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2333.mp3

I really like the 4th of july. I even put up with the heat to drag my very pregnant self out of the house for a picnic this year. And i have very often love. To spend that holiday like so many of you do with my family. And my case back home in indiana where i grew up. With my uncle's all trying unsuccessfully not to singe their fingertips on the fireworks. And my mom's sort of strange veggie pizza that involves enormous amounts of sun warmed cream cheese. And all of it wrapped up. In the sense that were a part of something. Bigger than ourselves. From the sparklers the 1812 overture to the kids with streamers flying off the handlebars of their bikes. It's a moment to remember. But this nation exists for something. But we are still this very day presents for a greyhound experiment. Of course i have a few other more complicated associations with the 4th of july to. Iraq war had just started. I went to the local fireworks extravaganza in the town where i was then serving as an intern minister and it was awesome. They're all the things you needed a fireworks extravaganza elephant ears and clumps of teenagers pretends not to smoke behind the porta potties. And all the 4th of july for volatility that you come to expect. And then we came to the grand finale of the fireworks. Point when the lights burst particularly bright and everything shines and points for that very moment and the grand finale of the fireworks in this particular year and that particular place. Came to the accompaniment of a country song by toby keith that some of you might remember. I love country music cliff our music director find that eternally been using that i would have the choir singing dolly parton every other sunday if he would let me but this particular song in this particular context was different. Some of you might remember it. Address essentially to the denizens of other nations who might harm us the lyrics of this anthem to american triumphalism proudly declare will put a boot in your posterior it's the american way. Enter that lines the fireworks burst and the lights exploded and the people around me seemingly everyone cheered up aureus lee. And i thought that i might cry. Freedom fries. In the congressional cafeteria. First time we'd heard the word the axis of evil. And the whole thing seemed to be spinning so fast all of us trying to figure out what the american way really was. And what had been threatened so irrevocability when those towers had come crashing down. About 4th of july. It was this it was as if. The violent lodging of a boot in someone's posterior where the point. Of all of our power. And everybody was on board with that. Is this the grand experiment in the american way with using our freedom for nothing nobler than sweet. Sweet revenge. Freedom. Has felt like something of a charged subject. I've heard from some of you that the very word freedom feels politically inclined almost dirty like a trump card we pull out as a nation every time we want to validate our own collective choices or perhaps like a brand name that we are duty-bound to sell to the world. Freedom. Any opportunity to celebrate it remind us just how precious this grand experiment is. No matter. What we might rightfully express about our nation and its limitations it's blindness we are not forcibly in this place headscarves and hooded nor hiding between the religious or financial oligarchies of this world. Including the mandates of sharia law. Or the north korean devotion to empire or any other association. That clouds. People's ability. To govern themselves. We are still places people dream of coming to and there is a dream still alive here captured somewhere in that complicated concept of freedom and we might all honor it even so. The part of our problem. In embracing the very concept. Of the american way lies not in some grave flaw in our fundamental freedoms as a nation but in the way we choose to frame them the context out of which we speak of freedom itself. Let me put it this way. In this life. Is all too common for everyone of us to get our principles all confused our priorities all out of whack. In essence conflating what is a final important with what is really just a means to an end there are some classic examples of this. So often we go to work. Going to work. Is the goal when in fact. It's what. Work creates and makes possible. The drive the whole enterprise. We're in money. Is it money itself is being purpose when money is only a means to an end to sort of embodiment of our values in this world and the same i hold is true for freedom as if it is the itself. Freedom. From whatever oppression force or government in and of itself is the goal we fight. And when we win the prize at the end is silvery glittery thing is freedom itself assuming all along that the story. Stop there. With the freedom fought for and earned. And displayed proudly to a grateful world. Look at this shiny prize with one. Freedom we think. Is ours to possess. Empath on. And what would forget is this i think. But there is a difference. Always a difference. Between laugh things. And second to last things. To put it in big words there the difference between ultimacy and penultimate see there are ultimate things that toward which the entire grand experiment of our nation our congregation our family our faith must point and there are panel tumut things there are second-to-last things. Required building blocks of the great goal but never the goal itself. Religious and justice leaders across the ages. Including jesus in the prophet muhammad and martin luther king they have expended great energy pulling apart. Laughing. From second to last thing. Pointing out that we must get above the guidepost and see our way to what lies beyond. In order to expand our vision. For now we see in a mirror dimly. But then face to face now i know only in part but then i will know fully. The incompleteness. The grand experiment to freedom draws onward toward what is next. And what comes next is not merely idolizing the concept of all that we are free from. For freedom. Even the freedom to marry. The freedom won in the civil rights area era in the freedom gained and the underground railroad and the freedom entered into with the first shots on lexington green all of it is a penile tumut gold it is a second to last thing not the end in itself but a requirement of that end steve freedoms points away. And if we follow where they lead we might uncover step. What our freedoms exist for. Because of course. The question of freedom for something. It's not in the foreground of our national conversation is it. We are focus so often and so clearly on freedom from. Freedom from this or that still we forget there ever was a next step. Freedom from is our dominant cultural concept freedom from the various oppressive forces of our age that hold us down as individuals is marginalized groups as a nation. And we come by this paradigm of freedom from. Quite honestly. Perhaps it was the first european in america to structure their language specifically around freedom from. Who's this guy adrian van der donk to and 1640 was living in the new colony of new amsterdam and he went knocking on all of his neighbors doors talking about the oppression of the oppressive rule. Of the governor peter what would become new york and he goes knocking on everybody's door talking about the oppressiveness of this rule and he says we must earn our freedom from this tyranny and those people proceeded along with others to change the world and change what their place would look like in it. The language and the history of freedom from. Is powerful. The language and the imagery of freedom from is familiar. Bears the snake hissing don't tread on me. The patrick henry pride of give me liberty or give me death. And perhaps most powerfully the limits of tyrants uncovered by freedom fighters across the ages. Include the great front including the great frederick douglass. Thoughts on the matter or just too good not to quote. The fight for freedom. And the fight for freedom from oppression he said. Who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground. Rain without thunder and lightning they want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. Power concedes nothing without demand it never did and it never will. Find out what people will submit to douglas setting you have found the exact amount of injustice which will be imposed upon them. Tyrants are prescribed by the endurance. Of those they oppress. Freedom from. The oppressor. Freedom from the tyranny of this or any age that's what the bill of rights establishes it's what the american revolution was all about that fundamentally defensive position is one we are so used to hold it. It has worked for us in the past. Ameritime. When no matter what advances we have made no matter what power we yield the sum of the oppressor is strong and the opposition to tyranny must be stronger. And then what. And then what. Penultimate. Remember. Freedom once earned is not the end of the story it is a guidepost. What comes next. And then there is something else. Some radical obligation that comes with freedom freedom not from but freedom for freedom for the realization of something so much greater than mere political autonomy free people have power. Empower build capacity and capacity means we can move our society and our souls and directions. But other people can only dream of. Freedom exists. To provide people with the capacity to engage their environment with power. And with conviction. In ways that bring life. After emancipation the formerly enslaved family had at least in theory the capacity. To engage their environment. In the creation of life. To till the soil they had known or to move far away to say yes or say no to the low wages the system offered them to fight with allies for higher ones to build their life and pass it on. Following their enfranchisement women had the power and the responsibility to determine which lawmakers would make what laws that would in time open the way for their callings to serve in this world. And following the downfall of doma glbt couples including so many of us. Africa mary. Each other's hospital beds and mourn. Freda make promises worth keeping. Free to get divorced. And be protected under the law. Freedom isn't the thing itself. It's what freedom demand of us discounts. In other words. People with freedom. As individuals and communities as a nation must continually ask. What is it that my own freedom is in service to. What is the purpose of my power. Are unitarian forbear a pal davies believed that it was a commanding sense of purpose. The transformed the founding fathers of this nation from loyal subjects. To the founders of a grand experiment. Of washington jefferson etc you know the old. Dead white guys he wrote. What fashions these men stronger than the world which had destroyed so many others. It was their purpose. Stubborn and indomitably deterrent indomitable determination to fashion from the brittle clay of a dying age. The glorious destiny of a new nation. They're stubborn. And indomitable determination. The fashion from the brutal clay of a dying age the glorious destiny of a new nation. He went on to say. That what shrinks. Some people makes others great. Bitterness is disappointed little miss but the choice is not the world's it is our own. The choice is ever our own. What is the cause. But my freedom serve. I'm not going to presume the cast of vision for our nation here this morning. But we do collectively have the freedom in the capacity to do so much. For one thing we have the freedom. And the capacity. To address the bubbling in justices still present from the jim crow era. Providing more capacity to our own citizenry more opportunity for more life-giving work. The expansive nature of our freedom as a nation. Mind-boggling. So vast has our power become. There is so much. That we have freedom. 4. Or. We may choose to define ourselves ever onward if people merely in pursuit of freedom from. Outside oppressors. Freedom from the laws of others freedom from our dads or freedom from the other however we might define her. The hungry and the marginalized among us must still fight for the power and the self-determination there are times for all of us. When the freedom we need most. It's not from direct governmental oppression but from the constraints of our own minds and spirits. Freedom that causes to break out of the old conventions that frame who we are into categories that need not apply. To who we will be. We might use our freedom. To be for one another more than just. The sum total of our boxes and categories to be greater than our stereotypes to see others with creativity and openness and that is an ultimate goal. We might be free to determine our own identities and in so doing we might also see others as more than mere stereotypes as well. We may use our freedoms. For so many things. To write scathing satire. To play rock and roll music all night long. To go off the grid or stay on it. To believe or disbelieve to buy a lamborghini and drive it up the pacific coast highway or the feed 5,000 children. The question remains. What is your freedom in service to. What is the purpose. Of your power. What. Once the sparklers are all burned out. And the deviled eggs are all eaten up. And the gym lookingglass reveals itself to merely point the way towards some ultimate clarity of our days. What. Does your power. Exist. 4.

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127.mp3

Good morning it's always a joy for me to be here. Talking with cliff earlier as to whether he or i. Came into this space. First it was about the same time. Between the two of us for the have the longest run is clerics. Hooper road. My partner tim when he saw the. The title we have given my talk this morning so i thought you weren't going to criticize religion. At river road anymore. This all came about because i was part of our clergy united. Group of about 200 district of columbia. Clerics. Headed by rob hardin. My colleague. To support marriage equality. And to help pressure. City council to pass. Same gender marriage. I don't associate with groups of clerics while i don't play well in groups. Last time was that at 8 a rabbinic retreat. I've gone around and everybody is supposed. Break something. Great about you that you don't get credit for people said these things. We're done with the icky part of this. Let's talk about. Secret since we're among colleagues. Something that you would like to in this confidential said anyone of the members said well. People don't know that i struggle with drinking. And i'm usually buzzed most of the day i function very well but i fear that. If people find out it won't look good for me. And someone else said the small group. Well i have a gambling addiction and i. Play online and eminem lose a lot of money and i wouldn't want anyone to know this. Someone said well i have been lusting in my heart with one of the members of my congregation. If this were found out it would be a scandal and stuff like that. Then everybody of course i was a last and they looked at me. Meissen. Gossip. That was my left aboard a frappe ice meeting and everybody's probably grateful for that. We found out when i attended one of the meetings of clergy and i did not have not been active in that. If i had attended one or two meetings. Learned that the day went the first licenses were going to be picked up. First licenses were going to be issued at the courthouse. It's a rainy day. Is that the westboro baptist. Phelps people would probably be there. And they would get a lot of media attention. And shouldn't the progressive clerics also. At least provide a positive religious voice cuz we know that the. The preachers against. Homosexuality. And marriage equality would certainly be there. So. I thought that maybe there was something i could do westboro baptist church. Has been in the news a great deal they're in the business of being in the news. They're best known for attending funerals. Say arlington for other funerals of veterans. Hope of soldiers. With signs that say among other things thank god for dead soldiers. That the deaths of soldiers in iraq and afghanistan us soldiers god's punishment for america's tolerance. Of a sexual depravity. They have a lot of other signs which i can't. Repeat here and still keep a. Pg-13 rating. I thought the notion of confronting them was scary there also ravenelii anti-semitic. As well though that's not as well-known. They. Inside people to violence by doing really horrible things imagine. Ignoring a funeral at arlington cemetery for perfectly innocent person serving their country you've got this. Please please put these people with these prophecies. And i saw the tv shots and they just be signs lined up. On the horizon as far as you can see dozens of signs. They get people to sometimes. Shove them around. And then they have attorneys who come in and press suit. Prepare to make their money. By the damages that they receive. From lawsuits. They're fairly a student what they can get away with. Under first amendment rights. And there's cases now in the court i guess going before the supreme court i'm not knowledgeable in this. Questioning whether or not there can be some exception. For desecrating funerals. And not give them the protection of. A first amendment rights which they claim i believe the aclu. I'm not sure has supported them. If it's okay. Time to be a card-carrying member of aclu i can prove it. But there's something wrong. There's something that's just not kosher about this. And i'm a big first amendment person. I think we have to tolerate a lot of things. In order to have freedom of expression. Did any event i decided that i wanted to be part of a small group of clerics. Quite small is a turned out. Who would at least provide another image. At least we could get our soundbite. Appositive soundbite. On tv. So i put on my street tallest my battle tallest i've got to tell us that reaches down to the ground. Prophetic it's not that practical. But if you're going to be demonstrating publicly you need to look the roll. The few other clerics that braved it we're not as ostentatious as i was. So i wore this and i stood in the middle of the plaza. In front of the. Courthouse in front of cameras. I came to me was very easy. Well i was giving kind of a mile statement about tolerance and so on. The westboro people came and you can hear them marching. And i cannot repeat the words that are. Kind of ugly. And you see this. Balance and if that's not the word this. Ridge. Of these really ugly signs god hates. This person god this. Thank god for dead soldiers always really outrageous things in large signs. You really couldn't see the people they were hot behind the signs. And the they stopped. And all the tv cameras rush to them. Like. I remember once going to a fish hatchery. And then you put food in it still 5,000 fish. Trumpet shoe and they. Cuz this is perfect tv they're very colorful. The cameramen women kneel down. So did you get close shots. The westboro people stood just at the edge of the plaza. This first amendment line something like that. You can only get so close to a courthouse they knew exactly what to do. And all the cameras were there. I said we've got to do something so i got the other. Cancel thursday we going to make some noise but start singing. Get me to the church on time something they didn't like that so we decided we would sing this little this little light of mine let it shine. So we didn't we gotta move around without a clap you got to create a lot of visual. And of course as soon as we did. The cameras turn right around and focused on us. It made the news. And so we had the the other side. But i got more closer to the face of evil than i've been in a long time. First thing that i noticed where there were only three or four people. There were two or three adults and one child. The notion of subjecting a boy maybe he was 8:10. To this kind of obscenity was offense if i don't know why he wasn't in school. But it's abusive. To bring a youngster. Into this kind of hate in this kind of ugliness in this kind of language. Each of these individuals carry for posters. So what appear to be so three people. Look like 12 people for people look like 16. And then hide behind if you don't actually know how big they are. I sense read somewhere that westboro baptist church west progress is the name of the town is a family. It's a husband and wife and their kid to maybe one or two other relatives instant extended family it's not really a congregation in the usual sense of the word. But they covered i don't know 20. 30ft is why this cameras could portray they filled the viewpoint with these few people each of them holding for. Large posters. I got that handled very professionally done. Play chant to things. Ugly things. After i led the singing. They started chanting and they used a tune the same words but to the tune of hava nagila. So i had been noticed. I want to go into everything they said but one of them was take off that beanie jewboy. So this is how these folks play the game. And i knew that i was not going to give them anything. That could be used. But there's something about. Considering whether this is first amendment rights. Learn it in the law and i'm sure people that are much more experienced enable navigate this. But there's something very unkosher. Something evil and something wrong about a society. Funerals i could be desecrated this was a public demonstration was fairplay. There are other preachers there as well. I think this was sort of fairplay but to see how this group operates. I'm particular the sense of joy or glee that i could see on the few faces above the sign. When they called me chuboy and i turned around for a second and they had gotten me. I could see that they were taking great delight. To see how unhappy they could make me they weren't there to protest. Protest. Moral depravity but since they had me. I guess they thought they would you know they would throw some bricks on wondering why. What they want. To do this. What could possibly be the motive. 2. 2 attack. My jewishness. Didn't know my sexual orientation i guess. So i have to find something i don't wear it on my sleeve all the time. About the same time that i had this experience. I was trying to. Figure out who they are what's wrong why. Why don't i like this picture. I had a nature of my my counseling practice. Why weird circumstances to do an assessment. For the court. Of a young man that was in jail for having assaulted. 18 year old. Mentally ill in my view who had us all today. Twelve or thirteen-year-old kid. Other things. Interviewing him why would you do this to somebody smaller than you what was your. Reason what's your mental state is mental state obviously was. Several. Several untreatable disorders. But what struck me was the element number one of a bigger person. Taking advantage of a vulnerable person a little kid. He really killed him he could have killed him. And then the vague justification he gave while i was standing up the cozy just my girlfriend. This guy doesn't have a girlfriend it's imaginary in this kid saw it was imagine. I'm kind of laughed at that. It's weird dissing my girlfriend she put him in a chokehold. And held him there. So the juvenile justification. Steve. Not picking on somebody your own size. How many told me about the distress i said. Kid couldn't breathe. Erdogan. He absolutely grinned he kind of laughed he thought that was kind of amusing the sadism. Hope it all. And then the question but why. Could this possibly have served whether or not he dissed your. Girlfriend. And that he couldn't quite answer but the hennessy perfectly justified. So these four elements. The differential of power. Did the light and causing pain to somebody else. Juvenile absurd justification for it. And the pointlessness of the action. But it's not going to complicate anything. I'm sorry this is the face. Loverboy. Phelps people the westboro baptist people i think. Our boys. Now they say that their profits. If you ask them they say they have received word from god and their purpose is to tell american to announce god's displeasure. Serves no purpose. Desecrating a funeral at arlington cemetery. Young american soldier. It's not going to do anything for mario for or against marriage equality in any state. It can't possibly accomplish any purpose. And the notion. That this is god's punishment. It's absurd. Who would believe that. The flies in the face of all theology. Who deliver. So the justification is is juveniles moronic. And there is an element of bullying. Because these are ordinary people. Crippled by grief. At a funeral. But they're going to be dignified they're going to try to be. Respectful. They don't have the experience they didn't come with. You know 20 signs. Enchanting. The differential of power. And the experience lawyers that they have. Better going to defend them. If anybody in the funeral party does anyting. The twilights their rights. So the mighty this is goliath picking on david. This is the mighty picking on the innocent. This is sadism. Because i can only serve the purpose of making people that are already miserable even more miserable. How to serve god. In the most demented mind even is beyond me. So it's people with planning. Power and skill. Taking advantage of people that are defenseless smaller and weaker than they are. It is the lighting and causing harm. The justification is there but it is absurd. And it serves no redemptive purpose. It doesn't change anything. What does this create human misery this is what bullies. Bullion boys are all around. Becoming much more aware of that saying school settings. Teachers have gotten some training in it. And there is evidence lots of evidence and i know this from my practice. That people that have been subjected to bullying often as children bear those psychics cars. If it's not process not handled well even as adults. Being humiliated be hurt. Create bruising of the soul. School boys. We'll pick on. Smaller younger. Or isolated people they don't pick on people your own size. There's sadistic. They take a delight. And twisting somebody's armor. Humiliating somebody or calling somebody names. If you ask them don't usually give a justification. The justification will be very juvenile. Well they deserve better they disrespected or i wanted them to know there's always some justification and their behavior serves no purpose. Most congregations most organizations. Including mine. Are often subjected to a kind of behavior that i never used to think of his bullying but in recent years i've come to recognize that is bullying. Disability individual who. Complains. And threatens to leave the congregation. And the complaints can be made up can be exaggerated can be hurtful. The clerics and the board have to be respectful and honest. The complainant doesn't so it's an unequal playing ground. And no congregation easily tolerate. Someone quitting. Person question. It looks bad so you have to. Kind of placate. And some people know that. Circus from the differential of power. And sometimes the playing around and having meetings and phone calls. As people beg them not to leave is also a client of causing pain. Kind of tricking someone. Pain. Their justification for their action unusual pages of email justifications. Typically our juvenile and don't hold up. The other question is why are you. Making so much trouble really can't serve any purpose. Other than taking up valuable volunteer time. You're kind of bullying. I'm thinking about that i think there's a kind of bullying say even in me and i can recall. Acacia not all that long ago when i became. That kind of person. It's complicated but. You know my bank has made some kind of error of some kind of service. And it wasn't the worst thing in the world that i just took. Umbrage and i was just getting angry and i was having a bad day and i was just ready to kill somebody. Because i was having a crappy day about other things is one of those. Clint eastwood make my day. Look at now that i analyze is looking for somebody. To offend me so that i could. Take this out in the bank have done that. My god on the phone by garth with customer service and i was going to let them know and i told him how many accounts i had and how many years i can't believe. I have 4 accounts with you and if i don't get some satisfaction all this money is going to go out of the bank right now i'm going to walk right over here competitor and i'm going to try out all the accounts and i want this and i want that his guys trying to apologize. Thermal correct it will correct it i don't know it will look into it whatever. I realized. All the power i have i'm a customer in a preferred customer whatever the heck that is. Somebody whose job is to be respectful to me. Making this person unhappy. I'm going beyond what i need to. And i'm making them sweat and apologized repeatedly. I became a boy. I can't say that i necessary was taking a lot of delight in it and after while i kind of disgusted me. That i was doing that. And i apologize. I said you know i'm really embarrassed. To do this he was very. Not sure what to say it already probably peg me as if as a as a troublesome person. I don't know whether first amendment rights protect westboro baptist. The famous case. Which i studied in high school one of the justices of the supreme court said the most liberal interpretation the first amendment. But not protect. Somebody from shouting fire in a crowded theater. So we do have a notion when something is not expression. But it's something else. Also i believe inciting to violence. I hate language. Or understood in our society as. Violations. I think in this case. Westboro baptist hiding behind the. Sacred robes of religion and prophecy. You have meanness and bullying. And i think that needs to be understood. First amendment rights do not protect in my view and individual for using speech solely for the purpose. Performing others. The law society we give religious organizations apass. We're not sure. When people talk about the supernatural. Where we can intervene or not so they claim their prophesying. That they are making statements on behalf of god about what is wrong in society. We certainly don't want to stifle. A prophet. So how do we parse out. When somebody is expressing a statement even an unpopular statement. When somebody is standing up for what is right and what is wrong. Against somebody is really being a bully. I don't think i could argue this before the supreme court i don't know if it could be. Legislated if it could be put into a law. But the elements of who these folks are. Are very different than other forms of. Protest that i have seen. There's another minister they are wearing a white store was reading passages. A from the scripture. Against homosexual behavior run. Well i don't agree with that i think it was quite legitimate. Something different about it. Now. The way to stand up to bullies. Alright tell kids. Is to have friends. Your week. Not if you're small but if you're isolated. So if you have relationship. With people. Then you don't have to fear anyone. Your friend your classmate. If you're a member of a group. Then you're safer. You have strength. Strength in numbers but strengthen relationship. If your solid and no who you are. You're not phone orville to being humiliated. If you're strong about your self-esteem. She's very hard for children in school and thickly adolescence. If you have security and self-esteem. And you know who you are. You can't be harmed. Or someone else's words. Physically harmed perhaps. Somebody bigger than you. But the way to stand up to bullies it's not to be changed by then. To stay who you are. Not to become a bully yourself. And to speak truth to their. Power. To there. Might to their thighs. To their meanness. I don't have all the answers about standing up to bullies are evil people. People get mugged people get attacked. As part of the nature of our society. But the way to stand up to public boys. Politicians clerics. Whoever they are. Is to be able to name it. To be able to say that is not free speech that is not prophesying that is not freedom of religion. That is bullying. It has the earmarks of it. It is sadistic. It is. Attacking the vulnerable. It is taking advantage. Of social situations that provide provide a differential of power. If i'm willing to be crazy and you cannot. I have power over you. Promoting to do anyting. You need to be courteous respectful because of where you are. I have power over you. If its purpose. Only to cause unhappiness. And it's justifications are juvenal absurd marana. And don't make sense. Historian. It needs to be identified. Standing up for what you believe in the face of somebody's powerful. Who's scary. Who will stop at nothing. Sometimes it takes courage. What's the purpose of the bullies. Enjoy your discomfort. You're full all until yourself. If i'm at peace with myself if i'm strong in my heart. Then i can stand up. Rabbinic literature it is a parable. Come 2000 years old. About the. Individual that was prophesying against the wicked cities of sodom and gomorrah. This may seem kind of ironic since. These people talking about sodomy butt in jewish tradition the sin of sodom and gomorrah. It was understood as violence. And in hospital bility. The strangers. Because they have threatened the angels of god. That were staying in lots house. And the people said who are these strangers. Rabbinic tradition that story is not understood at all. As referring to sexual minorities in anyway. So i'm coming to a from my heritage. The sins of sodom and gomorrah over violence. And cruelty. Luminaries. So this man prophesied against them god will punish you for your sins. Repent god will punish you for your sins. Until the sun and i drafted him. They would beat them up and they would tara signs it would make new signs and this went on for years. Never throw rocks at him. Any continue to prophesy repent. Repent god's anger. So. One day somebody said to me or no. All your life you've been. Prophesying you been standing up. Against these evil. Powerful. Wicked violent people. Do you really think that you can change them. He said well it's a beginning i did this to change them. But now i do it so that they will not change. Me.

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1817.mp3

In the suburbs of chicago. I meant these women in that somewhat artificial yet utterly holy circumstance of being their chaplain. Facing down terminal illness each of them asked for the chaplain. And each of them got me. That were very different from this person called the chaplain. And sometimes as i still do. In the course of that spring and summer i just answered each call in the hope that if i simply showed up sooner or later the minister would show up to. Caroline i met first. She was incredibly eager to meet. The chat. Perhaps too eager. Are on the oncology ward on-and-off for the better part of a year. The hospital had become her home. And she had had time it seemed to move right in. Caroline's room was covered i mean just. Floor-to-ceiling covered in angels. Angel stitch angel bronze and plaster angels pictures of angels cards of angels angels everywhere. And where there were not angels there were scripture passages taped to the wall tape to the lamps hanging in a mole deal above her bed. The room was crowded with angels and with words and when i arrived. I knew that she'd. Didn't really want the chaplain. To walk into her room. And bear witness to her last days on earth. What she wanted was god. She wanted me to speak for god. To affirm her convictions about god. The hold her up on a pillow of divine power in short order it became clear that she wanted me to represent for her the literal truth of her face. And no i was in no place to judge the truth is that it rather freaked me out. Caroline was maybe 50. Not old at all. But tail and hollow at people in the last stages of cancer often are. I don't remember what kind of cancer she had she didn't really talk about it. When i the chaplain got to her room she wanted only to testify. To tell me the truth is she understood its she testified that she prayed and she believed in the power of christ and that since she prayed and since she believes god with lifts. Burden. From her. Her eyes lit up and shined when she spoke this testimony so alive with pride so grateful that christ has given her this life so that the fateful might have him as a source of hope and power to lift the burdens and indeed literally heal the sick and make all things that seem impossible possible again. Caroline was sick. He was really sick. And the doctors wanted in the end to release her home to hospice care but she told them that she would not would never allow a hospice nurse into her room because she was not dying she would not die and she could not abandon the belief. That with the lord all things are possible. Including recovery. From end-stage terminal cancer. Caroline invited me to pray and to read scripture by her bedside which of course i did. And her eyes shined while i read the words she knew to be written by god's own hand words that to her would literally be her salvation and lives this disease from her and i played my part. I spoke the words. Because i could not begrudge her that. I got another call and maybe a week later. Caroline was dying. She could not speak. And it was almost over. I got there about 15 minutes before her eyes closed for the last time. And i have the perception that they were not so much shining now as glaring angrily. The world she would now be asked. Her fists were clenched. Her jaw was set. And she looked at me as if i the representative of god himself had lied to. She had angry eyes. Because faith had not saved her. And everything she thought she knew had let her down. And i said more prayers. And i read more scripture. And i went back about my life. Wondering what i could have done to have eased her way. So i did not then. Nor do i now. Know-how. And then there was tamara. Tamara who was just a few years older than me at the time so i would put her in her late twenties. We all called her tam that's what you like to be called and she's been around the hospital for so long for so many years that everyone knew her name. Everybody knew what to do when she got grumpy and everybody knew what to do when she acted out she's been in hospital since she was twelve for most of her life and the truth is that tam called the chaplain up to her room mostly just to check out the new rookie. And i think. To see how it went when i tried to apply my pastor old tricks on her. Inherited disease that sounds just as terrible as it is. Her body tissues especially the really thin ones. Like on the inside of her mouth and most importantly her stomach and intestine intestinal lining they were exceedingly frail. And it was subject to constant rupture. They put around the oncology wing just cuz they didn't know where else to go. We're always rupturing on her. Every time something did they would have surgery and every time she had surgery the stitches that sells would tear and more surgery was necessary. It got to the point that summer. Were they just left an open hole in her abdomen to get ready access. For her few remaining feet of small intestine. The surgeries were still, they didn't even bother to close the hole anymore. And everybody knew there was only so much time left. Cameron do it. She'd always known it. 12 couldn't really walk or play. She was so fragile. For her life with lived between the narrow confines of her living room at home in her hospital bed here. Her second home. And i did try to ply my ministerial tricks on her. You know ask deep and relevant questions that sort of thing. And how do you imagine your relationship to the divine i would say. And how do you find hope and meaning i would ask. And she just looked at me like i was full of it. She would have none of it. Once when i asked her what she thought about god she said you know i'd really rather talk about my dog. Sometimes i paint her toenails. She talked about her dog and about the poetry she rode in the things that made her laugh on and on she would rattle till i had to leave and eventually i just stopped playing my tricks. And i have a standing date three times a week to play gin rummy very poorly in her room with her. And she talked and talked about her life and she's asked me about mine and every day she would try to set me up on blind dates with her brother. She was a poet. And when she could she ride and when she couldn't she dictate things to those of us who could write. Overtime when people like me or her brother visited. They were hours of horrible pain. It was time for itching on and on of boredom. When one moment led to another in that same place. And i kept visiting. And it took months. But near the end of the summer that year she finally thought i'd earned it and she started to talk about her illness with. Grasping her stomach she said. Here you know. It's supposed to be the place where the most wonderful things happen. Here. Is where i'm supposed to get my nutrients. Here is where i'm supposed to be able to hold a babies make a life and all it is for me is a giant ball of pain. And she cried and she told me that the next time she had a rupture. Because there will always be a next time she didn't want to do it again. No more surgery she said. Just the wife that was left to her. No matter how brief. And so we worked up the papers she said exactly what she wanted everyone who mattered to her witness tits and the deal was sealed no more surgery only life. Only one she had left and for the next two weeks we still played cards and she still wrote poetry and she still tried to set me up with her brother and when the time came. As we all knew it would. We gathered around her bed. If you looked up and said her last words. Which i will never forget. She said. Heaven looks like scotland. And that was it. And i was so proud of her. I'm so humbled before the mystery i thought my heart might break. Two women facing the end. Women grappling with their way to women trying desperately to find something in the midst of all that hurting to hold onto two women with deep face and loving families one of who met her end with clenched fists and angry eyes and one of whom told me heaven looks like scotland. While she slipped away. What's the difference between those two. What made one leaves so gracefully and one so bitterly why did once let go and one fight her way out. Neither one of them was right or wrong but the difference i think. Were the two very different forms of faith. These two women held. One of them believed that life mattered even as it was short and sometimes filthy and boring the other believe that life only mattered if it could be fixed. Made by god into something better and less painful. One would rather talk about her dog than the almighty and the other would rather talk about god than life itself. The difference was not the measure of their face. For both believe very deeply both had faith that was deep and wide the difference was the expectation. Attached. To their respective face. And the way those expectations cause them to live. One believed in a miracle-working god. Who were the blige. Fix it all. The other believed in a god who lived in and between the long boring days and the painted poodle toenails in between hands gin rummy and poems written in failing handwriting. And that ladder god. Something that moves within life itself that for stood her in good stead all the way to the end. Long after the miracle worker had long abandon the one who put all her chips. On him. Julian of norwich. 14th century mystic wrote that. My spiritual awakening began the moment i saw god in all things. And all things in god. Her face with a face that included all things including her suffering. And called her to live a meaningful life. Within the confines than elder. That is not unlike the face i saw in tamara. In the living of our daily lives. So many of us search and search for something to have faith in. Underneath it all we are searching for a reason to hope and a reason to love life. We assume that such a thing and object a face must be in some particularly divinely powerful package or it is nothing at all. But sacred and secular saints of all stripes they know better. That holds us even unto the end of possible. Not in the divine lawgiver and his magic fingers of justice but in the solid grace of every single day pregnant with meaning and full of the sacred. Even in the midst of. Something to hold onto. It's a hell of a word. Azar reading today shed. It retains something of its old shine. You know i'm sure how many memories are all caught up. With our senses how the smell of mom's spaghetti just transport to right back to being 6 years old at the kitchen table i have a sense memory of that summer with these two women thinking on these things. It's a song i listen to over and over again. Spokane while caroline and tamara were dying. And my cd is all dirty and scratched up. Because i just had it on repeat. Over and over again. Song originally by john prine but i know the bonnie raitt version best and some of you might too. Called angel from montgomery. It remains one of my all-time favorite pieces of music. I listen to it so many times that summer. As i thought about what it is to have faith. What it is we can believe in. I thought about the fact that it didn't matter what you hold onto so long as you hold onto something that gives. Your life as it is. Meaning. And it reminds you you have always been told. The one that song that says. How the hell can a person go to work in the morning. Come home in the evening and have nothing to say. Even one single day of are abundantly blessed lives without daring to make something meaningful out of them. When she could lie there with everything ending. And talk for hours about all that made life worth living. How can we go even one hour without transforming monday and deeds into faithful living. Our lives. Like the lives of those two women sometimes have narrow confines. We find ourselves caught on the edge of scary things or caught in the middle of mundane and boring things are caught at the end of a long day with nothing to say. Nothing to offer for the hours that have passed. Sometimes even those of us who have pretty great lives have trouble believing they matter. Sometimes even those of us who are most blessed need a little space to keep us going just one thing to believe in just one thing. And we know deep down that whatever it is we believe in it has to hold even when we are not healed. Even when the brokenness of this world in the great fall of pain we may carry romaine. The song john prine wrote. Angel that flies from montgomery make me a poster of an old rodeo. Just give me one thing that i can hold onto. To believe in this living is a hard way to go. Believing in this living is a hard way to go. Especially when life is narrow and pain is real but each of us if we choose might find something your dog your community gin rummy in the joy of life. A poster of an old rodeo just one thing which you will endow with meaning that you can hold onto and that will give you power when it is time to let go with grace. Too many people in this world. Including those who believe they have great faith have nothing to hold onto in the end. Like caroline when things go wrong they lose their face. Not justin god than life itself. Amanda saving faith involves believing in this life and loving it for what it is not what you wanted to be. But for what it is. And for that which we can hold onto even unto. That was beautiful i just wanted to say one thing before we started a lot of people know this song feel free to join us in the chorus it is. The words are really beautiful.

