 I'm going to show you a little bit of what I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you a little bit of what I'm going to show you. Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. Let's get musically present with each other by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. Happy New Year and welcome to the first Sunday service of the New Year 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. Speaking of things that are different in this world, I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud, wildly entertaining and adorable 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 it's a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special congregation and our buildings, please join us for the fellowship hour right after the service. Speaking of the service, this will be a great time so that we can hear the service uninterrupted. If you would silence those pesky electronic devices that you just will not need for the next hour. And while you're taking care of that important task, let me remind you that if you're accompanied this morning by a youngster and you think that young person would rather experience the service from a more private space, we have a couple options for you. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium. And we have some comfortable seating right outside the doorway in the commons from which you can see and hear the service. And as you know, one of the reasons we can hear and see the service is that it's brought to us by a wonderful team of volunteers whose names I'm going to read right now so that you can thank Mark Schultz for handling the sound system and Smiley for being our lay minister. Penny Morey for greeting you this morning as you walked in the doorway. And Smiley, Doug Hill, Sam Bates and Elizabeth Barrett for serving as our ushers today. And let's also thank Richard DeVita and Gene Hills for providing the much appreciated hospitality and coffee a little bit later on today. You'll be happy to know that there are no announcements today. So that means you get to sit back or lean forward to enjoy the service and help bring in the new year in style. And you'll enjoy the service. I was here for the nine o'clock and I know that today's service will touch your heart, stir your spirits and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. We give thanks for the blessing of winter, season to cherish the heart, to make warmth and quiet for the heart, to make soups and broths for the heart, to cook for the heart, to read for the heart, to curl up softly and nestle with the heart, to sleep deeply and gently at one with the heart, to dream with the heart, to spend time with the heart, a long, long time of peace with the heart. We give thanks for the blessing of winter, a season to cherish the heart. I invite you to rise in body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And please join me in repeating the words of affirmation printed in this morning's program. Each morning we hold out our chalice of being to be filled with the graces of life which abound, air to breathe, food to eat, companions to love, beauty to behold, art to cherish, causes to serve. They come in ritual procession, these gifts of life. Whether we deserve them or not, we cannot say. They are poured out. Ours is the task of holding steady the chalice of being. And now on this less than inclement January morning, please turn in exchange a warm greeting with your neighbor. Please be seated. And I would now invite any children in our midst to come forward for the message for all ages. Either children or people who are feeling particularly childlike this morning. Hello, good morning. Good morning. You have the key to the kingdom? So once high up in the mountains there was an old hermit who lived in a rocky cave. And this hermit's cave was colored by the end of a rainbow. And every day the hermit would sit on a rock and he would watch the colors play over the valley and disappear into another land. Now one day a young man appeared on a silver horse and he stopped beside the old hermit and said, old man, I'm looking for the end of the rainbow. And the hermit smiled at him and said, where the colors touch my cave, that's the end of the rainbow. Well the young rider was shocked looking at the hermit's barren home, didn't have hardly anything in it. He said, but I live at the other end of the rainbow and at the other end of the rainbow there is this mansion full of treasures. What treasure lies at this end of the rainbow? Peace and happiness said the old hermit. And the young rider was profoundly disappointed by that answer. Finding no treasure as he had expected he followed the rainbow back across the valley to his own home. Well over the years that young rider became a very successful and rich merchant, a storekeeper. And now he had enough money to buy and to live in the rainbow mansion and he filled it with even more treasures. He now had a lot of money and a lot of possessions. He wasn't happy. And one day he was sitting in his big office and he remembered the hermit years ago and what he had said. Well perhaps he can bring me peace and happiness which I long for so much, the young man said to himself. Well the hermit did not want to leave his cave but when the merchant asked him to come, the hermit put on his best rags and he walked to the other end of the rainbow. And the merchant was really pleased to have the old man here in the comfort of his big mansion and he gave him the best room in the house with a bed of sheets that were made out of silk. But the old man laid down on the bed. He wasn't comfortable lying on these wonderful soft silk