 and welcome to First Unitarian Society. I am Roger Birchhausen, the interim minister. My colleague Kelly Crocker and I are joined in worship this morning by Drew Collins, Linda Warren, Heather Thorpe, Daniel Karnes, Stephen Gregorius, Michael May, who will be sharing about what FUS means to him, and the Sears Burns family who will be leading us in our chalice lighting. The vision of First Unitarian Society is growing souls, connecting with one another, and embodying our Unitarian Universalist values in our lives, in our community, and in the world. We thank you for joining us in worship today. We hope you will also feel welcome to join us in the virtual coffee hour that'll immediately follow the service and at the end of the service there will be information on the screen about how to join coffee hour. I invite you now to join in a moment of silence, to center yourselves, to bring yourselves to this time, this place virtually where we're together once again as a community. As we enter into this time, put away the pressures of the world that ask us 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 welcoming. 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. You only have to bring the gift of your body no matter how able. You're 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 time together. And we invite you now to join in our chalice lighting by lighting a candle or a chalice in your home as Jean and Becky lead us in our words of affirmation. We light our flaming chalice as a beloved people united in love and thirsting for justice. May it spark in us a spirit of humility. May it ignite in us radical love that transforms our energy into purposeful action. This is a chalice of audacious hope. This chalice shines a light on our shared past signaling our intention to listen deeply, reflect wisely, and move boldly toward our highest ideals. Please rise and body and our spirit and sing with us hymn number 1007. There's a river flowing in my soul. Our story today is called The Blue Songbird and it's from Vern Kuski. Once there lived a blue songbird. Every morning she would wake up, hop to the edge of a high branch, and listen to her sister's lovely songs. The songbird always tried to join in with them, but she could never sing like they could sing. I'm not like my older sisters, said the songbird to her mother. It seems there are no songs for me. My dearest one replied her mother, not just any notes will do. You must go and find a special song that only you can sing. So the songbird left her mother, left her nest and all she knew and she flew off to find her special song. When she reached a far off land, she saw a giant bird unlike any she'd ever seen before. The songbird landed and began to chirp, excuse me, Mr. Long-necked bird, in your travels have you heard of a very special thing, a song that only I can sing? The bird stretched his slender neck down low to where the songbird stood. My name is Crane whooped the bird. And I'm sorry that I can't help you, but see those mountains over there? Beyond them lives the wisest bird. If anyone knows where to find the answer, I'm sure it will be him. The songbird kindly thanked the crane, then flew off to continue her quest. She soared over the mountain peaks and dove down into a deep valley until she reached a dark pine forest. Here she found a bird who looked old and very wise. Hello, Mr. Wise Old Bird, in your long life you must have heard of a very special thing, a song that only I can sing. I am Owl hooted the bird, who are you looking for? No, no, not who answered the songbird. I'm searching for a song, but the Owl only cocked his head. Who, who, this must not be the wise bird after all, thought the songbird. Still she thanked him kindly, then flew off once more to continue her quest. The songbird crossed rivers and valleys, cities and oceans all along the way she always asked where she might find her song. But no bird ever had the answer. One windy winter day, she met a bird who looked a little bit mean and more than a little bit hungry. Even so the songbird bravely chirped, please don't eat me, Mr. Scary Bird. I just wondered if you've ever heard of a very special thing, a song that I can sing. Call me crow, called the bird, and I have heard of such a thing. Across the sea there is an island, golden as the sun, and filled with the most enchanting music. Fly west as far as you can, and there you will find the song you seek. The songbird kissed the clever crow, then set out to cross the sea. She flew through storm and wind through night and day until she was more tired than she had ever been. But the songbird did not rest, for she knew that soon she would find her special song. Then she saw the island, glowing like a jewel on the horizon. In the distance she could hear the sound of beautiful music. At last I made it, laughed the songbird, and suddenly her wings felt strong again. She swooped down faster and faster, following the sound until she found that after all this time, she was home. The songbird's heart fell. She had circled the whole world, spoken to every bird there was, but her quest had failed. Then she saw her mother, and all her disappointment disappeared. She had so many stories to tell, but when the songbird opened her beak to tell them, what came out was not words at all, but a song. She sang a song of crane and owl and of the clever crow, of cities and of stormy seas and mountains capped with snow, of all the warm and sunny days and the chilly nights alone, and of the love the songbird felt for her family and her home. This month we are inviting members of First Unitarian Society and affiliates to spend some time thinking about what FUS means to you. What