 to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. I'm Kelly Crocker, one of the ministers here. And today, my colleague, Roger Birchhausen and I are joined by Drew Collins, Linda Warren, Heather Thorpe, Daniel Karnes, Stephen Gregorius, and leading our chalice lighting, Rachel Avery and Terry Pepper. We are so glad to have you join us virtually this morning. Though not together here in our beloved meeting house, we remain tied together through the bonds of community and affection. Here in this community, we gather to grow our souls, connect with one another, and embody our UU values in our lives, our communities, and our world. We warmly invite you to join in the virtual coffee hour immediately after today's service. The information for that will be on your screen again after the postlude. I invite you now to take a few deep breaths, to be present here together, to bring ourselves fully into this time we share. Our opening words today are from Reverend Gretchen Haley. There is a time to let go of the resistance, the steadfast march to complete the to-do list for parents and activists, and for all who love this life, these people, these mountains, this sky. There is a time to rest and to trust the world will go on filled with partners at the ready. All of us splitting shifts on this project of building and healing, tending and turning. Breathe and being require their own practice, their own attention, and the heart needs time for becoming stronger after the shadowing, the opening wider, the learning to love more, and again. Coming to this place, study stillness and joy. Know your belovedness like a memory calling out from the center of your being, connecting every little piece of everything to everyone and all of us. Feel here gratitude rising and praise for this chance to begin again this day with hope. Come, let us worship together. And now I invite you to join in our chalice lighting by lighting a candle at your home. Our chalice lighting today will be done by Terry Pepper and Rachel Avery. We receive fragments of holiness, glimpses of eternity, brief moments of insight. Let us gather them up for the precious gifts that they are and renewed by their grace, move boldly into the unknown. Please rise and body and our spirit to sing together. Him number 352, find a stillness. Count down through the season of winter's dark leading into the light. Advent is a time of waiting, of cultivating patience. This season asks us to hold faith that all we are becoming is still awakening under the surface of our lives. On this second Sunday of Advent, we light the candle of peace. With words from the Buddhist nun, Pema Chodron. If we want there to be peace in the world, we have to be brave enough to soften what is rigid in our hearts, to find the soft spot and stay with it. We have to have that kind of courage and take that kind of responsibility. That's the true practice of peace. May this time of waiting inspire our courage. May we find the soft spot in the pressures of this season and stay with it as we discern our way forward. May we be filled with loving kindness. May we be at ease and discover the true practice of peace within us so that there might be peace in the world. So I was going along on highway and coming into Catich Grove outside of Madison a couple nights ago, really late at night from Michigan, thinking about what am I gonna do for the message for all ages this week? I don't know, thinking, thinking, thinking. And then suddenly from trees on the left side of the road, this owl just swooped right in front of my car, so much so that I ducked and it seemed really close and big, big ol' owl. And off it went, it was a full moon, maybe it was Tuesday night or close to full moon. And suddenly I had an idea. This book, Owl Moon, came to be. One of my favorite books, Owl Moon by Jane Yellen. And that's what the cover looks like. It was late one winter night, long past my bedtime, one pot, I went owling. There was no wind, the trees stood still as giant statues and the moon was so bright the sky seemed to shine somewhere behind us. A train whistle blew long and low like a sad, sad song. Much like this other night I was driving. I could hear it through the woolen cat pot and pulled down over my ears. Our farm dog answered the train and then a second dog joined in. They sang out trains and dogs for a real long time. And when their voices faded away, it was as quiet as a train. We walked on towards the woods, potting. Our feet crunched over the crisp snow and little grave footprints followed us. Pa made a long shadow but mine was short and round. I had to run after him every now and then to keep up and my short round shadow bumped after me. But I never called out, if you go owling, you have to be quiet. That's what Pa always says. I had been waiting to go owling with Pa for a long, long time. We reached the line of pine trees black and pointy against the sky and Pa held up his hand. I stopped right where I wasn't waited. He looked up as if searching the stars as if reading a map up there. The moon made his face into a silver mask. Then he called, Woo-hoo! The sound of a great horned owl. Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Woo-hoo! Again he called out and then again After each call he was silent and for a moment we both listened. But there was no answer. Pa shrugged and I shrugged. I was not disappointed. My brothers all said sometimes there's an owl and sometimes there's not. We walked on. I could feel the cold as if someone's icy hand and palm down on my back and my nose and the tops of my cheeks felt cold and hot at the same time but I never said a word. If you go owl-ing you have to be quiet and you have to make your own heat. We went into the woods. The shadows were the blackest things I had ever seen. They stained the white snow. My mouth felt furry from the scarf over it was wet and warm. I didn't ask what kinds of things hide behind black trees in the middle of the night. When you go owl-ing you have to be brave. Then we came to a clearing in the dark woods. The moon was high above us. It seemed to fit exactly over the center of the clearing and the snow below it was whiter than the milk in a cereal bowl. I sighed and Paul held up his hand at the sound. I put my mittens over the scarf over my mouth and listened hard and then Pa called. Hoo, hoo, hoo. I listened and looked so hard. My ears hurt and my eyes got cloudy with the cold. Pa raised his face to call out again but before he could open his mouth an echo came threading its way through the trees. Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo. Pa almost smiled and he called back. Hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo, hoo. Just as if he and the owl were talking about supper or about the woods or the moon or the cold. I took my mitten off the scarf off my mouth and I almost smiled too. The owl's call came closer from high up on the trees on the edge of the meadow. Nothing in the meadow moved. All of a sudden an owl shadow part of the big tree shadow lifted off and flew right over us. We watched silently with heat in our mouths, the heat of all those words we had not spoken. The shadow hooted again. Pa turned on his big flashlight and caught the owl just as it was landing on a branch. That's what that picture looks like. Wow. For one minute, three minutes, maybe even a hundred minutes, we stared at one another. Then the owl pumped its great wings and lifted off the branch like a shadow without sound. It flew back into the forest. Time to go home, Pa said to me. I knew then I could talk. I could even laugh out loud. But I was a shadow as we walked home. When you go owing, you don't need words or warm or anything but hope. So Pa says, the kind of hope that flies on silent wings under a shining owl moon. That's the end of our story. I invite you into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which sustains and strengthens our community. A community of memory, hope, faith and love. Our outreach offering recipient this week is Urban Triage, who is on a mission to empower black families while mobilizing community resources and distributing them to those most in need. Urban Triage engages systems in implementing systematic, sustainable, equitable and clinically sound approaches to health behavior and prevention and our poise to do this through education, community support services and advocacy. You will see on your screen that you can donate directly from our website, fussmedicine.org. You will also see our text to give information there as well. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. Favorite place of stillness is a lake up in Northern Wisconsin in the Nicolet National Forest called Shoe Lake. There are only two human dwellings on Shoe Lake. There's not an easy boat access. In fact, the only boat I've ever seen on the lake is my own kayak. I try to get there at least one time each winter. Trudging along in the snow toward the lake, I can hear each footstep in the snow. I veer off an old logging road into deeper snow down to the side of the lake. And there I stop and I stand as still as I can. The sound of my footsteps has ceased. There's no wind. The trees stand as still as giant statues. There are no waves because the lake's frozen. No cars or snowmobiles can be heard. Sometimes the snow is falling gently and noiselessly. All is quiet, absolutely quiet, completely quiet. All is still. It is stunning and arresting. I hold my breath so even that sound is gone. It's a sacred moment. It's an expansive moment that fills my soul. That one moment can get me through a long Wisconsin winter. I experienced a very different kind of stillness when I visited the village of Benay-Benay in the Philippines. The congregation I used to serve in Appleton has a partner church in Benay-Benay. Unlike Shoe Lake, there is plenty of noise in Benay-Benay, beginning with the roosters calling at about 4.30 in the morning. There is though for me at least a notable form of quietness and that is there's no phone signal, no wifi, no computers. It's a place where I was completely disconnected. Well, when I was there that time, after deciding that the roosters were likely not to stop, I decided to go outside the church where I was sleeping. There were several men chatting in the church yard as the sun rose. One of the church's two ministers, Giovanni, invited me over to his house, which was next door. His house is a thatched hut with a corrugated metal roof. Giovanni's wife, Joanabeth, sells Avon and so there's an authorized Avon dealership sign on the side of the house. The house is up on stilts underneath. The main living area is an area where they cook and eat. I climbed up the ladder into the living space and spent a wonderful time talking with the family. Then I joined several people in an early morning walk around the village. And even though it was only six in the morning, it was super hot already. I was quickly drenched in sweat. We walked along a dirt road with sugar cane towering on each side. One of the church members had a knife and so she cut off a piece of the sugar cane and whittled the ends, gave it to me to chew. What moist, delicious sweetness that was. We stopped at the water source, which is the lifeblood for this village. And already there were women gathered there to get water and to begin laundry. Then we went on to the congregational president's house. There we had a pre-breakfast