 Check, check, check, check. Morning. Mr. John, how are you? But it's not okay, good. No, no, no, that's good. I don't want it volume yet. Good morning. Hi, I'm Julie. Hi. It's nice to meet you. Thank you so much. It's so lovely here. Waiting till after the service to say that. Well, I've seen these services before. Hi, Amy, how are you? It's good to see you. Thank you. Oh, so many places. Most recently, Detroit, Michigan, which is my home, which you'll hear a little bit about because we're talking about water justice today. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm, uh, but I lived in Berkeley for the last three years. Yeah. Yeah, we went to the same seminary. Yeah, he's, he's got, I think, a little more experience than me. It's, uh, it's good. Where are you? Are you a lifelong Madisoner? Madisonite? Madisonian. Madisonian. Sorry. Wonderful. I am enjoying it. It's wonderful here. Yeah, I really am. Well, thank you. I'm excited. I'm, I'm nervous because I keep waiting for them to turn my mic on. Yeah, great. Awesome. Thank you. Everybody's awesome. I know. Please join in a moment of centering silence after that deafening sound so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which we'll be repeating three times. You'll find those words inside your order of service. Well, good morning, everybody, and welcome to another special Sunday here at First Unitarian Society, where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, or newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find that it is a special place. And if you're curious about our special buildings, we offer guided tours after every service. Just gather over here by the windows after the service, and we will take care of you. And speaking of the service, as many of you know, this is our perfect time for silencing those pesky electronic devices that might interfere with your ability to enjoy the service this morning. So please take a moment and perform that simple but important task right now, and those of you watching at home, you can disregard this instruction. And speaking of the service, if you're accompanied today by a youngster, and that youngster would prefer to enjoy the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options, including our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium and some seats outside the doorway in the commons. As is the case every weekend, we have an all-star team of volunteers bringing us today's service, starting with our sound man, David Briles. Our lay minister is Tom Boykoff. Our greeter upstairs, smiling as we arrived, Dorrit Bergen. Our ushers, Marty Hollis and Dick Goldberg. Dick and I are not related, but we would like to be. Pulpit palms were watered today and fittingly on a day when we're emphasizing water by John Tewes. Flowers were generously donated by Matt Anderson. Our tour guide is John Powell, and the all-important coffee and hospitality are provided by Biss Nitschke after the service. So take a moment to thank these volunteers when you have a chance, and perhaps you could add them to your Christmas list. One announcement, very important one, very fun announcement to make. You're going to be meeting her in a few moments, but the intern ministry team invites you to join us after the service during the coffee hour to welcome Julie Brock, our new ministerial intern for the 2015, 2016 season. Grab your coffee, enjoy a sweet treat in the commons after the service, and the sweet treats are provided by FUS member and caterer Nancy Deere, and among the treats she's providing is her very special flaming chalice cookies. So everybody's looking forward to that. We're also looking forward to welcoming Julie Brock. And I look forward to today's service, as I know all of you do. So please sit back or lean forward to enjoy the service. I know that you will find it will touch your heart, stir your spirits, and trigger at least one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. When I humble myself, the flowers rejoice. When I bow, all things are elated. The field and the cloud are lovers, and between them I am a messenger of mercy. I quench the thirst of one. I cure the ailment of another. The voice of thunder announces my arrival. The rainbow announces my departure. I emerge from the heart of the sea and soar with the breeze. When I see a field in need, I descend and embrace the flowers and trees in a million little ways. I touch gently at the windows with my sift fingers, and my announcement is a welcome song, all I can hear, but only the sensitive can understand. I am the sigh of the sea, the laughter of the field, the tears of heaven. So with love, sighs from the deep sea of affection, laughter from the colorful fields of the spirit, tears from the endless memory of heaven. It is my honor to ask you to rise as we light our chalice this morning. Water flows from high in the mountains. Water runs deep in the earth. Miraculously, water comes to us and sustains all life. And in life-sustaining community, I ask that you greet one another with friendly and joyous greetings this morning. Poetic meditation from