 Well, I mean, I'm curious to see the process. We have a lot of great... I mean, I'm curious to hear that, like, the reason why people will know about the, uh, technology that's coming with that, is, like, um, the posterior, like, controls is actually part of the general law. Yes, I'd like to see, like, the other, like, the other side of the revolution, all right? You can all agree on that. But, they said that there's a totally different place where people work. You can extend your time, you know, by people, or, actually, you can, like, see what people are doing, and you can see, like, see what people are doing. So, if you don't get to know that, yeah, you can have a good time. What about, like, just being able to freely, you know, you can have a good time. What about, like, the other side of the revolution? You can see, like, this is like, this is like, the way people view things, this continues. Most of it, for the voting? Yeah, I know. I see the 572 for the voting? Yeah, those are, like, runningのは, Thank you. Please join me for a moment of centering silence. The end gathering hymn is number 244 in your hymnals, the verse that we're going to sing is printed in your pamphlet though. Good morning. Welcome to 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. Human Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. I'm Maureen Friend and on behalf of the congregation, I'd like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation. So whoever you are and wherever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your drinks and your questions. Members of our lay staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding tealstone wear coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith and who would love to visit with you. Experience guides are generally available, sorry, no guide available today. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service but if a child needs to talk or to move around, the child haven or the commons are good places to retire. The service can still be seen and heard from those areas and speaking of noise, it's a good time to turn off your cell phone. So now I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help the services run smoothly. We have a sound operator today who is Mark Schultz and lay ministers that you recognize and smiley, several greeters. So Janine Nosbaum, Katie Belfos and again, and Usher, I think it's Mari Marion. I didn't ask you beforehand, but thank you. And the hospitality is made ready by Christy Minhan. The pulpit and the orchids are being taken care of by Hannah Pinkerton this week. The flowers are offered by Jan O'Neill. I have a special announcement because Roz noticed that when she pulled into the parking garage today that the outdoor was stuck so you might have to go out the indoor when you leave services today, but we're trying to take care of it. So please note the announcements in the red floor insert of your order of service which describe upcoming events at the society and provide more information about today's activities. Again, welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart, and stir your spirit. Frozen pipes, stiff joints, head colds, heavy boots, dead batteries. We know only too well the burdens of winter, but let us attend on this lovely morning to its blessings. Cozy clothing, crackling fires, crystalline mornings and star-studded nights. Hot cereal, mold cider, bowl games, home-baked cookies, long evenings full of leisure. Risk mornings laced with energy. The season is full of unsung blessings. I invite you to consider now the ways in which winter might bless you. Please rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. If you will join me in reading the words of affirmation that accompany the kindling of the flame. This chalice flame is a frail thing easily extinguished by the cold wind of cynicism and indifference. But may this small beacon remind us of the unquenchable power of the spirit. May we be bearers of the light that lifts weary spirits and increases the world's joy. And in that spirit, please turn to your neighbor and exchange with them a warm greeting. Please be seated. I see a small scattering of young people in the chairs, and if any of you would like to come forward for the message for all ages, I would feel less lonely. As soon as Anne is demonstrating, you don't have to be under the age of ten. All ages. It is a message for all ages. Thank you for joining me. So we know that there's a big day coming pretty soon, right? Yes, that would be Christmas, and Hanukkah is right near Christmas too, and there's new years, and there's the solstice that's coming up, and today it's just two weeks from Christmas. But I bet one of the things you didn't know is that our Christmas celebrations might look a little different if not for some Unitarians. So for instance, in the United States, people didn't start putting Christmas trees in their homes until a German came to this country and brought that custom to the United States, and his name was Charles Fohlen, and he was a Unitarian minister in Massachusetts, and he put a Christmas tree on his table and the family celebrated with what may have been the first Christmas