 Please join me in a moment of centering silence. And now let's join our voices together in our in-gathering hymn number 44. The words are printed in your order of service. First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a place where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in a safe and accepting environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for healing and transformation in the world. My name is Beth Binhammer and on behalf of the congregation I'd like to extend a special welcome this morning to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation so whoever you are we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. This would be a good time to turn off these lovely electronic devices that you will not need for the next hour or so. We do not have a guide available for today after the service so we apologize for that. We welcome children to stay with us during the service. Please remember that it often becomes difficult for those in attendance to hear in this lively, acoustical environment. Our child haven and the commons are excellent places to go to still hear and see the service if your child needs to talk or run around. I'd like to acknowledge now those individuals who help our service run smoothly. This morning we have Anne Smiley serving as our lay minister. Joan Heitman as our greeter. Samuel Bates Elizabeth Barrett and Helen Dyer are our ushers this morning and we thank them for their service to the society. Please note announcements in the red floors insert in your order of service which describe upcoming events at the society. We also have a couple of additional announcements this morning. Our seventh grade compass points classes are offering a game night on Saturday May 14th from 7 to 9 p.m. The evening a fund will raise funds for two students whose education we support through the partner church program. There is one in the Philippines and I'm not necessarily going to pronounce this name correctly but it looks like J.L. Rose Condes and there's Beata Bartah in Transylvania. There will be games for all age levels and the chance to send a letter to J.L. and Beata. Tickets are being sold in the commons after today's worship service. Ticket sellers will even welcome donations from people who want to give but don't want to participate in the game night. There's also a reminder that peace poles are ready to be decorated. Meet by the tables outside the meeting house after the service if you would like to decorate a peace pole today. And finally 12, a mere 12 days until cabaret. Tickets are available in the commons. There will be food fund fellowship providing financial support for FUS. Again welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. Welcome my friends to this privileged time and place where we turn our thoughts to how we can trust and be trusted, love and be loved, forgive and be forgiven, heal and be healed so that the goodness of our lives may become a shared blessing. And now I would invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the light of our chalice. Please join your voices with mine in our words of affirmation. We gather as a community of memory and a community of hope to celebrate life and the endless possibilities for love. We kindle this flame as a symbol of the light within every human heart. May our individual sparks meet and merge bringing both love and goodwill into the world. And in the spirit of that goodwill I invite you to turn to your neighbor and exchange with them a warm greeting. Please be seated. And if we have some children that would like to come forward for the message for all ages, we'd love to see you up front. And I have something wrapped up that's kind of interesting to see but you got to be up front to see it. Yeah, I know, that's probably true. Everybody's out here having brunch, right? I'm going to have brunch with my mother a little later. So this is a story. It's kind of a Mother's Day story and it comes from the Native American tradition from the Iroquois Indian tribe and it has to do with a little boy and with some bears and so I brought my bears. That's a little bear family. There's mama bear and two baby bears and this actually is a little sculpture that's made out of mikeshius clay which comes from northern New Mexico and it was made by the Taos Indians in New Mexico. Yeah, so these are my little friends here. So once there was a small boy who lived in an Indian village but unfortunately this little boy's parents had both died but it was the custom in this particular tribe that when someone's parents had died then the boy would be sent to live with a relative and in this case with this boy's uncle. Now this uncle was a great warrior and a very famous hunter, a really good hunter but he really didn't want to have to take care of a little boy and so he wasn't very nice to his nephew. He would dress him in rags and he would feed him only scraps from his own table and then one day he said, I just don't think I'm up to this. I'm going to get rid of my nephew. Pretty bad thought, huh? And so the next morning he told his nephew that the two of them were going to go hunting together and that the little boy was going to need to play the role of his dog. He didn't have a dog so the little boy was going to be his dog and so they walked for a long time until they came to this big cave and the uncle said, there are animals inside that cave. You're my dog so you go in there and you chase the animals out so I can hunt them. And so the little boy did as he was told. He went into the cave but there weren't any