role does FUS play in your life? We then invite you to consider your financial commitment to FUS for the next year or in the case of sustaining contributors the next two years. We are grateful for those who have submitted stewardship pledges and we warmly and gently remind those of you who have not to do so. This morning we are very grateful to Michael May for sharing a little bit of his FUS story and what FUS means to him. Hello fellow Unitarian Universalists. I'm Michael May. I've been a member of this congregation for over 40 years. I'm here today to talk about stewardship, our stewardship taking care of this great institution. What I want to talk about is our duty to prepare for the future. I'm a person who believes in the power of institutions. We can accomplish more together in a place like First Unitarian Society than we could accomplish if we all stacked up our own individual efforts. I want FUS to be the leading liberal religious organization in Dane County. I want it to be here for decades so that people like you and me have a place to call our spiritual home. Other people prepared this society so it was there when I needed a home or when you needed a place to bring your kids to church school. Just as others did that for us, we have a duty to do that for others. I miss seeing all of you at Sunday services and parish meetings, the ministers and staff, and really everyone has done a great job in maintaining connections during this awful pandemic. But guess what? The pandemic is finally on the run. Sometime later this year, we'll be gathering in those iconic buildings at FUS and we can see each other again. And we'll have a new called minister. We need to be prepared. We need to be prepared so that FUS and all of us are ready when we finally beat this pandemic. Because I wanna see that FUS is strong as the pandemic becomes weak, because I want FUS to be there for future spiritual seekers. I'm increasing my pledge this year to first Unitarian society by 10%. I hope that you can do the same. Whether you do it for our buildings or the Sunday school or our services or our justice programs or just so that we can pay our staff an ethical wage, we need to be ready for the end of the pandemic. We also need to be prepared for the long run. We must continue to foster ethical and liberal spiritual values to the greater society. To do that, we have to have a strong first Unitarian society. Thank you. The Episcopal priest and poet, Alla Renee Beauxart writes, the small plot of ground on which you were born cannot be expected to stay forever the same. Earth changes and home becomes different places. You took flesh from clay, but the clay did not come from just one place. To feel alive, important and safe, know your own waters and hills, but no more. You have stars in your bones and oceans in your blood. You have opposing terrain in each eye. You belong to the land and the sky of your first cry. You belong to infinity. These words speak to me of the fundamental questions we are asking this morning. Who and whose are we? I know I have delivered many sermons to you on that second question, who's are we? And I promise you, we will get to that in a moment. First though, I would like us to take some time with that first question, who are we? What is our commitment to ourselves? For when I look at these two questions, I know my own tendency is to jump immediately to thinking about who we are with one another and I think this could be to our detriment. I'm learning that we need to answer the first question, who are we first? To feel alive, important, and safe, know your own waters and hills. Since early November, I have had the great privilege of taking part in a program called Flourishing in Ministry, offered through the Center for Courage and Renewal, an organization started by Parker Palmer and Marcy and Rick Jackson. One of the foundational pieces of this work is that we all have a trustworthy source of inner wisdom that informs our lives and how we are in this world. It is our identity and integrity, the sum of our shadows and our light, our true self. Without taking the time to discover and uncover who this true self is, we cannot live a life of authenticity. Without taking the time for this crucial discovery of self, we cannot be fully present in building a life with others. This inner place they talk about is more than our intellect, our ego, our emotions and our desires. It is the light behind the eyes, the energy that animates us, or as Howard Thurman said, it is the sound of the genuine within you. If their language of true self doesn't resonate, you can call it your inner wisdom or your inner voice, maybe trusting your gut. Poets, musicians and mystics have all given words to this essence of who we are beyond the usual ways we define our lives, where we live, how we make a living, what positions we hold. John O'Donohue calls it the dignity somewhere in us that is more gracious than the smallness that fuels us with force. William Stafford appeals to a voice, to something shadowy, a remote important region in all. Although Parker Palmer often refers to his inner teacher, he often says that what you call this core of humanity doesn't matter, but that we name it matters a great deal, that we recognize it matters, that we take the time to discover it and learn how to listen to it matters. If we don't find it and feel it and name it, we start to lose the being in human being. We start to treat ourselves and one another like empty vessels or objects to be marketed. When we say soul or identity and integrity, there is a recognition that there is something within ourselves and within each person we meet to make a deep bow to. There is a