 Oh shit, I'm really good for you. Yeah, of course. I didn't want to do it, but I said, they're also finished. I'm really good for you. I'm really good for you. We join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically present with each other by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. Speaking of harmony, good morning everybody. A cheerful Labor Day weekend welcome to First Unitarian Society, where independent thinkers gather in a safe, nurturing environment to explore issues of social, spiritual, and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world. And speaking of things that are very different in this world, I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud member of this congregation, and I'd like to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, and newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find it's a special place and we invite you to join in our fellowship hour after the service. Speaking of fellowship, one thing that will improve our fellowship is if we silence those pesky electronic devices that we will not need during the service. And while you're doing that, I'll remind you that if you're accompanied this morning by a youngster, and you think that young person would prefer to experience the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options. We have our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium. We're a couple children who are already there. And some comfortable seating just outside the doorway in the commons, from which you and your young friend can hear and see the service. Speaking of hearing and seeing the service, the reason we can do that today is we've got a great team of volunteers who are bringing us the service. I'm about to announce their names, and if you would like to hear your name announced on this microphone someday as one of our volunteers, all you have to do is sign up. These people signed up today, and they're here, operating the sound system. Thank you to Mark Schultz, serving as our lay minister. Thank you to Anne Smiley. Lynn Scobey was our greeter upstairs. She's the one who shared that authentic, genuine smile as you walked in the door. Our ushers are John and Nancy Webster. The hospitality and coffee are hosted by Jean Hills and Pamela McMullen, and I must say Pamela is doing triple duty today because she was our greeter at the nine o'clock. She was also our tour guide after the nine o'clock service, and now she's working in the kitchen. So say thank you to Pam McMullen and maybe put her in your will. And speaking of double duty, in addition to serving as one of our ushers, Nancy Webster is making sure that our pulpit palms are green, moist, and vibrant. Speaking of vibrant, I think that's what you'll find in the service that you're about to listen to. So please, sit back or lean forward to enjoy this morning's service. I know it will touch your heart, stir your spirit, and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. Come together this morning seeking a reality beyond our narrow, isolated selves, a reality that binds us in compassion, understanding, and cooperation with all other men and women and with the community of sentient life. May our spirits today be open and receptive to the insights conveyed through music and poetry, which weave together the scattered threads of our experience, which help us to remember the wholeness to which we belong and to which we all owe our health, happiness, and indeed, our very lives. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And as Steve kindles the flame of our faith, please join me in reading the words that are printed in your program. We gather as a community of memory and a community of hope to celebrate life and its never-ending promise of love. We kindle this flame as a symbol of the light within every human heart. May our individual sparks meet and merge, bringing the warmth of love and a beacon of hope into the world. And in the spirit of that love and that hope, please turn to your neighbor and exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated. And if we have any children that would like to come forward for the message for all ages, I would love your company up in the front. It always has to be one person who kicks us off, and it's quite all right if your parents come up with you. Oh, the two pennies? Oh, yeah, we'll put that in the offering so that the church can use it to help pay for some of the things we do here. Okay, I'll leave it there. Sounds good, thank you. Ah, we have a good little group today. So this is a story that's titled Cooperation. Cooperation. Anybody know what the word cooperate means? You ever heard that word? Yeah. It means to work together, that's right. And why would you want to cooperate? You know? Because maybe if you have something really important you need to do, it's harder to do it by yourself than if you do it with some other people who are all working to do the same thing with you. So this is a story about cooperation. And it begins with the sun. The sun got up one morning in a bad mood. And the sun said to himself, I'm really getting tired of getting up every single morning and giving light to the earth day in and day out. I'm tired of ripening the corn. I'm tired of melting the snow. What does the human race? What do people do for me in return? And the sun was still thinking all of this over when the rain arrived. Lady rain, the sun complained. You water the earth all the time. You make the flowers to grow. You turn all the fields green. You fill up all the rivers. Have you ever thought about this? What have people ever done for you in return? Well, hearing this, the rain furrowed her brow with terrible cries. She fell headlong onto the earth. And as she fell, she pounded out these words. Listen, Mother Earth, you let humankind work with you, rip you open, scratch you, scrape