 Would you like to stand in the center? Okay, you can go ahead and come. Okay. Here we'll stand in the middle of the chair. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. You can change the order. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Alright. Your turn, Starting writting. You're right. Go ahead. Ready? Okay. Sorry for that. situación. Sorry. Okay. Okay. Right. Okay. Okay. Welcome to first Unitarian society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore 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 Elizabeth Barrett, I've been a member here for 22 years, and on behalf of the congregation I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you are on your life's journey. We celebrate your presence among us. We gather here to seek the truth, to grow in love, to join in service, to celebrate life's beauty and find healing for its pain, to listen for the wisdom that guides us in the quietness of this moment. I invite you to join me now in a few moments of silence for contemplation, meditation or prayer as we settle in and come fully into this time and place together. Good morning. Good morning. Would you please rise in body and or spirit and join me in singing hymn number six, just as long as I have breath, just as long as I tell him I said yes to just as long as a point. The words are taken from the writing of Robert Frost, two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both but be one traveler long I stood and looked as far down the road as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth then took the other as just as fair and having perhaps the better claim because it was grassy and wanted where though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same and both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black I kept the first for another day yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence two roads diverged in a wood and I I took the one less travel by and that has made all the difference will you join your voices with mine as we spark our chalice with the chalice lighting words printed in your order of service as together we say we like this chalice to remember that every vision wants to grow it has its own heat its own hunger it arrives wanting more and wanting us to become more it has us we don't have it we are continually drawn forward by its full may today help lure us towards its larger call I invite you to turn towards each other and offer a warm greeting for a few moments I invite anyone who would like to come up closer for our story to come on up again hey everybody can you okay hey good morning everybody oh I thought he was giving me a hug have you guys met Doug hi everyone everybody this is Doug Doug this is 9 a.m. everybody hello everybody 9 a.m. we are fancy today the thing that you bring to school every day what do you think lunch lunch is something you bring max your backpack you know what it looks good job back I wondering what's in it are you wondering what's in it yeah let's see well you're gonna find out you're gonna find out anyway yes well okay so Cal you know I just moved from Ann Arbor and I every two years at least for the last few years I have moved to an entirely new state sorry it's serving an entirely new congregation and so there's a lot for me to move around so so I've been bringing stuff every day to put into my office his office looks really really good if you haven't seen it yet you can come by anytime and see it yeah so what else do you have to bring okay well you probably noticed that really my office has plenty of things in it so I'm at the point now because I've really just started to do the full set of things that I'll do for you as the interim senior minister I wanted to bring a few last things that remind me actually of very important things that I want to remember nice so what do you have to show us today okay well I thought you never asked here we go open up the backpack right so these are things that just remind me of especially because I change where I work so often what I want to try to hold onto that will help me do a good job and so I bring with me thank you I bring with me a little picture album because it helps remind me of what I bring from the past and so I have in here some pictures from other congregations that I've served recently and it kind of goes from the closest to the first furthest away so I have a picture from Ann Arbor in the congregation that I served there and the way that we all worked together and learned and in particular I worked with the staff there to think about their teamwork together and then there is Bloomington and Bloomington was a place where I got to work with the amazing Mary Ann Macklin and also I got to work with the entire congregation and thinking about children's religious education and understanding more about what they wanted to do which was a very amazing thing to do and I got to think about other congregations as well ones that are from further back all the way back for instance the Bellingham Washington which is a congregation I served for 13 years and what I learned from serving a congregation for a very long time but it isn't just about the congregation it's also about my life before I became a minister so I remind myself of what it's like to be a teenager in the incredible things I learned during that time. What do you guys think? Does he still look the same? What's different? No beard. I like that answer. You're so kind. The hair is exactly the same isn't it? Although talking about coming full circle I also remember when I was much much younger than that and actually my hair looked pretty much the same it does now. So remembering. Oh