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4240.mp3

Years ago the preacher and writer rebecca parker. She found herself and a friend driving along in western pennsylvania along these country roads. Good looking out at the landscape stretching by she was in the car. With his friend is the miles kicked by and they approached and time of small-town. Down in the valley and moment-by-moment as they drove into this place. And the landscape unfolded before then they started to notice some weird things. About their surroundings. Stretching out on either side were full to bursting with standing water. The river over which they drove with coursing so fast they could hear it from far away as they approached and sandbags lines the low-lying areas and the edges of the water in the berms along the sides of the streets. Side roads were closed to traffic with big orange signs warning them away. And the two travelers knitted their brows just a little bit. And commented on what a remarkable amount of water they must have had in this place it looked to them like there had been a flood. And is the rain spattered down around them. Not too hard. Gone to the next town and were surprised to see that circumstances there were much the same. Ultimately as dr. parker turn down the last road she saw standing water right there in the middle of her path and she saw that the water was moving. Slowing even and at first she thought that meant it must be receding that the way forward would be clear. Until that is. She really saw what was happening and had been happening the whole time all around her. The water wasn't receiving. It was rising. And it wasn't the aftermath of a flood. They were encountering in that pennsylvania town it was happening. Right then. All around them. The water was rising fast with started to turn the car again but the water was rising behind us as well suddenly we realized that the flood hadn't happened yesterday. It hasn't happened last week. It was happening here. And now. Dry ground with disappearing fast and we hurriedly clamored out of the car in scrambled to higher ground. Soaked to the bone we huddled there under a fir tree she writes. The cold water of the storm poured down upon us baptizing us into the present moment. A present from which we had been insulated by both our car and our miss judgements. In the country we had been traveling through. Today i stand before you like i do every sunday. The sum total of all of my identities and experiences. My miss judgements in my blind spots and what sparks of wisdom i find. And because it is both obvious and yet often unremarked upon all the same. I stand before you as a white woman. And as a white woman in this place. In this time i am capable when i choose much of the time of driving right through the middle of a flood of injustice. All the wild imagining. That everything is really just fine. Because. On some level. Everything really is just fine. For me. Today. The privileges i enjoy protect me in many ways from the world from the flood from the bullets from the gangs from the poverty from so much and in my movements i could choose to believe that those deadly forces are not real today right now in this moment but everything is fundamentally just fine in the flood all happened before. Is white privilege. It is so easy to see. And yet not to see. Very midst of the flood and keep thinking that the cataclysm happened before. And some earlier hour on some other day. And that what we have to contend with in our time and just a leftovers of the tragedy that impacted some other people and some other time to think that any moment now the road will be totally clear and can't we just move on already. To believe that the flood which threatens everyone of us is just an inconvenience. Or distraction. On our way to wherever it is we think we're going. The prophet isaiah wants said. That those who are asleep to the world. Will constantly listen without understanding. And see without perceiving. Would move through the astonishing times given unto them unable to absorb the danger the reality the mission or the power inherent in this. Present moment. Guitar. In essence. That those who were asleep to the world went unbaptized to the present. And the benefit that i received a after day purely on the basis of my whiteness and the systemic racist ideologies that is wrapped itself around whiteness in this culture is that i get to pretend the flood isn't happening until and unless i am shaking. Firmly. That i am made to see. In a later reflection reverend rebecca parker wrote that to be wide in america. It's the travel ensconce tennessee cure vehicle. To see signs what is happening in the world outside. And not realize that those signs have any contemporary meaning. It is to be dislocated. Too often to misjudge your location. And believe that you are uninvolved in uninfected by what has happened. In the world. As a white woman i have the option. For a while. To move through the world and it's cataclysms assuming that what we see is the remnant of some former flood in some former year for some form of people assuming that the inundation of racial bias and racist ideologies isn't happening but has happened. In assuming that leaders. And warriors of the people like dr. king put those sandbags there. Contained the swollen rivers. Ensured that the waters would just keep receiving year after year until there is no more work for us or anyone to do. And we can resume our previously scheduled lives. Where we don't have to see race. And we don't need programs like affirmative action anymore. And we don't have to worry about the young black men because the ones who died at the end of the gun weren't caught up in a flood of continued injustice. It snatched away by happenstance. An unfortunate but isolated mistakes. Being white in this country. It doesn't mean being on the wrong side of history. Doesn't mean we're obligated to this endless guilt-ridden self-flagellation about our ancestors place in the story of things. It also doesn't mean banal and inarticulate repentance. For how the fact the plainfield still isn't level has something to do with us. What means on a practical level. Is it okay if we choose on most days we can be in the midst of the flood and keep on going. Until of course we can't pretend anymore and we are forced out of our sleepy complacency long enough to collectively make a break for higher ground. Parker writes that the rain under an elm tree. Made her finally see with open eyes when she was baptized to the present. And if there is one thing that the last 18 months in this country and in our congregation. The time following the death of michael brown our congregations trip to selma alabama the sturm and drang and the internal roiling and the glory and the change and the difficulty of putting up a black lives matter banner in front of our congregation if there is anything that any of that has done for us as a people it is just that it has baptized us to the present to the challenge to the difficulties to the discomfort of the present it has asked us to be uncomfortable enough to open our eyes and to see the world and to have conversations that are not easy to consider for ourselves what our place in the family of things is. And how individually and collectively. We can respond to the flood waters that are rising. In this nation. Instead of ignore them until it is too late not just for the people of color among us but for every. Last. Is reverend derrick harkins at union theological seminary has written. We need to make sure that dr. king's dream doesn't just reside in our hearts and minds. The translated into the protections and laws that need to be in place for all americans and that will encompass everything from economic inequalities to the shortcomings of the criminal justice system it is happening now. We are called to translate the message of a former age into action and reaction here in the flood tide today. A few years ago i preached about the speech martin luther king gave it overland college in 1965. Which it turns out was the first draft of a sermon he would preach at the unitarian universalist general assembly the next summer. What dr. king had to say to those privileged and protected college students at oberlin college it turns out is exactly the same message he had to say to unitarian universalist. Which could indicate that the audience were not inherently so different. In both cases king with gracious. About the hosting institution about the people it was preaching for any offered all this gratitude for the chance to bear witness over and over again to the power of collective action such as we have known as unitarian universalist. And then he launched right into a retelling of the story of rip van winkle. You know that story the old washington irving chestnut right. Rip van winkle climbs up a mountain to hunt near his home there on the hudson river valley. He falls asleep all blissfully at ease and when rip van winkle wakes up his beard is a footlong and everything everything is different. Sherman king said. Remember about the story is that rip van winkle slept for 20 years. But there is another point in that story that is almost always completely overlooked. It was a sign. On the in. In that little town in the hudson river valley from which rip went up to the mountain for his long long sleep when rip van winkle woke up when rip van winkle went to sleep. Sign had a picture of king george the third of england on it. When he came down from the mountain 20 years later the sign had a picture of george washington. The most striking fact about that story. What is there to tell us it's not that rip van winkle slept for 20 years in his beer. really long. Story exist to tell us that he slept through a revolution. Snoring up on that mountain. A great revolution was taking place in his world. The revolution which would do the whole course of history and rip van winkle new not a thing about it he was flat asleep. Dress that bright june day with called remaining awake through the revolution. And he called challenge go to those privileged young people have nose privilege unitarian universalist to step out into the world into stepped-up and wide-open ways away to the realities of their day. Nothing more tragic in all the world then sleeping through a revolution. And there was a revolution afoot in 1965 when he first said those words. Everything was changing everything could change it would change whether the people tried to sleep through it or not but if they chose to be awake he believed it could change in the direction of his great dream and their collective wisdom. Revolution was of course a social revolution. Mind it was quote sweeping away the old order of white colonialism. And he believed in the power of that revolution and each of us having a part in it. Country believe in that. Office revolution he said in our own nation that is sweeping away the old order of slavery and segregation the wind of change is blowing a significant development that wherever men and women are assembled the cry is always the same we want to be free. Until we see in our own world of revolution of raising expectations. The great challenge facing every individual today is to remain awake. Through this social revolution. Which island is it on. And so many people woke up. Ministers no longer able to sleep went down to selma in droves and stood alongside their black brothers and sisters who never did have the luxury of repose. We love died. March on washington and believe the dream just as powerfully then as you do now. The people wanted to be awake to that moment. The agents of brotherhood. To be buffeted by mighty quinn. For the sake of change. And then there is the reality of crime. Any issues of that age have changed. In some ways while in other ways remaining perpetually the same. Civil rights gateway to vietnam and in time the cold war in the middle east in asia and the era in every fight we have been awakened to in the intervening years. All of the hubbub in the working in the faithful service. This nation has once again. Largely been asleep. To the halting. Sometimes painfully still progress of the revolution dr. king started. In her book the new jim crow. Michelle alexander called this decades-long lack of national awareness the color-blind slumber. The years we have been living in where in it is no longer acceptable to use race explicitly as a means of social control or segregation but we're in new labels new categories for social control has taken hold. All cumulatively realizing affect shockingly like that of the overt systems of segregation we knew. In the first jim crow era. As michelle alexander says we have intended racial class in america we have just redesigned it. And by redesigning it we have made it possible to see without perceiving. To listen without understanding. So comfortably removed from the world as it is that we slumber in our own misjudgments and must be baptized to the present over and over again. There is a moral imperative at work in our time. Just as there was a moral imperative at work in 1965 and today our moral imperative is not about something as simple as diversity. It's not even about something as simple as being a welcoming community. We are not attending to the floodwaters of this age solely because we want to build a more diverse and welcoming congregation and seymour brown and black faces here at river road it is bigger than that and that is not enough and the call we have ringing out in our ears is less self-referential than what happens in these walls. We're doing this work because we need to be awake. And want the wake in the words of the movement we need a spiritual beings with integrity of our own to stay woke. So purely woke up. That were willing to give up our insulation in our isolation and service to the cause of justice in our time. My vision. Rvision. Is the build of ourselves in our congregation a wakeful keeper. People able and willing and equipped to move out of our places of comfort. And into the flood-tide of a broken world. Able. And willing. And equipped to meet the stories of others and the stories of their lives without shrinking away able and willing and equipped to show up for the revolution in our day able and willing and equipped really really just to show up. And bear off under the discomfort that showing up. Involved. In that same speech. In which dr. king left a legacy cautioning the faithful of all generations never to sleep through the revolution of their days. Dr. king said. Let nobody give you the impression. At the problem of racial injustice will work itself out. Let nobody give you the impression. Only time. We'll solve the problem. That is a myth. And it is a mess because time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively. So let us use this time. Which has been given to us. Constructively. Even faithfully. So that we might be awake to the revolutions within our hearts and within our nation. So that we might see and perceive. So that we might listen and hear. So that we might together. Be partners. In the work ahead.

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3074.mp3

That's the thing right there i don't even need to preach the sermon. I heard. Story recently about a woman who immigrated. From japan after the second world war. Describing what it was like to be in tokyo. When the emperor emperor himself. The famous and infamous hirohito stepped out of the doors of his palace. To greet his public. Longest in japanese history. Happened to overlap with a time not only a war but a rapid social change. And the woman who spoke of him. In telling her story she's been here in the states for a long time. But she never did forget what it was like to see him there. Divinity in the flash. And her culture he was the most sacred of human beings. And he was standing right there. In front of her. The sunlight that day to greet the people they were two different reactions among those gathered. Hoopeston they hollered to be in the presence of such power. But the older people. Airheads. Anteverted their eyes. Respectfully refusing to look as if such sacredness. Was just too much for them. Silent in their reverence while the young people were a boolean to their jaw and that turn. From sacredness to secularity caught up the whole world. It is grasp. It catches us till now as we asked over and over again what it is for us to be in the presence of the holy. What then is sacred. When the laser-like focus of the holy no longer lands on the face of one-man or one-woman or even one god. We live in an era of inquiry. When the idols in the empires of old have indeed been knocked down off their pedestals and the ancient forms of worship that for so long divided the sacred from the profane and human society. Are losing their grip on us. Is anything sacred. The conservators. Of culture. Have shouted in every age is anything sacred. Worthy of the highest respect is there anything to bow our heads to anymore or is everything just a matter of alternating enthusiasm and apathy. Meanwhile. Silicon valley glass towers with mariah cubicle in them in plenty of organic soy milk in the staff room. Newfound temples. Innovation. Nothing is sacred. Detect up hipsters in their hooded sweatshirts joyfully proclaim. Nothing sacred. And everything that stands in the way of the new was a barrier to the only thing that really does matter the human imagination. One might be tempted to think that the innovator's have it right. Except that even the innovators faith has its own idolatries. Even this breaks down at the edges revealing the fact as david foster wallace says. We all worship. It's just a matter of choosing what we worship or allowing the default settings to choose it for us. In ages past people worshipped. The church of the temple or the empire was the arbiter of the default settings we learned besides the scope that demand the commitments of our various kings and gods and we paid tribute in time. The temple's to innovation teach us to worship our own capacity. Our own imagination. And that's not all bad. But it's not all good either. Because a person will worship something. And worshipping ourselves does not always a marked improvement over worshipping the decaying construction of a bearded white god. Either way. We're still focusing like a laser beam all of our sacredness on one thing one form what we choose to pay attention to and whether we choose to worship at the emperor of an altar. Or the altar at an emperor or at the altar of our own needs & wants. Anytime the sacred becomes too narrow. We run a risk of thinking everything and everyone else is well. The opposite. Profane i guess. Unimportant. Maybe even so much draw getting in the way of what we really want. And today. Grounded in the universalist theology of our heritage i wondered if what matters. Is not the process of identifying what is sacred. But reclaiming the ability to stare wide-eyed at a universe full of wonder. And ask ourselves in regard to the sacred. What is it. Swim along in the water. It's around them. It wraps around their entire world such that this thing this one thing that is the very ground of there being becomes invisible. This is water. So2 with sacredness. With that which is worthy of our highest respect it is possible that we are in fact swimming in a sea of it surrounded by it so completely that it to becomes invisible to us. And so we try to take the easy way out. Describe sacredness 2 special things to special people still something we can see in point to when in fact it is right here all around us every single day this is water. Is holiness. Every moment and every person illuminated with glory if we can but she was willing eyes. The story about sacredness stats. In the canon of my own personal scriptures it's one i return to andre reed periodically at 1 probably either read or might read in your junior. English classes. From jd salinger's 1961 book franny and zooey. So bear with me when i give a little rundown. Frannie is the central character in this book. She's a college girl from a brilliant if depressive family and she's got everything going for her. Smart clothes in an ivy league degree and a boyfriend hair and she's the loneliest girl in the whole world. A brother zoe is an actor equally promising equally smart and almost is tortured is his sister. Wendy's to franny and zooey were kids they were child prodigies of a sword. And they acted together on a radio program right where no one can see you but you're performing. I'm about to share. Remembering that program in the advice of their older wiser and even more tragic brother seymour. With my very few edits for the saltiest language salinger can take it from here. As zoe tells his story. And his sister franny response. I started complaining one night before the broadcast. Seymour told me to shine my shoes just as i was going out the door. And i was furious. Moron moron the sponsors were morons and i just damn well wasn't going to shine my shoes for any of them i told seymour. I said they couldn't anyway where we sat. She said to shine them anyway. He said. To shine them for the fat lady. No i don't know what the hell he was talking about but he had a very seymour look on his face and so i did it. You never did tell me who the fat lady but i shined my shoes for the fat lady every time i went on air ever again all those years you and i were on that program together if you remember i don't think i missed it but a couple of times and it's terribly terribly clear picture of the fat lady formed in my mind. I had her sitting on a porch all day swatting flies with her radio going full blast from morning till night. I figured that heat was terrible and she probably had cancer and i don't know clear why seymour wanted me to shine my shoes for her when i went on the air. It made sense. Taking the phone away from her face to hold it with two hands. Like a prayer. He told me to she said into the phone. He told me to be funny for the fat lady wants. Yes yes alright let me tell you something buddy are you listening. Franny looking extremely tense nodded to her brother in the phone. I'm going to tell you a terrible secrets are you listening to me. Anyone out there who isn't she more fat lady. That includes your professors and all your cousins by the dozens. Call buddy. Christ himself. Christ himself buddy. And in the last page of the book franny goes to sleep. The first real sleep she's had in a long long time. She sleeps with a smile on her face just knowing deep in her bones that as long as you can muster the courage to care about her. The one-woman you will never meet. Sitting on a porch with the radio going full blast swatting flies in the afternoon sun as long as you can care about her the whole earth is crammed again with meaning. All of it. The whole mess and gloria that is holy. Again. I read this novel. Is a love story between a person in the whole world. Between a single lonely individual and the great teeming mass of humanity with which she shares this precious planet. To shine your shoes for some lady you've never met. And we'll never meet. To do your very best because she is beloved stranger might just be listening is to put everything we do. In the context of our secret interconnection. Rather than our self-obsessed aggression. Is it to change our default settings. And finally at long last play someone or something other than ourselves at the center of the story. Don't you see who the fat lady is zoe says. A buddy is christ himself. And suddenly we see that this lady on her porch is as sacred and as worthy of devotion. Has any savior has ever been. Even that professor you hate. Even though. people jamming the beltway. And the woman you've loved all your life who sits across from you at the dining room table every night and can't seem to stop disagreeing with you every time you turn around. All of them. As sacred as the ancient emperor. As holy as the redeemer. This is universalism at its best. Confucius pixie more fat lady or the person next to you and these chairs or the guy who sold you your coffee this morning and he one of them. Is as worthy of devotion. As inherently. Sacred. As any being who has ever lived. And you might change your life just to make there's better. We see each other's flaws. We see our hopeless failures are sweating brows are nervous tics. And we love each other anyway. We are our very best. For each other. We lessen the distance between us all by knowing really knowing that there might be so much more to every story than you can ever know on the surface and then each of these stories is as important as full of dignity as your own. Everyday sacredness. As it is written about in mid century novels and ancient holy books alike is a swirling mass of feeling that connects each to all. I never leaves us entirely alone. Body the marvelous truth. That any person blinking in the morning sun. Is it wholly as the last emperor. And that you are as wholly at the christ child and you and you. And you. As well. Spider-man. Even if you never noticed. No matter what you have done or have failed to do someone might just be shining their shoes for you. And it today. If you were willing. You might look around. At the city of sacredness in which we swim. And say to yourself. Is water.

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866.mp3

Assalamualaikum. And if you choose you would respond by saying while alaikum salam. Peace be unto you. Thank you. It was september 12th. 2001. I parked on pennsylvania avenue. The walk to my office next to the white house. Because the area was completely blocked off from traffic by the secret service. When i got out of the car i noticed for men speaking arabic. Sing something about the white house. They're also talking about going to kennedy airport in new york. Inside their car on the back seat. I noticed the koran. And some other books in arabic. When i said hello and my poor arabic thing became suspicious. Are you the police. I couldn't believe how reckless these men were to get so close to the white house. At a time when suspicion of muslims was so high. Wonder what they were up to. An hour later when i came back down to the street from my office at 17th and penn. To survey the scene. Two of the men were there. Standing across the street from each other. Looking towards the white house. It looked to me like they were conducting surveillance. And they weren't moving. I have spent much of the past 40 years studying the arab world as a journalist. 7 living in the middle east. My newspaper stories about the palestinians before and during the first uprising in palestine. At random me forever to some people is anti-israeli. Costing me promotions and jobs. The last thing i wanted to do was participate in the arab dating that was then going on. But i really wondered if it wasn't my duty to say something to the secret service. It was one of the most agonizing decision to my life. I went upstairs and call my boss and mentor less pain. A brilliant reporter and editor who also wrote an outspoken call him once a week from a black man's point of view. Open about prejudice. Last light meat served in the army and has a sense of duty. As well as a deep skepticism of authority. Production report them. I went back downstairs and to see the secret service supervisor for the area. And told him my story. But within the lambert preamble about how upset i was how much i loved arabs. And how i had absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing. I was practically in tears. But with great trepidation i gave him the car's license plate number. He was very thoughtful. And assured me that while the car would be stopped spotted by the police instructions would be given not to arrest or mistreat anyone without evidence of wrongdoing. I never heard back from the secret service. I will never know if the men were arrested. Or if they were innocent of wrongdoing. I will never know how much anguish my report might have caused them. How they were treated if they were stopped. I will never know if i did the right thing. Or betrayed all my principal. You can judge for yourselves whether despite my good intentions i was an early example of the muslim bathing that is now sweeping the country. 10-years after 9/11. We were worn with three muslim nations. And we are doing our best to alienate the several million muslims in the us. How. We infiltrate their moss. We arrest them as material witnesses. When they've committed no crime. In new york city. Politicians are calling the leader of a proposed muslim community center and place of prayer. Near ground zero. A terrorist sympathizer. Because he dares to criticize you us foreign policy. Alyssa mane the state department's enzyme world tours. Describe life in the us. You know. Orange is a country built on religious freedom. For christians. Choose. Even unitarian universalist. But not currently from. It seems. Juan williams. A distinguished journalists for the washington post and then mpr. Got himself fired eight months ago when he said on fox news to the infamous bill o'reilly. Brookville. I'm not a bigot. But when i get on the plane i got to tell you. If i see people over in muslim garb and i think you know they are identifying themselves first and foremost as muslims. I get worried. I get nervous. Earlier this year congressman pete king of long island held a hearing on the radicalization of american muslims. Earlier told fox. Eighty-two 85% of moss in this country or control by islamic fundamentalists. And that while. Ambridge muslims are loyal. They won't come forward and cooperate with police. The opposite is true. The pew research center to the first-ever poll of us muslims in 2007. The family to be largely assimilated. And happy with our lives. A majority said they are very concerned. About islamic extremism in the world. He's not a bigot. However. I used to be the bureau chief here for newsday. The newspaper for long island and peking's congressional district. We had a reporter who happened to be a black muslim. Assigned it cover. King and our other local congressman. When you wrote something critical of king the congressman called me into his office to complain. After an hour-long thai rated looked at me knowingly. Nsaid. Great. Powerful secret. You know he's a muslim. Of course. Florida. When the fundamentalist minister burned a quran chapter finding it quote. Guilty of crimes against humanity. It provoked a riot in afghanistan which led to the deaths of seven nieto workers. And let's not be too unitarian about this. Let's acknowledge. But since 9/11 a lot of good-hearted people. And certainly some of us in this congregation. Have found themselves at times. Freedom. And let's acknowledge that there are strange of islam that are violent or intolerant. Reprehensible. There are arrest in this country are muslims with violent intentions. Extremism is something to fear whatever the face. The question is. What do we do in the face of that fear. I do not believe that the members of this congregation have to embrace all forms. Harvest farm. That we have to accept into our bosoms. Hardline imams. Franklin including the one who spoke from this pulpit a couple of years ago. Who do not acknowledge other face or do not believe in treating women equally. But i do believe. Spiritual imperative. Not only to speak out on behalf. Of the millions. Of us muslims. The vast majority who just want to get along and live freely in this country. But also to take concrete steps to prevent anti-muslim bigotry. More than that. It is in our own self-interest. The terrible irony of all this. As a coupon demonstrates. Is it muslims are far more assimilated into american society than in any other western country. We heard stories all the time from england. Inference. A muslim totally alienated from their countries. But this new outbreak of muslim bathing here in the us. Assimilation. Actually increases the possibility that american muslims will turn against. Intolerance of islamic institutions. Hearing is targeting a religious faith. Turbo incidence of muslim harassment at airports. Will only increase the separation. And the danger. We don't have to embrace those aspects of islam. The defender principle. But our principles require us to embrace all people. Whatever face. Including. Our muslim brothers and. In your order of service. You'll find listed the five pillars of islam. One of the most important pillars is the cop or charity. And that is also a pillar. Unitarian universalist faith. River road depends on your generous contributions. Of time and money. Disappointed missions. And programs. The offering will now be gratefully receive. And this is also the time to light candles of joys and concern.

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3856.mp3

We have come now to the end of ramadan. In the muslim calendar of prayer and fasting. In the most blessed celebration of the year eid mubarak which literally means blessed. Celebration. Time which has been called out from high atop every tower perch like a spindled wand above every bustling city in the muslim world and beyond. The call to prayer rings out everyday. But especially on holy days like these. Allahu akbar the voice calls out four times from atop those minarets. God is the most rate. And in the streets below the people.. The hubbub stop. Strive to climb all ladders for a moment their efforts to beg for coins put down their cups. Tyrants and children. Punched grandmother's and glittering celebrities self-important magnates and the guy who pumps your gas station stop. Play out their prayer rugs and they put their heads to the ground and humble supplications to a god whose power to heal and to harm. Is nearly illimitable. A god whose name cannot be captured in any human tongue. It seemed sort of like a fairytale to me. This world where all the people change for a moment. Called out of the rush by some enchantment table their heads all the way to the ground and listen together tool the words of an invocation that ring out from the highest places in the city. Perhaps the world's most striking testament to the power of a uniform culture cultural and religious practice. And it is perhaps no wonder that it feels to me like match. Yet the world is the muslim faith. five times a day not for some magical enchantment. But for the simple enchantment of prayer. At moments roughly coinciding with times of rest and refreshment or mealtimes the people turn to face the holy city and reflect together on a spiritual truth that they hold in common. For them the fact that whatever they are doing no matter how important prayer is always more important that no matter what they get out of the affairs of their lives they get more from the ever-present practice of devotion. From the persistent reminder 5 times a day of what it is they hold dear. To the world at cnn and western tourists faithful muslims the world over pray the same prayers at the same time and a patterns with the surety of the sunrise and the certainty of the sunset. And what is called out from those minarets all over the world in english translates to something like. I bear witness that there is no god but god i bear witness that muhammad is his messenger come to prayer come to the god god is most great. Except for in the morning. Morning prayer arise at the special line is added which says and i am not making this up prayer is more important than sleep. Despres wants more. The most non-muslims the striking uniformity of practiced that mark's daily muslim prayer is so poetic and so powerful that it is at times downright uncanny. The word connect believers to a story that's been told for ages. Are grandparents who prayed the same way the same time beach and everyday. The prayers invite submission. What is a complicated concept for us. Submission not only to god but to tradition. And the vision of praying together can be for us both immensely moving and profoundly disturbing all at once. After all. Prayer. Is a way to gather together power. Protrudes to put words to the collective and personal yearnings of a people hand when 10,000 people or 100,000 people the power of their invitations is enough to change them at the very least it is enough to change the world as well. There's power moving in those moments. Whether or not they'll never make it all the way up to god the power of that many people in their hearts desire and praising with our whole bodies and souls something. And our businesses determine what it is worth harnessing that power for. In a similar but much much more modest vein. I do not truly care if a god or the god never hears me when i pray. But i'm here to tell you that praying. In this place. With some of you. Among the most transformative work we do in community together. Even rational even irrational non-believers yes even in this rational place praying and harnessing power together is some of the most important work that we do because no matter how rational you are no matter how removed from the daily practice of people half a world away battling is submission to a god you do not believe. Sometimes the words of a prayer. Are the only honest words that can be said. Early in my ministry maybe 15 years ago. I remember a family whose baby was stillborn. Much too tiny for the world. And her mother couldn't even bear yet to look at her. Her heart was so broken and there were no words but the mother called and asked me the minister the designated religious person in her life to sit with that stillborn infant. And to pray over her. She could not speak the words of blessing. Could not find her way to that prayer. And none of us bother to appeal to anything so tried is god's plan not here or there or now or later but she knew that some blessing must be spoken some honest words said to mark that moment instead of just forgetting about it. And so i sat there. Alone in a room. With that child now gone and i said a prayer that simply held the holiness in the heartbreak of the moment. I spoke aloud to myself and to the universe into the silent years of that little life just lost. The truth that even the briefest of her short existence really did change things. But they loved her even though they never really got to meet her. But nothing was the same. Because even for a moment she had moved and been. And mattered. And it wasn't a prayer for miracles. And it wasn't a prayer to change things really it was a prayer that existed in order to name some truths to say the true names to send those names out into the world with love. You can tell me. Put all of your rational mind. In this rational place. In this rational tradition of ours that praying is pointless especially if you do not believe in a miracle working god. But i will tell you that such an expression is nothing short of smug if you haven't been there. Do the cold dry center of your suffering. And reached out for any blessed water you might find. Even if it takes the form of a prayer you thought you had long given up on. We pray. When we must protect a precarious dream. We pray when the stakes are high and sometimes we pray not because we want to but because the prayer is escapes our lips unbidden when we are afraid. The finest people i ever knew former congress. Put been a wwii fighter pilot and a lifelong unitarian. Remind me that sell flying into enemy fire the only thing he could think this lifelong unitarian rationalist to the variance degree the only thing she could think the only words for the words of the 23rd psalm. Do i walk through the valley of the shadow of death i shall fear no evil for thou art with me. The rod and thy staff they comfort me. Surely goodness and mercy. Shuffle on me all the days of my life. And i will dwell in the house of the lord forever. What can you do in the cockpit of a fighter plane. Stretches out before you in 10000 lives stretch out on the landscape below when you meet your fear in the messy confusion of uncertainty what can you do but speak the only words of protection that spring to mind the only talisman of holiness you've got. For him the words of a prayer. Set that prayer in the cockpit there are no atheists in foxholes there most certainly are atheists in foxholes and in fighter jets and in city streets and then all of the places where one's body and soul is at risk. He said those words because he found in that ancient phrase and encapsulation of his deep. Yearning. And a glimmer of hope that would see him through. If you are thirsty. And there is water. Why not let yourself drink. If you were grieving and there are words to say that don't come out in the form of a handy twitter polemic or a well-researched argument perhaps those words might come out in a prayer and perhaps just perhaps even if you don't believe any of your deepest hopes. Is a good. And honest thing. And there are times. Times not just in my life but in our lives together when the only words left to capture what we feel or the words more or less. Of a prayer. And i pray in my own life and in the pastoral work i do with many of you. I pray. Because in some moments everything else. Seems like an evasion. Because everything else seem somehow less honest. What we yearn for out loud. I do not believe in the supernatural miracle working god separate from creation itself. But i pray. In my own life honestly i pray quite a lot. It's how i start every morning when i walk into my office over there. Because without it it's all just email and phone calls. And writing reports. I have a hard time remembering all those emails and phone calls and reports are pointing toward. Most of the time my own prayer life doesn't focus on asking for stuff or on talisman for protection or yearning for safety most of the time my own prayer life focuses on my deep desire to be a better kinder gentler person than i am. My prayers are like those of eusebius the stoic of all my power give all needful help to my friends who are in need a i never fail a friend in danger when visiting those in greece may i be able by gentle and healing words to soften their pain may i respect myself. In my face life i do not often pray in order to comfort myself. But you agitate myself. A better version. Of myself. I pray to remind myself that i have work to do. And it makes the work i do manage to do possible. Connection to most accurate river road i find myself often very sheepish and apologetic about it. Sharing your own face life your practices the places where what you rationally believe in you really learn to do come into tension. Before i ever pray with anyone in this congregation i have the set sort of monologue that i go through and many of you have heard it so you can just like sanket alongside me right. Appropriate words and strategize all the appropriate strategies i want to make sure you know that you understand i'm not imposing anything and i don't in fact believe in magic but when we've reached the end of a difficult and important conversation i will say something like. What i wonder just i'm wondering what school what i wonder is if it would be okay if i said a prayer line praying to know who i'm praying to her for an uncomfortably long time i will finally be quiet and it will be silenced. Can i say but of course silence is often more eloquent than words. And then i pause. Because i am afraid. And most of the time you say. And we pray together to a mystery we've not even bother trying to name. And perhaps mostly to and with ourselves. And we cry in a good and loving way and then go about our day feeling a little more able to take the next step. And sometimes after all of my babbling you say no thank you with kindness in your eyes. And we talk about something else. And that too is an honest and worthwhile exchange. But sometimes. Sometimes i'm too afraid to even ask the question. Because i am afraid you will be offended. Or perhaps that i will mess it all up. Or maybe it is rejection that i fear or the sense that you might think i am weird. And every time i do that. Find myself too afraid to even ask what would meet your spiritual needs at a crucial time i walk away feeling spiritually stingy. Like i was too scared to offer the water when you may have been thirsty. I didn't bring that particular power to bear when it is possible that is just what you needed most. Church my friend the fighter pilot was ashamed to talk. About the words that came unbidden to his lips when the bombs were falling all around him. He was afraid people would judge him. And so he told me that story near the end of his life as a kind of confession. And afraid. Some of us are afraid to speak the truth of our own spiritual yearnings to. For fear of what. Bucking some rational orthodoxy. And honestly i'm not even sure that orthodoxy really exists. There was only our experience. Our deep search for kindness. The truth of what we have known in the sacredness of making space for our difference. At its very best prayer is a speaking fourth of the way we want the world to be it is a statement of heartfelt intention. Weather tomorrow in efforts in the grace of a willing universe there is something about stating one's intentions that makes him rather more likely. To come through. The silence of our hearts are heartfelt intention. We can speak of life or death. We can speak of hope or of horror. Not just of naming what we yearn for but of harnessing our own power. And it is in our hands not only whether or not we choose to harness our power that way but what it is we choose to do with that power. Once we've harnessed. Prayer is. Power. And in a world where a few muslim radicals have used their prayers to bring about violence and a great many believers in the christian tradition and beyond. Have confused prayer with patriotism. Nationalism and sectarianism. It might seem easier to just write off the whole enterprise is something to be afraid of. Or simply not useful. And for some of us this is so. People are people. And they hunger the same for the chance to speak their hopes to a waiting universe weather in prayer and poetry in our tour in songs of their prayers are as varied as the hopes and the dreams of human beings have always been. Justice earring. Powerful. Just as dangerous. Injustice real. From the towering minarets around the world. The people are called to prayer. And their prayers for better and for worse are the same as all the world's the same as yours and mine the same as those other under our breath and in high singing voices all throughout american beyond. Our brothers and sisters neil. And in between the praise of their particular understanding of god they ask for a thousand different things. The people around the world are asking for two. Ask for protection from their fears. For the strength to change themselves and hold their families together they ask for peace and help and holiness in the everyday. And those who may have lost and found. Sometimes that is the case here and everywhere. The faithful confuse god with santa claus. And pray for stuff. And sometimes as is the case here and everywhere the people confuse god with a war general and pray for victory over their enemies in vengeance for those who opposed them. Indian mat measure what matters. Is not whether your prayers are called out from a minaret dora pulpit what color god's roved are or if god is even real outside you're imagining it doesn't matter if god gets called allah or the great nothingness in the broadest sense it doesn't matter if god exists or at all it doesn't matter whom you pray to it matters what you pray for. And the prayers of people the world over for better and for worse are so much more alike than they are different. Imagine it. 5 times a day. You and everyone you know.. Put it all down. The effort and the rush and the desperation teenagers put down those shopping bags t-ball players drop their bat mom pulled the minivan aside and business executives everywhere take a 10-minute break from their meeting. Imagine all these people want it all asking a generous creation to make them better. Asking themselves to make life more hole. Yearning for forgiveness for wholeness. For the challenge ahead. With the child pick up the baseball bat and wield it differently. With the meeting in the fortune 500 company go on as planned. Would mom in the minivan still raids forward on the road. If we let prayer be what it could be. Imagine five opportunities a day to connect with what matters most. To admit that the shopping in the ladder climbing in the commuting matter nothing compared with the steady and persistent work of aligning oneself to that which is worthy. 45 times a day we all were to stop whatever it is that occupies our time. Call forth our hearts desire to god or the universe or our neighbors and remind ourselves what really matters. So what might you pray for. What is your heart's desire. If god is not santa claus. And prayer is not patriotism. Religious practice is not just another excuse for self-aggrandizement. What might you pray for if you could. I pray for the courage to keep going for the. Water of comfort in the dry land of all your sorrows. With gratitude for poetry and art that still spring up out of that desert i pray with yearning to be and to do better. It matters not who we pray to. Or even if those prayers reach anywhere higher than these walls. It matters what we pray for. So what is it that bubbles up from within you. A word seeking form. And intention given shape. A power all your own. Manifest. For just one fleeting moment.