you. And what does the human race, what do people ever do for you? The earth turned to its furrows in the ground and murmured to the grains of wheat. Hey, little grains of wheat, you let yourself die so that human beings can harvest you and make bread to eat. What does humankind ever do for you in return? So none of them were very happy about this situation. So the sun stopped shining and the rain stopped falling and the earth stopped holding the grain and the grain stopped germinating and growing. And what happened? All life disappeared from the earth. But eventually the sun got bored because there were no longer any children who were dancing in its warmth and its light. And the rain, she began to feel sad because she never saw the smile of the gardener working in his garden. And the earth became very tired because the earth never felt the joyful step of the farmer cultivating his wheat. And the grains of wheat well, they just began to rot because there was no one there to pick them. So together, the sun and the rain and the earth and the grain they decided that they need to call on a higher power. So they said, hey creator author of the universe everything is dying everything that you made so good in the world is disappearing. Bring everything back to earth and bring you. And the creator replied to the sun and the rain and the earth and the grain. My friends I have given you already everything that you need to support life on earth. Life cannot be born except of you and between you. And life will be born again it will come again if each of you shares your special nature with all of creation and creator life is born out of sharing and cooperation the sharing of your lives together and where there is no sharing and no willingness to cooperate there cannot be any life. And this is true not just for the sun and for the rain and for the earth and the grain it's also true for all of us as human beings that things are a lot better when we learn how to share and to cooperate and to help each other which is a good lesson for all of us to remember as we begin a new year in school. So thank you for listening and we're going to sing you out with our next song and hope you have a good time at our last summer fun session of the year. Next week we'll be back in our classes. Please be seated. We continue our service with the selection from Scott Russell Sanders who is a professor emeritus of humanities and literature at Indiana University. He writes, since the eclipse of our native cultures the dominant American view has been that we should cultivate the self rather than the community that we should look after the individual as the source of our hope and the center of our value while expecting hindrance and harm from the larger society. And what other view could have emerged from our particular history the first Europeans to reach America were daredevils they were treasure seekers as were most of those who mapped the interior many colonists were renegades of one stripe or another some of them religious nonconformists some political rebels more than a few of them were fugitives from the law the trappers, hunters traders and freebooters who pushed the western frontier recognized no authority beyond the reach of their own hands and our religion our religion has been marked by an evangelical Protestantism that emphasized personal salvation rather than social redemption to get right with God as signs along the roads here in the Midwest gravely recommend that does not mean to reconcile your fellow citizens to the divine order but rather to make your own separate peace to look after the eternal future of your own singular soul and so this cult of the individual it shows up everywhere in America a lore a lore which celebrates drifters rebels, loners while pitying or reviling the pillars of our community when society begins to close in making demands, asking questions our heroes they hit the road like Huckleberry Finn they are forever lighting out for the territories where nobody will tell them what to do in our literature if the community enters at all it is likely to appear as a conspiracy against the free soul the hero or the heroine but for all of that we can see around us all of the fruits of concern for the common good the libraries, the museums the courthouses, hospitals orphanages, universities, parks and so on born as most of us are into places where these amenities already exist we may take them for granted but they would not be here for us if our forebears had not cooperated in building them no matter where we live our home places have benefited from the granges the unions from the volunteer fire departments the art guilds the garden clubs the charities, the food kitchens the homeless shelters, the soccer and baseball teams the scouts, the 4-H the boys and girls clubs, the lions the Elks, the Rotarians countless other gatherings of people who happen to see a need and respond to it while Emerson he is famous for preaching the gospel of self-reliance but he also knew the necessity of having neighbors he lived in a village he gave and received help and he delivered his essays to fellow citizens whom he hoped to sway and if you visit Emerson's home in Concord you will find leather buckets hanging near the front door because Emerson himself belonged to the village fire brigade and even in the seclusion of his study even in the depths of thought he kept his ears and eyes open for the alarm bell we need to make of this common life of ours not merely a metaphor not merely a story we need it to become a fact of the heart today there are so many alarm bells ringing that we may be tempted to stuff our ears with cotton but better that we should keep our ears and our eyes open take courage as well as joy from our common life and all work together for that which we love blend so well together so it's wonderful to have two consummate