 to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. My name is Kelly Asperus Jackson. I'm one of the ministers here, and today I am joined by my colleague, the Reverend Kelly Crocker, as well as the worship team of Linda Warren, Heather Thorpe, Stephen Gregorius, and Daniel Carnes. Our flowers this morning were donated by the family of Joy Wiggart, whose memorial service was held here yesterday. The vision of FUS is growing souls, connecting with one another and embodying our UU values in our lives, our community, and our world. If you are visiting us today, welcome. We are so glad that you are with us. If you'd like more information about First Unitarian Society and what we're about, please stop by the welcome table outside of the auditorium in the commons after the service. For those connecting with us virtually today, we are glad that you are with us as well, and we hope that you are able to join us for our virtual coffee hour immediately following our service. The information for joining can be found on the homepage of our website, fussmedicine.org, as well as on the slide that will be seen again after the postlude. Our announcement slides will also be shown briefly after today's service, and we encourage you to take a moment and learn about upcoming programs and activities. And now I invite you to join me in a moment of silence to center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. Come into this house of worship. Come in bringing all of who you are. Rest and quiet, your weak-worn spirit. For you are here to touch again eternal springs of hope and renewal. Calm your hurried pace. For this hour, let the cares, the fretfulness, and worry be set aside. Forgive yourself. You are so very worthy of moving on, of making new efforts, of trying again. Know that you are not alone. There is strength and caring support for you here. You will find comfort if you but ask. Look around. You are a part of potential community. You can make it what you will. Enter into this house of worship. Now I invite you to rise in body and or spirit and join me in the words of aspiration for the kindling of our chalice flame. May this flame, symbol of transformation since time began, fire our curiosity, strengthen our wills, and sustain our courage as we seek what is good within and around us. Name number 1017, Building a New Way. The story today that comes from the Sudan. The story goes like this. A long time ago, there lived a sultan. The great king ruled over a vast territory. Sadly, this sultan came to a relatively early end so that his son, the prince, became sultan much earlier than he had expected to. This young man suddenly in charge of a vast country. His closest advisor was his mother and luckily she was a very wise woman and a source of much good advice for him. One of the lessons she tried to teach him was that as a person with a great deal of power and wealth and prestige, he should be careful about picking his friends because there would be some folks in his life who would pretend to be his friends but didn't have his best interests at heart. So she said, when you believe that you have found a friend, I want you to invite them over for lunch. He said, just invite them over for lunch? He said, yeah, invite them over for lunch. I'll arrange everything and then I'll let you know if I think that they would actually be a good friend to you. So the young man, as people do hopefully in life, did make a friend pretty quickly. Another young man of the nobility, someone hanging around the court who seemed to have similar interests and similar ideas and he said, well, I have a friend, mother, I'm gonna do what you told me to do and invite him to lunch. So the two new friends sat across the table from each other and they sat and they sat. They waited a long time for the meal till they were very, very hungry and eventually with great fanfare and much ceremony, his mother brought out a magnificent platter and revealing underneath it, there were three hard-boiled eggs. That's it. Well, the two men were very hungry at this point so the sultan took an egg and his new friend took an egg and there was one egg left and the new friend said, well, you should have it. So the sultan did, he was very hungry and that was the end of the meal as friend went home and afterwards he said, well, he gave me the egg, right? That's a good sign. That means that he has my best interests at heart and his mother said, no. It means that he wants you to think that, that he wants you to think that he is selfless but if he's not paying any attention to himself at all then it can only be because he is waiting to take advantage of your wealth and your power. He's not a real friend at all. So a little while later, the sultan made a new friend, a very wealthy merchant who seemed to have the same sorts of ideas and same sorts of interests as he did and he did what his mother told him. He invited this new friend to lunch and again they waited a very long time and again the same platter and the same three hard boiled eggs. Well, the sultan took one and the merchant took one. They looked across the table at each other and the merchant reached out and took the third egg and afterwards the sultan was a little bit prepared for what his mother