animals in there and then suddenly everything got completely dark because his uncle had pushed a big stone up against the entrance to the cave and trapped the little boy there. The little boy knew that he was not going to be able to get out that his uncle was going to leave him there. So tears came to his eyes. He started to cry but then that he remembered that his mother one time had taught him a song. A song that he was to sing to himself any time that he felt afraid or lonely and needed to have a friend. And so he began to sing his song. Way on the way, on the way, on the way, on the hey way, hey, yo, yo, hey, yeah, yo, hey. And he sang the song over and over again but then he stopped because he thought that he could hear from outside of the cave someone singing back to him. Way on the way, on the way, oh. And so the little boy started singing again. Way on the way, on the way, on the hey way, oh, yo, hey, yo, hey. And then the big rock was rolled away from the front of the cave. The little boy walked out and his eyes had to get adjusted to the bright sunlight but as soon as he was able to see he noticed that all around him were all these animals. And there were foxes and there were raccoons and there were deer and there were eagles and there were bears and they were all looking right at him and he didn't know what they were about to do. But just then, old grandmother Woodchuck waddles up to him and pokes him in the leg and says, grandson, we heard your song. Do you need a friend? Oh, yes, I do. Well, I really, really need a friend and he explained what had happened to him and grandmother Woodchuck looked at him with pity and said, wow. We can be your family. We can be your friends. You just look around and you pick whoever you want out of all these animals and we'll adopt you. And so one by one all the animals came up to the little boy and explained to him how they lived and the mole came up and said, I burrow in the ground and I eat all these good juicy worms. And the beaver came up and said, we swim under the water and we have a lodge that's made out of sticks and mud and we eat the bark from those limbs. And the little boy listened to every animal as it came up and said to himself, I couldn't live like any of these animals. I don't know what I'm going to do until old mother bear came up and she said, my boy, we take our time as we walk through the woods and we eat all these good berries and honey and we sleep in a nice warm cave and my cubs will play with you as much as you would like any time you want to. And so it was that the boy went to live with the bears and the four of them got along just wonderfully well and the boy got fat and happy living with those bears and after a while he began to look more and more like a bear himself because every time one of those cubs would scratch him when they were playing all this black hair would grow up where he'd been scratched and so pretty soon he was just covered with all of this black hair just like the bears themselves. And so for two seasons they lived this way but then one day all four of them were walking through the woods and mother bear said, shh, what's that way here? That's a two legs and the two legs is following us. That's our enemy. We've got to run. And so the young boy and the bears began to run through the forest clearing and ran through a swamp but two legs was strong and he was fast and he kept pursuing them. Finally they got to another clearing and this big tree had fallen down and it was a hollow log and they all went into that log to hide from two legs. The little boy could hear footsteps outside and then everything was quiet. He must have gone away. He said to himself but then he started to smell smoke coming through the log because two legs had built a fire on one end of the log to force them out back into the clearing. Just then the boy remembered hey, I'm a human being. I'm a two legs too. And so he yelled out, don't hurt my family. Smoke stopped coming into the log and the boy crawled out and who was standing there? His uncle. His uncle, the two legs had been pursuing them and he stared at the boy and the boy stared at him and he reached out the uncle reached out to the boy and as soon as he touched him all that black hair just fell right off. My nephew, he said is that really you? Yes it is said little boy you're my uncle right? Well how can that be said the great warrior I left you behind in the cave and then I realized I had done a very very bad thing. So I went back the stone had been rolled away and you were gone and all these animal tracks were there I thought that they had eaten you. No said the boy the bears adopted me they're my family now and you must treat them well. You speak well said the uncle I'm so glad that I have found you call the rest of your family out and I will treat them as friends as well. And so from then on the nephew and the hunter were basically family again. And the bears well they also became part of their family and ever since then this story has been told to remind parents that they need to love their children as much as the bears love theirs. So that's our story for today and we're going to ask you to stay in the auditorium go back to your seats because we're going to have a special little ceremony for some of our newest members here and then after that we'll continue out to your classes. Thank you so much for listening. And so as part of our services this weekend we do recognize several individuals who have formally and officially joined First Unitarian Society since January. Overall 24 individuals