 Thank you. Good morning. Welcome to the first Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical, and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. My name is Dorrit Bergen and on behalf of the congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whoever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to be aware that we will have persons holding teal coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service, so if you would like to learn more about this sustainably designed addition or our national landmark meeting house, please meet near the large glass window on the left side of the auditorium immediately after the service. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service, but if you or your child needs to talk or move around, the child haven or commons are good places to retire. The service can still be seen and heard from those areas. This would be a good time to turn off all electronic devices that might cause a disturbance during the hour. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our service run smoothly. Sound operator Peter Daley, lay ministers John McEvna and Tom Boykoff, your greeter was Mary Elizabeth Kunkel, your ushers Nancy Daley, Lisa Monroe, Dick Goldberg and Ann Ostrom. Copy is being made for you this morning by Chip Quaddy and Helena McEvna. Please note the announcements on the red floors insert in your order of service, which describe upcoming events of the society and provide more information about today's activities. And I have a few announcements this morning. Eric Severson ends his internship with us at the end of this month and we'd like to send him off with our thanks and good wishes. The Intern Ministry team is hosting a table in the commons where you'll find note paper, pens and markers to write a message for inclusion in a book that we will present to him at his final time in the pulpit May 28th. For anyone who missed our fabulous cabaret, there are second chance auction items available in the commons. Please bid early and often. Volunteer signups for the next fall's Children's RE classes are looking pretty thin. Please help us change that by volunteering to join a team of three others. To find out where our needs are or for other information, please talk with Leslie Ross, our Director of Children's Religious Education, shall be in the commons following today's service. As our congregation moves closer to the June 4th vote on sanctuary, we and congregation Shereisha Maim will be hosting the question and answer sessions that are listed in your program. Please come with your questions and your thoughts about this important decision. Again welcome. We hope that today's service will stimulate stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. And I realized that I went out of order a little bit. So let's do a moment of silence now. Please join me in for in gathering him number 1010. Words today come from Gretchen Haley. Lean on and lean in that we might hear one another into being. Create here a circle of promise and trust. A safe place where we can be comfortable together. A place of grace and forgiveness. Bold bravery and new beginnings. Where we might still name the needful things of our hearts, the missing places of our lives, the dreams yet unfulfilled, some yet barely clear enough for words. Come, let us be vulnerable here. Human and true and messy. Or try to be just a little. Let the real peek out from its usual hiding places that we might meet each other, see each other, see life for what it is still possible, still becoming, still trying to be whole again with our help. Come, let us worship together. I invite you to rise and bow to your in spirit for the chalice lighting and join in the words printed in your order of service. Times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has caused to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us. And I invite you to greet those around you. Please be seated and if there are any young ones who'd like to come forward for a story, please do. Today's story, there we are. So today's story, how many of you have heard the phrase to lend a helping hand? What does that mean? What does it mean to lend a helping hand? Helping. It just means helping. So that's what today's service is going to be about for the grown-ups, about helping one another. Like when you step on your toe or something like that. So how many of you have done some finger painting? Painting with your fingers. What kinds of things have you painted, do you remember? I remember painting a turkey when I was young. A sandwich. Yeah, you can paint a sandwich. You made a turkey too, yeah. There's lots of turkeys. Well, this story has some beautiful pictures done all in finger paints. So I wanted you to be able to see the pictures. It's not a very long story. And it's about things we might touch with our hands. But things that aren't necessarily things we see, like maybe love. Things we can't really see, but we know are real, like love. So the questions are going to be, may seem a little strange to you, but I think the grown-ups will get it. So we can talk about it afterwards. All right, I'm going to sit here with you. It's called beautiful hands. What