 Hey, John. Please join me in a moment of centering silence. And now please remain seated for our in-gathering hymn. And the words appear in your order of service. Good morning. Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Karen Rose Gredler. And on behalf of the congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation. So whoever you are and wherever you happen to be in 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 staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal-colored stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experienced guides are generally available. And I happen to know there's one available today to give a building tour after this service. So if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house across the parking lot, please meet near the large glass window on your side of the auditorium after the service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service. However, because it is difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively, acoustical environment, our child haven back in that corner and the commons all along the back are excellent places to retire if a child needs to talk or move around. The services can still be seen and heard from those areas. Also, this would be an excellent time for you to turn off any electronic devices you have with you that might cause a disturbance during this hour, especially your cell phones. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who are helping our services run smoothly. On sound, we have David Burials. Our lay minister is Tom Boykoff. Our greeter is Patty Reardon. And our ushers are Mary Savage, assisted by her hubby Bob at the doors. Ann Hett upstairs, Jay Roberts, who was pulled into service, and Gail Bliss, who was also recruited from the lobby. So as you know, we need more volunteers, especially for the usher duty, where we need three or four people every week. So if you're so inclined, please see someone in the library and learn about how to get your name on the list. Ross Woodward would very much like to talk to you. Hospitality, meaning coffee making and any other drinks they have back there, this morning is being done by Sandy Plish and Chip Quaid. So we thank them all. Please notice the announcements in the red floors in your order of service. Insert, I don't know why I couldn't say that word. Please note that there are a lot of interesting things coming up and some more information about this weekend. So please look at this. Again, welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart, and stir your spirit. As we enter into this time, put away the pressures of the world that ask you to perform, to take up masks, to put on brave fronts. Silence the voices that ask you to be perfect. This is a community of compassion and welcome. You do not have to do anything to earn the love contained within these walls. You do not have to be braver, smarter, stronger, better than you are in this moment to belong here with us. You only have to bring the gift of your body, no matter how able. Your seeking mind, no matter how busy. Your animal heart, no matter how broken. Bring all that you are and all that you love to this, our time together. And if you will rise now in body or spirit to join together in our words of chalice lighting, we light our chalice, symbol of our faith, for truth sought through a questioning heart and an attentive mind. And for love pursued through obstacles inside and outside our own human heart. And for forgiveness and all it entails, the place where truth and love meet and merge. And before we join together in song, if you'll take a moment to greet your neighbor. Please be seated. If you arrived here today with a sorrow so heavy that you need the help of this community to carry it, or if you hold in your heart a joy so great that it simply must be shared, now is that time. The sharing of joys and sorrows is our time in the spirit of acceptance and support to share with one another some special event or circumstance that has affected your life or the life of a loved one in recent days or weeks. This is not a time for general announcements or political opinion. And as you share, please remember that those listening are not limited to the people in this room as our service is broadcast over the web. So for the next few minutes, anyone who wishes is invited to step to the front of the auditorium, light a candle using the microphone, briefly share with us your message. You may also come forward to wordlessly light a candle and return to your seat. And if you are unable to come forward for any reason, please raise your hand. Tom will bring the microphone to you, and we will light a candle on your behalf. I will begin our sharing today. Tom, if you will, light one candle for Roberta Preston, Bobby, as we know her. Bobby has been admitted into hospice and we hold Bobby and her family in our hearts and we send her our love and our support. I'm gonna show you guys, put it next to your mouth. Put it towards your mouth. Just put it towards your mouth. Can you hear me now? This first candle is for Janet Stonesifer, who was taken to the hospital last Sunday and had a pacemaker inserted and is now resting at home. She's quite tired and rests a lot. So we need to hold her in our prayers and chuck too. The second candle is for Eva Wright, who is coming along quite well. She too does tire easily, loves receiving cards, and we're glad that she's doing a little better every day. Good morning, my name is Pam and I have a great joy. I just completed all of my surgeries and procedures and treatments for breast cancer and now I just need to heal. So I'm very, very grateful, thank you. I light a candle for my grandma, who passed away at the age of 83 about two weeks ago and I hope that my grandpa and my aunt and dad will do well with healing and I know that she's in a happier place now. I have a request to ask for your prayers, your concerns, and your eyes