tree in America, and it became a very popular custom, so more and more people started doing it, and I'll bet almost everybody here has a Christmas tree, or at least a Hanukkah bush. And then there is that wonderful song that I'm sure all of you have sung, or at least heard, it's on the radio all the time, it's called Jingle Bells. Anybody heard Jingle Bells? Now that song was composed by another Unitarian by the name of James Pierpont, who was the organist at the Unitarian Church in Savannah, Georgia, where his brother was the minister. Now I always thought it was just a little bit weird that this song that celebrates dashing through the snow in a one-horse-open sleigh was composed by a man in Savannah, Georgia, where it very seldom snows, but actually Pierpont originally was from Massachusetts. And then there was another famous Christmas song that was written by Edmund Hamilton Sears, and he was the Unitarian minister as well, and he was from Massachusetts and he was very, very important before the Civil War in working to try to free the slaves, and his song was It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, and we sang the last verse of that at the beginning of our service today, but perhaps the Unitarian who made the most important contribution to our Christmas traditions was not an American, but an English writer, a novelist by the name of Charles Dickens. Charles Dickens was probably the most popular writer in the 19th century, and if people don't know anything else about him, they know that he created those weird characters, Ebenezer Scrooge. You heard of Scrooge? And the ghosts, the spirits of Christmas past and present and future, and Bob and Mary Cratchit and their young disabled son, Tiny Tim. And so Dickens' story of Christmas Carol has been performed for years and years. It's performed every year here in Madison in the theaters. It's been made into movies. It's even been made into cartoon shows. One of them stars Mr. Magoo as Scrooge. And when I was a kid, a Christmas Carol was always shown on Christmas Eve on the television, and I always made a point to watch the Christmas Carol. I never got tired of that story. But even if you have not seen or read the Christmas Carol, I'm sure that most people have heard, well, maybe you haven't, of Scrooge. Okay. And Scrooge was known to be a tightwad. What's a tightwad? A penny-pencher. He was very greedy and selfish, and he never shared anything. And he had this clerk by the name of Cratchit, Bob Cratchit, who worked, you know, at his business, and he was very mean to Bob Cratchit. And then there's this other really scary character in the story called Jacob Marley, and he was Scrooge's business partner before he died. And he was just as selfish as Scrooge was. And then after he died, he was condemned to wear these heavy chains around him, and he dragged them all over the place as punishment for having been such a bad person when he was alive. But Scrooge himself is the person that's at the center of the story. And we find out that he's a very cold and lonely old man obsessed with nothing but making money and had no sympathy and no love for anyone else. And he overworks poor Bob Cratchit, and he doesn't even want to give him a day off on Christmas, Christmas Day, to spend with his family. Well, on Christmas Eve, Scrooge returns from his office to his dim apartment, and he eats this bowl of cold, kind of disgusting soup. And he goes to bed and he pulls the covers up around his chin and he goes to sleep. And suddenly he wakes up because there is a spirit in his room, the spirit of Christmas past. And then there's going to be the spirit of Christmas present and the spirit of Christmas future. And all three of these ghosts or these spirits, they take Scrooge and they take him to all these different places and they show him what a bad selfish person he's been his whole life and it still is. Then he goes back home after the third spirit has visited and he goes back to sleep, he wakes up the next morning and everything's OK. Everything's like it was. But he kind of is wondering, maybe I should change a little. And so he decides at that point in time, he's going to be a different kind of person. But I don't really think it was the three spirits that really changed Ebenezer Scrooge's mind. I think it had more to do with Tiny Tim, Bob and Mary Cratchit's young son who has to use a crutch because he's lame. He's a very sweet and a very loving child. And despite his family's poverty, they didn't have much money and his disability. He never feels sorry for himself. He never complains. And so when his family sits down to this very meager meal on Christmas Eve, Tiny Tim's the one that raises his glass and says, God bless us, everyone. Aren't we lucky? So I think that Tiny Tim is really the hero of the Christmas Carol because he's so cheerful and he's so joyous. And he finds that even these simple pleasures can uplift his whole family. And he even refuses to think badly about Ebenezer Scrooge. Even though Scrooge won't share any of his money with his family or with anybody else, because he believes that everybody can be made better, even Ebenezer Scrooge. And so this poor young child's