will your beautiful hands do today? Will they plant? What will they plant? What things can you plant with your hands? Flowers, bushes, trees, fruit? Carrots. Tomatoes? Well, we can also plant ideas. You can plant ideas for one another. Things to think about. It does look like a diamond. Or we can touch. What will our hands touch? We can touch apples and blueberries, ladybugs. Yeah. So what else could we touch? Hearts? We can touch one another's hearts, maybe. What can our hands lift? What kinds of things do you lift with your hands? Blocks, birdies, dogs, a dragon. We can lift spirits. We can lift up other people's spirits. That's kind of fun. When we're feeling down, lift each other's spirits. What can our hands stretch? What do we stretch with our hands? We stretch ladybugs? No, we don't say ladybugs. Like rubber bands or silly putty or well, we could also stretch imaginations. Or gum. I think gum we could stretch. Or we could stretch imaginations and think of new things. And what can we reach? What do you have to reach for at home? What's up high in the house that you have to reach for? It's probably a good thing you can't reach everything in your home. Yes? Yeah. Okay, you can also reach for love. We want to reach out and love each other, right? And we can reach out for peace and truth and faith and hope and dreams. We can spend our lives reaching out for all these things, including our dreams. So what will your beautiful hands do? To model? That's the question. So I hope you will talk about with your folks, all the things your hands can do, your beautiful hands can do and what they'll do tomorrow. All right. Thank you. That's good. Thanks. Today is an excerpt from a sermon by the Reverend Tim House in Rockland, Massachusetts. To me, the heart of our religion is not tolerance. The heart of our religion is engagement, creative, curious, respectful engagement with one another and with the world. Theologian Henry Nelson Wyman called such engagement, creative interchange. In his book, The Source of Human Good, he asks that we intentionally engage others who have different ways of making meaning, different values and truths, not tolerate them, engage them with the intention of enlarging our understanding of what is valuable and true. In creative interchange, he says the needs and interests of others get across to me, transform my own mind, my own desires and felt needs, so as to include theirs. Real value, what Wyman calls the good, is not in what any of us individuals has created, but in the process of ongoing creation that takes place when we honestly open ourselves to one another. Value is created in what happens between us. Creative interchange is a process of engaging our interdependence in a spiritually transformative way. And this one's hands by Karn Solvee Andersen. A couple of weeks ago, I was perusing football journals and books. I came across a photograph of alignment. He was watching the field intently. His body hunched against a heavy sleet. His hands free to the elements. I turned the page of the book, and there was a close up of his hands bent and mangled, covered with scabs, bruises and scrapes. I was fascinated by his hands. Hands he would inevitably have to soothe. Hands that held violence and pain, but also gentleness. I put the book down and gazed at my own hands and thought about them, what they touch and experience and create. I already have my grandmother's hands with index fingers twisted slightly inward. I have bulbous veins winding under the skin that speak to my life, typing, playing the piano, soothing herds, applying bandages, caressing and daily work. I like to look at farmers hands or fishermen's hands, laboring hands. Hands that speak to the life of the person. I don't want smooth hands. I want mine to speak the life of the person. To my life's work, to a sum of my parts, a place I can look and see generations before and after me of work started or incomplete. I have a colleague who is often present with people when they die. Once I asked her what she did. Did she have some ritual for the passing of a life? She said she helps wash the body. She washes the face as a symbol of what that person has seen. The hands as a symbol of what that person has done. And the feet as a symbol of where that person has been. I love that symbolism. Unlike the lineman who can look at his hands and see what he does, most of us can forget what it is we do and who we are connected to. But it's all there in our hands, those we touch or greet in welcome and friendship of creation made possible through writing or painting or playing or conversations retold of tears shed in cradled hands. The shakers have a saying, hands to work in hearts to God. They believe that your life's calling, your work should be no less than an act of joy. An act of work is an act of worship. So I stare at my hands and whisper. Two weeks ago, Kelly Crocker ended her sermon with a quote by James Baldwin about holding on to one another. Because in the end, our lives depend on it. She invited us to practice shared striving and shared thriving. So it's not entirely but by coincidence that today's service focuses on holding one another in good hands. This phrase to be in