have taken that step and there are a few in attendance at this hour. Becoming a member of a congregation like this one is on the one hand a fairly straightforward proposition. One attends a series of representation classes signifies their intention, professes agreement with our UU principals and our bond of union and then enters his or her name in the membership registry. And so in terms of actual preliminaries and mechanics that's about all there is to it. But then we would need to ask why would someone choose to do this? Well we join a faith community in the first place because we believe that the promotion of liberal religious values will help to make a difference in the world. That a strong Unitarian Universalist movement will help to make our community and the planet at large a more peaceful and enlightened place. And we make this commitment because we believe in the transformative power of our UU tradition. We join because we want to be part of an enterprise that can elevate humankind ethically and at a personal level fulfill us spiritually. And also because we hunger to be in relationship with people who like us regard religion as an open ended ongoing quest for deeper meaning, more honest and authentic religious connection. But this is not a casual commitment that we ask people to make. And that is why we take the time today to recognize and to celebrate those who have accepted these solemn responsibilities and this commission for themselves. And now Lyns Gobi will read the names that we hear this morning. When I call your name, if you would please join me up front here and bring your little slip of paper that shows you what to say. The first new member is Liz Hatchin, Jeremy Janicki, Mercedes Kraus Marcos, Mel Meder, Christie Minahan, Melissa Moss, Chip Quadi, and if there's anyone else here who's a new member that I did not call you would like to join us. Please feel free to come up. New members, do you accept the responsibilities and freedoms associated with membership in a Unitarian Universalist congregation? Do you pledge to support this religious community with your words, your time and your substance? Are you willing to join the members of the First Unitarian Society in a common quest for religious and spiritual understanding and for the common purpose of living reverent and compassionate lives? Do you accept these people into this community as companions in the spiritual journey? Do you pledge to rejoice with them in times of happiness and to grieve with them tomorrow and to share with them all the blessings of our free faith? We do. We can all say in union, in unison, the continuing bound of union. We, the members of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, desiring a religious organization in the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth which shall make the integrity of life its first aim and leave thought free. Associate ourselves together and accept to our membership those of whatever theological opinion who wish to unite with us in the promotion of truth, righteousness, reverence and charity among all. In that rabbit you will extend the right hand of fellowship to our new members a sign of full inclusion in our religious tradition and in our spiritual community. We also wish to bestow flowers upon each one of our folks. And let's give our new members a big hand. And as they return to their seats and as our children leave for their classes let's sing together our next hymn. Please be seated. The late Charlotte Joko Beck was the leader of the San Diego Zen Buddhist community for many years and this is an excerpt from her book entitled We tend to pick our friends and lovers in much the same way as we turn on the TV. For instance we meet a nice girl and say hmm she looks like a Channel 4 I'm always calm and comfortable with Channel 4 I know what to expect on Channel 4 so we get together and for a while everything is just hunky-dory. Lot of comfort lot of agreement seems like a great relationship but lo and behold what happens after a while somehow Channel 4 gets switched over to Channel 63 which features a lot of irritation a lot of anger sometimes it's Channel 49 all dreams and fantasies and what am I doing during all of this well see I was pretending to just be a Channel 4 kind of person but no it seems like I also spend a lot of time on Channel 33 childhood cartoons mostly about my dream prince and princess and then I have all these other channels like 19 gloom depression with withdrawal and sometimes when I'm on that channel and I'm into gloom she's into the fantasy and the light that doesn't fit very well and then sometimes all the channels seem to be playing at once we have upset a lot of noise and one or both parties fights or withdraws what to do we are now in our usual mess our usual scenario and we have to try to fix it don't we somehow everything was fine at one time so obviously what we've got to do is to make both parties get back on Channel 4 and so I will say to her you should be like this that's the person I fell in love with and so for a while both parties make an effort because there's this artificial piece on Channel 4 and also a good bit of boredom but it's interesting that the question nobody ever asks about these channels is who turned them on what's the source of all this activity in a way there's nothing wrong with the channels but we never ask who turned the set on what's the source of this and that is the key question that we need to ask and if we don't ask this question and the suffering gets bad enough sometimes we're just going to have to