 I haven't been here for like a month doing this, is there anything new in any of this wording or anything? Oh, yeah. We did the Saturday one together the last time I said something about it and you said you were going to fix it. Oh, that's it. Well, I'm not sure that's what I knew about it. Please join me in a moment of centering silence. And now please remain seated as we sing our in-gathering hymn, number 134. And the words are printed in your order of service. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where 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 Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the congregation, I extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers and others are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library, which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your coffee or hot cocoa and questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding the teal coffee mugs. These are members with knowledge about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give building tours after services, so if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our National Landmark Meeting House, please meet your guide up near the large glass window on your left side of the auditorium after the service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service. However, it can be a bit difficult for some of us to hear in this lively acoustical environment. So we suggest the child haven back in the northeast corner, somebody's already back there, and the commons area outside the auditorium as great places to go when your child needs to talk or move around. The service can still be seen and heard well from those areas. This would also be an excellent time to silence any electronic devices that might disrupt the service, especially cell phone ringers. Now I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. We have Peter Daley on sound. I don't believe we have a lay minister for this service, but I'll be glad to help you if you need anything. Our greeter is Janine Nussbaum. Our ushers are Marty Hollis, Dan Bradley, Douglas Hill, and Nancy Daley. And the folks back making coffee and cocoa are Nancy Kosseth and Biss Nitschke. Please notice the announcements in our red floors insert in the order of service. These describe upcoming events at the society and provide more details about today's activities. I do have a special announcement in addition. You have undoubtedly heard that our spring auction event is going back to its cabaret roots. It is being called an old-fashioned cabaret. Last weekend members had the opportunity to suggest taglines to accompany this title. And today you have a chance to vote for the tagline that will be used. Stop at the table in the commons near the library doors right out there to cast your ballot. We are also pleased to announce that artists and Teresa Kaufman have stepped forward as cabaret team leaders. They will be working hard to make this event the best one yet. And if any of you have ever attended their murder mystery parties that they've auctioned or any other events they've hosted, you know what great hosts they are. Feel free, I'm sorry, watch for more information in the red floors and the March edition of the newsletter. Feel free to touch base with artists and Teresa with any thoughts and ideas you may have that would help to make this event truly special. And contact Sally Bowers for more specifics and mark your calendars for Friday evening April 24th as Steve reminds me only 68 days until cabaret. Ask him if he wanted to say that himself and he said he'd pass but I bet you'll hear from him later. Again welcome. We trust today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. If I were God, Pat Schneider writes, I would make a world just like this one. A world where everyone comes raw and naked and dependent into it where nothing is for certain, where there is so much to learn. I would make the world unfair as this world is unfair because only in a world like this one is it possible that maybe the rich will take down their fences. Maybe those who know how to read will teach those who don't. Maybe the fed will feed the hungry and maybe the lion will lie down with the lamb. I invite you to rise and body and spirit for the lighting of our chalice. Please join me now in repeating the words of affirmation that are printed in the program. The world rejoices in honest goodwill and everywhere hearts hunger for acceptance and support. Let us as well respond ungrudgingly to the needs of our neighbors, those close at hand with whom we feel kinship, as well as those tied to us by only the most tenuous bonds. May we be heralds of grace and goodwill to the world and pledge undying loyalty to the law of love. And in keeping with that law, please turn to your neighbor and exchange with them a warm greeting for the message for all ages. A little too cold to be out there sledding or skating this morning, isn't it? Maybe later on today. So this is a story that was written by a Jewish rabbi, so it's out of the Jewish religious tradition, and it's entitled, A Little Kindness Can Go a Long, Long Way. So not all that long ago, there lived a certain businessman, and his name was Reb Nacum. And he was kind of a selfish