good hands means to be in the safe, competent care of someone to be cared for with great attention. I need to acknowledge though that this title in good hands presumes a norm that all we all were born with and still have fully functioning hands when unfortunately, this is not the case. And lest we over romanticize the metaphor, we must remember that human hands have done some terrible things as history and current events have shown. So I offered the image of helping hands to represent generosity, the sentiment and commitment to care for others, which we all can do regardless of our physical abilities. It also is Mother's Day. For those unfamiliar with its history, in 1870, Unitarian Julia Ward Howe appealed for women around the world to unite for peace. Her pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco Prussian War later became known as the Mother's Day Proclamation. But Howe's efforts to establish a National Mother's Day for peace were not entirely successful. Years later, the Mother's Day we know today was initiated by Anna Jarvis to honor her peace activist mother, Anne Reeves Jarvis, who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the Civil War and to honor all mothers, because she believed that a mother is, quote, the person who has done more for you than anyone in the world, unquote. This, I would say, is debatable. And I feel a need to acknowledge that while many of us have been blessed, not all of us have had positive experiences with either mother figures or motherhood. And so this holiday can be a source of both joy and sorrow. This service is not meant to focus on mothers. Rather, in the few weeks before we disperse for the summer, I thought we might focus on caring for one another, holding on to one another and the rituals that help us do that. Each of us has our own daily rituals of greeting and parting, a kiss, a hug, a wave of the hand, a handshake, a fist bump. We may have rituals of connecting weekly, such as gathering for worship and our exchange of friendly greetings, watching a ball game, walking or biking together, having conversations over coffee. We come together now and then to mark milestones in our lives and in the lives of those we know and love. We honor or celebrate rites of passage for births, birth days, comings of age, school graduations, weddings, anniversaries, retirements and deaths. These gatherings might involve cleaning or decorating our homes, welcoming guests, giving gifts, telling stories, bearing witness, singing songs, playing games or sharing meals. All of these experiences we have in common serve to connect us. Over our lifetimes, memories of these times help sustain us. We Unitarian Universalists are notoriously independent minded. Organizing us can be like, or hurting cats, it has been said. And I'm sure the staff here can attest to that. And while many of us have chosen vocations in the helping professions, I think we enjoy fending for ourselves most of the time. We've been socialized not to ask for help, not to impose on someone when we do need assistance. We sometimes celebrate rugged individualism at the expense of community. And we can forget how dependent we really are on other people. One of the challenges of being part of a large congregation is that we can feel disconnected. First Unitarian offers a host of programs for new and long time members. Interest groups, support groups, classes, choirs, ministry teams, spirituals, practice groups. Despite these offerings, and despite a very engaged, dedicated group of volunteers and staff, it is possible to feel cut off from others by the hardships in our lives, by the ways we cope with those hardships, or even by our own stubborn pride. We depend fully on others at the beginning of life, as we often do at the end of life. But we also need help, as we know, in the midst of living when we are navigating life's uncertainties, disappointments, and crises. This is where ritual love and trust come in. We're being part of a faith community can benefit us. Rituals are the symbolic behaviors we perform before, during, or after meaningful events. Symbolic behaviors we perform before, during, or after meaningful events. Rituals can reduce anxiety, increase confidence, and alleviate grief, even for those who don't believe it does. The lighting of a flaming chalice, a flower communion, as we will have next week, if you want to make a note. A water communion, weekly worship and fellowship rituals like these remind us of who we are and to whom we belong. My father is one of eight siblings, so I grew up with lots of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Gathering at the family homestead most years for Thanksgiving was a great joy for me. We would play games, hike in the woods, go swimming, relax, and have fun. The adults would have their adult conversations, and the children would play. Thanksgiving dinner was a potluck, so everyone brought something to share. Before we ate, we would stand around the table and say one thing for which each of us was thankful. Maybe you had that custom as well. So in my family, the meaningful event was the gathering of the clan. The symbolic behavior was renewing our bond of kinship by sharing a