 Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now that moment you've all been waiting for, let's get musically present with each other by singing the words to our in-gathering hymn, which we will sing three times. You'll find those words printed inside your order of service. Well good morning everybody. Welcome to another wonderful Sunday here at 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. I'm Steve Goldberg. I'm a proud member of this congregation and it is a particular pleasure to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors or newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I think you'll find it's a special place and if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we conduct guided tours after every service. Just gather over by the windows after the service and we'll take care of you. Speaking of taking care of each other, this is the all-important perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that might interfere with your ability to enjoy the service. So please take a moment and perform that task right now. And while you're doing that, if you are lucky enough to be accompanied this morning by a youngster and that young person would prefer to enjoy the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options starting with our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium and some special seats outside the doorway in the commons. And as is the case every weekend, our service is brought to us by an all-star team of volunteers who deserve our thanks, our appreciation, and a few of them should be added to your Christmas list. So operating the sound this morning is Mark Schultz, thank you Mark. Thanks to Ann Smiley for being our lay minister. To Karen Hill for greeting us with a smiling face as we entered the building today. Thanks to Allison Brooks and Vivian Littlefield-Hulken for serving as the ushers of this unruly crowd. And to Gene Hills for handling the hospitality and coffee. And also thank you to Alicia and Matt Anderson for donating the flowers that you see behind me in honor of their 10th anniversary. Please hold your applause. One announcement, very special announcement. We are welcoming our 2015-2016 ministerial intern, Julie Brock to FUS. She comes to us by way of Detroit, believe him more about that a little bit later from Julie herself. Meanwhile, prepare yourselves for a wonderful treat after the service as we enjoy some sweets and conversation with Julie to welcome her to Madison. Now the sweets have been provided by our own Nancy Deere, who in her day job is a caterer but is also an FUS member and she has provided her very special flaming chalice cookies for today. And I just want to show you how they taste. Okay, so ended the announcements. This is really worth catching by the way. It's my second one. And speaking of my second one, the 11 o'clock is my second service of the day. I heard the 9 o'clock and I know as you sit back or lean forward to enjoy this morning service that you will find it will touch your heart, stir your spirit and trigger one or two new thoughts and teach you a couple new tunes from our own string band. We're glad you're here. The field and the cloud are lovers and between them I am the messenger of mercy. I quench the thirst of the one. I cure the ailment of the other. The voice of thunder announces my arrival. The rainbow announces my departure. I emerge from the heart of the sea and soar with the breeze. When I see a field in need, I descend. And embrace the flowers and trees in a million little ways. I touch gently at the windows with my sift fingers. And my announcement is a welcome song. All can hear, but only the sensitive can understand. I am the sigh of the sea, the laughter of the field, the tears of heaven. And so with love. Size from the deep sea of affection. Laughter from the colorful fields of the spirit. Tears from the endless heaven of memory. It is my supreme honor to ask you all to stand this morning as we light our chalice and join me in the chalice-like words printed in your order of service. Water flows from high in the mountains. Water runs deep in the earth. Miraculously, water comes to us and sustains all life. And while you are standing, if you would turn to each other and exchange a friendly greeting of welcome this morning. Please be seated. We continue with this meditative poem from the late Irish poet John O'Donohue, taken from a book entitled The Four Elements. Let us bless the grace of water. The imagination of the primeval ocean where the first forms of life stirred and emerged to dress the vacant earth with warm quilts of color. The well whose liquid root worked through the long night of clay, thrusting ahead of itself openings that would yet yield to its yearning. Until at last it arises in the desire of light to discover the pure quiver of itself, flowing crystal clear and free through delighted emptiness. The courage of a river to continue belief in the slow fall of the ground always falling further toward the unseen ocean. The river does what words would love, keeping its appearance by insisting on disappearance, its only life surrendered to the event of pilgrimage, carrying the origin to the end, seldom pushing and straining, keeping itself to itself everywhere all along its flow. At one with the sinuous mind, an utter rhythm never awkward, it continues to swirl through all unlikeness with elegance. A ceaseless traverse of presence soothing on each side the stilled field resounding out its journey, raising up a buried music where the silence of time becomes almost audible. Tides stirred by the arrows of the moon, drawn from that permanent restlessness, perfect waves that languidly rise and pleat in gradual forms of aquamarine to offer every last tear of delight at the altar of stillness