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908.mp3

Thank you very much for both of those marvelous election. Marvelously son. I think you've some of you have heard this before but i'll mention it again. Think i first said this from this pulpit 30 years ago. Carl barks the great the protestant the illusion of the. Fruits have the 21st twentieth-century rather. Once said that if it is true that god listens only to bach. In heaven than the angels singing bach he is also convinced that box listens only to mozart in his private moments. Okay well i'll take beethoven or dvorak myself but anyway. For at least the last 20 years we have heard a lot about family values from political conservatives. But we have not heard much from religious liberals about family values. And it is time that we did. Because we unitarian universalists and other religiously liberal people. Have a great deal to say about the significance of family values and our values. Are both healthy. And important. Today families come in many different varieties. When i was growing up in jefferson city missouri in the 1930s and 40s. A family consisted of mother and father. And one or more children. All of the same skin color. Today a family might consist of a single parent with children or two women with children or two men with children. Or two or more people without children. It may be an adoptive family. It may include adults or children who are biracial. Or multiracial. Adults who are heterosexual or homosexual or bisexual or transgender. A family might have members with the variety of skin colors. One of my sons is barbara referred to earlier in this situation concerns section. What a my son's brian married a latina woman when woman. Christian is a beautiful olive color. And they have two darling children. Of course. One of them has her mother's skin color. And the other has his father's lighter color. In paraguay where they live. They call the little boy the little german. Because most of the people with lighter skin color. In their town are descendants of german settlers. Sometimes i go to washington post had an article by a woman who found that the questions about race and ethnicity in the census form did not fit her family well at all. Coker family included asian. African american caucasian. And several combinations of these. Several times she simply had to check other. Set the number of her blended family. Did not fit the category for the census form. I suggest you that more and more families in the future will be like hers. And that is something to be celebrated. 4 means we might finally be able to get beyond these artificial distinctions. Of race and ethnicity. The only race. The mathers. It's a race we all belong to the human race. Of course. The family values political slogan was a buzzword. Directed against gays and lesbians and against women's reproductive rights. And used to exploit bigotry. For political purposes. Liberal family values celebrate gay families. Lesbian families transgender family's bisexual family fits well as. Heterosexual families. We support gay marriage and equality for lgbt people. In every way. We don't do that for political reasons. But because we believe in the worth. And dignity of every. Person. Liberal family values also support a woman's right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy. The term or not. That is a family value because every child has the right to be wanted. Every child has a right to be born into a family where that child can be well cared for. With a necessities of life including love. Love of at least one adult. Is the family value because no woman should have more children and she can adequately care for. Both materially. An emotionally. Is the family value because mandatory motherhood is something. To be rejected. I was the chaplain of goucher college. I-95 i guess it is. In them. Here in maryland in towson maryland for three years in the late 1960s. 1 monday morning a student to my new well. Came into my office with tears. Cascading down her face. He just returned from a weekend at home. What you learned that her best friend from high school. Had died a few days before. As a result of trying to give herself an abortion. With a coat hanger. It's a course was several years before roe v wade. The supreme court decision that made abortion legal during the first trimester. Her story reinforced my pro-choice viewpoint and illustrates. The importance of keeping abortion legal today. But i am appalled. 85 counties. And it is 85% of the counties in this country. There is no physician. Who provides abortion services. That means the two often abortion is not a choice for women can make. The recent healthcare legislation should make contraception more available to people who until now have had no health insurance and therefore we're unlikely to seek prescription contraceptives but it does not include. Abortion right. Does not include. Funding abortion. Reproductive choices still too often limited only to those who can afford to travel. Or who live where there is an abortion provider. The doctors who provide abortion services as you know. Are aware that they are risking their lives. Tragically. A number of states have been scaling back women's reproductive rights recently. And also scaling back family planning services jeopardizing access to basic healthcare for millions of women. In the first six months of 2011. States annexed to the record number. Of anti-abortion laws. The 80 abortion restrictions passed this year. Are more than double the previous record of 34. In 2005. Five states have defunded planned parenthood. Which one in for american women. Relion for healthcare. And what abortions are only 3%. Of its work. In addition several states are considering. Personhood laws. Laws that effectively outlaw contraceptives like birth control pills and the criminalize women who miscarry. Several states are making it nearly impossible for a woman to receive an abortion. And these states. Women seeking abortions are required to receive a medically unnecessary sonogram. At least 24 hours before an abortion. And to hear a description of the fetus. Pregnant women in other words are required by law in these states to be lectured to and must jump through numerous groups in order to receive an abortion. Abortion has virtually become illegal. And italy. 10. In several southern states laws have either been enacted or are proposed that require a woman who has a miscarriage. To prove that it occurred naturally. And was not a secret abortion. If she cannot prove that. The abortion that they miscarried rather was a natural event. She can be charged. With murder. All these laws are part of the war on women and on liberal religious values. Little liberal privileges family values. If we don't live in one of the states where these things are taking place. There isn't much we can do except to get financial support. To pro-choice group. And. To be reminded that even in relatively liberal maryland eternal vigilance. Is still the price of liberty. And. Right now. A few miles to the north of us in germantown. Eternal vigilance is especially needed. Yesterday operation rescue began a seven-day demonstration. To protest the work of abortion provider dr. leroy carhart. And today i called 18 the pro-choice groups plans to begin a counter-demonstration. In support. Of doctor carhartts work. Dr. hart's services include late-term abortions. Petit maintains mostly involves severely impaired fetuses. Let's hope there is no violence. In these demonstrations. Let me know turn to the roles of women and men within the family. Conservative say that the woman's place is in the home. But you should not work outside the home except after children are born. Are other especially after children are born. Her job is to stay home. Do the housework go to meals. The man's role is that a breadwinner. Working full-time the job outside the home. We religious liberals however believe that the wife should work outside the home if he wants to. If you wants to wait until the children are old enough to go to school before going back to work that's fine. But if not. That's okay too. It's her call hopefully. Arrived at. In consultation with her spouse. We also believe that it's a husband and father want to stay home while the wife and mother works. That's good too. Conservatives maintained that the husband is the head of the family. And the wife should always obey her husband. Religious liberals. Disagree. We believe that the husband and wife are equal. Equal partners in making decisions. When does not obey the other. They work things out together and come to an agreement. If they cannot agree sometimes the husband used to the wife's view. And sometimes vice versa. But usually they find common ground somewhere in the middle. Even though i'm talking about husband and wife for the most part. These values apply of course. 2. Gay marriages lesbian marriages as well. Religious liberals think that housework should be divided. If both husband and wife work outside the home. Cooking washing dishes another housework should be shared equally. We also believe the childcare is just as much the father's job as the mothers. And most of us men enjoy being father's reading to our children. Playing with them. Even changing their diapers. And i'll be fun but it's important. Have to be different. Also coaching their soccer or baseball teams. Not limited to men doing it but. Happens if that's when my sons were young i often coach their little league team sometimes together with another father one case a mother. Before the first game i had a meeting with the parents and the kids and ask them to follow the following rules. Which i was put under the category of liberal values no criticism of any player on our team. Or on the opposing team. No booing. Only praise. Nobody is humiliated or made to feel bad. Remember they're still learning and they're trying to do their best. If the kids strikes out you praise him or her we had one girl on our team. For trying and say something like better luck next time. If a kid makes an error in the field you say something like that's okay kevin. Good try. Lebron religious values. For little league. One year our team had a perfect season we want every game. Liberalism values are based on the fact that we honor and respect women just as we honor and respect man. Our values say women are just as fully human as men just as worthy of respect. Women are persons of great worth and dignity and so are men and so are women so our children and young people. One of our family values is it children are to be treated with love and respect. Several times i've seen mothers in the grocery store where i'm shopping scream at their young child and tell the child how bad he or she is. I'm sick and when i see the. Children can be difficult. As you all know. But there are better ways to treat. Clinical studies have shown that a child that is fed. And clothes. But not touched. Or given recognition from another. Will die. Human infants cannot survive without a nurturing person. Who takes care of them. I just agree with the idea that children should be seen but not heard. Are family values as religious liberals include hearing what children have to say. Encouraging them to express themselves and therefore to think for themselves. If our children have different ideas from ours when they grow up. That is a sign that we have done a good job as parents. We want them to have a voice. Not to be an echo. So you are familiar with george lake off from one of those books we read earlier. Is a university of california at berkeley cognitive scientist. He argues brother persuasively to me at least at the differences between political conservatives and liberals can be traced back to the way their parents. Raisin. Woodlake off calls the stick family model of the family begins with the assumption that the world is a dangerous place that is full of evil. It is a competitive place. There will always be winners and losers. Children need to be taught right from wrong in the way to do that is to make them obey the moral of four authority who is the strict father. And who knows right from wrong. If they do not obey they must be severely punished. In fact painfully punted including spanking. And peddling until it hurts. Only that way will they develop internal discipline and be obedient. An act morally. Children raised in this way generally turn out to be conservative as adults. Conservative religiously. As well as politically. Further this internal discipline will enable them to be successful in the competitive world. If they pursue their self-interest in a disciplined way. They will become prosperous. And so the strict father model links morality. And prosperity. This perspective. The child who is disobedient and does not learn discipline. Will go up to be undisciplined and immoral and will not be prosperous. Such an adult. Cannot take care of herself. And so becomes dependent. And people who are poor. Have no one to blame but themselves. The only way to change them is not to support them. With welfare and handouts. But you leave them alone. Until things get so bad for them that they decide to change. That helps to explain at least something i've. I really found. Very. Questionable in dubious. Why it is the conservatives do not. Like welfare programs or social security or medicare or medicaid excetera. And sony reward the good people who have demonstrated discipline and morality reward them with a tax cut since they deserve the best. And that leaves nothing for social programs but that's okay because the beneficiaries of social programs don't deserve anything anyway. I called this. Old testament religion. Because the god of the early parts of the old testament was an authoritative deity of anger. Revenge and strict laws. With the people must obey. The other type of parenting as you will remember from the reading this late what lake off calls the nurturing parent model. But this is liberals according to him. This type of parenting is gender-neutral. And if there are two parents. They both see themselves as responsible for raising the children. The emphasis on nurturing children means that you empathize with your children by protecting them from harmful things such as drugs. Prime. But also from poisons in the environment. And from harmful foods. It means that you want your child to be free enough. Define fulfillment in life. So you do not demand that your child go into business. If the child wants to go into. Teaching. Or music. You don't demand obedience and punished for disobedience in your moral expectations and talk with a child about their importance. Torturing parents also emphasize emphasize. Responsibility. Responsibility for oneself. And for others. Other values of nurturing parents are fairness and communication and community. And honesty. I assume that most of you perhaps all of you who have children who are parents. Follow the nurturing. Model. Marvin i did. We brought up our children in that way even though we hadn't heard of it at the time. And all three of our children are very liberal religiously and politically. Sometimes a bit too liberal but that's okay. Too liberal when it comes to church that is they don't find their way on sunday morning to where we would like them to be but anyway that's the two who have children are bringing up their children as nurturing parents. Values they care about our liberal values. Freedom. Integrity. Caring compassion. Communication. And personal responsibility. I believe those values results in happier and more productive people and in a society that it's healthier. And more just. And warfare. Finally. We often refer to a uu congregation as a family. And some you use think of the congregation as their extended family. Like most of us do i suspect. Saudi family values also apply. To our congregation. One of those values disrespectful children and youth as we've said. Wu congregations almost completely ignored children in use. Not many anymore that goodness but i can remember 25-30 years ago it was not unusual it when a family with children came to church the children went one way and other until sometime after the coffee hour. That is easier that way was easy for the adults to forget. But there's such a thing as children. No they have any responsibility for them. Fortunately i say we don't have many of those kinds of congregations anymore. Since i believe young people are very important part of our congregation. I hate to see congregations like that. Is nurturing families listen to their children and youth. And talk with them and not fm. So also our congregations to listen to what young people are saying all of them. And show them respect. Most of our children and youth do not join uu churches. As adults. Unfortunately in 5u. The figures are in a seeing some years ago or one in 10 that is one. Young person brought up in a uu congregation. Out of 1 out of 10 becomes a you you as an adult i hope it's better than that now but i don't know that it is. Sometimes they don't join yu-yu-hakusho because they marry someone. Has a. With another face. And decide to go along with that person. Their spouses really just choice but to off and it may be. Because they did not have a good experience. But unitarian-universalism as young people. Fortunately i think we have one of the best. Paris. Ministers in the. Going to talk to me so i think. A lot of those two. Things are not happening here but that's what is what has been happening in some of our congregation. I began by noting the family today come in a variety of colors and sexual orientations and lifestyle. The congregation the practices liberal family values. But want to be a family that reflects. That kind of diversity as well. After all it's pretty boring to be all white. Allstate. And all adults. And i reading droidleak offroad. The strong nurturing parent is protective and caring. Bill's trust in connection. Promotes family happiness and fulfillment. Fairness freedom. Open this. Cooperation. And community development. That's a great summer it seems to me of unitarian universalist values whether applied to the nuclear family. Or to the family we called the congregation. So. The family values of religious liberals are very different from the family values we've heard a lot about on television. And in the newspapers. A news magazine. In recent years. But i suggest to you that hours. Our values we can be proud of. They're worth practicing. And celebrating. And proclaiming to the world. But it's take a few moments. For personal reflection.

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Welcome-Welcome.mp3

What's the weather.

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2722.mp3

Which is rodeph shalom. In harlem. That brought together people of many traditions and. He told the story about a young girl from the nearby memorial baptist church. Who approached him at that tater pointing insistently. The silver kiddush cup that was brimming with wine untouched there on the seder table. The rabbi. Who's going to drink that why. We leave that cup. The good rabbi explained. The prophet will come down from the heavens our seder and drink that wine. In factoring the stator we open wide the door hoping that elijah will arrive at any moment. Why do you want elijah to come to little girl ass. Because we believe that if elijah comes he will announce the coming of the messiah. You know how in your religion jesus was sent by god to tell everyone how to livwell. Haha. And you believe that jesus will come again and make the world a better place. But we don't believe that jesus was the messiah but we are still hoping. That the messiah will come into our world soon. And you do this every year. You open the door for elijah and you hope that the messiah will come right after. Yes. Optimus i will make a better world. Yes. Why are you still waiting she said. Why don't you do it yourself. Why indeed. What are we waiting for. And what people been waiting for for the last several thousand years when the work of repairing the world is right here before us. Waiting for the promised one the chosen one the blessed one and traditions far broader than judaism and christianity there are promised ones aplenty. Waited for. Across the faith traditions of this world. So why wait for the one who will save us. What wait for king arthur to come back for the savior to return the child to be born who will lead the way to a better world holding out. Always needed is not yet arrived or maybe as if it arrived so long ago that we can scarcely even remember the outlines of the tail. Wait for the messiah in breathless anticipation rather than seeking and finding the savior's all around us every single day. Perhaps we wait because it is a habit of the human heart to look for miracles anywhere but here. Seek out blessings from external sources always imagining that the power to save us all rests with somebody else. We believe this in part. Because we have little faith in ourselves and in one another. And in part because the redemption of a broken world is a very big job indeed. And perhaps it is more comfortable to believe it is the work of someone anyone besides ourselves. And to be fair to the messianic impulse ennis all we wait around for the chosen one because we know that no matter what we do we alone are too small and too flawed. To save the world. One might understand the word messiah. Broadly speaking. As one who is chosen by god for a very special reason. And most of the truly great chosen ones in the hebrew hebrew tradition have one very clear tell you can tell a messiah by the fact that he or she is often very reluctant to take the job. Messiah. Because they usually don't call themselves one at all. King david in the stories is proud to call his forebear saul a message for messiah but saul never used the term for himself. Likewise david only reluctantly called himself and anointed one in his far later years when all of his fighting and heroism were over. Easy. And most truly wise one don't claim it for themselves. Even jesus who called himself the son of god never actually claim the role with his alone. But there have always been claiming. I've always been people call themselves e1b only the chosen one and some of those messiahs have always been wiser than others. Some more successful. Some more mired in their own sense of importance. Or warped by the power inherent in the role. In fact in the first century in palestine the most famous messiah was not the child in the manger. But a military firebrand whose name. Was simon bar hopa. The son of a star is what his name meant. Batman let the jewish people in an ultimately doomed armed rebellion against the roman occupation of their homeland. The book of lamentations says that that rebellion led by that particular messiah was so devastating. But the remaining inhabitants of judea didn't even have to put fertilizer in the earth for years after so rich was the soil with a horrible flow. Blood over the land. Chosen ones have power. Some of it quite terrible. And in the end the chosen ones of god the ones with the special-purpose are most often the ones. Are most often not the ones to seek after power for themselves but the one to notice the great power all around them. Chosen one. Or a chosen one. Isn't necessarily about being so particularly special in and of yourself rather it's about seeing and noticing what is so truly special so truly salvific. So truly powerful in the world. Imagine a thousand people. Walking by that bush burning on sinai on their way to one meeting or another playing farmville on their ipads with a glance over their shoulder while they think. What is strange bundle of sticks. But moses stopped. And he saw his calling in the world. Messiah's been are created by their unique responsibilities and ability to respond. To the call. Whenever and however they encounter it. They're made by the receptivity to the calling all around them and by their willingness to live it out. Messiah's are in defined by their willingness to embrace the possibility that this world might actually be made whole and that they might have a hand in doing it messiahs are defined by their willingness to accept a call to live out a special and distinctive ministry in this world. And perhaps messiahs. Called and chosen chosen ones. Are made by our ability to recognize and to bless them. When they come our way. I came across a story. Drive home this idea of universal anointing. The fact that each and every person is called and chosen. From anne lamott to the pastor in a writer. She's actually describing her experiences as a sunday school teacher. Working with four to six year olds in her little protestant congregation. Sunday school there's an exercise that she does to kick-off the class. Every single time. She called this exercise loved and chosen and it starts with the teacher sitting across from the children on a classroom couch and the kids are all lined up over here and the teachers over here with lots of room on the couch. Lamont rights. I glanced around at the classroom slowly in the goofy sort of way. Mca. Here wearing a blue sweatshirt with pokemon on it. The four-year-old so dress look down at his chest astonished to discover that he's match that description like what are the odds. Come on over to the couch i say you are so you are so chosen. He clutched it himself like a beauty pageant finalists. Can i asked if anyone was wearing green socks with brown shoes giants cap and argyle vest. Wonder of wonders. Turned out to be loved. Wichita's not happen so often in this world. Or maybe it does. It happens every single day people loved and chosen called out to do something gentle and worthwhile in this world maybe it happens each and every day not just on christmas. And not just to five-year-olds. Who among us would not clutch at ourselves like a beauty pageant contestant if for once. We felt special enough enough and loved enough to do something truly grand and decent with these our everyday lives. Who among us would refuse to come on over to the couch and take our place among all the others who like us are uniquely love. Uniquely chosen. Just like those children. Sometime. It takes others. The call-out the blessing and us. Sometimes it takes a sunday school teacher a friend to notice that we ourselves are more than just an interesting sort of smoldering bundle of sticks. But in fact burning bush all our own. Blazing with some purpose that can change the world. The chosen ones i think can't change the world. Until somebody cares enough. To let them lead. The appetite people have always had for finding mathias. Externalize is it distances it has us looking for the blessing anywhere anywhere at all but here. And yet the christmas story itself. The uber story of a messiah it actually has a different more radical story inherent in its buffet familiar versus. Because it's not. Messiah out there. In some distant and perfect place that we celebrated christmas. Instead it is a child born in the very messy middle of the everyday. Is unremarkable if he is miraculous. In the christmas story the chosen one comes into the world in the most mundane of circumstances. The child isn't crowned or wealthy or glorious or perfect in any particular way in fact he is poor. Essentially illegitimate child of an unwed mother. Born in a barn. Because there is no place for people like him. And for his family. Namely. There is no place. For unremarkable people. With no money. And no prospects. Who would notice a child like that today. Who would call him so loved in so showzen. Poor. Unattached to powerful people. A child whose family is only struggling to get by who would see the messianic calling and him unique blessing inherent in such a child today would you see it. What i. What her sunday school teacher. Or his friends at school. Or any other person know that child to be called and chosen or would we walk right by playing farmville on our ipads and never notice. The miracles before. Dinner christmas eve services this year lyle remind us of the words of gk chesterton who wrote. The christmas. Upon a beautiful and intentional paradox. Set the birth of the homeless. Should be celebrated. In every home. Is the season. When a nobody. Is the ultimate somebody. When the blessing comes in an unexpected package in the only requirement for the rest of us to receive that blessing is a willingness to notice it to name it just as it is this is the season of possibility when the called and chosen ones might just pay attention to their own mission. 10 ^ the miracles all around them. The season when one more redeemer. Is always around the corner. If only we have the vision to notice. Is my colleagues rob eller isaacs and bill neely road. Every child is born. One more redeemer. In each newhart a spark divine one more voice for compassion one more holy sign one more chance to restore and reveal and receive this is our face this we believe that every child is born one more redeemer. In this world. In this season of possibility. The multitude of messiahs cannot redeem us. Unless we take notice. In order to receive we have to be receptive to follow a star you have to see it shining in order to be blessed by the season we have to be open to the possibility of our own blessing. So let us take notice. But it'd be receptive. What is follow the star. Let us be open. The chosen ones an easy. And the one who will fix it all has always been anywhere but here. So in the words of the little redeemer. To her rabbi. Why are you still waiting. Why don't you do it. Yourself.

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264.mp3

Table in the fellowship hall. We need a lot of people to sign up to get involved in our community. by the action league table. And find out how you can be involved it starts a week. From today. I want to tell you a true story. About my very first easter sunday in the ministry. It was your god can it really be 36 years ago in early april of 1975. Haven't begun my ministry on a very cold january 1st. Of that year at the first church of houlton maine. Which was a stalwart little congregation of fewer than 100 full moon is trine northern section of maine. Mountain cemetery out in california they had prepared us in our classes. All the major spiritual holidays. Thanksgiving christmas easter and i knew of course. What do you through was all about theologically and spiritually indeed i already had a nice big thick file. Wonderful easter material about the resurrection of life and the return of hope at all that stuff. As easter sunday that you're drawn ears slowly dawned on me that i was in really big trouble. I was in really big trouble because i wasn't in california anymore i was in northern maine. We're in the first week of april snow was fully and firmly still in place. When i arrived at church that easter morning i'm not exaggerating there was 4 and 1/2 ft of snow on the church lawn. Nd. Janitor the sexton as we called him. Had made a tunnel entrance the snow was 11 feet high on both sides of the sidewalk getting into that little. Single. Church. Not a crocus. Daffodil or a robin inside i assure you. It was astounding. I think the served the temperature around service time with somewhere in the low twenties. I guess we got through that easter sunday okay because in spite of the overwhelmingly obvious winter outside. That little church was warm the furnace the big boil in the basement was cranking and it you know we faithfully sang all the hopeful hymns and recited the getty. Spring poetry i must have delivered some sort of tolerable easter sermon. Because they were at least kind to me and albert lea please with the experience. But that first year in my ministry easter itself was buried. Literally buried. Between mountains of dirty nasty. Snow and ice. And in that town they would scoop the snow off the street and dump it off the parking lot of the bank and that glacier was still there that your fourth of july. I will never forget that first easter of mine which meteorologically at least refuse to come now. Given the winter that ginger mentioned that we had this year in washington you probably know where i'm going with this story. You do for chance remember january and february. Now in the metro section this morning it says that march this year with the warmest march. We've ever had it did not go below freezing once in march. At national airport. January february. We're a different story now i grant you easter sunday has mercifully come on q this morning. The air this morning as gentle and balmy the birds are everywhere we had a window open last night, so i can hear the birds all night. Every living thing take a look is coming up glad someone green. Have they ever been more stunning than they were this year and others. And by the way kenmore is right over here if you haven't seen these cherry blossoms. Out this easter sunday is the meteorological opposite of that. First. Sunday i am that first easter in northern maine. And we must be grateful. But let us neither forget how brutal and challenging. The winter was. I'm just going to put this in personal terms i'm a 12-month of your cycling. This winter was really tough. The weather pardon my french really. And i had so many days when my feet felt like they were going to fall off as i wrote that i lost all feeling in my feet and hands it was a rough. Winter. And you all know this because. Over the winter drapes in here and you on my door is usually open i heard all of your complaints. I was trapped with my bored and cranky kids for 6 days. I threw my back out shoveling the walk. Does endless snow storms made my commute impossible. I slipped and fell on my sidewalk while bringing groceries in. I got so little sunlight that my skin now looks like dracula's. I have four cold this winter and still have a sinus infection. The litany of our complaints is warranted. And endless. But lest we forget what day it is. And given. The stunning weather today i've got to just stop for just a moment and say woohoo. It is easter sunday woohoo. It has come. Spring and all of its glory. It is fully and faithfully taking hold. And soon that winter we had will just be. A vague memory. And less i have to remind you about another washington habit. And i don't want any of you to tinnitus. It will only be now a matter of weeks. Before you are all conversely. Whining and complaining and kvetching about the moisture and the heat and the humidity in washington you know it's true we no sooner get out of winter and you start complaining about the summer. Human beings don't just talk about the weather they complain about it in every season of. This. Year there is no pleasing us. As we walk this earth. But let us at least this easter sunday pause. Remember the tough winter we had. And be fully glad. For the change. In the weather but. Enough on the weather. I am not a commentator. On the weather channel like jim cantore. I'm a minister. And this is a religious community. We are here together once again. On easter sunday when the spiritual task. It's what it always is. Define hope. Ingratitude in our hearts. Snow is all gone. Cherry blossoms. Are everywhere to bless us. And at this moment at least we just need to revel. In the gift. Of this earth. Of this creation. Of this. Day. We realize of course. How is becoming wrote and the little piece i read just before the first him. You cannot stop. The weather. Ford and spring he wrote. You and i may not hurry up. With a thousand palms my darling. But nobody will stop at nobody will stop at with all the policeman. In the world. Nobody can stop. Spring that is so true. I called a residence. Expert astronomer few years back nancy grace roman before another easter sermon. Well i wanted to understand precisely how spring works astronomically speaking. And here's what she said. Spring faithfully comes each year because the earth's axis is tilted. With respect to its orbit around the sun. And as a result the sun follows a path higher in the sky. Which warms the earth and the atmosphere. So no matter how cold. Or wealth. Our winter is april arrive does predictable tilting. With tilting of the earth. Means that the sun traces its predictable return across the north american sky. And the earth's atmosphere inevitably warm. Triggering everything into riotous life. Trees and flowers the birds responding to primordial wiring in their brain. Migrate north and begin to make nests and chicklings. Even the grumpy old black bears buried in dank dens of hibernation for months. Respond to this astronomical shift. Shake off the winter doldrums and begin feeding him forging. With the exuberant new cubs. It's a glorious miracle this. Return of the sun. And the subsequent reckless bursting forth. And it is utterly unstoppable. Every year sure spring comes differently. This march was the warmest ever the post told me this morning. But in the end it's as inevitable as the coming of dawn. Itself. What is my foot. Spiritually about. Easter this year. I realize that what is true and inevitable for the natural environment that that spring will always come. Is not true necessarily. For us. A human being. After we have experienced a hard patch. In our living. Hard or icy. Season. About live. There was a difference between house spring always and unavoidably works its resurrection in the natural world. And how our hearts may or may not rebound. After we've encountered a tough season. And i living. With spring. Tell me if i'm wrong here with spring. There is. No action. No volition. No wheel no decision making. Required on the part of earth. And its many constituent parts. All the earth and every life-form that grows and creeps upon it. Only have to do with spring is passively sit back. And wait for the sun to do its thing. To do with powerful and persistent thing. Crocuses and daffodils don't decide. To come up. Out of the spring mud. The sun rather relentlessly calls them up. Songbirds and ducks and geese and groundhogs and bears don't. Choose. 2. Migrating make babies their natural instincts respond to the warmth in the lights. Making their spring behavior absolutely unavoidable. Willow tree adult converts don't burst into green song by some act of will. Sun in the warm air in-flight pull in fact the leaves out. Because of the cosmic. Configuration of our solar system. Spring on earth is not a choice. It's an inevitability. It will always have. Always. And every form of life. On earth. Respond. It's not a choice. It will always. But this is not the way things work. For us. For us in the changing. Seasons of our soul. When we are struggling as we are all obliged to do in our personal lives. To move on from some harsh winter or some. Ross store more tough. Season in our heart energy. Hope. Life. And write relation. You're not always return oncue. Without effort. Without spiritual and emotional volition. On our part. Pelican perhaps be said the time alone heals all wounds. Many times we slowly recover from difficulty or loss in our lives. Simply by hanging in there. I would have you this easter sunday consider a larger truth. Them time heals. And that truth is this. After a hard winter in the heart. After a hard winter in the hard no matter what that means. We human beings can never sit back. Like the language earth does in april and passively wait. 4 time & life forces. Tequila wounds. To lift her spirits. And to make everything right now. With us something more is required. When it comes to war. Interior landscape. We have to decide. To help april. When we are trying to crawl out of some cave of winter hibernation. That has enveloped us. Who are there spring-like forces in the heart pulling us back. True or false cells especially the love. A family and friends. Which can have such a powerful healing effect on us when we're in a rough spot. But we can't singularly rely on others. I'm forces. Beyond ourselves we must also have the spiritual wisdom in the strength. To activate. To employ our souls and our spirits. If resurrection. It's become close. And make a differ. You all know the kinds of. Hard winters on talking about judith viorst. Pheasant life. Means you live through necessary losses. To live is necessarily to lose. Toulouse relationships to lose. Jobs toulouse. Health. Luis joy. We have necessary. Losses. In life. You all know these kinds of good friday. We all have them. You live in melbourne. And uncertain world such as ours. Means we suffer these winters these. Necessary losses. And when were in the midst of a loss. We wonder if we'll ever feel the sun again we wonder if flowers. Everbloom. Hear it. In the heart again. What. We human beings. Can do. Is weakened purposefully turn. Towards the sun. That's the freedom of the heart. We can and do find the inner resources. To begin moving past. The pain. And the emptiness. Of our losses. It requires. Does turning toward the sun. A spiritual choice. Aurora park. Whenever we face significant loss or trauma in our living. We have to be. Active participant. In the healing. Spring. To come back. The heart. And enliven us. To the full aliveness. For which. We are antenna. Let me this. Sunday tell you about a dear friend of mine. Who has recently moved past. The season of the heart and soul that was. Every bit as hard as this last winter that we all experience. February before last during the coldest and darkest and most depressing. Weeks of that winter. My friend debbie lost. Her beloved husband paul who is a very close friend of mine to a terrible cancer. Painfully took him. At the age. 52. Cutting short a rich. An energetic and meaningful life. Their marriage debbie and paul's. Strong and loving in the closest one. I'm so when paul was taken so early. They're wide circle of friends including collins and we wondered a great deal of worried a great deal about how this tragic lost. Might diminish might diminish debbie. As a person. We worried openly. That her beloved the loss of her beloved partner of some 40 years. Might somehow cast a permanent pale. Over her life like a. Socked in february. Drizzle in a rainstorm. We worried that this loss might. Reduce or maybe even kill altogether her energy and enthusiasm for life. The first few months after his death were of course hard and sad. For gabby and their children. For how can anyone lose. A life made. And bounce right back. In the heart. But much to the relief of her friends. Who will faithfully watching her very close. I'm doing whatever we could. To make sure that winter did not maintain its grip over her heart. Debbie rather quickly spiritually and emotionally turned away. From the winter she turned away. From the winter. And turn toward the spring. That lady just beyond the horizon. Of her life and indeed that spring just weeks after paul died. Their first grandchild. Astounding adorable little male critter named mile. Was born and debbie was able to throw all her love and attention toward this child being a grandparent. Twice. Being a grandparent. For paul as well and 12 months later a second grandchild. Just a little female critter. Out in arizona named josephine. Was born. And debbie again poured. Personal energy and paul's. Energy. In. To those. Couple of weeks ago when i called her to see how she was doing. Fighted a little hesitant lance first. A little more than two years after paul's death she just had her first. With a fine. Gentleman by the way. One of the worst ideas in the world. Is that we honor dead spouses by becoming monks or nuns. You need to see the fan and landers all the time family and friends say how can she date he's only been dead 14 months what the hell are you talking about. You go out and live. Spring. Because you had a valued. Marriage. You turn toward the sun. My friend debbie. Who could i suppose have crawled into some tomb of. Self-pity and isolation. Following paul death cause death. Has chosen. Another path. Originally. Chosen. Turn away from winter. And tutored. Ord. Spring harris what i want you to hear. This easter morning not just with your ears but. With your heart. Justice april. Has so visibly. Come through and green. Here in washington this week. This year spring can be in your hearts. As well regardless. Of what you have lost. Of what you have stuff. How hard is caesar. You have endured. For that to happen. We like the earth in its orbit. Have some serious tilting. We have to decide. Turn toward life. Or the sun. Satisfaction. And grace. Archer ever find us. We cannot be passive. Andy murray. Daffodil. Or robin. Or willow tree. We have to engage our spears. Mobilize our internal strength. And do some work to reconnect and stay connected. The relationship. What's earth. And self. And other. Increation. That alone has the power. To save us. Let me say this just a little differently. We human beings were not made. Lead lives of isolation. Diminishment. Sorrow and fear. We were meant rather by our creator. Toledo bus line. Play drip. Buy relationships. Engagement. Enjoy. And if we are to fulfill our destiny. Does.. Destiny. We must do the spirit work. Cultivating and nurturing. Everyday relationship. Relationships would find us actively into the world. And open up to the great gift of life that is our natural inheritance. This is true when our lives are breezing along in summer like he's. And this is also true. Sometimes even more intensely so. When i arrive are struggling along in the middle of february. The daffodils and crocuses and robin. Have it easy. After winter. They just relax. Laibach. Do what comes. Naturally and everything. Comes up. Roses. We human beings. When we find ourselves buried in some harsh place. I've lost. Or diminishment. Need always always. To do some traveling. To do some spirit work. We need to decide in our hearts. Participate. In the resurrection we need to decide. Turn toward. The sun. Turn. Poured. One april towards the end of his long and useful life. Colleague of mine routine emser road. The poem this poem entitled. The arrival of spring. He wrote this. The time when he knew. His cancer was incurable and would soon take his low. Like all cures. With her does not end. And spring arrive by calendar or even with. There is neither day nor our you can say. Now is the moment the winter's gone. And we are safely in the spring. Oh you may pick an arbitrary sign. To say seasons change forsythia. Turns yellow furred. Grackle rusty gate swing daffodil blossom horsehair. From barbed wire but you'll know the sign doesn't really mean you're safely beyond the reach of cold. Or that it's time to plant the peas instead. The spring step gently. Softly. Each day you got to watch sharply. To be certain of the changes. And then. You have to remember how it was. This. Of any. Healing. When we experience any hard winter of loss or sorrow as we all eventually do. Spring always remains a possibility. It wants to come. But it will only come. If we choose. To participate. Is it's coming only if we bring it to birth. In here. We are human beings. Puma spring will and heart. To the life. Which beckons. Around us. All we have to do. Spring return. It's a turn. Toward the sun. Turn. Twerking. Open our hearts. Andy black. Lowe's.

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2890.mp3

Thank you. Morning. Mine is catherine. And i'm standing here today at senior high school. And have absolutely no idea how i made it. One reason i made it though i know is because of youth group. Second grade my family moved to bethesda from d.c.. Apparent sound of a rodenbeek and begin attending weekly i on the other hand did not make the commitment just yet. Experience this counterintuitive shift in my ability to get up. Sunday on sunday morning. The second grader the ease with which i woke up early was not met by the wheel to go to church. Every sunday with a fight between my parents and me to go to church. And i usually one. Once i had 7th grade though i experienced this. Counterintuitive shift again. Well it's most kids become teens getting off on weekends gets harder and harder. But i got older and became attained the physical act. Waking up. Did get harder but my will to get up and go to youth group increased and got easier. Experiencing owl senior high owl and other years of youth group i grew closer with my tears. And they all became my friends. I found a community that accepted me and that i respected and loved and still love today. Last night i actually got back from a college visit that reminded me of what every college has said. I've whatever called you said when asked. What is your biggest complaint about your school. Most tour guides answer that experience. That they experienced fomo or the fear of missing out. They're too many experiences and and too many activities and too little time. A very diplomatic answer but not without its merits. High school took me away from youth group a little dude academics and a job. But the more and the more sunday sundays in retreat i missed. The more i long to go back and be with everyone. Cliche. Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Despite my numerous absences when i returned it was as though no time had passed. Everyone welcome to me and my friends. And my friendships never faltered. The knowledge that i had an unwavering community brought me joy even in times of intense scholastic stress. In fact the absence of major turning even more rewarding it made me appreciate the little things about youth group like the people. The pillows. Uneven check-in. I used to not really care much for checking but as i went through high school and began to recognize the value it had for me. Upon further reflection i began to realize that check in with a way for me to take a step back for my hectic life and really look at how i was feeling at the end of the week. I found this weekly reflection allow me to appreciate the small victories. Even if somewhat worse than others even listening to the check-in of others gave me great joy. Even outside of youth group i felt and still feel an intense connection with the larger community here at river road. Fireworks for dwight that one sunday amplified this connection. That song take on more meaning for me but it also gave me such delights to honor dwight. And i cherish that experience. As hard as it is to say this. My time here has come to an end as they use in the youth group. It's time to move on and enter the real world if you want to call college the real world. On this journey i take everything i've learned from youth group with me the friendships the community the values. I'm so grateful for everyone here and for everything i have learned. And i would like to close this burning speech with a poem that my aunts friend wrote when she was staying with us i believe it summarizes my experience river wild river road quite well. I woke up today in a different place. A place i've never been a place i had never known. And i felt welcomed. I felt at home. It was not the place that welcomes name it is a people in this home. Wonderful and caring and i am blessed to be in their presence. Do they have welcomed me with open arms. It made me feel a part of them. It made me feel at home.