little of ourselves with one another in a statement of gratitude. That was our Thanksgiving ritual, which we shared in an environment of love and trust. I wonder what your rituals are. We gather here in covenant with one another. We strive to make our spiritual home a safe place, because sometimes our living space or our workplace is not safe, and we need someone to confide in, rely on, or lean on. Did you know that First Unitarian Society has 22 lay ministers serving as extensions of the senior ministers. That's one lay minister for every 63 members, which is actually pretty good. The lay ministry program was conceptualized in 1985 and put into practice in 1996, so it's been around a while. These volunteers are trained to listen, recognize needs, be sensitive and empathetic, guide or prompt spiritual thinking, and provide a confidential, caring presence to congregants undergoing stressful life changes. How many of you were aware that this program is available to you? Raise your hand. Some, but not all. If you are in need, if you've been laid off or your parents' health is failing or your child is in the hospital or jail or your partner has asked for a divorce, for example, I encourage you to reach out. Ministers, lay ministers and staff members can help only if they know about your struggles. I also invite you, though, to be fully present to one another and to consider doing that a spiritual practice. I have mentioned before Martin Buber's concept of I and Thou, of being authentically and deeply connected with one another, engaged in relationship. When I think of the things that feed my spirit, the long-term commitment of and to my partner, the joy of parenting, the communion of choral singing, the wonder of nature, I realize that each of these requires my being in and I, Thou relationship with my spouse, my child, fellow singers, and the cosmos. So I invite you to consider how sharing expressions of love and trust with one another might serve you, even sustain you, as a spiritual practice, by remembering and embodying this I and Thou. Unitarian Universalist minister Tom Ohentoll once wrote that we come into existence with our fists clenched as babies, but when we arrive at death's door, our hands are open, and during the intervening lifetime, we are summoned to progressively unclench our fists and open our hands in love and concern toward all who crisscross our path. We are summoned, called to love and to serve one another by the golden rule, by parables, fables, stories, songs, scriptures, ancient and modern from around the world. We also are summoned to service by instinct, intuition, and conscience. We know that the benefits of generosity and service may be reciprocal. A study from the University of South the South in Suwani, Tennessee suggests that performing random acts of kindness boosts our psychological health by activating the release of dopamine, the feel good neurotransmitter in the brain. This is referred to as a helper's high. So being motivated by generosity can benefit the giver as much as the receiver. Most of us, I think, resonate with Marge Percy's poem, To Be of Use. We love those who submerge in the task and move in a common rhythm. We strive for the satisfaction of a job well done. We yearn for work that is real. Most of us want to help people, serve people, and serve them well, because we know that is work that is real. Sometimes, though, we don't know how to help someone, or we feel so uncomfortable with their pain that we avoid them, or we give advice, or we rush to immediately fix things without really acknowledging the person's experience. Author Deborah Tannen's research has shown that men are more likely to do this than women, which is a topic for another day. Parker Palmer, among others, in an article he wrote a year ago, counsels us to resist giving advice or trying to fix things, but simply being present to one another. The human soul, he says, does not want to be advised, or fixed, or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed, to be seen, heard, and companioned exactly as it is. Serving as a companion for people as they are doesn't mean we shouldn't challenge ourselves, confront our own unconscious biases or beliefs, strive for personal transformation, or work to dismantle systemic oppression. We should do those, but when we deal with one another, we need to be mindful that each of us has a story, that each of us bears some untold truth about difficulty or suffering, and that we need to have it acknowledged, witnessed, before we consider solutions. Karen Anderson in our second reading suggests that our hands reflect those stories. Our hands have done so much, she says, have touched the lives of so many people. They connect us to past and future generations. They reflect all the work we've done and left undone in our lives. What we do, who we are connected to, is all there in our hands, she says. And as our choir so beautifully expressed, these are the hands that have touched life, have reached out. By them, we are blessed. There are so many stories, so many minds and hearts that need to be gently witnessed. This requires that we engage with one another. And this is what we hear are all about. Tim House