inland. And the rain in the night driven by the loneliness of the word to perforate the darkness as though some air pocket might open to release the perfume of the lost day and salvage some memory from its forsaken turbulence and drop its weight of longing into the earth and anchor there. Let us bless the humility of water, always willing to take the shape of whatever otherness holds it, the buoyancy of water stronger than the deadening downward drag of gravity, the innocence of water flowing forth without thought of what awaits it, the refreshment of water dissolving the crystals of thirst. Water, voice of grief, cry of love of the flowing tear. Water, vehicle, and idiom of all the inward voyaging that keeps us alive. Blessed be water, our first mother. If you have brought water with you today, you will be invited momentarily to bring it to the front. If you have not done so, we still invite you to participate in our communion first by perhaps bringing forth the virtual water that you may have forgotten, adding it to one of the two containers, and then also sharing in our communion by taking a small portion of the mingled waters with you at the end of the surface, and we have empty containers for you to do so. And so I ask that you come forward with your water in five stages. First, I will ask for water from the west and then water from the south, and then from the east and then from the north. And then finally, I will ask for waters that have been brought here from some location in or in the waters adjacent to our home state of Wisconsin. These are waters from the center. And as you come forward, please place your water in one of the two large containers to my left or right, and then in just a couple of words, tell Julie or me the source of that water so that we can then share it with the entire congregation as a whole. And so now we would invite you to begin by bringing waters from the west. This is water from Glacier National Park, Montana, Parmigan Falls, or Tarmigan Falls, depending on how you pronounce that. It's a bird, in any case. We have virtual water from the San Francisco Bay Area and the Pacific Ocean. More water from Glacier National Park, Lake McDonald, popular place this summer. Water from our General Assembly in Portland, Oregon. We're in Hawaii. From Maui, Hawaii, Los Angeles, California. We have water from San Diego and the San Francisco Bay. San Francisco Bay again. The Pacific Ocean around Honolulu, Hawaii. Too important? Do you want some help? This was collected from outside of Oregon on the occasion of a family reunion, it's Pacific Ocean water. Pacific Ocean near Big Sur. San Francisco Bay and Depot Bay, Oregon, we have some more virtual water. Water from the Green River in Utah's Dinosaur National Monument. And now water is from the south. While you're coming up, I'll add my own water from Perrysville, Ohio and the UU Young Adult National Retreat, Spiritual Retreat. From the south of Morris' house from the Rain Gauge, Guadalajara, Mexico, Cape Town, South Africa. Water from Costa Rica and water. And water from Richmond, Virginia, which deserved its own parade. Water from the east. Water from the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean off Jacksonville. From the San River in Paris. Carnegie Hall, New York City. From Long Nidrie from Scotland outside of Edinburgh. And Antwerp in Belgium. From Bahaba, Maine. Virtual water from Alon by the Sea, New Jersey. Lake Kivu, Rwanda. Water from Mecca. Virtual water from Cuba Lake Cuba, New York. Waters from the north. Pretty far north. Nobody went to Canada this year, OK. And then waters from the center, which could also be the northern part of Wisconsin. Rainwater from Madison. Kwamegon Bay, Lake Superior. Clearwater Lake, Boundary Waters Canoe Area, Minnesota. Water from their rain barrel in their backyard. Madeline Island, Lake Superior. From her rain gauge, thankful for the two inches of rain that she has received. This is from her first grown-up apartment here in Madison. Rainwater from her daughter's backyard in Oregon, Wisconsin. Vivian Lake Minota, her backyard. Water from Lower Hay Lake in Minnesota. Island Drive, Madison. From her new apartment home in Middleton Glen. From Middleton Pond, his daily walking spot. From Lake Michigan. From the Minota City Pool, and she's grateful for it. From Cloud Falls that turns into Lake Superior. We have water from last year's water communion. It's from his wife and his first apartment in Madison. And this is more water from last year's water communion. We bring our waters, which have touched the west, to the north, the south, and the east, which come from the sky and from the earth. We bring water that belongs to lakes and streams, reservoirs of fresh water that quench our thirst. We bring water that is part of the great oceans and the seas that serve, obteeming with life, the source of all life. We bring water to this place of meeting and sharing. In this container, there is new water. Formed in the atmosphere daily, there is old water from the deep of the earth, deposited by the rains of 10 million years ago. This is the stream of life from which all water flows. All people are connected by this stream for it runs through our veins and courses through the stems of the leaves and the plants. It is the symbol of the reality, of the oneness that unites humankind and all life. May our separate waters join in one sacred stream as we add our lives to the stream of living souls who live out the work of love and justice and hunger for peace. Now I'd like to share with you a story from the Native American tradition entitled Coyote and the Frog People. So Coyote was out hunting one day and he came across the old bone of a deer, a deer antler. And he looked at it and he said, "'Why, this looks just like a rare dentalia