 I'm sure you know it. Yeah. Well, it is between the two of us. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like, um, yes. Yeah. I got you, Please stand up. Sit. I have a lot to say. We were talking at some point. Yeah. 20 years. I didn't have it when you were in my student. That's what I had. Yeah. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Here. Thank you. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. You have a very good course 2020. Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn which you'll find inside your order of service. And the top of the morning to you, happy day after St. Patrick's Day 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 as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud and very happy member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find that this is a special place, and if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we're offering a guided tour after the service, so if you're interested in doing that, just gather over here by the windows after the service and we'll take good care of you. And speaking of taking good care of each other, this would be the perfect time to silence all those pesky electronic devices that you just will not need for the next hour. And while you're taking care of that simple but important task, let me remind you that if you're accompanied today by a youngster and you think that young companion would rather experience the service from more private space because they're afraid you might be fidgety, we have a couple options for you including our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium and some comfortable seating outside the doorway in the commons from which you and your young companion can see and hear the service. Just one announcement before we get into the service this morning. The announcement is the number 47 because that's the number of days until cabaret. Friday evening May 4th, the theme is a Caribbean cruise. Again, Friday evening May 4th, stay tuned for more information about this wonderful annual party that we call cabaret. And with that I invite you to sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I know it will touch your heart, stir your spirit and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. We were put on this earth not to leave things the way that they were but to interact with each other and with nature's harmony so as to enrich all that we touch. So let our being in the world become a mark of gracefulness, of intelligence, of loving concern and may this time together, the thoughts, the music, the conversation that we share encourage us to these noble ends. May it help us to become more faithful and effective stewards of the many lives and of the planet that we cherish. I invite you to rise in body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice and please join with me in reading the words of affirmation for this morning. May we find the courage to live our faith, to speak our truth and to strive together for a world where freedom abounds, peace prevails and justice is done. May we know the fullness of love without fear and of security without oppression. May we hold one another in the deep and tender places of compassion and know that the divine spark within makes soulmates of us all. And as soulmates I invite you to turn to your neighbor in in your own fashion exchange a friendly greeting. Please be seated. And at this point I'd like to invite our children to come forward for the message for all ages. You were ready before me. You are quick, quick, quick, quick. So I don't really have a story for you today but I do have a message, a message for you and a message for all ages and the message is actually kind of more of a question than an answer and as you hear this song you're going to hear the question repeated several times so I want you to think about the question and see whether perhaps you have an answer for me when I'm done, okay? This is called these hands. Some hands have held the world together. Some hands have fought in wars forever. So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? Hear the question? Some hands have blessed a million people. And some hands help free the world from evil. So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? The world could use a hero of the humankind. So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? Some hands can't stop alive from dying. And some hands comfort a baby crying. So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? Because the world could use a hero of the humankind. So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? I want to sing it from my heart. I want to hear it in the wind. Till it blows around the world and comes back again. And all that we can ask is for ours to be free. To use them when we want for whatever the need. Some hands they give voice to a nation. Some hands wrote the times they are a-changing. So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? Because the world could use a hero of the humankind. So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? So can you answer the question? You saw a lot of nice pictures up there accompanying the song. What would you do with your hands? What's the question? What do you do with your hands? And what are the good things, the nice things that you do with your hands? Carrying. Carrying? Carrying things with your hands? Carrying. We care with our hands. We can care with our hands and with our minds and with our bodies. Our hands kind of represent our whole selves and what we can do with our whole selves to make the world better, right? So what