 I'll just take a few moments to become present and have a moment of... Thank you, Mike. Louder. Louder, okay. Usually I'm told that I'm too loud. Okay, well. Let's have a moment of centering silence. And now let's sing the in-gathering hymn. It's in your program, or you can look it up in the book. We're curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual. As together, we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Rob Savage. I'm president of the Board of Trustees here at First Unitarian Society. And I would like to extend a special welcome to any visitors or guests that we have today. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life's journey, we celebrate your presence. 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 to meet with our staff and lay ministers. You may want to bring your drinks and your questions, and they will be happy to chat with you. You may also look for persons holding a teal stoneware coffee mug. These are First Unitarian Society members knowledgeable about our faith community, and they would love to talk to you. Experienced guides are often available to give building tours after each service. So if you'd like to have that building tour, you can meet over here by the windows, and you'll be led around our historic meeting house and our environmentally wonderful new building. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service. However, because it is difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment, our child haven, which is back here, and our commons are excellent places to retire if the child needs to talk or walk around, you can hear the service just as well out there. And speaking of noisemakers, please remember to turn off your cell phones, beepers, whatever other kind of electronics you've got that might disturb our service. I have a couple of announcements here, one of which I forgot down there on the counter. Pass me that announcement, that would be great. You can see that I'm a professional, and have a great backup staff here. You can join FUS Ministers past and present as Scott Prinster and Kelly Crocker bring you a program on Transylvania, the land beyond the forest. This gorgeous land, bounded by the majestic Carpathian Mountains, is known less for the birth of Unitarian Universalism and more for its association with vampires, mystery and magic. Next Sunday at 2 p.m. you can learn more about our rich history in this amazing place and you can find out more in the red floors. We also have a special announcement this morning from James Morgan and I will let him introduce himself right now. Good morning, my name is James Morgan and I'm a member of the FUS Moses Ministry team. We are fighting mass incarceration in Wisconsin. Every year the Department of Corrections revokes or sends back to prison about 4,000 former prisoners who were released upon condition of following rules of supervision. They are being revoked not for committing a new crime but because they broke one or more of their rules of supervision. Things like using a cell phone or a computer without permission or authorization, missing an appointment or failing an alcohol or drug test. Does breaking some of these rules really mean that the person is now a threat to the safety of the public? Do we really need to lock these people up for years at a cost of $150 million per year? The impact of these decisions in human cost is devastating and I can personally attest to that. Individual lives are destroyed, families are often torn apart and public safety is rarely improved. Our FUS Moses Ministry team invites you to a presentation about the issue of the abuse of revocation in the Wisconsin prison system. One week from today, next Sunday, March 13th. From 10.15 a.m. to 11 a.m. in the landmark auditorium. Good part. Coffee and refreshments will be served. We hope you will join us to learn more about this problem and how we can push for reform. And again, I would like to thank all of you ahead of time who I know are going to attend. It's going to be very informational and it would be an honor to see you there. Thank you. Again, welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. Our opening words come from the American Buddhist teacher in the Shambhala tradition, Pema children. We are tempted to think that the point of life is to pass a test or to overcome a problem. But the truth is that things never really get resolved. They come together, they fall apart. They come together again, they fall apart again. Life is just like that. Healing, the healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen. Room for the grief, room for the relief, room for misery and room for great joy. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And as Rob kindles the flame of our faith, please join me in reading the words of affirmation printed in your program. May God, the mind that sees our faults, the tears that sting our wounds, the laugh that soothes our aches, and the love that redeems us all, be illumined by the light we kindle in this house of inspiration and healing. And in the spirit of that healing, I invite you to turn to your neighbor and exchange with him or her a warm greeting. Hi, Betty. Good morning. Good morning, Rob. Good morning. Good morning. Hi, Nancy. Good to see you. Number 368, and if the men will join their voices in singing the bass part on this hymn. Children who are in our midst that would like to come forward for the message for all ages. Some of you don't have very far to come at all, right? You got some of those electric shoes. Yeah. Those are warm, though. Yeah. So when I first came to Madison in 1988, which was a long time before any of you were around, I thought I'd actually come to Arizona because it was about 100 degrees for a whole week straight and it hadn't rained for a long, long time, so everything was drying up and all the flowers were gone, and