 Please join me in a moment of centering silence. Please remain seated and join me for our in-gathering hymn, number 110, and the words also appear in your order of service. 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 Karen Rose Gredler, and on behalf of the entire congregation, I would like to extend a special welcome to visitors. We are a welcoming congregation, so whomever you are and wherever you happen to be on your life journey, we celebrate your presence among us. Newcomers and others are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library, which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium. Bring your beverages and your questions. Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you. You may also look for persons holding teal-colored stoneware coffee mugs. These are FUS members knowledgeable about our faith community who would welcome visiting with you. Experienced guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service. I'm not sure if we have one today, but if we do, that person will meet you over on the window side of the auditorium after the service. I hope we do have one, but I didn't see one signed up on the list. We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service, however, because it is difficult for summon attendants to hear in this lively acoustical environment, our child haven back in that corner, and the commons outside the auditorium are excellent places to go if your child wants to talk, move around, dance, whatever. The service can still be seen and heard well from those areas. This would also be an excellent time to turn off any noise making devices that might cause a disturbance during the hour, especially cell phone ringers. I'd now like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly. We have Maureen Friend on the sound system. We have Anne Smiley as our lay minister, Pam Winnie as greeter, Patricia Becker, Karen Hill, Doug Hill, and I think Marsh Schweitzer as well. As our ushers, hospitality, those folks making beverages for us, our Genie Hills and Kristie Minahan. We would also like to thank the websters, John and Nancy, for looking after our poems and orchids this morning. Thank you. I'd also call your attention to the Red Floor's Insert in Your Order of Service, where there are announcements and information about things that are going on this week, today, and in the upcoming future. I have three announcements I would also like to read. An opportunity fair is coming to a commons near you. How do I get involved at FUS? What are the social justice groups? I keep hearing I need to join a chalice group, but I'm not even sure what that is. Have you ever had any of these thoughts or others? If so, then consider coming to our opportunity fair on October 22nd and 23rd after all services, Saturday afternoon and the two Sunday services. This is a time for you to learn about all the opportunities available at FUS. Our programs will be represented, things such as service teams, advocacy teams, food haulers, shawl ministry, spiritual practice groups, lay ministry, chalice groups, exploration groups, choirs, religious education, and if you can believe it, a whole lot more. So bring your questions, curiosity. This is for anyone. You don't have to be a newcomer or person new to FUS at all because many of us who have been here for 20 years or more still wonder about certain groups and might like to become involved, so please attend. All of these are ways to deeply engage with other members in this large congregation and find your place here at FUS. Group representatives will be staffing tables and mulling about throughout the commons and crossing areas of the atrium building, that's this place. And there will be friendly faces waiting to greet you and tell you everything you always wanted to know about their program. Another announcement, today from one to three, is that right Michael, got it wrong early, one to three in this auditorium, you're invited to join M. Adams, co-executive director of Freedom, Inc., an organization that works with low-income black and Hmong women. She was one of the contributors to the recently released National Movement for Black Lives platform and has been recognized by UW-Madison as one of our seven most influential women of color for 2015-16. M. Adams is also the author of Forward from Ferguson. And on a sad note, our hearts are with David and Becky Briles as they mourn the loss of their son Max, who passed away on Tuesday, October 11th, from complications of anorexia. A remembrance gathering is scheduled for this Wednesday, October 19th, from 5 to 8 p.m. at the home of Greg and Leslie Kibakis, 6,008 Ridgewood Avenue and Manona, and an obituary will be in today's, or should be in today's Sunday Wisconsin State Journal. Please hold them in your hearts. The opening words come from one of the 20th century's great classical vocalists, the African American singer, Marian Anderson. There are many persons ready to do what is right because in their hearts they know it is right, and yet they hesitate. They wait for the other fellow to make the first move, and he in turn is waiting for you. The minute a person whose word means a great deal dares to take the open-hearted and courageous way, then many others are likely to follow. I invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice. And if you will join your voices with mine in