word for it, he says, in every wisdom tradition. Too many of us allow the sense of who we are to come from the sum of our life experiences or many of us tragically allow all of our mistakes to tell us who we are. We look through the murky lens of shame or regret that our stumbles and hurts, our heart aches and breaks and define ourselves by these alone. No other measure or other voice can convince us otherwise. Without taking the time to discover the underlying core of our being, getting clarity around what we value, what grounds us, what convictions we hold, we will not be able to see ourselves and one another as we really are as beings of worth and value, light and shadow, inherently good just as we are. This question lives at the heart of Unitarian Universalism. We can hear it in the words of our transcendentalist forebears. In his 1841 essay, Self-Reliance, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Insist on yourself, never imitate. Nothing can bring you peace but knowing yourself. Don't try to be someone else. Be yourself and bring something new to life. Who are you? A woman in my small group cohort mentioned the power of rereading journals she has been keeping since she was a teenager. I see common threads throughout my life, she said. The themes are the same, the dreams are the same, the core of who I am is the same. I may be a different age, have a different job, live somewhere new, but my inner teacher is always there reminding me of who I am and what I stand for and whether or not I am being true to myself. It has taken me many years to realize that what I need to do is remember and listen. When we can be rooted in the answer to this question, who are you? Then we can show up in the fullness of who we are. This creates space for others to show up in their fullness as well and it must be said that there are those for whom rooting in self, for whom making this commitment to knowing themselves and honoring themselves is a radical act. There are so many forces that disrespect selves especially when those selves happen to be in bodies that are black or brown or Asian, female or non-binary or LGBTQ or more. The poet June Jordan said, I am a feminist and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am black. It means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect. To make a commitment to knowing yourself is about growth and justice and change and challenge. It's about what we hold sacred and how sacred we hold our very selves. Know your own waters and hills, but know more. Douglas Steer, a Quaker teacher says that this ancient and original question, who am I, inevitably leads to a deeper one, who's am I? Because there is no identity outside of relationship, he says, you cannot be a person by yourself. To ask whose am I is to know more, to wonder who needs you, who loves you, whose life is altered by your choices, with whose life is your own all bound up in obvious and maybe invisible ways. Reverend Sarah Lamert tells a story from her days of studying in Kenya when she was a youth. She and the other students were invited to a dinner hosted by some local tribal leaders and during the dinner, she recalls, one of the young men asked me who my people were. I stumbled with my answer explaining that I came from the area of the Mississippi River. He seemed puzzled that I could not clearly identify myself with a tribe. I know who I am, he said gravely. And by this he meant I know who I am in community. I know who I am as part of the natural world. I know myself to be a member of one tribal body, I belong, therefore I am. That powerful statement, I belong, therefore I am, is also a humbling one reminding us that we cannot be a person by ourselves. Whose lives are all bound up in obvious and invisible ways with your own? In our story of the blue songbird, we see this journey of setting out and discovering who we are. For the bird it was finding her song, the one that only she could sing. What I love about her journey is that she risked the adventure. She found the courage to head out on her own and she found her song when she returned home to her family, when she remembers whose she was. It was when she was with them that she discovered the song that was uniquely hers to sing. That story reminded me of the blessing that we give to our high school seniors when they participate in our bridging ritual, marking their transition from youth to young adulthood. We use the words of my colleague, Reverend Kelly Weisman, asked Ruth Jackson, who wrote, I send you out now to share yourself with the world. May its promise and complexity set your mind ablaze. May you hold fast to what your life has taught you. May you question everything. And when you have changed the world and when the world has changed you, may you return again to this place and share what you have learned with us. Who and whose are you? To become our authentic true selves, we need to hold fast to what grounds us, honoring our own inner wisdom, and we need others to help us see and understand ourselves clearly. In Courage Work, Parker tells us we stand with simple attentiveness with another, trusting that they have within themselves whatever resources they need, and that our attentiveness can help bring those resources into play. This is the beauty of knowing to whom you belong, knowing that you belong here together. In community, we are able to show up in the fullness of our beings. When we are filled with joy and when we are deep in sorrow and know that we are held here in love. Our community is grounded in a core value of love. We say we are bound to one another in love, by which we mean the willingness to create space for our own growth, as well as the