can we do to make the world better? Anybody know? Being good friends to other people is one way, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've got more questions than answers today. But this is a good question for you to think about. What can you do with your hands and your hearts to make the world a better place? So I want you to think about that as you're going out and I'm going to invite you to sing along with me with the chorus as we sing the kids out. What shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? Cause the world could use a hero of the humankind So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? What shall I do with these hands of mine? Cause the world could use a hero of the humankind So tell me what shall I do with these hands of mine? I shouldn't do that. You're going to make me think I'm a real musician. So the first of our two readings this morning comes from Francis Moore LePay's book, Democracy's Edge. When Texas Wesleyan College announced that it was moving to a more upscale part of Fort Worth, Texas, the college was reacting to the neighborhood's decay. But if the college pulled out, the neighborhood had virtually no chance of recovery because that campus provided the last point of stability on which to eventually rebuild the neighborhood. So in response to this proposal, Allied Communities of Terrant, ACT, a broad-based citizen organization comprised mostly of moderate and low income blacks, whites, and Hispanics, ACT contacted the Board of Trustees of the College and the President and asked for a meeting. Terry Boggs recalls that to prepare we conducted a two and a half hour role play. We went over every eventuality and by the time we were finished we knew we were ready. At the appointed hour all of us, 15 laypersons and pastors arrived at the parlor off the President's office. And there we saw chairs lined up in two rows all facing a table where the President was to sit. So immediately we started rearranging the furniture so that we could all sit in a circle. ACT organizer Perry Perkins explained what happened next. At that point the President's assistant walked into the rooms, what the heck do you think you're doing? He asked. And we replied, we want a meeting. We don't want a lecture. We were polite, but our actions communicated that we were an organization with power and we deliberately created a certain tension. Our action produced some discomfort that the President and his assistant were just going to have to deal with. We created this public moment that was designed to focus people's attention. And it all worked. The college after that meeting ended up recommitting itself to the community. In its disciplined initiative ACT had remade the power relationship, not through nastiness, but by creating just enough tension to make those who had more power aware that they had to take seriously the voices of those who they perceived to be powerless. Typically Americans think of power in the form of money, the law, force, status. But once we understand power as a relationship between and among people, many new opportunities will open up. In a similar vein, this poem by Marge Piercy entitled Hope is a long, slow thing. Piercy writes, I became a feminist, but I didn't get it all. So I committed myself to the Church of Perpetual Subservience. I protested, I demonstrated, but still war went on. So I realized politics is useless. And so I've joined the Junior League instead. We have marvelous lunches. I made phone calls for my candidate, but little happened. So I'll never vote again. But progress is never individual. A wave crashes on our shore, traveling all the way from Africa, storming, eroding the cliff, grinding it down. But the same water is not what moved. We are droplets in a wave. And maybe I cannot, with my efforts, displace a rock. But the energy of movement can force it from the way. Look back. My great-grandmother was killed in a pogrom. My grandmother gave birth to 11 children in a tenement, eating potatoes only sometimes. And my mother had to leave school in 10th grade to work as a chambermaid that salesmen chased around the dirty beds. Nothing changed by itself, but was changed by work. And history records no progress that people who did not sweat and dared to push ever made. And so along we is the power that moves the rock. And thank you, Dan, for preparing it. How'd y'all sleep last night? Okay, I'm not someone who has a real hard time sleeping. My head hits the pillow, and I'm pretty much out until my bladder wakes me up about four or five hours later. Then I'm probably good until about daybreak. So rarely have I felt upset or anxious enough to have my sleep life disrupted, my dream life tainted by some untoward turn of events out there in the larger world. Now, to be sure, as an elementary school student who was taught to duck and cover when the air raid sirens sounded, fantasies of nuclear holocaust did keep me awake, but that was 55 years ago. And then Donald Trump was elected president. After November 8th, 2016, I did sleep fitfully, and I often awoke with a sense of unreality. Did that really just happen? And just as I was beginning to come to terms with the outcome of the election, the inauguration took place. My agitation spiked again. I'm hardly exaggerating when I say that the last election ranked close to 9-11 as an emotional disruptor for me. Now, when it comes to national politics, I'm generally a fairly non-anxious person. I was a polypsi major in college, so I know something about how the political system works in the United States. I know something about the fickleness of the American