John O'Donohue from a book entitled The Four Elements. Let us bless the grace of water. The imagination of the primeval ocean, where the first forms of life stirred and emerged to dress the vacant earth with warm quilts of color. The well whose liquid root worked through the long night of clay, thrusting ahead of itself openings that would yet yield to its yearning, until at last it arises in the desire of light to discover the pure quiver of itself, blowing crystal clear and free through delighted emptiness. The courage of a river to continue belief in the slow fall of ground, always falling further toward the unseen ocean. The river does what words would love, keeping its appearance by insisting on disappearance. Its only life surrounded to the event of pilgrimage, carrying the origin to the end, seldom pushing, seldom straining, keeping itself to itself everywhere, all along its flow, at one with the sinuous mind and utter rhythm never awkward. It continues to swirl through the unlikeness with elegance, a ceaseless traverse of presence, soothing on each side the stilled fields, sounding out its journey, raised up in a buried music where the silence of time becomes almost audible. Tides stirred by the arrows of the moon, drawn from the permanent restlessness, perfect waves that languidly rise and pleat in gradual forms of aquamarine to offer every last tear of delight to the altar of stillness inland. And the rain in the night driven by the loneliness of the word to perform the darkness, as though some air pocket might open to release the perfume of a lost day and salvage some memory from its forsaken turbulence and drop its weight of longing into the earth and anchor there. Let us bless the humility of water, always willing to take the shape of whatever otherness holds it, the buoyancy of water stronger than the deadening downward drag of gravity, the innocence of water flowing forth without thought of what awaits it, the refreshment of water dissolving the crystals of thirst, water voice of grief, cry of love of the flowing tear, water vehicle and idiom of all the inward voyaging that keeps us alive, blessed be water, our first mother. If you have brought water with you to the service today, you will be invited to bring it forward momentarily. And if you have not done so, we still invite you to participate in our communion. You can come up and add some virtual water to our two containers. And then at the end of the service, you can come forward and using one of the containers provided, take a portion of our mingled water with you. And I ask that you come forward with your real water or your virtual water in five stages. First, I will ask for water from the west, and then from the south, and then from the east, and then from the north. And then finally, I will ask for waters that have been brought from some location within or adjacent to Wisconsin. Those are the waters from the center. So we start with the west, the south, the east, the north, and then from the center. And as you come forward, please place your water in one of the two large containers and in just a word or two, tell Julie or me the source of that water so that we can share that information with the entire congregation. And so now I would invite waters from the west, west of the state of Wisconsin. Travertine Falls, which flows into the Colorado and the Grand Canyon. Jackson Lake, Wyoming. San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. Water from Lake Tahoe under Nephew's Wedding in San Francisco. One more west. Devil's Lake in Forest County, the Pottawatomie community. Now waters from the south. Sea of Cortez, San Jose de Cabo. De Cabo, all right. And we have water from the Galapagos Islands. And waters from the east, from the Jordan River. Oh, she says it's really dirty. So we sterilize it. Sorry. We've just had polluted water from Madison, but it is representing the Gonset River in India. From the Nile River. Boston Harbor in the Atlantic Ocean. From London. England, I take it. From the Aegean Sea. Go ahead. Go ahead. From the Aegean Sea. From Cincinnati. From a, from a reunion? A cousin's reunion. From San Bernardo, Italy. Some very fine virtual water. Atlantic Ocean by Bar Harbor, Maine. Baganji's River in India. I will add my own water from the UU Young Adult Spiritual Retreat in Perrysville, Ohio. And Fleming could not be here today, but left water outside of my office door. This is water from an unpronounceable city in India. And then I'm not sure from what direction, but the second one says ocean water. Maybe the Indian Ocean. Water from the, where am I? South? North. North. Thank you. QAnon Peninsula off of Lake Superior. This is water from Mandito Falls in the Porkies. And water from the center. Water from our home state of Wisconsin, or adjacent bodies of water. From Maria's Bird Bath. From Lake Wingra. Huddy Creek, Wisconsin. From the Apostle Islands. And from her Rain Barrel. Outer Island, the Apostle Islands. From his sanctuary, also known as his kitchen. From the sky on Friday in Middleton. That's probably the purest water we have. Virtual water