artists who are performing we are indeed very very fortunate to have Linda and Dan on our staff and to have had them for as long as we have so stick around guys well among the quirky cast in the 1990s sitcom Northern Exposure we find an abrasive misanthropic fellow simply known as Adam dressed in fatigues his long unkempt hair held in place by a stocking cap Adam tramps barefoot through the Alaskan backcountry popping up from time to time in the small town of Sicily for reasons beholden to no one Adam is in fact a culinary genius a man who in former times had prepared unique gourmet dishes in some of the world's finest restaurants uncompromising in his pursuit of excellence utterly devoted to his discipline Adam claims to be self-taught the sole arbiter of his success as he is treated to Alaska he continues to create these gastronomic masterpieces but only on his own terms and only on occasions of his own choosing I was reminded of Adam the other day while perusing a recent issue of The New Yorker one article a personal profile focused on a man named Damon Barrow a character right out of Northern Exposure's playbook Barrow runs this tiny out-of-the-way restaurant a half hour south of Albany, New York and he has gained an international reputation as an extreme locomotive a master chef who creates eye and palate-pleasing dishes out of such humble local ingredients as milkweed, cattail stems tree bark pine needles, acorns and goldenrod and apart from the small amounts of meat and milk and fish that he procures from local suppliers every ingredient that he uses comes from the twelve acres on which he lives and works in upstate New York even the three dozen varieties of cheese that he prepares using nettles and carrot top hay as the necessary coagulants unassisted Barrow harvests for prepares, serves, clears and cleans up after each meal that he creates as one experienced reviewer enthused it is the most memorable meal I have ever had and I have never in my life seen one person do everything to prepare and to serve such a meal Barrow's establishment caters only to small private parties that have made reservations well in advance his waiting list he claims is ten years long some say that he belongs among the top tier of the world's most innovative and accomplished chefs like northern exposures Adam Damon Barrow professes to be a self-made professional generally speaking he says I was inspired by Native Americans but I've never read anything specific about indigenous cuisine now as a teenager he had worked at some French restaurants in the area but he says they only taught me what not to do he cites no instructors no mentors as sources of influence and he insists that he acquired his abilities through close observation of the surrounding natural terrain and by trial and error experimentation and so Nick Palmgarten says that Barrow has concocted a canny fulfillment of a particular foodie fantasy an eccentric hermit rings strange masterpieces from the woods of his scrabble backyard and of course this story is appealing to the reader because it also fits rather snugly into that old, whorey tale self-made man the individual who has parlayed his own acumen industry and perseverance into a winning formula for success the narrative is as old as the winning of the west thought to have been accomplished by those hardy pioneers who alighted from their conestoga wagons to bust the prairie sod and to prospect for gold in the Colorado foothills 19th century American romantic writers some of them with unitarian connections contributed to the popularization of this peculiarly American fable it figures prominently in Henry David Thoreau's Walden and it also finds expression in a series of best-selling juvenile novels by one Horatio Alger who at one time served as a unitarian minister and once of men live lives of quiet desperation Thoreau once complained but in a woodland glade on the banks of Walden pond Thoreau would demonstrate what it meant to really live to live freely unencumbered self-reliant responsible to no one but himself here he wrote I intend to live deep to suck out all the marrow of life living so sturdily as to put to route all that is not life and Thoreau applied his famous dictum simplify simplify simplify not only to his furnishings his diet and his apparel but also to his relationships which he tried to keep he said to a minimum toward his admirers Ralph Waldo Emerson once observed Thoreau acts superior didactic he scorns their petty ways his hometown of conquered he dismissed as being on a very low level culturally were the only of pygmies and mannequins he was deeply distrustful of all communal enterprises and for Thomas Jefferson's observation that that government is best which governs least Thoreau substituted that government is best which governs now Thoreau has gained a deserved reputation as a nature writer and as a clear-eyed observer of natural phenomena but as Catherine Schultz points out he was also self obsessed and adamant adamant that he required nothing beyond himself to understand and to thrive in the world now for his part Horatio Alger won a wide audience for his so-called rags to riches stories tales that featured disadvantaged boys who used their native abilities to overcome adversity and rise through the social rags as a youngster Ernest Hemingway was smitten by these Horatio Alger stories there was one summer his sister Marceline remembers when Ernest couldn't get enough of Horatio Alger and this was a passion shared equally by many young readers of that particular era and this proposition continues to carry considerable weight with any number of Americans the self-reliant self-made individual who does not require any sort of subsidy from the social system this is still held up as a model for many of us to emulate it was a theme that Mitt Romney revisited in the 2012 presidential