 special guest Jennifer Yancey, Becky Byrne, Sandy Eskrich, Brian Rainey, and Jay Ranny along with Catherine Clouette. The vision of First Unitarian Society is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our Unitarian Universalist values in our lives, in our community, and in our world. We look forward to greeting you all at Coffee Hour after today's service out here in the Commons. It is also where you will find our activity for all ages, that we are going to begin creating together in our service in just a few moments. And if you're visiting us today welcome, we're so very glad that you are with us. And if you'd like more information about First Unitarian Society, please stop by the welcome table located outside the center doors. And for those of you connecting virtually with us today, we are very glad that you are with us as well. We hope that you'll be able to join us for our virtual Coffee Hour immediately following today's service. The information for joining can be found on the homepage of our website, fussmattison.org, as well as on the slide that will be seen again after the postlude. Our announcement slides will also be shown briefly after today's service. We encourage you to take a moment to watch those and learn about our upcoming programs and activities. And now I invite you to join me in a moment of silence as we center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time joining together once again in community. Sink into this chair, breathe into this body, the very body that will be you till your very last day. Come into this day. Raise your gaze into this light, this one steadfast sun who watches over all growing beings, even you, even now. Come into this heart and break into the boundlessness of wild beauty, no beginning or ending in you, but flowing through you like white water, reaching toward all that ever was, and all that ever will be. And if you will rise now in all the ways we do to join in our words of affirmation as Becky lights our chalice, day breaks on our gratitude for family and friends, for the freedom to find our own truth, for the company of those who gather here, and the promises we offer one another. Let the light of day bring the grace of faith into our lives, age service each year. And so for our service today we have turned the tables and we have asked them to deliver their statements for us. So what we would like to do now though is to bring all of you into this activity of thinking about what it is that we believe. And so this board here, we're calling it our belief board. It's got some statements on it already. Things like the holy is found in nature. Laughter is healing. Rituals help ground me. Creativity feeds the soul. Each person has worth and dignity. Life is messy. We need to be here for each other. There is a spark of divinity in each of us. Our relationships with others help us know the divine. Life is better with a pet. We are each called to do the work of justice. Eating can be a sacred act. So I ask all of you, I'd love it if you would yell one out, what is a one sentence belief statement? Something that you believe. Live in awe. Thank you, Dave. You all know that voice, right? Without justice. Thank you, Kelly. Love is universal. Thank you. Spread kindness whenever you can. Thanks, Leslie. Faith is a verb. Thank you, tree. Live compassion. People will be people. Those are some true words, Barb. People will be people. Make me think of one. There is very little that I actually control. Thank you, Rene. There are powers. In fact, right now powers greater than me are these labels. Okay. I can do it. There are powers greater than me. I got you. Just give me one second. Fighting with my labels. Kindness is transcendent and transformative? Okay. I love it. Kindness is transcendent. Can I fit it on our label and transcend? I'm caught up. Yeah, Judy. All right. Your spirituality is what you do in your everyday life. How are we doing on Nail Sandy? These are great. Thank you all for making this work. Gene, live today. Imperfect is perfect. Thank you, Winnie. I'm going to write that really big. Is there another hint? Yeah. Patience is important. Two more. Okay. Tell me. Tell me. Tell me, Clio. When you feel sad, think of something that makes you happy. Thank you, Clio. I'm getting it. One more nail. Do we have a last one out there? Yeah, Emily. No meaning but the meaning we make. Y'all look good at this. I had the four of them on standby. No, are beautiful. So this activity comes to us from, I saw it at the Unitarian Church in Kholishvar in Romania many years ago, and they had a board like this. And now what you do is during coffee hour, if you believe patience is important and that love is universal, find two that resonate with you. Take a piece of yarn, tie it from one nail to the next. And so when we're all done and this board is full of yarn and you have found things that resonate with you, it will be a visual reminder for all these different beliefs that we hold. And though our beliefs may be different, how much we truly all have in common. Thank you all for making this work. And I now invite you into the giving and the receiving of today's offering. We give freely and generously to this offering to sustain the ongoing work of this community. You'll see on the screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org. You'll find the text to give information there as well. And in addition, there are baskets for cash or checks at the back of the auditorium. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. Good morning. My name is Becky Burns. I was born and raised here at FUS. In fact, I offered my coming of age faith belief statement back in the 1980s. Currently, I serve as a co-chair of the FUS racial justice ministry team and am a member of your healthy congregations team. And I'm looking forward to teaching coming of age again this year. I believe our behaviors reveal our true beliefs. That's how I approach this opportunity. I looked at what I do, how I present in the world, and then I explored the value or belief that was behind that behavior. After all, actions speak louder than words. And here's what I came up with. I believe as humans, we must care for each other. Like all living beings, some are weaker, others stronger, some are healthier, some are smarter, some are wounded. And no one's at fault for the way they are. And no one is superior to any other. Every person adds value to our world. So why wouldn't we all care for each other? If someone needs help, I like to help. If someone can be self-sufficient, then I like them to take care of themselves and lend a hand towards others. It's likely this belief that has led to my career in helping families who have children with disabilities, being a pen pal and a friend to inmates in our prison system, and happy to lend a hand to friends and family members in need. I've always aligned with the story of the starfish. One day a man was walking along the beach when he noticed a boy picking up something and gently throwing it back into the ocean. Approaching the boy, he said, what are you doing? And the youth replied, throwing starfish back into the ocean. The surf is up and the tide is going out. If I don't throw them back, they'll die. Son, the man said, don't you realize there are miles and miles of beach and hundreds of starfish? You can't make a difference. After listening politely, the boy bent down, picked up another starfish, and threw it back into the surf. Then smiling at the man, he said, I made a difference to that one. I believe in treating each other with dignity. All of us are born with inherent worth and value. I even go so far as to believe that if everyone treated others with dignity, we wouldn't be plagued with issues like racism and homophobia. Rather than treating others the way that we want to be treated ourselves, try treating others the way they would like to be treated. There are huge benefits for all humans to simply accept each other's identities and be accountable for our own words and actions. If we focus on those behaviors, I believe we would live in a world with more joy and peace. I think humans are responsible for the world that we've created, and its future is ours and ours alone to change. I believe in respecting oneself and others. I treasure healthy boundaries. If I'm expecting someone to express gratitude for what I have done for them, then I've crossed a very important boundary, and it serves as a sign to me that I've overextended myself. The heart of volunteerism is not in the recognition you may or may not receive. It is the satisfaction one receives from the mere act of contributing to the better outcome of others. I think it's essential to establish and uphold healthy boundaries as a measure of respect to oneself and those you love. Finally, I believe in the rejuvenating power of music. Thank you. Of silence. Of good friends and laughter. I think we could all use a bit more of that in our lives. Thank you. I believe in silence. I thought it might be funny if I just stood here in silence for five minutes, but I don't think that sound is a bad thing. I love talking with people. I think it's important that somebody can speak up when they see an injustice. Personally, I also like to make music, but there is a saying that I heard a lot playing in big bands. Jazz is about the notes you don't play. Sound is important, but what's more important to me is the space we leave between. When I was little, I was sensitive to noise. I would wear ear protectors in movie theaters. I was at my best in quiet places, and I still am. Silence helps me calm down. It helps me process everything that's going on. Silence is also an important tool for me day to day. When I play contract bridge, it helps me concentrate so I can do my best. When I'm at work and I disagree with somebody else, if I silence my own opinions first, it gives other people space to share their own opinions, and usually that's really helpful. Like most tools, though, if we use silence wrong, it can be dangerous. Like a very sharp knife, it's extremely useful if we use it carefully, but it can also do a lot of damage if we're not careful. One example of that today is what's going on in Russia and Ukraine. There's a lot that I find sickening, but one of those things is the way that Putin uses silence as a weapon. In Russia, the freedom to protest is only a facade. You can't write a newspaper article about what's truly going on. The silence makes it almost impossible for people to work together to stop the evil. Silence can be damaging. Silence can be eerie. Silence can be awkward. But at its best, silence is an essential part of my life, especially my spiritual life. I've changed a lot since I grew up Catholic. One thing that has not changed is the importance of silent prayer and meditation. Here at FUS, we often start services with a moment of centering silence. Something feels very natural about that to me. When I think about the whole universe, most of it is very quiet. When we sleep, we are silent. For the many years before we're born and after we die, we are silent. It's only for a fleeting flicker of time that we can cut through that silence. Silence reminds me of how precious an opportunity that is, and it reminds me to make the most of this life. 1008. When our heart is in a holy place. Unitarian universalism as a teenager, more than 50 years ago when my family moved from Illinois to Madison and I joined First Unitarians Youth Group. During the course of my life's journey, I've attended UU churches in other places, but I've always considered First Unitarian Society of Madison my spiritual home. I was once married here. I've attended too many memorial