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2922.mp3

Religious experiences as such. At least the most important ones. They don't usually happen within sanctuary walls. What we do here provides the context for the real awakenings. For the moment when the chrysalis first dreams it might emerge to become a butterfly. Seldom dd transformations go who go down on sunday morning. It's where we begin it. This was very much the case for one of the greatest theologians of the 20th century charles hartshorne. Hartshorne is famous for what has come to be known as process theology. Holy is in the movement of things in the changing of things in the process that we're all caught up a open rather extending one profound static truth. It's what's happening not what happened that matters. That was hartshorn's big spiritual awakening is his aha moment when he dreamed that the darkness might not be forever and the moments when he saw that truth and really understood it for the first time happened on a day not so different from today bright and beautiful. I'm not gay. Whatever largely forgotten reason the theologian found himself mired in some brooding. Which was interrupted quite unceremoniously by a force even larger than all of his worries. Aspect my life that seems most discouraging when these gloomy reflections were interrupted. Hearing this. Suicide. Down into a goalie beneath him and what did he say. But a playground outside of the school where all the kids had just been let out on recess and what would you expect to hear in a moment such as that but. Somewhat shrill sound. I have children. I've heard such real sounds already today. Sounds of delight of laughter of children working out the ins-and-outs of their lives. All of it could not be a more stark contrast to the theologians lonely brooding. And maybe. That would just be nothing to most people. When i'm brooding other people are happy. But the hemet change this whole understanding of life. Never since then he wrote. Have i allowed myself to identify unless briefly the question is life good and beautiful with the question is my life good and beautiful right now. Family matters. Even to me. Is the wife of the whole the something that includes me outlast me and contains more good than i can distinctly imagine. Let's just take that first part. So obvious and yet so radical to allow himself to conflate the two questions is life good and beautiful. And my life good and beautiful right this minute. Because life is bigger than this moment. Because whatever we feel whatever we think we know whatever age is story we are in the middle of retelling that is a part of something so much larger than itself. And this is the blessing. I think. The season of light. As it bursts out of the cold tomb of winter just in the nick of time. Right before we become totally convinced. Whatever present darkness we know is indeed the way our story ends we are interrupted in our brooding by the shrill sounds of life itself. And everything changes. All over again. Just when we think we know. How the story ends. It takes a turn. The story that leads up to easter morning in the christian tradition is actually not a terribly unique one at all. In fact it is a terribly common story. Played out in one form or another all over the world and throughout history wherever empires and power structures come into contact with the agitating voices. At the margin. From golgotha to a ron to rwanda. The story of the powerful cracking down on the agitators is as old as the human condition. And one could be excused in the midst of that. For a bit of brood. Assuming it's even for a moment that this is just the way of things and that the ending of every story will be the same as the ending of so many stories that went before. Was killed by the roman empire for the crime of sedition. For being a rabble-rouser. He was silenced because he was making a mess for the people in charge. And he was contributing to the fact that the already saint governable providence province of judea was becoming even more out of control. And so. It took place alvin's of times before him and thousands of times after that roman empire neutralized the threat. Dominance asserted its power and if history of any kind is any judge that in fact should be the end of the story. And perhaps it might have been. Bernard great many sources outside of the christian scriptures themselves that give evidence of the life of the man but the greatest tadeo historian of all-time josephus. Does independently bear witness to his death. And that's it. Did the man ever lived. Is historically evident only by the fact that you died. The footnote. In josephus epic history of the jewish wars indicating the death of this man from galilee should have been the end of the story. Empire winds. The rabble-rousers are quieted once again the cold and the dark and the old old story of power cracking down on the singular voice of changed the brooding silence of the tomb that should have been it. But it wasn't. It isn't. And even as is the case for many of us we don't believe in literal resurrection there is new life here. Because the story doesn't stop where you expected to. Stop ten thousand times before incensed with the mighty silencing the week there is another chapter yet in this book and interruption of our brooding expectation. A larger context for this loss. A reminder that this moment no matter how dark no matter how cold no matter how early expected it might be is not the end of the story but a part of it. I'm in the ongoing story of easter morning. When the stone is rolled wade and jesse's denied its permanent victory for once the rabble-rouser winds and the empires of the mighty lose for once the victim is the victor and the power of an individual righteous indignation dominates even the greatest authorities of the world. Even the empires that would in time be built around the stories and mythology of jesus. Have had their own easter mornings. The shocking moments windows they have silence. We're speaking still. Plenty of reasons to brewed in this world. And worse than brewed i think. Stories being told right now that have repeated themselves over and over again through the course of time and history there are empires and egomaniacs working the same old angles they have always worked. What comes of a story that begins that way. Nothing good. If history and common sense are measures of possibility. Easter morning is a time of miracles. When possibilities aren't confined to history and common sense when the story doesn't have to end the way it always has when this moment no matter what it holds isn't the single moment by which we can judge the possibility of the future. Rather. Has the theologian understood when he heard the shrill voices of the children laughing. Oliver brooding. It's caught up in a process that is bigger than itself. The moment of our loss and our fear is only a part of the ongoing dialectic of time and meaning. Mlife. My colleague tom shade wrote that this thing were caught up in. It keeps going on. Of empires and rabble-rousers he says oppression breeds resistance resistance inspired solidarity solidarity creates unity unity engenders hope and hope transcends all cruelty and death. Making them not individual defeats. But redeemable sacrifices. Now that. That is a resurrection. And not one limited to ancient times. 2000 years later. We're still telling the story of an empty tomb. And we're doing that not because we necessarily believe in the heavenly hosts but because we believe that the story isn't finished not even now not ever because even today all over the world the stone rolls away from the places where the mighty have dominated the week and there is no death there. But another chapter. In the book of life. Just in the nick of time. Everything changes. And what we thought we knew. The brood and we thought was the only truth. It's only one piece of the great. Spansive. Happy easter. The story. Goes on.

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2893.mp3

Hello my name is junior. I tried to think of one moment of joy that sums up my youtube experience. One moment that stood out among the rest i can't really show how much it all meant to me. But i couldn't. The problem was there was too many. Too many last enjoys and tons of pure happiness. I remember dancing in the kitchen my freshman year at the winter retreat blasting music. None of us cared that we couldn't cancel it all. Because you were family many people our age grunt. I remember sitting in the youth group. Do you throw talking about social justice and realizing that is something i care so deeply about. I never playing 50 in the trees i'm parked outside and all just being together. I remember the overnight. Staying up late and learning about each other. Delete attack the fundraiser the retreat. All of it made me who i am. People always describe every road at the community but to me it's more than that. It's a pillar a constant throughout my life. I first came here when i was 32 it raised me taught me how to do. It helped me acceptance and tolerance and love. Actually, nothing came out with you without it. Even to the time to my life that where the heart is. Martha struggles death and stress. For me. It didn't matter whether is owl or coming-of-age or high school youth group. People are constantly there who cares. I always knew the time would come when i had to leave. What high school did not last forever and that i woodbridge. I seen so far away. Unreachable idea. But now i'm here i don't know how to comprehend that i've grown up. Actually made it to this point in my life. Every part of me is terrified and so incredibly sad to leave this place. This helmet mine. But i'm so thankful for all the joy and has given me for everything is done. I know that you still love me will continue on to learn and grow and have so many more time to happiness. They will discover who they are and one day to bridge. Leaving this place and he's amazing people of the hardest things i've ever had to do. But i know that i'll always carry everything i've learned in the memories games for the rest of my life. Amazing to me that this group of teens. Found a desire to be with one another instead of the world and practice our spirituality. Could be so moving and so powerful it can change so much. joy.

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366.mp3

As i found myself writing this sermon i was writing 10-10-10 often. And i asked everyone in the office if they knew of any significance. Have this number because i'm not too much into that kind of stuff. But i realized it would happen only once every hundred years. When i shared that one of the staff members said well. I guess we'll miss the next one won't we. It was mentioned that bill mckibben is leading the 5 to 3:50. org environmental work party. N7014 events in 188 countries today. Someone thought it might be. The mayans prediction that the world come to an end on this day. But they couldn't find any evidence of that. Did have a few things to say one of three things they said what happened today. A most splendid events would happen on this day. But there was no scientific evidence. To guarantee that. Or two. Nothing would happen today. Something terrible would happen today but of course there was no scientific evidence for that either. So i must conclude that 10-10-10 is a splendidly ordinary and yet sacred day on this beautiful october morning. There was an another ordinary and yet sacred day many years ago. When i worked at the first universalist church in minneapolis. It was a beautiful sunday afternoon in the first. Father's day after my father had died. I had invited anyone in the church. Who would lost their father that year to come over to my house in the afternoon for some wine and cheese and just. Share stories about our father. I was looking forward to sharing all these wonderful stories about my father who was so remarkable that in high school people wanted to rent him because he was such a great dad. Well the first person who shared. Father. Had committed suicide. And the second person who shared. Do that his father had abandoned them when he was a child. And the third person. That her father had been abusive. What was i supposed to say. I got this wonderful story i want to tell you now. So i didn't say anything about my father by began to just ask more questions. To help these people remember more. Then those first facts about their father. And they do have some good memories. Then help them let go of some of that pain they began with. And i. I finally acknowledged how blessed i had been. To have my father. The people sitting on my deck in the backyard where my people. I had planned events with them created meals with them lead workshops with them we were so much alike in so many ways. And yet. We were different. We had different experiences. All our similar experiences. We're connected with being active. In the unitarian universalist congregation. And just being human being. We all know differences are more than red why. Black brown or yellow. There are differences. Don't. Skin color differences are easy to identify. Some of our differences are not so immediately obvious. At least not to most of us. Most of the time. Another non-church event helped me recognized. Again years ago. I was putting hanging clothes on a rack in the junior league thrift shop. Some of my friends were staffing the checkout counter. I overheard them talking about their concerns. Over. Personal. Cash flow. And then the conversation led to investment choice. At their age should they be investing is very sick. Security bill or more risky mutual funds with a higher rate of return we're just picking out some good stocks. I looked around the thrift shop and realize there were people shopping who might never have had any of these problems. And i went up to the women at the cash register and i said. You know. I think your conversation would be better shared in the back room. You're probably right they said. And they change their topic and started talking about their kids. Sherry register in our reading this morning realized that she had left her meat-packing family. I'm went on to college and graduate school and she was creating differences that would be hard to bridge. She felt education of ally she had chosen distanced herself from her family. Yet. The road a book. To bring that inherent worth and dignity have her family and the people of their lives. To the whole world. She reminded us that even if we are privileged. We need only go back one or two generations. To be part of families. Far fewer privilege. How we are alike. Indifferent. And how that differences. Those differences in the life influence our interaction with each other came to my mind through these stories. And more as i planned and then listen to comments. About our annual water ceremony the september. For those of you unfamiliar with the water ceremony. Usually just before our fall season begins we invite people in the congregation to bring water from their summer. Anytime over the last year to share with us as we gather for the fall season. Over the years people have gotten into the habit of planning to bring water back. From vacation sites. Or some other meaningful events in their lives. Historically we've invited people to come forth with the water identify the origin of their water and bless the waters. The memories these waters bra. Many recognize this. As a returning from the summer to our routine religious community life. And sometimes a sharing of their li. 4 years. I have listened to ministers and religious educators talk about the water ceremonies they lead. And often the questions and concerns. About how non-inclusive and classes the ceremonies. Can involve into evolve into. You haven't been able to go on a vacation. But how does it feel to others to be announcing all the wonderful places. Someone has been this summer. One minister told me of a story when two people came up to her after the water ceremony and ask. Where the water was. Could they still add water to the large bowl. Holding all the water. They had not gone on vacation that year but they had saved two vials of water. For the ceremony. They had wanted to share but decided not to identify themselves publicly. And doing it silently wasn't enough. One was filled with tears they had literally saved. Wonder woman's mother had died. The other was filled with water from the table in her hospital room. When she had had her breast removed. Some ministers told how they invite everyone to say aloud at the same time where their water came from. And then pour it in together. I recalled in the past. How some proudly said their water came from the backyard hose or the kitchen water faucet. And then i remembered my four-year-old grandson as he was running to the ocean to collect water for the water ceremony and planning to say. From the ocean at the beach. We came up to pour the water into the large bowl. And i truly pondered about how to lead that water ceremony. I changed my mind several times as i was riding. Unfortunately. When i decided to invite people to silently. Call up the memories of their water. For silently into the common bowl i didn't let anybody know. Ahead of time of my plan. No one had a chance to adjust their expectations for the morning. After the service on the water ceremony. Some more delighted. They like the spiritual, the moment. And watching intentionally why people poured what meaningful water into a common bowl with music behind. One remember called me congratulating me on doing the service in silence. Did not come to the service because she didn't want what she called the bragging session that usually occurred. You heard about the silent service from france. Others. Others were sad and disappointed. They had wanted to share a here. Others share. A bit of their lives. It was blue for their sense of community. And that was lost. Without being able to identify the sources of the water. Something had been taken away from their sense of gathering. From their sense of wanting to be who they were. And share that with others. And all this. Carried me into wondering how many ways we at river road. Have meaningful activities. That can exclude or make others uncomfortable. Because we are not all alike. And what is it we need to retain. In order to feel like this is the place. We can be who we are. Membership committees often asked questions as they work on being more welcoming. And improving our hospitality. Religious education committees reflex concerning how welcome we are two families. I'm single people. How can we be welcoming to that active middle schooler. We have people at river road. With fast financial resource. And some living on social security. How can we prevent scholarships for events in the church. Like the partner fest. For the minority scholarship dinner or the latin fiesta that carry the same kind of respect. Is college scholarships. To get into universities. That was just exist for these events. Just ask me for one. But people rarely ask. And when i do they're most often somehow apologizing for not having enough money to go. How can we somehow impart. Does the amount of your pledge to the congregations operating budget budget. Is appreciated at whatever level of giving you can manage. Because it is your act of contributing and committing. That makes us whole. In that same light. Why can't we celebrate a large financial gift to this congregation. With the same kind of public delight. That we do when we receive large gifts of time or energy. Do you remember. Anytime you have felt different. At river road. Do you remember a time when you realized you were the old person in the room. The only person. That was not married or partner. Or sometimes even divorced. The only person without children or the only person with children. The only person who couldn't drink alcohol. The only person who doesn't drive and who needs a ride home. Should we announce or print the names of the colleges are high school seniors have been accepted in when we know some didn't get into the schools they wanted. And some couldn't afford the school. Invited them. And some aren't going to school at all. And still we know our students worked so hard to get into those colleges. Surely we can somehow find some way to celebrate with them. How do we celebrate our people and their lives value in both the ordinary. And the extraordinary. I remember telling my daughter if you have to diminish yourself in a relationship. To be in that relationship. It isn't a healthy. Relationship. How do we invite out how do we value the inherent worth and dignity of all. Even ourselves. How do we value and support the person who just saved the economy of hungry and the mother who just quit her job. So she could spend more time with her children. The fact of the matter is. We do it all the time. We do it with our family and our friends and we do it better sometimes than others. Because our cultural stereotypes and custom. Constantly invade our ability to be different and together. Just look at this greater world we live in. Our relations often get tattered and torn and we clipped and we stitch them back together and slightly different forms. We do it best. When we know. Each other. I would like to invite. Everyone in the coffee hour this morning. Is there at least. Picture with at least two people. Where you grew up. Where did you come from. We need to know each other more. Pick up your coffee cup your teacup of your glass of juice and water. Go to someone and say tell me something about where you grew up. If we did that for just five minutes. Every sunday. By the end of the year. Each of us. Would have talked with people for 4 hours and 20 minutes. About where people in the congregation came from. And we would know more about each other. All those pieces. Of the quilt behind me. Are not the same. They're not the same color. The same size. Or the same texture. But they are all essential in order to create that quilt. They have all been given space within the whole. If we rearrange them. It would be a different quilt. Let me tell you a little bit about this quilt. It was created by betsy toby rate. Who was born in 1802. And by ida estelle paul for nerd who was born in 1855. This quilt was given to marry estelle ellenwood. On her 13th birthday. On march 25th 1902. Mary. Was betsy rates great. Great-granddaughter. And get this. The first choir director of river road unitarian church. Almost 100 years later. It was given to river road by florence bentz tantrum and mary scamman. It is made up of pieces that have been tattered and torn and stitched back together again. Just like all our lives. To really appreciate it we need. To look at it. We need to pay attention. To learn more about how we can be different and yet be a part of this remarkable community we also. Need to pay attention. We need to make spaces. For other pieces of this community we need to rearrange our lives ourselves. To recreate ourselves from time to time. Audre lorde's houses. We can't know each other. Until we know our differences. As well as our similarities. And when we have created howard space from many of those differences. For a moment. At least for the moment. We can say to each other. Looking good. Looking good. Looking good. Let's have a moment of reflect.

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93.mp3

How many viewing. How many people travel through new england at some point in your life and visited or least driven pass. Some of those wonderful old historic white clapboard churches in new england that's in the town square. Universal has buildings. England. Most especially in massachusetts. Many of those simple and elegant white clapboard churches with sit on the town square sometimes surrounded by. Ancient tombstone. Unitarian universalist. Most of these proud congregations date back to the 18th and 19th centuries. When unitarianism. And universalism. Drive under the influence of both the transcendentalist thinkers. And liberal enlightenment thinking. From europe. Although the theology. And social outlook tots in these historic buildings of ours. Were enlightened and optimistic and liberal. Several practical aspects of congregational life at that time. We're a little less. Shall we say warm and fuzzy. For starters almost all of those old meeting houses. In which those hardy new englanders gathered for worship where it may surprise you to learn. Totally unheated. In winter and the only cooling in the summer. Was it the windows could be opened. In the early days of our movement then there were there was more often than not. Not so much as a simple wood stove anywhere in the building. And so in the coldest. Months of winter by the way that's why the ministers were wore the robes and the brightly-coloured thing of it like a scarf. That's why we wore those investments to stay warm. In the coldest months of winter. Those attending sunday services in new england often face temperatures. That were indistinguishable. From that which was outside. All heard about how tough and stoic on new england new englanders are reputed to be. Perhaps they came by this naturally from having to endure thing. Like unheated churches in the winter. I found this description that true description in a congregational history. Last week about one of our new england churches. Men attending church. We're still bundled and wrapped with scarves they could barely walk. Warrap 27 petticoats. Benny soliven cape sandlin gloves. The more wealthy history said the more wealthy had servants. To carry their foot warmers made of iron. That held live call. Heated brick. Wrapped in blankets from home to supply warm. And then this settings. Three women had fat poodle. Brought to church as their foot warmers. And then the history conclude decide you can't make this stuff up. This history reported. Several women caught cold and died from chills. Play talk. In church. Well i really don't think a lot of our parishioners. Died of cold from the experience of unheated churches but. Church in new england in the early days was not a warm and cozy experience to say the least. Melon partial remedy the situation as the brief. History i just read you. Individual families again all bundled up. What bring the church a contraption called a foot warmer and i have one for you to look at this morning. Barbara lewis. In florida. But i am moving to florida so i won't need a foot warmer. In fact i'll need an air conditioner. The way the thing worked again if your family would place calls from their home in a car. The hearts the new england in the winter when 24/7. Put on sunday morning go to one of their many fireplaces in the home. They got some hot cold and bring this. The church. Many of the pews in these early churches if you've been in them are what they call box fuse. Surrounded by a little 3 foot high wood wall and each family had their own box pew. So when you brought your foot warmer your little private foot warmer in your little private pew you could can it create a toasty little environment. Also another aspect of these the ring on churches is that. You may not know but to attend church in those days you really had to buy up a few you had to pay yearly dues. As many synagogues today do for the high holy days. In new england all the churches presbyterian lutheran methodist anglican catholic they all fold. What the church i served out of seminary. The first church of houlton maine was formed in 1811 and it was difficult. The 1974 they're on the back wall was the map. Of the pews and which family paid for which pew the frisbees who were the richest family they had the good seating in front. The archibald in the campbells in the holden and the putnam. In the putnam. And the putnam. And those were usually spelled out by first name. Family had to pay. Off of yearly subscription. When i got there in 1970 for some of those historic families. Still. Sat in the same place even though few dudes were given up around the turn of the 20th. Century. And believe me if anyone dared sit in the archibald pew by mistake an early newcomer. Mr. archibald would go up there and say your. You're in the wrong. So these habits last a long time. So early in the early american church then. There was neither a gala tarianism nor warmth. When it came to attending church it was literally every family for itself. As my colleague chris rabil puts it. Once one was seated with one's family in one's own pew. With the door closed. One could be rather cozy. Especially if you had a foot warmer full of life call to radiate the teeth into the enclosed space. And if one were warm. One-pot very little of the possible cold of others. And some other part of the church. Unquote. And those early new englanders surrendered their individual individualistic stern. Puritanical traditions reluctantly let me tell you a fascinating story. About what happens in the first. Parish church of row massachusetts. Which to this day is the unitarian universalist congregation. In the year 1787. In the year 1787. The church called is second minister the reverend. Persevered smith. What a great name for a minister none of us ever have to persevere persevere smith was his name. In any case. Reverend smith like so many of the clergy of the. was being slowly persuaded. To the unitarian position. Which man said he came to theologically reject. The prevailing calvinistic doctrine of the trinity father. Son and holy ghost. And preferred instead to see god as one. Central hall of creation. Spirit in creation. A singular. Spirit which was. Unitarian. Opposition. Now all over new england. During what is now called by religious historians the great's unitarian controversy. The congregational churches split. They either went unitarian. Or trinitarian. And. With the unitarians and trinitarians fighting of course over who would get the building. Not to mention the hearts in the minds of the town i usually. If the minister declared himself a unitarian. The congregation would usually follow that minister and the trinitarian. Resign from the church. March across the town square and build their own white clapboard church glowering back at the unitarian. If the minister was a trinitarian. And the unitarian had to take their marbles and go across the town square.. The church would devour back at the trinitarian and so it was all over new england in a brief period early in the nineteenth. In any case. Back to the church in row. In 1821 during the great unitarian controversy persevered smith. Declared himself a unitarian which limit has surprised me you've been preaching there for 34 years. Better than expressing is unitarian views. This declaration as controversial and divisive as it wasn't many towns in massachusetts. Did not cause a ripple in all in row. The entire congregation became unitarian there was no split. No division over his leadership but. Just two years later. In 1823 the church did split. Not over theology but over technology. It seems that some radical philandro suggested they put a furnace. In the building. So the foot warmers would no longer be necessary on all the attendance regardless of their social standing. Would find the church warm and welcoming. Have chris rabil tells the story. The proposal intro was adopted. The church installed a stove. The number of members were so upset that they withdrew in outrage. Move down the street and built another unheated church. Slipknot over the centrality of theology. But over the centrality of the heating system for god's sake. Why am i telling you this quaint. Curious and certainly minor historical tale. About the nineteenth-century schism at the first. Parish in row. Well. Is all you need reminders today is stewardship sunday. It is my task gladly i think for the gladly now for the last time as your senior minister this year. To encourage you to pledge and pledge generously. To this conjugations operating budget. As you moving this all-important transition. Was going to be very important to have a healthy budget. To attract the right kind of interim minister and then two years after to get the right settled minister for your future. I believe as you ponder your commitment to this wonderful congregation. Your partner your emotional commitment and. As steve said your treasure your financial commitment. This image of foot warmers. Applies. It applies. Love of course on a technological level at least we're already a furnace church. You be on harry radcliffe and don cherry ann and andy taylor have been down there been a very uninviting room. Just below here there's a state-of-the-art computer driven highly efficient. The point of the report in as a result of our renovation project a couple years ago. It really is a technological marvel. And it produces incredible amount of hot water every sunday. Throughout the building. To keep us warm now we have had over the years of my 12 years here a few sundays where. The whole region was out of power because of an ice storm. Or other problems and so we have on occasion. Had a very. Chile experience when. One of these would have been a helpful accoutrement. But generally speaking. We have a furnace. We keep the place warm. And welcoming. For also what i'm talking about a foot warmer congregation. Versus the furnace i have a course not speaking literally about our heating system. I'm speaking figuratively. Talking about how committed we are. To the whole. Warmth and energy. Jabara congregation. I pray that when our stewardship campaign is completed a few weeks from now. We will not prove ourselves a foot warmer congregation. A foot warmer congregation. To use the metaphor a little further. Is the church with no shared broadvision. A foot warmer current location. Is one where the people bring just enough fuel just enough coal for their own needs. Just enough to cover their own attendance and maybe their own personal needs and the needs of their children. With no passion. For the larger corporate possibilities. Of what this community might yet become. I have heard people from this congregation say while i'm. I'm here just for the music car well i'm here just. For the social justice circle i'm here just for my kids sunday school. And what i read in that is. My commitment is minimal. I'm going to take the music or take the re or take the. The social justice work and i'm just going to. Give to the atom and nothing more i'm not going to be a furnace kind of thinker i'm going to be a foot warmer. Kind of thinker a furnace. Hazardous heart. A great shared engine. Furnace of commitment and vision and purpose and faith. A real commitment to to what we can do together when we're not just looking out for ourselves not boxing ourselves into our own program or our own box fuse. But really looking out. For the whole. Of course. Emerging us to be not a foot warmer convocation. But a furnace. Simple metaphor. With a very. Obvious point but really. Nevermind. metaphor the real furnace. All the church. Is always. The faith. That drives. In our case. How are unitarian. Universalist faith. The flights are flashing. Our principals our dream. For the human family which animates. And informing instruct hopefully everything we do here. It is our faith. Which is the furnace. Of everything we do. Both for ourselves. Very needy community that lies beyond these warm. Inviting. Wall. It's our job here to live out and serve our unitarian universalist. And we do that not just on sunday. This place is a 24/7 institution. As i look around unitarian-universalism and i've been visiting many congregations over the last few weeks. I can tell you that we are one of the most active and engaged congregations. In our entire faith we do an awful lot. And in this building is used. Credibly. Hard and well. Because we find so many purposes to come here. + 2. Begin to live our faith out. Here. In this good place we are. Church. With furnace programming. Edwards furnace. Expectations. We have these expectations for ourselves. And for the institution. We are a church. With furnace people. And furnace programming and expectations and i must tell you. We have a lot of foot warmer giving. Some. Who can give more simply. Because they're thinking. Frankly like 19th century fox. I'm just going to take what i need i'm just going to give. A little bit. That's what we're thinking now look. Does your ever kindly and every gentleman after i would never resort to scolding or guilt. But. If that if that will help you a little bit this week. A little tiny bit this morning. Ask you to substantially raise your pledge if you know you're a foot warming giver you know you're not giving. Is generously as you can. He said last night that. Because of modern technology you can go back online and you can up your pledge and diana chimes and the office will figure it out. You can re-up your pledge and that's what i'm hoping. A lot of us will do. Will move past this thinking about pew subscription. And little box fuse. The really. Really make a furnace pledge. And. Serve our whole movement and everything that we can given what this mean. Is it you're not giving a quarter percent. Of your income or half a percent. But you're giving 2% or. 3% or 4% or 5%. Of everything you make that. Waterfurnace pledges. I personally have been pledging 5% of everything i make to this congregation. For the 12 years i've been here that's a furnace pledge. And i like a challenge and we have many people here who give at that level. And i we realizing mabhilidi very clear. Of course some of you are in a financial place. Where you can't make a large pledge. But that doesn't mean you can't make a furnace play. For some people hundred dollars. Is a friend of pledge i'm not talkin about him out here. If you can't give much if you were living in very fixed circumstances do not feel i'm. Harassing harassing you about that that's not what we're talkin about this morning. We are talking about. Giving generously from what we have at all differently. That's a very important. Appointed make i just want to highlight. Some of the goals for this year which steve has not yet mentioned. We have. Four goals. First. Is to give our staff. 3% cost-of-living raise this year. Some of you do not know that you're wonderful staff sherry and andy and ceridwen and beth and all the rest the janitors who work so hard. We were still receive no increase last year they all lost ground in their personal income. And we need to rectify that this year and give our wonderful staff thing i'm not going to be a part of that receiving a salary. It's not for me it's for all of them. Secondly. This last year we did not pay. Our full fair share to our denomination. A year ago we we manage that the last two pay our full fair share but this year we are budgeting only have. We will not fulfill our obligation to our broader movement. And all the good work that they do chalk you know your board of trustee member. We river road should be embarrassed that we're only are only able to do half this year. If we have furnace giving we're going to pay our fair share to the un that's very important. The 3rd. It to eliminate our deficit. We took out a new mortgage last year. The pay for that wonderful new building that mortgage is almost $100,000 a year it's a brand-new cost to us. For being a congregation. And we are running a deficit. Which we anticipated. As we work our way into paying our mortgage we want to eliminate. That deficit. And the last thing we have a wish list of items that will help us. Do our job better here new kitchen equipment. Obama paid volunteer coordinator part-time. For religious i'm sorry about your coordinator. Laferrari. And a few more staff hours for communication and outreach which cherry blanchette. What direct. Now whether or not our church will become the best. Most effective communication that can be. Is utterly dependent. On each of your decisions about how generous. And i'll committed you are. Whether you're going to give it a foot warmer level or a furnace level. It really is the future of the congregation. Which depends finances aren't everything. But there's something. You know money won't make you happy but it doesn't hurt either. And that's the same for congregation. As well. As it is for individual so. I'm here to tell you this morning. But the 19th century. Is dead and buried. It's gone. This is a lovely antique. We can't afford. The live in a foot warmer culture anymore. We need to be a furnace organization. And give generously so that we can do our business here. For ourselves and for the humanity humanity would so needs. Are unitarian. Universal is. I guarantee you. Did you make a furnace pledge you will never regret. This investment. Fort makes all things possible. And i saying mean to you. Amman.

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233.mp3

I've spoken at something like 50 other. Uu congregation silver they've been a years. And them. This is always the best place to be. On sunday morning otherwise. The late rev dr forest church longtime minister of all souls unitarian new york city. Was a brilliant man and the most famous and influential uu minister of our time. He wrote or edited more than 20 books. And was in great demand as a speaker. Like his father the late senator frank church. Hadley forest died young. At age 61. Less than a year ago. After a long battle with cancer. He left behind a congregation that more than tripled in membership during his 30-year tenure. As well as his. 20 books. 20 +. 2223. As i mentioned in announcing the sermon at age 15. Forrest accompanied his father to this congregation in 1963. When senator church was invited by his neighbor brad patterson. Speak on the sunday following president kennedy's assassination. This building was not yet built. And the congregation was meeting in the radnor school. I don't know what that visit had any effect on forests later decision to become a uu minister. I hope it did. In which case. We can claim to have played an important role. In the life of the most influential. Uu minister of our time. In one of his last books. Forest road that his mantra was this. Want what you have. Do. What you can. Who you are. I like that very much because if we can follow these. Simple recommendations. Our lives will be fuller. Happier. And more productive. They are in fact so simple that some might say it's even tried to talk about them. How to use it as a mantra and yet. Like so many simple things. There's a great deal of profundity involve let's look at each of them one at a time i'm going to switch the order a little bit. For my own purposes and yours too i hope. First of all want what you have. Sounds easy. But how many of us have trouble doing that. In our consumption oriented culture where we are bombarded by tv commercials telling us that we can be happier if we buy this or that product. It is often hard to be satisfied with what we have. We want more. They want better. Do you want newer and bigger. We get tired of driving our five-year-old car and even though it still runs well. We want a newer car with. All the latest bells and whistles. Or our computer seems to be getting slower. Would like a new one that is faster if or has more memory for both. Or maybe it's new clothes. Or maybe a larger house. Is barb and i were driving here again today we found we we discovered yet another mcmansion going up on one of the small lots. I don't know one of the side streets. Pepe come by. On and on. We may even get tired of our spouse. Have 10 or 12 or 15 years and think about finding another. That too has been known to happen. I love the children's story about the little boy who wanted to have duck feet. He wants feet like a duck so we can walk in puddles of water. Without his mother scolding him. Without getting his feet and shoes. The end up. His socks wet. I'm so he would not have to wear shoes. Or socks. Never again. Magically his wishes fulfilled and he has a wonderful time with this new ducks eat. For a while at least. But after a while he soon finds that having ducks he has way too many problems and he longs to have his own feedback. Got a little cold in the snow. Next wishes next wish brother was. For a tail like a monkey. That also is granted. And with the same result first a great deal of pleasure and he would swing from branch to branch from the tree but. Then he found it wasn't such a great thing after all when he tried to sit down or. He's doing so far. U-pull-it sale. This goes on for several more wishes and each time. Sooner or later. Tires of the novelty and wants to return to being his own self. At the end of the book. Is back to being his normal little boy self again. And he is very happy. Great story for children. Good one for a doll. Like that little boy most of us would find it if we got everything we think we want. It would not bring happiness. Brother. Rather than spending a lot of time and energy wanting things we don't have we will be happier if we follow forest church is advice. And be grateful for what we do have. Always wanting something else. Is after all a symptom of a person who is dissatisfied and unhappy. And that is very sad. Be who you are. This is a hard one for some of us. Because we may not be entirely happy with who we are. I'm thinking what i call the if only syndrome if only i'd been a lawyer instead of an accountant. If only i'd done a doctor instead of an engineer. 20 i'd taken the job with xyz company instead of working for the government. Only i had married chris instead of jerry. These are things about ourselves that each of us. There are things about ourselves and each of us does not like. That we regret. And that we wish were different. If you were granted one wish to come true. I want to ask a friend of mine who was short of stature what would you wish for it to be tall was his immediate reply. He'll be important to be able to accept ourselves as we are tall or short. Good-looking or not so good-looking. Wealthy or not. Young or old. Smart or not so smart. How sad it is when a person beats up on him or herself for not being rich. For not being handsome or beautiful not being famous not being powerful. Many aspects of who we are were not things we chose. Over which we had control. Twin park accepting ourselves means accepting what life has given us. Rather than beating up on ourselves for what. We are not. And could not be. However self-acceptance does not mean complacency. Does not mean self-satisfaction and therefore an unwillingness to grow. It means accepting those things about ourselves that we cannot change. A the prayer that goes crap me the strength to accept the things i cannot change. To change the things i cannot accept. And the wisdom. The know the difference. That is very good advice. Ironically it is only when we accept ourselves as we are that we do begin to grow. That we do begin to pursue. Newest things that we. Would like to be able to do in person that we would like to be. It is not an either-or. It is simply the basis. Kelly ripa. Accepting ourselves as we are. Is the bassist. For a gross. An improvement. And for challenging ourselves. To be better. Able to accept ourselves as we are we must also know ourselves. Know who we are and who we are not. The delphic motto know thyself is just as important today. Is it was an ancient greece. Let me confess to you a secret passion i've had for many many years. I love classical music. Play enjoyed. Playing 25, former clarinetist many many many years ago i never played as well as you. And sometimes i wish that i could have been an orchestra conductor. A composer but i laugh. I did not have the gift that would have made that possible. It is important to know who we are. And what we can br can do. Most of us do not have whatever it takes to become rich or famous or powerful. Side sometimes becoming rich or famous or powerful involves hurting other people in the process. And does not necessarily bring happiness. And satisfaction. We cannot be those things but we can be who we are. We can be a person of integrity. Person who cares about others. And the person who does little buddy important things that help others. We can be good mothers and fathers. The children of aging parents. Good neighbors. Be who you are. I did not become an orchestra conductor as you know. Instead i became a minister and a teacher and i'm very glad that i did. Implied inductor churches mantra is the idea that we should be grateful. For what we have and for who we are. I'm convinced the gratitude is one of the most important qualities any of us can have. On my desk sits a small framed card. It reads just to be. Is a blessing. Just to live. Is holy. I see it everyday and it reminds me. To be grateful. Perhaps no attitude is more important than mental health into a sense of joy and living. Ingratitude. William james once said that the greatest discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives. By altering their attitudes of mind. And the attitude of gratitude. Is life dance for me. Gratitude is a basic state of mind transforms us from life as a curse. Do experiencing life is a blessing. From being whiners and complainers to being joyful and happy. Form regarding life is dull and boring. To experiencing it. Exciting and wonderful meaning both terrific and full of wonder. And it transforms us from being spiritually dead. To be spiritually alive and vital. Thirty-some years ago founded american men in particular. Found gratitude to be. Discomforting and humiliating. Prep the reason is that gratitude recognizes the fact that we are not entirely the authors of our own destiny at least some of our good fortune. Two others. And prepped luck. Men it seems. Don't like to admit. That they are dependent on. I guess. Dependent on anyone else or anything. That is sad because gratitude leads to and is the basis for much joy in life. Show me a thankful person and i will show you a happy person. Person who experiences life. As. Gratitude is the fundamental outlook on life leads to the capacity to find joy in little things. The vibrant colors of the leaves in the fall. The lilting sounds of birds singing daybreak. Ocean waves breaking on the beach. The child irrepressible laughter. The company of dear friends. It means you awake each morning glad to be alive and thankful for another day and the opportunity it brings. I'm going to betty tonight. Grateful for the experiences of that day. The great medieval mystic meister eckhart once said if you can manage only one prayer. And your life. And it is simply thanks. It will be sufficient. When you're on this loss or adversity of any kind strike acne-free difficult. To say thanks. It's sometimes these things to our blessings in disguise a former neighbor of ours. Had a serious heart attack when he was in his early forties. Happy he recovered he expressed gratitude for it. Saying it was the best thing that ever happened to him. It told me he said that i needed to change my life from being an intense. Type a personality. To someone who can relax. And take things in stride. And spend more time with my family. I'm a better person. For it. Course he could have taken the opposite approach and curses bad luck and having a serious health problem. Often it is not what happens to us but how we interpret. What happened. That makes the difference. It is not always possible or even desirable to be thankful for adversity. The grateful heart neither denied nor overlooks the tragic. Dimension. Of human. Since i still grieve. Ginger slaw. Only daughter. I don't see anything to be thankful for. And i lost. Although wonderful life that she lived. We can be thankful for her 33 years. Yep. In spite of suffering misery unfairness injustice and death. It is still possible. To affirm that life is good and worth living. And that it is a blessing. To be alive. Gratitude is also good therapy. When i'm feeling blue or disappointed or frustrated i find it if i take a few minutes to think about all the things and they are many. For which i'm grateful. My mood changes. The helpful exercises to. Write down each day or perhaps each week the many things for which you are grateful. People who do that find their lives changing for the better. The grateful person is also a generous person. A caring and mentally helpful person well on the way to flourishing. To becoming more fully human. It has been said that religion begins with thanksgiving. And ends in service. And we are truly grateful. We want to share our good fortune with others. Martin luther said all ethics rather is all gratitude. Ethics is all got it i think he had something. Just to be. Is a blessing just to live. Is holy. Finally. Dowhatyoucan. Are many things i would like to do if i could. Things like the congress to pass through the universal healthcare like barb and i experienced in canada when we live there. I'd like to be able to get the israelis and palestinians together to resolve their differences. I'd like to abolish corporate money flowing into elections. Supreme court notwithstanding. I'd like to have your dates well so i could donate billions of dollars to efforts to make life better for thousands of people. I'd like to abolish prejudice and discrimination and poverty and hunger and homelessness and on and on and so would you. But we can't do these things. Let me know we can't. If we can work on them with other people. And with organizations dedicated. To those goals. We can give money to such organizations even if it is only a small percentage of what we wish we could get. Do what. You can. Many of you will know the story of the rabbi who said that on the day of judgement god would not ask him why he did not do what moses or king david or one of the great prophets did. He would just ask him why he didn't do what he could have done. In 100 little. Dowhatyoucan. Maybe it seems to you like you can't do very much. Timberwood margaret mead said about that. Let me quote it's a small group of thoughtful people could change the world indeed it's the only thing that ever has. I love you had that experience look at what those of you who worked against torture were able to accomplish. You helped to bring it into one of the most heinous and illegal things this country has ever done. Others have you had work in other areas. Refugees from el salvador. Housing. Beacon house and salon. Tripping wonderful things that have come from this congregation. I with the help of this congregation morgan m right. A small group of thoughtful people. Can. Change the world. There is much we can do. Each of us has gifts that we can use to make the world a better place. From the personal to the professional to the public sphere. It is not necessary to become famous or to change the whole world to make a significant contribution each of us confined waze. To ease someone else's burden. We can find ways to give encouragement. To another. We can join movements working to make some aspect of the world better. There are many ways we can help make life better. More beautiful. Or just. More livable. And more truly human. For tall people. Dowhatyoucan. Not with president obama can not with martin luther king did not what bill late to bill gates can do what you can do. And maybe one only you. Can do. As i said earlier sometimes the simplest things are the most profound. List of the mantra from forest church is simple. But profound. So i suggest. We all might. Consider. Adopting it. For throat. In each of our lives. Not only will some rain for that. The fires will burn. The ground will shake. And one day. Life will be extracted in payment for the gift of life bestowed. By wanting what we have. Doing what they can. And being who we are. Arkup will forever be. 4:30. Not. Half-empty. And. We will live. Picture. Fuller. More satisfying.