leave the relationship entirely and find a new Channel 4 and this scenario is true not just for our intimate relationships but at the office when we're on vacation just about anywhere because this is what we as human beings do sometimes we may realize that after living with someone for a long long time we've never really met him never really known him and I did this I did this for 15 years because some people live a whole lifetime together and they never meet their channels meet once in a while but as two people they never really meet for anthems for the entire year this will be their last performance until September so we are very very grateful for all other efforts and all the rehearsals among the many unusual case studies described by the late neurologist Oliver Sacks one of them focused on a man's slow recovery from a brain tumor that seemingly had erased his memory and rendered him largely unresponsive to the people and the stimuli around him the last hippie was the name that Sacks gave to this particular case and it was subsequently made into a feature film and titled The Music Never Stopped this film played for a brief time at Sundance Cinemas and my wife Trina and I showed it here at FUS as part of one of our film series but being a low budget independent production with no big name actors the music never stopped didn't garner a lot of attention after its release but it is a wonderful story about reconciliation and about healing Gabriel is the only child of Henry and Helen Sawyer and in his pre adolescent years gave bonds with his father through music the music of Sinatra, Bing Crosby the big bands however during his teenage years in the late 1960s gave turns to rock music and together with some of his friends starts a rock band his musical taste shift and his political views they also start to diverge sharply from those of his conventional and conservative father and ultimately the two have a very serious falling out over the Vietnam conflict and amidst his mother's tears and his father's anger gave storms out of the house vowing that he will never never come back and he never does years pass without reconciliation whatsoever but then one day the Sawyer's receive a call Gabriel now homeless has turned up and he must undergo delicate brain surgery to remove this massive tumor the family has been physically reunited but in the weeks that follow Gabe's affect remains completely vacant he speaks only in monosyllables and when normal rehabilitated practices prove unsuccessful there's this young female psychologist who urges the family and Gabe's treatment team urges them to try using music as a stimulant having exhausted other options the team begins to expose Gabriel to a variety of different musical styles including those old songs that he and his father had enjoyed during Gabe's childhood but Gabe remains indifferent to this as well music therapy seems like a dead end but then quite by accident Gabe hears this snatch from a song by the Beatles and voila he becomes animated chattering excitedly about the song and about his love for the Beatles and so then over time and in fifths and starts Gabe learns to communicate again he struggles to retain memories of his childhood and his youth because his short term recall has been permanently impaired but he does have a new lease on life now as Gabe copes with this medical condition his father Henry he's fighting his own demons Henry has never been able to accept Gabe's rejection of his musical tastes and of his political views and in a real sense Henry is still very angry and so even as Gabe begins to respond to this rock music Henry vigorously opposes the protocol and he only relents when his wife Helen delivers an ultimatum grudgingly Henry begins listening to the music that his son loves and then playing the same music in the rehab facility where Gabe is now living they listen to the music together and for the first time in their adult lives they begin tentatively to discuss the past the harmonious early years and then the contentious later ones that split the family apart and listening to his son really listening for the first time Henry begins to gain insight into his thinking his musical ethos appreciation follows understanding and in the music's final scenes father and son both dressed in tie-dyed T-shirts attend a raucous grateful dead concert both of them responding enthusiastically to the beat of the music stop look listen this in a nutshell is the process many of us have to go through in order to get the most out of our relationships first and as a result to live self-awareness now the sequence in which these three actions occur may shift and in this case the case of Gabe and his family it would be stop listen look when we are stuck in old self-righteous patterns of thinking and judging nothing positive nothing transformative can happen until until we are brought up short we have to stop even after his prodigal son had been returned to him gravely injured Henry Sawyer keeps traveling in that same well-worn groove he knows what real music sounds like and either Gabe has to come to his senses or he's just going to have to remain in that semi-comatose condition so Henry angrily dismisses the work of the psychologist who has found this musical key that unlocks his son's brain now until this point Helen Gabe's mother she's remained pretty much in the background deferential and passive in the face of her husband's militant resolve but Helen desperately wants her son back and she realizes that this unusual approach to therapy may represent their last hope