voter and the vagaries of the electoral college. None of that particularly surprises me. And having now lived through 11 U.S. presidencies, I've known disappointment in the past. But even the tainted 2000 election that propelled George W. Bush into office didn't exact the psychological toll that this one did. So let me be clear. My reaction had little to do with partisanship or party loyalty, the fact that a Republican prevailed over a Democrat. It had to do with a particular individual who, as commentators across the political spectrum have agreed, is the least qualified person to ever occupy our nation's highest office. Now, to her sorrow, Hillary Rodden Clinton once used the epithet deplorable to describe candidate Trump's supporters. It was an insensitive and elitist comment that probably benefited her rival. But deplorable is not too strong a term to apply to the candidate himself and now the president. And that is what kept me up at night. And it's not just the policy positions that Donald Trump has taken. The scaling back of environmental and workplace protections, the crippling of the Affordable Care Act, tax reform that exacerbates inequality, draconian immigration guidelines, a shoot from the hip approach to international relations, the padding of our nation's already bloated defense budget to name just a few. Because the United States has weathered extreme shifts in public policy before. The challenge we face today is of a different order. And it's reflected, at least in part, in Mr. Trump's misogyny, his mendacity, his spitefulness, his recklessness, his self-dealing, his willful ignorance, and his pugnacity. And that an individual possessing such characteristics command so much power is chilling, and that so many others in key leadership positions have become the president's enablers and his apologists seems practically inconceivable. Now until recently, I wasn't quite sure how to frame this issue. How to look past all the bluff and the bluster, the tweet storms, and the rabble rousing in order to kind of dig down to the heart of the matter and to the source of my own deep anxiety. And then, fortuitously, I came across an article by W. Robert Conner, professor emeritus of classics at Princeton University. And the focus of that particular article was demagoguery. Conner in this article takes us back to ancient times when the city of Athens was embroiled in the Peloponnesian War. Things had not been going well for the Athenians in that war, and following the death of that city's great statesman and soldier Pericles, leadership passed to an opportunistic politician by the name of Cleon. Cleon seemed not to have any fresh solution to Athens' difficulties, Conner writes, but he spoke and he acted in unprecedented ways. As far as we know, Cleon was the first individual to whom the label demagogue was attached. Apparently the comic playwright Aristophanes coined that term. Demagogue is a cognate created from the Greek words for people and to lead. One so described leads the people, but more in the manner of a pied piper than someone guided by a coherent policy platform. And according to the Greek historian Thucydides, Cleon was this magnetic speaker and it was his oratorical skills that had made him a favorite among the Athenians. But any ideas that he might have presented, those were wholly beside the point. What one of him numerous rabid followers was, quote, his skill at expressing and manipulating emotion. Demograph gods don't worry about consistency, about the practicality of their proposals. And so Conner says there may be nothing at the core except a vacuum that sucks into itself cliches, slogans, factoids, and fabrications. But because the emotional bond between the demagogue and his followers is so strong, no argument can possibly pierce the thick armor of their devotion to him. And so Professor Conner asks us to consider the parallels between Cleon's time now some 2,500 years ago and our own. Demagogue, he writes, has the ability to transform itself into autocracy if one by one the institutions that resist the aggrandizement of power are eroded and destroyed. Now if much of the foregoing sounds vaguely familiar, it's because we've been exposed to enough of Donald Trump's mass rallies to have a pretty clear idea of what demagoguery looks and sounds like. Donald Trump stirs the fires of discontent with broad sides against media figures, political rivals, the special counsel, intelligence agencies, and then he combines all of this with lavish praise for autocratic and repressive political practices. And Professor Conner finds all of this to be deeply, deeply troubling. And Peter Slatterjig is one of Europe's most popular public intellectuals and he has recently echoed those concerns. Trump and leaders like him, he says, are rage entrepreneurs. They are fear mongers. And Trump's true significance, Slatterjig says, lies in the way that he instinctively subverts the norms of modern governance. And so instead of waiting for the crisis in order to impose his decrees, his decrees get them the emergencies he needs. The playground for madness, he says, is immense. So I don't think it's too great a stretch to say we are headed toward a crisis of democracy that we downplay or that we dismiss to our peril. The stakes are that high and if we are not convinced of the immediacy of the threat, then we certainly ought to be. That threat needs to be lifted up as often as possible in as many venues as is conceivable, including our faith communities. Now there was an old memory that prompted me to share these concerns today. Way back in 1973, I was 22 years