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4321.mp3

It's so wonderful to be back in this pulpit to hear the choir again. Where i spent the place where i spent a fabulous internship year from 2007 to 2008. Is a long time ago now. I was realizing as i was writing this i remember the 2007-2008 part but i hadn't realized how long ago that was. I guess i've reached the age where chunks of years fly by and it's only the appearance of other people's children that makes me realize how long it's been. Does my children and family make no difference with her. In fact i met a lovely person the other day in entirely different context to mention she was raised in this congregation and we figured out that she was in high school when i was an intern here and now she's out there in the world being a functioning adults. Lots of happen since 2008 and what's happened to me is the springboard for what i want to talk about today. Because it is also the springboard for my understanding of what unitarian-universalism needs. And what its future is. And i want to bring what i've seen and learned about the future of unitarian-universalist here at river road. Because i want you to be a part of it. I want you to play a distinguished role in that future. In the same way that you have played a distinguished roll up until now. So let's rewind back in time to that year 2008. To my last sermon here. Some of you may remember that i talked about the giant list of things i had to do in order to become a uu minister. In that sermon i listed the requirements for uu ministry a list that went on and on. Not much has changed in our requirements since then at least not the length of them you should know and by that point i had become accustomed to the formation and training. Process necessary to emerge as a competent minister. I wanted to be the whole enchilada as a minister. If that makes sense. I wanted to be able to do all the things. And perform all the time. And thank all the thoughts that are necessary. And i wanted to do those things well. Display. Help me learn how to do that. So this is what minister of formation was in my opinion. Ministerial formation took a regular person with a lopsided skill-set and train them up. Fill them out. To become a whole enchilada minister who could do all the wide-ranging things that are required of our ministers. I think any minister will tell you that they have their own particular skills and interests of course. And also that they're training for ministry gave them the ability to perform in areas that aren't their first choice of task or skill. That's why that training information is so important. As any minister will tell you. You may remember that i finished a year later was ordained and also called to serve the sugarloaf congregation just up the road in germantown maryland. Sugarloaf is a wonderful place and was a great choice for me. What are particularly loved is that similar floafers have i called them against their will. Church because they were looking for specific things. I could easily provide. In a disconnected and scattered world. Most folks at sugarloaf essentially wanted to take a minute an hour morning out of their busy lives. 2 paws. Reflect. That's how they wanted to do church. Since i thought this was a great way to church i was delighted to go along. What sugarloaf didn't particularly want to do while i was there and they would say the same cells. They didn't particularly want to build. Itself. Orbi well-known in the community or try to influence political. Which are things that other churches do you want to do. And i spent six happy years. Well mostly happy. Only mostly happy because as i grew into my ministry. Starting from the beginning ministry that you saw here when i was trying to learn how to do all those things but i didn't know how to do. As i grew from that beginning ministry was focused on becoming the whole enchilada. I found myself growing tired. Not the kind of tired from overwork. Or from stress. But. Although i did have some of that. But the kind of tired you got. When there's a disconnect somewhere. Between what you're doing. And what you are really called. I'm sure most of you have experienced this fatiguing disconnect yourself at some point maybe even now. It happens when you realize that something has been slightly off. Maybe has been so for a while. And something in your gut tells you it's becoming time to look at that thing that isn't working. And to wonder about why. For me over the course of time i began to question the notion. Of the whole enchilada minister. The minister who does everything well. More i began to question the notion of the whole enchilada church. That was hard about ministries sugarloaf was that they weren't the whole enchilada church. Not in the way that we you use have been told the church ought to be. As i said sugarloaf as a wonderful place to come in order to pods in the midst of one's busy life and to clarify and to connect and renew. I loved this way of doing church. And i think it's what's necessary and are disconnected and broken world. Church should be a place. Where you can pause. Connect. And renew. But institutionally speaking a church where just a hundred people are simply inspired to pause. Does not automatically make for sustainable comfortable organization. We were always dangerously low on resources and money and available talent no matter how hard we tried. And that broke my heart. We got new members all the time would come to us seeking spiritual support. And unitarian universalist values. And the leadership and i would have to force them into conversations about how the roof was going to get sick. Donut. And yet how can you not have a fixed roof. If your whole enchilada church. You have to have the tortilla first and foremost. Sugarloaf just wasn't a whole enchilada church. They were possibly a delicious and intricate guacamole. And a dollop of sour cream. And the freshest possible cilantro. They were delicious and they were doing great work in the world. But if you were to measure them by the standard of the whole enchilada church. A church with a well-maintained cisco plantain. being a vibrant religious education program and a voice for justice in the world outside if you measure them by the whole enchilada measurement then they're delicious particular flavors don't matter. Because they couldn't keep a tortilla going very easily. That broke my heart again and again. I didn't want to force them into being something they weren't. To the detriment of the thing. Thought they were. But i couldn't figure out a way around it. One of my kids went had a math teacher in the fourth grade who had all these advanced degrees both in math. And in the art and science of teaching math. And she told us parents that she had she was teaching 4th grade math because she had been teaching 8th and 10th grade math. Realize that the students early on and by the time she saw them it was too late to undo. And so she took her roadshow to a different level in the teaching process. The level at which her skills had the most impact. That's what i did to. I was walking around with undiagnosed heartbreak over the sugarless situation when i stumbled across reverend scott taylor who was at that time one of the ministers that are very large church in rochester new york. Became the director of congregational life for the internal universalist association. He was saying this the thing that i had been thinking about sugarloaf of course. And not just about small congregations linking with other congregations either. He was talking about how we've all been trying to be the whole enchilada the full-time. And we're all exhausted from it. Because each of us trying to do it all is not actually how we are at our best. As a result of this attempt to do it all ourselves. We find ourselves walking around exhausted from an undiagnosed disconnect of the spirit. No one of us. No person or congregation. Is in itself all the things we need to be in this world to heal it. To help one another. Or to make a difference. Of course we aren't. It's absurd to think we could be. Fields don't run well. Squirrel can only fly if they start from high up. We need those who can run in those who can fly because we need running and flying the world does need. The whole enchilada but we can't be. Can't do. All those things ourselves. Either individually. Or congregational me. So rather than going it alone and morning our deficits the way we make the whole enchilada of unitarian universalism. It's by working together. One group about the salsa. One group of artists cheese. A bunch of us might want to concentrate on being the tortillas. Don't exhaust your bodies or your spirits being more than you can possibly be. It's unnecessary and counterproductive. We're all right here. Why don't we just talk to each other. And make the whole thing together. If you want a fancy theological term for this. It's called interconnection. So long story short. Orchestra long when the opportunity arose to work with scott taylor on this interconnected way of being here in the dc area i couldn't help it for suet. And so now my job is to consult with all the congregations in the dc area on behalf of the ua. I hope you get providing resources for you to do your work. Here within your walls. Help the movement by having an eye on the broader mission of the pursuit of unitarian universalism. In our area. What ingredients are in cuba. How can we work together to further our goals both inside our walls and out. How can we learn from each other. Give two and take from each other grow and move with each other. So that all of us are contributing the best we have to offer to the common goal of making the whole enchilada of unitarian universalism in the dc region. How are each of us bringing the talents we are particularly great at. To make a whole enchilada of extraordinary quality. For all of us. This is a striking contrast to the model of each of us trying and failing to make our own paltry enchilada with partial ingredients literally next door to another group doing the same thing with a very ingredients we may be lacking. It is truly tragic. If you think about it to do unitarian-universalism in this way. Divorced from the efforts of ruu neighbors. And yet that is what we have been doing. To the detriment of all of us and to the detriment of the world. That needs us to be better at what we do. Let's talk about river road for a minute. One of the things i've learned in this new job is that our large congregations do a pretty good job of looking like the whole enchilada. I know how hard you work. To maintain the structures here and sundays. It might seem like you aren't totally on top of your game. But let me tell you that it is objectively true that you have a strong structural church here river road. Your physical plants and your strong staff and your relatively robust relational health. Are the tortilla and the rice and the beans. Of any good enchilada. You should feel proud of what you're accomplishing here. Yes if we shift our nose thinking to the notion that none of us can possibly be the whole enchilada of unitarian universalism. If we shift our thinking to see that no matter how great we are at the things we do there are always going to be things that we aren't so great at that still need to be done. If we shift our thinking to see that each of our unitarian universalist institutions has their own flavor flavor to contribute. Their own ingredient to add. If only we can find them and work with them. Become. More obvious where are large congregations might move in order to be even better. Then they already are. Yes the tortilla and the rice and the beans of the large healthy congregation are the foundation of the whole enchilada. You can get away with that. I know there are pockets of other flavors here to i don't want to suggest that there aren't. But you aren't the whole enchilada river road. It is impossible to be. The whole enchilada. That's what we're all realizing. There's no way. To be all the things. You cannot do everything. The best if you try. Is a kind of enchilada that looks okay. But it's not as delicious as i could be. You cannot do or be. Everything. And here's the great news. You don't have to. If you want to create the whole enchilada that not only has the strong foundation but also all the broad range of flavors that make it the most delicious enchilada possible. How to force your tortilla makers into being salsa maker. What you do just simply throw open your windows. How conveniently large. And you shout out we need salsa we need jalapenos we need another kind of bean and two kinds of cheese at least and some green onions which we will be happy to help chop up. You have to mean it. When you call for those things. You have to want them because you know it makes the enchilada better. And then when they come. The work you do is just being open to them being them. With you being you. Mixing it all up. And making the greatest enchilada you can make. And feeding the world with it. By now your ears either thoroughly sick of tacos enchiladas or are making serious plans to visit your favorite taco truck. For lunch so let's wrap up in plain english. We know we're entering our new religious landscape where there won't be one right answer or one. Right solution or one obvious path forward. What is needed in this new world. Are people and institutions that can be flexible. That welcome the other. And that resource the skills and talents of everyone. For the greater good. No one out in the cold. No one disconnected. Everyone working together. Because we need every last one of us. Can river road be that sort of place. Can river road be an anchor in a complex and diverse community of. A complex and diverse community. Of the world. Of course you can. All the ingredients you need right here. I look forward to working with you. Amen.

www_rruuc_org

2870.mp3

Somewhere in the picture over fields of my imagination. I gleaned a story that i've been carrying around with me this week. No i know i heard this story somewhere i didn't totally make it up yet no amount of inveterate googling. Your consultation of yellowing old notebook seems to be able to come up with the source and so i cannot verify it or claim it is strictly speaking. True. But still. It stuck with me until i suppose you are stuck with it too. There's a village somewhere my memory tells me. And in my imagination it is an ancient place. Far far away from here but where the people struggle in much the same way as we do. With hope amidst the pain. With a search for purpose and conviction or even just with good old-fashioned ennui. Perhaps in that entire culture the most sacred place is not a church for the grove of trees. Planted as nearest possible in a circle the trees and that place limin upon one another. Creating an arbor of dappled light a sanctuary of sky and air. It is the place that exists for picnics and for parties. As well as from morning. A beginning again when we have come through the hard places. Is the place where almost everything important happens for these people under the reaching branches each route. Digging down down. Into the good earth. And the water table below. This grove of trees is maintained pruned and planted literally by the birth life and death of the people in this place. Every time a child is born they planted tree. In that holy grove. And so each and every person. From the newest little day old bud freshburst with the spring to the grandmother in her final winter each one of them has their tree. And the trees grow day-by-day alongside the babies. Reaching upward and saplings when the toddlers turn to children and straining to reach strength and maturity even as the teenagers connected to them. Stream toward their own adulthood. The season pass for each of them. In person matched creatures. Serving as mirrors to one another. 30 advancing years. Delete person in the village celebrate their birthdays birthday their 20th their 65th their 100th beneath their own special tree. They go there when they need to pray and i think i'm totally making this part up but i imagine that when they come to dye their coffin is carved from the wood. Of their own tree. And it's perhaps the child were to die while the tree was yet to green to carve the whole plan falls apart. Because after all. In the death of a child. Or in any person far too young every plan falls apart. Anyway. And there it is. Is idea in my imagination. Plants in person flora and face all wrapped up two beings intertwine from first to last connected to one another and to the deep sources beneath the earth that feed them. And that sustain them through it all. Can you imagine. Being that rooted. That connected to something anything at all including a place. A source so deep and so unmoving that it is always there from first to last a root system built overtime. It reaches down. Down. To the very beginnings of things. Including you. Can you imagine. What it would be to watch the seasons and live life not in a thousand different places with a million different lenses of shifting perspective. Put in relationship to one place. One creature. Once shared source that undergirds at all. Could you imagine that depth of relationship to anything or anyone at all. Perhaps in back you can. And the deep sources and deep connections of your life guide you and hold you even now and through everything that awaits or perhaps you cannot. And you find yourself yearning in strange and random moments. For some unknown aimable. More. Yearning to go deeper. Deeper into something. Connection. Spirituality. Life itself. Hoping that the waters which run deep beneath the earth may yet be tapped by one such as you. Perhaps you do not know such death. A relationship of spirit of source and you yearn for ways to connect to it. One of the great theologian to the last century was named paul tillich. Felix said that the experience of being human has two dimensions. There is the horizontal dimension that sort of productive yet flat progression from one moment to the next. Which in his view could be translated as something like the unexamined parts of life. The horizontal dimension of life is what you do at 3 in the afternoon on the middle of a thursday be everyday bumbling and dancing along that make up the moment-to-moment flow of existence. My horizontal life include diapers. Grocery shopping. An almost endless email checking. And 10000 other hurry to tasks. Horizontal life is what you do when it's just got to be done. It's not necessarily unpleasant and it's not even unimportant it's just not necessarily. Either. The diapers the groceries the email all of them belong to the horizontal aspect of my life in as much as those activities are done without a whole lot of attention to their meaning. Each of them. Even the diaper changing could tip over in the right circumstances into that other dimension a dimension that till it called the depth. Dimension. The depth dimension he said with any aspect of life concerned not with doing stuff but with meaning with value with the sources of our hope and yes our sorrow. We live in the depth. Dimension. When we are rooted deep down in the sources of things. When we are connected to something so much larger than just this moment. And when we know not only what matters but a passing glimmer. Of why. It matters. We move along the horizontal dimension so easily in our lives. For most of us it's what we know best. It's certainly the part of life that makes the most sense and it's probably the least awkward dimension of life as well. I mean really. Plumbing the depths of existence. It can make a person a little weird. One of my favorite quotes. From flannery o'connor who says is not she says you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd. The depth dimension is not for the meat. Invited into another way of living and it's not a dimension we should be living in all the time. Time in a place friends for blankly watching american idol on the couch. Dimension. The vulnerable space. And it's not something wrong way too eager to jump into. When i think of the dimension of depth experience in congregational life i always think of casserole care. Those moments when we connect over the most real thing the no bs spaces. Where grief. Enjoy our present and the roots reach down because we have no choice. I was thinking this week of a congregate in my former church in manassas. He was one of those really wonderful committed lay folks. Put on dramatic and glorious and who did absolutely everything his congregation ever asked of him provided you did not make a fuss. He reminds me of many of you in fact. People who love to serve. And you don't like to draw attention to themselves. It will say his name is. An ad with starting to get up there in years. Even starting to slip a little bit cognitively. Then one afternoon he had chest pain in the whole system kicked into gear if he was rushed to the hospital. And because i was his minister. And because i really did care. I called ed at the hospital shortly thereafter wanting to check in. And he said to me something like. Will mansi i'd be glad for a visit but i'm alright. Don't come here thinking i need any pastoral care or anything. Okay ed i promised him. Nupath real terror anything like that. And i remember showing up at the hospital and we complained together about some nonsense related to a church committee and we chuckles half-heartedly through his pain. Keeping it all neatly tucked into the horizontal dimension just as he asked. And yet at some point in the middle of all this chuckling. Never seen his wife so afraid is when the ambulance pulled away. Somehow we got to talking about what it feels like to forget things. And how there's a strange freedom in that. And i must have nodded and stuff. Because when i got up to leave he said. Well damn nancy that was pastoral care was that. Sorry i told him. And we shared a better laugh and a deeper one than we had before. The depth dimension it sneaks up on us sometimes. It connects us even when we have not planned it the deep waters of meaning end up getting tapped whether we would have it so or not. And the horizontal can flip into the depths just about anytime. In other words we may just find them or we are looking for when and where we least expect it. Or. We might put ourselves in the position we might plan for the depth dimension we might encounter it more richly in our lives because of the intention nowadays we cultivate to make it snow. I was actually all cued up to preach this week about the debt we might find through our spiritual practices. Unitarian universalist we often slip along in the horizontal dimension of religiosity. Meditation hear a smattering of silence there. And that just about anything. Done with grace. I'm with consistency over time. Can develop into a spiritual practice that dig down dig down deep. And nourishes the soul. And all that is true. If you yearn for more. Finding a practice. Just about any practice that helps you encounter more and more deeply if possible. Some of our programming here might even help you find that for yourself. But that is in fact an important sermon for another day i think. The ways in which we can tap the deep water that the salt pump ourselves into the depth dimension with the intentionality of our practice. But this week. Is louise said. This week i hardly know where to begin. This week it doesn't feel like we need strategies for finding the depth dimension. Because life. And everything in between teeth landing ice in the depths to mention whether or not we choose it. Louise and dog and i have attended two more pass or emergencies in major life transitions among you in the last 10 days than i can even count. And that's just the last 10 days. On top of that. String of deaths and new beginnings and journeys and stories of so many of your lives reaching back and connecting you. Network of story and grief and meaning. Lost parents new diagnosis death that snuck up in the middle of the night like a thief. Everyone's been anticipating with much too much dourness for way too long the heartbreaks to put out the very light of the world. And the joys. Of course the gioi. All of that. Is going on. Right here. Right now. And so i don't think we really need strategies for touching the deep places right now. In times like these the roots reach down whether we would choose it or not. In the moments of turning in our lives we don't have to seek the death. We just have to live in them and to figure out each and every day how to live in a reality transform. Joan didion. A reality for her transform particularly by law. By grief. It's a terribly honest account of the year she lived in the wake of her husband's death. And in her writing she doesn't sugarcoat grief into self-help. He calls it for the paradox it is. The book is called the year of magical thinking it's wonderful if you haven't found it yet and in it she writes. Grief turned out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate. It's someone close to us could die. But we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that it mediately follow such an imagine death. We misconstrue even the nature of those few days or weeks. We might expect that we would be prostrate inconsolable crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy. Cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return. And be in need of his shoes. Nor can we know ahead of time. The fact. And here lies the difference between grief as we imagined it and grief as it is. Of the unending absent. Literally fall off. Grief turned out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. And as we sit together at the turning points. We see the grief is not merely something to be gotten over or gotten through. But a force that shapes our lives. Into something so deeply transformed. When the tools for grieving given by our history and our society stretched too thin. When the promises of many mansions in better places breakdown at the edges and grief meets you with a force you could not anticipate even then there is a deeper well a source of water that rises up unbidden and unforced. After a law such as some of you of know nothing will ever be the same. But that does not mean there isn't our rising up in you. From the deep places. It doesn't mean you can't find some meaning in the connections don't think it's that the loss of it. Breakthrough into. Because i have seen you make life again out of so much loss. Nobody could tell me. There is no water. Has denise levertov put it in our poem today do not bother telling me. There is no water. Don't tell me there is no water to solace the dryness at our heart i have seen the fountain springing up out of the rock and you drinking there and i two before your eyes found footholds and climbs to drink the cool water don't say there is no water the fountain is there among its scalloped gray and green stones. And is still there. And always there. With its quiet song and it's strange power. Bring in us. And threw the rock. This week. And this year so many of you are tapping the depth dimensions of your soul. Not because you have chosen to or because it is a part of your grand self-improvement plan but because you must. And when you go to those deep and those lonely places when you strike the barren rock with the sharpness of your grief lo-and-behold again and again some water does begin to pour for. There's not really a strategy for this. There is no plan to make it happen. We cannot know ahead of time how. And when it will happen. But i tell you that it does. We do come to know the depth. Right in the midst of our losses. Even the dryness before the water ever pours forth has the power to change us. In ways that brings strange and unbidden life. And yet i pray today for one thing. That we may also know the depths of our existence. Without needing to know the losses first. I pray that we might indeed know the depth. Something more. As a part of our self improvement plan. And not merely as a stricken necessity. I pray that the water makes bring up from the rock when we choose it. I pray that even before you no great loss. Even before the moments of your turning you might move toward the depth dimension and be connected so deeply known so fully that your roots go as deep as those of the tree someone planted on the day you were born. You know that tree. The one that has been growing all this time. Breaching its root down. And its branches up. Stretching both to the source of its strength. And the yet unrealized culmination. Of all of it.. Baby song.

www_rruuc_org

2517.mp3

Before i start. Talk of garden full confession. I do house plants. I have about 30 of them. But i've never been a tender of a garden. In my backyard is being torn down right now so that's about to change. Thinking about planting. Beyond my backyard right behind our home in washington dc there is a story of seasons of course it's always there all around us. Harvest. And there is a huge communal slot that lies in the back and ask where that's bounded by the four blocks of townhomes. It's open land. And it's joint space in the middle. The space between. It's a giant garden it has been for decades. And last week i saw three neighbors they're picking tomatoes in their basket. Right now the morning glories as i look out my back window have completely covered. This garden is tended a group of male african-american citizens. Usually out early morning or evening except during winter. This is their daily work for decades. Awesome paws to sit and chat on the folding chairs or the overturned tub. They have out there. You can help. Sharon the harvest. But their plots have been in place. For many years. So you don't get one. Unless. Here in the family that's lived there since the 60s and there's a reason. They put the sweat equity again. To make it happen. Because you see the garden didn't always look that way. One morning i was out back i was moving the trash cans and mr. willis was picking his beans so i went over to say hello. I don't know how it started but he said. When he was younger and he lived on a different street nearby. I didn't have any interest in gardening then. Is that it seemed to flow. But i did help in the clean-up. What cleanup. Steven told me there's a great organizing story of mid-sixties urban renewal. What is now a garden have been an enormous mound of scrap metal. Tired. Abandoned furniture. And trash. Most large cities in working-class neighborhoods these places accumulate. And stay. It's not like living some other places where you call someone. And they come. To clean it up. There are plots of land between and behind houses that have complicated. In the alleys but no man's land in between. And everyone thought it was someone else's problem. Mr. willis says a few of the original african-american neighbors on that square just got tired of it. I stopped waiting. They began to organize the surrounding blocks. And they started carving out the trash. It took months. He said about a year-and-a-half. And then it started to plan. Eventually eat the food that they grow. As many of them had before. Coming from rural communities in the south to washington d.c.. They took back this land. The garden that i see every morning. And i tell the story for a couple reasons one in tribute to their tenacity to their vision. And also is this metaphor for how we continue to build our lives and our. Communities. This is the automatic or not. We're halfway between the growing light of the summer solstice and the diminishing. Light of the winter solstice. So we're poised and it kind of seasonal balance. I think those midpoints. The in-between points. Are the places. That help us figure out where we are. And where we want to go. In that case. A mountain of trash. Could we envision a garden. We do this as individuals that are taking stock in our lives and we also take stock as communities. I like to say a word about each this morning and how it. Plays into. The work that i'm doing here at river road which is newark for me. That season of beginning. There's a very large turnout at a workshop at the retreat that was called transitions. I heard about. Transitions of life. And i saw a great interest is that workshop in pondering personal season. Desire to know and reflect upon where we each are. Seasons of multiple in our own life there places. Where we are beginning. It's uncomfortable. And places where a very practice. And places where we're ending. Maybe with some sorrow maybe with some excitement. And they happen all at once all together. Sorting out living is his constant deep challenge. There's people of faith and ethical frameworks who wants to thrive. And contribute we have to put time in. Our own feel plain and simple. Nexplanon big advocate of what i call spiritual practice. By which i mean. The things that nourish your spirit. Whether or not you name a larger source that nourishes you is less important. If. And when. You take responsibility for your own practice. We all have these patterns. It actively shape the life we live. We're aware of them we don't always make a move to chip. In my previous hat and work as a spiritual director i often sat with people as a coach as an allied. In their steps. To build the practice. I learned the hard way. I'm doing almost no practice. That when we don't pay attention to the garden of our living. The weeds grow. Then we find ourselves living in a land. That we don't want to be in. Having lost the path. What's on my sat at a retreat a silent retreat we were asked what is the biggest barrier. To your spiritual practice and the answer came to me so suddenly. I thought being a minister. I already did land with me. My fault offering and adult learning opportunities which is now on the river road website to explore. Is this five-week group. Nibble things together what is your spiritual practice. And again medicine mean what nourishes your own spirit. Are you creating a framework that actively brings those things into your life. It's that simple. Is that challenging. Because it involves the same tending as the garden. You plant. He water. There's lots and lots and lots of weeding maybe it's all about weeding. Cutting back. On the ground itself. You take the action that will yield a harvest. And whether it's walking. Start competitive reading or meditating or yoga river rafting. Appraiser journaling. None of these things. Jump onto the calendar by themselves. I have also learned this the hard way. We have to choose to clear the mountain of trash. And make a garden. Over and over and over again. With some gentle. But discipline focus. I think it's congregation also has many seasons of beginning intending and harvest all operating simultaneously. It's my own position here is a beginning but it's also a kind of transition interlude. It's an aquanaut. It's the place in between. Following along service of a beloved minister ginger loop. One of my primary roles on the new pastoral care team leader. And so our goal is to accompany you. A large congregation in many lifes seasons living together. I think it's a fact that all systems need to be rebuilt overtime. And another previous hat. Where is community organizer. Great phrasal organizing is just organizing and reorganizing. Top creative mulching. Right now. I love the mulching. It's a little confusing can get a little sometimes what's happening. But something's taking place there's opportunity to design new patterns to develop new leadership to expand the vision even of what pastoral care can be. Not today. How much to say about this and decided to stay at the bird's eye view. Division level of the pastoral care garden. And share the statement that the team is working with now. The pastor of character name. In collaboration with the minister. Works toward building and sustaining a caring community at river road congregation. The team provides physical. Emotional and spiritual support. Joys and challenges. Accompany community members in the passages of life. Member 62b. The healing presence. In the lives of fellow congregants. In that healing presence in that pasture alt ending of one another. The literal world as a shepherd cares for sheep. I am well aware that you use are the farthest from cheap. We might save the shepherd of the cats. One of my goals is to help create this shared sense of responsibility here. A joint understanding that we all hold patrick eric together. That's why we have joys and concerns in the weekly. Worship fire worship leader. That's why they're in the erie toy that's why we asked for information to come in and go out again. The news is actually our collective history. Includes all the passages. Child dedication coming-of-age. Marriage. Divorce. Dying. As well as all the illnesses and treatments that can happen at any place on the spectrum of life. Info in large congregations for the whole. What has the responsibility we must have many. Shepherd's of cats. Nancy gabrielle and i others on paid staff. All the key volunteers on the pastoral care team. People who are will become paschal associates or password partners. We have a certain kind of leadership. Accountability. I believe that's true. Effort. Because it's march piercy said new connections take time. And harvest. Is often the work of months. I invite you to consider this our shared garden. Pastor care is something that we can actually only do well. With collective action. Marge piercy road weave real connections. Create real notes. Build real houses. At this point in life. In my mid-fifties. That's all i care about. The real houses. Live a life you can endure. This is how we're going to live for a long time she says not always. For every gardener knows that after the digging. After the planting after the long. Impending engross. The harvest. Come. The wire. Worship. I said spontaneously that i keep being drawn back to help leave congregational life. In spite of all those strange and dysfunctional ways we do human community. The blips in the sorrows in the weirdness that happens in group life at time. I am compelled by this vision. I'm doing it well together. The belonging somewhere. That creates belonging. I think kyrie gheysens offer amazing opportunities where else. Do we have such communal support for being the designers. Of our individual lives. Where else do we have to capacity. For making all the passages of our lives have intentions and meaning. A live together. Animal th community. I think we tend. Joint land river road. Not just literally but symbolically and in this garden of possibility. In this field that has so many individual crap. An abundant harvest can come again and again. So maybe fine. The wave. To weave. Real connections. Play we enjoy this collective action. The chicks place. Journey together. With healing presents. With purpose. But the desire to be real. Fayetteville.

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1899.mp3

He was the master of his domain ball he roamed the good earth. And his expectation was that he might be master of his domain in the land of shadows to come as well. But the legend says. Once he crossed over the river styx is we are all called to do in time. Interminable and ever repeating cast. Of pushing with giant boulder up a hill over and over and over again for all time. Depress the shoulder to the stone heated up step. By wearying stats to the very top. Just at the moment when it seems as if all of his work is done every single time that stone reverse it reverses course and roll back down to the plane upon which he found it in the first place. And amazingly. Everything time. Sisyphus teams are on top of the mountain. Wok and roll. Before turning his footsteps back down to the distant place from which he has come over and over again he goes back down to it and resume the task every single time forever. For eternity. Do you ever feel like that guy. The one destined to labor forever. Going to come so close to the end of whatever heartbreak or burden you face and who looks right back down that hill again. Only to start all over. Sisyphus is perhaps mythologies clearest example of the guy who just can't. Operate. No matter what. Keep coming one upon another. Honestly. We don't have to look to ancient myths to find this archetype. So often all we have to do is look inside our own hearts. For there are seasons of long long winter for our souls. Are times when it feels like the cold my clothes in and meaning is far away times when we too are trudging up our own interminable mountains only to begin again just at the moment when we thought the task was done. And if we are here to be a beloved community. We must speak of those * 2. After all if there is no room to admit. But our own soul sometimes find themselves in the midst of long winter we're only half here together. Hiding behind. Amidst of perpetual summer. Is john milton said. I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue on exercise than done breathe. That never sally's out to meet her adversaries butts links out of the race. Immortal garland is to be run for. Not without dust and heat. I can't praise a fugitive and cloistered virtue that protect itself. From the reality of our suffering. Knowing that this race this racing which whatever the immortal garland of human living is it is to be run and never ever. Is it to be completed without. The hertz. In the pressure. Sometimes immeasurable burton's the great dust and heat of human living. The spaces in the time but not stone just. Keep. Rolling. Denial about reality. Pretending as if our hearts are never broken and our souls don't cry out. It all to mately won't bring us the solace we may rightfully deserve. For there is a long cold. Winter in each of our souls. There's a long cold winter in this world and it is in these times it is in that truth that we are called to make me most fully back the road. In fact. Isn't that winter of the soul that we are called to the deepest levels of spiritual honesty that we will ever know. Provides do not stand long in that vulnerable place. Nor even half-truth. Or comforting fallacies they just don't hold up. In the long winter of the soul. No partial explanation or oversimplify dancers will long endure. Precisely because it is a place both of pain and of power. We are called to our best. Most honest words. In no time. In fact that. I will never wholly understand. There's a great preacher william sloane coffin he preached at riverside church in new york city he's one of the best of the 20th century. And william sloane coffin actually stood up to preach a sermon 10 days. After his 24 year old son was killed in a tragic car accident got up to do his job 10 days after this tragedy i feel like i would just. Hide somewhere. But this man he got up. This boy alex is son had careened into boston harbor in a vehicle gone out of control. Just over a week. Before his father rode up and took to the pulpit again. It was the darkest winter williams long coffin had ever known. And into that darkness the people came to try to take care of him cuz that's what we do isn't it. Clutching casseroles and trying to find the right word the people came. Just as we all do. Baffled and full of tear the people came into this household which had been claimed by winter and they tried to help. Sherman-williams phone coffin dave some advice for potential helpers for those who come into our spaces of our hearts and our home. In the time of deepest winter. When a person dies. There are many things that can be set. And there is at least one thing that should never be said. The night after alex died i was sitting in the living room of my sister's house outside boston. When the front door opened and then came a nice-looking middle-aged woman carrying about 18 quiches. When she shot when she saw me she shook her head. Headed for the kitchen. Sing shadley over her shoulder. I just don't understand the will of god. Instantly. I was up. And in hot pursuit. Swarming all over her i'll see you don't lady i said. For some reason nothing so infuriates me is the capacity of seemingly intelligent people to get it through their heads that god doesn't go around in this world with his finger on triggers. Around knives hands on steering wheels. Deaths that are ultimately. And slow and pain written. Which for that reason raised on answerable questions and even the specter of a cosmic sadist. Ethan and eternal vivisector come into our lives. And violent deaths such as the one my son died to understand those is a piece of cake. As if younger brother put it simply standing at the head of the casket at his funeral. You blew it buddy. Gib lewis. The one thing that should never be sad when someone dies. Is. It is the will of god. Never do we know enough to say that. My own constellation lies and knowing that it was not the will of god that my son died. But when the waves closed over his sinking car god's heart was the first of all our hearts. God's heart. With the first of all our hearts to break. Not the eternal vivisector bent on giving us what we deserved or enacting a master plan but the ground of love itself that sleeps with us when our loss is so great. Simply stands as the most honest of friends in the presence of that heartbreak. Admits that this winter chill her to the bone 2. The god william sloane coffin prayed to in the dark of night. It's the one who is present to his prayers. Responding not with answers but merely. With shared tears. I remember the first moment that i come contemplated the idea of a god who might weep with me. I was actually driving along on some random day in the car with my husband will probably go into the grocery store i don't know. And i was pondering as i am want to do instead of actually pay attention to what's going on around me i was pondering theological questions. My husband will see the space you look. In my eyes and he'll know. I'm thinking. And on this particular day instead of commenting on what grocery store we should go to ihop instead you know. I don't think i can be a unitarian and universalist at the same time. I was already gainfully employed as a unitarian universalist minister i imagine he raised an eyebrow. And said something like. Could you explain to me what you mean by that. Not mad what i meant. But still meme. Is it. Understandings of unitarianism the kind that predates the people we think of as our spiritual ancestors by about 1,000 years but. In some understanding. The idea of the unity of one god can sometimes be equated with the idea of a unity of one power. A singular all-powerful deity one mighty for to govern the affairs of all life on earth and in heaven. The unity of god. Buy some. Has been understood as a unity of power. An understanding that all things are within the grasp of the singular daddy. Now i know it's not what unitarian unitarian is a means to watch now again it's been about a thousand years. And other additions have since risen up admirably to find their own corner on that kind of god in the market. But still. Unity of god cannot or us mean the unity of god's power. It just doesn't work. Especially in light of the other half of our tradition. Because universalism has always even now held that love is at the core of all things. Universalist understanding of god has been explained as simply as. God is love. And so what i was thinking that afternoon was nothing particularly groundbreaking i'm sure you thought it yourself mainly that there is no way for me to reconcile the idea of an all-powerful deity with an idea of a god whose name is love. God cannot have an all-encompassing master plan that includes the senseless death. A 24 year old boys. It can't predetermined that two-year-old should be shot. Or that your child should suffer. Or your husband hurt. A baby starve. Or tsunamis break. If there is a god with such a plan then god is at the very least a total and irredeemable. Sure. And we would all be better off without her. The plans of god. Have nothing to do. With your heartbreak. There is no eternal vivisector. And there is no cosmic santa claus. Who will let you live without pain. Provided. You've been nice. And at least atone. When you're naughty. To believe this is to make an idol out of face. And to insult the wisdom and truth found in our greatest losses. The theologian paul tillich was actually buried in my hometown. And no one in my hometown particularly likes him they think he's weird. Logan paul tillich. Call this idea theological theater. And he argued that the god of theological theism fails to bring any real comfort meaning or purpose. In times of pain. Is all-powerful god. Ultimately status and santa claus cannot penetrate the dust. In the heat of our lives for long. It burns away. Leaving an empty space where the perception of that power once was. But there are other ways. Your other theology. One might even say there are other gods. Imagine a god who cannot fix it all not even if she tried imagine a god who is not even a person or an image but a force. From which all things emanate into which all things returns imagine a god who is made of all things including your tears. And when you are hurting and when you leave. Imagine a god who merely weeps along with you. No advice. No master plan. Inevitable outcome but a world that cares a creation that feels. Holiness made manifest in every single soul who shares your pain. And help you to find a way through it. The ground being. It makes. Life meaningful. Expanding infinitely into stardust and shadow. The living world that gives birth to us again. And again. Till it called the god beyond god. The force of being. The one who merely encourages us to keep on living. Even in the presence of our broken hearts. And of course. Many people think paul tillich was a glorified atheist. And that's okay. By many people's definitions i'm probably is somewhat overblown agnostic when it all comes down to brass tacks. But that doesn't keep me from praying to the one who weeps with me. Or giving thanks to the one who rejoices when my spirit soars. Even if the name of god is not remotely meaningful to you in fact even if it is directly repugnant. There was one thing that we know. But this world is full of dust in heat. I feel your pain and loss permeate our days and that the winter of the soul is an experience we all will have. And we know this. We are not capable or even called to fix it for one another. Not anymore than god is called to fix it for us. There's nothing i can do to erase your pain not even with 18 lovingly made quiches. There's nothing you can do to fix me when i have well and truly broken to bits. And we don't need to have heartedly attempt to make it all okay for each other. We do have the ability to share honestly. Uncompassionate. We do have the capacity to offer comfort not in the wiping away of sorrow but in the gentle accompaniment through it. In the making of meaning within it. William from coughing wrote that what we need from one another and what we really yearn for from the ground of our being. Minimum protection and maximum support. Minimum protection from the truth of our existence including the painful one. A maximum support. Unwavering. The tells us we are not alone. We are never alone. As long as compassion touches us. That there is comfort. And there is hope. I encourage you to leave these books closed. And i'll give you words of comfort i'll say get through one's for you. Call.

