 First Unitarian, Bruce Jackson, and I am one of the ministers here. Today I am joined by the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Stephen Gregorius, and Daniel Karns with special guest musicians James Waldo and Trevor Stevenson. Thank you very much for being with us. The vision of FUS is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our UU values in our lives, our community, and our world. If you are visiting us today, welcome. We are so very glad that you are with us. If you would like more information about First Unitarian society, please stop by the welcome table, which is located in the commons just through those doors and around the corner. We hope that you'll be able to stay and join us for coffee hour immediately following the service also held in the commons. Now your vision and mission task force is charged this year with helping us together as a congregation create a new vision statement and mission statement for us to live into. They have produced a draft of both of these things for us to consider and reflect on in preparation for eventually creating a document that we can approve as a congregation. The wording of that is among many other places is available on the table right across the way from these doors, but they are holding a series of in-person listening sessions for you to come and give your feedback on the wording, the things that speak to you, maybe things that don't, things you might want to see changed. One of those listening sessions is immediately after this service, so it'll be held here in the auditorium. Please feel invited and encouraged to go and get the beverage of your choice and then cycle back into the room you would like to provide your feedback on the draft mission and vision statement. And now I invite you to join me in a moment of silence to center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. From our very first breath we reach out. Co-regulation, not self-regulation, is our nature. We find our cues from the sun and the moon, from each parent and caregiver. We find our place in this great turning planet by turning to one another, generation to generation. We awaken to the dawn and fall asleep at the evening's end. Our life's journey is part of something greater, something simple, something divine. A flame cannot be lit without a spark, a life cannot begin without the air, and we cannot begin to find ourselves without love. May we reach out to one another. May we offer love and nurturing care. May we join together in celebration of the interdependence of our lives. In this spirit, let us worship together. And now I invite you to rise in all the ways that we do and join me in the words of aspiration for the kindling of our chalice. A chalice lit in our midst is a symbol of our liberal faith, a faith built on the foundation of freedom, reason, and tolerance, a faith sustained by acts of kindness and justice, a faith that visions a world flourishing with equality for all her people, a faith that requires thoughtfulness, a faith of wholeness. This tiny flame is the symbol of the spark of all this within each of us. Oh, really? Both versions are excellent. Let's sing together our opening hymn number 344 in the gray hymnal, a promise through the ages rings. A note of hope sustains us. Life is made of years and message Easter. So I would like to tell you a story today. You're welcome to come up here if you want, but there are no classes today, so we're not going to be leaving. Yeah, you're going to be leaving. Yeah, and that's cool. I mean, you can do what you need to do. But I want to tell you this story today about this pot. Well, I mean, not this pot literally, but a pot like this. So here's the way that the story goes. This is from a long time ago in China. And in this story, there is an emperor who is in charge of the whole country, but the emperor has no children. So there's no person who's going to become the next emperor by default. So he creates a plan for how he's going to choose the child who will get to be the next emperor. And this is his plan. He's going to call all the children in China to come visit him. Now, first of all, this is this is a story, right? So I don't really know how you would make it work to have all the children in China come to the same place at the same time. But the point is a lot of children, right? So a lot of children are going to come to the palace and he gives each of them one seed, one little tiny seed and says, I want you to take this seed home, to plant it, to take care of it. And then in a year, come back and show me what you have grown from this seed. So all these children come to the palace and they each get a seed, and they each take it home and they plant it. So one child in particular is one child in particular named Chen. He went home, he found a nice pot that his grandfather had made, probably even nicer than this, if I'm honest. And he got some nice dirt and he planted the seed and the dirt inside the pot and he took good care of it. He watered it, he looked after it, he kept it in the sunlight. And what do you think happened? Well, that was what he was hoping for and certainly what he was expecting. Oh, you think you know this story? Well, well, let's not spoil it. But nothing grew. He took good care of it. He did everything he was supposed to, but no plant grew. Months later, it's still just a pot with dirt in it and nothing else going on. Maybe some fertilizer? But, but he was pretty disappointed, right? I mean, I'd be disappointed too. This is, I have had an experience like this in that I am very bad at growing things, just straight up. So he was, he was sad, he was disappointed. He felt like it must have been his failure. So he told his grandfather that, you know, he had failed and that he wouldn't be going back to see the emperor because I mean, come on, the emperor doesn't want to see his empty pot. But his grandfather said, well, look, you, you took good care of it, right? You looked after it, you watered it, you made sure it got sunlight. You can tell the emperor that you can say, I did everything I was supposed to do. I took good care of it and this is what I have to show for it. So, so he did go back the next year and all those children from all over China came back to and everyone had a different pot with a different plant inside of it. There were so, and they were so beautiful. There were flowers and there were medicinal