growth of another. Learning to be in community stretches us to understand, respect, and support one another, which is why we say love is hard. Yet we choose to do it anyway. A community that allows us to do this makes us want to grow from the inside out, giving us the safety needed to take the risks and endure the failures that growth requires. Knowing who you are is critical, and so is knowing whose you are. These two questions together allow us to understand ourselves and why we are here and remind us that we never need to do this alone. Each day you go out into the world, holding fast to that core of who you are with struggle and growth, changing and being changed by the world. And then we hope you return here, sharing what you have learned, singing the song that only you can sing. Here with us, our lives inextricably bound together in mutual care and abiding love. May we be brave enough to make it so. I invite you into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our community within and beyond First Unitarian Society. Today's offering will be shared once again this week with the UW Madison Odyssey Project. Odyssey takes a whole family approach to increasing confidence through reading, writing and speaking. It has empowered over 500 low-income adults to find their voices and begin to earn college degrees. Let's hear the story of one person whose life has been impacted by the Odyssey Project. Hello everyone, James Morgan here. The UW Odyssey Project offers free University of Wisconsin-Madison humanities classes for those students facing economic barriers to college. The majority of Odyssey students, 95%, are from racial and ethnic minority groups and are often overcoming the obstacles of single parenthood, homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, incarceration, depression and domestic abuse. As a graduate of the Odyssey Project, I can attest that the Odyssey Project has transformed lives. Now let me share with you the newest part of Odyssey Beyond Bars. Odyssey Beyond Bars teaches credit-bearing and non-credit UW Madison courses to students incarcerated in Wisconsin's prisons. It was created to address the problem of mass incarceration by giving students in prison the academic and professional opportunities they need to re-enter our communities. As a previously incarcerated person, I'd be remiss in not sharing my special affinity for Odyssey Beyond Bars. Like many of the men who've challenged themselves to acquire higher education while in prison, I too made the decision that in order to become someone as opposed to something, change would be required. Education was and is that pathway. One of the lesser known and overlooked facts when it comes to the criminal justice and injustice system is that higher education produces and reduces the rates of recidivism, making it less likely that someone returns to prison. Prison education contributes to the overall safety of our communities and gives the returning individual the opportunity to become more personally and culturally responsible. Odyssey Beyond Bars provides that transitional bridge, that foundation. I now work alongside Odyssey staff in preparing the curriculum for this project using Plato's Allegory of the Cave. From a pre and post incarceration experience, I understood the inherent metaphor embedded in the literature. The story of prisoners fettered in a cave reflects the lives of many of these men have lived in a shadow world that are seeking the life of life. As you consider your contribution today for Odyssey Beyond Bars, you will not only be supporting someone's opportunity at a second chance, but perhaps their first chance to live a purposeful life. Of equal importance is that our faith promises forgiveness, compassion and connectedness to our fellow travelers. That will be the true impact of your gift today. So give and give generously to Odyssey Beyond Bars, to life and to love and thank you. You'll see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org and there'll also be instructions about our text to give program. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life that we create together. Is love, is love, is love Each week we gather, bringing the fullness of our lives into this place, sharing with one another our losses and our celebrations knowing they are held here in love. This week we light a candle of sorrow for Jane Richardson as she remembers and mourns her dear friend Carol Brooks who passed away on Tuesday. And this week once again we are here in grief and in anger as another senseless act of violence has taken place this time in Boulder, Colorado taking the lives of 10 people. We also know that in the past week alone our country has seen at least seven shootings. May we join now in a moment of prayer. Spirit of life and love, shaken by sorrow, we wonder why, we wonder how. Humans can find it within themselves to destroy the life that exists also within them. Together we grieve the injustice of lives cut short by anger and hate. We hold in our hearts the survivors who now live in fear and all the loved ones who now live with deep and abiding grief. We stand firm in life as a community of strength and hope. May we remember, may we grieve, may we join together today and all the days to come to do what we can to heal and rebuild our world. May it be so. Blessed be. May you be filled with the blessings of this community. May you carry them with you through your days. May you discover the places in the world where these blessings are needed and may you have the courage to share them. May there always be an open place within you to receive the blessings of all the people you meet along the way. Blessed be and go in peace.