it really, really didn't feel very good. So this is actually a story that comes from the Comanche Indian tradition that is kind of similar to that, to what I experienced way back then in 1988. I was in a drought. You're absolutely right. That was the question that I was going to actually ask you. What is a drought? It's when it's really hot and there's no rain falling, right? All right. Well, this is a story about a drought that happened a long time ago and it affected an Indian tribe called the Comanche Indians and they were having a very, very bad time because it hadn't rained for so long and all the crops they had planted had withered and there was no fruit on the trees and so with no grain and no apples or fruit, there wasn't anything to eat, right? And so the people were all beginning to starve and so in despair they began asking the Great Spirit, what's going on here? Can't you help us with this? Can't you help to make it rain? Our land is dying, they said. Our people are all dying. Did we make you angry and is that why it's not raining anymore? Did we do something wrong that you're making us suffer this drought like this? And so the people asked the Great Spirit, please bring an end to this drought and make it rain again before all of your people are dead. And so the people prayed and they performed their rain dance to try to make it rain but the rains just didn't come and both the young and the old were really, really suffering a lot. There was one very small girl in this tribe and she was thirsty and hungry like everybody else but she was still very much alive and this young girl had a very strange name. She was called She Who Sits Alone. She Who Sits Alone because she didn't really like to play very much with the other children in the Comanche Village and in fact she would oftentimes just kind of sit and watch as other people in the tribe were doing things as they were dancing to try to make the rain come and as she watched she had this doll and she would hold that doll very, very close to her chest and this doll was her dearest possession, the thing that she liked the most and she thought of this doll as really being her only friend and she had dressed it in this very soft leather deer skin and she had a rope around its head and feathers sticking up, bright blue feathers from a bird called a Blue Jay and she who sits alone, this little girl, watched as the older people in the tribe called the Elders walked to the top of a nearby mountain to receive wisdom from the Great Spirit, to talk to the Great Spirit and several days and nights passed and they were up on the mountain and when they came back all the people gathered around to hear what the Great Spirit might have told these old men and women and they said, well, for many generations the people of the earth have taken from the earth everything that they needed or anything that they wanted but all this time people have given nothing back to the earth and so now the earth itself is in great pain and that's why it's not raining and so to correct this, to make it right the people, the Comanches, have to make a sacrifice well, how are you going to do that? we need to build a big, big fire and everybody in the tribe must bring to that fire something that they own, a possession that is of the greatest value the thing that they love the most and they must toss that into the fire and then you take the ashes from all of these things and you spread it to the four winds and when that has been done then the Great Spirit will make the rains come again well, the people gave thanks and went back to their tepees to look for the things that they cherished the most that they liked the most and a warrior went back to his tepee and he looked at his bow and his arrow and he thought to himself I can't imagine that the Great Spirit would want my bow and arrow and then there was a woman who went back to her tepee and she had this beautifully woven shawl that she had made and she looked at it and said would the Great Spirit really want my beautiful shawl? and the medicine man went to his tepee and he looked at all the healing herbs that he had collected to make people well and he said I don't think the Great Spirit would want all of my herbs and medicines and so this is the way it went everyone went back to their tepee and no one was willing to give the Great Spirit their greatest treasure but then meanwhile this little girl, she who sits alone looked at her doll and she held it close to her and she whispered to the doll I know what the Great Spirit wants and I know what I must do and so that night when everybody else was asleep she who sits alone snuck out of her tent and her mother and her father were asleep as well and walked to that big fire that the adults had built and she saw that the fire was just about out and she sat down by it and she talked to the Great Spirit she said here, Great Spirit, this is my doll the doll that my mother and my father gave me and it's the thing that is most precious to me I ask you to accept this doll as my sacrifice and so she stirred the dying embers of the fire until it blazed forth and she was very very sad it was very painful for her to give up her doll but before she could change her mind she threw the doll into the fire and then after the fire had died down again she scooped up all the ashes from her doll all that was left and scattered them to the four winds and then she was so so tired and so she lay down beside the fire and fell into a very deep sleep well after a few hours the morning sun woke her up and she who sits alone and looked around kind of confused, didn't know where she was wasn't sure what had happened the previous night and she could see as she was looking around there beside her there was a feather a bright blue feather of a blue jay how did it get there? and as she was looking closer to look at the blue jay feather