plants and plants that smell sweet and plants that grew tall and plants that grew wide. All kinds of different plants from all those seeds. And so the emperor had each child come up and show what they had grown and he looked at it and he appreciated it and he told them how nice it looked. And then they came to Chen and here comes Chen with his empty pot. And Chen said, emperor, I planted the seed you gave me, I watered it, I took care of it, but nothing grew. And the emperor said, thank you very much, Chen. You know, he appreciated it, he validated it and he went on to the next person. And so it went until all the children had shown off all these different plants and at the end of all of that the emperor said, you have shown me so many beautiful plants that you have done such a good job raising and each of you has worked hard. I can see that. But I have to say that there was a secret behind those seeds that I gave you. You see, all of those seeds had been boiled, which means that they could not grow into another living thing no matter how hard you worked at it. So you grew some beautiful plants but I can promise you that they didn't grow from the seeds that I gave you. The only one of you who took the seed that I gave you and did what was asked and told the truth about what happened because of that was Chen and his empty pot. So he will be the next emperor. Why do you think that was? What do you think the emperor was looking for? Yeah, so he was looking, it was a test and he was trying to find someone who could take good care of the people in the empire and the reason why he chose Chen was because Chen had told the truth about what happened. Everybody else, I think perhaps we could be generous and say it came from a place of misunderstanding but everybody else was pretending that they had grown something from a seed when they hadn't. They went, they cheated. They got a seed from somewhere else or maybe, you know, let's not necessarily blame the children here. I bet there were some parents involved, right? I mean, let's be real. Yes, but only Chen was willing to tell the truth about the kind of disappointing outcome from that boiled seed. Thank you so much for listening to my story and now we can return to our previously scheduled program into a time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our community here and also our outreach offering recipient, whom this week is the Odyssey project an award-winning UW Madison project that takes a whole family approach to breaking the cycle of generational poverty through access to education. It has empowered more than 500 low-income adults to find their voices and get a jumpstart at earning college degrees they never thought possible. Using a six credit English literature course, UW Madison faculty members introduce adults to great works of literature, philosophy, history, and art and help them improve skills in writing and critical thinking. There are multiple ways to share your gifts this morning. Baskets now being passed in the auditorium may be used to deposit cash or checks and you will see on the screen that you can donate directly from our website fussmattison.org and find the text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. Maintaining integrity and finding trust in ourselves is a constant effort. Being true to ourselves and to our own ideals can often be very challenging. One of the ways in which it can be most challenging comes in the conflict between our expectations or biases about a person or a group and some crucial moral choice about what is right and what is true. The Rallifant Club of Cleveland, Ohio began over a hundred years ago as a society for those who studied, appreciated, and in particular collected books, rare and limited editions specifically. Besides promoting friendship and camaraderie among their members from their earliest beginnings, the Rallifant Club existed in part to publish its own fine collectible editions. In 1899, they published a special prestige edition of a previously issued short story collection written by Charles W. Chestnut, a Cleveland native. He had hopes that because they'd found his work worthy of publication, they might admit him to their special club. But his application was rejected on the grounds that one or two members thought the time hadn't come. Charles W. Chestnut was black, you see, and the here to date all white club didn't feel ready for change. The usual spotty defenses of this sort of polite bigotry rang especially hollow in this instance since the Rallifant Club didn't have much of a tradition to lean on. It had only then been in existence for seven years. Charles Chestnut's response to this indignity became one of his most famous and well regarded short stories. Its name, Baxter's Procrustes, hints at its ultra-fancy overwrought language. The entire thing is a satire of how tastes and appearances interfere with the actual appreciation and honest criticism of art. The story is about a club of book lovers identical to the Rallifant Club who greatly prized their limited editions and jealously protect their value. This was in an era of bookmaking when it was common to print multiple pages of a book on one over large page which was then folded and folded again and woven into the binding so that after the whole thing was printed and bound you would have to cut the various creases in order to read the actual pages of the book. Baxter, the main character in the story, is a member of the club but realizes that his fellows have so fetishized their first editions that no one actually reads them. They would have to destroy their value in order to do that by cutting the pages. So when the time comes for the club to publish its next edition, he volunteers to provide some of his well regarded poetry and so every member of the club unwittingly manages to buy and to praise as erudite and poignant a rare edition of a book whose pages are all blank on the inside. Chestnut satire of the Rallifant Club wasn't about race ostensibly but it was about how assumptions and biases often lead us to judge a book literally without reading it. Certainly that does apply to racism and all other forms of oppression born bias but it also extends even beyond that. The impulse to think someone I trust or like or who is similar to me in some way said it so it must be true or did it so it must be right is a powerful and persistent one as is its opposite. In a passage