sheets and so every night that he stayed there he would slip away into the garden and sleep between the big roots of a friendly tree. And the merchant also offered his guest the richest foods that he had to eat and fine wines to drink. But the old man, he didn't like these either. So instead he would go out and he would pick fruits and vegetables from the garden and he would drink from this little stream of clear cold running water. And the merchants, he invited all of these great thinkers and important teachers to the rainbow mansion to hold conversations about important things with the old hermit. But the old hermit wasn't interested. He was a simple man and he crept away to talk to the creatures who visited the gardens. And the great thinkers and these important teachers were so busy trying to impress each other they didn't even realize that the hermit was gone. One day the merchant went for a walk in the garden and he found the hermit sitting under a gentle tree talking to the animals. Old hermit, the man asked. Why do you not sleep in the beautiful room that I've given you? The bed is so soft and the sheets are so cool. And the hermit replied, all my life I've slept out here in the arms of nature. I do not fear the darkness, the nighttime whispers help me to sleep better. The merchant didn't understand any of this. Why don't you eat all the excellent food and the drink that I've offered you? The hermit smiled and said, by eating very little of simple foods I can taste the goodness that grows from the earth. And the clear spring water doesn't make me feel all giddy in the head so that I say things that I really shouldn't. The merchant was puzzled by these answers and he asked again, well why are you talking to all these simple creatures ignoring the wise men that I have brought to have conversation with you? And the hermit looked at the animals that were gathered around and said all the creatures of the world have something important to say. They're not fools just because they live so simply. After this last answer the merchant went back to his office. I asked that hermit to come here to bring me peace and happiness and he just tells me all these things that I really don't understand. So after a while he called the hermit into his office and he said, hermit, let me tell you, I want you to bring me peace. Can you bring me peace? No, said the hermit, I can't bring you peace. Can you make me happy? No, I cannot make you happy, the hermit said. Why not? said the merchant with a sad expression on his face. And the hermit looked very closely at the merchant and said, peace can't come from me. Peace has to come from within you because peace is like a seed and you cannot force it to grow into something that you want it to be. You just have to give it love and freedom so that it can grow outward into something beautiful and pure and only then when that seed has matured will you find true happiness. The merchant was silent after he heard these words and then he asked, well, how do I start? How do I go about this? The old man smiled and said, well, the first thing you can do is let me go back to the cave where I belong. And so the hermit was allowed to go back to his cave and so he would sit beneath the falling colors of the rainbow and with a satisfied smile he would look across that broad valley to the other end of the rainbow and he knew that the seeds of peace had also begun to grow there. So that's our story about the seeds of peace and perhaps you will learn a little more about happiness and peace in your classes this semester. We're going to sing you out to those classes with our next hymn, number 164. Thank you for listening. Please be seated. This time I would invite you into a period of meditation and inner communion. For many of us, life may feel like a roller coaster ride, rising and falling, circuitous, but with enough plateaus to provide temporary respite to our way to the finish line. And there are times perhaps when we might prefer a long, quiet highway to all the shaking and the swaying, the slow climbs and the sudden descents of this carnival attraction. But then we'd probably end up profoundly dissatisfied. Relieved of its contrasts, life loses much of its savor. If our spirits have not been depressed by grief, they will probably never be stirred by compassion. If our teeth have never chattered with cold, the touch of a warm southerly breeze would not delight the skin. Without the trepidation that accompanies a moonless night, sunlight spilling over the eastern horizon would not uplift our spirits. Is it not naive to insist that paradise is that place of perennial peace, perfect order, undiluted comfort, a place where no one calculates wind chills or measures the heat index, where compassion is superfluous because everyone is sufficient unto him or herself? But is it this innocent yearning for a life free of dissonance that keeps us frustrated with the human condition, impatient with winter, allergic to discomfort? So instead, let us revel in the energies issuing from our glorious earth and with open hearts receive all that life hands us for the blessing that it is. May this day be for us heaven enough, or it may be the only heaven we will ever know. Let's continue on in a moment or two of silent reflection. Blessed be God, man. The following selection was composed by Steve Gardner, a resident of Billings, Montana, a personal reflection. As a beginning author, he writes, hoping to gain advice and inspiration, I attended a state writer's convention. The week was capped off with a closing banquet at which awards were given out for fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and