was going to say. If he's gonna eat the third egg, obviously he doesn't care about your well-being at all so he can't possibly be a very good friend. So now the sultan, I'm gonna be honest with you, is feeling a little lonely, right? Doesn't have any friends that meet his mother's approval and one day he was out for a walk in the countryside all by himself because he didn't have any friends and he ran into another young man who was from one of the villages, he was out hunting and he knew that the sultan must be an important person. I mean, he was dressed like an important person dresses but he didn't realize that he was the sultan, right? He just thought he was an important person and so they got to chatting and it wasn't so much that they had all the same ideas or all the same interests. I mean, they led pretty different lives but they enjoyed talking with each other and the sultan walked with him for a while and eventually they parted ways on good terms and a little while later the sultan was out for another walk and he happened to chance into meeting the same person again and he was excited to see him. He felt like it was an opportunity to reconnect and hear more about what was going on in his life. How was the hunt last week? How is your mother doing? Just exchanging news about each other's lives. He started going out for more walks just as an opportunity to see the same person again, spend a little bit more time, get to know him a little bit better. And eventually his mother recognized that he's spending a lot of time outside the palace doing something else and he seems to come back very happy so he said, it seems like you have a new friend. He said, well, I guess I do. That's wonderful, you should invite him to lunch. The sultan wasn't so sure about that but he didn't want to disagree with his mother so he invited the young hunter to lunch. Once more, they waited a long time. Once more the same platter, the same three hard-boiled eggs, the sultan was just looking at it thinking like, maybe if I don't take an egg, that changes something? He's trying to figure out how can this work so that I can keep this person as my friend but eventually, he was hungry so he took an egg and he ate it and the hunter took an egg and he ate his, they looked at each other across the table over that one last remaining egg, both still very hungry and the hunter reached out and he took the egg and he took a knife out of his pocket and he cut it in half and he ate half and he gave the other half to the sultan and afterwards, the sultan's mother said, this is the sign of a true friend. He made sure that you got something and he got something because he wasn't paying attention to anything other than what's seen most fair, what would meet both of your needs. I'm glad you found a good friend. And that's really what friendship is about, I think, a willingness to share what we have, at least what we can share with each other. I invite you now into a time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains our community here and also supports the work of our outreach offering recipient. This week's offering will be shared with the Odyssey Project, an award-winning UW-Madison project that takes a whole family approach to breaking the cycle of generational poverty through access to education. It has empowered more than 500 low-income adults to find their voices and get a jumpstart at earning college degrees they never thought possible. Using a six-credit English Literature course, UW-Madison faculty members introduce adults to great works of literature, philosophy, history, and art, and help them improve skills in writing and critical thinking. Some graduates of the program have journeyed from homelessness to UW-Madison degrees or from incarceration to meaningful work in the community. You'll see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussMadison.org. You'll see the text to give information there as well. And there are also baskets here by the door. We thank you, as always, for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. A story from long ago in India. The sage told his student, everything is God. This is the end of all wisdom. The student heard this, and in an instant, he understood the divine was all around him and in him flowing through everything, universal, inescapable, all-encompassing. He felt a wellspring of tranquility rise up within him. His soul seemed to expand to fill the earth and sky and stretch beyond even the borders of the universe itself. In a days of wonder and self-absorption, he wandered out into the road, stumbling in awe. Coming from the opposite direction, there was an elephant and a driver who sat on the animal's neck, waving and shouting, make way, make way. The student could see and hear all of this very clearly, but lost in his ecstasy, he refused to move. Why should I stand aside, he asked himself. I am God. And the elephant is God. Is God to live in fear of himself? Unafraid, the student walked forward, and at the last possible instant, the animal reached out with its great powerful trunk and swiped him aside, knocking him into a ditch. In confusion and dismay and covered in dirt, the student returned to the sage. He explained what had happened to him and