. So he took his hammer and he snuck away again and went back home and thought, now what am I going to do? Because I have to break up the bell into little pieces if I'm going to get it anywhere. But I can't have that noise if I'm not going to get caught. So he thought for a while, he sort of paced back and forth. He thought for a while, he thought and eventually he thought of an idea. He got some wax from a candle. He rolled up two sizable balls of it and he stuffed one in one ear and one in the other ear and then he got his hammer again and he went back to that house a third time. He took hold of it and he ran and he swung the hammer and he hit the bell very hard but you know he didn't hear a sound this time. There we go. I've solved my problem and he just wailed on that bell over and over and over again until it was broken into lots of little pieces and he thought, well now I am really all set and that's when he got arrested. And the moral of this story is that we are very ingenious beings, we humans, we can come up with very creative solutions for a lot of different problems. And he was right. He couldn't hear the bell with that wax in his ears. But just because we have a creative solution for a problem that we're facing doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right solution. And I now invite you into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our community here as well as our outreach offering recipient. This week our outreach offering is shared with Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin which provides affordable quality confidential health care to more than 61,000 people each year in 24 health centers throughout Wisconsin. Planned Parenthood Wisconsin focuses on preventive care seeking to ensure all people have access to the care and the resources they need to make informed decisions about their bodies, their lives, and their futures. So you'll see on the screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org. You will see our text to give information there as well. And for folks who are here with us in person, there are offering baskets at all the doors. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. In 1950, Jimmy, in the 1950 Jimmy Stewart vehicle, Harvey, Jimmy plays an eccentric man named Elwood whose best friend is an enormous, sentient, invisible rabbit named Harvey, who walks around on its hind legs and likes to play tricks on people. Elwood introduces his invisible companion to just about everyone he meets and explains that Harvey is a puka, a shape-changing trickster fairy from Celtic folklore. Some folks humor Elwood and others are exasperated by him. But by and by, in large part, people do not tend to actually believe that his invisible friend is real, most especially his sister, who is understandably concerned for his mental health. But we, the viewer, watching the film get clearer and clearer signals throughout that Harvey really is quite real and able to intervene in the world. And while this story is about an adult, it's most noteworthy and persecuted at times, nearly being institutionalized and forcibly medicated adult because he's engaged in an adventure that's generally associated with childhood. Elwood has what at least from the outside appears to be an imaginary friend. Do you have an imaginary friend or have you ever had one in your life? I did when I was a good bit younger. Imaginary friends in books and movies tend to be colorful and elaborate and to have a habit of turning out to be very real and tangible by the time that the story is over, just as with Harvey. I wouldn't say that my imaginary friend was nearly as interesting as that. He was my same age, so three or four, something like that, and had a family that seemed to mirror my own all the way down to their ages, genders, and names. He lived in the rear hallway of my house where exactly I never quite established, just somewhere in the hallway. It was possible that it was by the cat food bowls or maybe the recycling bins, but of his imaginary family, only his name was different from its mirror twin in the conventional world, almost certainly because I used to watch a lot of Rocky and Bullwinkle reruns when I was a small child, so his name was Rocky. I cannot remember the experience of believing in Rocky. I'm not sure that I did in terms of not knowing the difference between what was real and what was not, but I'm also not certain that I didn't, and I don't want to be dismissive of the imaginative and spiritual life of my younger self. Is the lesson that I want you to take away, and I'm giving this to you up front, which is something that I don't normally do, is the question of whether or not an imaginary friend is real, is fundamentally the wrong question. The better and more useful question is does your imaginary friend make your life better, make the lives of others better, or does it make it worse? This question comes not just from my opinion, not just from my wild musings, but it is one which is woven deeply into our faith. Here's why. Nearly every religion has some sense of an unseen world, moving behind the visible one, influencing it in subtle ways. In Paul's second letter to the Corinthians, from the Christian tradition we read, So we do not lose heart, even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen. For what can be seen is temporary, but what cannot be seen is eternal. In Islam, the world is populated by innumerable, invisible spiritual beings called jinn, and endowed with the