bright spirit has an amazing effect on other people, including on Scrooge. Because at one point in the story, accompanied by the spirit of Christmas present, Scrooge and the spirit visit the Cratchits' house. They're invisible. Nobody can see him. But they overhear what the Cratchits are saying at their dinner table. And a lot of what they have to say isn't very nice about Scrooge. It's pretty critical it's about Scrooge, except for Tiny Tim. He refuses to say anything bad about Scrooge. He's the exception. And so Scrooge is powerfully moved by that, by the sweetness and the generous heart of little Tiny Tim. So I don't really think it was those powerful spirits past, present, and future that transformed Ebenezer Scrooge. I think it was that helpless little boy, Tiny Tim, who touched his conscience and stole his heart. So if you haven't seen the story or read it, it's a really good story. And maybe it's one that your parents could read them. So thank you for joining me. And I'm glad that you all are here this morning, delaying your sledding and your skiing, whatever else you're going to do this afternoon. And we're going to sing you out with him 323. So please enjoy your classes. I'm sure your teachers will appreciate your presence. Please be seated. And so we continue our service this morning with a selection from the Old Testament book of Isaiah, the 11th chapter. And some of the images may be familiar to you. A chute shall come out of the stump of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and fear of the Lord. And he shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear. But with righteousness, he shall judge the poor and decide with equity for the meek of the earth. And a wolf shall lie down with a lamb and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together. And a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall graze, the young shall lie down together and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp and the weaned child shall put its hand in the adder's den. And they will not destroy on all of my holy mountain. And the earth shall be full of knowledge of the Lord, even as the waters of the sea cover the earth. And then this from a contemporary writer, Ray Kurzweil, from an essay that he composed in 2006. We stand at the threshold of the most profound and transformative event in the history of humanity, the singularity. What is the singularity? From my perspective, the singularity is a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so fast, so far reaching that human existence on this planet will be irreversibly altered. We will combine our brain power, the knowledge, skills, and personality quirks that make us human with computer power in order to think, reason, communicate, and create in ways that we can scarcely even contemplate today. This merger of man and machine coupled with the sudden explosion of machine intelligence and rapid innovation in gene research and nanotechnology, this will result in a world where there is no distinction between the biological and the mechanical or between physical and virtual reality. These technological revolutions will allow us to transcend our frail bodies with all of their limitations. Illness, as we know it, will be eradicated through the use of nanotechnology. We'll be able to manufacture almost any physical product on demand World hunger and poverty will be solved. Pollution will vanish. Human existence will undergo a quantum leap in evolution. We'll be able to live as long as we choose. The coming of into being of such a world is in essence the singularity. Now, our forebears expected what lay ahead of them that it would resemble what they'd already experienced with few exceptions, because they had lived during a period of time when the rate of technological innovation was so slow, it was almost unnoticeable, and thus their expectations of an unchanged future were continuously fulfilled. But today we have experienced the acceleration of that curve, and therefore we expect continuous technological progress and the social repercussions that will follow from it. Now, only technology, with its ability to provide orders of magnitude of advances in capability and affordability, only technology has the power to confront problems such as poverty, disease, pollution, and all the other overriding concerns of society today. The benefits of applying ourselves to these challenges cannot be overstated. The development of technology enables the persistence of the accelerating pace that started out with our own biological evolution, and it will continue until the entire universe is at our fingertips. Thank you, Sean. Wonderful to have you with us this morning, and as I was remarking at the first hour, you can imagine it's quite a process to bring this instrument in here, and originally that was supposed to happen this morning, but with the weather forecast, Dan and Sean were here last night assembling the marimbas so that we would be able to enjoy the music this morning, so thank you very much. The year was 1844, and a Wisconsinite by the name of Warren Chase had a vision. He had been studying the writings of a French philosopher named Charles Fourier, and