asked, Guru, you taught me that everything is God, including me, including the elephant. If this is true, how could God inflict such indignity on himself? The teacher replied, what I told you is true, everything is God, including you and including the elephant. But why did you not listen to the voice of God itself that was yelling at you from atop the elephant, make way, make way. This story may be one of extremes, but the heart of it is a sobering truth. Sometimes we human beings can become so invested in our own view of the world. So certain of our own perfect rightness on some abstract philosophical or cosmological point that we ignore the practical. Once made up, the mind is a difficult thing to change. I say again, once made up, because we all have questions that we don't feel we have solid answers for, or areas where we recognize that we don't know enough. Or maybe once again, I should say, all of us ought to have questions that we don't feel we have certain answers for. We live in an age in which unfounded certainty is often rewarded with power and prestige, an age which has lasted so far as I can see for the last 6,000 years. So much unearned confidence is, in one's own particular perspective, is born out of religion, and yet religion can also be a crucial antidote to it. The religious imperative to right action even when it is difficult, dangerous, or unpopular, budding up against the religious tendency to value rules following over rules breaking. Consider the story of the two Buddhist monks who had taken vows of celibacy and sworn never to touch a woman. They came to a river and found someone, a woman, as it happens, standing there, trying to find a way across. And so the older monk offered to carry her over on his back. After they had made the crossing together and the woman had gone off on her own way, as the two monks had continued on their journey some distance, the younger scolded the older. How could you break your vow so easily? The older monk replied, I set that woman down back by the river. Why are you still carrying her? The ideal and the practical are always in tension. Much of the quest for a moral existence lies in deciding for ourselves where one must give way to the other. Often those places of deep internal conflict are powerful opportunities for insight and learning if we approach them with inquiry and curiosity rather than fleeing from them as fast as possible. Even in the story of the two monks, there seems to me a step further to go, questioning the heterosexism inherent in a vow of celibacy which takes the form of a male practitioner swearing never to physically touch a woman. Can you see a loophole there? In the Gospels, according to Mark and Matthew, the teacher Jesus went to visit the city of Tyre. While he was there, a woman came to ask for his help. Her daughter, the story says, was possessed by an evil spirit and so she came to ask the traveling teacher to make her child well. In the Gospels, Jesus's ability to heal the sick and to drive out such harmful spirits is presented as a sign of his holiness and spiritual authority. The woman and so also her child is called a serophonition in terms of language, ethnicity and religion. She is not a member of the same category as Jesus. Now, Jesus has a very peaceful, loving reputation, but in the Gospels themselves, there are also moments where he can be super mean and this is one of the most striking examples of that meanness. Jesus says to this poor woman seeking help for her suffering child, it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs, but by this he seems to mean that his spiritual treasure, whatever of value it is that he has to offer is reserved for his community, the people he is connected to religiously and ethnically. Having just received the verbal equivalent of a slap in the face, the serophonition woman replies with an even more staggering comeback. Yes, Lord, she says, but even the dogs under the table may eat the children's crumbs. By this she accepts the low position that he has consigned her to, because even from down there, she can make a claim to his help. The well-being of her child is more important to her than her pride. In the story, Jesus immediately turns around, praises the woman and heals her daughter. Now, there's a popular interpretation that says he was always going to heal the child, but that he began with a cruel rejection in order to test the woman's faith or to teach a lesson to his disciples. For people that need to believe that Jesus is a unique being who can never have done anything wrong or make any sort of mistake ever, that's probably an understandable way to approach the story. But if the character of Jesus is to be understood as a relatably human being, someone who is near enough to you and to me, that they can serve as a moral example and that their life can help us to better understand and to live out our own, then there's a much simpler explanation for this story. Jesus was wrong. He was acting from an ingrained prejudice that wasn't unique to him or to his community or even to the human species. It's just the idea that I should favor the people who are somehow like me and disregard those who aren't. All of us are capable of falling prey to this sort of thinking. And