what did she feel on her cheeks? she felt rain beginning to fall because of the sacrifice yeah and so from then on the rain began to fall again and the people of the village decided that they were going to change this little girl's name she was no longer going to be she who sits alone now she is going to be called she who loved her people for she alone was the one who gave that which was most dear to her as a sacrifice so that everybody could be saved so that's a story about sometimes we've got something that is very very important to us but we know that maybe by giving it up we can help a lot of other people we hope that that's never going to be something that we have to do but someday it just might and this is a nice little story that tells us that sometime that can be worthwhile so we're going to sit right here while our choir sings us one more song thank you so much choir and Heather and now as Linda plays a little traveling music our children can leave for their classes and their other activities oh yeah we continue our service with a selection from a book of essays by Mark Nepo and this one is entitled being a spiritual warrior it is true that there is much sadness in the world but there is a difference between feeling the pain of things breaking and ending and drifting apart and the sharper pain that comes from measuring these inevitable events of life against some ideal of how we imagine things are supposed to be in receiving hardships in this way life is always a falling off but life is hard enough without viewing all of our pain as evidence of some basic insufficiency that we must endure there's a beautiful Tibetan myth that helps us to accept our sadness as a threshold to all that is life changing all that is lasting this myth affirms that all spiritual warriors have a broken heart alas they must have a broken heart because it's only through the break that the wonder and the mysteries of life can enter into us so what does it mean to be a spiritual warrior? it's far from being a soldier but more the sincerity with which a soul faces itself in a daily way it's this courage to be authentic that keeps us strong enough to withstand the heartbreak through which enlightenment can occur and it's by honoring how life comes through us that we get the most out of living not by keeping ourselves out of the way the goal is to mix our hands with the earth not to stay clean I remember once in getting to know a new friend how over lunch we shared our stories in an increasingly personal way and as I kept taking my turn I heard myself telling of loved ones who had died of my own struggles through cancer of a marriage despite the deepest commitment did not last of years of being rejected as an artist losing a teaching job that was very dear to me suffering a brutal estrangement from my parents and just as I was feeling a kind of a strength come over me from facing life and from being authentic my friend across the table wiped his mouth and said to me what a sad life you have had it took me a few moments to withstand his judgment and his pity but I looked at him across the table and I kept breathing deeply through this break in my heart understanding that in daily ways we are often judged and discounted even pitied for the glories that only we can affirm in the end life is too magnificent and it is too difficult for us to give away any elemental place in that journey may remain seated as we sing together hymn number 315 the year was 1982 and I was looking forward to running in my first Boston Marathon I had qualified for that race the previous fall in Harrisburg with a time well under the two hour 50 minute threshold and I had been training diligently through a snowy upstate New York winter but then six weeks before Patriots Day when that race is traditionally held I strained my Achilles tendon climbing stairs was difficult running was simply out of the question working out on a stationary bike was the best I could do to try to maintain the fitness level that I had achieved and gradually the tendon became less tender by early April I felt confident that I could run the 26.2 miles from Hopkins to the Prudential Center in the heart of Boston and so with 4,000 others including legendary marathoners Joan Benoit and Bill Rogers I towed the starting line on one of the hottest mid-April days on record in Boston at 15 miles runners in better shape than me were cramping up and walking off the course but I soldiered on coming off of Heartbreak Hill at the 21 mile mark with five miles still to go my calves and my hamstrings were tightening and huge blisters were forming beneath the sweat drenched racing flats that I was wearing to this day I do not remember that last harrowing half hour stumbling down Commonwealth Avenue and the finish line at the Prudential Center remains a blur I do recall lying in a cot in the recovery tent surrounded by other depleted runners many suffering from dehydration and hooked up to IVs a masseuse was working on my cramped and painful calf muscles while another treated and bandaged my oozing blisters but it was well over a half hour before I could even stand up to the place where my wife Trina and I had agreed to rendezvous and in addition to the foot and leg pain that persisted for several days I lost four toenails in the wake of that race it was a month before I could jog again several months before I was able to run a five kilometer race and yet 12 months later I was back in Hopkinson at the starting gun as it released 5000 runners for the 87th running of the Boston Marathon in his book Long Distance the environmental writer and advocate Bill McKibben describes his own passion for endurance sports cross-country skiing in his case and if anything I believe that skiing 30 or 50 kilometers in the dead of winter is more challenging than marathon running but the experiences are in many ways comparable to