businessman. He was constantly thinking of ways that he could make more money. Even if that meant sometimes being dishonest and trying to take advantage of his customers. And Reb Nacum had grown quite rich, but because he was always trying to make money, always looking after his own interests, generally ignoring the needs of anybody else, well, he didn't really have any good friends, and he didn't see very much of his family. Now, Reb Nacum was not a cruel man. He didn't want to hurt anybody, but he was regarded by most people who knew him as being pretty cold and calculating and greedy. But one night, after he had left his store, and it had been a very profitable day, he'd made lots of money, he was driving in his big fancy car, and he saw on the side of the road what looked to be a poor farmer whose pickup truck had gone off the road and was stuck in this deep, sticky mud all the way up to its hubcaps. And the farmer was out there in really good clothes, kind of like this suit, and he was trying desperately to push that truck back onto the road, and he just couldn't do it. Because it was the Jewish Sabbath and he was on his way to the synagogue, he was all dressed up in these fancy clothes. But he had been struggling for quite some time, hadn't been able to get the truck out, and he was becoming very exhausted and increasingly distressed. Now, by the time Reb Nakum came along, well, the poor farmer had just about thrown up his hands and said, I guess I'm going to have to miss the services at my synagogue. Now, ordinarily, being the kind of guy he was, Reb Nakum would have paid no attention whatsoever to the plight, the problems of this poor farmer. But on this occasion, he was about to drive on by, but he looked in his rear-view mirror and he saw the farmer and suddenly he felt this very strange sensation. He felt sorry for the farmer. So he backed up and he got out of his car and he offered to help. And he said, you know, if you've got a chain, a sturdy chain in the bed of your truck, perhaps we can hook it onto the bumper of my car and I can pull you out of the ditch. Well, as it happened, the farmer did have a good sturdy chain and between the two of them, they did manage to get that truck out of the mud and back onto the road. And as they were congratulating each other and saying goodbye to each other, Reb Nakum saw on the good clothes of the farmer that because of all of his efforts, there was this little bit of mud that was sticking to his suit. And so he flicked it off with his finger and said, now, my friend, you are ready to go to your synagogue for the Sabbath service. And so they parted. And that good warm feeling that Reb Nakum had, well, it pretty soon kind of faded away. And Reb Nakum went back to his normal business practices, manipulating people, cheating people. And he never repeated that little good act that he had done that night. He never did anything like that again in his life. Many years later, Reb Nakum died. And he found himself standing before the gates of heaven, seeking to be admitted. I want to get into heaven just like everybody wants to get into heaven. But before that could happen, everything in his life, everything he had ever done had to be evaluated. He had to be graded. And so in order to do this, there were two angels standing on either side of the gates of heaven. And one of them was the accusing angel, kind of like a prosecutor who tries to find out all the things that Reb Nakum did that would prohibit him from going into heaven. And on the other side, there was the defender who was going to find out all the good things that Reb Nakum had done that would allow him to come into heaven. Well, as the prosecutor, the accusing angel, looked over the long record of Reb Nakum's life, he found a lot of very negative stuff. Reb Nakum had only devoted himself to amassing more and more riches. He never really took care of his kids or his wife, had no real friends, had never done anything particularly good to benefit his community. Now between these two angels in front of the gates, there was this huge scale. And the accusing angel took all of this information that he had about Reb Nakum, all this bad stuff, and he put it on one side of the scale. And the scale tipped all the way over toward the negative side. It didn't look so good for Reb Nakum. And then the defending angel, well, he didn't know exactly what to do. He said there's probably not a whole lot I can do to get that scale to tip back the other way. And he looked and he looked and he looked all through Reb Nakum's life and he could only find one bright spot. And that was when Reb Nakum had helped that poor farmer to get out of the ditch. And so the angel had an idea. He took that big heavy truck and he put it on the other side of the scale. And the scale swung to and fro, but it ever so slightly went back to the negative. It didn't look like Reb Nakum was going to get into heaven. But then the angel noticed something. There's a little tiny piece of mud that Reb Nakum had flicked from the farmer's good clothes. And so the angel put that little piece of mud up next to the truck and the scale swung ever so slightly in the positive direction. Reb Nakum was able to enter heaven. Now some people believe in heaven and some people