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2549.mp3

But i just sat there listening to them sing and burst into tears and i'm asking myself why. Why am i crying right now listening to that music. I'm crying because i have been. Too many times in my life. Infatuation where the stakes were so high. Didn't know each other and trust each other enough. Draw the circle wide and to find real solutions. Before about my ministry in manassas virginia. Where i was in 2007 when some of the most hateful conversation and. Dialogue is not the word vitriol around immigration in these united states started. In manassas it's time. Brown children were having their pictures snapped at the bus stop by people in red shirts so that they could document this invasion of immigrants into our community. Kids were scared families were leaving. And we clergy tried to get together. To do something in the problem is that we had never really met each other. Down in a room with no relationship to build on with no ground work from which to start we didn't have any idea what to do next. In fact everybody looked at each other about who was in charge and meanwhile children's and meanwhile our community with falling apart. And i never. Never. Want to go through that again. I never want our congregation to face the most important decisions. To even begin. And that's why. This campaign that's why i'm crying. Because it matters. And there will come a time. When we are going to need each other. And in that moment we can't start afresh as strangers. Starting fellowship. As a community of care. People who each other. So i want to tell you a story about organizing today. About when it works about a group of people and a community that was broken apart. And found ways to connect across even the barriers that separated them. This is pastor heidi numark and in 1984 she was called to be pastor of transfiguration lutheran church. In the south bronx. The 1950s by working class. Urban refugees who fled the gentrification of manhattan. Anytime all the overcrowded housing in the increased poverty in the south bronx lead to crime and violence and drug use until that neighborhood became one of this nation's. Harshest urban desert. Anybody who could afford to move further out move further out. After the spaghetti network of highway overpasses that had been cut the south bronx into insulated pockets of urban blight. More and more alienated and less and less a part of the community that surrounded them. Intrepid travellers would get out of their cars in the parking lot on sunday morning and hurry inside the sanctuary dorbz furtively all sort of huddled over as if the very air around them were threat. Change their place of worship not because of but in spite of. Everything that surrounded it. And when she came the only thing pastor numark checked off of her to-do list every single morning with the singular task of repainting the doors in the front wall that the sanctuary to cover over the fresh layer of graffiti that have been tagged on them overnight. Other than that she didn't know where to start. The congregation was virtually non-existent. And don't forget arrive on sunday morning did so with fear afraid to interact with the world and leaving right after they nabbed at communion wafer. Duty done. Just as lonely as they had been. When they walked in. Because she didn't know what else to do. How do you mark took on the good and simple work of one-on-one meetings in her neighborhood. After repainting the doors every single morning she would put on her clergy collar and walk out into the streets and literally just start talking to people. A mom with three kids at the corner market a homeless man camped outside her front door the stately older woman sitting in the same lawn chair outside the fire station day after day. The hard-working those just trying to make it through. She simply sat down and talked to people for a short while. Before following where their stories lead and then time she became something of a pastor to the whole community. These meetings newmark wasn't trying to get these people to show up to church. She always invited them. She wasn't trying to get them to join the committee or group of any kind and she certainly wasn't national politics. She was listening. Youcaring. Being real. And before long the neighborhood kids looking at her clergy collar would say hey father every time she walked by. Tagging her front door with graffiti and she recruited them to paint it into a riotous mural and in time a food ministry in the children's program started at transfiguration and the community center broke ground in what had been the abandoned parking lot the congregants walked through with fear. Eventually lonely ones in exile who drove there from the suburbs for church on sunday morning. Started to stand with straight back. When i walk through those doors. Unafraid. Or at least mostly unafraid. Maine was not the land of frightening strangers but a community of friends. Neighbors who cared enough to work together. Fight together when it mattered. No i know. We're not in the south bronx. We aren't afraid of our neighborhood though truth be told the more the bad news percolates from the city. From our own streets the more our own surrounding seemed deeply uncertain. And deeply unsafe. Eating show. Even though we are in this case enclave how much do we know of the stories the heartbreak the triumph of our neighbors. Or even ourselves. How deeply are we aware of the commitments in capacities and gifts of the people right next to us in this sacred space right now. We look around at the alienation of the everyday. And we wonder like the beleaguered pasture with her can of paint what to do next. Where do we go from here. When we are isolated in spite of ourselves. Lawmakers are so mired in categorical thinking that they can't even begin to relate to each other as human beings. Let alone respect the shared humanity and interdependence of atolls. Where do we go. For pastor newmark and for us part of the answer might be simpler than it seems. We start by meeting each other. Really needing each other. Not interviewing each other or asking each other for things but meeting each other on a human level. We start by listening. By sharing. What this 121 process is about. Listening. And sharing. And seeing what that simple tool of relational meeting might take us toward. We who have so much to offer and whose stories are so much deeper and more profound than most people know. Starting today and running to mid-december the 121 campaign invites us to trust each other enough to be real. To sit down for 5 or so 30 to 45 minute 1 21 conversations with members friends strangers acquaintances who stories you would just like to know better. And so far we have 80 members of our conversation. Plus leaders and members of our staff who have signed up to be trained more deeply in the using of this tool. People will intern reach out to five people a piece and even if you're not a part of that network of trained and trainers and you just want to pick up the phone go off the grid entirely and make an effort to reach out do it. Make a plan over coffee hour. To be sure to get a call from one of those folks put your name in the fishbowl outside the sanctuary or just say hey. Why don't we sit down sometime. One thing we accomplishing this. Let's have fun. Let's know each other. Let's do something different. The point isn't the product of the data gleaned of the program started the wall that will emerge the point of the conversation itself which is rather countercultural for us. If someone calls you and invite you to a one-to-one this month don't be freaked out it's not a pick-up line the process of daring to value each other. Trusting the power of our connections. And it's a process this whole world would do good to emulate. On hoffer said they're the kind of listening with half an ear. That presumes already to know what the other person has to say. It is an impatient inattentive listening that despises the brother and is only waiting for a chance to speak and just get rid of the other person. This is no fulfillment of our obligation. And today we know. The great deal can be helped. Merely by having someone who will listen to us seriously. We are aware that whole communities can be transformed simply. Hi darren. To listen. And so we're trying it. As many things. The chance to ask people with important to them. What are the turning point the events in their lives it's chance to mirror our own experiences. Therapy session or a gossip session. At the time to be present in a way we are not naturally inclined to. Mistakes i do think. Are high. When we gather. After the next memorial service that breaks our hearts. How much more white might we know. When we gather at the next moment when the hardest decision must be made. How much more white might we care. And so may this house. Trulia place of meeting. Meeting one another with courage and warmth and joy and openness meeting each other with love. Entrust. May all who enter here trust one another so surely that they dare to share the deep fires the fires that burned as they sometimes do into anger as much as the sweet spring waters that swell into laughter. May this house. Bierhaus of meeting. For everything you bring to it. Is secret. Let's join together in our closing hymn. Should i be able to find the piece of paper that has.

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3380.mp3

In the late morning of august 9th. A big strong rather aggressive black boy. Walked into a convenience store to buy some cigars. Money for the cigars he had chosen and he. Pulled some sheep cheaper cigarillos from the shelf instead. Unclear from the video what kind of exchange exactly happened over the counter but the boy leans in. Initiating a threat and or engaging the present hostility of another we do not exactly know. As this boy leaves the store. He puffed up his chest. An angel gesture of youthful power and assertion of dominance. The boy leaves. He walks out the door. 15 minutes later. That boy is dead. His body lies in the street for over 4 hours. If people snap pictures on their cell phones which they email to their friends. And post on twitter. Friends and family members of the boy step over the police barricade once it is in place nothing. Is under control. Michael brown is dead. Face down in the middle of the street. And a week later. When the gas station had burned in 100,000 black hands were held above blackheads and support and infrastructure solution. Do you know what the headlines were. What question was for a time at the forefront of our public discourse out of all this. Emerged as a preoccupation among the people of this nation. Do you remember the question everyone was asking in mid-august. Did michael brown steal the cigars. Did michael brown steal the cigars. National headlines wrap themselves around that question as if the answer to that question changed including the desk and the suffering and the lost and the michael brown steel cigars. The surveillance video was released for some reason and. White america couldn't stop talking about those cigars and i thought then and i think now what the hell does it matter. In this grand tragedy of national and international pain if the boys stole the cigars. What the hell does it matter. Even if he pushed and he puffed and he stomped around a boy was dead. This nation obsessed with a particular kind of justice. Ready to blame and to absolve especially to blame the other end to absolve ourselves we were eager to show that somehow the stealing of cigars in the puffing out of his chest meant that he deserved it his death in that street where he was left for 4 hours. In the headlines this week we hear that indeed michael brown may have reached into that police car. A or may not have threatened the officer he might have even gone for the gun. Likely she was in some way threatened himself or in one way or another the power of an arresting officer depends. Drop form upon threat. Toxicology shows. That the boy may have been high enough on marijuana to trigger hallucinations. In essence. Michael brown may have been. Just the kind of big scary black boy. That's so many in this nation. Have been trained to fear. Maybe so. Maybe not. Maybe officer darren wilson feared for his life when he pulled that trigger truth be told i don't doubt it that the officer was afraid and that fear pulled that trigger again and again and again and again and again and again. I do not doubt. When does st. louis county grand jury finishes their hearing sometime next month i along with many others suspect that officer wilson will be acquitted. And i fear what that might mean. I fear what part of our nation's soul will burn should more fires ignite. In the streets st louis. I fear once again that are stubborn insistence on that particular kind of justice did he steal the cigar did the officer act in self-defense did the boy get high that all of it all of it will once again distract us from the greater truth that a boy is dead and not just that boy but so many young brown and black boys because of a fear so elemental in the spirit of this nation that it erupts into violence and death. Over. Dover. And over again. I believe the officer darren wilson feared for his life. I also believe that if i had walked into a convenience store highclere off my rocker and pushed around the attendant while i picked out cigars if i puffed out my chest and barreled my way into a car if i score and i screamed and i refuse to comply if i did every single thing michael brown may or may not have done this day including threatening the very lives of police officers. Would not be dead today. Probably would have scooped my sorry self up from jail and taking me to rehab. And at least my story on my kids. Would go on. And it's not just of course because i'm a girl. Every statistical study shows it. The horrible truth that even if i were a 300-pound 18 year old white boy. And i did all the things michael brown may or may not have done that day. The fact remains that my chances of survival would have been exponentially. Greater. Because the fear that kills. Kills black boys. More. And that's the difference. And that's the point. Not whether or not he stole the damn cigars. Not how aggressive he was. Not even how afraid this particular officer was in these particular circumstances but the fear that kills. The categories of known and unknown safe and unsafe blessed and unblessed deserving and undeserving into which we so readily filed humanity and the fact the fact that people of color in this nation have for hundreds of years been steadily filed into the ladder of every single one of those categories. Fire dominant culture. That kills kills black boys more. Because in america we think we know without even asking which people to be afraid of. And the trigger finger is lighter. And the rising curses louder. And the underlying violence of our natures more accessible. Because of it. Across this nation. People in all different stages of guilt and innocence for we are all in different stages of guilt and innocence are we not. People of all different stages of guilt and innocence died because of this truth. And that's the point. Not the cigars or even the outcome of the grand jury deliberation that alone. I have been aching actually over the last couple of months over the fact that i haven't until now been able to make myself preach into a message about ferguson. Every time i tried to frame a thurman out of this heartbreak i walked away and i'll it instead upon something more pastoral right something to take care of us collectively to take care of you in these challenging times for all that lies ahead something to strengthen your spirits because for the last couple of months. I couldn't figure out how about this this this piling of humanity into categories that kill could possibly give us courage. When we need it most. And then i remembered. He's not have to invent our strategies for meaning-making whole-cloth as we go along doing. We don't have to pull hope out of the chaos all by ourselves as if nobody in any other generation ever suffered. Here in this room have a heritage that is uniquely our. We have a story to tell. We even have a theology that preaches ever sold loudly in these times. Sometimes we forget we have it. But it's there. And the world needs a theology now as much as it ever has. Displace. Unitarian universalist. And that means something. Inheritors of a dual heretical tradition born from within the radical branches of protestant christianity. We have taken our foundation directions over the centuries but our theological heritage remains the same. One god. Not three. Your modified by jesus or any other prophet but one god and universalism. The unyielding belief that each and every person is endowed with an original blessing. The call them. And that claimed. Regardless of circumstance. Or even of worthiness. And every person is endowed with original blessing as much as elliot. Bryce. And every child we honor in this sacred space. Every single person. Inherently endowed with worth and with dignity and original blessing for every single with no categorical exclusions in the least. None. Now what is that the illogical heritage mean for us today. How far removed from the theological underpinnings of our founding days it can be hard to interpret at all. I will tell you this. And everyone is worth and dignity than human kind cannot be categorized and this whole groups of humankind cannot be dismissed. It's not just one kind of person for one category of persons who are offered every blessing of life and every dignity besides it is everyone. Whether you deserve it or not. Where do you stole the cigars or not. It does not matter. And by focusing our national discourse tan his perceived culpability or lack thereof we seem to be acting as a nation if michael brown did or did not deserve. To die that day. And we wrap ourselves in 22 deadly ways of thinking that run counter to everything our tradition teaches us that some people deserve life and safety while others being guilty. And that there is a right kind of person. Inherently blessed. And by extension there is a wrong time. And our blessings extend largely to those we perceive. To be in the first category. Whether we want to admit it or not in this nation we not only focus. On whether or not michael brownwood guilty but whether or not he was the right kind of black boy. Was he the kind of black boy. Who deserve to walk free. Or was he the kind of black boy who ultimately got what he deserved. In a parallel mode we ask again and again. If a young woman raped on her college campus was the right kind of young woman. Was she wearing fishnets and he'll did she get drunk at the party did she lead him on our culture asks as is to determine once and for all which category we can sort the beatings the injured the oppressed. The broken into. Are you the right kind of woman. The kind that doesn't deserve to be raped. Or are you the other kind. In the category we can dismiss. The kind that gets what she deserves. Are you the right kind of immigrant the right kind of woman the right kind of american and perhaps most pointedly the right kind of young black man because in this nation if you are not our culture is ready to wash our hands of you. And that. Is an unstated but deeply live doctrine of hell on earth. It runs contrary to every single thread of the universalism at our core. A tradition which calls us to uncategorically love the hell. Out-of-this-world. Not to spend our time deciding who is the right kind of person to receive the basic blessings of life. And safety. And dignity. Determining what characteristics or likenesses to power place a person in the category of the blessed. We have a long and painful history in this country. A markedly racist and decidedly auntie universalist worldviews. Any kind have been systematically shoehorned into a single story of what constitutes the right kind of person worthy of belonging. Of protection and blessing. The marker of the right kind of immigrant. And the right kind of african-american has long been more or less. The willingness and ability of those persons to assimilate. Into the dominant white culture around them. If demand. Place by our culture on any minority voice is by no means new. One stark example that just. Blows my mind is from the peak of the industrial age and it's it's henry ford who founded what he called the ford english school. 1914 increasingly the laborers who are working those assembly lines that revolutionized and brought wealth to this nation those laborers were immigrants. For determined. Earners in the immigrants in the workers in his factories those adult learners would be taught english language skills in addition to american history culture and such florida prove values as good manners thriftiness and cleanliness. The conclusion of the school curriculum with this sort of graduation ceremony in which the immigrant laborers laborers would begin on one side of the stage dressed in intentionally outlandish versions of their native dress right. So the native americans would have feathers everywhere in the people from india would be wearing just. Go from that side of the stage 2 walkthrough a 20 ft tall melting pot. Melting pot right people working in their native dress put you in a proper american business suit. And send you out the other side. Symbolically and literally up the right kind of late right kind of person it is horrible and it's absurd. Heartbreaking because let me be honest i am not sure we have come as far from that as we think. Even today we preached simulations power in this nation. The right kind of person worthy of blessing. If you are quite such blessing is largely assumed if you are not our culture says you must prove your worth. Demonstrating 1008 you are good enough. Assimilated. Innocent enough. Why can't you power enough. Delivered safety. And with dignity. And here's what are universalist heritage teaches us. And everyone of us. Across the whole spectrum of difference and innocence and guilt and suffering. Everyone of us. We do not have. Good enough. You do not have to be a good enough black boy to not get shot in the street. Do not have to be a good enough immigrant basic health care when you are dying. Do not have to be a good enough girl to not be raped. You do not have to be good enough. Deserve basic human rights. You do not have to earn your safety. This does not imply a world without justice or even without just punishment but it does demand a world without an implicit conditioning to kill. Don't have to prove that michael brown didn't steal the cigars or threaten the cop. The claim that he should not have been shot. Nor does every black boy and every street in america have to code switch into a vernacular of benign whiteness to keep the prison bars. From rattling away their futures. We are. Enough. We do not have to prove it. Michael brown with good enough to not die. No matter what happened that day. Officer wilson is good enough. To do whatever it takes to be free from his fear so they eat you might live life. A great blessing. St louis and ferguson and washington dc are good enough every one of them. For an expectation of safety and humanity and dignity in their city streets. With no fire to burn away at their souls nor billy clubs to threaten them. Or canisters of gas to raise up yet more tears when so many have already been shed. We are good enough to advocate for. To make policy for. The fattest age for law enforcement and legal discourse that includes all without targeting some. Illogical ancestors tata that we create hell on this earth. When we dare to categorize people in and out of access to blessing. And we love the hell out of this earth when we come back again and again and again. The worst indignity that is always there. And everyone. Always. The gospel of our faith the good news challenging news which says each and everyone we needed the potential blessing it might just be one of the few truths that can combat the fear that kills. Because the fear that killed will kill again in these days. If we cannot collectively still the trigger with a truly universal blessing. For the world and all who dwell within. Kendama.

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868.mp3

In 1999. I accepted a consulting job. In the united arab emirates. And traveled for the first time to the middle east. As a return peace corps volunteer and the librarian who has traveled extensively in the world. I thought i was prepared for yet another cross-cultural experience that i was tolerant. An open. Sweltering touring the area near dubai i saw the moth. Dotted throughout the communities. And i experienced a strange inexplicable sense of regret. The sensation of regret. Emerged from. Inside me and i found myself thinking. Bad. Arnot chapel. The first time i felt that reaction i dismissed it as an absurd question. But the second time i felt that same deep sense of regret i took note. Deep inside i was reliving that historic tug of war. Between christianity and islam. I was shocked and embarrassed. To realize that i was so left no sentra. As to wish that christianity had one in the middle east. 7 years and a couple more trips to the united arab emirates in the middle east later i had the opportunity to move to dubai. Where is accepted the position of dean of library at zayed university. A university for emirati women. I worked in the position more than four years and i learned something new everyday. Awesome that lesson was about islam. At the end of my assignment as i prepared to leave the united arab emirates i made a promise. Friends and colleagues. I promised that i would bring. Good news. From the middle east. To the united states. Today's service allows me to partially fulfill that promise. So what did i learn about islam. For starters i learned the symbolic and therapeutic value of prayer. Observant muslims answer the call to prayer five times a day. Overtime as we got to know one another men and women alike talked with me about the value. Of observing the schedule of prayer. How it's framed their personal and family lives. How it helped them. Remember their relationships to one another and to allah the most powerful one. At the workplace i saw the men pray together. Leaving their sandals and shoes outside the door of the designated prayer room. After midday prayer the same man congregated for lunch. I witness those bonds that form when people pray together. I also learned about integrating discipline and self-denial. Into one's life. On the first day of my first ramadan in dubai i came face-to-face with what me what it means not to eat or drink during daylight hours. Ramadan begins the day after and and iman in saudi arabia. The crescent moon so no one is quite. Able to predict the exact day. That year the first day of ramadan occurred on a weekend. And i wasn't aware of the announcement when i left home to do shopping that morning. I pulled into a coffee into a parking lot and i did my usual routine. I reached for my water bottle and swallowed a few golf. Keep. Hydrated. I got out of the car. Before i took two steps a man came hurriedly up to me and said. You are breaking the holy law you may not drink water it's the holy month of ramadan that is wrong. Fortunately most of the muslims i knew did not expect me to observe. Ramadan. Expect us not to eat or drink in public. During ramadan i packed lunches on the weekdays in my favorite coffee shop was closed on the weekend mornings when i took my walk. At the university during ramadan we shortens the work hours. 2923. And rearrange class schedule. Meetings that involved muslims were always scheduled in the mornings when they were still alert. Students were unable to finish their homework because evenings were devoted to eating socializing and with family late into the night. We locked the vending machines and the cafeteria was closed for the entire month. We opened a hidden tea room. Where the expats could eat their packed lunches or have a beverage break. Because we were not permitted to drink water at our desk. Either. Ramadan with strange. And i never got used to it. Yet many devoted muslims treasure that month. The time to purify themselves. The words of the prophet. To offer acts of charity. Deepen their spiritual lives and certainly to strengthen their family ties. As i came to know them better. Observant muslims. Told me of both the difficulties. And the values of their observing ramadan. Well prayer and fasting are pillars of the islam faith. There are many customs westerners associate with islam that are in fact not tenants of the religion. The middle east. Is a geographic cultural and religious juncture of east. And west. Often the things we attributed to islam are actually deep. Cultural differences that are not religious. Customs related to. Styles of clothing. Arranged marriages. Restrictions of women's behavior. In public for example are historic. And even regional. But not religious in origin. According to the prophet muhammad. Who wanted his wives protected from the stairs of other men. Women. Modestly dressed. Put the degree to which women cover their hair and their bodies. Local custom. Rather than by the quran. In the united arab emirates where i live i wore modest western clothes. I covered my knees my shoulders my upper arm. But i did not wear the black abaya or the black shayla over my hair. In saudi arabia however women's rights are sharply curtailed particularly in public. Once i had the opportunity to attend a conference in saudi arabia. And i had to cover my hair. And wear with a black shayla and wear the black abaya. Before i got off the plane. When i put on the abaya and shayla i felt invisible. It seemed to take more energy for me to talk. To make myself heard. Then when i wear western clothes. That was my personal experience but many women. Who traditionally wear a bias and shayla's. Tell me they do not feel that constraint. Another example of local custom that seems strange to us is the expectation that women must always be accompanied by a male relative if they leave the house. This constraint is practiced to protect the women. To maintain their good reputation. And to help them attract a good husband. I learned cultural preferences come from the bedouin life not the quran. The better one where traditionally nomadic people who lived in small groups. Mostly extended family. In the desert. They did not let strangers see their women for fear the women would be stolen. The better woman only trusted their families and they wanted to keep in close contact with their extended family. Which are reasons why they still are likely to have their children marry cousins. Even today. About 65%. Of the emirati couples are related. Most of these are cousins marrying cousins. Sometimes first cousins. It's my exposure to the middle east. I've interacted with arabs who practice islam and others who do not. Even those who don't practice islam. Observe its holidays in march the same way. That non-practicing christians observe christmas or easter. And non-practicing jews observe yom kippur and rosh hashanah. For passover. I'm not sure when. Exactly my attitude. About the ubiquitous moss. Actually changed but it certainly did. I came to see that mosques. Often with small grocery stores next door or community centers. We're men of all social strata. Gather to pray. To socialize. To gain sustenance. And to care for the poor. And i suddenly realize one day that the call for prayer with comforting. Even when i heard it early in the morning before my alarm went off. The call for prayer. Became a reminder. Of the spiritual aspects of life that are so easy to forget. The call for prayer. Like the cool. Of the distant morning.. Or the song of the cardinal. Is a reminder to pause. For a moment of reflection. To become more mindful. About the present. And to prepare for whatever may follow in my life. Reading. M4.

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1483.mp3

That reflects the rising sun and makes a stop and breathe in wonder. Hallelujah. For the pool with the tithes and unceasing beat of ocean waves that soothe our souls and connect us with the ancient rhythms of the cosmos. Hallelujah. For the greenlee glowing canopy and shadow dappled forest floor. For the angel majesty of the towering trees and for the intimate discovery of a flea live wildflower that invite us to leave our hurry lives and embraced illness and contemplation. Hallelujah. For the exhilaration of grassy plain that dance and undulate in the wind. For the endless blue horizons of ocean. Inspire us to imagine and dream and call us to embrace the possibilities. Of that promise but lies just beyond the horizon of our knowing. Sing alleluia. For the terrifying and awe-inspiring power of a lightning flash stormy night. And the bright sparkling calm of the morning after that reassures us. Is always a dawn after the darkest most sold ending night. Hallelujah. For the renewal we feel and then never changing cycle of the year and add and flow of the season. That helped us to accept with gray the comings and goings in our lives. The heavy loss and joyful welcoming of live precious to us. Sing alleluia. For the sleeping growing vibrant and unimaginably rich and wondrous world that we are blessed to share for our brief moment under this sun in this particular universe. We raise our eyes this guy breed in the wonder of it taste the goodness of it and shout it sprays. Winnsboro hallelujah. Hallelujah. Shout hallelujah. Sing alleluia.

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1267.mp3

Irene so. With a preschool child. Living with her parents in china. During world war ii. Japanese soldiers had invaded china. Irene's father. What the professor who had done his graduate studies. And received his doctorate at mit that's the massachusetts institute of technology in boston. When the japanese invaded. All the professors and the students. Of king while university which is considered the mit of china. All of the professors the students and their families. Moved. To southwestern china. Where they hoped. They would be safe. When it became clear. Even there they would not be safe her family flew. In an unpressurized plane. Over the himalayas. To kolkata india. It was called calcutta by some of us then. From kolkata they got on a boat. And they went through the indian ocean. And the arabian sea. And the straits of mendeleev and she remembers all these she calls them. The suez canal the mediterranean sea the straits of gibraltar and across the atlantic ocean. To new york. From there they travelled down here to washington d.c.. Irene's father wrote six papers based on his. Doctoral dissertation. And he became a professor. At the university of rochester in new york. Irene. Became a dentist. With a specialty in orthodontics. And last month. Irene was the honoree. Of the cornell asian alumni association. Pan-asian banquet. Commending her leadership. Import cornell alumni affairs. And the support of asian and asian-american students. Irene so is a member of our congregation. I think she will be here for the second store.

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983.mp3

I begin this morning. With a story from my own life. From when i was teaching elementary school some 20-plus years ago back in kentucky. I was unpacking children's books at the time. My principal into my classroom and he closed the door. Survey my room and. Fourth grade classroom. A few chairs. All over the floor was already swamp. And the school year wouldn't start for 2 days yes. We look at each other and i knew. I was at the okay corral. I wasn't sure what i was about to be shot. What's up. Year-old child who lied to 20 minutes before about having to use the restroom but now really needs to go. Well my principal looks somewhat less composed. Then that. I told him i had. Silence. More fidgeting. Began have an inkling of what this conversation was going to be about. I'm glad we're on your turf. He looked at me for a minute 9.. Silence. Took a breath. You know that tristan burke is no longer on your class list. I nodded again. His mother made me take him out of your class. Caleb down and then back up i nodded again tristan's mother was president of the pta that year. I only vaguely knew who tristan was. And the only thing i knew about him was it tristan was the most effeminate boy encountered in 5 years of teaching. Homosexual i don't know how she knows it but she knows it. Play look at me. And i look at him. And i can see the wheels. In his head. I would wonder later if he could see the wheels spinning in mine. Fortunately and sadly i had prepared for this moment i have no doubt it was going to come at some point. And then i would answer yes. I raised my eyebrows. More. Silas. Was hoping. Opportunity. Finally tell my story. This is ridiculous he said you're not the type of person to harm children. We looked at each other and i nodded quietly realizing the support that i was getting from him. It was a bittersweet moment. For both of us. I shouldn't have pulled him out of your class. You're you're horrible mine too for that matter. It's okay. Back at me. Weekly reading groups today it's an hour each day. You'll get my back and she'll just have to deal with it. There's another parent concern to i'll deal with him as well. We won't. Talk. About this. Again. I surveyed my room. I get this room cleaned up i don't know how you're going to be ready to start teaching in 2 days. Espana's hilsenteger enjoy the door. He opened it. How do you turn back to me. I'm glad. He looked at me one last time. Try to smile. I love. Closing the door behind him. For the next four years i never heard any of those complaints again. I invited another to come into reading class to help out when she could end. And we left a lot together that year. Premier fine art of teasing children. And probably a few other things. It occurs to me i could tell you why i'm here. Why not work is the director of the transitions office for our unitarian universalist association and i'm not teaching 4th grade anymore. I left elementary school because i was afraid. Afraid of being found out and fired for being a known homosexual certainly a part of it. The longer i stuck around in kentucky the greater the odds were that my private life would become public knowledge. But my parents are part of this story 2. My father was a principal in the same school system i taught in. My mother taught first grade is a neighboring well. I never had the opportunity. My folks are giving me a lifetime of modeling to know how to overprotect people. I know any public battle i would also have included them. I live for lies when i lived in lexington kentucky. I live the work-life where i love the work of teaching elementary school. I live the family life for had dinner with my folks once-a-week visited my grandmother a lot. Overspent on my relatives at christmas. I live with my friends let us support group and played volleyball. I lived a religious life where i said i'm nearly every committee. In my home unitarian universalist congregation. Denominational work beyond that. I even managed to begin to see some overlapping. Certainly my work life in my family life overlap song. And as i came out in my congregation my gay life in my religious life. I work very hard back that i'm making my congregation a place will be welcoming for gay lesbian bisexual and transgender people. Well cat mate helping our congregation bring in. Lesbian bisexual and transgender people. And it happened. It happened in part because i and others started telling our stories in church. I was able to tell the story of having a crush on mr. gardner my high school drama teacher. The seventeen-year-old working up the courage to tell him about that crush. I was able to tell the story of being raised in a very. Southern baptist church. And having my anita bryant type sunday school teacher asked me if i agreed with her that homosexuals for sick people. I was able to tell the story of coming out to my parents and having my own father asked me if i was going to molest children. Well my mother cried. I was able to tell the story of meeting a unitarian universalist minister one night in a gay bar and that's where i first learned about unitarian universalism. I was becoming aware that not only could i be 11 + 10 + 9 + 8 + 7 + 6 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1. But i could talk about them. As well. You see my real fear was not that someone like my principal asked me if i was gay. My story. My real fear is that i would never get. This is what the radical right wants to control our society should only certain approved stories can be told. This is why the work is congregation did yesterday in the beyond categorical thinking workshop is so vitally important. I would create a place where everyone can tell their. Stories. I was afraid that. I would not get to have a life. I was afraid i would always have four of them. My fear is not that my private life would become public knowledge. My fear is that it never would or would happen only. On someone else's terms. When i hear people say they want to make sure they have a private life in a public life i wonder. Do they really want to lie. Categories for human beings really are a bad idea and i think i learned that during my conversation with my principal. As a side i do understand that people are talking about controlling choice when they make the point about having a private life i'm all for that. I just believe human beings together when we only have one life to juggle. It's more than enough to do. Began to know that i needed. I look around me and i became sadly we are the number of people i knew who are also living more than one life at a time. There was my good friend at one time been married to a man who had a sexual addiction for children. But she felt like she could never talk about this with anyone. My father never had a father and never talks about him. My friend quit playing the piano because he became a librarian. Still haven't figured that one. My friend sandra who told no one about her live-in boyfriend dick. All of these people in so many more who never got to be 11. It was hard for me to see in the children i taught. Children who came to school and then had to go home and cook and clean for younger brothers and sisters. Children who knew they could not fail. Children who would go home to wars. Children who might have to parent their parents. The times they were nine years old they already knew. They had to keep these lives quiet. Religious educator maria harris talks about implicit education what we teach without ever actually saying it out loud. I need to have more than one life. There had to be a better way. I look at how i might make it a better way and i learned. But back then at that time. I just didn't trust that those were real. I look at the amount of work i had to do and i thought about the fact that i often spent more time documenting what i taught how i taught it and who is there to hear it. Some days. So i decided to look elsewhere. The person i saw doing the most teaching was my minister. Unitarian universalist ministers i knew. And i didn't have to fill out report cards either. Rabbis consider themselves. I watch the unitarian universalist ministers on you. Buy watch the way they talk people around them. By telling stories. Often their own stories. At the same time i've begun leaving homophobia workshops in uu congregation. The knot how to have more of it but how to have less. And i learned quickly about teaching adults. 1. Necessarily have longer attention spans than children. Usually engaging people on an emotional level increases their attentiveness. Adult learning is as much about unlearning as it is about learning. The product isn't nearly as important as the process. Texas. What's ableist. Explicitly you're teaching them about that oppression. Implicitly. You're teaching them about vulnerability. That's where the magic happens because people let themselves become more vulnerable. Become stronger. Become less homophobic. Left races flush excess less ableist. I did this for telling stories. Sometimes my stories. I was blessed for the stories of others. The possibility for having one. Lion. Friend of mine from seminary and i were talking one day she said you could learn a fair amount about a person by asking questions. 1. When did you stop. Singing. When. Dancing. 3. When did you stop playing. 4. When did you stop telling. Your story. For the record i stopped singing when mrs. rice told me i should stop when i was in 3rd grade. Do i still have to myself if i think people aren't looking. I still go dancing. I still play. As i told my friend marianna tomorrow matter of when i started telling my story. Then when i stop.. Telling my story at 14. 10 years before i started telling some of my stories again. It's only since i've become a unitarian universalist minister that i've not had to figure out what story i could tell where. Like the story of the possum one story leads to another and little your our story. In someone else's story. Well that's the magic. What are your stories. Have you stopped telling them. Certain places. Internalize. How well do you know the stories of those around you. Stories in this room. Your stories. A magical. I hope you're not afraid to tell them. All your life and i let you be fully 11. Or whatever. You are. My wish for you. Is it you can share your story. Whenever. And wherever you choose. Whether you are 11. Or 90. Or somewhere in between. Play. Tell your stories. Listen to the stories of others. 1. Magic. Let us take a moment of silence.