and so Helen plays her trump card Henry I will leave you if you don't change your attitude and give this a chance to work her husband is stunned and perhaps for the first time in their life together Henry's wife has challenged him and he stops we can't really look and listen properly with depth and sensitivity unless we first bring ourselves to a halt this is where the practice of meditation can make a real difference in lives where we feel like we're always on the go we're always rushing around because meditation is first and foremost it's about stopping it's about putting the brakes on in order for us to be present for and fully aware of what the external environment and our own inner voices are trying to tell us and this is by no means an easy task caught up as most of us are in our personal agendas in our busy schedules but it's ever so important that we make the attempt the Canadian physician an expert on child parent dynamics, Gabor Maté draws a crucial distinction between the phenomena of attachment and attunement attachment and attunement most parents and children he says quite naturally form an attachment to one another but because they have trouble stopping what they are doing and giving their full and undivided attention to the relationship they fail to become attuned they're not on the same wavelength and so to understand where another person is coming from we have to learn to stop parenting, Gabor says is not about technique parenting is about the relationship you can read all the latest books but if your relationship with your child is not well established because you're too stressed, you're too busy you're too involved with your career even the best techniques are not going to work and to be honest full disclosure this was for me a really big issue in the early years of my ministry while I was serving a church in upstate New York I would be working away in my office deep in concentration and there would be a knock at the door I knew better than to tell the party outside to go away after all a minister is supposed to be accessible to his congregants but it bugged me visitors broke my train of thought and although I never said get lost that message undoubtedly was communicated through my body language and through my tone of voice as Anne Lamott once put it the devil can't get you to sin he'll keep you busy but eventually and with the help of some candid critical feedback and a meditation practice I was able slowly to change my expectations and my demeanor and I did I did actually acquire the ability to be pulled off task and then to come back to it even after a lengthy interruption we can learn to stop so let's talk about listening good listening is an art but what passes for conversation many times in our daily lives would better be described as intersecting monologues I take my turn you take your turn but the threads of our conversation are never woven together because each party is more interested in what he has to say according to Kay Lindahl careful listening is the true hallmark of hospitality when a person knows that they have our full undivided attention they feel cared for they feel that their personhood has been honored none of us listen enough do we dear Father Joe an English benediction and spiritual counselor once said none of us really listen enough do we we only listen to a fraction of what people say but it's a wonderfully useful thing to do he continues you almost always hear something that you didn't expect moreover Father Joe continues we must listen because so often we are wrong in our certainties that is certainly what Henry Sawyer once he had been forced to stop discovered when he had no choice to engage with his son Henry did begin listening more closely to those rock songs which for so many years he had smugly dismissed as incoherent noise then as he and Gabe began listening to those same songs together the father began to find his son's enthusiasm infectious and he got curious Gabe what is that song about I don't get it and Gabe would patiently explain what the composer's message was and Henry would struggle to understand but then as he gained insight from those conversations he was able to begin to step into ever so gingerly his son's world and then to identify the true source of their estrangement now Henry had an advantage in all of this that many of us probably do not because following many years of faithful service to the same firm he was laid off he was forced to take early retirement but after the initial shock and the anger the sense of betrayal wore off this turned out to be for Henry a very fortunate fall because he had time now to learn this new musical language by which he could reconnect with his son this is not a luxury that many of us have in our families and yet there are latent opportunities in every household for developing greater attunement yes many of us are pressed for time many of us don't feel that we can carve out more time in our busy days but as Bill Doherty suggests we can use the time that's already available for family activities more effectively hypothetically everyone has to stop what they're doing to eat so make sure that at the family meal everything else stops no texting, no scanning social media no TV all families establish these patterns of behavior, rituals that they follow not so much out of intention but more or less you just kind of fall into those it's more by accident and so those patterns can be changed if the stakes are high enough it's important enough a greater degree of mutual understanding and appreciation, greater attunement