the words of affirmation that accompany the lighting of the chalice, may we find the courage to live our faith, to speak our truth, and to strive together for a world where freedom abounds, peace prevails, and justice is done. May we know the fullness of life without fear, and of security without oppression. May we hold one another in the deep and tender places of compassion, and know that the divine spark within makes soulmates of us all, and in the spirit of soulmates please turn to your neighbor and extend to them a warm and friendly greeting. Please be seated. And if there are some children excluding the cherubs and choristers who would like to come forward for the message for all ages, there will be lots of pictures projected up here to help explain the story, you look like you are going to Mardi Gras. So it looks like some of you are old enough to be in school, right? So it's about the middle of October right now, and usually everybody kind of starts school at the same time, right? But then sometimes there's a new kid who comes into your class a little late, maybe two or three or four weeks late. Have you ever had that happen in your class? Okay. And so the teacher might say, you know, hello, this is so-and-so and they're going to be joining us this year. So what do you do when someone comes in who's new in your class? What do you try to do? Throw them around, okay? You know? Tell them what your names are. That's a good one. Yep. Okay. Ask them at recess whether you can play with them. And that's what it would kind of mean to befriend the new person in the class. And sometimes we say that I'm going to be an ally with that person. I'm going to help them out. And this is a story about someone like that. So Chloe is telling us this story. And Chloe says that that winter snow fell on everything and made the whole world a brilliant white. And one morning she said, as we settled into our seats, the classroom door opened and the principal came in and she had a girl with her and she said, class, this is Maya. Well, Maya looked down at the floor. She was kind of shy. I think I heard her whisper, hello. We all stared at her. Her coat was open and the clothes beneath the coat looked kind of old, kind of ragged and her shoes were spring shoes, not the kind of shoes you'd wear in the snow and a strap on one of her shoes was broken. Our teacher, Miss Albert said, say good morning to our new student. But hardly anybody spoke. Hardly anybody said hello. Well, the only empty seat in the classroom was the one next to me, Chloe says. And that's where the teacher put Maya. And Maya turned to me and she said, hi there. But I didn't smile back, Chloe says. I moved my chair and I moved myself and I moved my books a little further away from Maya. And every day after that, when Maya, that's a candle. And so every day after that, when Maya came into the classroom, she would smile at me but I didn't smile back. Is that very nice? No. My best friends that year were Kendra and Sophie and at lunchtime the three of us would walk in the schoolyard holding hands and whispering secrets into each other's ears. One day while we were standing next to the slide, Maya came over and she held out her hand and there were these shiny new jacks and a bright red rubber ball. She said, this is a high bouncing ball. But none of us would play jacks with her. So she played by herself. That afternoon when we got back into the classroom, Maya whispered to me, bet you don't know who the jack champion of the world is. Behind me, Andrew whispered, Chloe's got a new friend, Chloe's got a new friend. She's not my friend. I whispered back. The weeks passed and every day we whispered among ourselves about this new girl, Maya, laughing at her clothes and her shoes and the strange food that she brought with her to lunch. Some days Maya would hold out her hand again to show us something that she had brought to school, like a deck of cards or pickup sticks or an old tattered doll. And whenever she asked us to play with her, we said, no. Well, the days grew warmer and warmer and the pond thought the grass began growing where the snow had been. And one day Maya came to school wearing a very pretty dress and some nice shoes. But the shoes and the dress, well, they looked like some other girl had worn them before. I have a new name for her. My friend Kendra whispered, never knew. Everything she has came from a second hand store. We all laughed at this and Maya stood over by the fence. She was holding a jump rope and she didn't come over to ask if we wanted to play with her. After a while, she wrapped the jump rope around across her hands and she began jumping. And she jumped all around the entire schoolyard. She didn't look up once. She just jumped and she jumped and she jumped. And the next day Maya's seat was empty. In class that morning, we were talking about kindness. That was the subject for that morning. And our teacher, Mrs. Albert, brought this big bowl into class and she put it on her desk and she filled it up with water. And then we watched as she dropped a small stone into the water and tiny ripples came out from around that stone, moving slowly away from the stone. And she explained that this is what kindness is like. Each little thing we do, each kind act or word we speak ripples out and it affects the whole world. And then Mrs. Albert let each one of us drop a stone into the