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1549.mp3

Always a joy for me to be here. Have opportunity to speak. Before different groups and. Are two groups that are always exciting for me to speak and that is. My own home congregation which means here. And this congregation or sort of my two congregations. It is interesting to have the opportunity to meet a cleric who's been here before me. 20 years ago my now husband and i. Still getting used to that. Turn. We're shopping for. School 44 son or adopted son. Progressive schools no surprise. Director of a very nice program i say which one. Talkin about the inclusiveness in the diversity. And choose things from from different groups that have some religious affiliation. She wanted to assure us that there were diverse and not narrow. They said they do teach some bible therefore they don't say anything about the angry punishing god of the old testament. Talk about love and moral values. Well you know i got to take this a little personally she's talking about after all my family mets. But i flashed at that moment on a routine by bill cosby. I thought maybe she's right and talked about all the smoothie. The older translations. Every sentence begins with and. He really doesn't call for it. And there's a lot of smiling and i guess smoke. Is the past tense of maybe. There's some redemptive value to these. Stories indeed. The god of the old testament does seem quite emotional and often that emotion is anger. Awfully emotional for flaunting of power and sometimes it's punishing. But in fact in those areas. In general. Where god intervenes in human history it's usually out of a kind of righteous indignation. Because there has been some kind of injustice and abuse of power which god answers. To set right. But i can understand how some of this material. Maybe off-putting so maybe you would have to have a choice. Habitue curriculum smoothing and non smoothie. One of the first instances where god exercises this anger is. When there's an injustice cain kill his brother abel. And there's no one around to see. Course i'm not a creationist so i don't believe that these were the first two people. The authors of this passage didn't really think that would be around. The other hand who did. They marry. A man and a woman right. We read whatever we want to in the bible and i read that as a sign that. God sees all he says to. Okay where is your brother abel well i mean your card right. So the story can't be taken literally and what ifs kane do these stories are very human answers like you know my kid you know who did this who who. What general clothes lying on the floor i don't know. So what if kane say he says i don't know am i my brother's keeper. Then that's the last line says. Your brother's blood cries out to me from the earth. Anger this. Was done in secret. But it's still evil is still wrong so god comes in because they're their there was an abuse. God smite. The egyptians is because they are enslaving and abusing people that are weaker that pharaoh is abusing power so god comes in with the greater power and of course you've got this. Hulsey moses magicians and pharaoh's magicians. I'm competing who's got a bigger miter who's got a stronger one you know these stories were written by men. Buck or a because there is abuse of power. Course clerics make what we want of these stories i went to school for this. Sodom and gomorrah. The reason god. Mozart and gomorrah. Was because they were. In jewish tradition. They were violent and they were cruel to people who are different. Cause god's angels in the form of humans were being hidden in lofthouse. They were not from there they were strangers. Sodoma na maroda cause them to be destroyed. Was that they were abusive. The people who were weak strangers people who cannot. The avengers justice able. Adventures. Adjust. Salt lake to respin the. That lady i know talking about. Adam and eve by. Define religious excuses to deny other people ride such as marriage equality. All eyes will be on maryland. In a few months but that regard. You know in the story of the flood. It's a very heterosexual story much more so than an atom. Create gmail. But then at the end of course he has. To make the world survive. But at the end of the story this redemption god. The seas that people are inherently problematic. He's never going to destroy the world again and he says the symbol of diversity in the future everybody will be included in the ark. He puts the rainbow in the arm. Anyway. That we want. I have been concerned clergy always say that they're concerned. The two events happened at about the same time in my life. I am looking for the presence of young and tender ears. Just to be on the safe side i'm going to speak a little obliquely. But the amazing and horrific story about the. Coach in pennsylvania. Was unfolding. Now my practice is a psychotherapist by. I'm an expert. In working with the survivors. Trauma and abuse center ford stories. I like that and. Study these. I'm often testify in court as an expert witness i was rather appalled. Some psychologist was it you was either. Fortune offer was used. Play say something about. Histrionic personality disorder which is being phased out of the diagnostic manual. Person if you have histrionic personality disorder you would have histrionic personality. What we saw was cold-blooded. And all the words all the passages all the testimony could come out of any textbook that i study or lecture ever attended. Look at that particular mental disorder. And the effect that it has on people people are traumatized to textbooks a. By events. Have to include two ingredients. Where you're helpless. Where you're isolated. Somebody else has power. Invisibility. No. Recently i was. About the time this is going on i had occasion to visit somebody in prison. You ever had to visit anybody in jail or prison. You have that so. You know about what this is like you think it's humiliating to go through airport screening. Imagining an outrageous. Then the kind of screening that innocent people relatives go through and the hopes of visiting a loved one or a. Parishioner in prison is 10 times like that. I was in clarksburg. State state prison in montgomery county. Linedock you have to get there early. Because. It is certain. Time if you're not processed by enough to you have to go home. Leaving now. Prisons are not close to public transportation in the shuttle bus. Wealthy enough to have a car not everybody does. But you took the morning bus. It's not going to be a bust till evening and this prisoner visiting hours once a week on tuesday if you don't make it in because they were slow. You can't get to see this person they don't see you for another week. This kind of thing. Well there was a woman there of enough advanced years that she was. Visiting her grandchild grandson. This woman would probably be in her 80s i would say. And because i have a very strict dress code for visitors. Obeyed the dress code she did not wear shorts or a t-shirt. She wore a very nice dress a long dress a respectable dress. My mother i think would have called a sundress. The shoulders were not there has no sleeves and this was in the summer. Well they had a rule no sleeveless car. Because it would be. I don't know what sexually enticing for the prisoners. And they wouldn't let this woman and. And this guard was just going to stand her ground and she would not let grandma and because the dress was sleeveless. People were frantic because it was so absurd. Are you. Stupid this makes no sense. Are you that literal minded what is going on here in tears. You got to come back next tuesday. She can't get home until i'm in and put on a sweater or something in the sweltering heat. A chance you'd wait for the bus. So what is happening in our society in which ordinary people. Are subjected to outrageous. Disconnect. The human society that corrupt why is it that a man who quit in public life. Have the admiration well-earned admiration of many people who did very great and good things. And then another setting behaves very differently. Why would an ordinary person a working-class person. Who is no different than anybody waiting in line. Probably not that much different from anybody incarcerated there. Commit an act of human cruelty. How do these things. He was thinking about. I often think about another child that i thought if you had superpowers. High school yearbook cuz you had one superpower what would it be. A lot of people said they want to be able to fly that was mine the other was invisibility. God has superpowers. Scripture. What do people do if they have superpowers is it true that. Power corrupts. Inulin in the movies the people that have superpowers become heroes. Comply. Stick to wall. Good they often also use invisibility that is they have masks. The anonymity seems to help. If i have power. And can hide i have a mask for invisibility. What are use it for good or just power. Corrupt. Power corrupts. Then are all people. Automatically corrupted when they have super powers. I don't think that power corrupts. I do not think that that is what is going on. What i think happens. Is that when one or two things come together. Divisibility. Corepower. For both. But you have a moment or a situation. That is a true opportunity. For moral choice. People complain about speed cameras. Before i drive safely because i don't want to get a ticket. And that is the reason i confess. That's not a moral choice. That's enlightened self-interest. If i do good things. Because i have a. Roll that i play is a cleric. And i'm aware that people will admire the good things. Got a moral choice or is that. But desire to be approved. By people. I think what happens is that the opportunities people have to make genuine moral choices. Unlimited. Batman people have invisibility. 4 people have power. Those moral choices. Indicate the real character. I don't think power corrupts people are corrupt i think the bible is right. Process i know that the heart of humankind is corrupt. When you have moral choice when visibility people behave very differently. Political news junkie and you can you can get. And i followed the poles. General presidential election cycles. Sort of like reading tea leaves can you predict. Happy willow fooled i will i rejoice november am i going to talk about moving to canada or something. It's an interesting phenomenon that exit polls. They're going to vote or how they voted. Add up the numbers the actual votes are different. I mean it's a good thing. But what that is saying is that what people talk about making choices. Which referendum are which candidate they supported. The referendum or the candidate that they voted in secrecy. There are two people. People would often say something based on their expectations of reward or punishment. The public where the person is asking the question. But what they did in the secrecy of the voting booth was very different. When power and invisibility. Come together. People are unique situations to make moral choices that we don't have another air is moral choice can only be made where there is freedom. If i do not have freedom it's not a moral choice. Nimari witches system grounded in the old testament. Make a decision that youman beings needed to be regulated. So the old testament is a a. God realize that people were corrupt and decided that. That because people do have anger and jealousy and hatred and greed. So we may call you can't kill your brother. You can't make slaves out of people. You can't be cool. Animals. You only have laws. To regulate behavior. That is already bad. Used to be that you couldn't turn right on red i don't know if that's universal. But the way you knew that you could turn on right on red in the state as if you saw a sign that said no right on red. Another word semesters a sign you could. So if the bible says do not see the kid in its mother's milk. That's a sign that people were actually doing it. Particular pagan rite sandwich. They would do these sorts of. Now. Later generations. I'm particularly around the beginnings of. The post temple. second temple. beginnings of christianity. Despaired. Regulating behavior. Firewalls. Because people could circumvent these and you got to get more and more complex laws and it became burdensome. So based on inspiration from the prophets. Who talked about a new age. When people would. Transform their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks and other words the anger the fear would be transformed into a new kind of person and people wouldn't learn war anymore. Religious tradition took a new direction what if we transform people. Winter people that will make good moral choices. Rather than regulate behavior. That's very risky. Because you can give people that kind of freedom. Some people will abuse it. But in the end it is redemptive. My concern about what is happening in our society. It's not just that there is excessive. Define excessive power. My concern is that we are creating. Citizenry were educating children never to have moral choice. We are eliminating systematically all opportunities for moral choice. And all governments do this. Probably not going to stalk you if i come out and tell you that politically on the liberal. I probably be a socialist if i could get up there was a socialist party. You don't have a viable socialist candidate i am. I'm about as liberal as is is you can get. But i am well aware that liberal or conservative. Candidates when they. Achieve power. Want to play power. Presidents. Want to be powerful. Governors want to be powerful marijuana be powerful. So if you have power. Executive is rarely give up power it's in the nature of the human greed in humans driving. To have control. So. As time goes on all governments. Regardless of political persuasion. Absolute power over people. We began this in earnest 10 years ago. The terrorist attacks which were tailor-made for executives to seize power. Because people don't want to die. I'm often trade freedom. For fear of death. People have immense power. And the ability of. Police or government or airline. Tsa people. Prison guards. To exert enormous power over uman live through the technology has increased tenfold in the past decade. I worry about more than that then global warming. Hello there people who deny it. My brother lives in denver. Fairly conservative area he's a rocket scientist to retired rocket scientist. A pretty. Happy sort of guy. Letter to the editor. Global warming global warming 99% of all scientists believe in global warming that shows you what's a conspiracy. How can you get your trust people to make moral choices. I live in an atmosphere of fear. The farnham said you can never remember they ever went wrong underestimating the intelligence of the people. He also told me that he was amazed that somebody wrote in that i'm going to tell that story another story. And it's not you ready. But i'm concerned that opportunities for moral choice or vanishing. I don't have the answer. In terms of. Theme song in my i know about this kind of mental disorder. I believe that children must be protected very. Very carefully. And that invisibility. An abuse of power has to be regulated very carefully cuz children women and then people are often very very vulnerable. Hard to believe that people need to be protected first and foremost. What you go through a. To get on an airplane you lose. Privacy. You don't even have. The privacy of my body children who are educated not to allow people to touch them and certain parts of their body have been touched. White people in uniform in certain parts of their body. To all the more principles of what is private. Or turned aside because of our fear. Such a police scanner body is scanned. And i am guilty unless i can prove that i am innocent i am a terrorist unless i can prove to your satisfaction that i'm not. And i dare not. You argue with you because you will take me to side. I could be arrested. You know you're in trouble when they say sir. These are going to be arrested. The grandma did not complain to the warden. By the way. And i knew that she wouldn't because if you've ever visited anyone in prison they asked you not to complain. Because i have such little power and there will be vengeance so no people waiting in line or very meek and mild and we do not complain to the warden. About the abusive. Because loved ones are parishioners. Have such little power. I'm aware in my own life. What i do when i have moral choice. And sometimes i am surprised. Not some of the real me leaps out. Generally i'm a fairly courteous person i say please. Thank you. I wait in line. But recently. I had an example. How i might make a very different moral choice if i had power i don't really have a lot of power and like to. But there was a problem with my. Phone account of eevee. The internet. Part of it. And i had to complain there was an error on the bill and then i was going to put it all. Incense in the service wasn't right eventually a customer service person the nicest person in the world. The only wanted to do was solve my problem that that was his job and if i would just be patient he promised me he would solve my problem you couldn't ask for anybody more conciliatory and that gave me immense power. Because i was the aggrieved customer. And i spoke to him and very. Disrespectful ways about your customer service. This is ridiculous and who was absolutely going to be kind to me. Because i had power. I have more power than he did. No i'm outraged when people text. When they drive. But i do confess on some occasions since i'm a complete. Total addict 2. Computer and iphone i don't know if it's separate addictions. And the dsm-5 diagnostic manual it will. Actually have that it's it's been. Research to natural mental addiction to brain chemistry changes. I don't know what the implications are but i do know. I've been waiting at a light and. Sort of look down and abby. Plus i have invisibility and the days before cameras. I will confess. That if i'm waiting at a light and there is absolutely no traffic and it's the middle of the night. You know it's midnight or something i have gone through red lights. There's nobody within a 10 mile radius. Even though i guess it's illegal. Because i had invisibility. I wouldn't do it now and never do that if someone were in the car cuz it was said about example. I'm not an anarchy. Though i think what i am suggesting in some ways his anarchy. We have to decide what kind of society we want. Do we want an obedient society. Do we want to save society. Or do we want a redemptive society. Right now most people want to be safe. Most governments want them to be obedient. Inversion people want them to be redemptive most of the religious voice the vocal religious was america once i turn the clock back. The samara when people have clearly defined roles. My gender age. But if you want to be a redemptive society. Rakitic people to make moral choices. I'm going to have to give people moral choice. So. It's an easy thing for me to say but if i had a choice. I would get on an airplane that wasn't so carefully screened. If i didn't have to be humiliated. I would give up metal detectors. And i would take some risks because i don't want to live like that. I can always make that choice for other people. Personally do for myself as that live free or die. The people that say that want to restrict other people's behavior. I want to have a redemptive society society that grows a side of that creates happiness. Fulfillment. Literature love. Admiration inspiration redemption for people. They're going to have to give up the control. We cannot at the same time create moral people. And create obedient people. They're incompatible. We cannot spy. You cannot control every aspect of every human life. We want to create people that will create. Hope redemption and a new world. If we want peace. We will not do it by outlawing war. We want peace. Do it by creating people. Google transform their swords into plowshares. Play down their spears and transform them into pruning hooks. We won't give up on the desire to regulate and instead the desire to love. To welcome to nurture to promise. I want to end with the read.

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344.mp3

Water. You turn on the faucet and it's load unless it's been turned off for some repairs or the water main broken. Water you walk out in it when it rains or walk out after days and days of dry. Looking at plants wilting in wishing for rain. Water you fell into water while canoeing on the potomac or the seven of the susquehanna river and people are shouting don't drink the water it's not safe. Even though it feels cool. And welcoming. 3/4 almost 3/4 of the world is water. And 65% of your body. Is water. So if you weighed 100 lb. 65 of those pounds are water. And yet we know water is in danger today. And that means that life on this earth. And i have six pages here to talk to you about. But i'm only going to share one story in it. It turns out. That there are thousands and thousands and that actually millions. The poorest people in this world. Live on 5 gallons of water a day. So would you. Would you hold these 5-gallon for me the kind of heavy. Unless they've got one more here. Can you hold that. That weighs 8 lb is that right. I turned around against five-gallon tear. That's how much it takes. But that's how much. Most. Millions of poor people in this world. Live on everyday. I just stay there for me. And i want you to look at. All of these chairs. All the earth. All the way back to here. And. Is there a blue ribbon over here on the rideshare. Right there and all of these chairs off to that blue ribbon. If there were a gallon of water like that on each of these shares all of those. And all of these. That's how much you and i you. One day. That means not just what we drink but how we fix our food and how we flush the toilet and how things are made for us. Nn. Can you play the satellite of difference between all of us. We have. Same amount of water. You guys can sit down. We have the same amount of water. But once somebody says you don't waste water. And you stay back. The same amount of water we always had in the world. Why do we worry have to about wasting it it's not going away someplace. No. But we're getting something like 83 million new people. 83 million more people. A year. We're going to have to start. Sharing a spotter. Animes that we need. The sheriff. It needs it means that we need not to be polluting it because we start saluting it then there's less and less and less that we can drink and they still be here. But it's not so we can drink on it even plants can grounds around or animals can live with it. So what i just want you to. Think about today is that. We can do it. You can do it i heard in albuquerque new mexico. They were using 140 gallons per person per day. And the city went the whole city said we've got to save water. It's hard to get it there. If we got to save water and they did a whole bunch of different things. In the city of albuquerque just recently. And they changed it down to 80 gallons of water which is still alive. Phentermine 60 gallons less than they were using before. Emmett range powder toilets flush. And they change and they caught watering in the off of their roofs and they saved it. Amazing wastewater like letting the water run when your brush. I do that. Have to stop doing. Letting the water run when you're stopping your hands. And it doesn't mean you shouldn't wash your hands. Because we know that washing hands is the best way. To stay healthy this area. So what i want you to remember and think about when you drink that water when you see the rain come. When you go splashing and stomping in those puddles. Running your bicep. The puddle. I just looking out the window. We're thankful for it. But we have a lot more than our share of it. And we need. Barry. Because. The earth. Can we live on. We're not moving to. So we need to take very good care of it. Some people call it our blue boat.

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1249.mp3

Growing up in wisconsin. I lived in a monochromatic world. My suburb whitefish bay. With derisively known as white folks pay because in the fifties all of us who live there or what. Even baseball legend hank aaron. Star hitter for the milwaukee braves had trouble buying a house there. I didn't know it at the time. You could say that i started life. The binders of a racist. This morning. I want to tell you about my attempt to cast aside those blinders. And to ask whether we as a liberal congregation. Might have some of the same short-sighted and involuntary prejudices i grew up with. In my 30s i moved to new york city. Barely an exclusive private school and left my old world behind. New york with exciting fibrin. Unimaginably diapers. But i was shocked. But obviously income gap in the neighborhood schools. Touches the well-kept private school where i taught. And the shabby republic. A new teacher friend asked me to tutor with her. An after-school program in east harlem. A tall african-american. Struggled with embarrassment. But he could hardly read and he was in the sixth grade. At first. She had a disability of sorts but no. Kitchen leaving pasta law someone great the next. He never got to learn the basic. With the right help he caught on quickly. Even so. I knew he would always be a world behind the students i taught it freely. Which overcrowded and under-resourced. We have waiting lists and endowments. His library was non-existent. Pearly's woodsfield floor-to-ceiling. With leather bound books. Institutionalized racism. Economic disparity. Or both. Who is like david for one thing. Appeared. White another. The first time i met him i found myself stepping backwards. I was shocked at my reaction. David's father was large and very dark skin. I realized i was afraid of him. I was coming face-to-face. With my own racism. My fears have been there all along. Recognize. Oh yes i've been horrified by the brutal reaction to the civil rights movement but there was in the south. I lived in the north and we didn't do such thing. I thought of myself. It's an open-minded compassionate person. How was it that i could be having such a negative reaction like this. I had work to do on myself it seems. I started reading african-american literature and more importantly. I started getting in touch with my internal fears. During quiet times of meditation and some personal psychotherapy. I got to the heart of my fear of the other. Somehow up raining it was designed to shelter and protect me head instead cause me to view the world. To a very narrow plant. I'd grown up conditions condition to see darker-skinned as. The other. This was a nice of you i wanted to take of my fellow human beings this was not the person i wanted to be. So i got busy. I volunteered at riverside church of vibrant interracial place with a strong social justice program. Different types of people. I was determined to toss aside the blinders. But my short-sighted upbringing. I became the weekend manager of the men's shelter at the church. Find myself sleeping on a cot in an open room with 12 homeless man most of them black. Addiction mental illness poverty. I had some of my own. There was no privacy and yet. I never once stayed awake. Out of fear or anxiety. Somehow i knew and trusted that the men would never harm me. I was beginning to leave behind the fears i develop in childhood. And i was starting to believe the words is my therapist. Once you name it. You can tame it. Back in my classroom with really krista one of the few black girls in my class. Confided to me. But no one would come to her birthday party at her home in harlem. I guess that the fear factor was due to her address. After a few discreet calls to the parents of her friends. Almost all of them showed up at her party. The parents hadn't even fearful. But they weren't full. I didn't want a little girl's birthday to go unacknowledged. I knew that fear. In addition to acknowledging my. I wish learning to acknowledge racism. Where i thought. Owning a racist. Are we doing this in our job. Are we doing this with our children. Are we doing this in our church. What does that even look like. Tapestry of faith class last year has opened my eyes even more. In one activities we listen to many voices of hispanic and african-american you use. Who are made to feel unwelcome. In various churches even if that's inadvertently. I wonder how they would feel riverworld. I wonder do we ignore visitors especially if they look a little different. I feel deeply the pain of one visitor. I'll let you know who was totally ignored when he entered the lobby of a large uu congregation. And then again after the service. During coffee hour. He vowed never to return. But about a month later she got word that a colleague of his was preaching at the same congregation. So this time around. He dyed his clerical collar. Latino visitor was an ordained minister. And this time around members approached and engaged with him. So what happened the first time. Racism. Or just complacency. Hard to tell. In this liberal and seemingly enlighten church not too far from a major urban center. With not much diversity and evidence. This cherished uu tradition of ours. Has a long history of whiteness. Even if we survive in the years ahead we will not try. We will not grow. If we continue to wear the blinders that cause us to otherwise. No matter how inadvertent or unintended are otherwise they may be. If i'd learned and continue to learn from my own experience. Confronting racism is our unfinished and ongoing work. By opening our eyes. And acknowledging our own racism. We make ourselves open to the diversity we say we want. Once we name it. We can pain. What if. We wanted to move out of our comfort zone.

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1056.mp3

Enjoying my view of the wild potomac below. Like the swirling river. My life activities threatened to overflow the banks of my calendar. Navigating the strange pressures. Each day. Is like sweeping down an obstacle course of humpback rocks and jagged ledger ledges that could smash this flimsy boat at any moment. For now. I spit a safe distance. And sip hot orange pekoe tea from a thermos. This elixir evokes sharing afternoon tea with my father and it's so soothing. I am in a place of sanctuary. I am at peace. Later that afternoon. My mother called with news that throws me deep into an emotional whitewater. My dad has just been diagnosed with the early stages of alzheimer's. All my life dad has been my trusted counselor and friend. He has stood calm when i have been troubled. So often his says it's his advice. Has built a path of stepping stones to lead me back to solid ground. Now. I am reeling at the news that he has steadily and irretrievably going to lose the gif. Of mind and memory that has made him uniquely himself. My own very beloved dad. Why do i suddenly feel as if it is i almost as much as he who is drowning in confusion. In this crisis. I tried to recall some of the stepping stones my father put in place. To help me maintain my equilibrium in life. Upheavals. One of these stones is a word i made up in his honor. Copperas. I can still picture myself as a little girl standing in line in the cafeteria of valley road school in princeton new jersey. I am torn between hunger and red. As i approached the hulking states of that cafeteria woman i fear so much i had forgotten. To bring the $0.35. I needed to buy my lunch token. And the great over was going to scold me again. Tears welled up. I thought of my dad. What would he do what he cry most certainly not. I ended his calm demeanor for its power and distance from hurt. At that moment i needed his strength. So i invented the word copperish because it reminded me of him. Like firm metal. It wouldn't buckle. And like a penny. I would always have it in my pocket. When i needed it. Put on copperish as my armor that day and made it safely through the line. Next day. I brought the money. Yes siree. I paid. That big woman. 35 copper pennies. I watched her count. Each penny one by one. It was a moment of triumph. Much later. For my 50th birthday. Friends gave me a wonder woman comic book. Expression. Flying with your fifth stressed out at all who would threaten her. He looks very copperish. Maybe my friend saw some of that in me. Another of dad stepping stones. Finding good humor in difficult times is important. At the age of 21. I had just returned home after enduring a battery of bluebook final exams. My dad sing my bleary-eyed exhaustion. Invited me to join him for a cup of tea. Then unfurl than amazing poster. Featuring a black cat. Iphone ring claus tenaciously digging into the branch from which it was dangling. The poster red. Hang in there baby. I laughed. And cried. And mentally took a snapchat snapshot of that moment. I still see you. When i am stretched my limit. That also gave me the stepping stone of seeking tranquility in a turbulent world. A while back. My car was totaled by a driver. Who ran a red light. So i escaped injury. I had to fight with the insurance companies and other bureaucracy to recoup my losses. After while i was growing discouraged from battle fatigue. One morning as we sat at my parents kitchen table. My dad handed me a small white index card with the following words. I seek. The power of the rock. The magic of the water. The religion of the tree. The color of the wind. The enigma of the horizon. A bridge of tranquility in trouble times. For me dad has always been that bridge. His message with that card. Was. I could learn to hold. To build my own bridge over troubled waters. By seeking tranquility. Within my own heart. It's not just my dad i'm worried about. It's my mom too. The last time i saw her striding purposefully down the beach with an air of confidence. Within 2007. I remember watching her white hat. Bobbing and sync with her step. And disappearing as she reached that point in the distance. Withstand. And sky. Meet. Since then. A very limp. Strain of shingles erupted and morphed into post. Herpetic neuralgia. That has her trapped in constant pain. He winces that reminds me not to hug her. When she was plagued by open wounds on her back. Dad was her nightly caregiver. He would plaster large bandages on her running sores. Doctors found no remedies. Now. She has a frightening prospect. I'm witnessing the emotional deterioration. Of her caring and attentive husband. The love of her life for the past 58 years. 4 years have passed. Since that moment when mom vanished. Into that point of oblivion. On the beach. Never to return. To her former self. I feel figures. In my copperish. Veneer. Mi-2 rock. Are turning to sound. I realized. That it will be up to my brother and me. To build a bridge of tranquility. In trouble time. For them. I worry about my ability to stand up to the challenge. Because i don't always feel like a copperish woman. Still. I hope that my father's lessons will bolster my inner fortitude. I recently wrote to my brother. That i think. We should savor the quality time. We do have. By cherishing family time together especially thanksgiving and christmas. Before these good times. Are equipped. By forgetfulness. And pain. That certainly knows where he stands on all this. Copperas as ever he is declaring in no uncertain terms alzheimer's be damned the doctors don't know what they're talkin about. As long as there is strength in denial. He will not give in. To tears. That's his spirit. And to that i say. Hang in there baby. Power on. Dad. As for me. I can't tonight what's happening to the two people i love. I can't wish away the pain. I feel at my parents slow decline. The grief that is descending over me their losses. In my own. I am bracing myself to be copperish. Especially when i am with them. I am looking for the humor. I can share with them. I am more intense than ever. Unbecoming tranquil. In a time of adversity. And i will spend what time i do have. With my brother. 11 support my parents. As long as i am able.

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2462.mp3

Gabrielle farrell our lifespan religious educator for that story into languages. Who knows the second language. American sign language in english. And welcome back every traveler. Today at traveler might come back and body and the different places. Or you may have to send a traveler in spirit. I know i didn't go anywhere in july and august sit back and forth the river road and it was wonderful. Got to see. More of this congregation and many new faces today. Welcome back to river road where belonging matter. Are september theme belonging. For each of us can contribute something to enrich the whole. Perhaps you've been here a year or mine. Or perhaps today is your very first time. At this water in gathering and we bring something of value to the circle. Today's service includes an annual ceremony. It has a different form forbes keep evolving everywhere. It's a ritual of welcoming one another home. Home to this moment. Even if you are just here for a very short time. You're not sure this is home. If you brought some water with you we're going to invite you a little bit. Put that water into the ball with others. And if you didn't bring anything. We still have water for you here into pictures and you can also poor. Pouring. We are saying we acknowledge. That somehow someway. We got here together. On this day. And this is the way of living you know what it's like we arrived at some places with our canteen and our can't maybe metaphorically foursome and we're ready and equipped. To other places. Realizing relax water food. Sustenance. And others bring us the bread for the journey. And so in a way we're in this metaphorical boat. Tidewater today the water of life. Only you can experience and perceive. A name. But the lying here might mean to you. We speak in many voices in the unitarian universalist congregation we named many sources and so there's no one way no one language. To say. Belonging. This day lands in your particular history. Time for you. Where are you. Today september 1st. It was a little bubble that was coming up from the mouth of the fish. Never raindrop a raindrop falling down from a cloud in the sky. And they arrived into something much much larger together i learn that by watching the story. In the same way i would say your breath. In this place. Is part of the sky. Your water. So you have bright or that you pour is part of the ocean. Our voices come together where sky and ocean meets the story says as oneness. Uncommon planet we named earth. Are blue boat home as well sing later. The story that gabrielle told also tells us that we might get here safely. Silverlight where we belong. Ours is a complex reality individually and collectively. Old river road. As safe. Congregation. Sacred place. With this goal of. Integrity in our best judgment. And we do hope this life for life is coming in right now is silver maybe. Shimmers from many different hearts and mind. Miracle in our world today. Community. The holding of difference. The coming together with some creative conflict but in general as one body. I say we are greater. Then the sum of the parts. We are greater because there is this expansive quality to belonging. Widening sense that you have fellow. Sojourners. Water of life. That's what keeps drawing me back to work in congregations over and over again. Tell you the truth i keep trying to leave. And then i get drawn back because i'm so. Deform. Each of us create something of a kind of joint. Solidarity with each other. I know that you don't answer the door and connect with every person in the same way. And still we say. That all of us are welcome. Belonging. Behold a kind of joint. Pouring to be worthy of our very best self. We sometimes fall short of our ideals and still this is the way. We weave community one day what action. My offering at a time. Truly matters. Community-at-large. Planet. Remember the great poet of india rabindranath tagore. Describe this commingling. In these words of cosmic dancing. Do you understand the world to be splendid science. Maybe you hold the world to be a kind of mysterious energy however you name it. Pouring language together here's what he says. The same stream of life. That runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It's the same life. Enjoy. The earth. And numberless blades of grass. Tumultuous waves. Of leaves and flowers. Life is rocked in the ocean. Cradle birth and death. In evan flow. River road. We celebrate. The ab. Passages of life in a community together. We mark the arrival of a new baby. We see the challenge of aging. With friends. Becoming the door ending a marriage for have. Are planning a wedding. We celebrate life ending another life just beginning. Welcome new seasons. Or say farewell. A movement to a different passage. We have cycles. Spirit learning. Of connecting together social justice in the wider world. This is a powerful. We have of belonging. To each other. I'm glad you're here. I'm glad i'm here. I'm glad broad river road in this boat.

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2015.mp3

What's the worst that can happen in this moment right i'm marginally vulnerable let's say i forget everything i was going to say and you all stare at me blankly you're probably not going to fire me yet. Real courage evolved real vulnerability the kind of vulnerability where you can stand before the world speaks the truth you have to say and risk losing. And one story that occurs to me always when i think about courage. Exactly about my husband i asked his permission to tell you the story today because one should always ask their family's permission for telling tales on them. My calling or some sense of morbidity but this is the one story. 140 years old for he's a very healthy man. Summarize. And why i love him. And that's it when he was in very early elementary school. Very young boy. Don't kids on playgrounds we're doing as kids on a playground do. And they were taunting the fat girl. In fact in this case they were throwing rocks at her. My husband as a little boy. Stood up for. I know what they did. They threw rocks at him. And for two years taunted him. The kind of courage that we hope to instill in our children isn't that the kind of bravery to be like an after-school special ever watched in the 80s where there's the 12 the honest what happened to the after-school special the kid becomes a neurosurgeon or something and and it's all hearts and flowers you know what happened to my husband to john. People hurt him for years. And called him names. Physically. Threw rocks at him. It's not at all clear whether his courage changed the dynamics of that schoolyard at. When you talked about it now she says i'm not sure i would recommend that to anybody least of all our child. Child to make themselves that horrible. That's what courage invites us to. No one is willing to stand before the literal sleeve arrows and stones. Of our age. Only the schoolyard but the world. Will never change. I'm thinking about the act of vulnerability and how courageous people in fact if you put it to them if you really ask. Courageous people. Why they do what they do. Pretty much under no circumstances. Will those people articulate i did it to be paraded and most the time truly courageous people do not define themselves. Princess gender in our grandson who cannot walk without a walker. Do you know that boy is out. Surfing with a surfing instructor in california right now. If you would have asked him. Why is it that you're doing that. Or if you want to go out to us to stand up on that surf and with the expression on his face because the truth is he's doing it because he can. He's doing it because he's capable of doing it. And he's doing it because he is willing. Vulnerable enough to fall right out off that surfboard he has to. Reminder that tub martin luther the great reformer of the protestant tradition. Before this whole assembly that was trying him for heresy. In the man. The risk of dying flat dying i mean the most vulnerable human being can do he stood before his judges who could kill him and they asked him if he would recant. Particular theological position and you know what martin luther said. He said here i stand. I can do no other. Would martin luther king recommend that his own children stand so firmly before the injustice of the ages. And risk. The bullet that killed him. Wood. Kennedy's. Or any of the people who we idolize. Tell their children their children's children that the risks they took were worth it. I don't know. But when they stood in those moments. It wasn't an act of trying to be courageous that guided them but an act of trying to do the next honest thing. And that. Is what i think we are invited. A courageous people. Who want to change the world. To do the next honest thing that is laid out before us. And though we may do that honest thing or say that honest word with fear and trembling as i do so now. It is our task to find out. What that honest thing is and go forward with it. Remember that job. My installation which is back in october. I have the preacher. Preach the story about toby the anointing woman and it is featured in the christian scriptures. It was aretha in fact the preacher at my installation looked at me and and she said. So nancy chose this reading for me to share with all of you today and then she goes thanks a lot and see. Store from the christian scriptures which frankly raised some eyebrows. like what is this new miniature doing. Having a stylist story and the truth is. What's not and is not a story about the guy from nazareth at all it's a story about that woman in the same way that the story of the birth of islam that we told today is not about muhammad. It's about khadijah. The source of courage and strength that lay behind the great vaunted man. The story of the anointing woman is basically. This and i'm not going to call him jesus because we'll all get itchy under the collar i'm going to call him bob the peasant revolutionary the peasant revolutionary. 4 meal with all of his friends. For some time i've been traveling throughout the countryside. Killing bringing food to the poor trying to make a way for justice in the face of death. Incredibly corrupt roman empire that was cadet with keeping down the jewish people as friends are all sitting around and they see themselves as a pretty tight-knit bunch right imagine your small group here at river road you been in the same small group for 10 years really like each other. And all the sudden into this room comes a stranger. I'm not only a stranger but a woman. Know some of the gospel say that she was. A prostitute but i don't like that version. But anyway she comes in. And a woman walked in the room this stranger and r&b eyebrows are all raised. She takes out this great jar of ointment which which bob and his friends would have known as nard it was like if i took out a bottle of chanel number 5 this big. How she found the money to get it. She walked right up to bob pours the whole thing over his head. I'm talking to yours worth of salary on his head. Do you know what to do. Bright. Big fight and grape and grain. Because this strange woman locked in. This expanded stuff that couldn't use for so many better purposes. He was unknown to them. Some of the gospels actually say that she took down her hair. Imagine this woman with her hair all 10. i'll probably like it should be. With her hair that is some soft business right there and there's 1210 staring at her and judging her for doing it. I think that's for the important for us to hear it my installation why do i think it's important in the context of courage. Woman. Everything and then some. To bless the people she loved. If you know what she got in return for it. Are scorn. She was. Called for the ages prostitute in the christian scriptures right. What she did was dare. To take her greatest gift. And pour it out without apology. She had the courage to bless the one she loved. And the only honest thing to do. Worcester shareit. Now i got to say bob came through for in the end bob told his friends to calm down and stop complaining and that history would remember this woman. As doing the honest and loving thing so at least somebody had her back. Woman is much like khadijah actually. Khadijah have the power to bless she had money. Providence she had power and she used it all in defense of this man and his visions and his message and the hope of a world where people could truly give of their greatest resources. So that all might be well. She lost everything she had because she loved him. And islam would never have been founded without her courage. Her risk. And her great blessing. So the question for us is. What is your power. To bless. I took that great big bottle of chanel number 5 and i poured it all over patrina hollingsworth ted. Because i love her. What great blessings of abundance do you have to pour out no matter what the world says no matter what your neighbor say even when and if locks are thrown your way and even if. You lose. Everything. I might argue that one of the things i have when the powers to bless i have his word since this babbling that i'm always doing on sunday morning. Each of us is called to find your power to blessed and extend it as freely and as fully as you dare let's call out a few what power do you have. Could bless the world and that on occasion you might be guilty of tamping down to play it safe anybody. Anybody else. The power of love. Talking to stranger. What else. Forgiveness. How we hold back forgiveness. And how we hold back what we love for fear that others might judge us in fact i'm going out on a limb here. Those of us who are on deep spiritual journeys here at river road unitarian universalist congregation that we do not share in this community for fear that others may think we're weird. It's true. It's true. But if we dare to be vulnerable and courageous enough to love one another. Regardless of what one another thinks and be real together we have the potential to be the kind of community that changes the world. Come back for just a minute to the schoolyard. Not john reminded me that just by taking the story of his courage is a little boy and preaching it one inevitably give the spin that's. Part of the deal of preaching a sermon. But i am aware that in the moment when we choose courage there is no spin. Not and will never be an after school special. And that the fruits of our courageous acts are honest moments. We may never live to see. I'm aware in fact that that schoolyard in which. He acted as a young prophet. Full of so much vulnerability probably never did change. But when i think about what i love about him. And when i think. About the inspiration that he offers. It actually makes me want to be a better person. Right. I'm not just quoting a cheesy romance movie line it actually. Makes me want to be a better person and does that not change the world a little bit. I want to be a better person today because of the model that he showed in the schoolyard all those years ago so while he never change their minds he sure as hell changed mine. 1 quotes. I want to share before i finish up. Richard from howard thurman. Howard thurman road. I seek the courage to live this day. How easily he says i slip into a mood that it's just sultry. Quietly informed my mind that tomorrow i can begin a new way that tomorrow i can make a fresh turning. Courage to strike out on a path i have never tried before. Is what i seek now. Courage to make new friends courage to yield myself to the full power of my dreams. Courage to yield with abiding enthusiasm. The spirit of love. And the wide reaches of human possibility. That is my prayer. And that is what i seek today. So with you friends i seek the courage. The bless the world not tomorrow. And not from the confines of my safety net. But from the deep wilderness of this very day. Affirming this day which is not guaranteed to be remembered in the annals of history. We will not all take our seats on ruby bridges bus. We will not all stand before the griping disciples with our hair flowing unafraid. We will not all like khadija be the solid ground upon with upon which life-changing faith is built. The next honest thing. We can use our powers to bless. For there is none. To do so. Mcafee show. Indominus. Artem is number 322. Please ride in body or spirit thank you for these. As we prepare to send this lady has kindled out into the wayne world.

