 Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. Now let's get together musically by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you find inside your order of service. And to First Unitarian Society, where individual and 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, a proud, delicately balanced member of this congregation. And I'd like to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, or newcomers, and to the bleacher creatures in our newly reopened balcony. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I know that you'll find it's a special place. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we'll be conducting a guided tour after today's service. Just gather over here by the windows, and we'll take care of you. And we can also take care of each other by silencing those pesky electronic devices that we just will not need for today's service. And while you're taking care of that important task, I'll remind you that if you're accompanied today by a youngster and you think that youngster might prefer experiencing the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options for you. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium. And we also have comfortable seating just outside the doorway in the commons, from which you and your youngster can see and hear the service. And the reason that we are able to see and hear the service today is because we've got a great team of volunteers who are bringing us the service. They include Mary Manoring, who's providing support for the sound system. Tom Boykoff, who is serving as our lay minister today. You are greeted by Patty Witte upstairs. Our ushers today are Gail Bliss, Michael Lossy, Paula Alt, and Bob Alt. Rick DeVita and Nancy Kossoff are hosting the hospitality hour. Ann Smiley is taking care of the greenery that you see up here on the stage. And John Powell will be your tour guide. So the names of the people I've just read deserve our thanks. And they also deserve some help from a few of the rest of us who might want to volunteer and support weekend services. You'll see in your red floors bulletin that there is an announcement about an orientation session that will take place right here after the Sunday service October 2. If you want to learn more about how you can earn the right to have your name announced from this microphone. Couple announcements before we begin the service. The Wisconsin Faith Voices for Justice would like to announce a moral day of action at the state capitol tomorrow, Monday at noon. Staging for the event will take place at Grace Episcopal Church on the square at 11 o'clock in the morning. Madison Unitarian Universalists will join other faith labor and civil rights groups to challenge our elected officials and candidates for political office on these vital issues facing our country. Issues such as democracy and voting rights, poverty and economic justice, workers' rights, education, healthcare, environmental justice, immigrants' rights, criminal justice, LGBTQ rights, and more. All are welcome to attend and participate. In addition, we have an announcement about our ministerial intern, Eric Severson, from whom we will hear a little bit later in the service. Eric will be leading worship for the first time next weekend. That'll be his first time up here leading the service. And right after that event, there will be a welcoming reception for Eric after the service and you were invited to attend that. I know Eric would love to see you there. And we are providing an opportunity to comment on and ask questions about today's pulpit message after the service, not during the service, but after the service. And if you'd like to participate in this 15 to 20 minute exchange, please meet on the right side of the auditorium. I think that's your right, my left, and you'll have an opportunity to dialogue about today's service topic. We have one more announcement from Kelly and I invite her to come on up here and share that announcement with you right now. Hello, this weekend as you may have guessed is the start once again of our children's religious education program. It's so wonderful to see all of your faces back here. We have around 400 kids registered in our program and there are always more who choose to join us throughout the year. We have a couple of open teaching spots at this nine o'clock hour. It is a wonderful opportunity for you to get to know other faces at FUS, to get to spend time with our kids who I've got to tell you are remarkable. And they're teams of four and we like to have them be teams of four because then you're on for two weeks and you're off for two weeks and then it's a very manageable commitment. So at this hour, we need two teachers for our second and third grade free to believe class. So if you've ever wanted to dive more into Unitarian Universalism on a second and third grade level, this is the one for you. And for our ninth grade coming of age class. And so you may know that coming of age is the culmination of our program. They are the ones who create that extraordinary service in May where they deliver their belief statements. And so if you have wanted to think more about what it is that you believe and dive into Unitarian Universalism at a ninth grade