and your ears for the elder black woman, still unaccounted for these past two weeks on the east side of Madison. She suffers dementia and I know her African family longs for her return. If you will light one last candle in the spirit of life and love to lift up every joy and hold up every hurt that remain quiet in the silence of our hearts. And if we can now rise in body or spirit to join in our next hymn as our children and teachers leave for classes, please be seated. Once upon a time, there was a blacksmith who worked hard at his trade. The day came for him to die. The angel was sent to him and much to the angel's surprise, he refused to go. He pleaded with the angel to make his case before God that he was the only blacksmith in the area and it was time for all his neighbors to begin their planting and sowing. He was needed. So the angel pleaded his case before God. He said that the man didn't want to appear ungrateful, that he was glad to have a place in the kingdom but could he put it off for a little while and the man was left. About a year or two later, the angel came back with the same message. The Lord was ready to share the fullness of the kingdom. Again, the man had reservations and said, a neighbor of mine is seriously ill and it's time for the harvest. A number of us are trying to save his corpus or another. The blacksmith would just shake his head, tell the angel where he was needed and decline. Finally, the blacksmith grew very old, weary and tired. He decided it was time and so he prayed, God, if you'd like to send that angel again, I'd be glad to come home now. Immediately, the angel appeared as if from around the corner of the bed. The blacksmith said, if you still want to take me home, I'm ready to live forever in the kingdom of heaven and the angel laughed and looked at the blacksmith in delight and surprise and said, where do you think you've been all these years? He was home. I'll be ashamed to turn, turn, till the turning, turning, turning. Thank you. It's a joy to have the society choir back again. When I was a child, the priest who served our Catholic church loved a hymn called, here I am, Lord. It goes something like this. I, the Lord of snow and rain, I have borne my people's pain. I have wept for love of them, they turn away. I will break their hearts of stone, give them hearts for love alone. I will speak my word to them, whom shall I send? Here I am, Lord, is it I, Lord? I have heard you calling in the night. I will go if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart. We sang this hymn week after week, so much so that I could stand here and sing the entire hymn to you from memory, even though I haven't really thought of it in probably over 20 years. It was this refrain, I will go if you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart that really stuck. This was the peace that Father Collie wanted us to remember. Each week after we sang that hymn, he would reinforce this message of care, of giving, of taking to heart this idea that we are the ones who are here. We are the ones being sent to love, to remember, to heal. There are many who believe that helping, that service is who we truly are. In that seminal work, how can I help? Ramdoss and Paul Gorman wrote, caring for one another, we sometimes glimpse an essential quality of our being. We may be sitting alone lost in self-doubt or self-pity when the phone rings with a call from a friend who is really depressed. Instinctively, we come out of ourselves just to be there with her and say a few reassuring words. When we're done and a little comfort's been shared, we put down the phone and feel a little more at home in ourselves. We're reminded of who we really are and what we have to offer. Father Collie was this magnificent Jesuit priest who brought the stories of the Bible alive. All of us, young and old, listened to his stories on the edge of our seats because when he talked about these ancient tales, they actually made sense. They made us laugh. They made us question our place in the world and understand something more about who we are and what we are meant to be doing. I will never forget the Sunday when he brought up the parable of the loaves and the fishes. Do you remember this one? It's also known as the Feeding of the Five Thousand. The story is usually interpreted to highlight Jesus' miraculous abilities. When read in this way, the emphasis is on Jesus' special relationship to God and how this relationship allowed him to turn five loaves of bread and two fish into enough food for everyone. When Jesus prayed, God worked a miracle through him. The food meant for maybe a dozen became more than enough for five thousand. Father Collie reminded us that like all the stories in the scriptures, this one could be interpreted in another way. What he said that morning stuck. Jesus performed a miracle that morning, he said. The miracle was that he spoke words that opened people's hearts to one another and taught them the power of sharing, the power to give, the power to receive, the power of community. In community, all are fed, all receive care, all are given the gift of presence and hope. When Jesus brought out the loaves and the fishes that he and his companions had with them, when he blessed the food and offered to share even though it never would have been enough, he convinced everyone else present to share with the group what they each had. Some may have had fruit in their pockets and his generosity moved them to share it. Others had loaves of bread tucked away in the bottoms of their bags and when they saw what was happening, they decided to share as well. In this way, the whole community created a great miracle and because they shared, everyone had not only enough but more than was needed. The Buddhist teacher Jack Cornfield would tell us that this is what is to be expected. We all have without exception, he writes, a very deep longing to give, to give to the earth, to give to others, to