believe in angels that weigh our good and bad deeds. But that's probably not the real point of this story. I don't think that's what the Reb I had in mind when he wrote this story. The real story is this. We never know when some small little act of kindness that we do is going to have some very, very positive results. Reb Nakum only did one good thing in his whole life. May there be many such acts in our lives. Thank you for listening to my story. We're going to sing you out with him, number 34. Enjoy your classes. Social critic, commentator, poet, and she is also a practicing Buddhist. To work for peace and justice, we begin with the individual practice of love because it is there that we can experience firsthand love's transformative power. Attending to the damaging impact of abuse in many of our childhoods helps us eventually to cultivate the mind of love because abuse is always about lovelessness and if we grow into our adult years without knowing how to love, how then can we create social movements that will end domination, exploitation, and oppression? Now to begin with this practice of love we first must slow down and be still enough to bear witness to the present moment. And if we accept that love is a combination of care, commitment, knowledge, responsibility, respect, and trust, we can then be guided by all of these understandings, these apprehensions. We can use these skillful means as a map in our daily lives to determine right actions. When we cultivate the mind of love, we are, as Sharon Salzburg says, cultivating the good. And that means recovering the incandescent power of love that is present in potential in all of us and using the tools of spiritual practice to sustain our real moment-to-moment experience of that vision. To be transformed by the practice of love is to be born again. It is to experience spiritual renewal. What I witness daily is the longing for that renewal but also the fear that our lives will be changed utterly if we choose to love. And that fear can paralyze us. It can leave us stuck in the place of suffering. When we commit to love in our daily lives, old habits are shattered because we are no longer playing by the safe rules of the status quo. Love moves us into a new ground of being. We are necessarily working to end domination. But this movement is what people fear. If we are to galvanize the collective longing for spiritual well-being that is found in the practice of love, we must be more willing to identify the forms that that longing will take in our individual daily lives. Folks need to know the ways we change and are changed when we love. And it's only by bearing concrete witness to love's transformative power in our daily lives that we can assure those who are fearful that commitment to love will be redemptive that it is, in fact, a way to experience salvation. And the second reading is a short poem by the well-known poet Ellen Bass. What if you knew you'd be the last to touch someone? If you were taking tickets, for example, at the theater, tearing them, giving back the ragged stubs, you might take care to touch the palm, brush the fingertips along the lifelines' crease. When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase too slowly through the airport, when the car in front of me doesn't signal, when the clerk at the pharmacy won't say thank you, I don't remember that they are going to die. A friend told me she'd been with her aunt. They just had lunch, and the waiter, a young gay man with plum black eyes, joked as he served coffee, kissed her aunt's powdered cheeks when they left. And then they walked half a block and her aunt dropped dead on the sidewalk. How close does the dragon's spume have to come? How wide does the crack in heaven have to split? What would people look like if we could see them as they really are, soaked in honey, stung and swollen and reckless and pinned against time? Please join me now in the spirit of meditation. Whatever storms we have weathered, whatever difficulties we have endured these past few weeks, grateful now for a noticeable lengthening of days, for more abundant sunlight glancing off icicles, resplendent upon snowy fields. We have reached a turning point in winter, and although still remote, spring seems possible now. And yet half of February still spreads out before us, a short but often frigid month, winter's doldrums some would say. At this time of year, holiday gaiety is already half forgotten. Daffodils, those harbingers of spring, are still deeply dormant. So what consolations has February to offer? What does it promise besides four weeks of cold, lent and disciplined and lessons of self-denial? It is, thank goodness, a month restricted in most years to 28 days. Who would wish it more? And yet this can be a very precious time, an opportunity for making and renewing connections for foraging bonds of community. A dearth of distractions, that's the hidden blessing of February. There's no World Series, no Chris Kringle, no cows on the concourse. February is free of graduations, weddings and vacations also are few. What good then is February? Of all the months of the year, there's one during which we can be most present for and to one another. At home, in the workplace, in our spiritual communities. And so if this