from Potato Falls. Virtual water from two rivers. From Shawamagin Bay, Lake Superior. Fesent Branch Spring. Green County Rainwater. Thirteen Acre Brightsman Lake. Virtual water from Afterglow Lake in Phelps. This is water from the Drinking Fountain in Frank Lloyd Wright's Landmark Meeting House. And then finally, a portion of water from last year's Water Communion. We bring our waters which have touched the west, the north, the south, and the east, which come from the sky and from the earth. We bring water that belongs to lakes and streams, reservoirs of fresh water that quench our thirst. We bring water that is part of the great oceans and seas that circle the globe, teeming with life, the source of all life. We bring water to this place of meeting and sharing. In this container, there is new water. Formed in the atmosphere daily, there is old water from the deep in the earth deposited by the rains tens of millions of years ago. This is the stream of life from which all life flows. All people are connected by this system for it runs through our veins and courses through the stems and the leaves of the plants. It is the symbol of the reality of the oneness that unites humankind and all life. May our separate waters join one sacred stream as we add our lives to the stream of all living souls who live out love, work for justice, and hunger for peace. And so we continue with a story from the Native American tradition, Coyote and the Frog People. This is my message for all ages. Coyote was out hunting one day and he came across the old bone of a deer that looked just like a valuable dentalia shell. You all know what a dentalia shell is, right? Dentalia means tooth, so it's a tooth shell. And why would these have been valuable to the Native Americans? Well, some of you may actually have some jewelry that is made out of dentalia shells. So very, very important artifact for Native Americans. And so Coyote picked up this bone that looked like a dentalia shell and he had an idea of what he was going to do with it. He took the shell and he went to see the frog people. And at that particular point in time, the frog people had a monopoly. They had all the water in the world. And so when anyone wanted to take a drink or to cook or to wash their body, they had to go to the frog people and get some water from them. And so Coyote came up and said, hey frog people, I have this big, valuable dentalia shell, but I want a big drink of water myself and I'll give you this shell if you'll let me have a big drink of water. Give us the shell, said the frog people. You can drink as much as you want. And so Coyote took the old piece of bone that looked just like a shell and he gave it to the frog people and he began to drink. Now, all of the water that the frog people had was trapped behind this large dam that they had built. And it was right next to the dam. That's where Coyote put his head down in the water and began to drink. I'm going to put my head down and I'm going to drink for a very, very long time, he said to the frog people. So don't worry, don't worry about me. Okay, said the frog people, we won't worry. And so Coyote began to drink and he drank for a long, long time. Finally, one of the frog people said, Coyote, you must be awfully thirsty. You sure are drinking an awful lot of our water. What are you doing that for? Coyote brought his head back up in the water from the water and said, well, it's because I'm just so thirsty. I've been running and I've been hunting and I'm really, really thirsty. Oh, okay, said the frog person. And after a while, Coyote's head is back down under the water and one of the frog people says, Coyote, we've never seen any buddy drink as much water as you. What are you doing down there? You ought to give us another shell if you're going to be drinking that much. Just let me finish this drink, said Coyote. And he put his head back down under the water. Frog people wondered how one person could possibly drink so much water and they began to get a little suspicious because Coyote was known to play tricks on the other peoples. And in fact, while his head was under water, what Coyote was doing is he was digging underneath that dam. And when he had finished digging out as much as he thought he needed to, he raised his head up out of the water and said, that was a really, really good drink. That's just what I needed. And then he quickly ran off. Well, a few minutes later, the dam collapsed and all of the water ran out and it made the valleys and the creeks and the waterfalls and the rivers and the lakes that we all find today in the world. And the frog people were so angry and they called out to Coyote, you stole all of our water, Coyote. Coyote could hear them complaining and he yelled back, it's not right for one people to have all the water. I took it out so that everybody could have it. That's what Coyote did for us at the beginning of the world. And now anyone can go down to Lake Mendota and they can get a drink of water if you dare risk that or bathe or maybe just swim around. As Julie will be alluding a bit later, we still have some