in the gospels the apostles the leading students of the teacher Jesus had been arguing with each other over who was the greatest in the eyes of their teacher hoping to win favor one of them came to him and declared master we saw someone we did not know casting out demons in your name and we told them to stop because they were not with us. Casting out demons was one of Jesus's signature moves you understand. The apple polishing apostle seems to expect praise for engaging in what we might call today proactive brand management on his teacher's behalf but instead of praise Jesus gave the opposite. He told the student that he was wrong and not to do the same again because as he put it whoever is not against us is with us casting out no further no further mention is made in the story of who this unknown exorcist might have been someone whose faith was powerful enough apparently for them to at least attempt miracles in Jesus's name without his presence or even necessarily his knowledge perhaps they received the rebuke from the apostle and persisted perhaps they thought this one knows the teacher personally where I do not he must be right and I must be wrong if it was the latter then their spiritual activism was just one of the countless things that the world has lost because those with gifts to share were driven from them when they trusted the authority of others over their own inner calling the artist who stopped painting the poet who stopped writing the preacher who stopped teaching should deserve some understanding the pressure to conform to such authority can sometimes be overwhelming particularly when it is backed up with force in an episode of Star Trek the next generation Captain Jean-Luc Picard is captured by a hostile government though his mission is a noble one it is determined that he is not a prisoner of war but a terrorist an enemy of the state and so the protections normally required by diplomacy and the rules of war do not apply he is tortured for information hurt harmed harassed and humiliated in all the ways that nations both ancient and modern have employed against those whose fundamental humanity they reject yet he does not break in his jailers final bid to defeat him Picard is shown four lights blindingly bright he is instructed that there are five the pain will stop when he agrees to that statement he struggles and resists and manages to hold on until conditions change and he is released on his way out he declares to his torture defiantly there are four lights now this all reads like a triumph of the human will against inhumane conditions but at the close of the story the captain confesses to a friend that he was only moments away from breaking down it was not simply a matter of the pain and the terrible conditions by that point he had been so ground down by his experience that he was on the verge of saying that there were five lights because although he knew that there were only four he had begun to see five injustice cannot change the truth it cannot make the wrong thing right but it can do the next best thing by robbing us of the integrity needing needed to resist it Vaslav Havel the Czech playwright revolutionary and unlikely politician described such resistance as living within the truth any great injustice depends upon a very large number of people living out a lie pretending to believe what they do not believe pretending that they are indifferent to people and things that they care about and generally denying what is true in their heart out of fear or complacency but any moment of living in truth even a small one threatens the unjust status quo because it points to the lie and points out to everyone who lives in it the absurdity of that lie Vaslav Havel compared this absurdity the absurdity underlying all injustice to the night that he was walking down a road in the dark and fell into an open sewer suddenly submerged in a pool of well a word that I'm not going to say from the pulpit Havel was in trouble some friends began to scramble around the edge of the hole with flashlights making different attempts at a rescue while he focused his energies on just trying to swim it was a good bit of time before anyone had the wise idea to run and fetch a long ladder the situation was momentarily a hopeless one few things will suck the hope out of you like being trapped in a lightless sewer pit but hope still managed to reach into the forsaken place it is Havel said state of mind not a state of the world in the face of absurdity life is too precious a thing to permit its devaluation by living pointlessly emptily without meaning without love and finally without hope to live with integrity we must be willing to believe ourselves when it would be easier to believe someone else we must be willing to side with those whom we do not know or do not like simply because it is right and even though it may be unpleasant or carry some personal cost the price of integrity is high and its reward is low that's not a very conventional argument for a preacher to make but if I was going to argue for integrity on the basis of its rewards I wouldn't really be arguing for integrity at all the poet hafees one of the most passionate mystical voices of the rich cultural tradition of Islamic poetry in what is today modern Iran wrote about our human condition centuries ago you entered form to give a holy message an envoy from the inconceivable is each of us when you have completed that courageous task you will be able to return to a world that does not know sadness but so difficult your divine errand it will take a lifetime to accomplish love along the way being true to the holy message entrusted to each of us requires us to look past our biases and expectations our ignorance our anger and our comforts and consider over and over again what is the right thing to do what is the true thing to say this message emerged from a meditation on a quote from el hajmalik el shabazz that is Malcolm X which I return to again and again to remind me of my commitment to that ongoing struggle Malcolm came to prominence as a leader within the nation of Islam a afrocentric religious identity movement which was inspired by Islam but also led by a founder who according to the religion's teachings was God incarnate that man Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm eventually had a falling out and Malcolm moved towards a more conventional practice of Islam as part of that