snack, as they called it, which was pasta and chicken and fruit. We capped that off with some coconut water, fresh off a coconut tree in the backyard. So lots contributed to the magic of that morning in Benay-Benay. Maybe most important of all, I was able to be completely present, savoring each moment with joy, delight and my full attention. I really had no sense of time. It felt like that might have been five minutes or five hours. Though an entirely different setting from the wintry shores of Shoe Lake, I had a similar feeling within, a feeling of serenity, equanimity, centeredness, well-being. It was, in its own way, a moment of stillness in Benay-Benay. Only the stillness was completely inside this time. As Buddhists who meditate or Christians who practice contemplative prayer well know, you really don't have to travel to the Philippines or even the north woods of Wisconsin to find stillness. It can be as close as a meditation cushion or a comfortable chair in your house. It's tic-nac hand writes or it can be right there when you're doing the dishes in your kitchen. So what are some characteristics of these moments of stillness? Be they quiet or noisy, distant or right where we live? Well, these are moments when we are truly in the moment, completely absorbed in the present. In Buddhist lingo, these are moments when we are completely mindful of what we're doing at the moment. We're not thinking about the past. We're not thinking about the future. Our monkey minds as Buddhists talk about and our devices and our diversions are switched off. They're not distracting us from this very moment. These moments of stillness are embodied moments. Even for a Buddhist monk deep in meditation, there is an attentiveness, a connectedness to their body, to their sitting or walking, whatever they're doing while meditating to their breathing. Moments of stillness envelop the body and all of our senses. Moments of stillness open our imaginations and potentially unleash our creativity. We can imagine what it might be like to live a centered, open, peaceful life truly connected to our soul, to others and to place. We can imagine new possibilities for our life and our world. Our creative juices can start flowing. And these moments of stillness are what I would call soulful moments. Kathleen Norris writes about a little girl in North Dakota who wrote about silence. Silence reminds me to take my soul with me wherever I go. Well, stillness, whether quiet or loud, does the same thing. It's a recognition in those moments that, hey, our soul is with us always. In some ways, I feel like this pandemic is the perfect time to encounter more opportunities for stillness. With the absence of spending time with friends or going to restaurants or movies or sporting events or traveling, many of us find ourselves with more time and space in our lives. Some of us don't, and I want to lift up that reality. For example, parents who are trying to work at home while also helping coach their kids through every hour of virtual school, five days a week, they're not finding more time and space in their lives. I found, though, even though I'm lucky enough to have more time and space, I'm generally not making the most of that opportunity. Maybe that's true for some of you as well. Distractions, diversions, monkey mind have mostly sucked my attention. Anxiety about the pandemic, the election, the racism so painfully and obviously still present in 2020, these have all been overwhelming at times. There is a cacophony of noise, a cornucopia of distraction in my life right now, even if I'm not going to parties or restaurants or stepping on a plane. Mindfulness actually feels harder to me now than usual. And so this difficult distracting moment in our lives calls us to try to create and find more opportunities for stillness. I invite you to join me in the season of Advent and solstice to create some opportunities for stillness. Advent, this month before Christmas, is a season of waiting. In the mythical story of Jesus' birth, Mary has to wait a long time, nine months, after Gabriel shares this news that she unexpectedly is going to have a child. And as with any pregnancy, that waiting gets more intense in the last month. For Mary, it's a complicated time and place to prepare to give birth. There's the Roman occupation. There's this last minute census that causes her and her beloved to have to travel to a distant village. Giving birth to a baby in a stable was not part of her plan, I'm guessing. The Advent season and the Christmas story, like Hanukkah, draw on the more ancient rituals and stories and spiritualities of the winter solstice. In Northern lands, this is a season of short days, long nights, cold and mystery. It's a season of fallowness. We wait for the sun to begin to return, for the cold to end, for spring to come, for the grasses and the flowers and the trees to burst forth again for the sandhill cranes to return. The rituals of this season invite us to sink into, to embrace the cold, the darkness, the fallowness and even the waiting. There is a beauty in all this. The solstice invites us to revel in this quiet, dark beauty. So this is a season to sit in a chair with a blanket and a steaming cup of tea, even for five minutes if we can find the time to contemplate our own life and life, capital L. It is a season to prepare room in our hearts for what is to come, ironically by living fully in this moment, not living in the what is to come. So I invite you to create opportunities this month for stillness. Find ways to cut down on the distractions even for a few moments. If you're one of those people whose life is busier in the pandemic, maybe even try to find a five minute block