same quality that makes human beings distinct from all other animals. They, like us, are neither inherently good nor inherently bad. Instead, both we and they, the jinn, have the capacity to choose between right and wrong. So there are both kind and cruel jinn, and they are capable of changing over the course of their existence. According to the Quran and the Hadith, the central text of Islam, which connects, the Hadith, of course, collects various stories and sayings attributed to the religion's founding prophet, Muhammad. According to these, Muhammad's mission as a prophet was not only to humanity, but also to the jinn. He was called to bring them a new revelation, call them to a moral accounting and bring them into a new relationship with the divine, just as he was for human beings. According to the Shinto tradition of Japan, the world is suffused with and animated by a nearly infinite number of spirits who govern and protect the natural world and its elements and forces. A mountain, a waterfall, even a field planted with rice, each of these has its own spirit to watch over it, its own personality, interests, and sense of humor. Human beings also have lively and important spirits in this system, and these human spirits can come into play even before a person dies and becomes an ancestor. The Japanese term ikiryo applies to a spirit that has left their human body behind, even while the body and the person that resides in it still lives. Restlessly exploring the world, an ikiryo can engage in this sort of mischief or spookiness we might associate with a more traditional ghost, causing objects to float or crash to the ground and shouting or whispering ominous threats and curses. But it may just as easily travel long distances to be with friends or family, but its body is too far away to reach easily. An ikiryo can be the ghost of a living friend who is thinking of you and wants to check in on you and keep you company. Both in West Africa and throughout the African diaspora, we find religious systems similarly ascribe color and personality to the forces of the natural world and to the immutable realities of existence, such as death itself. They are known by many different names and many different languages, including orishas, iwas, loas, all words that can be translated as either spirits or gods fairly interchangeably. The Haitian Revolution, the first mass rebellion by enslaved people in the Americas to overturn a white colonial government and win their freedom, began with a religious ceremony at a place called Boyce Cayman, the Alligator Forest. The people at that gathering invoked and consulted the loas, particularly Ezilí Dantor, the spirit of the island of Hispaniola itself. The enslaved people who took part in that ceremony promised the goddess and each other that they would free themselves from bondage and then they left that place and changed history. And then of course, there is simply God. Whether worshipped in the person of the Christian Trinity or the strict monotheism of Judaism and Islam, all of the above are unseen spiritual beings or forces. All things which cannot be quantified and verified objectively through conventional scientific means but which nonetheless have a profound impact on the lives of their adherents. There is a way of looking at such spiritual ideas which is strictly either or. The unseen spiritual dimension of existence is an absolutely true and knowable thing or it is an utter falsehood, unconnected from reality. We can draw a comparison to that Jimmy Stewart film and I'll beg your understanding here that I am not pointing out the parallel to be dismissive. Either Harvey is a six foot three and a half inch tall invisible rabbit or Elwood is suffering from persistent delusions and badly needs psychiatric help. These two extremes are unfortunately what religion or the absence of religion too often gets reduced to. Because if the unseen is perfectly clear and knowably true then the only thing that is to be done is to find whatever the one true faith is and then the one true version of that one true faith and then to practice it unflinchingly no matter where it might take you because there is if there is no moral code other than what an omniscient omnipotent God says there is so long as such a God definitely exists and that God's will can definitely be known. And if all the spiritual realm is purely fanciful with no relationship to things that are or could be then likewise no religious story or idea can have any bearing on what is right or what is wrong or the way we live our lives and everyone who has ever believed in any of it is a fool. In our religion there is space here for theists and atheists and for the agnostics and religious naturalists and pan-end theists and all sorts of folks who might see themselves as somehow in between. In fact the only thing we do not have space for here are those two extremes I just outlined. The terrifying moral absolutism of a totalitarian form of theism and the nihilistic sophistry of a contemptuous sort of atheism. We find the space between these two poles the space where we live religiously by demoting the question which animates so much of popular debate about religion God is real yes or no instead we focus our attention on a somewhat different question and there are many ways I could put this but the simplest way is this God is good yes or no. Our tradition emphatically answers yes to this on both sides of the family tree both the universalist and the unitarian. It