campaign when he extolled America's business elite saying you built that nobody helped you, you built that as you may recall this was a direct rebuttal to a statement that President Obama had made somewhat earlier in which he stressed the principles of interdependence and shared achievement much the same position has been staked out more recently by Donald Trump who has taken almost exclusive credit for his own financial, political and even his literary accomplishments Trump's self-portrayal as a Horatio Alger figure has buttressed his political appeal Jane Meyer observes but how much credence if any should we give to claims like this is it really a myth that we are talking about here or is there something anything in these perennially popular narratives that rings true a closer look at some of the individuals previously mentioned may provide us with something of a reality check so let's return first to Horatio Alger's hackneyed stories about underprivileged youth making their own breaks and getting ahead in the world a few people today read these books but Alger's name is still routinely invoked in support of this principle of self-reliance the suggestion that a person can and should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps but was this really the author's outlook was this the position that he took but not so much it is true that fictional characters Alger's ragged dick did rise from grinding poverty working as a boot black in New York City to a position of respectability but Alger's heroes typically had these rich patrons who had recognized in those young men certain noble qualities and initially at least took those youngsters under their wing strived to be honest strived to be a decent human being Alger a former minister suggested and success will find you or as the book of Proverbs puts it misfortune pursues sinners but prosperity rewards the righteous Henry David Thoreau's brief in favor of independence and self-sufficiency was less nuanced the superior man he believed was no patrons and so like A.N. Rand the progenitor of 20th century objectivist thought Thoreau dismissed society as a sham as an impediment to individual expression and achievement but Thoreau's behavior was not always of a peace with his ethos in the first place Walden wasn't exactly a frontier wilderness park like a popular destination for picnickers and swimmers and hikers and skaters in the wintertime and this is where Thoreau built his shack a 20 minute walk from the village green at Concord and he made that easy trip into town frequently drawn by his mother's homemade cookies and by the Emerson family's dinner table relatives and friends often visited Thoreau at his shack in Walden bearing with them additional victuals as well as the latest community news and so as Catherine Schultz cautions only by elastic measures can Walden be regarded as non-fiction read charitably it is a kind of semi-fictional meditation featuring a character named Henry David Thoreau and what of Damon Bayrell shares some of Thoreau's eccentricities well his own parents sold him his original six-acre homestead at the bargain price of $160 per acre and he admits that he acquired his own early knowledge of native plants from his mother an amateur horticulturalist moreover Bayrell did work for a time at an Albany area restaurant under the supervision of a chef named Rene Faccetti Faccetti says I introduced Damon to all these ingredients that you can find out there in the woods and Faccetti's wife Corinne says why can't he acknowledge us because there is no such thing as a self-educated chef despite these debunkings of the popular myth it can certainly be argued that the myth has made a difference in at least some people's lives the comedian Groucho Marx he was the son of Jewish immigrants grew up poor like ragged dick in inner city New York and he had dreams of being a doctor but those dreams ended at the age of 12 when he had to go to work to support his family but Marx at that point was already a voracious reader and he was lapping up Harajal Alger's stories he attributed those stories to his early motivation to succeed these books conveyed a powerful message to me and many of my young friends that if you worked hard at your trade your big chance would eventually come aim high keep plugging away make your own luck the odds are you will be rewarded but of course it doesn't always work that way talent doesn't always tell and the rewards we receive are not always commensurate with the time and the effort that we put in and in fact the claim that one can go it alone and be successful that claim can even limit one's opportunities to rise higher in the world but it's exactly the kind of argument that has traditionally been offered by so called right to work advocates why should anybody belong to a union? why should you pay your hard earned money as dues to that organization? individual workers are better off on their own acting as independent agents autonomously bargaining one on one with their employers besides they say unions are job killers they chase manufacturers and businesses to places where labor is cheaper and where there's not so much opposition well unions are hardly above criticism but there is of course ample evidence that it is the strength of unions in this country that have been a benefit to workers and when that strength has declined so have the fortunes of American workers the economic policy institute just released a major study out of Washington University it's data attest to the positive effect that unions do have on workers fortunes that yes union members not only enjoy superior wages and benefits and working conditions and job security but the mere presence of unions in a given locale raises the bar for all employers so everybody benefits regardless of whether you actually pay union dues now private sector union membership has