of those problems that the frog people presented to us so many eons ago. And when I think about water, I am reminded of the Hindu religion. And in particular, I am reminded of those three supreme gods that sometimes are referred to as the Hindu trinity. And each of these three gods is identified with a specific function. Brahma is described as the creator. Vishnu is the sustainer. And of course Shiva's appellation is the destroyer. Now Shiva is not considered by the Hindus to be an undesirable or an evil deity because of that particular role as the destroyer. These three processes, creation, sustaining, destruction, naturally belong together. They reflect reality as we see it because the cosmos is constantly changing. A star far up in the heavens is born. An ample supply of hydrogen keeps its solar furnaces burning for billions of years, but eventually it comes to an end as a supernova. The original star is no more, but its gaseous elements have been released and they become available for another cycle of star making. Creator, sustainer, destroyer. And as with the stars, so with water. From our grade school science books we all learned that life on this planet began in the warm liquid depths of the ancient oceans. While the earth's dry surfaces were still inhospitable to sentient life in any form, water was the perfect medium in which complex chains of proteins could morph into those single cell creatures, then into multi-cell invertebrates like jellyfish and mollusks, and then finally into vertebrates, fish and amphibians. More than a few myths of origin identify water as the environment out of which life first emerged, and so we read in the first two verses of Genesis. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form or void and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. Water was here according to scripture before anything else. It was the chaos out of which God, that cosmic creative principle, ushered in life and light. We now know that for billions of years the creation of new life forms was completely restricted to our oceans. So is it any wonder that for many life scientists, the presence of water on other planets raises the possibility that they might also be capable of producing life. Creation without water, that's almost inconceivable. Water sustains as well as creates. The world's oceans are not only the cradle of creation, they also play a critical role in sustaining us. Water vapor from the oceans accounts for much of the rainfall that keeps our land fertile and moist, and of course those same oceans provide a high percentage of the protein that we human beings eat. Now as recently as 50 years ago, few people and not even many scientists, few feared that the time would come when there would not be an ample supply of saltwater fish for us to catch and to eat. The oceans were believed a half century ago to be literally inexhaustible, a reliable source of human sustenance for centuries to come. We have since learned that even the oceans regenerative powers are limited and that she has proven no match for drift nets and factory fleets and oil spills and other powerful human interventions. Given the excessive heat and the parched conditions that much of the West Coast has experienced in recent years, it's easy to understand why compassion and water have been inseparable concepts for the peoples who live in the perennially dry Middle East. Water, Martin Lings points out, is considered a direct symbol by the Arab peoples of God's mercy, for in the Quran it is written, He sendeth down water from the sky and thereby quickens the earth after her death. Water has this uncanny power to sustain us emotionally and spiritually as well as physically. No wonder the Lord's prayer contains the line, He leads me beside the still waters and restores my soul. How many times have any of us sought out a lake, a river, a seashore, when we were feeling downcast, out of sorts, oppressed by life? There is something about water, something more than those negative ions that counteracts distress and helps us regain our mental and emotional equilibrium. The benefits are intangible, but no less real than the water that we drink to preserve our physical selves. In so many ways, water sustains us. And then of course water is a fearsomely powerful force of nature. And so when God despaired of humankind and when He resolved to destroy everything He had made and start overs from scratch, what did He do? He opened up the heavens. And the Bible reports that torrents of rain fell steadily for 40 days and for 40 nights. All the world, with the exception of Noah and his ark full of animals and kinfolk, everything was drowned. Other religions and other culture traditions relate similar tales of destruction. And we have seen in the modern era our own share of hurricanes and floods and tsunamis. Deep Sea earthquakes produced tidal waves that killed tens of thousands in Indonesia and Japan. Hurricanes like Katrina, whose 10th anniversary we celebrate or at least observe this weekend. And Hurricane Sandy displaced entire populations, demolishing large swaths