finish oftentimes means running through what athletes call the wall that point in the race when the tank is just about empty and the pain from overexertion is intense but mustering every ounce of willpower you press on to the finish Rich Kenna is a former American track champion in the 800 meters one of several athletes and trainers that McKibben interviewed for his book and Kenna described for McKibben the mindset of runners at different distances he says the thought process of a 400 meter runner is I want to get around that track just as fast as I can by the 800 meters I want to get around the track as fast as I can twice without slowing down in the middle the longer you go the more time you have to think about quitting and that's why the battle for 253rd place in the marathon can be just as gripping as the battle for first in a 400 well I ended up running 10 marathons before calling it quits none was as agonizing as the first of five Boston marathons but each and every one of them was accompanied by its share of pain and those endless internal arguments over whether to call it quits to spare oneself to simply drop out I never did but then my son Kyle was born and I no longer had the time or the motivation to train properly for such long races in an important sense my son saved me from myself and as a consequence I can still run today but I cannot imagine myself making a comparable effort subjecting myself again to so much discomfort back then it felt important a meaningful compliment to my professional and my personal life because I was stretching myself physically which in turn bolstered my self-confidence and gave me the sense that I had the ability to surmount difficulties in other aspects of my life now at one time not so much anymore it was commonly believed that peak physical and athletic performance demanded pain painful preparation and this was true whether one was preparing for a marathon an Ironman triathlon or simply enduring the army's boot camp Arnold Schwarzenegger a one-time world-class bodybuilder former Mr. Universe Governor of California he began weight training at the age of 15 and he was taught by his instructors that pain means progress and so he came to believe that every time his muscles grew so sore he knew that those muscles were getting stronger but this relationship between pain and progress has hardly been confined to the athletic arena Dave Mason teaches literature at Colorado College he's former Poet Laureate of Colorado and he says that some of the suffering that I have experienced in my life has been so darn intense I would not wish it for another person going through a divorce I felt for months as if I had an axe buried in my heart I had weeks at a time where I felt suicidal but by God I would not have given that up for anything it has fueled my writing it fuels my empathy for other people it increases the joy that I feel when I come through it and I realize that I am still alive it is a mistake Mason argues to avoid that pain and anesthetize ourselves although that is what we Americans typically try to do sweeping all of that pain under the rug he says that seems to me to be kind of a living death Mason's perspective was shared by no less than Benjamin Franklin who once wrote those things that hurt instruct for others it's not just a matter of instruction but of redemption for instance the Roman Catholic monastic tradition features countless saints for whom self-imposed physical pain had become a sacred obligation and a daily discipline St. Teresa of Aviva fasted for weeks at a time quipped herself repeatedly rubbed her body with stinging nettles Henry Suso carved the name of Jesus on his chest he had an iron cross studied with nails fastened to his back Peter Damian an 11th century Roman Catholic bishop said what a joyful, unique spectacle if the heavenly judge looks down and a man flogs himself to his depths a 19th century spiritual handbook described pain as the purest most ideal form of happiness such seemingly masochistic behavior isolated by our own saintly mother Teresa and still practiced by members of the church's stricter orders has always been regarded as a distinctive mark of holiness the motto of such people might be no pain no celestial gain as the Harvard historian Steven Greenblatt explains this was a central part of the eschatological drama being performed within the human life and aiming at the bodily presence of the suffering Christ what sureer method of imitating Christ than turning oneself into the living image of the scourged and crucified Lord and such practices have hardly been confined to Christianity in observing the Muslim holiday known as Ashura which commemorates the martyrdom being the grandson of Muhammad frenzy devotees whip themselves and cut themselves with knives until they bleed profusely the Su Sundance also includes a painful physical component in its most traditional form the skin of the dancer's chest is pierced and a leather thong threaded through it which is then tied to a central pole and the dancers dance around in a circle tethered to that pole prior to developing a more moderate approach to spiritual development the so-called middle way the Buddha himself had adopted severe ascetic practices that were common to Hindu yogis he was then at that point in his life convinced that the physical body and its senses had to be completely subdued in order for the spirit to experience liberation eventually those practices as we know almost killed the Buddha and he reconsidered the notion that self-inflicted pain hastened the enlightenment process and yet the Buddha is also the one who taught us that pain and suffering are constants in the steady unfolding of our human existence man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward the author of Job put it but if this suffering is inevitable the Buddha believed and certainly do not need