give to society, to work, to love, to care. That's true for every human being and even the ones who don't find it, it's because it has been squashed or somehow suppressed in some way in their life but it is there to be discovered. We all long for that and there's a tremendous sorrow for a human being who doesn't find a way to give. One of the worst of human sufferings is not to find a way to love or a place to work and give of your heart and your being, opportunities to give arise everywhere. One thing I've come to understand is that it isn't the bold initiatives or the grand strategies which make a difference, it's the small moments, the times when you have brightened someone's day with a smile or a call, remind it them that they are not alone in their struggle. Rabbi Neckman of Breslov, a Hasidic master once said, it's very easy to criticize others and make them feel unwanted. Anyone can do that. What takes effort and skill is picking them up and making them feel good. A favorite poem of mine is this one from Naomi Shahib Nye, entitled Kindness. Before you know what kindness really is, you must lose things. Feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go, so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride, thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore. Only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread. Only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say, it is you I have been looking for. And then it goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore. A kindness that flows naturally out of the recognition of our connection, our oneness, our place in this web. As we move around this world and as we act with kindness perhaps, or with indifference, or with hostility toward the people we meet, we are setting the great spider web a tremble. The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life. And that in turn another. And who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch will be felt. Our acts have reverberations which are felt way beyond our imagining. Kindness is sometimes viewed as one of those worn out virtues lacking in charisma or clout. And yet it encompasses meaningful acts of love, words of encouragement, reverberations beyond our knowing, generosity and healing. No wonder Abraham Joshua Heschel near the end of his life said, when I was young, I used to admire intelligent people. As I grow older, I admire kind people. Caring, giving, kindness, these are essential qualities of our being human. Yet there are two parts of this important to remember. First, the words of the poem. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. We have many ways to distract ourselves from suffering, from sorrow, and from the fact that they are both there in others and ourselves. Denial, abstraction, constant activity, these are all ways in which the mind reacts to suffering and attempts to restrict the natural compassion of the heart. As we reach out, we often pull back because the pain is too raw, the suffering too close to home, the feelings too intense. This is a lesson of caring, to truly care for another. We must learn the gifts of openness and presence. This is no easy skill. It takes practice and time and courage. We must learn to be open without judgment, without turning away to the beauty and the pain of another. Sitting with each other in our grief, holding a hand to say, you are still here, I am still here, and you are not alone. This is a gift we give to each other and to ourselves. And this is a second piece. We need to loosen our hold on that beloved proverb it is better to give than to receive. Let's replace it with, from you I receive, to you I give, together we share and from this we live. When we give to another, we're saying you have value in my eyes. You are important to me. You are worthy of my care and concern. When we receive from another, we are acknowledging that we are not entirely self-sustaining, that we need one another, that we are vulnerable. Giving and receiving is a dance, and many of us are quite comfortable with the giving. Few are good at the receiving. Sometimes we are caught off guard in our unsure how to react. Other times we're embarrassed by the attention. Questions begin forming in our mind, how do I feel about this person? What is my past experience with her? How does she want me to react? Is this gift something that we really want? What will he want in return? Just as giving requires us to practice openness and presence, receiving requires us to practice emptiness and letting go. Our minds are so full of our own stories, our own ideas, preconceived notions, assumptions, that it's difficult for us to empty ourselves and simply receive a kind gesture, or a gift given with gratitude and compassion. It requires letting go. Letting go of our need to direct our lives and control the outcomes. Letting go of the stories that we use to understand ourselves, simply accepting what comes. The truth is that we need each other. Not a one of us can be spared, and the only way we can succeed individually and together is in the giving and receiving that keeps our world whole. This congregation, every congregation, is a community of revolving care receivers and caregivers. Here in this place, we can be strong enough to care and vulnerable enough to receive. The classic notion that the pastoral work of this congregation is done totally by the ministers is simply not the case. We are blessed with a lay ministry program, a network of care and support. People who offer comfort, kindness, help, and healing to members and friends. These are people who model openness, presence, emptiness, and letting go. They have experienced joy and woken with sorrow and have come to this work with the realization that only kindness makes sense. In a moment, we'll be recognizing them and the work that they do here. If you are realizing this morning that you are in a place to be strong enough to receive care, to