several other categories. And then came the highest honor, the Hang Fire Award. The master of ceremonies read the winner's name and a short, energetic woman dashed to the front in victory while everyone gave her a standing ovation. Now the Hang Fire Award, the emcee explained for the sake of newcomers like me, that award is given every year to the writer who has received the most rejection slips. Seriously? I couldn't believe that this woman was so excited to be the most rejected writer in the state of Montana. Well, a friend saw my confusion and said, you know, it's really a recognition of her persistence. If she has the most rejection slips, she probably sent out the most pieces of her writing. Well, I got it. But I still felt uncomfortable that they had singled this woman out for her failures. Well, over the year that followed, I had a few articles of my own published in the local newspaper and in regional magazines. And so I went to the writer's conference again the next spring and I actually won an award for photojournalism, after which I continued working on my writing, increasing my productivity and reaching out to larger markets. And as my correspondence with various editors increased, I created two file folders, one for my acceptance letters and one for my rejections. And of course, the second folder grew much faster than the first. By the time I attended the Spring Writers Conference again, I had received 75 rejection letters, enough to make many a writer reconsider his or her passion. And yet I had also been published in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, other magazines and newspapers. And the joy of occasional publication somehow balanced the sting of reject. That year, I won the Hang Fire Award. I was the most rejected writer in the state, and now I finally understood. The second selection is from the Dalai Lama. A couple of words of introduction. An internal source of happiness closely linked to an inner feeling of contentment belongs to this sense of self-worth that we have. And in describing the most reliable basis for developing that sense of self-worth and with it happiness, the Dalai Lama offered this explanation. Now suppose he said, I had no depth of human feeling, that I had no capacity for easily creating good friends. Well, without that, when I lost my country, becoming a refugee would have been very difficult for me. There was a certain degree of respect that was given to the Dalai Lama in Tibet, and people related to me accordingly, regardless of whether they had any affection for me or not. But if you see yourself first and foremost as a human being within a human community, as I did, then you share a bond that is strong enough to give rise to a continued sense of worth and dignity. And that bond can be for you a source of consolation that you might lose everything as I did. Generally speaking, the Dalai Lama says you have two different kinds of individuals. On the one hand, you have a wealthy, successful person surrounded by friends and relatives and so forth, but if that person's primary source of dignity and self-worth is only material, then so long as his fortune remains, then maybe he can maintain a sense of security and happiness. If that fortune should wane, there is no other refuge for them. On the other hand, you can have a person enjoying comparable success and status, but at the same time, that person is warm, affectionate, and has a feeling of genuine compassion. And with such a person, there is far less chance of becoming depressed if the fortune disappears. So here you can see the very practical value of human warmth and affection in developing and maintaining that important sense of our own self-worth. Michael Scherer's theme for the week was, I knew immediately one of the songs that I needed to sing. Not unlike the story for all ages. Stumbling on the old wise one in the woods. This is a song that invites us to consider not only what our goals are, what our aims are, but what our motivation is. Why does we want a particular thing? As I was walking down the old I came upon a place where that one road turned to two. It seemed as though I did the best I could to not have any gone wise man on. He turned his evil mind in one sight. And for the question I said, surely you must know where the goal that I now travel will take me away. He said to me, yes, babe, I'm sure if I won't smile to wait for the next time I The question was not clear to hear. I turned around to ask him, found he was no longer there. I thought, baby, as I got down on my knees. Soon the fire burned my hands and the wind blown through the trees. And he said to me, yes, babe, for the one next to mine. But I come back to the path that's for me, it's the only way. No time to see the answers that I need, the highs and lows I find. He said to me, for the one next to mine. For the one next to mine. Compliment to the theme and to the message this morning. So recently I came across an essay on Alexander the Great, an essay that was written by the imminent American man of letters, George Steiner, back in 1991. And Steiner's review of the 4th century BC boy conqueror's riotous life, that review captured my attention because it deviated in several notable respects from the more admiring accounts that we encounter in today's popular media. Now George Steiner, amply supported by contemporary scholarship, Steiner says that the closest parallel to Alexander that we find in western history is none other than Adolf Hitler. Now perhaps temporal distance and historical myopia have served to moderate this ancient potentate's image, but apart from the raw, unrestrained power