in our first reading declares that unitarian universalism, the heart of it, is not tolerance but engagement. We make meaning in our lives, he says, through creative interchange. Engagement is more than tolerance, he says. It means welcoming other people's different values and truths, by which we may enlarge our own understanding of what is valuable and true. Real value, he says, is not in what any of us as individuals has created, but in the process of ongoing creation that takes place when we honestly open ourselves to one another. Value is created in what happens between us. What happens between us. And what a piece of work we are, truly. Each of us is a living, breathing wonder. And as today's story suggested, we are capable of so many things. Planting ideas, touching hearts, lifting spirits, stretching imaginations, reaching for love, peace, truth, faith, hope and dreams. We have it within us to create together a circle of love and trust, bravery and forgiveness. And even dare I say it, save the world. And when at times our own light goes out, let us seek one another so that our inner flame may be rekindled. With all that lies ahead for this congregation, a capital campaign, a minister and staff transition, discussions about sanctuary and white supremacy, continuing work for justice in a changing landscape. I invite you to look at all these things in the months to come as opportunities for deeper engagement and growth. I invite you to attend to one another. Take the risk to share your needs and witness the needs of others. When we experience hard times, difficult transitions, forces that threaten to divide us, let us engage in those rituals that help us hold one another in good hands. Let us love and trust and live with integrity. Our opening words invited us to be vulnerable here, human and true and messy, or try to be just a little. Let the truth, let the real peek out from its usual hiding places that we might meet each other, see each other, see life for what it is, still possible, still trying to be whole again with our help. What will your beautiful hands do tomorrow? Blessed be an amen. The work and mission aggregation is sustained by your contributions. We will now take our offering, which will be split with the Girl Scouts of Dane County, who gathers with joys and sorrows written on our hearts. In this place we love and are loved, we forgive and are forgiven, we give and receive in return. We come together to find strength and common purpose, turning our minds and hearts toward one another, seeking to bring into our circle of concern all who need our support and love. Today our thoughts are with Joan and Becky Burns and family in the death of Carol Burns, Stott's. Carol was the eldest of Joan and Bill Burns. She passed unexpectedly on May 2nd. And we have had enough death this spring. We've known our sense of loss. We remember two of the family and friends of Ann Nelson, whose memorial, I believe, is the 18th at 3 o'clock at Oakwood. The family and friends of Lillian Redding and Tim and Ava and Milo Rochester for the death of Gabriel Rochester. And many of the flowers up here are for her in honor of her. And we remember Ken Ragland, who is now in the hospital with a broken hip. All of the joys and the sorrows too tender to share, we remember as well, that we live in the fullness of our hearts. I invite you into a space of quiet and peace to ground yourself by noticing your contact with chair and floor, by sitting straight, by becoming aware of your breathing. Look at your hands. They've been through a lot, those hands. They have scars, strengths, beauty. I invite you to remember that it is your hands that do the work of love in the world. These hands may hold another's hands. These hands may type emails to politicians, sign cards of consolation or congratulations. These hands maybe may patiently teach, quilt works of beauty or write words urging peace. These hands may bathe children, feed elders, nurse the ill, work the earth, organize communities. These hands clasp in prayer, open in release, grasp in solidarity, clench in righteous anger. These are God's hands, your hands, our hands. A great mystery of flesh and intention. A great potential of embodying love. I invite you into a moment of silence to reflect on all that our beautiful hands can do and on the cares that we shared this morning. May we remember that we are part of a web of life that makes us one with all humanity, one with all the universe. May we be grateful for the miracle of life that we share and the hope that gives us the power to care, to remember and to love. If you would please rise and body or in spirit for our closing hymn number 1021. You please remain standing. Join those beautiful hands with the ones next to you. The hand in yours belongs to a person whose heart is sometimes tender, whose skin is sometimes thin, whose eyes sometimes fill with tears, and whose laughter is a beautiful sound. The hand that you hold belongs to a person who is seeking wholeness and trusts that you are doing the same. As you leave this sanctuary, may your hearts remain open, may your voices stay strong and may your hands remain outstretched. Please be seated for the postulate.