unpraised and underappreciated month is in many ways a test of our endurance, may it also be a test of our affections. And may we remember that when we hold on to each other and skate through it together, February can be warm and it can be lovely. Blessed be. Friends, wonderful to have you back and providing such lovely music for our services. According to his biographers, Abraham Lincoln, whose 206th birthday fell on Thursday, Abraham Lincoln was well known for his generous spirit. As a young attorney, he often represented indigence and on many occasions he charged less than was typical for an attorney's services. Although hardly a wealthy man, Lincoln donated money to those who were ill or disabled or facing severe financial difficulties. And then later as president, Lincoln was also magnanimous, often granting pardons to AWOL soldiers who otherwise would have faced severe punishment. On one notable occasion, he was moved by the entreaties of the mother and wife of a man who had been imprisoned for draft evasion. When the two women left his office and he had promised to pardon this man, his good friend, William Speed, said to Lincoln, Lincoln, with my knowledge of your nervous sensibilities, it is a wonder that these kind of encounters don't kill you. And in reply, Lincoln admitted that he did have a nervous disorder, but he said, what you witnessed was the only thing that I have done today that gave me any real pleasure. They went on saying, Speed, die when I must. I want it said of me by those who come after that I always try to pluck up a thistle and plant a flower where I thought a flower would grow. The closing paragraph of Lincoln's second inaugural address, notable for its brevity as well as its eloquence, reflected this sensitive man's ardent wish for reconciliation between north and south. Lincoln spoke in that paragraph of binding up wounds, of caring for the widows and the orphans, and of course of treating the defeated with charity. Few presidents before or after have possessed as benevolent a spirit as Abraham Lincoln. And yet he was also the man who used the authority of his office to enter into and to persevere in a conflict that ultimately would claim the lives of 600,000 combatants and wound a half million more, figures that nearly matched those of all the country's wars before and since. One can hardly imagine what it must have been like to be Lincoln and to experience that profound sense of cognitive dissonance. To the word charity, as it is commonly used today, hardly seems to do justice to a man of Lincoln and of his temperament. Most Americans today undoubtedly feel an obligation to be charitable, to make modest donations to worthy causes to so-called charities, and if we are in a position to itemize then to deduct those amounts from our income tax. Behaving in a charitable manner toward others is also an ethos that many of us try to uphold even as Reb Nakem did with that farmer that was stuck in the ditch. Perhaps some of you saw an article recently published in The Cap Times that was entitled Snow Removal Acts of Kindness. The author of this article showcased several vigorous Madisonians who rise early after every snowfall, clear their own sidewalks and driveways, and then move on to other properties. One such benefactor with older neighbors said that shoveling for others is a responsibility all younger homeowners should feel good about. It does not appear that the beneficiaries of this service request assistance, the snow shovelers simply do this work because it strikes them as the appropriate and the right thing to do. People perform random acts of kindness in various other ways, like pulling a pole at the toll booth for the car behind them, helping an elder to load groceries into his or her car, giving up their seat to someone who looks like they're struggling when they get onto the bus. And such simple gestures are important because they help to build social capital. They reinforce our collective sense of solidarity. A rather amusing example of this was shared by a man named Richard Herman recently in explaining why he likes living in small towns. His mother borrowed his pickup truck to go shopping, but Richard had left his fishing pole in the truck's passenger seat, and as his mother was turning the corner, the pole fell over against her and the hook got snagged in her collar. Unable to extract the hook in the truck, she walked into the grocery store carrying the pole, seeking help from the elderly store owner, but he could not get the hook out either, so he simply walked behind her carrying the pole as she picked up her groceries. You can't get that kind of service in the city, Richard Herman says. Maybe at Metcalf's, you can, I don't know. Now, while all of this is really quite lovely, it doesn't, I believe, get to the essence of charity. Charity is about more than doing nice things for people on occasion. It's about more than contributing to a few causes with which we happen to sympathize. The English word comes from the Latin carus, which simply means something that is dear to us, and the noun form is caritas, which translates as charity, and that word appears numerous times in the New Testament. But caritas and charity are themselves the translation from the Greek, from a