open yourself to another, call on them. They are here for you. If you are being stirred this morning to join them, to offer yourself up as one who would like to do this work, come and talk with me. Anne Lamott posted these words a few days ago. Last night at Arbor Lawn United Methodist Church in Fort Worth, the last of 14 cities on this book tour, a woman in her late 20s raised her hand and asked, what is the big picture? I do a lot of things that I love and value, but I don't have a clue what it all means. The crowd was actually hushed, as if I might have the secret launch codes and could answer this for all time. I said, welcome to the monkey house, stealing one of Vonnegut's titles. Everyone of every age roared with friendly laughter because we're all in the same boat. We all think we missed school, the day that the visiting specialist stopped by our second grade classroom to distribute the pamphlets on what is true, who we are, how we are to live with the great mystery of life, how to come through dark times, how to awaken. We're all sort of winging it, trying to learn self-love and respect, trying to be here now sometimes and live lives of meaning and joy. This is what I said to her. You do a lot of things that you love and value. That's the big picture. You've learned about radical self-care, about putting your own oxygen mask on first, yet also have discovered that we can only be filled up by service, by giving. Ram Dass said that he thought that when it was all said and done, we are all just walking each other home. That's the meaning, I think. That's the big picture. That's why we are here. May we hold one another in our hearts and may we feel the deep responsibility and gift of walking each other home, home to beauty, to wholeness, to peace. Blessed be. I now invite you into the giving and the receiving of the morning's offering. It is an outreach offering. You can read more about our recipient in your order of service. We thank you for your generosity. Ministry is all that we do together. Among the many opportunities, the lay ministry team lives this out in tangible ways through the work they do each day. Lay ministers come to this work with a compassionate heart, ready to be present, to listen deeply, to companion on the journey. As the professional ministers, Michael and I cannot be everywhere when there is a need. Lay ministers hold a special role in this community for they serve as an extension of the ministry that we do. Lay ministers are committed to this work. They participate in regular meetings and receive skill-building opportunities throughout the year. Their dedication and commitment is palpable and strong. So today we pause to honor and bless our lay ministers. So will the lay ministers present please stand? There are many more of them. They're just mainly an 11 o'clock crowd. We are grateful for your role in this place. You work in coordination with us and serve this community as compassionate listeners and companion others on their journey. You have our trust and our respect. We thank you for your service and we ask, are you willing to serve this congregation as you are able and do what you can to build and maintain this beloved community? With open hearts and welcoming hands, will you listen and care for members and friends with whom you are matched? If so, please say we will. And if the congregation will rise in body or spirit, to all of you, I ask, will you members and friends of this congregation support these lay ministers in their efforts? Will you trust them and open your hearts to the gifts they have to offer? If so, please say we will. With full and grateful hearts, we thank you for your service and your presence in this beloved community. And now that you're already up and standing, if you'll join together in hymn number 301, please be seated. Before you leave today, I just want to remind you in that three short weeks, you will be able to sign up for Select to Connect events. So since it's only three weeks away, we wanted to make sure that you know what it is. These are events, dinners, picnics, sporting events. They are a fantastic way for people to get to know each other better. They are events created by our members and friends, by all of you. There are already some submitted on the FUS website that you can look at. And speaking of events, I'm hearing from Sally who is out there in the Commons staring at me. Sally is here staffing the table each weekend. What she tells me is that many of you are speaking with her or with Becky about these great ideas that you have for events, but the confirmation and information isn't coming in. So we really want Select to Connect to be a great success, both in making connections and also raising some much needed funds for the budget. I'm asking for your help today in thinking about an event, an activity that you can host. My family is once again doing a winter solstice family celebration. It's crafts and snacks and all to welcome back the sun. It's simple and it's easy and it's fun. If I can do it, you can do it. Trust me. Michael and Sasha and I are going to host a yet-to-be-announced get-together. But whatever it is, it's going to be fabulous. So Sally is out at the table in the Commons, stop by after the service, talk to her about an event, tell her that you'd like to do something but you don't know what. She has amazing ideas. So thank you for thinking about hosting and then thank you for remembering to sign up to attend some of these events in just three weeks. And now our closing. Those here with you today are people whose hearts are sometimes tender, whose skin is sometimes thin, whose eyes sometimes fill with tears, whose laughter is a beautiful sound. The ones gathered here with you are seeking wholeness and know that you are doing the same. As you leave this place, may your hearts remain open, may your voices stay strong, and may your hands always, always be reaching out. Blessed be and go in peace.