shell.'" Now, dentalia is a word that means literally tooth and dentalia shells look like this, tooth shell. So this old bone looked like a dentalia shell. And these shells were particularly prized by Native American people. Many of them came from the Northwestern part of the country and made their way all through the country and they were prized because Native Americans used them to make beautiful jewelry. And so Coyote had found this dentalia shell and he picked it up and he had an idea about what he was gonna do with it. So he went to see the frog people. And at the time, the frog people, they controlled all the water in the world. They had a monopoly. And when anybody wanted any water to drink or to wash with or to cook with, they had to go to the frog people and beg to have a portion of the water. And so Coyote had this shell and he goes to the frog people and he says, hey frog people, I've got this big, beautiful dentalia shell and I want a drink of water, a big drink of water and I will give you the shell if you will let me have a big drink. Give us the shell, said the frog people. You can drink all you want. And so Coyote gave him this old piece of deer antler that looked like the dentalia shell and he put his head under the water and he began to drink. Now all the water that the frogs had was trapped behind this big earthen dam and right by that dam is where Coyote took his drink. I'm gonna keep my head down for a long, long time, he said to the frog people, because I'm really thirsty. I've been running and I've been hunting and I need a big drink, so don't worry about me. Okay, we won't worry, said the frog people. So Coyote began to drink and he drank for a long, long time and then finally one of the frog people said, Coyote, you sure are drinking a lot of water. What are you doing down there? And Coyote said, well, I'm just really, really thirsty. I need a big, big drink. Oh, okay, all right. And after a while, one of the frog people said again, Coyote, we've never seen anybody drink this much water. How can you possibly be that thirsty? Maybe you need to give me another shell. Just let me finish this drink, said Coyote and he put his head back down under the water. Frog people wondered how anybody could possibly drink that much without exploding. And they didn't like what they were seeing and they were beginning to get a little suspicious because Coyote could be something of a trickster. And in fact, what Coyote was doing with his head under water all that time is he was digging out from underneath that dam. And when he had practically finished, he stood up and he said, ah, that was a really good drink. And then he hightailed it out of there. Well, a few minutes later, the pressure of the water, the dam collapsed and the water went all over the valley and it created the creeks and the waterfalls and the rivers and the lakes of the world. And now everybody had access to that water. And the frog people, well, they were furious. They called to him, you have stolen our water, Coyote. Coyote heard them complaining and he called back, you know frog people, it is simply not right for one people to have all the water and not to share it with everybody else. Now everyone has water that they can use. And that's what Coyote did for us. Now anybody can go down to Lake Mendota, get a drink of water if you dare, or wash your clothes or maybe just take a nice swim. So when I think of water, in addition to thinking of the trickster Coyote, I'm reminded of the Hindu religion and in particular of the three supreme gods who comprise what is sometimes called the Hindu trinity. And each of these three gods is associated with or identified with a particular function. And so we know that Brahma is described as the creator and Vishnu is the sustainer and Shiva, his appellation is the destroyer. Shiva is not considered by the Hindus to be evil or undesirable because of this particular destructive role. Because these three processes, creation, sustaining, destruction, these naturally belong together. They reflect the reality that we know for our cosmos is constantly changing, going out of and coming into being. A star far up in the heavens is born and an ample supply of hydrogen keeps its solar furnaces burning for billions of years, but eventually it comes to an end as a supernova. That original star is no more, but its gaseous elements have been released and become available for another cycle of star making, creator, sustainer, destroyer. And as with the stars, so with the water. From our grade school science texts, we all learned that life on this planet began in the warm liquid depths of our ancient oceans. While the earth's dry surfaces were still inhospitable to sentient life in any form, water was the perfect medium in which complex chains of proteins could morph into those single cell creatures and then multi-cell invertebrates like jellyfish and mollusks and then finally into the vertebrates, fish and amphibians. More than a few myths of origin identify water as the environment out of which life first emerged. And so we read in the first chapter of Genesis that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void. Darkness was upon the face of the deep and the spirit of God moved across the waters, across the face of the waters. So water was here according to the Bible before anything else. It is the chaos out of which God, that cosmic creative principle, ushered forth life and love. And we now know that for billions of years, the creation of new life forms was restricted entirely to the oceans. And so is it any wonder that many life scientists believe that the presence of water on another planet foretells the possibility that life could evolve there as well. Water sustains as well as creates. The world's oceans are not only the cradle of