old and my wife and I had just landed in Berkeley, California where I was to begin studying for the Unitarian Universalist Ministry. And that first semester in Berkeley, Trina and I volunteered to teach church school at the first Unitarian Church of San Francisco. So for several months we crossed the bay every Sunday morning to fulfill that commitment. On one occasion, however, we were free of that responsibility and were able to attend worship services in the cavernous sanctuary where the Reverend David Rankin, the highly esteemed senior minister of that congregation, routinely preached to large and appreciative crowds. At that time, November 1973, Richard Nixon was in office and evidence of political dirty tricks and obstruction of justice in the Watergate affair was mounting. And yet months would pass before the president would eventually be forced from office. But that morning, in November 1973, David Rankin said that the facts were now incontrovertible and he called on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings. And as I recall, he was the first Unitarian Universalist minister to take that prophetic step. Now, the Reverend William Barber in our own time is convinced that our political culture desperately needs a similar jolt. The moral Mondays movement that he helped launch in North Carolina has now gone national and is part of a larger effort called Unstoppable Together. Worried about the fate of our democratic institutions and the declining fortunes of ordinary citizens, Reverend Barber challenges us in his words to be the moral defibrillators of our time, shocking the heart of this nation in order to build a movement of resistance, of hope, of justice, and of love. And Reverend Barber is not, at this moment in time, beating the drum for impeachment. And frankly, neither am I. And given the current composition of our Congress, that is not a realistic expectation. But for the rot at the highest levels of government to be excised, there simply has to be a recommitment to the democratic norms and principles that in our complacency many of us have taken for granted and are failing to protect. And so what is called for today is a sustained uprising. And because it goes to the heart of things that we care about most deeply, this isn't just another political battle. The values at stake here, I believe, are spiritual ones, they are moral ones, and they include our children's very lives, currently threatened by the easy access to deadly weapons that our legislators have made possible. The fate of the planet, as the pace of climate change accelerates while lawmakers curry favor with the fossil fuel industry. A widening gulf between haves and have-nots due to regressive tax policies, business-friendly right to work laws and corporate welfare, an alarming increase in hate crimes as black lives matter, activists, Muslims, Jews, undocumented immigrants, queer and transgendered people are scapegoated and demonized. And a disregard for human rights, the acceptance of torture and mass incarceration as legitimate instruments of foreign and domestic policy. These are just a few of the values that are being transgressed by this increasingly autocratic regime. Fortunately, the present peril has been capturing the attention of a wide spectrum of Americans, including, I'm sure many of you who last year alone participated in over 8,700 different protests throughout the country in one year. The hashtag MeToo movement, whose stock continues to rise, drew its initial energy from the women who were dismayed over Donald Trump's sordid past. And we've seen nothing like this since the 1970s as tens of millions have risen up to defend the spirit of democracy, the spirit of brother and sisterhood, the spirit of equity and fair-mindedness, the spirit of forbearance and open-mindedness, the spirit of truth. So what will it take for this moment of resistance to succeed? Well, first the recognition that it's going to take more than a moment. And that powerful opposing interests are awash in resources and they have plenty of arrows in their quiver. And so a successful effort will require constancy, a willingness over time to persevere. And where do we get the energy for that? For that prolonged struggle. From indignation, a fitting and natural response to repeated offenses against human dignity and the degradation of our common life. Indignity is related to anger, but indignity is less likely to hinder our ability to think clearly and keep faith with our moral compass. Pure anger, that makes us stupid and self-righteous. It fuels not positive activism, but regression and obsession and vengeance, Ursula K. Lagien writes. And that is exactly what we have seen among those who have aligned themselves with the alt-right. So we need to stay in touch, not with our raw anger, but with our indignation, which is not too terribly difficult because every week brings some fresh insult to our political and social sensibilities. And yet indignation alone is not going to do the trick, is it? For meaningful sustained action to occur, is to be wedded to something positive, and that positive thing is hope. St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians says, let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not give up. So what does that hope look like? You only needed to be at the capital square at one o'clock p.m. on Wednesday to see it in full flower. You saw some images a bit earlier of those protests. Over years, the National Rifle Association has crafted these permissive rules that have helped to create more carnage here in the United States than in any other country