when such thought leads to action, it results in harm. It leads us to make powerful mistakes that disconnect us from other people and from what is true and right in life. In the story, the prophet's hubris is on display. The syrophoenician woman points this out to him with her own humility, his contrast. And so he corrects his mistake. I find a lot of hope in that personally because sometimes, and perhaps you can empathize with this, I pray, sometimes I am simply wrong. There are moments when I have sunk below my own moral level and I need to be called to account for it. The story attests to the idea that sometimes even prophets are in need of being prophesied to. So perhaps there is reason to be gentle with ourselves and each other when we too sometimes fall short. When we are too set in our own perspectives, and do harm to each other by them. The syrophoenician woman showed the teacher Jesus the mercy of staying engaged with him, despite his harshness. She gave him the generous opportunity to change his mind. Of course, just giving someone the opportunity does not guarantee that they will take it. A few years ago, a certain voice on Twitter became temporarily famous in that way that people do sometimes these days with this brief story. I still think my favorite thing that's ever happened to me on the internet is the time a guy said, people change their minds when you show them facts. And I said, actually studies show that's not true and linked two sources. And he said, yeah, well, I still think it works. Good evidence and reasoned arguments do not automatically lead to personal change. But there is a hopeful coda to this little internet anecdote. The source of the original story shared that after their tweet had been seen by a mind-boggling number of strangers, one of those strangers pointed them to yet another article analyzing two different studies showing that correcting misunderstandings and falsehoods with accurate information has some positive effect on average. Not that it always works, not that it never works, but that it can work and does so a statistically meaningful amount of the time. However imperfect it may be, it can still be a thing worth trying. But if logic and data can help to change a person's mind some of the time, personal experience can go at least as far. There's a quote from El Haj Malik El Shabbaz, that is Malcolm X, which I return to again and again to remind me of my own commitment to try to do what is right and follow what is true, even if it means I have to change my mind sometimes. Malcolm came to prominence as a leader within the nation of Islam, an Afro-centric religious identity movement which was inspired by Islam itself, but also led by a founder who, in the teachings of that religion, was God incarnate. That man, Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm eventually had a falling out. And Malcolm moved towards a more conventional practice of Islam. As part of that evolution, he went to Mecca on Baha'j, the pilgrimage that Islam requires all Muslims to make, at least once in their lifetimes, if they are healthy enough and have the means to do so. On that journey, he became more convinced than ever that the man he had been following was not divinely infallible, and he came to meet Muslims from every continent who treated him with kindness and fellowship, including those with white skin whom he had been taught to hate. Afterwards, in letters to friends, he wrote that he'd had enough of someone else's propaganda, as he put it. I'm for truth, no matter who tells it. I'm for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I'm a human being first and foremost, and as such, I'm for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole. Even as he said this, back in the U.S., his home country, the same consideration was never returned to him. For the little that was left of his life he remained narrowly understood in popular, that is, white society, as the voice of a violent, angry, dangerous blackness. His message about listening for the truth, no matter the source, was, ironically, never really listened to. Now, as a community which celebrates free thought and open-mindedness, we might rightly feel that our religious teachings counsel us to be ready to change our minds when it is called for. But of course, the hardest part of that is always recognizing when it is truly called for. When the issue is not one of straightforward prejudice or ignorance, but rather a matter of deeply held competing principles in conflict. For people in communities that care deeply about things that deeply matter, such situations are unavoidable. Perhaps the most common version of this challenge faced by Unitarian Universalist congregations is the dreaded paradox of tolerance. What does it mean to welcome all people when not all people are committed to making others welcome? My favorite example of this problem comes from a British sitcom of a few years ago. In it, a character who is, we might rightly say, spectacularly square and uptight, has chosen for foolish and selfish reasons to attend an all-abilities dance therapy group. A space free of judgment where everyone is invited and encouraged to move with no sense of making the wrong motion to accept their bodies