word agape, agape, which the New Testament writers use to denote a special, very sacrificial kind of love, the kind of love that can, indeed, be transformative. According to the apostle Paul, of all the gifts of the Spirit, agape is the one that Christians should be most eager to acquire. And now, faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of them is love. Agape describes God's love for human beings, and God expects human beings to show the same sort of consideration to act in the spirit of agape with one another. Love of neighbor, love of God are roughly equivalent. Now, more recent editions of the English language Bible have struck the word charity out, and they have replaced it with love. Now, good arguments can be made for either choice, but the problem with love is that our English word lacks the precision of the Greek language in which the New Testament was originally composed. Love for the Greeks could mean several different things. It could mean arrows, the passionate, carnal, romantic love that we celebrated yesterday on Valentine's Day. Arrows is never mentioned in the Greek New Testament. Phileon is a love that binds siblings and close friends together. Now, that is mentioned on occasion in the Bible, and Phileon exists between kindred spirits, but it excludes strangers or more casual acquaintances. Agape differs from both arrows and Phileon because it is indiscriminate. It's comprehensive, and it is disinterested. Agape rejects no one. It expects nothing. If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that? Jesus asks his followers in the Gospel of Luke. After all, even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, is there any merit in that? After all, even the sinners do as much. If you lend to those from whom you hope to gain, is there any merit in that? Even sinners lend to sinners in order to get much in return. And so I say to you, love your enemies. Do good and lend without any thought for yourself. But that way you will be children of the most high who is generous to the ungrateful and to the wicked. This is the kind of love that President Lincoln had in mind when, with the Civil War winding down, he implored his fellow citizens to lay their hurts, lay their grievances aside, and act with charity toward their Confederate adversaries. But just as Jesus was crucified, Lincoln was assassinated. And the spirit of Agape died with him. And instead, retributive measures were adopted. The wounds of the Civil War continued to fester. Now, Agape differs from Eros and Philia in another important respect. The latter two arise more or less effortlessly as desire, as affection. Eros and Philia belong to us as natural endowments. Agape is different in that it requires a certain measure of discipline on our part, the exercise of willpower. It is something we must choose to actively practice and to prioritize. It's the kind of love that we have to learn, my colleague Arthur Foote writes. It's like a ladder that we spend our whole lifetime climbing, never quite managing to get to the top run. Now, this is not to say that Agape is a sensibility that is wholly absent from our basic human nature. Richard Dawkins has suggested that we all possess something that he calls a selfish gene, which we turn to when we want to prioritize our own personal survival. But we are also born, it appears, with a capacity to empathize. Buddhism teaches that human beings are intrinsically compassionate. Each of us invested with the potential for exceptional kindness. And the tension between these two tendencies is something that we do have to deal with almost on a daily basis. And because so many forces and so much of our conditioning push us toward self-interest, the actualization of that selfish gene, it does often take a concerted conscious effort to connect with that compassionate and loving side of ourselves. Eros and Philia, they come easily. But thinking and acting charitably toward those with whom we have little in common, whose values are at variance with our own, that is a much greater challenge. But it's precisely what Agape prescribes. In one of her books, the spiritual writer Anne Lamotte describes the anger and the revulsion she felt toward George W. Bush following the invasion of Iraq. And she had convinced herself, even as a good Christian, that such sentiments were wholly justified. But then Anne Lamotte was brought up short one Sunday morning in the Presbyterian church that she attends. The theme of the day's sermon, Love for One's Enemies. This drives me crazy, Lamotte writes, that God seems to have no taste, no standards. And yet on most days, she says, this is what gives us just a grain of hope. And so in the days and weeks that followed, Lamotte did her best to try to turn around her attitude, to get past her distaste for his policies and to see the president as a flawed and struggling and mortal human being like herself. Someday she says, I'm more successful at doing this than others. But she perseveres because she believes, she believes wholeheartedly that loving the people in this White House is the single most subversive position I can take. Loving one's enemies does not mean acquiescing to their agenda. It does not mean excusing their behavior. It does not mean failing to hold