level, it's the one for you. So if you are interested in either of these opportunities, you can see Leslie Ross and she will be in the commons down in the religious education and after the service. Thanks so much for considering it. Thank you, Kelly. And with that, we're gonna dive into the service. So please sit back or lean forward to enjoy this morning's service. I know you'll find that it will touch your heart, stir your spirit and trigger one or two new thoughts. Glad you're here. We delight to occupy this room together, not to sit separately bounded by our skins, but joining today as raindrops join in rivulets, as rivulets join in streams and streams in rivers and rivers in lakes and in seas. The fact is we are not bounded by our skins, our love, our perception, our influence. These all go beyond us and yet they are as much a part of us as our integral selves. This place this morning then is where we share and unify those influences. And so what was uniqueness becomes variety and influence becomes confluence and individuals are forged into community. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our shells. And as Steve Kindles, the flame of our faith, please join me in reading the words printed in your program. Water flows from high in the mountains. Water runs deep in the earth. Miraculously, water comes to us and sustains all life. And now on this fine September morning, please turn to your neighbor and exchange with them a warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated. And so today is our in-gathering service, the beginning of a new church year, officially speaking. And it is also the day in which we celebrate water communion. Now in the past we have typically celebrated water communion at the end of August rather than the beginning of September. So this is a bit of a new wrinkle. And so things are a little bit different today than they might have been in August. And if you brought some water with you today to share with water communion, you'll be asked to bring it forward momentarily. And if you have not done so, either because you didn't know what we were doing or you simply forgot, you still are invited to participate in our communion service by taking a small portion of the mingled water with you at the end of the service. And later on, Eric will describe what we would ask you to do with that water. And so I would ask you to come forward with your water that you have collected in five stages. First, I will call for waters from the west, the area of the globe west of Wisconsin. And then from the south, south of the state of Wisconsin, and the east and the north. And then finally, I would ask for waters that were brought from some location within the state of Wisconsin or its surrounding boundary waters, waters from the center, in other words. And so as you come forward, please place your water in one of the two large containers to my left or my right. And so now I would invite those who have water from the west to bring it forward. Waters from the south, water from the east, waters of the north, water from the center. And I add water that was saved from last year's water communion, which probably contains some measure of water from all previous water communions, suggesting the sense of continuity with communities past. And then we have this dry and empty container that reminds us of all of those who do not have access to safe and affordable water. And as we celebrate water communion today in water-rich Wisconsin, let us be reminded that rationing in Southern California and many parts of the Southwest has now been mandated. In 2010, the United Nations General Assembly declared that clean water is something that all people have a right to, a symbol of the reality of the oneness that unites humankind and all of life. And so may our separate waters today join into one sacred stream as we add our own lives to the stream of the vital souls who live and work for justice and who hunger for peace. We bring our waters, which have touched the west, the north, the south, and the east, which come from the sky and from the earth. We bring waters that belong 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 circle the globe, teeming with life the source of all life. We bring water to this place of meeting and of sharing. And so in these containers, there is new water formed from the atmosphere daily. And there's old water from deep in the earth deposited by rain 10 million years ago. This is the stream of life from which all life flows. All people are connected by this stream for it runs through our veins and it courses through the stems and the leaves of all plant life. And now I would invite you to join together in singing our next hymn number 1007 as our children depart for the first day of classes. My name is Eric Severson. I am your 2016-2017 ministerial intern. I got my degree here in 1986 and was married in the landmark in 1988 and it is a joy to be back. Let me share today insights from Canadian geneticist David Suzuki. Basically, each of us is a blob of water without, with enough macromolecular thickening to give us some stiffness and to make us keep us from dribbling away. Every day about 3% of the water in our bodies is replenished with new molecules. The