so Chase wished to establish a planned community based on Fourier's prescriptions. Now, individuals wishing to join this enterprise, they were supposed to purchase and to hold shares while living and working together to advance the association's interests and to serve its mission. And so Chase and a few other enthusiasts, they set about exploring the state, hoping to find the optimal location for a Wisconsin phalanx, as it was called, and they settled upon a parcel of first-generation and they settled upon a parcel of fertile land with a clear running stream near Green Lake in Marquette County. Twenty families initially enlisted in the effort. They made the required financial investment. They agreed to follow the association's constitution and abide by its bylaws. And the residents, they enjoyed a communal lifestyle. They all shared space in three large dormitories, and together they tended the jointly owned crops and livestock and milling operations of the association. Free schooling was provided for all children, and regular meetings were held not only to conduct business, but also to promote social harmony. The phalanx was officially non-sectarian and several different faith traditions were represented. Each one of them had their own dedicated worship service. Success followed. And within two years, membership had doubled and additional property had been acquired. The community was clearly flourishing economically but also domestically. Warren Chase wrote that the four great evils with which the world is afflicted, intoxication, lawsuits, quarreling, profane swearing, these never have, and with the present character and prevailing habits of our members, never will find admittance into our society. A curious visitor to the phalanx came away duly impressed. In an 1847 letter to the New York Tribune, he wrote that this experiment showed the capability of the human race to rise above the social evils that afflict humankind, to attain a mental elevation that few had ever hoped for. And then, just five years after its founding, the association stood on the brink of disillusion. The proximate cause, its resident historian observed, was personal ambition and greed. As the result of its financial success, shares in the association had risen in value. And so a few opportunists within the community sought to maximize their private advantage by purchasing other members' shares and then selling them. The historian continues, being absorbed in the worldwide spirit of speculation, they forgot the necessity of social change, which once appeared to them to be so important. Another observer concurred. The cause of the breaking up, he said, was just the love of money and want of love for the association. Now the Wisconsin phalanx was but one of many experimental communities, created with the hope that under the proper conditions, this human proclivity for greed, aggressiveness, jealousy and dishonesty that all of this could be overcome. Idealistic Unitarians and Universalists founded a number of these communities, including Brook Farm at Hopedale in Massachusetts. There was Oneida in upstate New York, and Fourier inspired phalanxes in a number of other locations. As Akash Kapoor notes, this period between the turn of the 19th century and the Civil War, this was the long, sunny season of American utopianism. And in the end, however, every single one of these enterprises failed, usually within a single decade. In nearly every instance Kapoor observes, egoism, acquisitiveness, competitiveness, all the other ills that the human flesh is prone to, these bob repeatedly to the surface, like a cork that will not stay submerged. But this longing for a much improved, if not an unblemished world, appears to be rooted in a fundamental discontent that we all have for the way things are and in our imaginative ability to paint a much prettier picture. More than 2,500 years ago, the author of the book of Isaiah, whom we've already heard from, he looked forward to the coming of the Messiah, at which time God would restore the world to its original prelapsarian perfection, and with paradise restored, humans and beasts alike would live forever in peace and in plenty. Meanwhile, around the corner in Greece, Plato was hard at work composing his magnum opus, a republic in which he outlined the features of a just and equitable society presided over by a wise and knowing, benevolent despot, the philosopher king. In the third century BCE, India produced just such a figure, a philosopher king in the presence of Ahsoka, because Ahsoka had converted to Buddhism and this ancient ruler was determined to translate Buddhism's peaceful principles into public policy. But unfortunately, the experiment hardly outlived his own lifetime. Moving forward to the 16th century, Sir Thomas Moore, a Catholic cleric and the Lord Chancellor of England, he coined that term that would later be associated with all such enterprises, the term utopia. In Moore's imaginative utopia, private property was abolished, and with its abolishment, inequality, envy, crime, they disappeared as well. And despite his record as a persecutor of English Protestants, Moore's utopia featured religious toleration with