an offending party accountable. But it does mean resisting the temptation to demonize. It means striving to be patient rather than petulant, speaking and acting out of good will rather than ill will. As the 14th century Flemish mystic John of Roycebrook put it, a heart full of kindness is like a lamp full of precious oil. For the oil of mercy enlightens the airing sinner with a good example. And with words and works of comfort it anoints and heals those whose hearts are wounded or grieved or perplexed. And it is a fire and a light for those who dwell in the virtues, in the fire of charity, and neither jealousy nor envy can ever perturb it. And when I think about agape or charity as an active principle in today's world, the first thing that comes to mind is restorative justice. By bringing victims, perpetrators, other stakeholders together to discuss a crime and the harm that it has caused, by doing this with willing parties, emotional healing is promoted, painful residues of bitterness and shame can be removed. Restorative justice work can be extraordinarily uncomfortable for its participants, but it does serve to awaken our native empathy and to help people move closer to forgiveness. Now, in this respect, we find in Buddhism a concept called bodhicitta, which is closely related to agape. Bodhicitta is a cognate of the Sanskrit word bodhi, which means awake, and cheetah, which can mean either mind or heart. So bodhicitta is the awakened heart or the awakened mind. But Chodron describes bodhicitta as a soft spot in our psyche, a vulnerable and tender place, which she says even the cruelest people possess. And she says when we are open, when we allow ourselves to be affected, to be touched by the sight of suffering, then we will, of course, initially feel this deep sadness. But then if we are patient with ourselves, out of this sadness, a profound and all-embracing compassion will emerge. Bodhicitta, she says, can humble us when we are arrogant, and it can soften us when we are being unkind. Joanna Macy is another Buddhist teacher, and she shares her memories of work that she had done with Tibetan refugees in northern India some half-century ago. And during her service to these Tibetan refugees, a Buddhist nun approached her and they got into conversation. They began talking about compassion, and the nun said, I have this technique for developing greater compassion. She said, I remind myself that over countless lifetimes, every sentient being has been my mother. View someone as your mother, caring for you, sacrificing for you, and your heart will naturally open to them. Joanna Macy listened to this elderly non-respectfully, but she concluded that because she didn't believe in reincarnation, the teaching didn't apply to her. But on the other hand, she did feel troubled when she would be on the road and she would observe these gaunt Indian laborers struggling under their heavy loads, and oftentimes she found that she could not look at them. She had to turn away. She could not face such suffering, such a spectacle. And one day, she observed a man stumbling and straining under the weight of this enormous tree trunk on his back. And she didn't look away. And she said, suddenly I felt the furniture in my mind rearranged. The man had ceased to be an abstraction to her, ceased to be the faceless victim of a cruel and exploitive economic system. Now, he was her mother. He was her child. And she experienced this deep sense of kinship. And she says, and how it did not matter whether or not I believed in reincarnation. Now, unfortunately, it is all too easy to look away, to turn one's back on misfortune and to rationalize self-protective and ungenerous behavior. There's Alice, a woman that I read about recently. She lives in Texas. She remains to this day deeply troubled by her experience with the refugees that came to her community in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Initially, Alice says she tried to be supportive. She baked cobbler, brought meals to the door, rounded up furniture for the empty houses, searched for employment for this distressed family that had moved from New Orleans into the house next to her. And she tried to do this for several months, but then one day the family was gone, perhaps returned to New Orleans without hardly saying, thank you or goodbye. And shortly after that, Alice was approached by another neighbor, two houses down, who had also been displaced by the hurricane. The woman appeared at her door looking disheveled and agitated with two small children in tow. And this young woman wanted to know whether Alice had a long extension cord that she could borrow and plug into Alice's power source because her power had been turned off and would only be turned back on in a couple of days. Alice hesitated because her own utility bills in late spring were already pretty hefty in southeast Texas and because she also was subsisting on a limited income. And then she remembered that other neighbor who had departed without ever showing the first sign of gratitude for all the assistance she had given. So Alice told this new neighbor, you know I need to take some time to see if I have a long extension cord. Why don't you come back in an hour? Then Alice got on the telephone. She called her