that he wielded, there wasn't really very much to admire about Alexander. Now as a military commander, the Macedonian had no peer. He was crowned king as a teenager, and by the time of his death at 32 Alexander had conquered territory stretching from the Nile to the Indus River from the Balkans to the Persian Gulf. But as George Steiner points out, success, military success, was achieved by means of an utter ruthlessness and an overweening ambition that undoubtedly hastened Alexander's demise. He may well have been poisoned in the end by members of his own entourage. Now as a youngster, Alexander studied with Aristotle, one of the ancient Greek worlds wisest and most ethically astute men. But this didn't apparently make much difference in the path that he followed. With success on the field of battle, his ambitions soared ever higher. His armies spent years on the march, and Alexander ignored repeated pleas by his weary battle fatigue commanders to pull back to be satisfied with their already immense gains. He purged his leadership court, eliminating any officer who questioned his decisions. Steiner observes that hysteria and morbid distrust of all who drew near him came to possess the Macedonian's fevered mind. And so few lamented his passing. And for several centuries after his death, Alexander was regarded as a tyrannous aggressor, a foreign autocrat who imposed his will by violence alone. Alexander the Great. He was a larger-than-life figure, but his early death should not be viewed as tragic. Success affected him like a powerful habit-forming drug on which he ultimately overdosed. Perhaps this ancient story can serve in our own time as something of a cautionary tale, for although there has been no one remotely like Alexander since Adolf Hitler, his malady is still a familiar one. A steady stream of revelations about sexual misconduct by men in high places has been pouring out in recent months. Women in all walks of life have complained about the liberties such men have been taking with other people's bodies. Some of these miscreants, like that ancient monarch, seem to have regarded their predatory practices as some kind of personal prerogative, the status perk that they were meant to enjoy. As Donald Trump summed it up so succinctly back in 2005, when you are a star, they let you do it. What's truly alarming about these reports is their ubiquity. As the emergent hashtag me too movement has made clear, this sort of abuse and exploitation has been practiced by office holders in both political parties by a wide assortment of professionals by men of various races and religions and ethnicities. And if nothing else, this spectacle would seem to confirm Lord Acton's famous dictum that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And to the extent that success in business, politics, sports, entertainment, even journalism does give an individual increased leverage over others the temptation to exercise that heady power inappropriately grows accordingly. Now sexual misconduct aside, power can also foster that dangerous belief that one need not answer for their behavior. That power inoculates a person from accountability. U.S. presidents are particularly prone to this illusion sometimes letting power go to their heads and they have to be brought up short witness the inglorious endings of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon's administrations. The power of the office can be seductive as George W. Bush put it early in his administration. So why do you explain why I say things? That's the interesting thing about being president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something but I don't feel like I owe anyone an explanation. So why do so many powerful people act as if their moral compass had developed a malfunction? Well, some of them may indeed be sociopaths who have spent their lives striving for power and influence as ends in themselves overtly charming oftentimes cleverly manipulative as they climb the ladder of success once they have arrived at the top rung the masks come off and their hidden authoritarian impulses come into full view. Now evidence suggests that sociopaths are born not made. That they come into this world lacking that crucial part of the brain that triggers an empathetic response and without the ability to experience and to enjoy fellow feeling sociopaths tend to objectify those with whom they interact using those people as pawns to secure their own advantage. Now this is not invariably the case of course. If a person has been exposed to and internalized the appropriate social and ethical norms those sociopathic tendencies can be mitigated. But sociopaths are predisposed to use power and often to use it inappropriately. But there's other evidence that suggests that power itself can have a transformative effect that is very similar to sociopathology. Several decades of research by Datcher Keltner of the University of California at Berkeley suggest that when people acquire power something does shift in their mental makeup. They act he says as if they had suffered traumatic brain and brain injury. When people are successful in gaining power they may, Keltner says, become impulsive more less risk aware and like sociopaths less adept at seeing things from another person's point of view. In related research Jonathan Davidson has identified what he calls a hubris syndrome in persons who have successfully acquired and held on to power for an extended period of time. Left unchallenged or unchecked such power holders begin to feel genuine contempt for other people. They lose contact with reality. They engage in restless, reckless behavior and they