evolution he went to Mecca on the hajj the pilgrimage that Islam requires all Muslims to make if they are healthy enough and have the means to do so at least once in their lifetimes on that journey he became more convinced than ever that the man the man he had been following was not divinely infallible and he came to meet Muslims from every continent who treated him with kindness and fellowship including those with white skin whom he had been taught to hate afterwards in letters to his friends he wrote that he'd have had enough of someone else's propaganda as he put it I'm for truth no matter who tells it I'm for justice no matter who it is for or against I'm a human being first and foremost and as such I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole even as he said this back in the United States his home country the same consideration was never returned to him for the rest of his life he remained narrowly understood in popular society as the voice of violent angry blackness his message about listening for the truth no matter the source was ironically never really listened to no matter what you expect if you live long enough if you listen carefully enough you can be assured that the truth will come to you from some corner that you had previously ignored or disregarded and that wrong counsel or wrong action will be undertaken by someone that you trusted or looked to as a perfect source of truth the poet Naomi she have nigh writes about the variety of different ways in which we express our humaneness and in particular the different ways that we pray in just one small microcosm from her own experience she writes there was the method of kneeling a fine method if you lived in a country where the stones were smooth the women dreamed wistfully of bleached court yards hidden corners where knee fit rock their prayers were weathered rib bones small calcium words uttered in sequence as if this shedding of syllables could somehow fuse them to the sky there were the men who had been shepherd so long they walked like sheep under the olive trees they raised their arms hear us we have pain on earth we have so much pain there is no place to store it but the olives bobbed peacefully in fragrant buckets of vinegar and thyme at night the men ate heartily flat bread and white cheese and were happy in spite of the pain because there was also happiness some prize the pilgrimage wrapping themselves in new white linen to ride buses across miles of vacant sand when they arrived at mecca they would circle the holy places on foot many times they would bend to kiss the earth and return their lean faces housing mystery while for certain cousins and grandmothers the pilgrimage occurred daily lugging water from the spring or balancing the baskets of grapes these were the ones present at births humming quietly to perspiring mothers the ones stitching intricate needlework into children's dresses forgetting how easily children's soil clothes there were those who didn't care about praying the young ones the ones who had been to america they told the old ones you are wasting your time time the old ones prayed for the young ones they prayed for a lot to mend their brains for the twig the round moon to speak suddenly in a commanding tone and occasionally there would be one who did none of this the old man fousy for example fousy the fool who beat everyone at dominoes insisted he spoke with god as he spoke with goats and was famous for his laugh charles chestnut did eventually become a member of the ralphan club in fact his children reported after his passing that some of his happiest days of the last several decades of his life were spent in that club enjoying the company of its members it still exists today and despite having been racially integrated more than a hundred years it persists defiantly in being a men's only organization progress is possible but it is not guaranteed and it is more possible where we are open to the idea that truth or justice or both will come to us from a place we do not expect from something we have disregarded from some person that we have already written off because those things are not closed off to any person upon this earth we are only able to close ourselves off to them ship campaign in which each of us has a little bit of work to do to decide within ourselves what this place this community means to us and how we will reflect that meaning in our pledge of financial support for the year ahead during this time it is our practice to invite members of the congregation to share their perspective with you on why f us is meaningful to them and why they choose to support this congregation financially here to offer that message today are some members of the ryan joy family hi my name is elissa ryan joy and i'm michael ryan joy elissa and i have been members at f us for almost 15 years now and we have two kids winnie and thea who are involved in a number of activities at first unitarian we wanted to share a few thoughts as we wrap up our stewardship campaign we tried to do the thing where our whole family sits on the couch and respectfully listens to each other speak for this uh that worked out about as well as you might expect yep so we're trying something different what do you like about f us thea um after prayer before prayer prayer um i really like uh participating in prayer so like seeing service and practice that's also fun getting to know people like at coffee hour in between the two services and hot cocoa that's nice and um i also really like re because it's more open-ended than school so it gives you an opportunity to share your thoughts without just being like no that's the wrong answer you get to actually share your thoughts about big ideas where there really isn't one right answer so serving on the board the last three years has made me really reflect on what this community means to me so let me share a few things that i've realized i value about f us um first of all we have so many really incredible inspiring and and loving people in our midst here i've felt really blessed to to deepen my relationships with so many of you and there's also clearly a passion here for living out our uu values i think that that shows up in the larger communities and the world that all of us are a part of and also right here in our own congregation so i wanted to just share a couple of examples with you uh the first one is is one that i don't think has escaped