water molecules that perfuse every part of our bodies have come from all the oceans of the world, evaporated from prairie grasslands and the canopies of all the world's great rainforests. Like air, water physically links us to earth and to all other forms of life. Our bodies are perpetually on water alert because our daily intake must be exquisitely matched to our daily output. When you start to become dehydrated, the concentration of salts in your body fluids begins to rise. A small change is enough to induce the posterior lobe of the pituitary gland to release the hormone ADH, which acts directly on the kidneys, inducing them to decrease the secretion of water. Other biological alarms are set off when dehydration reduces the volume of blood. Stretch receptors monitor blood volume inside the heart and send signals to the thirst center of the hypothalamus in the brain to inhibit the production of saliva. Dryness in the mouth registers in our consciousness as thirst, stimulating us to drink. If you drink too much water, these alarm systems work in reverse. When the concentration of salts in your body fluids becomes diluted, the production of ADH is inhibited, stimulating the kidneys to excrete more water. Moreover, one property of water, its high absorption of heat to change from a liquid to a gaseous state plays a critical role in regulating body temperature. Water within the body reaches the surface of the skin by diffusion or via sweat glands that are activated by the autonomic nervous system, which functions without our awareness. After it reaches the surface of the skin as sweat, the water evaporates. Evaporation requires energy and drying sweat uses heat from the body as energy, thereby cooling the skin. There is a remarkable equilibrium between your body and its surroundings. The inside and outside of your body combine to manage the ebb and flow of water within and around you. Ambient humidity and air temperature, together with your level of physical activity, determine how much water moves through your skin into the surrounding air. In the same way, external and internal conditions regulate the water you imbibe and the water you eliminate. The same is true for all other creatures. This lifelong balancing act is part of the global circus, a performance stage managed by the planet and its inhabitants together. Thus you might see the whole enterprise of life as just a vehicle for the transformation of water. If a hen is the egg's way of being born, then human beings are the way water molecules get to talk to one another. For those lovely harmonies invoking a truly... You know, for many ancient cultures, balance was a highly regarded and sought-after condition. The 5th century BC Greek physician Hippocrates drawing from even older Egyptian and Mesopotamian sources he described optimal health as a function of keeping the body's humors in the right proportion. Unpleasant moods, adverse behaviors, physical maladies, Hippocrates insisted, owed their origin either to an excess or to a deficit of one or more of the four basic bodily fluids, blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. And the practice of medicine in ancient Greece had largely to do with restoring this physiological balance. And in later centuries, the humors began to be associated with certain personality traits. And individuals came to be categorized according to the element that most clearly and consistently was manifested by that individual. So some people were sanguine, other people were choleric, some were melancholic, and others phlegmatic. But again, the status to be achieved, the most desired status was a temperamental balance. And indeed, our English word temperament derives from the Latin temperare, a verb that means to mix together. Healthy and high functioning human beings thus are able to maintain an optimal mix of balance of these various humors. A medicine and psychology abandoned this theory centuries ago, but in some respects, the principle of balance still applies. As David Suzuki observed in the reading that Eric shared earlier, with respect to water, our physical bodies are indeed finally tuned to maintain this exquisite balance. And in addition, emotional balance is a quality that many of us hope to acquire. This ability, as we say, to stay centered during confrontations, to control our anxiety in stressful circumstances. Balanced people, we believe, have the ability to exhibit anger or composure appropriately to be both serious and playful by turns. But there are cultures that even today place a much greater premium on balance than our own does. So in China, for instance, practitioners of traditional medicine are trained to work with those energetic principles, yin and yang, and to try to achieve a balanced and harmonious relationship between the two. This is thought to be the key to good health. And balance also informs the work of Chinese cooks and artists and landscapers and many others. And this is largely due to the influence of a philosophical school in China called Taoism, which describes the world in terms of polarities. We have yin and yang, positive and negative, black and white, masculine, feminine, hot and cold, rising and falling, high and low, firm and yielding. Now as Westerners, we