become increasingly incompetent. This warping of the personality is then one of the real perils that can attend success particularly if it leads to how. And yet we can point to plenty of highly successful people who have been able to keep a level head and to continue leading caring and empathetic lives. So how do they avoid the pitfalls that I've just described? Let's consider Rebecca Solnit. Solnit is a prolific author who is these days much in demand as a social commentator. And Solnit recently penned an article in which she highlighted some of her own personal struggles with success and with growing celebrity. Now at some point as she's climbing the ladder she realizes that she needs to take a step back down and look at herself more candidly and what she saw when she did that was not very pretty. As she was increasingly in demand Solnit noticed that her feelings toward other people had begun to change. And she was experiencing this chronic sense of urgency and so other people were in her way they weren't letting her get done what she needed to get done. She says I began to believe that my needs and my rights mattered more than those of these other people. She was in this kind of self-absorbed state of entitlement and other people were becoming increasingly bothersome. But Solnit recognized that this newfound callousness on her part was violating her professed ideals and the values with which she had been raised. As my own status has risen she writes I have come to realize that the force you need to resist is yourself. It may well be that when a person experiences a great deal of socially sanctioned success when they build on it, when they invest in it they also become less self-aware. They're so preoccupied with the care and the feeding of the public persona that they look increasingly outward rather than inward. And so it did take a concerted mindful effort on Rebekah Solnit's part to correct that imbalance and to bring her ideals and her behaviors back into alignment. Richard Roach who is a Buddhist teacher says you have to begin with the fundamental practice of knowing your own mind. The mind he says can be our most powerful ally if it can be trained to be self-reflective and discriminating. It is our best line of defense against the shadow side of success. Let's consider also Arturo Tuscagnini a celebrated figure whose career is worth contemplating. Tuscagnini was as classical music lovers know one of the early 20th century's premier orchestra conductors. Admiring but equally famous conductors described his work with the baton as incalculable. Despite his singular triumphs Tuscagnini continued to know his own mind. Before World War II he was courted by both Mussolini and Hitler, the powerful leaders of Europe's emerging fascist regimes. Tuscagnini demurred. They offered him honors, generous honorariums, but they failed to win him over. He would not lend his prestige to German and Italian cultural projects. And so his recordings and broadcasts were banned in both of those countries. But Tuscagnini continued to conduct. He was a birthright Roman Catholic but he traveled to Palestine to lend his immense talent to a newly formed orchestra comprised mostly of Jewish refugees from Nazi Europe. Following World War II the philosopher Isaiah Berlin dubbed Tuscagnini the most morally dignified and inspiring hero of our time. Clearly it is possible to enjoy significant success without putting one's personality and core values at risk. Knowing one's mind is absolutely crucial. But here there is another different peril that we need to be concerned about. Yes, Tuscagnini never let his successes interfere with his moral scruples. But he did suffer from expectations that simply had to be left unfulfilled. He never found the ultimate success that he dreamed about and he said, in all of my artistic life I have never had a single moment of complete satisfaction. Another musical legend Franz Liszt had ambitions that were similar to Tuscagnini's. Despite a towering reputation as a performer and a composer Liszt was profoundly disappointed with himself. To tell the truth he told a friend, I sense in myself a terrible lack of talent compared with what I would like to express. The notes that I write he said are pitiful. So this chronic sense of insufficiency this frustration that you cannot be perfect. It's not my intention today to dismiss success out of hand. Success as an artist, a professional, a public servant dismiss all of this as a less than worthy objective in life far from it because I have enjoyed a modicum of success myself. But the challenge is to keep it in perspective which is precisely what the Dalai Lama was urging in that passage I shared earlier in our service. Success in our chosen endeavors and the recognition that comes with it, that's nothing to be sneezed at. It's enjoyable. It's fulfilling. Nevertheless, mental and emotional security and our sense of self-worth are most dependably secured when we forge a common bond with other members of the human family. And that bond the Dalai Lama said can be a source of consolation in the event that you lose everything. But here's the thing. You don't have to lose everything. You don't have to forfeit all the successes you've worked for and accumulated in order to feel disconsolate, in order to feel unfulfilled as Oscar Wilde famously observed in this world there are just two tragedies. One is not getting what you want and the other one is getting it. Now one would think that some people psychologists for instance would be cognizant of the perils that attend success. More aware of this than perhaps the rest of us. These are folks who study the