creation, they also play a vital role in sustaining us. Water vapor from the ocean's surface accounts for much of the rainfall that keeps our land moist and fertile. And of course those same oceans provide a high percentage of the protein that we humans eat. You know as recently as a half a century ago, few people and not even many scientists feared that the time would come when there would not be an ample supply of saltwater fish for us to catch and to eat. The oceans were believed to be literally inexhaustible, a reliable source of human sustenance for centuries to come. What we have learned since then is that even the great oceans regenerative powers are limited and that she has proven no match for humankind's drift nets and factory fleets and the oil spills. And given the excessive heat and the parched conditions that much of the West Coast has experienced in recent years, it's easy to understand why compassion and water are inseparable concepts for people who live in arid parts of the world, particularly in the Middle East. Water, Martin Lings points out, is considered to be a direct symbol of God's mercy for the Arab peoples. In the Quran it is written, he sendeth down water from the sky and thereby quickens the earth after her death. Water has this uncanny power to sustain us emotionally and spiritually as well as physically. No wonder the Lord's prayer contains the famous line, he leads me beside the still water and restores my soul. How many times have any of us sought out a lake, a river, a seashore when we were feeling downcast out of sorts, oppressed by life? There is something about water, something more than negative ions that counteracts distress and helps us to regain our mental and emotional equilibrium. The benefits are intangible, but they are no less real than the water that we drink to preserve our physical selves. Yes, in so many ways, water sustains us. And of course, water is a fiercimally powerful force of nature. When God, disparate of humankind, resolved to destroy everything that he had created and start over, what did he do? He opened up the heavens, and it is said that it rained steadily for 40 days and 40 nights in all the world, except for Noah and his ark and the animals and his family members therein, all were destroyed, all were drowned. And other religious traditions relate similar tales of the destructive power of water. We have seen our share of hurricanes and floods and tsunamis in recent decades, deep sea earthquakes produced tidal waves that killed tens of thousands of people in Japan and Indonesia. This weekend, we observed the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Katrina, Hurricane Sandy on the East Coast, displaced entire populations, demolished huge swaths of US coastline. The shrieking winds of a hurricane, those are terrifying. I've actually been in a couple of them, but it's the storm surge. It's the breached levees that ultimately claim so many lives and destroy countless livelihoods. And even those relentless winds of the hurricane, they draw their energy from water that has evaporated from the ocean's placid surface. And likewise, overflowing rivers in the Great Plains have inundated towns left tens of thousands of acres of croplands submerged, unable to be planted. We human beings love to live near water because of its sustaining qualities. But even a lake like Mendoza, even a river like the rock can quickly become treacherous, betraying our trust and laying waste our dreams. So yes, water can be every bit as ferocious as it is friendly. And so we do well to regard it with due respect and to exercise caution in its presence. But again, even as the God Shiva is not an evil being because of his destructive nature, water is not necessarily demonic because it foils our plans and forts our ambitions. There is a fine line between destruction on the one hand and cleansing on the other. And when water rises up to oppose us, it may be because we have taken certain liberties because we have acted in a less than prudent fashion by placing our homes and our cities in places where they really don't belong. Water is very good at reminding us that for all of our technological prowess, the forces of nature will in the end have the last word. We are all water babies, Agnes Baker Pilgrim, a revered elder of Oregon's Silas Indian tribe says, we are all water babies and it's never too late, she says, to save the world. So wherever you are, take care of the water if you really want to live. Let us hope that we will become ever more aware of and sensitive to the indispensable role that this liquid gold plays in our lives and in the life of our planet lest we toss out the baby with the bath. That dreamed of flowing into the sea. And that stream started in an aquifer, huge pool of water underground. But the call of the ocean was so strong that the stream pushed its way up through the nooks and cracks up through the earth until it burst forth into the air and began its journey to the sea. The waters bubbled up to the surface and they ran down a hill carving the stream bed into the earth. Sometimes the stream babbled as it traveled. Sometimes it gurgled and at other times it roared. At times the stream traveled alone. Its waters were so clear that you could see the pebbles that lined its bed. And at other times the stream ran through great lakes or tumbled over a cliff or joined other streams to form a river and then it would split off again to travel alone but always, always this little stream yearned to flow into the sea. Sometimes the stream would run fast and deep, eager to reach the sea. Fish swam in its waters and it carried them swiftly on its journey. Sometimes the stream would grow wise and slow and would carry boats on its back as it continued its journey but always, always the little stream