might look at these pairs of opposites and presume that they are bumping up against each other, that they are in conflict, that they are clashing forces, each seeking to overthrow or to dominate the other. But Taoists, on the other hand, understand the whole concept of polarities very differently as part of a seamless whole. And so the key to the relationship between yin and yang, Alan Watts writes, is called zhangcheng, mutual arising, inseparability. And he goes on to say they are thus like the different but inseparable sides of a coin or the poles of a magnet. There is never the ultimate possibility that either one will win over the other, for they are more like lovers wrestling than enemies fighting. And so the art of life is not seen as holding on to yang and banishing yin, but keeping the two in balance because there simply can't be one without the other. And at a practical level, this quest for energetic balance dictates many Chinese dietary customs because foods in China are classified either as hot or cool depending on their energetic makeup or chi. And so eating foods in the proper proportions is crucial to maintaining or restoring good health. And particular maladies are addressed and treated by regulating the elements hot or cool in Watts diet. The word for physician in Chinese, Adeline Yan Ma writes, is yisheng, healer of life. And the professional Chinese healer strives to treat the whole person, utilizing various foods and naturally sourced medicines to correct imbalances and ideally to promote optimal health. Formal Chinese artists adopted a similar approach, whether in a garden or in a painting, the emphasis was always placed on balance. High places, a jutting piece of limestone or a temple or a mountain would be juxtaposed with low places like a pond or a rice paddy. And some of the same principles have been incorporated into Feng Shui whose practitioners seek to orient buildings and their contents so that yin and yang are brought in to proper alignment. Now for those of us who have been steeped not in Eastern but in Western values and in the hard sciences, these quasi-metaphysical assertions may strike us as mere superstition, holdovers from a more credulous age that have long since been discredited. But while that may be true in terms of some of the particulars, these teachings do point to a greater overarching truth that we would be well in the West to absorb. Because the fact is that we have not really come to terms with balance and with its necessary place in the greater scheme of things. And one can easily cite numerous examples of human choices that have disrupted nature's balance and created serious problems not only for the human race but for sentient beings of all descriptions. So take water. Like our own bodies, earth's land masses are only able to maintain this magnificent biodiversity when a delicate balance between withdrawal and replenishment of its fresh water supply is maintained. But as our human species has burgeoned wetlands as we know have been drained, lakes have been emptied, watersheds contaminated and aquifers depleted. And this is a reality that we have long ignored and that future generations are going to be left to cope with. And as competition for this rapidly dwindling resource heats up, water wars, say the experts, say the folks in the Pentagon will become increasingly likely. Now if we are going to navigate this problem, some of our indulgences that we have grown used to are going to have to be forsaken like turf grass lawns. Lawns, Carolyn Corman informs us, are the single largest irrigated crop in America. This, if instruments set up into space by NASA satellites are to be believed. And so why do so many homeowners insist on growing grass that they seldom set foot on except to mow? Well, apparently this approach to landscaping was introduced to the United States in the middle of the 19th century when the American horticulturalist Andrew Jackson Downing wrote this glowing tribute to the lawns and the gardens of guess who? The English aristocracy. If a man surrounds his home with a soft and refined lawn downing enthused, it not only contributes to the happiness of his own family, but it improves the taste and adds liveliness to the country at large. Well, it took a while. But after World War II, this ideal gained widespread acceptance. Wetlands and coastal chaparral and forests were cleared for these massive housing tracts filled with all those quarter acre lots, each of which featured a turf grass monoculture that must of course be kept emerald green all year long, even in Southern California, which is now in the midst of a hydrological crisis. Lawns may not seem like such a big issue here in our neck of the woods, but maintaining an adequate supply, a balance of fresh clean water is. Driving north on State Highway 13 recently, Trina and I passed numerous roadside signs that were protesting the sighting of CAFOs, confined animal feeding operations. And the concern that these signs were registering was over water, both the drawing down and the contamination of local supplies by these large industrial entities, the CAFOs. But the problem here, and the problem that citizens of Wisconsin's central counties are facing arises not just out of