services for departed friends here. And for many years, I've taught religious education classes under the superb leadership of Leslie Ross and Kelly Crocker in order to help first my daughter and then many other young people decide whether UUism is right for them. What do I personally believe? There are many paths for each of us, but here are three of the milestones along my personal path. The first is the challenge. Over the years, I've heard regularly from time to time a stream of cracks about Unitarian universalism, including some from people who otherwise have very liberal values. Those cracks were to the effect that UUism is a mushy religion, kind of a collection point for people who want some connection with religion but don't want to put too much energy into it. I don't believe that. Many years ago at a UU service I attended in Milwaukee, a congregant got up and said, you know, people think UUism is easy. It's not. If you do it right, it's the hardest religion there is. His statement struck home with me and it's been an essential guide and a goad I should say for my personal path. I think our religion is hard because it doesn't come with a built-in roadmap. It provides options and suggestions, but every UU must find their own path. It's hard work, but I've found it very rewarding, much more so than being confined to a doctrinal route planned for me by others. The second milestone in my path is what I would call enlightenment. One of the basic questions we talk about in our religious education classes is, is there a God? I've thought about that a lot over the years and I think my answer is that I would consider myself a mathematical deist. Let me explain what I mean by that. Many years ago when I took physics in college I learned about the laws of gravity in planetary motion. I had an epiphany in class one day, the day that we studied a law discovered by the Bohemian mathematician Johannes Kepler. Kepler's secondary law of planetary motion and that's probably the last time you'll ever hear anybody say their faith was inspired by Kepler's second law of planetary motion. Now what is that law? Kepler's second law is basically planets do not orbit the sun with constant speed. They orbit the sun in an ellipse and their speed varies so that the imaginary line between the sun and the planet as it goes through its orbit sweeps out equal areas in equal times as the planet orbits the sun in its ellipse. For some reason when I heard that that day I thought you know that can't have happened by chance. These laws of motion and gravity cannot have happened by chance. The universe can't be random. It can't. There must be some higher power out there that created this beautiful mathematical order. Now I may never figure out probably never will figure out the deeper nature of that higher power but I do feel a calling to think about it and to relate it to my life experience. Particularly when we address other questions that we address so often at first Unitarian. For example if you do believe in a higher power how do you reconcile that with the existence of evil with the tragedies and with the loss that life inevitably brings? What is true goodness and how can one achieve true goodness? Working through these questions is very hard. I am grateful to Unitarian Universalism for reminding me to keep at it and for providing resources that I can use to look into and explore my path. The work of exploring this path itself brings comfort and sometimes and I have to confess only sometimes a little bit of progress. The final milestone in my journey is community. In the many years that I've been here I've put most of my energy into religious education and as a result I have to confess I don't know some members outside of that area very well but I will tell you that seeing people even those I don't know very well gather as I walk into church on a Sunday to get ready for class or as I walk in on a Christmas Eve for the Christmas Eve service or other days for other services this gives me a real feeling of being at home. That feeling sustains me outside of church as well and it helps me know always that I am in the right spiritual community. I am grateful to you all for helping to make that happen and that in a nutshell is what I believe. When Kelly asked me to consider doing this I thought sure I've already I'm all set for this because when we ask our ninth graders to finally sit down and and put a pen to paper and write what they believe I mean Brian and I were sitting there with them for 45 minutes or an hour in silence while they wrote and I thought well I got to do the same thing so I pulled out my what I was writing in and I wrote my belief statement so when Kelly asked could we do this I thought sure I've already done this and then I didn't pull it out to look at it until just the other day and I thought well yeah you know that's mostly still true and and and as as Brian and I said I think I've edited it every day since then in just a little bit there's pen marks all over it. I believe in living an intentional life. I believe we as humans are social beings we benefit from our relationships and from belonging to community. During the pandemic our assumptions about our own agency were and I think continue to be severely tested. I was fortunate to be part of a family pod we could be in each other's homes share meals share fears and share relative successes it required honesty and living not just for oneself but required constant decision-making for the benefit of that small valued community. I think we've all learned from that and are continuing to learn from that lives are short fragile and maybe all we've got. My experience in community is varied here at FUS a wonderful community in my neighborhood I feel in community with circles of friends and previous professional colleagues some for more than 30 or even 