of our U.S. coastline. The shrieking winds of a hurricane are terrifying, and I've been through a couple of them myself, but it's the storm surge. It's the breached levees that ultimately claim so many lives and destroy countless livelihoods. And even the relentless winds of the hurricane, from where do they draw their energy, from water that has evaporated from the ocean's placid surface. And likewise, overflowing rivers in the Great Plains have inundated towns left tens of thousands of acres of cropland submerged for weeks. Yes, human beings love to live near the water because of its sustaining qualities. But even a lake like Mendota, or a river like the Rock, can quickly become treacherous, betraying our trust and laying waste our dreams. So yes, water can be every bit as ferocious as it can be friendly. And so it's always well to regard it with due respect, to exercise a bit of caution in its presence. But again, even as the Hindu god Shiva is not an evil being because of his destructive nature, water is not necessarily demonic because it foils our plans and ports our ambitions. There is a fine line between destruction and cleansing. And so when water rises up to oppose us, it may be because we as human beings have taken certain liberties, have acted in less than a prudent fashion by placing our cities and our homes in places where they just don't belong. Water is very good at reminding us that for all of our technological prowess, the forces of nature will always have the last word. Agnes Baker Pilgrim, a revered elder of Oregon's Silits Indian tribe, says that we are all water babies and it's never too late to save the world. Wherever you are, take care of the water, she says, if you really want to live. Let us hope that we will become ever more aware of and sensitive to the indispensable role that this liquid gold plays in our own lives, in the life of the planet, lest we throw out the baby with the bathwater. Blessed be. Once there was a little stream that dreamed of flowing into the sea, and that stream started as an aquifer, this huge pool of water underground, but the call of the ocean was so strong that the stream pushed its way through the nooks and the cracks up through the earth until it burst forth into the air and began its journey to the sea. And as the waters bubbled up to the surface, they ran down the hill and they carved a streambed into the earth. And sometimes the stream babbled as it traveled, sometimes it gurgled, sometimes it simply roared. At times the stream traveled alone. As waters, they were so clear that you could see the pebbles that lined its bed, but at other times the stream ran through great lakes or it tumbled over a cliff or it joined other streams to form a river and then it would split again to travel alone, but always the little stream yearned to flow into the sea. And sometimes the stream would run fast and deep, eager to reach the sea. Fish swam in its waters as it carried them swiftly on its journey. Sometimes the stream would grow wise and slow and it would carry boats on its back as it continued its journey, but always, always the little stream yearned to flow into the sea. And one day, just as the call of the ocean seemed to grow a bit stronger, the stream found itself flowing sluggishly and its waters grew thick with mud until sadly they pooled into this brackish mud hole right on the edge of a desert. What was me, said the stream, now I will never get to the sea. I tried going around the desert, but it was too wide. I tried going under the desert, but it was too deep. Still, even with mud in its ears, the little stream heard the call of the ocean and yearned to flow into the sea. After what seemed like a long time, as the stream just pooled there in the sun, it began to hear a voice. I can take you to the sea, little stream, come with me. I am the wind. I will carry you to the ocean shore. And how could you do that, said the stream? You are only made of air. I can carry you on the breeze, but you must be very brave, for you must let yourself change. You must let go of yourself. I've changed many, many times. But this will be different. The little stream paused, but deep within, that stream still yearned for the sea. And so the stream did as the air bid, it let go. And the wind picked up the stream, particle by particle. And at first the stream was scared, for it felt lost. It was no longer a stream, but it had been turned inside out, and had become a swirling in the sky. The view was like nothing that the little stream had ever seen before. Not only was the whole wide world laid out below it, but it was, it was surrounded by all these sparkling jewels. And then what had been the stream realized that all those sparkling jewels were really part of itself, molecules of water, droplets of moisture sparkling in the sunlight. And what had been the stream realized that it was truly beautiful on the inside. Next, the stream turned moisture saw that it was not alone, for the wind has whispered to other streams and ponds. And even to the morning dew upon the oasis, all had turned to moisture. All of