the growth of CAFOs, does it? It arises out of our own personal choices, most notably the wholesale consumption of meat and dairy products. According to John Robbins, fully half of all fresh water in this country is consumed directly or indirectly by the raising of livestock with animal waste runoff from large industrial operations degrading an even greater proportion of our water. So what about personal choice? Let's move the conversation to that arena. The health of the planet aside, to what degree, how consistently do any of us recognize the importance of balance in our own lives? And whatever the limitations of those ancient teachings that I referred to a moment ago, wasn't it prudent for our forebears to promote a more balanced lifestyle? Some people in our culture would seem to agree. In a survey that was commissioned by Men's Health Magazine about 20 years ago, 65% of respondents said that they professed admiration for individuals who had managed to strike a good balance between their work and their leisure lives. Now admiration is one thing, application is something else again. Because numerous studies confirm that workers here in the United States spend more hours per week and more weeks per year on the job than their counterparts in just about any country you would care to mention. And if you add to that big block of time, the additional hours that the average American spends shopping in the marketplace, which is four times more than the average European, there isn't a whole lot left over for real restoration and rest. As the Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock observed, you know, these Americans, they're queer people, they do not know how to rest. Now to be sure, economic necessity sometimes will dictate for us a long work week. But for many others, there is this underlying assumption, sometimes conscious, often unconscious, that professional accomplishment and a healthy balance of time on and off the job, that those two are incommensurate, that they don't go together, that prioritizing one's spouse and one's children, having important outside interests is seen rightfully so in some instances as an impediment to career advancement. And even if we wanted a more balanced life, the culture at large has made its attainment difficult by refusing to guarantee the living wage, which forces many single parents to hold multiple jobs. Nor are paid sick days, paid parental leave, paid vacations, benefits that many workers can count on in our culture. And then there are the technological advances that have made possible a 24-hour workday and constant connectivity. And all of this moves us farther and farther off the mark. As Wayne Mueller remarks in his book entitled Sabbath, yes, we are strong and capable people. We can work without stopping, faster and faster. But we need to remember that no living thing lives this way. There are the greater rhythms that govern how life grows, circadian rhythms, seasons and hormonal cycles, sunsets, moonrises, the great movements of the seas and the stars. We are all part of this creation story subject ultimately to its laws and its rhythms. And so we do work too much, and for the wrong rewards, we need to seek a more fertile and healing balance of payments. So what might a healthier balance of payments look like? Well, obviously, there's no one-size-fits-all answer to that question. One's stage of life, one's chosen career path, one's family circumstances, societal commitments, avocational interests, all of these will help to determine one's daily schedule, and the equation is likely to shift throughout the course of our lives. But perhaps to find that healthy balance, we should begin by consulting a little more often with our bodies. Dr. David Elliott was chief of cardiology at the University of Nebraska Medical School. He had a nationally recognized reputation in his field of cardiology. He was felled by a heart attack at the age of 44. Functioning on overdrive as a practitioner, a teacher, a sought-after lecturer, a promoter of the university's cardiac program, Elliott took very little time for rest or for relaxation, or for exercise. His wife gave him an exercise bike for Christmas. He never had time to sit on it. Saddled with these high standards, these lofty goals, he felt, as he put it, that he had to run faster and faster just to stay on his career track. But after the heart attack, later on, a chastened Elliott wrote a book entitled, Is It Worth Dying For? And in that book, he described his former life as a joyless treadmill. If we attend more closely to our bodies and to our emotional status, they can provide us with some very meaningful feedback. But then we have to ask the question that meditation teacher Gail Straub poses. Okay, this is what I'm being told. Now, where is my compassion leading me at this point in my life? Inward or outward? Toward greater self-care or toward more service to the larger world? A Japanese farmer monk by the name of Takashi gave similar advice to a woman named Gretel Ehrlich, who was a California rancher and a screenwriter, and she was just out walking on her ranch one day outside of Santa Barbara, and lo and behold, she was struck by lightning. The shock was so severe that recovery from that