only atheists and those who denied the immortality of the soul excluded. And the point of Moore's fable, Stephen Greenblatt observed, was to imagine those conditions that would make it possible for an entire society to make the pursuit of happiness its collective goal. But of course, Moore's neologism, his new word utopia, literally meant no place, attesting to Moore's doubt that such a society could ever be brought into being in the first place. Now, strictly speaking, a utopia is something new under the sun. It represents a fresh approach to the problems that have always plagued humankind. Such was Plato's Republic. Such was Warren Chase's Wisconsin Phalanx. But Isaiah's vision of the peaceable kingdom, that was something quite different because that kingdom was based on the assumption that the world was once so much better, that the world was a place where all creatures flourished, where every life was secure. And there's another label that we give to that kind of vision, Arcadian. And according to W.H. Auden, the late British poet and critic, the word Arcadian harkens back to an ancient Greek province, Arcadia. And in Arcadia it was thought that this was a place where the good life had truly been established. And so Arcadians long for something desirable that has been lost, that once existed, rather than a brave new world, such as the utopian envisions. Now, our Puritan ancestors were classic Arcadians. Having reached the New England shore, they believed that what lay spread out before them was an authentic vestige of the Garden of Eden. That this was a place set aside by God that was just awaiting their arrival. And here the new Adam would find his or her proper home. In America, man is made new, George Steiner writes. The vestments of his fallen state stripped away. Of course it didn't work out that way. Soon these early settlements were embroiled in religious controversy, displaced bands of Indians became increasingly hostile, and with the growth of commerce, ethical compromises had to be made. Although they had fled the corruption and the vices of the old world, the Puritans too fell victim to their own human nature. We are on the whole, George Steiner writes, a cowardly homicidal bundle of appetites endowed with seemingly limitless instincts for destruction and self-destruction. And despite all evidence to the contrary, despite the unambiguous historical record, we still cling to these fantastic hopes, and our recently held elections provide ample proof of that. As I see it, the race for president featured both a Utopian and an Arcadian. The reforms that Senator Sanders campaigned on were often described in the press as idealistic, impractical, and incompatible with the country's prevailing economic ethos. Hoping to guide the country into a more egalitarian, post-capitalist future, Bernie Sanders resembled nothing so much as a Utopian. The president-elect, on the other hand, he campaigned as an Arcadian. Make America great again. Because in Donald Trump's mind, if not in his rhetoric, there was this period in American history where everything was copacetic, hunky dory. And this appears to have been the period between the end of World War II and perhaps the mid-1960s, at which point the counterculture, the civil rights, the women's and the peace movements and the welfare state all of this brought America's golden age to an inglorious end. But Mr. Trump promises to return the country to its past glory, to restore prosperity and respectability to those hardworking Americans whose birthright has been stolen. A figure like Mr. Trump, Cory Robin observes, speaks for a special kind of victim, one who has lost something of value as opposed to the wretched of the earth whose chief complaint is that they never had anything to lose. This brand of victimhood connects his disinheritance to an experience that we all share, the experience of loss, and it weaves that experience into an ideology promising that whatever has been lost can be restored. And nothing is ever so cherished, Robin says, as that which we no longer possess. Now, unfortunately for those who have taken Mr. Trump's Arcadian promises seriously, unfortunately few, if any, of the conditions that prevailed 60 years ago can be replicated. The factors that contributed to America's ascendancy, they included our post-war position as the world's sole surviving industrial powerhouse, a powerful labor movement that fought successfully for wages and benefits, corporations that at that time were willing to invest in their employees and in their communities, a generous GI bill that made college education and home ownership available to a wide swath of Americans. And of course there were also those Jim Crow laws and those discriminatory practices that prevented inroads by the nation's minorities and guaranteed white privilege. So we have seen in our time the rise of what Mark Lila describes as redemptive reactionaries. Politicians whose appeal to the public typically begins with the line, once upon a time. And if history proves nothing else, it is that the extravagant hopes that such appeals elicit inevitably end in disappointment, leaving those who held those hopes more desolate and more