their parts were also sparkling in the sun. Together they were even more beautiful, for the sunlight had changed them into all of the colors of the rainbow. And then the little stream turned rainbow, felt itself begin to fall. And it fell, and it fell, and all the other little droplets were falling too, until plop plop plop, the droplets ran together into this mighty river, rushing down a mountain side across a coastal plain, and then into the sea, where the waves pushed it back, and pulled it forward, and the current carried it far out into the pulsing depths. And now the little stream was finally content. But then every now and then, the wind would once again breeze by whispering into the currents of the sea, come with me, come with me. And then the moisture would rise up into the wind, be carried away, to start all over again. So the first thing that I would like to express as your new official intern minister is the deep sense of gratitude that I have at the opportunity to be able to spend this next year here with you. And here in Madison, I'm pretty sure you guys know this already, but you have a really beautiful city. You have a really, really beautiful city. I cannot imagine, I cannot imagine though we have many sources that our water comes from, that many of those sources hold more beauty than the sources of water that hold this city. And every time I come to a new place, I like to introduce myself to the water. Water being the third most stable element, not so permanent as earth, yet not so transient as air or transmutant as fire. Water is a great place to hold the stories and the emotions of a place. So when I get somewhere new, I like to go introduce myself to the water. And I thought I would do this by taking a walk around one of your lakes, and I was not ambitious enough to try Medoda or Manona. So I decided I would take a walk around Lake Wingra in the south. And I thought it's about four miles, I can do that. I wanted to be free. I wanted to be free on this walk. So I left my water bottle in the car and also my phone with the maps function, even though I have literally no sense of direction. I thought how hard can it be to keep the lake on your right? It turns out, if they put a golf course in between you and the lake and you can no longer see it and you have absolutely no sense of direction, it turns out to be kind of hard to keep the lake on your right. So my four mile walk around Lake Wingra turned into a 10 mile hike through southern Madison. And I began to feel very foolish for having left my phone with its map functions in the car and especially my water bottle. It was a hot day and I was really, really thirsty. At one point, I saw a sprinkler going back and forth on someone's lawn. And the only thing that stopped me from awkwardly trying to drink from that sprinkler was the thought that today I'd be standing up here and one of you would be like, honey, wasn't that the girl that tried to drink from our lawn the other day? I have to tell you that had I been any further, had I been any further on that hike, I would, under any circumstance of personal dignity, drink and have drunk from that sprinkler. Because even though I knew that I was in a metropolitan area and there was going to be no harm coming to my body from dehydration, with five hours of not knowing where my next drink of water was coming from, I began to panic a little bit. I was actually scared. I felt physical sensations of panic in my body thinking that I did not know where my next drink of water was coming from. There are people in this country, in this country with the most resources of any country in the world, in the richest country in the world that never know consistently when their next, where their next drink of water is coming from. There are people that do not have consistent access to clean and reliable sources of water. One of the reasons that water communion is so beautiful as a ritual is that we get to bring water from where we have been and where we have been says a lot about who we are. I come from the city of Detroit. It is the most impoverished city in our country. And not only is Detroit ridden with poverty, it is also underwhelming as a functioning bureaucratic unit, shall we say. And so a thing has, a pattern has risen in Detroit. People that don't have enough money to pay their water bill, don't pay their water bill, and the city doesn't do anything about it. Until last year or the year before, the city went bankrupt. And an emergency financial manager was brought in to usurp the powers of the democratically elected government there. And this emergency financial manager said, well, why aren't we collecting on all these water bills? There's millions of dollars in water that we could be collecting. There are 65,000 delinquent accounts, delinquent as in criminal, as in it is against the law to use the resources that the divine gives us and mandates for the perpetuation of life because we do not have enough money, man made money. So this emergency financial manager started issuing water shut off threats. And now in the city of Detroit, up to 