trauma took several years, and the high-achieving Ehrlich often felt so impatient, so frustrated by her incapacity to do what she'd been doing before. Well, Takashi visited her from Japan and they were in conversation together, and he observed, you know, Gretel, you've always been so strong, and now is the time for you to learn how to be weak. This is what is necessary for you at this point in your life. Now in some respects, achieving a healthier balance is getting harder rather than easier in our world. Much has been written in recent years about our portable electronic devices and how they compromise our relationships with one another and with the environment surrounding us. Cell phones and tablets and laptops, they allow us instant access to multiple places, literally at the same time, but only access at the most superficial level. And as a result of this, the sociologist James McWilliams writes, heavy users of such technology are today a wreck. They are among the most anxious people in human history, twitching for little more than a chance to indulge in the next new thing. For McWilliams, a balanced life and a firmly accurate identity are made possible when one makes a concerted effort to routinely disconnect from the digital world and substitute the following four practices. First, spend at least part of your day alone. Really alone. Because being alone, while uncomfortable for many of us, allows us the time to reflect on that which we really love and need to do and that which we fear. Second, engage in more meaningful conversations because that process, conversation, helps us to discover what we routinely hide from ourselves. Third, forge mutually supportive relationships to provide at least some opportunity for reciprocal self-disclosure. Fourth, find an outlet for communal activity because in communal activity, we learn not just to teach, but to be taught, not just to lead, but to be led, and we are exposed to the deeper wisdoms of tradition and outside expertise. So where is compassion leading you at this point in your lives? Inward or outward? What do you need to achieve a healthier balance and what options are available for getting there? We always have options if we are open enough, receptive enough to look for them. And that is one of the reasons that an institution like this one, First Unitarian Society, exists to provide the encouragement and the good company that you will need to find those options and the courage to pursue them. Blessed be and amen. This being Water Communion as has been our practice in the past, our offering will be shared with an institution or with a project that seeks to protect our valuable water resources. You can read about that project in your programs today. Please be generous. We gather each week, a community of memory and to this time and place we bring our whole and at times our broken selves. We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past and seek a place where they might be received, be celebrated and be shared. We pause this week. This week we wanna remember and offer peace to Lisa West and her family on the passing of their mother Dorothy, whose smile shall be forever with us. And we offer them our blessings. And in addition, we also acknowledge all of those unarticulated joys and sorrows that remain among us and that as a community we hold with equal concern in our hearts. Let us now sit silently together for a few moments in the spirit of empathy, compassion and hope. By virtue of our time together, may our burdens be lightened and our joys expand. Following the postlude, you will be invited to come forward to retrieve a portion of the waters we've gathered together. We've provided a number of empty containers for those who didn't have water to contribute today, but if you choose, you can still share in our communion. Due to the many sources from which this water has come, some probably less than pure, we recommend that you boil it before using it to nourish a favorite house plant, a tree or garden patch. Perform this ritual mindfully, remembering the symbolism and the significance of this simple yet invaluable life sustaining substance. And I share the words of Langston Hughes. I've known rivers. I've known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young. I built my hut in the Congo and it lulled me to sleep. I looked upon the Nile and raised pyramids above it. My soul has grown deep like the rivers. I invite you to stand in body or in spirit, to join in our closing hymn, number 1064, Blue Boat Home. A benediction today comes from the words of Benjamin Hoth. Let us find a way today that can take us to tomorrow. Follow the way, a way like flowing water. Let's leave behind the things that do not matter and turn our lives to a more important chapter. Let's take the time, try to find what real life has to offer and maybe then we'll find again what we had long forgotten. Like a friend true to the end, it will help us onward. The sun is high, the road is wide and it starts where we are standing. No one knows how far it goes for the road is never ending. It goes away, beyond what we have thought of. It flows away, away like flowing water. Watered water this afternoon, please come forward. Yes, through me, we're not a clue.