bowl and as we did so, to tell her about one kind thing that we had done. And Chloe says, I stood there with that stone in my hand and I couldn't think of a single thing. And my teacher said, Chloe, even small things count. But I couldn't think of anything and I gave the stone back to my teacher. Well, Maya didn't come to school the next day. She didn't come to the school the day after that. And every morning I would walk to school slowly hoping that maybe this would be the day that Maya would return and that she would look at me and she would smile and I would smile back to her and I would say hello. Each kindness, Ms. Albert had said, makes the world just a little bit better. But Maya didn't come back. Maya's seat remained empty. And one day our teacher announced to the class that she wouldn't be coming back, that her family had moved away. And then she told us to take out our books because it was time for our spelling lesson. So that afternoon, Chloe says, I walked home by myself and when I reached the pond, my throat filled with all of the things that I wished I could have said to Maya, the kindness that I had never shown and now she had moved away. And I saw, I threw small stones into the pond over and over and watched the way that the ripples moved out and away, out and away. And I watched those ripples until the sun was setting through the trees and the chance of being kind to Maya became more and more forever gone. Not all our stories have happy endings, do they? Sometimes we miss the chance to be kind and so we need to remember. We never know when someone is going to move away or someone comes into our life that's a little bit different from us and that they can be lonely and they might need for us to be friendly to them and kind to them. So that's just something for all of us to remember as we go to school in the days and the weeks ahead. So we're going to stay right here now as our choir sings us another song. Thank you for listening. And so at this time we do invite our children to depart for their classes or whatever other activities I'll hide in store. Selection that I would like to share at this point in our service is from Martin Luther King's 1963 letter from the Birmingham jail. This is just a small portion of that rather lengthy piece of correspondence. I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's greatest stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the white citizen counselor, not the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice, who prefers a negative piece, which is the absence of tension, to a positive piece, which is the presence of justice, who constantly says, I agree with you in the goals that you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action. The person who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom. Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. And lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. Well, I guess I should have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand, can appreciate the deep groans, the passionate yearnings of those who have been oppressed. And fewer still have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers and sisters have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and have committed themselves to it. They are still too small in quantity, but they are big in quality. I invite you to rise once more in body or in spirit as we sing together hymn number 124. Please be seated. Despite the hype surrounding the Wisconsin Badgers and the Ohio Buckeyes. I suspect that most of you also know that the major league baseball playoffs are also underway. And this season, many fans are wondering, hapless Chicago Cubs, will that win the World Series that has eluded them for over a century. This is perhaps a record of futility unmatched in the history of sports. But the Chicago Cubs aside, and I know we're all looking and listening and waiting to see what happens, I want to begin my reflections today by sharing the quest for another record, one that many observers felt would never be broken, and that was the career homerun record established by the legendary Babe Ruth. The Bambino, as he was known, hit 714 forebagers over the course of two decades, and that record stood untouched for almost 40 years. But then in the early 1970s, it became clear that a Milwaukee slash Atlanta Braves player by the name of Hank Aaron had a shot at that record. Now, Henry Lewis Aaron was a quiet, unassuming figure. He was described by teammates and opponents alike as a true gentleman. But as his homerun total continued to rise and was expected to eclipse Ruth's achievement, Aaron's life became a veritable nightmare. So much hate mail was sent to him that the U.S. Post Office awarded Aaron a plaque for receiving the highest volume of mail of any civilian. The FBI investigated numerous death threats. A guard accompanied him to the field each day, and there was even an attempt at kidnapping his young daughter. One commentator put it this way, Aaron's main antagonist during his quest for the homerun title was not Babe Ruth's ghost. It was the racial hostility of baseball fans. A one homer short at the end of the 1973 season, Hank Aaron admitted that he might not live to see the 1974 season. And it still hurts inside, he later acknowledged, because it chipped away a part of my heart and of my life that I will never get