40 years ago. We've developed long-term relationships that are important parts of us throughout the years. To do this requires focus and patience to really know people over a lifetime know and care about individuals over a lifetime. I benefit from each of these communities and these relationships and I believe I have something to offer that's valuable to each. Intentional living requires a physical body. Our bodies need to be fueled and moved and rested to truly be well involves the physical self and without physical self-care we don't have the focus energy or endurance to live fully. I think about the presence that we experience in meditation I notice the presence they experience when they're producing music. I feel like to me I find presence sometimes in physical activity and whether that means you know swimming where breathing is everything you have to breathe you have to keep breathing or whether that means hill climbing on a bike where your whole brain and your whole body are acting as one to move up that hill without falling over sideways. Clearly our bodies don't last forever and neither do our lives of conscious living. Is there more than intention and physicality? Yes I think so. Intentional living requires reflection empathy and perspective taking. We choose how to invest our resources our time and our energy and from what basis do we make those decisions those choices. All of us have values drawn from lived experience and maybe from vicarious experience. What are my values? Kindness honesty the natural world empowering myself and empowering others and physical presence and exertion. Everyone draws their choices from their values expressed or silent acknowledged or not. When I retired a couple of years ago from public education I did it with some intention and I decided I wanted to grow a few things in my life I wanted to grow my spirituality I wanted to grow my civic engagement and I wanted to grow physical wellness as well as continue to take care of family and friends. I believe without considered and applied values we're only a very sophisticated animal driven by behavioral conditioning less than an intentional spiritual human. So values considered weighed and expressed in action are the foundation of spirituality and are necessary for an intentional life. Thanks to our four presenters today we gather each week creating a community of love and support a place and a time where we can share the celebrations and the sorrows of our days. Anne asks us to light a candle of gratitude relief and joy for the re-establishing of a long relationship that was broken by emotional and geographic distance. There is great joy for taking small steps on this journey together. And we light a candle of concern and hopes for healing for Rebecca Blank who received news of an aggressive cancer. We send our prayers for support for hope and that she is surrounded by those who love her on all the days ahead. Alyssa Ryan Joy asks us to light a candle of concern for the Lee Now family who are struggling with COVID in their home with the illness itself and with the disappointment of two little ones who were supposed to be at a sleep away camp this weekend. And we send Mike and Anya our best and hope that they are on the other side of this very soon. Bev Dusso asks us to light a candle for the new National 988 number for those struggling with mental health issues. May we celebrate the lives that will save those rich or poor from this day forward. And a candle of joy, gratitude, hope and prayers for Amanda and Oliver Kiefer and their twins who were born at 29 weeks this past Wednesday. They welcomed Simone May and Weston Henry into this world. Both are struggling in the NICU. So we know that this will be a long journey for all of them. We're holding all of them in our hearts as well as grandparents Henry and Barbara Nelslow as that family loves and supports each other so very well. And I light a candle of deep sorrow for the passing of the Reverend Mark Ward. Mark passed away suddenly this past week. You may remember Mark as our ministerial intern way back in 2003. From here Mark was called to the UU congregation of Asheville, North Carolina. He went there in 2004 and he served them until his retirement in June of 2021. Mark was a brilliant human being with a curious mind, a hearty laugh and a heart filled with compassion. We hold his wife and their family in our hearts as they begin a journey of deep and abiding grief. And we light a candle in solidarity with the people of Ukraine both in their suffering and in their struggle. Together we yearn for peace for them and for all people for an end to all wars of conquest anywhere and everywhere on earth. And if you'll join me in a moment of prayer spirit of compassion enter our hearts be with us in the hard hours the lonely hours the times of loss and pain help us to remember the kindness that dwells within spirit of belonging help us see the pain of those around us the ones we know and the ones we know not yet let us be with them in their sorrows that we might speak a gentle word along the way spirit of love enlarge our heart so that our compassion may embrace all let us be generous of heart that we might forgive and be forgiven spirit of life let us be together in our humanness in our vulnerability that by traveling the path together we may be made strong spirit of it all help us to face the mysteries of this life ground us in trust in openness in hope and in love may these hold us and heal us bless us and all in our care this holy day bless it be and amen some additional verses you can follow the words on the screen taught you may you question everything and when you have changed the world and the world has changed you may you return again to this place and share what you have learned with us blessed be go in peace and please be seated for the postlude