yearned to flow into the sea. Then one day, just as the call of the ocean seemed to be a bit stronger, the stream found itself flowing sluggishly. Its waters began to grow thick with mud until sadly it pooled into this brackish mud hole right at the edge of a vast desert. What was me thought of the stream? Now I'll never get to the sea. I tried going around the desert but it was just too wide. I tried going under the desert but it was too deep. Still, even with mud in its ears, the little stream heard the call of the ocean and yearned to flow into the sea. After what seemed like a long time as the stream just pooled there in the sun, it began to hear a voice. I can take you to the sea, little stream. Come with me, I am the wind. I'll carry you to the ocean shore. But how could you do that? You're only made of air. I can carry you on a breeze but you must be very brave for you must let go of yourself and change. I've changed many times. But this will be different. Little stream paused but deep within the stream did still yearn for the sea. So the stream let go and the wind picked it up particle by particle and at first the stream was scared. It felt lost. It was no longer the stream but it felt like it had been turned inside out. It had become something swirling in the sky and the view was nothing like anything that the little stream had ever seen before. There was the whole wide world laid out below it but then it noticed that it was surrounded by all these sparkling jewels. What had been the stream realized all those sparkling jewels were part of itself. These molecules of water, droplets of moisture all sparkling in the sunlight. What had been the stream realized that it was truly beautiful on the inside. Next to the stream turned moisture saw that it was not alone for the wind had whispered to other streams and ponds and even to the morning dew upon the oasis and all had turned to moisture. All of their parts were also sparkling in the sun. Together they were even more beautiful for the sunlight had changed them into all of the colors of the rainbow. And then the little stream turned rainbow, felt itself falling, falling and falling. All the other droplets surrounding it were falling too until plop plop plop. All the droplets ran together into this mighty river that rushed down a mountainside across a coastal plain and then into the sea where the waves pushed it back and pulled it forward and the current pulled it far out into the pulsing depths and now the little stream was content. But every now and then the wind would once again breeze by whispering into the currents of the sea. Come with me, come with me. And then the moisture rises up with the wind and is carried away to start all over again. So the first thing that I want to express in my official role as intern minister is the deep sense of gratitude that I have for you all for being able to spend this next church year with you and here in Madison, you folks probably know this but Madison is really beautiful. It is, it's really beautiful. We have had so many sources of water brought here today but I can't imagine many of them hold more beauty than the sources of water that hold this city. Whenever I go to a new place I like to introduce myself to the water. Water is the third most stable element. It's not so permanent as the earth. It's not as transient as the air or transmutive as fire. So water's a really great place to hold the emotion and the story of a place. I thought a great way to introduce myself to Madison would be to go take a walk around one of your lakes and I was not so ambitious as to try to walk around Medota or Manona. So I thought that I would walk around Lake Wingbra to the south. It was about a four mile walk, so said my maps and I wanted to be free on this walk. I wanted to be able to move. So I left my water bottle in the car and I left my phone with my maps function in the car thinking you keep the lake to your right. How hard can this be? It turns out if they put a golf course between you and the lake and you can't actually see the lake and you have virtually no sense of direction it's kind of hard actually to keep the lake to your right. So my four mile walk around Lake Wingbra, Lake Wingbra turned into a 10 mile jaunt into Southern Madison. Feeling a little foolish for leaving my maps function in my car and I was feeling really foolish for leaving my water bottle in my car because I was starting to get really, really thirsty. In fact, at one point I came across a sprinkler going off in somebody's lawn and the only thing, the only thing that kept me from awkwardly trying to drink from that sprinkler was the thought that today I would be standing up here and one of you would say, honey, isn't that girl that tried to drink from our front lawn? Had it been any further on my walk, no amount of trying to preserve my own dignity would have stopped me from drinking from that sprinkler because after five hours walking in the sun with no water, I actually started to feel a panic inside myself and I knew, I knew I was in the middle of a metropolitan area there was gonna be no actual harm that would come to my body from water deprivation that day but just the idea that I didn't know where my next drink of water was coming from was really frightening for me. There are people in this country in the richest nation in the world, in the nation with more resources than any other nation that live that way, that never have consistent access to a clean source of water. One of the beautiful things about water communion is that we bring water from many sources and part of who we are is where we have been. I come from the city of Detroit. Detroit is my home and it is also the most economically devastated city in the United States. It is also rather underwhelming as a functioning