back. I did not enjoy myself in that quest for the record. It was hard for me, though, not to enjoy something that I worked so darn hard for. So as I was thinking about what it might mean to be a white ally to people of color, as I was reviewing the literature, as I was soliciting various opinions, one suggestion that I encountered was this one from Paul Keeville. To begin with, he says, we must understand and we must learn from the history of whiteness and the history of racism in this country. Baseball aside, there's a more significant development in the history of American race relations that bears mentioning today, because it has undoubtedly colored the perceptions of a good many white people. Now, perhaps some of you who subscribe to Netflix watched, or at least heard of, a documentary entitled 13th, which premiered on October the 7th, just over a week ago. Anybody see it? The 13th focused on the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and as we know, that amendment abolished slavery. Abraham Lincoln worked very hard to push the 13th Amendment through Congress. And the text of the amendment reads, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to its jurisdiction. Despite its admirable intent, this amendment contained a loophole large enough to drive a chain gang through, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. Following Reconstruction, and in mortal fear of these newly liberated slaves who would begin to claim rights and privileges that historically had been reserved only for whites, in the aftermath of Reconstruction, white policy makers throughout the South began passing and rigorously enforcing a white assortment of so-called black codes. And these were statutes designed to criminalize conduct that, heretofore, had been the prerogative of any and all citizens. The right to travel freely. The right to pursue work of one's choosing. The right to own a weapon, whether a firearm or a knife. Many other rights were curtailed for African-Americans. And the cumulative effect of these black codes was to recreate a slave culture through the machinations of white-dominated courts and county sheriff's departments. As Douglas Blackmon documents in his book, Slavery by Another Name, this system retarded African-American social and economic progress by at least 100 years. Black codes remained in place in many southern states right up until the middle of the 20th century. And both inside and outside of the South, they had the nefarious effect of planting in white mines the image of the black man as criminal, a dangerous malifactor. And this is the very legacy that still haunts us to this very day. Now, I suspect that many well-intentioned, many progressive whites would deny that they are conditioned by this old stereotype. And while that may indeed be true at the conscious level, most white Americans do develop and we do retain implicit biases that can affect our deportment to a much greater degree than we would ever care to admit. And a lot of data on implicit racial bias has been compiled in recent years thanks to a test designed by scholars at Harvard University. To date, well over three million Americans of all races, including members of the Madison Police Department, have completed this test. It tells us, as Tim Wise notes, that the vast majority of us as white people have internalized certain racist and prejudicial beliefs about people of color. This doesn't mean that we are bad people. This does not mean that we are incorrigible racists. We develop these unconscious biases simply because we are here. And because we are subject, all of us, to certain cultural cues. Advertising works, wise continues. And we've been subjected to a whole lot of negative advertising. Now, I had to tell you, it can be a little scary to take Harvard's online implicit bias test. It even contains an admonition before you even get started. If you are not prepared for what might be disturbing results, don't proceed. I swallowed hard and I took the plunge. And guess what? I didn't do so well. The test revealed that at an unconscious level, I exhibit a decided preference for white people over people of color. Was I chagrined? Was I disappointed by that outcome? You bet I was. Because I have been an activist for years. I know my American history. I am fully aware of and I am deeply disturbed by the glaring racial inequalities in our society. But at a deeper level, I am obviously biased. And in the end, I am very glad to know this about myself. The Christian pastor and social activist Jim Wallace has called racism America's original sin. Transmitted through the generations, this meme has left its taint on so many of us. And so the question today is not do we have it, but rather what are we going to do with that knowledge? I attended services at Christ the Solid Rock Baptist Church two Sundays ago. I do that as often as I can. Everett Mitchell, now a circuit court judge, pastors at that community. At one point in his sermon, which focused on reaching for delayed goals, Everett assured his listeners, you don't have to be perfect, just honest. Be honest about what's holding you back. Be honest about your fears and your reservations. Be honest about your ignorance and your confusion. Be honest about who you are. If we can just be honest with ourselves and accept the fact that darn few of us in this racially charged culture can claim