anybody which is our choice to move to a co-ministry model of leadership which prioritizes collaboration and trust and brought us our amazing team kelly kelly cracker and kelly oj another example of living those values that maybe has been a little bit less visible to some but i'd like to spotlight it here um i know not everyone's able to read every single communication that comes from f us or participate in all the parish meetings um but over the last few years we've committed to bringing staff at f us up to the recommended salary levels for their positions it's been a really important step both to promote equity and to enable our staff to support themselves and their families so as we take time this month to consider what we can contribute to f us we know that a large part of our budget goes toward program and carried out by our staff who who really pours so much of themselves um into our congregation so we can show our appreciation and care and love by giving what we can in the same spirit of transparency that kelly aj kicked off our month of stewardship we'd also like to share how we decided on our pledge amount this year we are a single income household with compensation that's made up of two parts a stable salary and then an annual bonus payment that varies from year to year so our pledge reflects three percent of that salary and then 10 percent of this year's bonus it's an amount that feels good for our family situation and we think also reflects the deep appreciation that we have for this community many of you have already thoughtfully considered your financial contributions for this year and so far about half of our members are increasing their pledges from last year or becoming sustaining stewards and a lot of new members are making their first pledge f us members also made a new or renewed commitment of time and talent our family has found that being engaged in shared ministry by volunteering our time is fun most of the time and fulfilling all of the time as i roll off the board this year i've committed to chairing our nominations committee to going back to teaching ari and also participating in our music ministry through singing in the meeting house chorus i promise to singing choir my favorite volunteer um job is to be a reader and make unicorn out of the name tag um scraps i like to contribute to f us by singing choir and bringing baked goods for events and making things for cabaret i also really like um before choir teaching people board games and i think a lot of people enjoy that so we encourage you to thoughtfully consider your contributions of time and money to first unitary in society to all of those who continue to make those commitments we appreciate all that you do to support a community that's so important to our family thank you wow each week we gather caring in our hearts and joys the losses of our days we hold our own pain and celebration and those are the ones we love we share these here knowing they are held gently in care in this community maria duncan asks us to light a candle of grief and memory for her mother joanne murphy who passed from life on march 20th may joanne be at peace and may comfort come to all those who knew her as they moved through this time of mourning we light a candle of honor for linda warren's longtime friend and fellow Celtic harpist musician harp harper tosh who died this month at his home near seattle after a long battle with cancer we light a candle to acknowledge and hold in our care those living with and those struggling with depression mindful of the often invisible burden they carry we wish for them the care and support they need and deserve and the deep knowledge that they are not alone we light a candle of celebration in anticipation of the transgender day of visibility which is this coming friday together we affirm the precious gift of all trans lives both here in this community and all over the earth we light a candle in solidarity with the people of ukraine and in compassion and care for the people of syria and turkey we hold in our hearts all the areas of our precious world mired in struggle and heartbreak the places we know and the places unknown to us we earn for peace for safety for freedom and joy for all people everywhere on this shared globe please join me now in turning both inward and outward as we pray for three things among the countless that we might turn our thoughts towards at this hour let us pray for peace peace between nations which is the presence of just relations the sharing of the common wheel and trusting in others to make their own decisions in the same way that we might wish to be trusted by them and peace in every human heart which is the presence of love and the needful gifts of knowing and being known by other souls as beautifully and tragically human as we are let us pray also for hope hope which flickers and flashes among the dullness of fatigue and the sharp points of grief hope which sustains us when nothing else can or should hope which is our greatest need from the world and our greatest offering to it and finally let us pray for joy the joy of laughter that comes easily between old friends the joy of unexpected surprises of a world still so full of wonder as on the day when we were born and joy that lives in memories of a past which is no less real for the distance now in years from it for the for these three things and for so much else we yearn together with a common heart amen now before we rise to sing our closing hymn i want to teach you the low part that's a two part song and it has a very fun bass line if you have your hymnals it's on page 368 and we're going to teach it to you and then we'll stand and i'll sing the melody together it goes like this now let us sing sing sing sing now let us sing sing sing sing lift up your voice be not afraid now let us sing to the power of the faith within so if you want to sing that we welcome it the rest of us are going to sing the melody let's rise and body and or his spirit sing sing to the power of the faith sing to the power of the lift up your voice sing to the power simplicity the path that leads to compassion and wisdom that leads to happiness peace and ease welcome the stranger and open your heart to a world in need of healing be courageous before the forces of hate hold and embody a vision of the common good that serves the need of all people blessed be go in peace and please be at rest for the poster