radically just as they are and to offer affirmation to everyone else on the same terms. He does not fit in. More than that, he actively disrupts the stated intention of the class. He hates everything about being there. He lets everybody know it. He's the sort of person, or at least he is in the sort of place in life where he does not feel comfortable with his own body and he thinks that everybody else should be uncomfortable with theirs too. So at the end of the session, when someone finally observes directly that this doesn't seem to be the place for him, the poor, sad man asks within dignity. If there isn't room here for people who stand against everything you believe in, then what sort of a hippie free for all is this? I've been a part of more than one congregation that had to ask itself, what sort of a hippie free for all is this? My answer, please keep in mind, this is my answer, you don't have to like it or agree. My answer to this paradox is that the limits of tolerance are tolerance itself. Put another way, welcoming all means welcoming all, who welcome all. The boundary of inclusion can't be drawn across people, but it can and sometimes must be drawn across behaviors. Because any group from the smallest circle of friends to the largest nation, which is absolute in its unwillingness to draw boundaries around behaviors will eventually fall prey to someone who would use their lack of boundaries to draw and enforce new and rigid ones to the benefit of themselves, the detriment of everyone else, in the parables of the sage and the student, the two monks of Jesus and the syrophoenician woman. The rightness of one position rather than the other is, I hope, fairly plain. But in times of conflicting principle, which we all eventually face in life and which all communities face given enough time, it is not necessarily so easy to know. In this story, am I the syrophoenician woman or am I Jesus, unable in the moment to imagine extending my gifts to someone beyond my community? Am I the elder monk or the younger one, fixated on the letter of the law over the spirit? Am I the sage or am I the student, standing in the road, stubbornly unwilling to step out of the way of the elephant? I would say that it is a good sign if you have some uncertainty about which character in the story you are. It demonstrates a willingness to question yourself and openness to changing your mind. Still, it would be helpful to have some guidance on which choice you should make, wouldn't it? Here is what I can offer you in that regard. In each of these stories, the last word goes to the voice that speaks with the greatest compassion, that offers the alternative which does the least harm and offers the widest circle in which others may find a place. And furthermore, that compassion extends even to the inflexible hardliner on the opposite side of the argument. Compassion asks us to try to help an opponent to change their mind, not because it is certain to work, not because they are even likely to do so, but because they themselves are worthy of our effort. I'm gonna start out by telling you what FUS means to me. And the thing about FUS that's so important is that it lives the values that matter to me. Intellectual growth, spiritual development, social justice, community building. The first 10 years of my 20 plus years of membership, I spent in a small group ministry, 10 years in the quest program, and then in leading a child's group that's still meeting, leading a movement meditation she gong called Japanese Crane. Now, as the years have gone on a little bit and we're embracing this co-ministry and shared ministry, I'm interested in the governance of First Unitarian Society, and so now serve on the board of trustees. What about you, Paula? I would say that I am just extremely drawn to the always being reconsidered principles of the Unitarian Universalists, that's all the things you just mentioned, and about social justice, and fairness, and equity, and working on yourselves to be part of a radically empathetic, human being and human beings in community here in FUS, and having grown up in a Protestant Presbyterian church and seen through many other denominations and many other religions so much persecution and harm done under some banner of some dogma and some hierarchical special human, I mean special being that really wasn't human, the interconnectedness of everything and the reality and the spirit and the kindness, Unitarianism and FUS pulls the thread of all that's best in all of those faiths, and that means a lot to me so that I can be welcome here and we have the kind of openness and free minds and open hearts that I've always experienced here. Now, if you think more about membership, I have to confess today that I'm a bit of a subway member, a bit of a quasi-member moving into full membership because I worked really hard and had a big job and hardly had any days off and when Anne wanted me to come with her at 9 a.m. on Sunday mornings, I wasn't quite sure I could face being around a group of people because I'd been around a group of people, I had to dress up, I could not put on good clothes and come and be social with people. I'd walk with a dog and then we'd come but now, having retired, I can stop living vicariously and