to be truly colorblind, that's what it means to be honest. That's what it means to be authentic. William Faulkner once said, the past is never dead. Heck, it's not even past. If we're going to be allies, we need to know our history and how it's contributed, even now, to our own conditioning. And without such awareness, we are much more likely to dismiss the discomforting narratives that persons of color try to tell us. Or we're going to reframe those stories that reinforces our own previous biases. So for instance, the Guardian newspaper recently reported that 38% of unarmed individuals killed in the United States by law enforcement are black, 38%. Even though blacks constitute only 13% of the general population. That's an alarming statistic. And it should be telling us something not just about trigger happy officers, but about the publicly approved and sanctioned laws and policies that countenance and that permit this level of carnage. Now when such killings occur, the first thing that typically happens is for the victim to come under close scrutiny. What did he or she do to provoke, to present a threat to that law enforcement officer? It took Tulsa police 30 seconds to kill unarmed Terrence Crutcher, whose car had stalled on the highway. A recording made at the scene shows officers describing this music-loving father of four as a big bad dude. And thus someone capable of causing mayhem. A toxicology report is now being presented as evidence that Crutcher was under the influence, acting erratically, and thus a candidate for the application of lethal force. If that's true or not, every time an assessment like this is handed down, it allows white America to beg the question of reform and to ignore calls for a searching examination of policies and protocols that disproportionately affect people of color. That's what ends up happening. You know, statistics indicate that as a white person, four to five times more likely to be criminally victimized by another white person than by a person of color. And yet whites are much more likely to regard black men as potential predators. Why else would whites indicate greater support for the death penalty after learning that it discriminates against blacks? As a 2007 study revealed, only an exaggerated fear of black violence can explain such a paradoxical result. So in addition to this awareness, this awareness of innate bias, acknowledging privilege is another prerequisite if we intend to be allies. Francesca Ramsey says that there are some things in life that you'll never have to experience. You'll never have to contend with just because of who you are. Now, white privilege is a reality that 25% of white Americans dismiss completely. It doesn't exist. Another 50% believe that it's only marginally significant. But the facts suggest otherwise. In a recent column in The New Yorker, their economics commentator James Surowicki addressed the wealth gap. We're all aware of the wealth gap. And he noted that white households possess, on average, seven times as much wealth as the average black household. Seven times. This is not for lack of effort on the part of African Americans. Blacks and whites in this country, we've both worked hard. But historically, whites have been rewarded handsomely for their labor. And for most of history, the fruits of black labor ended up in whose pocket? Ours. The wealth gap, Surowicki writes, is attributable to a toxic combination of institutionalized discrimination, persistent racism, and policies that amplify inequality. James Shapiro, a sociologist from Tufts University, told Surowicki that history and legacy created the racial gap and policies maintained it. Together they contribute to what he calls the hidden cost of being African American. As Angela Blackwell observed at last year's YWCA racial summit, the question is not how African Americans got into this situation. The question is, how did we allow it to happen? There are many other facets to this privilege equation. There are many resources that you can draw upon online, in our library. My own reflections on this topic delivered in January of last year. And educating yourself is an important, but not a subject. Being yourself is an important, but not a sufficient part of being an ally. Once you've convinced yourself, you've got to convince others. But these can be difficult conversations to have with the people that you care about, Kirsten Claude Feller writes. Even if those conversations get awkward, do it anyway, and in a manner that moves the conversation forward without shutting it down at the outset. Brittany Cooper, professor of African and gender studies at Rutgers, concurs saying, white people should recognize that the best way to be a good ally is to go to work among yourselves to create more allies. Use your privilege to confront racial injustice. So over and above education, over and above honest self-assessment, there is this active component to allyship. Our English word ally comes from the Latin oligare, which is a verb. It means literally to bind oneself to. Ally in English is a noun. But following the Latin, perhaps we should begin treating it more as a verb. Because as Francesca Ramsey says, simply telling me you're an ally, that's not nearly enough. Working to change hearts and minds in the white community, represents one important action that any of us can take. It demands a certain measure