bureaucratic entity. So there's a thing that happens in Detroit. People are poor and it's hard to pay your bills when you're poor and so people don't pay their water bills sometimes, people are unable to pay their water bills sometimes and the city for very many years has not collected on those water bills. So a pattern happens, people don't pay the bill and my mic just go out. So people don't pay the bill, nothing happens. And then a couple of years ago the city of Detroit went bankrupt and they brought in an emergency financial manager to usurp the power of the democratically elected government there. And the emergency financial manager said we have millions of dollars in unpaid water bills. This is a great way to try to recoup some of the financial loss in this city. So they started sending out bills to people who couldn't pay their water bill even one month that were years worth of water bills. And saying if you don't pay now we will shut off your water. If you can't pay this, we will shut off your water. There were 65,000 delinquent accounts delinquent as in criminal, as in it is against the law to use something the divine has given to us as a necessary sustaining source of life because we do not have enough man-made money. Currently in the city of Detroit up to 10% of the population faces already has their water cut off or faces going without a sustainable source of water. And 10% is a lot when you consider that Detroit has roughly the population of San Francisco. And San Francisco is another place that I have lived. I went to school in Berkeley which is in the San Francisco Bay area and San Francisco has a completely different economic makeup than Detroit but they have water problems too because in San Francisco there has been a huge, huge drought and the actual, the water companies have realized that they don't have enough water that they don't have enough base material to sell to keep themselves financially going. So they knew or they decided that the best way to deal with this was to increase the water rate. And they realized that this was going to be hard for a lot of people because there was going to be a significant water rate increase, something like 30%. So there was an idea put forth. Well, why don't we do an even bigger increase, 50 or 55% on everyone and those who cannot afford to pay that rate increase can get vouchers so that most of the burden will fall on people that can afford it. If you own a new tech startup, your water bill increasing 50% probably isn't a game changer for you. If you wash dishes in El Cerrito, it might be. And the people said, well, that isn't fair. That isn't fair. It's not fair to disproportionately allow some people to pay for the water. So instead, they increased the water rate on everyone and some people are just disproportionately affected. Even a place like Wisconsin, even a place of seemingly abundant sources of water, the groundwater is starting to dry out in some places and people are starting to have discussions about which people have access to which resources. Water is the most immediately necessary source of life after oxygen. Water is the molecule that makes up most of our bodies. For centuries, Unitarian Universalists have stood and proclaimed that we know that humankind cannot regulate God. Odd it not be time that we stand and say we also will not regulate life. We are in a place of great abundance. I pray that we enjoy it. I want us to drink deeply and to swim freely and to paddle and soak and wash. And as we do so, let us also hold the complicated truth that water is a human right that not all humans have access to. May we celebrate our abundance in song. I ask you to join in with me singing Blue Boat Home. It's number 1064 in your teal hymnal. It will be the preservation coalition and you can read more about that possibly contaminated. So we ask that you to nourish your favorite plant or tree or sprinkling it in your garden. Perform this ritual mindfully remembering the symbolism and significance of this simple life sustaining resource. And our closing song today is Somos Albarco and the words to the refrain are printed in your program and I would ask you to join me in singing in the refrain and then I'll be singing the verses. So we'll sing through the refrain first so you get the hang of it. It should be familiar to some of you. Somos Albarco, Mo Salmoir, You're now a go and tea You're now a go send me For the boat that I sail in you And you sail in me Oh the stream sings it to the river Sings it to the sea And the sea sings it to the boat That carries you and me Somos Albarco, Mo Salmoir Now I go in tea I got send me I sail in you Now the boat we are sailing in Was built by many hands And the sea we are sailing on It touches every sand Somos Albarco, Mo Salmoir Now I go in tea Now I got send me We are sailing you You sail in me Oh the voyage It has been long and hard And yet we're sailing still With a song to help us pull together If we only will Somos Albarco Now I got send me I sail in you You sail in me So with our hopes we raise the sails To face the winds once more And with our hearts we chart the waters Never sailed before Somos Albarco Mo Salmoir Now I got send me And we are in I sail in you You sail in me I sail in you And you sail in me Some things say the wise ones who know everything Some things are not living And I say you live your life your way and just leave me alone I have talked to the faint clouds in the sky when they are afraid of being left behind And I say to them hurry, hurry And they say thank you we are hurrying Now about cows and starfish and roses There's no argument They all die after all But water Water is a question So many living things in it But what is it? Living or not? O gleaming generosity How can they write you out? Blessed be and amen.