here and there. Create opportunities to pay attention to the soul. Friends, we are in a complicated time. Now we're not like Mary where we have to worry about Roman occupiers who are pretty brutal or am I gonna give birth to this baby with a roof over my head? But it is a complicated time nonetheless. And it can be tempting just to lose ourselves in the waiting, waiting for a vaccine, waiting for this COVID-19 nightmare to end, waiting to embrace our beloveds, waiting to come back in person to a service at FUS, waiting for January 20, waiting for racism to end or at least for black and brown bodies to stop getting killed. Advent and solstice invite us to actually sit with this waiting to sit where we are in 2020, not to jump in our minds ahead to 2021. Like Aulene, you just need a couple of things, bravery and hope, at least a little bit. And who knows? You might find some calm, some peace, some insight or wisdom in these moments. There's no guarantee just like Aulene, you can create opportunities to see an owl, but you might not. Sometimes the owl answers, sometimes it doesn't. The only guarantee is that if we stay stuck in this world of distractions, these moments of calm and peace and insight and wisdom are not likely to come unless we're really lucky. I've only seen an owl fly over me in a car twice in my life. I'd be more likely to see an owl if like the father and the child, I ventured into the woods on a full moon night. I'm more likely to experience insights if I create stillness in my life. Find a stillness, hold a stillness, let the stillness care. Let me flower, help me flower, watch me flower, care in the spirit, by the spirit, with the spirit giving power, I will find true. Each week we gather with hearts that are heavy and hearts that are filled with joy. We share these in community knowing we are held in love. This week we light a candle of great gladness for Dorot who is celebrating the birth of Roscoe Rex, who brought joy into their hearts when he was born last month in Eugene, Oregon. He is the son of Alex, a young man who Dorot has known since before he was born. And we light a candle of deep sorrow for Lori Schwartz as she grieves the pain of her friend Jody who was in a very long time. That accident gave Jody life-threatening injuries and also took the life of her wife, Julie. We hold Julie, Jody, and their family in our hearts and we pray for strength and healing as Jody begins a long journey of recovery and grief. And we light one last candle in recognition of all the miracles and the messiness in this life. Both the ache and the awe, the mystery and the wonder. May we be together for a moment now in silence as we hold our blessings, our pains, all that lives within our hearts. Blessed be and amen. We pause this morning to give thanks and recognize three staff who have reached milestones in their time working at First Unitarian Society. Today we celebrate the time and service of Leslie Ross, Daniel Kearns, and Linda Warren. Leslie Ross has been our Director of Children's Religious Education for the past 20 years. And it is difficult to put into words all that she has brought and continues to bring to our community. Leslie is a passionate advocate for children, youth, and families. She brings her immense creativity to our program, constantly updating and working with our curricula to ensure that our children are receiving the best possible learning experience. Leslie works with hundreds of volunteers each year and is masterful in her support, training, and care of them. First and foremost in her mind is always the building of community. Within our child's care room, our many classrooms, and lately in Zoom, across the state, Leslie brings people together and helps them learn, grow, and find a home here. Leslie, please know how grateful we are for your talents, your compassion, and all the gifts you continue to bring to us. Daniel Kearns has been working here at First Unitarian Society for the past 15 years. Dan has been one of our facility specialists helping us out during worship, events, classes, and programs. He has served as our facility scheduler and most recently and most obviously to us, though perhaps not to you, as our audio-visual specialist. All of the beautiful videos you see on Sundays, scenes from around our buildings so artistically composed, that is the work of Dan. He puts in countless hours editing our videos, making us look good, except for that recent blooper reel of your ministers, which I believe brought him a great deal of joy. Dan, thank you for your creativity, your passion, your steadfast determination in helping us create the best possible worship we can. We are so grateful for your efforts. Linda Warren has been our assistant music director for the past 15 years. Many of you might not know that Linda is the only person in the state of Wisconsin who can play organ, piano, and harp. How lucky are we that she brings her immense talents to our services week after week. I have been fortunate to work with Linda on countless weddings and memorial services, and Linda brings beauty, comfort, joy, and healing into all of her work. We have you right to us week after week, offering your deep gratitude for Linda's talents and the impact her music has on your own life. Linda, please know that we are sending you our deepest thanks for all the grace and all the peace that you bring to us week after week. We are truly blessed to have you with us. Leslie, Dan, and Linda, we thank you today and always from all of us at FUS. Thank you. During the season of solstice, may each of us find within us bravery and hope, may we bring those things to create moments of stillness where we can be in the now. May you go in peace.