of courage, because as the YWCA's executive director, Rachel Krinsky, discovered, the response you can receive when you start talking about this will be defensive, and sometimes it can be vitriolic. If we find that scary, if we find it off-putting, then perhaps we need to reacquaint ourselves with another piece of American history, the civil rights era. Being a white ally in the 1960s required exceptional courage, because such individuals were often regarded as white traitors. Two Unitarian Universalists, Viola Liuso, the Reverend James Reid, they were attacked and they were killed in Alabama for their efforts at being an ally. And in his letter from the Birmingham Jail, Reverend King complained about the reticence and the timidity of too many white progressives, white moderates. But then he also paused to acknowledge those few, like Liuso and like James Reid, who as he put it were big in quality. Now, allyship may entail certain risks, exact certain costs today, but it's by no means as risky as it was a half a century ago. But in deciding, even today, whether or not to take that step, we still must ask the same question that a freedom rider in 1961 asked himself, Paul Brenna's asked himself, what type of white person do I want to be? There are those who will say, I don't know why I should do this work. I'm not personally responsible for slavery, for Jim Crow. I'm not responsible for all those black code laws that were passed. I'm not responsible for any of the problems past or present that affect the black community, to keep the black community down. And the answer to that is that as white Americans we continue to benefit from those past injustices and we continue to enjoy privileges bestowed upon us solely because of our race. There is a difference between being responsible for something and being accountable as a beneficiary of a system that is still rife with inequality. You are white, Sarah Saheem writes. Use the unrivaled respect that you enjoy as a societal birthright to acknowledge this and to rectify it. So should we embrace it, we can further this cause by talking to our kids, if we have kids, about race, preparing them well in advance for situations that they are almost bound to encounter. We can situate ourselves from time to time in communities where, as Everett Mitchell puts it, we are in the minority where others are in control. That's where some of our best and deepest learning can take place. We can join a demonstration if we're up to it and if not we can lend material support to those who are willing and able to make a public witness. And we can be strong enough to make mistakes because as the Reverend Alex G. recently told a Madison audience, you're probably going to do something wrong. You're probably going to say something wrong because making mistakes means that you're doing something. Being an ally doesn't require a person to become a compliant, uncritical follower. Allies walk beside and not behind each other. But it does require a willingness and openness to being taught and when necessary, to defer to someone else's better and more informed judgment. Which is a tough assignment to calling all the shots. It's a few days past the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, a time when Jews the world over engage in searching moral reassessment. And so I would close these remarks by invoking the memory of a German rabbi named Joachim Prinz. Prinz was an outspoken critic of the Nazis during the 1930s. In 1937, he fled Germany and came to the United States where he became a close associate and ally of Martin Luther King Jr. He was invited to address the crowd of 250,000 people at the 1963 March on Washington. And in his remarks, Rabbi Prinz said, bigotry and hatred are not our most urgent problem. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, the most tragic problem is silence. At the very least, let us refuse any longer to be silent. And now I would like to invite Eric Severson to come up and to share with you an invitation to some personal and community practice. Good morning. As is evidenced by the black prayer flags outside on our shared space, on our lawn, bearing witness to our commitment, First Unitarian Society's Equity Ministry team exists to end racism through the work of racial justice grounded in Unitarian Universalist principles. It's an ambitious mission to say the least, and we cannot do it alone. The team also is committed to helping build on our community's visions of ministry, in particular, to engage a broader spectrum of members and friends in increasing opportunities for exposure to the rich diversity of human experiences, and identities. It is to intentionally support and guide one another in a step toward this vision that you are cordially invited on this, our Faith Community's Annual Black Lives Matter Weekend to participate in a 21-day equity practice. What? You say I have to practice something? No worries. You'll have a handy list to guide you, and the practice is all about looking in new places and opening your minds to new things. What could be more stimulating? But what is equity anyway, you might ask? According to a recent Ford Foundation conference on community philanthropy and racial equity in the American South, equity is society's commitment to meet people where they are and provide for each the resources necessary to enable them to achieve at their highest