good friend across the street and told her what had happened. The friend gave Alice an earful. Those people, she said, are just disgusting. They have so much gall. The young mother returned. Alice told her she did not have an extension cord and could not be of any assistance. The woman looked down, mumbled a thank you anyway and retreated to her house. And later on Alice reflected, was I punishing this woman because of the ingratitude of those other neighbors? And perhaps it's typical for people to borrow electricity from each other in New Orleans when one or the other of the family's power has been turd off. But try as she might. Alice could not settle in her mind the issue of her own guilt. I cannot, she says, muffle my guilt. So how do we avoid such rationalizations? How do we tap more effectively into our own charitable instincts and bring them more consistently into play in our lives? Oftentimes it simply means moving at least a little way out of our comfort zone. If we are never in touch with those who live on the other side of the tracks, our empathy is likely to remain dormant. And research does show that people who live in economically diverse communities, they are more generous and they are more charitable than those who live in wealthy enclaves. And not surprisingly, those who volunteer in food pantries, homeless shelters, those who tutor in the public schools become more aware of that soft spot in their own psyches. Unfortunately, those who have the most resources, the most ability to give, those who could make the greatest difference in their collective fortunes are often those who are the least likely to exhibit bodhicitta or agape. Because today, Americans in the top quintile, the top economic quintile, give less than half as much of their earnings to charity as those who are in the bottom quintile. 1.4% for the top quintile, 3.5% for the bottom quintile. Moreover, relatively fewer donations that come from the top quintile are directed to those in the greatest need. I read recently that of the 50 largest individual gifts to public charities in 2012, not a single one of those gifts went to an agency that primarily serves the poor and the dispossessed. Where did those gifts go? Those huge gifts of charity. 34 went to prestigious universities. The remainder went to museums, medical facilities and other institutions that cater to the nation's elite. This really shouldn't surprise us because some of you may have seen a recent poll of America's wealthiest citizens, a majority of whom characterized poor people as lazy, unmotivated and undeserving of public support. The Russian religious and political philosopher Nikolai Berdeyev once said that the question of bread for myself, that is a material question. The question of bread for my neighbor, that's a spiritual question. Berdeyev got it right, bodhicitta, charity, agape, whatever name you care to give it. That is a spiritual value. It demands a spiritual practice and it attests most clearly to the attention that we have given to our own spiritual lives. It is transformative. It is, as Bell Hooks observed, a way for any of us to experience salvation. Blessed be. In the spirit of love and charity, you will note in your order of service that our gifts today will be directed to the Unitary Universalist Associations standing on the side of Love Campaign. Please be generous. We gather each week as a community of memory and of hope. And to this time, we bring our whole and our broken cells, carrying with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past, the past, the present, the future, the future. We gather each week as a community of memory and of hope. And to this time, we bring our whole and our broken cells, the joys and sorrows of the recent past, seeking here a place where they can be received and celebrated and shared. We would pause now to acknowledge a message from Jennifer Yancey who would like to offer up healing thoughts and prayers to the friends and family of Allison Norland, a Fitchburg teen who was killed in a car accident last Wednesday. Allison, she says, was a student of mine at Oregon High School and her passing has been a huge loss to the kids at that school. And then, I would like to acknowledge the passing of Dan Bronner's father last week. He died in Florida after a lengthy and difficult period of decline and Dan was in Florida this past week for the funeral that was held on Thursday and as you can see, he is back with us in the saddle this morning. And in addition to those just mentioned, we would also acknowledge any unarticulated joys and sorrows that might remain among us in our hearts. Please join me now for just a moment of silence and the spirit of empathy and hope. And so by virtue of our brief time spent together today, may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded. Please turn now to our closing hymn number 86 and rise once more in body or in spirit. Close with these words from the Jesuit writer, Anthony D'Amalo. Everywhere in the world people are in search of love for everyone is convinced that love alone can make life meaningful, can make it worth living. But how very few understand what love really is. How few know how it arises and expands in the human heart. Blessed be and amen. Please be seated.