10% of the population, 10% of the population has either had their water shut off or is facing the imminent threat of water being shut off. And 10% of the city of Detroit is a lot. That's, Detroit has a comparable population to that of San Francisco. And San Francisco is a place of fantastic wealth. I lived there too while I was in seminary or in the San Francisco Bay area. They have a very different economic climate. But they too have water issues. They have the physical resource of water running out there. And the water companies realized that they didn't have enough of the actual resource to sell, to keep themselves sustainable in San Francisco. And the governments realized that increasing the water rate very drastically all at once would be very difficult for some households in that area. So there was an idea proposed that instead of increasing water on everyone 30% or so, that they would have a more drastic increased of 50% increase on their water bill. And then people that couldn't afford that 50% increase would be able to get vouchers. So that if you were the successful owner of a new tech startup and your water bill increased by 50%, you could probably handle it. But if you were someone washing dishes in El Cerrito, you could get a voucher if that was going to be too much on your monthly budget. The people of San Francisco and the surrounding areas decided that it would be an unfair thing to do to disproportionately increase the rates on some people. And so they have allowed the rates or allowed the effects to disproportionately affect others. Even here, in a place like Wisconsin, with seeming beautiful abundance and bounty of water, there are places where the groundwater is running dry and people are beginning to talk about who should get that water and who should have access to what, what people should get what water. For centuries, Unitarian Universalists have proclaimed that humankind will not regulate God. Is it not time that we now say we will not regulate life? Water is the most immediately necessary life sustaining resource after oxygen. It is the molecule that makes up most of our body. How dare we regulate life? We are in a place of great abundance. We are in a place of great beauty. We are in a place of great blessing. And I pray that we enjoy that bounty and those blessings. I hope that we drink deeply and swim freely and wash and paddle and soak. And I hope that while we do so, we also hold the complicated truth that water is a human right, that not every human being has access to. But let us celebrate a little in song. Will you please stand and sing in your teal hymnal, blue boat home? It's number ten portion of today's offeratory Wabisa preservation coalition. More information about that can be seen in your order of service. We have a number of empty containers for those who didn't bring water with them this morning, but would like to share in our communion due to the many sources from which this water has come. Some is possibly contaminated and we ask that you boil it before using it to nourish your favorite plant or sprinkling it in your garden. Perform this ritual mindfully, remembering the symbolism and significance of this simple life sustaining substance. And so our closing hymn is Somos El Barco and the words to the refrain are in your program. We'll sing through the refrain first and I'll sing the verses and I just invite you to join me on the refrain. This should be familiar to some of you and if it's not you'll pick it up rather quickly. Somos El Barco, Somos El Mar, you're now a go and tea, you now a go send me, we are the boat, we are the sea, I sail in you and you sail in me. Let's try that. Somos El Barco, Somos El Mar, you now a go send me and I sail in you, you sail in me. Oh the stream sings it to the river, sings it to the sea and the sea sings it to the boat that carries you and me. Somos El Barco, Somos El Mar, you now a go send me, I sail in you, you sail in me. Now the boat we are sailing in was built by many hands and the sea we are sailing on, it touches every sand, Somos El Barco, Somos El Mar, you now a go send me, I sail in you, you sail in me. Oh the voyage has been long and hard and yet we're sailing still with a song to help us pull together if we only will. Somos El Barco, Somos El Mar, you now a go send me and I sail in you, you sail in me. So with our hopes we raise the sails to face the winds once more and with our hearts we chart the waters never sailed before Somos El Barco, Somos El Mar, you now a go send me, I sail in you, you sail in me and I sail in you, you sail in me. Some things say the wise ones who know everything, some things are not living and I say you live your life your way leave me alone. I've talked to the faint clouds in the sky when they are afraid of being left behind and I say hurry hurry and they say thank you we are hurrying. Now about cows and starfish and roses there there is no argument they all die after all but water water is the question so many living things in it but what is it living or not oh gleaming generosity how can they write you out blessed be and amen