to add more onto it a more sensible approach is to learn how to manage it to come to terms with it and we can begin that process Buddhism suggests by looking at our lives more objectively which does mean recognizing that pain is part and parcel of conscious sentient living but that pain whether it be physical, emotional is compounded by the desire for things to be other than they are unable to accept the terms of existence we may say to ourselves this can't be it but if we stop and step back from ourselves and from our personal preferences about how we want life to be we might say to ourselves wait a minute what if this is it and at that moment we can begin our earnest search for antidotes now it goes without saying that not everyone's experience of pain is going to be the same some of us have a higher threshold for physical pain than others a requirement perhaps for running marathons likewise not all of us are equally susceptible to emotional pain empaths experience another person's pain acutely as their own sociopaths seem completely inured to it whatever our personal level of sensitivity we are all universally familiar with pain and one of the keys to managing it successfully is to prevent it from rising to the level of suffering or as one writer described it wretchedness pain is inevitable suffering is optional and old adage reminds us of what then constitutes suffering that species of pain that can make us feel truly miserable that can in fact become almost unendurable well according to some schools of thought the crux of the matter is not really the pain itself it's what the mind does with that pain when we make pain into an enemy refusing to acknowledge that it is a part of us then as Ezra Biden observes we add a layer of negative judgments to the foundation of the physical and emotional discomfort that is already there John Kabat-Zinn a mindfulness teacher who has worked for decades in pain management says the pain is not a simple thing it really has three different dimensions there's the physical aspect of it the somatic there is the affective or the emotional and then there is the cognitive aspect of it and Zinn's work has convinced him that if the emotional or the affective and the cognitive aspects of pain if those two dimensions of it can be neutralized then the physical sensations will begin to feel less acute and one's suffering will be reduced accordingly now it strikes me that at the level of the emotions and cognition three factors contribute to and exacerbate pain suffering the first is a lack of acceptance the second is isolation and the third is an inability to extract meaning from that experience now with respect to acceptance John Kabat-Zinn counsels that when we feel pain we put out the welcome mat rather than barring the door you change your relationship to pain by opening up to it he says Mark Nepo offers an example an example of someone say who has badly stubbed his or her toe and for several days that person experiences some pretty severe foot pain and as a result he says that person's orientation toward the world may shift rather noticeably the problem of the toe he says becomes everything and now that miserable individual becomes oblivious to the same beauty and the same blessings that had been so readily apparent before that accident the whole world is now reduced to my poor little toe and this is what typically happens when we are not able to accept that a certain measure of pain is an inevitable part of life we chafe against it, we feel ill-used which then contributes to making our life more unhappy more fearful and more contracted isolation the absence of concerned caring individuals that also can compound our discomfort in the book of Job we find the protagonist Job sitting on his dung heap alone children are all dead he's covered with painful sores he has lost his wealth and rather than commiserate with his fate the three friends that remain come to him and try to convince him that hey Job you must have done something to deserve all of this and so Job feels utterly alone even God seemingly deaf to his entreaties all suffering has one thing in common Christian Wharton Breaker writes separation and isolation from the world until Gawande recently published a book called Being Mortal and Gawande was a surgical endocrinologist and a professor of medicine at Harvard and in this book if you are familiar with it he wrote about his experiences with his father also a physician and his father's struggles with a painful disabling tumor in his spinal column his father was very anxious to find some kind of relief through surgery and so he and a tool went to consult with two specialists in the field the first person that they talked to was very informative he was briskly professional but he was also somewhat impatient with the steady stream of questions that the older afflicted man was asking him finally the specialist says look I'm an expert here and I'm telling you that this tumor in your spine is dangerous if you want to proceed I'm here to help you if you don't hey that's your choice they consulted the second specialist their experience was quite different the man was no less competent and no less confident about his ability to perform the surgery but Gawande says this specialist had a way of looking at people to let them know that he was really looking at them he was a rather tall fellow but he made a point at the beginning of the interview to sit down so that he and the Gawande were communicating at eye level he didn't fidget through the entire interview he did not look back at his computer screen he patiently answered all the questions and then before the interview was over the specialist asked the afflicted man what do you hope for and what are your most profound fears going forward and so before that visit was over my father Gawande says had decided this is a man I can trust the point