but no glasses in that picture you're right. I know I have huge eyes there don't I? He would be an adorable baby with glasses though wouldn't he? So remembering that helps me remember really that there have always been people in my life to love and that love me and also that I'm always learning more but there's more that I need to do I need to remind myself of what I'm here to do and so I have a few things like I have here this little compass that a member who is a woodworker in Bellingham made for me when I drove all the way across the United States and so that reminds me that a big part of what I'm to do here is to help this congregation think about the direction it wants to go in the future and the nice thing about the compass is that it just gives you a very broad direction it helps you know whether you're going north or south or east or west it's not like a map it really just helps you orient yourself get the big picture and decide what you want to do well I'm not here to tell the congregation what to do they wouldn't listen to me anyway and so I am here to help them think about the big picture during this time and decide what they want to do with that but there's more that I also do I also brought with me a mirror and the mirror reminds me that a lot of what I do is I listen to what all of you tell me and what you do and I just reflect back to you what I've seen I say well I notice that you always do this or you say that this is what is important to you is that what you really want is that what you really mean and over and over again instead of again telling people what to do I just showed them what they're showing to me and give them a chance to think about what if anything they want to do about that but there's another part of my job that is really hard and exciting and so I brought a lantern with me and it has a bright light so the reason I bring the lantern is that another part of my job is to shine lights into murky places within the congregation that the congregation may not be aware of every organization has stuff that they do that they don't think about anymore every congregation has stories from the past that are hard or sad stories and so I help them think about those stories and shine a little bit of light on them to see what they might discover is true and finally I always travel with my hindal and as I told you a few years ago that this most recent move was a relatively short one but many years ago I drove all the way from the other side of the coast which took like four or five days to get here and it was really scary in the middle of the united states to be in a place I'd never been before driving by myself and so what I would do is I would sing some of the songs from the hymnal that I knew by heart to help keep me company and to help me feel a sense of strength and one of the songs that I sang is one that you all sing sometimes and you have a special relationship with and it's I think a very meaningful one it is filled with loving kindness number 1031 and a loving kindness meditation is a sort of blessing it is a wishing everyone around you everything around you offering a sense of friendliness and love to everything which I think is a perfect way for us to send everyone off to discover new things in their classes with our love and our friendliness that's a great idea so as we rise in body or in spirit we're gonna head off to classes and I look forward to spending more time with you in the coming months entitled set in stone in a cemetery once an old one in new england I found a strangely soothing epitaph the name of the deceased in her dates had been scoured away by wind and rain but there was a carving of a tree with roots and branches a classic 19th century motif and among them the words she attended well and faithfully to a few worthy things at first this seemed to me to be a little meager a little stingy on the part of her survivors but I wrote it down and I have thought about it since and now I can't imagine a more proud or satisfying legacy she attended well and faithfully to a few worthy things every day I stand in danger of being struck by lightning and having the having the obituary in the local papers say for all the world to see she attended frantically and ineffectually to a great many unimportant meaningless details how do you want your obituary to read he got all the dishes washed and dried before playing with his children in the evening she balanced her checkbook with meticulous precision and never missed a day of work but missed a lot of sunsets missed a lot of love missed a lot of risk missed a lot but her money was in order she answered all her calls all her email all her voicemail but along the way she forgot to answer the call to service and compassion and forgiveness first and foremost of herself he gave sparingly and without radical intention without passion or convention she could not would not hear the calling of her heart how will it read how does it read and if you had to name a few worthy things to which you attend well and faithfully what I wonder would they be here is the leading when I was eight years old I had this kooky idea that I talked my mom into helping me with I decided that I wanted to go to vacation bible school at a local southern baptist church now I never attended church before that and to get there I had to cross this eternal abyss known as the truck route which was a highway that was way too dangerous and busy for any eight-year-old across alone so I kept begging her until she let me do it now why I decided to do that I'm not really sure I'm pretty certain that summer boredom was somewhere in the midst of that but I could have