achieved through this kind of casual but connective banter between family members that would seem to be ample reason for making the effort stop listen look listening pays the way to looking and here I mean looking squarely at one's self in the reading that I offered earlier from Charlotte Jocobat she talked about all those different channels all those various story lines that our minds create and then those story lines go on to color our perceptions of others without a greater degree of self awareness we imagine that the source of our disc content, the source of our pleasure or our pain that it all has to do with the other what they are doing, not with the frequency that we happen to be on at the time and so Jocobat suggests that in order to really know another person we have to get a better handle on our channel guide some people live their entire lives and never meet she says their channels meet once in a while but they never do and this is precisely what occurred with Henry and Gabe the father was held captive by what the Buddhists call fixed views a couple of comfortable channels continually supported and reinforced Henry's world view and it was very discomfiting for him to consider or to be exposed to the channels that his son was on and so initially it was downright painful for Henry to listen to his son and to give his experiences serious consideration wrong channel Gabe and he heard a lot of things that were painful to him a lot of things that caused him to feel regret but it was important enough that he persevered he kept on listening listening without exercising judgment and ultimately he was able to turn back to himself, recognize his own prejudice, see himself in a new light not as the villain of the peace but as the product of a culture that never has required men to listen to their children Henry acquired insight into the underlying sources of his intolerance and as a result he began to see new possibilities for himself I don't have to be so self-protective my thinking and my imagination can expand beyond these preset channels that I have restricted myself to for decades and so it was without the least degree of self-consciousness Henry, accompanies Gabe to a concert that the father knows will bring his son happy memories for the rest of his life as we endeavor to practice with relationships, Charlotte Jokobek says we begin to see that they are our best way to grow in them we can see what our mind, our body, our senses and our thoughts really are why our relationships such excellent practice because, aside from our formal sitting meditation there is no way that is superior to relationships to help us see where we are stuck and what we are holding on to as long as our buttons are being pushed we have an excellent chance to learn and to grow so our relationships are a great gift not because they will make us happy, she says often they will not but because any intimate relationship if we view it as practice is the clearest mirror we can find the music never stops ends with Gabe and his mother walking out of a cemetery following Henry's funeral at his burial Henry had already suffered one severe heart attack and not long after he and his son attended that Grateful Dead performance Henry was felled by a second coronary and before lowering the casket a boombox is brought out it's turned on and a final musical salute to the deceased is played it's not Sinatra Touch of Grey by the Grateful Dead I know the rent is in arrears the dog has not been fed for years it's even worse than it appears but it's all right I will get by I will get by I will get by I will survive because of what they learned by stopping, listening, and looking we know that Gabriel and his widowed mother will also get by they will survive and our offering this morning will be distributed in part to the Madison Dental Initiative and you can read about the good work that they are doing with people in our community please be generous we gather each week as a community of memory and of hope and to this time and place we bring our whole and broken selves carrying with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past and seeking here a place where they might be celebrated received and shared there were a couple of entries in the presentation book for Erin that she finds success and respect at her new job and for Stephanie as she and her husband heal from kidney transplant surgery and navigate the challenges of receiving disability from the Veterans Administration and then please keep Jan more in your thoughts and prayers during his time of recovery in addition of those three just mentioned knowledge any other unexpressed joys and sorrows that remain among us and as a community we hold those with equal concern in our hearts let us sit silently for just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and hope and so by virtue of our brief time together today may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded please rise once more in body and spirit as we sing together our closing hymn number 307 is seated for the benediction and the postlude earlier in the service I showed the children a bear that was fashioned by the Taos Pueblo people and so we end with these words from the Pueblo Indian tradition of New Mexico hold on to what is good even if it's a handful of earth hold on to what you believe even if it's a tree that stands by itself hold on to what you must do even if it's a long way from here hold on to life even when it's easier letting go hold on to the hand of your neighbor even when we are apart blessed be and amen