aggrieved. And then what happens? Well, it won't be the President's fault if he fails to deliver on his promises. Scapegoats will be found. Others will be blamed for hindering the backward march to the Promised Land. Because it's happened before. It happened in ancient Rome. It happened in revolutionary France. It happened in Nazi Germany. It happened in communist Russia and China. The great philosopher Max Otto, former UW-Madison faculty and a member of this congregation, once said that idealism is fire. It may warm, it may burn, and it may consume. Before wrapping up, I want to introduce another species of utopians whose hopes rest less on political and economic upheaval than on technological innovation. We heard earlier from Ray Kurzweil. He, among others, believes that by merging man and machine, we can eradicate poverty, preserve the planet, and even cheat debt. Kurzweil is a computer geek, a futurist who styles himself a transhumanist. Another member of that elite club, named Michael Vassar, he predicts that a fairly total cultural transformation will begin within the next decade. He envisions a time in the near future when 5.9 billion people across the globe are going to have smartphones. At which time, he says, you will be able to work from anywhere, talk to anyone in the world, you can receive your goods by drone, pay for them with bitcoins, that is, if you don't have a 3D printer at home. As software eats everything, prices will plunge. You won't need much money to live like a king. It will not be a big deal if your job is made obsolete by a computer code or a robot. The rich will enjoy goods and be first in line for new experiences, but otherwise, there won't be any difference among people. Yes, inequality will increase, but it will cease to matter. Politics, as we know it, will lose relevance. Customer citizens armed with information will demand transparency, accountability, and choice. In the future, Facebook will be the new home of the public sphere. Google will automate everything. A pretty picture. But are transhumanists any more likely than their utopian forebears to see their dreams fulfilled? We have seen time and time again how each advance in machine capability delivers costs as well as benefits. A new source of energy can become a weapon of mass destruction. Innovative methods of crop production damage the top soil, kill off desirable insect species. Fast universal access to information, it makes possible the dissemination of false news, and so on. In the end, trappist Thomas Merton cautioned that there can be no peace on Earth without the kind of interchange that brings humankind back to its right mind. It's really rather silly to suppose that flawed, egocentric beings endowed with this perverse capacity to love and to hate at the very same time, that we are capable of engineering the perfect society or fulfilling our mythical fantasies. Our seriously imperfect beings, Walter Mosley says, so we need a platform today that simply accepts that fact. So he suggests that we pursue a more modest and pragmatic program that he calls un-topia. So many of our attempts over the centuries to reach a state of social perfection have ended in dystopian malfunction. As an un-topian, Mosley is less interested in transforming our social and political systems than in simply altering people's frame of mind, changing the way that they process reality. Let us dismantle our expectations of perfection and accept the world as a place where we're simply going to have to get used to muddling through with the modest but worthwhile goal of increasing humankind's general happiness step by step. George Eliot, the great 19th century novelist, coined a term for this approach, miliarism after the verb to ameliorate. Forget about perfection. Just work together to make things a little better. Doesn't sound terribly glamorous. This kind of modest agenda is not going to lend itself to political propagandizing. But if we could somehow realize this shift in our frame of mind, in our outlook, it might be possible to begin bridging some of our differences and developing fairer and more workable solutions to our collective problems. Miliarism is not going to take us to the promised land, but it might help to make the present less fraught and the future a whole lot less frightening. May it be so. Amen. It is now the time for the giving and the receiving of our offering that the Salvation Army of Dane County is the recipient of the outreach share of that program. And there are a couple of members of our Salvation Army team who will be in the comments today to answer any questions you might have about our work and our collaboration with the Salvation Army. And so please be generous. As part of our services this weekend, we are recognizing some individuals who officially and formally joined First Unitarian Society since last May. Overall, there were more than 60 people who took that step and there are a few in attendance at the 11 o'clock hour, although our attendance has been obviously handicapped somewhat by the snowy conditions. Becoming a member of a congregation like this one is a fairly straightforward proposition. You generally attend an orientation