done a lot of different things to be able to get rid of that boredom and my mom who at the time was not attending any church decided to let me do it which I imagine was a bit of a journey for her as well and I don't know what was on her mind except for perhaps that she was happy to get a bored eight year old out of the house for a while but anyway she walked me to the edge of the river sticks and sent me across to the other side and I began to attend as an eight-year-old a southern Baptist church now I wish I could say it went better than it did it was a rough go for us all it turns out I kept getting in trouble now I would never claim that I was a perfect child or a perfect adult but the reason I kept getting in trouble was that I kept asking questions I was so curious about what they were trying to teach me and so I would do sort of the eight-year-old version of so let me get this straight tell me again about the rapture where is that in the bible first of all and second of all this sounds like science fiction are you sure this is true this did not go over well with my Sunday school teachers and I'm sure they were not prepared for that kind of question but I stuck it out for a while it seemed like I didn't want to give up on religion in some part of religion was not giving up on me and so I went with some friends to what was sort of an early version of a mega church that was charismatic and so there were like 2000 people in the congregation all on their feet speaking in tongues and which freaked me out enough anyway but I looked over and there was my math teacher speaking in tongues which is a site I can never unsee it haunts me to this day so that wasn't such a good fit but imagine my relief when I found a congregation that welcomed my questions I remember in particular going to Sunday school and being asked what what about this passage makes sense to you where do you think it seems strange what doesn't make sense now and this wasn't a unitary and universalist congregation it was a liberal Christian church disciples of Christ congregation but our teacher Tana Gartside who would later in ninth grade become my social studies teacher was an award-winning and deeply passionate teacher who had found her vocation and so she created space for us to safely question and she found ways to let us know that by questioning we could deepen our understanding and she found ways to let us know that we mattered in that congregation so I found myself getting more involved and I actually as a young teenager volunteered on committees and I enjoyed it I actually liked working with people for some sort of greater good but perhaps most importantly of all as a young teenager who was beginning to suspect that it was very likely that he was gay it was a place where over and over again they said to me you matter there is something inside of you that is very good and powerful and true and it is welcome here that message spoke to me so powerfully when I needed it most so I continued to be a part of that congregation and we moved into a new building and before our very first Sunday we all pitched in to try to make the building ready and so I was in the sanctuary vacuuming the brand new carpet and Mrs. Gartside my Sunday school teacher was a few rows away from me wiping down all the brand new seats and as I was vacuuming I looked up and I noticed that she was no longer cleaning and was staring at me with a very strange look on her face so I turned off the vacuum cleaner and I said Mrs. Gartside what is it what am I doing wrong what what what and she said after a moment that was this sort of reflective look on her face Doug have you ever thought about being a minister well my first thought was wow I must really be doing this vacuuming thing exceptionally well little did I know how it really would come in handy one day as a minister but the second thing that was most honest was no that was the last thing in the world that then eighth grader would be thinking about but never underestimate the power of a provocative question especially when it's asked by someone that you love and know and trust when she asked me that question instead of entirely dismissing it it set a little spark in me that began to build and I found myself stepping through a doorway to explore that question and once I stepped through that door I never really could step back and it continued to grow and I realized now many years later that it began when I left my house and walked across the river sticks to the southern Baptist church and began that journey and it continued through the questioning and through people affirming and it brought me to this place on this day now it matters of course my own call to ministry and and how I understand it now because I'll be working with you for many months but just as important is your understanding of what your life is about and I want to spend some time thinking about that with you William Stafford wrote in his poem the way it is there's a thread you follow it goes among things that change but it doesn't change people wonder about what you are pursuing you have to explain about the thread but it is hard for others to see while you hold it you can't get lost tragedy happens people get hurt or die you suffer and get old nothing you can do can stop times unfolding you don't ever let go of the thread Parker Palmer reflecting on Stafford's poem remarks holding on doesn't make life easier but it can keep us from getting lost in the dark woods that swallow us up every now and then knowing we can find our way home with that thread in hand we're more likely to explore the darkness and learn what it has to teach us while it certainly