declined from 33% to less than 7% in the past 40 years and during that same period workers annual income in this country has fallen by $3200 in constant dollars and so even the Libertarian economist Dan Ikinson agrees that the erosion of union membership has had a severely deleterious effect on both wages and benefits in the United States of America so banding together a mutually supportive organization it does pay dividends witness the fortunes of the mostly female unionized workforce in Las Vegas's hospitality industry as Brittany Bronson reported in the New York Times recently a poor girl who grows up in that particular city Las Vegas whether or not she belongs to a union will make 7% more than she would if she lived elsewhere by the time she reaches the age of 26 income mobility is better in Las Vegas than in 71% of communities nationwide the one thing we know Bronson writes not just from the data but from the experience of thousands of culinary workers in Las Vegas is that unionization makes an enormous difference in women's lives so next time you are in Vegas ask your cocktail waitress union members understand that as part of a collective speaking with a single unified voice they can exert far more influence than if they acted as independent agents yes we all understand that globalization and labor saving technologies have made the task of unions that much harder but one would be hard pressed to argue that today's workers from teachers and nurses to carpenters and trash collectors that they would be better off as independent contractors with even a modicum of humility would be disingenuous in attributing their success solely to their own enterprise 100 times a day Albert Einstein wrote 100 times a day I remind myself that my inner and outer lives are based on the labors of other people living and dead and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure that I have received and am still receiving this summer I took the time to read Walter Isickson's lengthy biography of Apples late founder and CEO Steve Jobs here was the man who possessed one of the larger egos in corporate America a man who was notoriously prickly and demanding a man who routinely dismissed other people's ideas with the words it stinks and yet even Steve Jobs was self aware enough to recognize his own limitations as a teenager working as a lowly intern for Hewlett Packard Jobs gained this amazing insight the insight that a properly run company can spawn more innovation than any single creative individual and so in the year 2000 having reversed Apple's flagging fortunes Jobs returned to this insight saying I discovered that the best innovation is sometimes the company it's the way you organize the company and so when I got the chance to come back to Apple I realized that I Steve Jobs would be useless without the company and that's why I decided to stay and to rebuild Apple Steve Jobs was a passionate advocate of what he called deep collaboration whereby all sectors of the Apple organization continuously supported and cross-checked each other and in today's world a world threatened by climate change porous borders and a growing gap between rich and poor in today's world there is really no place for yet another generation of self-deluded loan rangers what we require instead are a lot more people who clearly recognize our urgent need for stronger communities and greater collaboration because as Rebecca Solnit echoing John Muir recently wrote we are nodes on this intricate system synapses snapping on a great collective brain we are all in it together for better or for worse blessed be and amen and in the spirit of that collaboration we resume our outreach offerings this weekend and today's gifts will be shared with the ICWJ Interfaith Coalition for Worker Justice that is doing wonderful work on behalf of all workers in our community and beyond please be generous we gather each week as a community of memory and of hope and to this time and place we bring our whole and sometimes our broken selves we carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past seeking here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared we would pause now to acknowledge an entry in our Cares of the Congregation book by Bressica Berg who is remembering and honoring her grandfather Ron who passed away last week we would extend congratulations to Allison Brooks and to John Mix who are both members of the congregation and Allison's mother Hathaway Hasler has been a member here about as long as anybody that I know of and Allison and John are going to be married and we're new and at Bishop's Bay and I'll be performing that ceremony and looking forward to celebrating with them I would also at a personal level like to extend to my mother Nancy a happy birthday wish yesterday she turned 93 and we celebrated with a very nice lunch at Labrios just down the way here and then a second cousin of mine got married last week on August 27th which happened also to be Trina's and my 43rd wedding anniversary so congratulations to us and in addition to those just mentioned we would also acknowledge any unexpressed joys and sorrows that occurred to you as I was speaking and we hold those with equal concern in our hearts let's sit silently for just a moment or two in the spirit of empathy and hope and so by virtue of our brief time together today may our burdens be lightened and our joys expanded and I invite you now to turn to our closing hymn a very short hymn number 157 step by step the longest march please remain standing for the closing words from Barbara Wells oh spinner weaver seamstress of our lives your loom is love may we who have gathered here be embraced by that love and empowered to weave new patterns of truth and justice together may we create a web of life that is strong, that is beautiful and that is everlasting please be seated for the postlude