matters so much more than everything else that it completely overrides the question of whether or not God is real. Whatever truth is at the center of your being by all means follow it. We find no meaning in fighting about how your God is different from hers which is different from theirs which might be different from mine which most days at least is nothing I particularly like to call God at all. What matters in our faith is that whatever lies at the center of meaning for you must move you towards good towards caring for yourself and for others and for the earth which is our home. As unitarian universalists we are not accountable to any particular doctrine or even necessarily to the scientific method in determining what we most deeply believe at a spiritual level but we are morally accountable for the worldly consequences of the God we follow even if that God entails the absence of God. As the Unitarian minister Cyrus Bartle wrote, I spell my God with two O's and my devil without a D. There is a quote which is attributed to our irascible Unitarian ancestor Ralph Waldo Emerson. Truthfully it is my favorite Emerson quote. This is a bit of a problem because it is not actually by Emerson so far as I or anyone I've spoken with has been able to determine. The furthest we can trace it back is that it was created by one or more of the rabbis who were putting together a prayer book several decades ago which included inspirational readings from non- Jewish sources and it sounds a lot like Emerson because they did a good job of capturing his voice and values and then we picked it up and put it in our own hymnal. I can show it to you sometime if you want. So now having acknowledged the complicated truth that it is probably not directly from him I can share it with you because I believe it is worth repeating wherever it came from. A person will worship something have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts but it will out that which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives and character. Therefore it behooves us to be careful what we worship for what we are worshiping we are becoming. Another quote and this one can actually be attributed to its source with confidence from the author Ursula K. Le Guin. She was writing about the imaginative work of a fantasy writer but in some sense all children are writers of fantasies and the rest of us can be as well if we do not deceive ourselves into thinking we are too good or too proper for it. She wrote the exercise of imagination is dangerous to those who profit from the way things are because it has the power to show that the way things are is not permanent not universal not necessary. Having that real though limited power to put established institutions into questions imaginative literature has also the responsibility of power. The storyteller is the truth teller. Now for my own self I think that Rocky my early childhood imaginative friend imaginary friend was a way for me to talk about myself without having to speak directly for myself. I could say Rocky wants this Rocky feels that that sort of thing provided a sense of safety through distance. Imaginary friends can serve many purposes to keep us company when we are lonely to express the emotions that we have trouble sharing directly or to help us practice the relationships that we might hope to have with other human beings of flesh and blood rather than thought or spirit. But just like Harvey and Jimmy Stewart the value of a friend or anything else with its source in our imaginations is the quality of good or ill that it does for others and for ourselves. Each week we gather with hearts heavy with sorrows and hearts filled with joy. We share these here in community knowing they are held in love. This week we light a candle of concern and hope for Dorrit whose brother Dan is having complicated back surgery and we send Dan our good thoughts and our hopes for healing. We light a candle of joy and celebration for Deb and Sam Lawrence who share the wonderful news of the October 9th marriage of their daughter Alex Lawrence to Cooper Campbell and a candle of healing for Mary and Joe Murphy's granddaughter Emma who has a mild case of COVID. Mary asks that we keep Emma in our thoughts and says that they hope no one else in her family catches it and that she recovers quickly and Mary adds we also hope our FUS and Madison communities stay safe. And finally we light one last candle for all the joys and all the sorrows that live within the silent sanctuaries of our hearts. May they each be held gently in gratitude, in love, and in hope. There is a love, there is a love. I want to answer the call of love with our closing hymn number 1014 answering the call of love. Those worshiping in person are invited to hum. May is dawn at diva reflections of grace in air ace fulfilling the vid together as hearts beat as one. Bolden by faith we all dare to proclaim that we are answering the call blessed and made whole is our God heart speed as one emboldened by faith to proclaim to proclaim grace in every fulfill it to proclaim that we are. These words of benediction come from Beverly and David Bumbaw. Our church exists to proclaim the gospel that each human being is infinitely precious that the meaning of our lives lies hidden in our interactions with each other. We wish to be a church where we encounter each other with wonder appreciation and expectation where we call out of each other's strengths wisdom and compassion that we never knew we had.