matters again what I believe this is also a time to think very deeply about your own thread of purpose something that has been at work in your life for a very long time it's important for this phase of our life together but there's a deeper reason why it is important it is a frequently observed human truth that we human creatures gain a sense of empowerment and direction and hope by discovering and reconnecting with a deeper sense of purpose or meaning perhaps one of the most famous examples of exploring why this is so important came from Victor Frankl's work and in particular his book man search for meaning it began with his own experience in concentration camps during world war two he observed that the inmates who were most likely to survive were those who felt that they had some overarching goal or purpose Frankl himself spent much of his time in the camp trying to reconstruct a manuscript that he had lost on his journey which he considered to be his life's work but he observed that others held on to a vision for their future seeing a loved one again a major task that they wanted to complete once they were free so many ways that we live into find embody hope but one of the most time tested is returning to that thread of purpose that is life-saving and reorienting especially when we feel most lost in our lives there are a lot of different ways of describing what that thread might be understood as but I believe that one way of understanding it is that it points towards our vocation a deeper calling in our life the theologian Frederick Beekner writes this that we find our calling most meaningfully when we find the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet one significant purpose of this congregation is to help you identify clarify strengthen and live into the few worthy things that are an important use of your affection your time your resource it is a seedbed in which you can invest and explore a sense of vocation and I don't mean by that what you necessarily do for a living vocation really is that deeper sense of call that you embody on some level in every part of your life it is something that is innately a part of you Palmer goes on to observe that often we think of a vocation as something that is out there that we need to discover and change to fit into but what he believes and I agree is that our sense of calling is actually something that we recognize in ourselves that we become even more ourselves in order to move towards it is that thread a purpose that probably began a very very long time ago long before you recognized what it was about and how important it was to you but it remains with you still what is that thread a purpose for you and from time to time we all lose track of what is important to us especially when we are afraid or overwhelmed by the non-stop circus of life's distractions so let's think together about a few questions to help us explore that sense of purpose and what it may do for us when you look back on your life what are some of the most fulfilling moments that you remember or for that matter what whatever your job or task what do you find yourself doing over and over again maybe you are the person who always pays attention to the human element in your job maybe you are an excellent organizer maybe you are passionate about getting the numbers to line up in a spreadsheet perfectly and you understand the implications of that whatever it is step more deeply into what it is telling you about your life now and once you have grabbed hold of that thread and you have it firmly in hand what mystery is it asking you to explore what fears do you need to face in order to hold on to that thread even in the midst of great difficulty that place of purpose can really help you at the hardest times when I knew that it was time for me to leave Bellingham Washington after being there for 13 years I felt utterly adrift and it was only when I remembered the few things that mattered to me in ministry that I discovered years ago the importance of collaborating on something that matters the importance of helping people and giving them space to ask essential questions to let people know that they matter I needed to find a place and a space to help me do that work and for me interim ministry has been the new way that I do that well how in fearful times can you find again what you need to know about yourself in your life and what situations tend to most often make you want to let go of that thread that sense of purpose and in those situations how can you better deal with that desire to let go of something that essential you probably can't always avoid those situations but you may find strategies to help you remember that it is that thread of purpose that will best help you navigate the difficulty in these coming weeks we will explore important things together we will explore what it means to be a congregation in this time and in this place and then think about what that is calling you to do in the future but there's no way for us to do that authentically and well if you leave behind your essential selves you need to call to mind that thread of purpose that I hope allows you to be deeply connected here but there's the world's deep hunger as well and you may hear that deep hunger first in the words of your neighbor as you are in conversation about what matters here together over the coming months you will discover more about what this community is calling is and begin to think with me about how to realize that most powerfully Margaret Wheatley is a writer and a scientist that I quoted last week and her words speak today as well there is no power equal to a community discovering what it