class, or if you're a young person, you finish our coming-of-age curriculum, signify your intention, profess agreement with our UU principles and our bond of union, then enter your name on our membership registry. In terms of preliminaries and mechanics, that's about all there is to it. But then we would want to ask, why would someone want to take that step in the first place? Well, we joined because we believe that the promotion of liberal religious values will make a difference in the world. It may not bring about the promised land, but a UU movement of strength will help to make our community and our planet a more peaceful and enlightened place. We make this commitment because we do believe in the transformative power of this institution, perhaps the ability to shift people's frame of reference a bit. And we join also because we hunger for a relationship with people like us who want to regard and be a part of a religion that thinks of it as an open-ended, ongoing quest for deeper meaning and more honest and authentic spiritual connection. Now, as members, we are responsible for strengthening the institution so that it can accomplish those tasks. We agree that religion is as much a public as it is a private affair and intensely communal as well as an individualistic endeavor. And so we honor our responsibilities to FUS when we do the following. When we make an effort to learn something about this tradition, we want to learn a little bit more about it this morning. It's history, it's principles, because we want to understand what it really means to embrace Unitarian Universalism. We want to make generous, ungrudging contributions of time, talent, and treasure, trusting that when we give from the heart, we do grow in spirit. And we want to make a good-faith effort to participate in the open democratic process by which, as a congregation, we order our affairs. We should be prepared to become active citizens and not just passive consumers of the services that this congregation offers. So this is a simple but not a casual commitment that we ask people to make, and that's why we do take time twice a year to celebrate those who have accepted the responsibilities for themselves. And then Scobie will now call out the names of those who had indicated they would be with us at the 11 o'clock hour. If I call your name, please come up and join us up here on the front and be sure to bring your insert. Ian Shea, Penny Green, Howard Bowman, Jean Bowman, Breesha Berg, Joe Berg, Beth Butler, Katie Udall, Bob Quinlan, Roxanne Quinlan, Olivia Mote, Leslie Bartlett, Carolyn Clark, Brian Lininger, Allison Carr, Sanny Oberhauser, Chris Terpherken, Eric Tice, and Cody Sorley Tice. And if there's anyone who is a new member and I did not call your name, please come up now. Thanks to so many of you for making the effort this morning. This is impressive. It sort of puts us in our place here as long-time members. We need to have the commitment that you have, and this is actually one of the more fun parts of being on the board of trustees. So, do you accept the responsibilities and freedoms associated with membership in a Unitarian Universalist congregation? Do you pledge to support this religious community with your words, your time, and your substance? Are you willing to join the members of First Unitarian Society in a quest for religious and spiritual understanding and for the common purpose of living reverent and compassionate lives? And for all of you brave folks who actually came in as well today, do you accept these people into this community as companions in the spiritual journey? Do you pledge to rejoice with them in their times of happiness, to grieve with them in times of sorrow, and to share with them all the blessings of our free faith? We do. Let's join together and read the continuing bond of union. We, the members of the First Unitarian Society of Madison, desiring a religious organization in the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth, which shall make the integrity of life its first aim, and leave thought free, associate ourselves together, and accept to our membership those of whatever theological opinion who wish to unite with us in the promotion of truth, righteousness, reverence, and charity among all. And now we would extend to each of our new members the right hand of fellowship, which is an ancient symbol of acceptance and inclusion within our faith community. Let's give our new members a big hand. And as they return to their seats and retrieve their hymnals, let's join together in singing our closing hymn. A song that has a nice little utopian flavor to it, composed in the 19th century throughout the time that all those utopian communities were coming into being. And please be seated for the benediction and the postlude. We end with words on a slightly more pragmatic thing. For that which has been done to raise humankind to new levels of social order and health, for this let us be thankful. For that which we can now do but have left undone, let us strive to give it new life. And for that which needs to be done but is as yet beyond our reach, let us continue to search, to seek, and modestly to hope. Blessed be and amen.