is the specialist asked the afflicted man the point is is that one can feel very much alone even in another person's presence if that person seems to be indifferent to you as an individual human being suffering is in part existential Sally Tisdale notes made worse when no one really seems to care if nothing else and often it seems that I can do nothing else at least I can try to see that person and then finally there is the problem of meaning as Friedrich Nietzsche famously put it he who has a why to live can endure anyhow and it is true that suffering may be easier to bear when it doesn't seem gratuitous when it does not seem purposeless some religious traditions perhaps most but Christianity for instance offer guarantees to the faithful that their pain is meaningful because it brings them closer to Christ because it will reinforce their faith for his part the Jungian psychologist James Hillman suggests that our souls grow they are fulfilled through suffering that is what makes us fuller stronger human beings he promises but as a general rule I would propose that pain experienced on behalf of some external cause can be born more easily than pain that simply compromises one's own comfort when that pain is incurred in the pursuit of some objective that we deem worthy we may well conclude that the pain is worth the price that it feels more legitimate that it doesn't feel quite so burdensome we may not be happy about the pain but because it is meaningful it doesn't feel like suffering and so sacrificing her most first possession for the sake of her people that was painful for that little girl she who sits alone was painful but did she suffer well the legend would indicate otherwise this being the time of year when we ask all of you to spend some time thinking about this institution the first Unitarian society and about your commitment to it I would like to ask you in closing to remember something remember what that this is a place of communion connection community where we discover others who will bestow their attention and their caring upon us and it is a place that we can reliably come to when life is beginning to feel a little thin and we are hungering for some deeper meaning it is true that we don't have a one size fits all answer for the riddle of human existence but we do have some resources you can draw upon open-minded people that you can dialogue with fellow pilgrims who are willing to walk beside you in your own quest for deeper understanding I don't know that pain is always to our advantage that it is always redemptive I doubt it sometimes pain is just pain but I do know that here at FUS there is always something to be gained despite any pain that you might bring through these doors with you blessed be and amen we did not have any cares of the congregation registered in our book today and that being the case we are going to move directly to our offering and the outreach portion of the offering will be shared this week with Madison Urban Ministry they have a display table and information outside they do tremendous work in our community so please be generous good morning my name is Melissa I have been a member at FUS for about nine years my husband Mike joined a couple of years after me our daughter Winnie was born into this community a little over four years ago and this little girl who's been kicking me in the ribs to show her enthusiasm for our community is set to arrive next month as most of you are aware FUS is in the midst of its annual campaign and as you've probably figured out I have been asked to share with you what our family chooses to give of our time and money to FUS and to encourage you to reflect on how you do the same and while I hope my broader message is relevant to everyone this morning I especially hope that it resonates with some of our younger families which are often busy with the work of raising children perhaps not always feeling entirely established in careers maybe even foregoing some income to allow a parent to be home always to connect to a community but unsure how much to put into that commitment let me take a couple of minutes to tell you how I grew into our FUS community first I love church services and I know not everybody does but I've always really enjoyed them at every age at pretty much any church I've attended I love to sing hymns I value the meditative atmosphere that special time each week so it's fair to say that when I first joined FUS I started doing research in the auditorium each weekend but after a few years I wanted to meet more people in our community so I started teaching RE classes with this added involvement I started having more questions about the organization of FUS and how it functions why do they do this why don't they do that why do they put resources into this instead of that my curiosity about what they do and then eventually into the realization that they was me I am them, we are all them we are the people who make decisions about this congregation and put in the work and financial support that allow FUS to thrive I can't really say why it took me so long for me to realize my own role and responsibility I grew up watching my parents give generously to their church but maybe it was just a little bit difficult to acknowledge that I am actually approaching the age that I remember my parents being when I was young so with this new found sense of investment I started attending more parish meetings and thinking about how my pledge each year makes a difference last year I joined the growth pass force which explores new ways to grow our congregation and I am learning more and more about how FUS functions I have to say that I am increasingly satisfied that we are doing a pretty darn good job we've built a wonderful community and we're served by an outstanding staff today is the day of promise and our annual campaign committee has asked each of us to make