beautifully through Anne but also more fully engaged and eventually sign the book with this wonderful Kelly Crocker and this wonderful Kelly AJ. I'm done for now. We were asked to tell a personal story about First Unitarian Society so I decided to tell the story of when Paul and I first moved to Sherwood Hills and it was well, 20 years ago, 20 plus years ago and I was in a really low point in my life, really not happy and I heard and knew that there was a beautiful building, only 10 minutes walk from our house so I began to walk down and I would sit Sunday mornings in the landmark auditorium and I would sit and tears would roll down my face and I just took refuge and took safe harbor there. The warmth, the music, the message, all these things really healed. So today it is still a bomb and a healing but now it's become much, much more to me but I will never forget that shelter that it offered and I found myself continually affected by the people I've gotten to know in the congregation through the various groups Anne's been a part of through the many services over the years that I have attended. You could see Kelly Crocker in Whole Foods or anywhere and she always knew my name even though I wasn't really technically a member. That warm, loving presence and what welcome has meant so much but then what tripped the trigger for me to really walk up to Kelly one day and say I gotta sign this book is the whole new paradigm under which the congregation has led itself with the co-senior ministers, this real deep work on interpersonal work along with our social justice work and our out and being in the community but that paradigm of equality and collaboration and caring across reducing the hierarchy that means a lot to me and I think this congregation and the work we're doing can be a great influence on our own larger community here and other places and the more such models are adopted the more hope I have for the world. And then finally why I am and Paul and I are both sustaining members and I am sustaining if I can say the word sustaining member impartial repayment to the people who sustained me. Lori Joyner who gave me steadfast friendship and modeled community commitment. Roger Birchhausen who believed in me and tapped me to help write the relational covenant. Kelly AJ and Kelly Crocker who are showing me the power and joy of co-ministry. Thank to you all and thanks to so many others. And just on a very more practical level or the ability to fulfill mission and accomplish the goals and strategies and the building of community that we all want it does require resources in a sustained membership which we've done I think since we arrived 20 years ago in Sherwood Hills that ability to plan to know what your foundational base is and be able then to make a strong smart budget that's pointed to the priorities of the congregation that happens by having knowledge and feeling secure in money and where that can come from. So that gift of doing something monthly whatever it might be that then it's known and people can start working with that and think about that and how to deploy that in fulfilling our goals and our vision and our mission. So we do encourage that so much. Thank you. And it's also a fun place. How about those kids with the banners? You all didn't see that part but we had our banner parade yesterday and this morning at nine. So that's what Paula was talking about and our thanks to Paula and Ann. Each week we bring ourselves to this time and this place carrying with us the concerns and the joys of recent days. We share these here in a spirit of acceptance knowing they are held in love. This week Ann asks us to light a candle for Al and Sparrow Centi. Al is recovering from pneumonia away from Sparrow at the moment and we send our love and our hopes for healing and reunion very, very soon. Sparrow lets us know that after 75 years of marriage it is incredibly difficult to be apart. And if you'll join me now in a moment of prayer with these words from Maureen Killarin. As the spring rains wash our land may we enter our days with hearts washed of the worries we carry. May we begin by intentionally relaxing the tensions we hold within us. The strains of those things we cannot abandon, the responsibilities of our lives. As the sun begins to warm our land may we allow the warmth of this community to heal our broken places. May the fog be lifted so we can see each other clearly. May we rejoice in the blessing of companions who if we will open ourselves just a little will truly greet us with compassion and care. As the earth nourished by rain begins to bring forth flowers to surround us with beauty may we to allow our spirits to bloom even as we acknowledge the complexities of our days. May we be together for a moment in the silence of community to release, to heal, to nourish, and to rest. Blessed be and amen. In number 1058, be ours a religion. We will be singing it two seasons. The inward turning of winter, springtime's lush, renewal, the effortless, steady growth of summer and autumn's rich harvest. May your passage from season to season be blessed eased by hands to hold and by the light of love to guide you on. So blessed friends, may you go forth in peace but first please be at rest for the post-loop.