life of the mind who are equipped to help others to understand their own mental processes, their emotional lives, their predilections and this psychologists do very well. But that doesn't mean that they too don't struggle with the emotional complexities of achievement and success. So writing about her father Eric Erickson the developmental psychologist who coined the term identity crisis Sue Erickson Blolan his daughter describes her father's drive for recognition as insatiable, monumental. As Eric Erickson rose to the heights of his profession the house was filled with plaques with honorary degrees and yet his daughter says these failed to secure for my father the sense of accomplishment that he so desperately longed for. Reflecting on her father's experience as well as others who had enjoyed comparable success Blolan who is herself a psychologist says that we need to be more cognizant of the humanity of our heroes. People like Eric Erickson because she says we want to believe that they have arrived at this secure place of self-approval that achieving recognition can set us all free from gnawing feelings of self-doubt and we want to believe that if we ourselves could be sufficiently admired we'd be healed and our self-esteem would be forever secured. So we harbor fantasies about success that according to Susan Erickson Blolan may tempt us to forgo the inner work that someone like Rebecca Solnit undertook and Solnit as you may recall realized that she needed to do some serious mental and emotional housekeeping and that's an exercise that Sue Erickson Blolan also recommends to it she says the real cure for your sense of inadequacy is to expose to others what you are ashamed of and to discover that you will not be cast out for making that known that you will still be a member in good standing of the human community. This might be a lesson that we would all do well to heed in the dawn of this new year but it may be especially relevant to those of us who are preparing for or who have recently entered retirement. At this stage of life success in the commonly accepted sense of that term has to be laid aside and if we haven't already begun the kind of inner work that Blolan and the Dalai Lama recommend it's best that we start doing some of that now. Doesn't mean that success becomes completely irrelevant only that we need to find ways to reconceive it so while resting at last on our professional laurels we can begin cultivating more supportive relationships and pursuing neglected interests and exploring more opportunities to serve and coming to terms with our aging and our mortality considering the legacy that we want to leave on and by so doing we can bring closure to a life that might otherwise leave us feeling unfulfilled and incomplete. You know in the eyes of the world success makes us somebody and hey we can all get off on that and admittedly the kind of success that I'm now recommending in the last chapter of our lives is not going to get us a whole lot of public recognition but that's not so bad because as the spiritual teacher Ramdas tells us you've been somebody for long enough you spent the first half of your life becoming somebody so now you can work on becoming nobody which is really somebody for when you become nobody there is no tension no pretense no trying to be someone or something and now you discover that the natural state of the mind can be confined through unobscured and the natural state of the mind is pure love Blessed be and amen and now it is time for the giving and receiving of the first offering of the new year and you will note that it will be shared with the NAACP of Dane County please be generous and graceful and great this is the manner as they saw in the lights that guided their way that's the longing inside when it's all that of being to the edge of the land afraid and they're going beyond there's a grace and I'm honest and all that awaits we gather each week as a community memory and of hope and to this time and place we bring our whole and sometimes our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared. There are two entries in our Cares of the Congregation book this morning. First some healing thoughts for Skater Nancy Daly who broke both bones in her right arm. We presume as part of a skating accident. So our warm wishes to Nancy. And then for my friend Colin Rome who left this world too soon rest in power roar. He loved dinos or dinosaurs. In addition to those two just mentioned we would also acknowledge any unspoken joys or sorrows that remain among us and as a community of concern and caring we hold these in our hearts as well. 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. I invite you to rise once more in body or in spirit as we sing together our closing hymn 350. Please be seated for the benediction and a postlude to close a poem by David Budbill. Have ambition and ego ruined my life? Where have my easy days gone? If only I had a monk friend to wander off into the mountains to visit. If only I were so idle that I had time to visit him. If only we could while away the day drinking tea playing flutes and talking. If only as the moon rose my friend could point the way home through the mountains with the night sky lantern to light the way. If only I could be happy with only that. Blessed be Adam. Thank you for the gracious welcome today here. I have been blessed many times to share and worship and be secure and it is always always an honor so. In order to sing of me on this one you need to remember two words, going home. Going away tonight from where far from the soul. Sovereign who gave up. Going down the shoulder at the same. Sovereign son.