in the developed world. But on Wednesday, thousands of high school students, their teachers, their administrators, moms and dads, grandparents, community activists, clergy, they all marched and they chanted and they demanded meaningful and immediate change to our state's gun laws. And as I watched that demonstration, I saw a man in an NRA hat drifting away from the crowd, affected, one hopes, by the determination of this budding crop of social activists. Over the years, many of us have become resigned to the gun lobby's sway over our morally challenged legislative pawns. Our fatalism on the issue of gun control, hey, what can we do, has become, as George Zanuck says, self-reinforcing. And so, the Second Amendment absolutists continue to prevail. But the members of Generation Z, as they've been called, are not accepting that. And they have discovered that even if they don't have a vote, they have a powerful voice. Now, gun control groups have been springing up across the country since the Sandy Hook massacre. But those students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School may finally have brought us to the tipping point. These young people weren't just indignant. And they weren't just hopeful. They were also savvy. Within four days, the journalist Emily Witt notes, they had given, those students at that high school, had given their movement a name. Never again. They had given it a concrete policy goal, stricter background checks on all gun buyers. They had a plan for a nationwide protest, a march for our lives, which is scheduled for next weekend, but it says that the student leaders knew that the headline industrial complex grants only this narrow window of attention. And they made the most of that and expanded that window. Now, these students may have been coached by their elders, or they may have had this intuitive sense of how to build a movement. You begin with a passion and a clear sense of your purpose. And you figure out how to engage the opposition, not on their terms, but with more prayers and condolences. But on your terms, hey, let's look at the elephant in the room here. And you establish a network and you keep expanding it until it cannot be ignored. You find ways to leverage more media coverage, which in turn keeps the pressure on your policymakers. And when all of this happens, Naomi Klein says, you can surprise the hell out of yourselves by being united and focused and determined. I don't have a whole lot of confidence that the demagogue currently degrading his high office, undermining our democracy, is either going to resign or be impeached very soon. But a patient and persistent resistance, that can in all of its myriad manifestations prevent Mr. Trump from turning his worst impulses into policy. And since each one of us as individuals is limited into how much time we can commit to such this enterprise, how much of our money we can give to it, we each have to commit ourselves to an issue or two that touches us most profoundly and stick with it. If there is a silver lining to the current presidency, it is that Mr. Trump has spawned an insurgency that it may be impossible to suppress. The political arena is now being flooded with voices that the powerful once felt safe to ignore and can do so no longer. There is a fundamental realignment going on in our society, Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies writes, a fundamental realignment going on in our society. And younger people, he says especially, are not buying those old stories. Some kick-ass movements are emerging. And as a member of the older generation, Colin says, my job is either to support them or get the hell out of the way. Blessed be. The Unitarian Universal Service Committee is doing wonderful work to support peace and justice and sustainability throughout the world, and your gifts this morning will be given 100% to our Unitarian Universal Service Committee, so please be generous. We so much appreciate your monetary gifts when we receive the offering each week, and we also appreciate the gift of time that people have gifted us with, donated to us in helping our services to run smoothly. Steve Goldberg was, of course, our worship associate this morning. David Briles was on the sound. John McEvna was our lay minister. Claire Box, our greeter. Don Warrell, Jane Nelson Warrell, Bob Ault, Paula Ault, were our ushers. Hospitality following the service is being provided by Lucy and Bob Lasseter, Biss Nitschke, and Tina Uptik. And we expect that John Powell will be with us after the service for a tour for those who would like to see the rest of our fine facility during the coffee hour. So thank you to all the folks that help our services to run smoothly. And there were no cares of the congregation that were recorded in our book today, so we are going to proceed directly to our closing hymn, number 163. Please be seated for the benediction and the postlude. We end with these wonderful words from Audrey Lorde. She says, I have come to believe that what is most important to me must be spoken, must be made verbal, must be shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. We can sit in our corners, mute forever, while our sisters and our brothers and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned. We can sit in our safe corners, mute as bottles, and we will still not be any less afraid. We are going to die. If not sooner than later, whether or not we have ever spoken ourselves, that my silence has not protected me. Your silence will not protect you. Let us recall the times that we have remained silent. And then let us find our voices. That's it.