a financial commitment by today to allow FUS to plan and make the best use of our contributions in the coming fiscal year in my own view I don't think every religious community strikes the right balance when asking for funding from the congregation some put excessive pressure to give beyond the level that families feel comfortable with others are so afraid to approach the topic of money with congregants that the church is barely able to provide a spiritual community and certainly doesn't have the resources to make an impact in the broader community FUS asks our members to give a thoughtful and responsible way in my opinion as you consider the amount that you'd like to commit to our community this year and in the spirit of thoughtful and responsible giving I'd like to tell you how some of my own families have influenced our giving two years ago we made a pledge that fit our families budget right up until I had to leave a job my husband was at home with our daughter and so we temporarily went without income for a few months I hated to do it but I called and had to cancel a portion of our pledge that year my request was met with only support from FUS staff the next year with our family in a more stable position we increased our pledge this year I'll be taking some unpaid time off to get to know this little one so we'll keep our pledge the same as last year and hope to increase it next year life doesn't always throw you a study predictable increase in income but if you saw your family income increase this year consider whether there may be room for increase in your pledge as well like many we also increased our pledge after a couple years of testing the waters here most of us probably don't dive into a new organization giving as generously as we could without knowing its significance to ourselves and our family and the community and it's been important for us each year to reflect on how our relationship with FUS has changed when deciding on a pledge amount instead of just sticking with that testing the waters pledge there are a lot of different ways to think about pledging I'm always tempted to add a couple of things that I get from FUS a high quality service with inspiring reflections and music opportunity to sing in the wonderful meeting house chorus weekly children's choir and religious education classes for Winnie fantastic lectures and workshops throughout the week high quality childcare for everything the list goes on and I don't think this is a bad thought experiment if you've never added up all of those things that you may be paying for if you were finding them somewhere else but I also know that FUS is not just the things that I personally take from it it's a spiritual home for over 2,000 people it's an important participant in social justice movements in our local community and it's also one of the largest and most active congregations in the country that supports the important work of our larger religious movement we've all chosen to be part of this community and contrary to some assumptions about you use I don't think that's just because we get to believe whatever we want in fact I think our religious principles are some of the most challenging to actually follow and our community at FUS challenges us to think, discuss, and take action based on these principles in order to make our world a better place if you've already made a pledge this year, thank you if you haven't had a chance to yet I will be out at the annual campaign table lingering around with Monica Nolan one of our newest staff members available to answer any questions about the annual campaign please come fill out a pledge form or share your thoughts and ideas about our campaign in the FUS community, thank you thank you Alyssa before we sing together our closing hymn just a word about caring community we do try to model caring in our community and part of that process is to give individuals a chance to share their joys and the sorrows once a month by coming up and using a microphone and lighting a candle here this happens usually the last Sunday of the month and we followed that practice last week in the intervening other weeks we have this book called cares of the congregation it has for several years sat right outside the middle doors of our auditorium there's a sign that says cares of the congregation anyone who wishes to share something with the congregation and I deliver it on your behalf from the pulpit can simply write on the pages of the book your joy or your sorrow or some event that has happened in your life that is of some consequence you can also email Kelly or Julia or myself sometime during the week to share that information and we will deliver it to the congregation on Sunday morning I am aware that some people are not always conscious of the fact that this book has been lodged right outside of the front doors for quite some time now but it is and we invite you to take advantage of it and with that let us please turn now to our closing hymn in the teal hymn no number 1008 we see it for the benediction and the postlude we close with these words from the poet Alejandro Perez the journey is long and treacherous the roads narrow the cliffs steep the rocks jagged the hills soft the answers few the questions many and the hands are many and strong strong hands to shelter and catch me as I fall as I make mistakes so many hands to shelter and catch and slap and touch and slap and hold so many hands to shake and take and hold and let go and fall through the fingers of the hands so many strong hands it's good to be on this road it's no longer a maze no longer a search it's a road that I'm traveling and I'm learning and I'm feeling as I go I know there's no cheese at the end there isn't any end just as there isn't any beginning but I have hands hands to touch to hold to let go to clap and slap and tap and give me shelter blessed be and amen