really cares about it is always like this real change begins with a simple act of people engaging in conversation about what they really care about the opening words remind us that every day we make choices and as frost sort of implies it it isn't so much the path that we choose but that we choose it and know how essential that choice is this is one of many places of making important choices for your own life for the life of this community this is an exciting time but what is more by holding on to that thread of purpose it will stitch together the unraveling of your life when you find yourself coming to pieces what is that thread what is it asking of you now that truth will lead you into better and bigger ways of living may this place help you find that thread and hold it when you need it most so may it be amen and blessed every week we offer a variety of ways for you to engage a deeper sense of calling to the world twice every month we offer part of our offering to an important organization locally that does good work for the second week in a row we are giving part of the offering to one city schools you can find more information about what they do in their mission in your order of service as we move into our time of offering may we connect with that deeper thread of purpose both in our own lives but in the life of this community and from that purpose find a sense of generosity and love the offering will now be given and received with that spirit appreciate the many gifts of this congregation and so we wish you offer gratitude for those who helped this morning our sound operator is steven gregarious and smiley is our lay minister mary bergen is our greeter lysam and roe dick goldberg and ancy daily served as our ushers blaze thompson is our coffee maker for the day praise be and uh we will have at the end of this time if you would like to take a tour jump out we'll be waiting for you to give you a tour of our beautiful facility and and mojo will be at our welcome table we have a few announcements to share with you please stop by the journey circle information table in the commons after the service this morning journey circles are our new small covenant groups that will focus on the congregation's monthly worship theme so if they were going this month they would help you think about vision they are an integral a part of the theme-based ministry that we are working to make more essential to our combined journey here the journey circles offer the gift of listening to one another and attentiveness to each person's thoughts ideals and reflections guided by the monthly theme a connection to an engagement with others from our faith community is the heart of that work journey circles are an excellent way for you to find a deeper connection with other people in this congregation in the greater whole so i invite you to find out more at the table after this service and if it feels like a good fit to sign up for a journey circle friday new music cows will begin again the first friday in october october 5th the friday new music cows is f us's distinguished artist recital series it runs most fridays from october through may the four october programs include a soprano duo classical guitar flute in a program of classical music from asia the gathering begins around noon and the program about 12 15 it's always free and non-ticketed we also every week in some way explore the cares of the congregation we join as a community who has joys and sorrows written on our hearts and in this place of love and where we are loved we give and receive that love and return so we come together to find strength and common purpose turning our minds and hearts toward one another seeking to bring our circle of concern to all who need our love and support so this week we remember nanaji whose ashes were strewn in the strewn in the ganji's river in delhi thursday the beloved grandfather of an smiley's son's wife madhvi he will be missed on two continents he lived a full life after leading his family on their flight from the punjab into india in the 1947 partition we also keep our thoughts with marge engelman who grieves the loss of her husband kin who passed on september fifth we hold bivvian that'll feed field hulkin in our hearts and her husband lowell hulkin who died on september sixth and our love and prayers are with joys carrey whose husband phil passed away on friday morning a gentle and loving soul who spread kindness everywhere he went he will be deeply missed we remember also the joys and the sorrows that are in this room and in our community that at this point still remain unwritten or spoken may we be grateful for all of the miracles of life that we share and the hope that gives us the power to care to remember to act for love i invite you to join your voice with mine and rising up in all the ways that we do as we sing our closing hymn hymn number 108 my life flows on and in the song my life flows on in handless song the bed hails on the strife i hear it sounds an air to thwart the storm can shed tyrants trump prisons and friends by shape and now as you go forth from this place may that thread of purpose that each of you has hold you in good stead and may you hold it tightly when you need it most and in those moments when you let go and we all do may love itself and community and family and friends hold you tightly until you find it again we extinguish this chowice but not the light of wisdom the warmth of love or the fire of commitment to justice and change these remain in your life until you gather in this place again before you move on into your day may we take another moment together and sit and listen to the gift of music