levels. Equity is about respecting each person's inherent worth and acknowledging in word and in deed that the primary infrastructures of our society have failed to do so. It sounds a bit like our first and second principles. Committing to a personal practice of equity is important, no matter because no matter where we are in our understanding of today's challenges of systemic racial inequities, every one of us can benefit by learning, growing, and practicing greater awareness. Only with practice can each of us effectively advance and act toward racial equity in our little corner of the world in accordance with our unitarian universalist values. The idea for this equity practice is based on the 21-day Equity Habit Building Challenge developed by white privilege conference organizer Dr. Eddie Moore and Debbie Irving, author of Waking Up White. 21 days is widely considered to be the minimum time it takes to effectively build a habit and this is what we hope this equity practice will become for all of us who participate. Sometimes it can be hard to begin, hard to know where to begin when starting a journey of racial justice work. As Michael mentioned, laying the foundation for this work by learning about our societal context and our own privilege is essential. The Equity Ministry team has compiled a list of media, articles, videos, local events, multicultural news sources to guide us in this process. Categories from which you might choose activities include framing the journey, assessing ourselves and our environment, contextualizing racial inequity in history and in our local area and planning the next steps in the process of being an effective ally. This practice can be done individually but we encourage you to share your journey with one another and with others in your life. Ask a friend or family member to join you. You can track the progress of your 21-day practice any way you choose, of course, by using a handy form, by journaling your thoughts and reactions or by responding to prompts in a special First Unitarian Facebook group. In addition, we've planned events on each of the weekends of the three-week period when we can come together to complete the day's practice and check in with one another. There are bound to be moments of struggle and moments of epiphany, moments that we hope you will share both for your own learning and for that of others. We invite you to sign up at the Equity Ministry team's table with the funds right outside the doors after the service to receive the list of 21-day equity practices and to pick up a handout with more information. The materials are all available online but you do not need to be computer savvy. Just tell the person at the table that you're interested in alternate means of digesting the material. We will make sure that you have the tools to establish your practice of paying heed to matters of racial equity. For example, a printed set of the material is available in a notebook in the FUS Library. And speaking of the library, please stop by and peruse the wide selection of racial justice-related books on display, including a number of new titles and children's books. So may each of us find the curiosity, courage and tenacity within ourselves and with the help of our faith community to carry our equity practice forward. Thank you for your offering. And as you can see from your program, our offering will be shared this morning with young gifted and black local organization that is doing its part to reduce the equity gap. Please be generous. At this time, I would invite you to listen to the period of silent meditation. And as we experience silence as a community, I invite you to listen as the names of 20 black men and women who suffered violent death within the last year as those names are invoked and candles are lit in their honor. These were men and women whose lives mattered, but perhaps not enough for them to be granted a full span of life. We recognize, of course, that these 20 represent, but a small fraction of black lives lost under comparable conditions. May we be cognizant of the many who remain unnamed, whose lives mattered as well. Please be seated and let us continue on in a few moments more of meditation. This is the end of our program. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. The color and creed, gender and ethnicity have nothing to do with intrinsic human value. Let us hold out the hope that at some not so distant time, the old errors will finally be erased, that we will be one people, richly diverse, resourceful and talented, celebrating in and marveling at the world we have created through our common efforts and for the common good. May it be so. I invite you to rise one more time in body and spirit as we sing together hymn number 1018 in the Teal hymnals. My colleague James Hobart asks, what can we do? We can speak out against injustice when others remain silent. We can include all persons when others include only a few. We can practice compassion when others profess indifference. What can we do? We can give of ourselves when others are withholding themselves. We can attach our lives to a human community when others seek to remove themselves from common interests and a common cause. What can we do? Through thought and word and deed, let us seek to live for justice and toward harmony today, tomorrow and always. May it be so. Please be seated for the postlude.