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3557.mp3

He was proclaiming were hard to hear. Among all the leaders of the civil rights movement. Dr. king's great and distinguishing gift was perhaps his singular ability to push people to find their capacity to hear. And perhaps beyond all things it was that message and that still that the children who stood in birmingham and put their own lives in freedom on the line had been listening to. Whether dr. king was entirely comfortable with it or not those children had learned from him and from so many others how to make people. Here. And when they rode in opposition no one said aren't they precious. They knew that they were powerful. That they were compelling. And that all of us this entire country would do well to really hear. Not to turn away or clam up or close attention down but to hear the clarion call of the profits into be changed by it. In 1965. Martin luther king. Beaches dream. And know that the people were listening. Weather react or supportive or directive directly violently opposing his message the people were listening. And even though he would die his message would not. And the fact that we were listening in those days. Something to this nation. That we were listening mentioned we had a chance perhaps not even a likelihood but it's chance of overcoming the very worst of ourselves together. But not every dream has the audience that dr. king did then. Not every song can be sung in the streets with the full clarity of its message some songs are still whispered in the dark unreported unheard unseen some words of power and pain are still fundamentally ignored or not understood or simply forgotten in the flood-tide of news. Matthew 13 verse 15. The preacher paraphrase the prophets before him. When he said this of the people who would not address the suffering of their neighbors. For this people's heart has become calloused. They hardly hear with their ears and they have closed their eyes. And so in this which is given to austin no other each of us might find the courage to ask the truly difficult questions mainly to what have our own hearts become callous. What am i not hearing and where are the prophets who preached even today. Andre johnson is a professor of sacred rhetoric at memphis theological seminary. In a short time ago he wrote of the profits of these days. Are there will always be a remnant. Prophets on the periphery proclaiming and preaching moaning and groaning witnessing and wailing for those people whose voices are drowned out by the cacophony of voices of the powerful in the privileged. Walmart plentiful these prophets will always speak. The only question is. Will we have ears to. Will we indeed. And can we tune ourselves to their clarion call if it rings do the streets of our own city. As i meditated on this i was reminded of one of my favorite books by heidi newmark. Who tells the story of her little church in the south bronx. At which she began her service as a pastor in the mid-80s. The time when the south bronx resembled nothing so much as a nightmare criss-crossed with highway overpasses that kept the people of means safely separated. From the people in pain. It was she wrote ground zero for urban blight. A place where it was not uncommon for mothers to scrub the blood of their sons off the street before passing traffic erase the evidence. Of their heartbreak. It was a time of drugs and aids and death and newmark writes that there was never a night without gunfire. Or week without funeral. And for some years in that community it seemed as if nobody heard and nobody cared. And there they were. Little church. Trying to exist in a war zone that no one paid any attention to their they were trying to make enough noise that someone might finally noticed and one of the first organized activities that this little church began was a summer program for the kids to come. Eager to have something safe to do together. And one day the program included local parking lot. Local parking lot which have been decorated with scenes from the bible a blue strip down the middle of the pavement was the great river jordan a paper-mache ark of the covenant stood ready to be born on small shoulders across their little urban terrain and an suv drake in paper student for the walls of jericho. Nicely for that morning. People approached the seemingly impenetrable walls outnumbered and facing enormous obstacles they walked around the walls of the city and silence. 7 * and joshua the prophet blew his mighty trumpet and everyone heard and the sound was so great that the wall just came tumbling down. Parking lot jericho. Children whom no one listened to. Struggles and hurts and hopes existed just below the consciousness of the powerful abandoned outnumber people facing impenetrable obstacles circle to the walls of their vehicular jericho. Quietly together not making a sound. Until they completed their appointed rounds and when they have finished their seven circus not having a trumpet they shouted out the loudest song they knew in their grandest voices with a clarion call they saying out. Chicka rocka chicka rocka chicka boom. And the paper walls. So flat. Before their power. Silent. No longer unheard but their profits voice is echoing over the potholes in the empty lots in the city hall. Some people at city hall said when they heard that story. The children are singing isn't that nice. What goes with ears who could not hear perceived when those little voices shouted something far more elemental more dangerous more bold than the world around them seems capable of hearing. Because in that moment finally both literally and metaphorically they had a voice. The word had serious meaning and it was not precious or cute their profits voices told the world we are not finished yet. The meaning underneath their word the code. We are not finished yet. And this society does not have permission to give up on us. And at least their church in their neighborhood had ears to hear. They had eyes to see. And while never enough maybe that was a start. Voices of the young and the powerful in the streets of the south bronx there is a long history in this country. A powerful people who could not hear. Who's definitely wasn't is astonishing. Whose failure to heed the call cost them and all of us nearly everything. And there was a long history of those who would speak would sins would shout anyway knowing that the very definition of the oppressor could be turned against them. Of course the old masters. On the southern plantations had ears. But they could not hear. There was truth that was not available to them because their actions gave them only one layer of the story when most of the power in the challenge in the wisdom. Play deep down in a place they could not reach. And so in those days. The oppressed people. Sing songs in riddles. Facebook words. In cold. Not so long after that sandy the playboy sat in his dj booth. And broadcast the song that sang on multiple levels. There are stories. Of harriet tubman. Who moved through the plantations of the south her goodbye songs into open windows. Notes of freedom might sound in the night around the very ears of the masters even as the passengers on her underground railroad bid them farewell. The old spirituals as a signal. The call to come to walk out of those cabins and into freedom and her song with an open secret open to those who needed to hear quite close to those who did not. When she came as a conductor to gather her passengers she sang beneath the windows of the enslaved in the oppressor alike. And her friends heard one thing in those repeated strains while her cat while their captors heard another. Her friends heard that this bondage they were in was limited. That in fact it was over now. Freedom had come in the jig was up and the owners what they heard. And what they saw. Was a little black woman singing a song. That little black woman was singing. And her words were so powerful that they catapulted her and dozens of others to freedom that waited just on the other side she was more powerful than any of her captors she was more powerful than any of the men she worked in the fields with she was more powerful than them all and only those with eyes to see what she had to tell them. The tulip musical subterfuge that tubman used in her escape. It wasn't limited to her. She didn't invent it or pioneer it. Spiritual decoded vehicles for communication with born of necessity. Some legends even say that swing low sweet chariot is itself a math song. Pointing the way to a specific station on the underground railroad the chariot descends from above driven by god himself or by the conductors that descends and it carries the people home. To heaven to freedom. To the north. Or to the blasted company of those who have already crossed over. And when the people saying those words they found a way to carry on. To resist. And sometimes when the resistance was not enough. To fight the powers of oppression they found in those words the dignity. The hold on. At the very end. And yet the masters heard those words ringing over the cotton fields. And they thought isn't that nice. The flavors. And they did not know what their own ears hurt. And the communities on the cross bronx expressway heard the children bring down the very walls of jericho and they thought isn't that nice. The children nursing. And i did not know what their own ears hurt. And the people gather for commemoration of dr. king's birthday and give speeches and sing songs and too often for too many of us we think is his dad. Did we have gathered to remember him. As if he was never dangerous nor bold. No prophetic in the unsettling sense of the word. So much so that the walls of the ancient city could crumble at the clarion call with his trumpet. We live in a world that follows the prophets like martin luther king jr.. And harriet tubman. And the children who marched in birmingham. We do not have permission. To hear swing low sweet chariot and think isn't that. We do not have permission to hear today's children's shout out their power and think that they're just so cute. We also don't have permission to watch the hashtag cross our screens. Information and opinion and determined that the text of a tweet tell her to tell us the whole story of the people that we don't need prophets anymore because we have facebook. For instance the profits of the muslim world. Women who simultaneously proclaim compassion for the slain. And remind us that in the 48 hours after the massacre in paris no less than 16 muslim places of worship in france. We're attacked by fire bomb. Gunshots. And the launching of pig head. To their sanctuary. Yes we surely. The world thinks and isn't that nice. Solidarity. And free speech. A balm to the soul in the time of suffering. But behind that the prophets we don't always pause to hear remind us that islamophobia killed as much as terrorism and solidarity is not just for those whose deaths we mourn so publicly but also for those who have never been given a pencil or a pulpit. Or a platform from which. Speak their truths in the first place. And yet in the middle of all this a profit stands. A muslim woman captured on our news feeds in a headscarf holding a sign with a hashtag of solidarity not backing off of the greater truths north signing away her compassion. Freedom she declares. And she means freedom not just for the dominant culture but for her. And for everyone. And the new songs are still being written. And the new prophets are taking their places. And when we think that black lives matter was really all just about one boy in ferguson or one isolated case in florida or some isolated ne'er-do-wells baiting us all into a panic the prophets of our time. Tell us. But the prisons are still overflowing. And the flood tide of racial bias has not yet turned. I am reminded of the words. Of andre johnson. Who told us to look for profits in the periphery. Proclaiming and preaching witnessing and wailing walmart 24 he promises. The only question is. Will we have ears to hear. For the profits of complicated and difficult truth. Especially those we would rather not hear. For the gifted ones who might yet compel us to listen for the message beneath the message and the story that includes us all we gather. Will we here. When the prophets proclaim their truth today. Will we hear when the children declare their power. Like those who came before us will we here. Like them. Will wii 2. E-transfer.

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2378.mp3

Nice to be back. Together with you. The congregation there some familiar faces out there some new ones. Nice to see you all. In the sermon i'd like to offer a spiritual toolbox. Now. Spirituality. It's kind of slippery term. Different meanings. Different realms of being. I can repair the otherworldly. Contrasted with what is physically present here and now. But spirituality can also involve the practical concerns of making it through a day. Talk about this morning. Gathering spirit takes to live each day. I do think of this as a spiritual toolbox. Strategies to reach for and times we need something to get us through. Maybe a little adjustment the attitude. Maybe a change of perspective. Maybe a new approach to an old dilemma. Benelli. Things to keep things serviceable. Sometimes you find yourself thrown off balance. Losing track of who you are. And what you want to be. Maybe rockford occupied with concerned and worried that make it difficult to be present to this day. Maybe. If you're worried. Find another challenge to some of that energy to face what's in front of you. Maybe sometimes. That's one to turn to this tool box. Address the problem. I would like from the start. But there's nothing in this tool box that's particularly fancy. You might use several of these tools anyway. Remember. The common denominator is it their youthful. Maybe that also help you. 1st of july have to offer. Recognizing.. It just is. It just is. Things happen. These might be a little bad things. You lose something you break something the computer crashes and can't find what's on there. 45-day big bad things. Enormous. Personal crisis. A job loss challenges faced by children. Sometimes. We might think. Why did this have to happen. I don't want to be dealing with her. If only i take a different path. If only i'd made smarter choices. If only life were so messy. If only the wind has blown and the rains haven't come. The train to come. And when you go. So after i do a significant amount of railing against the face. A certain amount of questioning by but i've done what i haven't done. Plymouth finally get to the point of recognizing you know. It just is. I'll have to deal with it. Whatever happens to be. Someone a disappointment. It just is. If i make it to that point of acceptance. And something wonderful occurs. Something wonderful. Is it my attention shifts. I might actually addresses problem. Instead of wasting my energy on a phone lace. I do what i can with what i got. Stop by the way the bonus tool. Not all this 27 but just one on the last. Do what you can with what you've got. It's a bonus accounts are realizing accepting. Two number two. Starting a conversation i had with a unitarian universalist minister who is in her first year of serving our congregation. Helping her acclimate to this new reality of being a minister. She said something that might be familiar to many of us. Praise. She just counted. Does not take it seriously. But when there was criticism. It goes to the heart. An auditor. B minor. Color is your day. Feelings emotions. Especially thoughts driven by feelings. But hang on. Hang on long after their useful lives are done. Something happens at work. And the feelings left exchanged linger. Or maybe there's an issue in your family. Continues to bother you. Old hurts old memories old injustice has thickened remain inside for years. Broyhill lives. Buford generations has hurts and justices are passed from one to the next. Now it is important to listen to criticisms. Important to be aware of my feelings. But according to standby or convictions are true. But there comes a time. When the useful life of any specific issue or experience passes. Maybe we've learned what we can from this experience i need to move on. Maybe we've done what we can to address this and justice. Maybe the issue is felt so passionately about has been discussed and fought through and decided. We still might not agree. Time to move on to something else. How to do that when something inside still wants to continue holding on tight. Shelby this. Let it go. What a feeling or hurt or an idea i'll let it go. Experience of meditation. You're recognized the pattern. Did you try to relax and become standard. Thoughts and feelings then crowded your mind. Important thoughts and feelings. For the practice of being present. Pretty what meditation is. So what are you do with those thoughts and feelings that distract you. You let them go. Don't argue with them. try to wish them away cuz it just makes me stronger. Brother. Flamingo. Welcome back. Let them go. You let them go. Each time they reappear. The power diminishes. After while. They don't return. The benefit of the first to adjust is. Is that enables us to deal with whatever the matter is at hand. Frozen trying to wish it away. The benefit of the second tool let it go. It helps us become president. Right here. Right now. Those things about islam beyond their time they keep us in the past. Discipline. We're brought into this present moment. Release the ghosts of yesteryear or yesterday. What role is counterintuitive to americans. Because we like to see ourselves as people of action. Granddaughter a problem and we want to fix it. Now. But sometimes that doesn't work. Sometimes action doesn't get us anywhere we just been our wheels. A better strategy is to wait. Spiritual. Wait. Our daughter was just finished graduate school was telling me about a problem on a take-home physics exam that she couldn't get. She worked on it for a long time. Finally gave up in frustration went to bed decided she would hand him the exact time with that one problem on a dress. Good morning she got up. Took a quick look at the stubborn problem. Of course. You know what happened. How to do it right away. Set up all night and never got enough. Waiting. The answer came to her. I want to make the point when working on a project writing a sermon. Appropriate decisions but i don't know what to do next. Attic times it can be a useful strategy. The weight. Put the bottom on the shelf. To something else. Give the stars time to align. I made some bad decisions by taking action before was time. I do better when i pause that forever. For a while. The way to this problem by presenting self. Divider for the advice. Don't just do something stand there. Wisdom has been attributed to various sources including the buddha and jesus. Identify the original source. The white rabbit in walt disney's 1951 version of alice in wonderland. The point is valid. Sometimes the best course of action. It's awake. 1/4 spiritual. Keep on truckin. I'm a child of the 1960s. For me a permanent resident of that era. Representative in spanish. Keep on truckin. What account do the back but y'all know what it looks like. Add reminder. But i don't know what else to do. I keep on truckin. But it just keep taking one step after another. When my wife and i moved to dc area about a house. My first big project was to paint the exterior. The color was tired yellow. I think that's one of the colors mix to the paint store. Because i see it around a lot. Tired yellow with something called bleecker face. I would like to have the job of naming paint colors. We are repeated our bathroom and something called determined orange. I like the paint houses. Exterior interior. Cuz when i paint i can see what i've done. Immediate visible results unlike a lot of other things i do. But even though i like the paint there were mornings when i had a hard time getting going. I did not want to do it. This is a common challenge of everyday life. Getting going. Doing things you don't really want to do but it need to be done. Sticking with an activity to the low points. Without generating much excitement or much energy. Big lots take hearing. If i haven't pushed myself or the time to low enthusiasm for my painting. Today would be a patchwork of tired yellow and bleeker beige. Tango's are projects. I work the things we're trying to do. Really does energy and enthusiasm sustain them all the way through. That's when we need to keep on truckin. That is but one foot in front of the other. The obvious benefit is done. Keep on truckin everyday tool because. Spiritual tool. Because of the process of trucking. We might receive a gift. The gift is a bicycling with us. We find ourselves involved again. Unexpectedly present for this project you're working on. Experience. when i was painting the house. Many activities. There are times when i just forcing myself through. Without realizing when or how this occurs i find myself engaged. What year. Right now. Holy presence. That's what i was doing. Beautiful. Create space. Now that might seem impossible. There's only so much space. We can't manufacture more of it. But psychologically and spiritually creating spaces very real. Even in the city. I don't want people come to me with a problem being a personal issue of family matter is fearful concerned physical issue. The problem becomes all-consuming. Always consider always getting underway. Experience. Without it being obscured by the central concern. Password your face you can't see much beyond it. But sometimes when something is too close. We need to create space. Ourselves an issue that is claiming our attention. Because you can't deal creatively with something that's right on top of you. You need space. Can move around space to breathe space to think space in which to find yourself. How to create space. We'll take a step backwards. The other parts of your life. Change your focus think about something else. Respective get away from my go for a walk. Baseball game. Take your attention elsewhere for a while. The benefit we receive from creating space. Imagine. If you are in a physical space that is too tight. What happens if you relax. Your attention widens beyond that tight spot. Occurs when you create psychological for spiritual space. Miralax. We breathe. We become who we can be. Creating space to another useful spiritual tool. Toonami pictures of mantra. But it's something to repeat because it reminds us of what is true to help silas free. This mantra. It's not about you. How many years out of mustache. Foomanchew type. But i really want a beard. Enough there to satisfy that. So i settled for a mustache. Enough. I'd say they're on my upper lip. For some 20 years. Until i began to think it was time to move on. But i couldn't quite bring myself to cut it off. I was not in love with that mustache in fact i thought it was looking silly. But didn't do anything about it. Cuz i was afraid that i was afraid that everybody would notice. People would stare at my naked lip. Exposed. Explain why that mustache wasn't there anymore. That concern kept on. Gray and white and i decided that enough was enough i shave that mustache just came off surprising when he's away and then brace myself for comments and questions of the curious world you know how many people noticed one my daughter was a time five-years-old she picked it up. I find that a helpful lesson to keep in mind. Thinking about me making comments about me. They aren't because mostly other people are thinking about themselves. about me. This is the fact that human consciousness. Better not a criticize or change it remember new rule number one. This realization can be. Disconcerting but also freeing. For those about to turn towards self-consciousness. We have to worry about what people think about us. You could probably do not. Whatever the thinking it's not about you. When i reach the final of my seven useful spiritual tools you might wonder why 7. Could it be 5 or 8 or 9. Toyota courts. 707 unitarian universalist principles that we draw upon to articulate who we are and what we stand for according to the book of genesis. So one more. This one is. It's already here. Whatever looking for probably. It's already here. I might call this the wizard of oz principle. Remember the story. When dorothy finds itself in the land of oz. Give me the scarecrow wants a brain attend man who wants a heart a lion with power light. Hbo2 stopping essential to being as missing from his makeup. Don't long the way to find the wizard. Your crow without a brain shows that he can think. Without a heart. Demonstrate kindness. And a lion faces danger bravely even though he is afraid. What each seeks is already here. Simile. What were urine for. What drives has. What brings us to rush around catherine throw. What we dream of. It's already here. Already here woman through the experience of of an ordinary day. In the cool precious of a summer morning. The comforting humidity. Steven course the birds and bugs. Sing the song to life. Bitterness of chocolate. Are the stats of a fully ripe peach. Are the snap for really fresh green beans. The soft light of dusk or dawn. The wispy clouds the later clouds or lazy afternoon. Coolray never precious after a series of hot days. In a moment of learning something you hadn't known before. Tears of sorrow. Character, your laugh. Accompany the memory. Another time. Another place. A moment of connection understanding. With another person. Spiritual traditions and religions comes down to this. Being present. Right now. Because those things with urine for most deeply. They are already here. Since my spiritual box. To recap. These are. Let it go. Keep on truckin. Create space. It's not about you. It's already here. Pl tools to draw on. Agriculture. It does not work well in every situation. Screwdriver with a flat blade. Are the times only a phillips head will do. Tobacco small ranch will make an adjustment tickets things going. All the times you do better with a sledgehammer. Call heather utility. Where does it say these are tools to help us be present to our lives and the gifts given to us. The freedom to breathe. To be ourselves. A zygarde is towards realizing. Delight bazaar. Right here. Right now. During our time of redlands. Amateur.

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842.mp3

I would like to put two stories. In your mind this morning. The first happened several years ago here in bethesda. Snipers. We're randomly shooting around the town. Do you remember. Children were kept in from recess at school. People talked about what might be the safest time to fill their car with gas. Because sniper bullets. Have you hit innocent people while they were gassing their car. Runners were afraid to go for runs through our park. We were looking all around for white van because someone says the snipers were in white van. Should we let our sunday school kids out on the playground. Was a question. Another regular meeting of the unitarian universalist religious educators in the washington area. One of our religious educators and african-american woman said. I don't know what everybody's so riled up about. If you are a mother. Have a black son. It's like. Everyday. We all were silent and. Not in our head. And i do not remember one other word that was said at that meeting. But those words. Still in my. The second story. Is told by reverend rebecca parker. The president of the starr king unitarian universalist seminary in california. Towns about cross-country trip with a friend. They were driving through rural western pennsylvania. When they came down a hill into a valley and it has been raining hard. And there were blinking yellow lights warning of danger as they neared a small town. The fields were covered with standing water. And several of the side roads. We're blocked with. Road closed sign. As they said as they headed out of the town they were captivated she says. By the evidence is all around them i dramatic flood. When they turn the band the road in front of them. Was covered. With achieved of rising water. Like huge silver balloon being inflated inflated before our eyes she said. They started to turn around. The water was rising behind them to. All of the sudden they realized. The flood hadn't happened yesterday. It's what's happening now. They climbed out of their car and scrambled the highground drenched in the heavy rain. Baptizing us into the present she said. A present from which we had been isolated by both our car and our miss judgments about the country we were traveling through. She says. That is what it is like. To be a member of the dominant culture. To misjudge your location. And believe you are uninvolved and unaffected. By what is happening in the world. I think we may be shooting off fireworks this year. In the middle of a flood. And we are just beginning to realize it. The pictures of the sparklers in the fireworks. You probably have memories of years of. Fireworks watching the flag flow in the wind hearing that old bruce. Bring theme song i'm proud to be an american. Or even older that leonard bernstein song about west side story i want to be in america. Many of you know that feeling of participating in political campaigns for candidates or issues. I know the excitement about working to make something better. Some of you know what it's like to put your life on the line in a war. To protect those you love here at home. Some of you here may be old enough. Do remember hearing lyndon johnson say. We will overcome. On the radio. Shortly after the selma civil rights march. Today. It is hard for many to imagine he even who the wii is. And there is a noticeable lack of drive. Overcome anything. Many of the people have lost faith in their government. The economy. Schools and colleges their families and their religious. Institutions. Beer and accusations. Roll into our minds and psyche and ways i have never known. Blaming others. For our current condition. Seems to relieve the pain for many. Blaming others. And refusing to collaborate with each other. We act. We are powerless. That we have lost our grounding. We seem to have lost faith. In ourselves and those around us. You think spirit of life. Common to me. Sing in my heart all the stirrings of compassion. Come to me. Come to me. We sing it. But do we really mean it. Are we crying for it to come to me. But we do not know how to receive. The spirit of life. We are reverting deeper and deeper into ourselves. Many of us start fighting for our education our healthcare our social security our financial security and we stopped thinking about the greater community. We even stopped trying to communicate with those who are also fighting for their own sense of security and privilege. You know years ago reverend. According to keenan when asked what a universalist was then. Universalist believe. All of us are going to end up together in heaven. So we might as well learn right now how to work with each other. Theologians call dad. Realized eschatology. You know i always thought. Of universal theology as the salvation of all souls as meaning we are all equal and deserve the same rights and privileges. I guess i can say i never really thought of it. It meaning we all of us all of those people who do not think like i do. All have to live together. I think about the whole community and i recognize the inherent worth and value of all. But living together. I am reminded of another short story. A member of our congregation was very active in her neighborhood. She always invited every new family in our neighborhood to dinner. Seeing her husband were. Strong liberal activist. Be heard. But the most conservative leader in the house of representatives. And his family was moving into their neighborhood. I guess. I will be inviting them to dinner. She said. Percent of us included all in her neighborhood even those whose work and style she abhorred. Many of us. Are not even at a place. Or we can think. I'm inviting those we struggle to be with. To come to the table. We are depressed or traumatized by political and economic troubles. It seemed to have no end. We are so focused. On our own us. All this focus on us changes the way we walk. The way we look into the eyes of people in the metro or in the line at the post office or the grocery store. Changes how we feel as we stopped at a stop sign waiting for that driver on the right to go so we can go. It often changes the way we talk to each other. It changes the way we dream. It seems. We seem to be building forts. Rather than planning trip. I think rabbi are blacker primed you but this morning when last week he told you there were no golden days of long ago. And there won't be any paradise. It is today. Behalf. And how do we reach into our inner strength. And that's fine that strength of support maybe even from. Someplace. The desire to feel in control leads many to. Smaller and smaller spheres of activity. Tribal enclave become increasingly attractive. Religious leaders. Often answer by placing our hope in the future a new dawn will a new day new age will dawn. We religious leaders. Are often about creating the kingdom of god here on this earth. And we try to climb to the high ground. Without giving a second thought. To the flooding water. It is the emphasis on positive thinking. In which we have been so well trained. But we need some truth-telling. There is reason for us to be a bit depressed. One tenth of us are without a job. We are in so many words you can get into an argument counting them. The public parks in minnesota have closed for 4th of july weekend and after. Teachers and police are being fired. Our elected officials are elected leaders can't seem to work out anything for the common good. And we we have been working on this for years it seems. We have been working on many of these issues without realizing that. Some in our country. Have been feeling. Like we feel today. Much longer. Then most of us. The sense of powerlessness and voicelessness. Has been the norm. For some. I think it takes a different kind of energy to fight for the rights of all when we see ourselves in that ol. It is. Harder to step away from it. For even a minute. Our language has been for the common good but most often we were watching the flooded fields when we said that. Not finding ourselves. In the middle of the flood. After truth-telling. We need to salvage. Ourworld. Our history. And the religious wisdom that gives life. Can help us. Do that. And we need to go. Take a look. Happy. Traditions. That are part of hours and yet are oppressive. We need to recognize a renewing power of nature. If only. We look at it. It's there. Did you hear the thunder and lightning last night or hear the thunder and see the lightning. Yes. Frederick law olmsted the landscape architect who designed new york central park. Rodan 1865. In an article on the creation of a national park. He says it is a scientific fact. That the occasional contemplation of natural scenes. Of an impressive character. Particularly if this. Contemplation occurs in connection with relief. From ordinary cares. Change of air and change of habits. It's favorable to the health and vigor of men today i'm sure he would say and women. And especially to the health and vigor of their intellect. Beyond any other conditions. Which can be offered them. That is not only gives pleasure for the time being. But increases the subsequent capacity for happiness. And the mean. I'm securing happiness. There are guides to help us through this hard time we find ourselves in now. They are people who themselves. Have walked through suffering loss and depression and found a way to survive. We find it in the poetry of those like adrienne rich. When she tells us survival means living with those who. With no extraordinary power. Reconstitute the world. We find it in the stories of alice walker and toni morrison. Animal stories of our neighbors and colleagues. Who have survived. Many of us. Need to reconstruct our theology. We grew up whether we were christian or not. With the idea that redemptive suffering like jesus's crucifix. Can heelers. And make us better people. We were taught that violence in the name of justice like the crusades. We protect us. We were taught that seeking the knowledge of good and evil was grounds for kicking us out of paradise. End of the journey for that knowledge. With a punishment. It is what jesus taught us about living. That is important to me. I know that violence will never solve something by itself. That at some point people have to sit down and figure out how to work together. I believe. That's a journey of life with all its learning and growing is a gif. Not a punishment. I like rebecca parker believed that knowledge is never an individual achievement alone. It is constructed by communities of people and its construction. Transforms communities. Some of our youth are experiencing this as they listened to stories. Communities in el salvador today. They are down there today. And that journey i'm talking about. Requires some soul work. 2. We must turn inwards. As well as outward if we are to get to a place. Where we are at again energized by living. We must work beyond our individualism. So radically laid on us by the enlightenment. We must recognize that we have made mistakes. And that our ignorance has sometimes been hurtful. This recognition. It's what has led to that. Doing better. Described by ann quinlan. We must be able to bless ourselves. To love ourselves as well as others. And it is harder than you think. We've been so conditioned to think that we should be perfect. We rarely know how to act. And folks. That is the way. For much of our country today. I thought we could get all these problem taken care of. And we haven't. The world greed. Which many of us have profited from. Has gone uncontrolled. To enable the recovery of our so we must bring our humanity. To one another. Religious community this river road unitarian universalist congregation. Awesome enables us to bring our humanity to others. It is a community that enables people to develop the depth and courage needed. To stand for the goodness of human life. And the beauty of the earth. And against those acts. That humiliate. Punny. Or divide us. Or denigrate the account ecology of the planet. We can go to nature. We can go to that in their voice of hours. And give it a chance to be listen. We can reach out to those. We love to again say i love you. Social and social action can become a spiritual practice to help us restore our humanity. But only. Only if we understand it. It's from our inner soul that we do social justice. Not from the idea of charity or taking care of others or helping out. Social justice is redemptive. When it is rico constructing our world. From our hearts. I remember once when my daughter called from college and she. Had always been struggling with trying to understand what her friends and associates meant when they said god. The voice was a bit excited and i think she had just come out of a class or deep conversation with some. I think i think i know what they mean by god she said. They mean hope. When they talk about dante really talking about hope. And maybe they were. I'm always so amazed. In the times of such disappointment and discouragement. There is a drive to live. Enough. A drive to heal. There is a seeking out of that spirit of life. Or just maybe. It is the spirit of life. Seeking us. Seeking hope acknowledges the brokenness that we are called to face. Realizing that even as people have broken the covenant. To love our neighbors and care for the earth. Somehow again and again. Our experience of brokenness is the place of revelation. And that revelation is what. Will fuel. A new covenant. A new way of creating the world. We so want. It will call us to live. The way we want the world to be. People are still planting garden. And writing poetry and music. People are choosing to have babies. To bring new life into this world. Spirit of life is calling us. To live in the floods around snipers and amongst incredible indecision. In our congress. It is calling us to live with our personal family pain and fear. It is calling us to live. Today. May our ears the open. And are hard.

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2567.mp3

Good morning. I'm emily dickinson. No wait a minute that's not right i'm louisa may alcott. No that's not right. Play tony o'connor. Clara schumann. Wait a minute i'm candace whittington and this is the 21st century. I'm sure that's right. Don't worry i've not lost it. I'm just having a little fun with my dramatic bent. I have been happily writing scripts for historical or literary women for sometime now who am i then put tray dramatically in one woman performances being the one woman. How did the person that shy as i used to be the nerve to stand up before audiences and act. Many people in my college class didn't even know who i was because i was so retiring. But my closest friends did know that i love to imitate or college professors and offer singer than anybody else. Fortunately monsieur shambaugh in our french class did not know how i imitated his. Gambling walking his. Sleazy jokes. Anyway my subsequent career college teaching gave me growing confidence and trust in myself. It combines talking before groups with my love of the literary characters that i taught. Hi my love of reading and writing. Teaching does have its dramatic elements. I joining the unitarian church in another state. And then later moving to bethesda where i joined this church. And felt comfortable from day one. Unitarian i had heard about the mountain the unitarian retreat in north carolina. When they asked me to come there and teach a 5-day elderhostel on emily dickinson. Perfect. Being in the smokies. With unitarians and unitarian principles and emily dickinson beside. What could be better. At the end of the week but class. No said to me. Why don't you dress up. And the emily and then put traeger. Well the idea intrigued me so on the drive back to bethesda i thought about it and i had a picture of how emily might enter the stage. He would run on the stage. By the way she would be escaping from a knock on the door because she was far more reclusive than i ever was. Started me off and once i got home i begin to write. When i finished the script i tested it out on my husband jack. That was a hard sell because i was in the flip-flops and shorts. But he said it will fly. Go ahead. Well okay but where should i fly with it. Where did emily's trial run take place. Haha. River road of course. Among people who would be curious. Tolerant. Patient. Enjoyed i would be able to trust them. My debut came at daytimers the monthly potluck program event here now i would still rather new when this took place at church and so i wasn't even quite sure what day time which was but they were very nice they said do whatever it is you want to do. They trusted me. On performance day i was nervous in my heart pounded wildly i kept my. Crepes nearby as a safety net. But people smiled and clapton and said nice things. And i went home afterwards and and exhausted but happy. Dave. I'm happy to report that now my heart does not lb wildly before performing. Except maybe the one i did in emily dickinson's own house in amherst massachusetts which i'll tell you about in the moment. And i now have eight. Character fortress. A show on the underground railroad in which i play about 15 different characters. I'm pretty much free from my scripts now which enabled me to focus more on my acting. I'm a member of the montgomery county historical society and perform around town as a volunteer for them. But i also perform in many other venues for which i get paid. So things are getting rather routine now. Oddly though i find that speaking as myself. To you and this way is almost a little more of a challenge then speaking before complete strangers. Why. Well i guess there's a kind of a freedom in for training somebody else. And sense of involvement did not characters life along with. I think i sort of thrill. A pretending that you are a person you really wish you could have met. Like emily dickinson. Or clara schumann. And i always say. Clara schumann new brahms so i can pretend i did too. One of the 15 characters i present as a cameo in my underground railroad show is an anonymous black woman praising harriet tubman. It's one of my favorite scenes because it's so passionate and because i so admire. Harriet tubman. But i wondered is that. Alright. A black woman being white. I preview the show in front of tony cowan who is a person of color and a local specialist. On the underground railroad. To my query to him about portraying a black woman he said. Absolutely yes. You can betray anyone you want. Black or white. Male or female. He said this is the theater. I loved his answer. I might add that another rewarding aspect of doing these performances is trust in another sense. In one's powers of memorization. I must review a script. When i'm called to perform one that i haven't done for sometime but thankfully they reside in my head and i can pull them out when i want. It's like money in the bank. Undisclosed for palms i have learned to. Because once learned these poems can be pulled out well maybe if you're stuck in the traffic jam. Or in the post office q. But more importantly having the lines of palm tucked in your head. Can be uniquely comforting in times of stress. Or grief. Recently i learned to shakespearean sonnet. Healthcentral soda foot life. In perspective. I think shakespeare sonnets are especially good for that. Not only for his meeting. But also for his splendid language. Knowing poems from memory might just be another aspect of trust. Because we can tap into the wisdom and genius. Of those who went before us. I highly recommend learning some poetry. Let me in with my visit to the dickinson homestead in amherst where i portrayed emily in emily's own parlor. I drove all the way to amherst alone. Trying to remain calm and cool. Suppose emily ghost came out of the attic. Outraged my pretending to be her. What nerve i had and in her house too. At the dickinson homestead as it is as it's called while waiting to begin my performance. They let me sit on the back stairs where emily herself used to sit so that she could listen to conversation in the parlor. That tourist are not allowed to go there. And so the thrill of sitting there did not escape me. As soon as i entered emily's parlor and everything went well despite my nerves. But there was one lovely humorous moment before my performance. Dress in costume similar a little bit to the one i'm wearing now. I went upstairs to the modern bathroom to kind of arrangement tire. Few people in the house who were taurus. And apparently one elderly lady after she can use the bathroom. He came upstairs and knocked on the door imagine her surprise when i opened the door and stood there. Her eyes widen your hand went to her throat and then she regained composure and said. Especially gave me a jolt to my deal. I will close with a poem about. By emily about indian summer. And more than that. It's about her questioning of the christian. Ideas of immortality. Her awareness that the indian summers apply for a kind of a trick. Winter is indeed coming as his death. But she asks that she's like a child. Can share in these emblems of renewal blankets communion and noticed there are communion images in here. Is a poem. About trust. When birds come back. A very few. A bird or two. To take a backward look. These are the days when skies resume the old old sophos trees of june of blue and gold mistake. A fraud that cannot cheat the b. Almost by plausibility and deuces my belief. Terrain could feed their witness bear. And softly. Movie altered are. Hurries a timid leaf. Osaka ramen of summer days. Last communion. In the haze. Permitted child to join. By sacred emblems to partake. Buy consecrated bread. To break. And not in mortal. Wine. Thank you emily.

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3073.mp3

Then one of my first classes at seminary the professor started us out with an icebreaker. In which he asked us to line up according to how long we ichidan ministers. When people asking to clarify what you meant by ministry. Turn the question back on us. I told us to determine for ourselves what we consider to be ministry. You can see everyone's mental wheels turning. I thought i was coming to seminary to become a minister. Clergy person. But clearly the teacher was asking us. Bandar view. What we thought ministry is. After a minute or two smiles appeared on people's faces and they started shouting out numbers so we could get into the right position. Some people said that they've been ministers all their lie. Well i didn't go that far but for the first time i realized i've been a minister for a little over 10 years. So how did i come to that conclusion. The first i had to define for myself. What ministry is. What came up with the nets. What second of what i still is what i still believed ministry to be. Administer. Is the app. A being in service. Do another spiritual. Helping others seeking express meaning purpose and connectedness. Something beyond themselves. Another words. Ministry is being in spiritual relationship. Frosting that relationship. And surrendering to that trust. Accepting one's connection to that large revision head deciding to be present. Two others. As part of that. Connectedness. Reverend deborah copeland says. What matters most. In any kind of ministry. Integrity. Humility. Respectability and an appreciation for another's knees. For me. The seeds two minutes we were probably stone in 1998 when i decided to leave my roman catholic faith. And cast out in search of a spiritual path where i could be free to determine what i actually believe. I started studying the daodejing reading books about reawakening my intuition. It took awhile to unpack the layers of doctrine and dogma that heads in case my spirit. Premeditation. I was beginning to feel a profound spiritual connection with something beyond my senses. I was stepping out onto new grounds and i need a support from a caring community. I need it to be in a relationship with fellow seekers would walk with me and minister to my spiritual needs. You later a co-worker suggested i check out unitarian universalism. I was immediately smitten with the open-minded loving and nurturing environment. Church. Almost immediately. Opportunities for me to live. Into my spiritual quest by being a minister to others opened up in front of me. I have always wanted to be a teacher. And now i had the chance to teach religious education to children youth and adults. My ministry began. I believe. When i fuse my existential need to teach. With the faith formation of others. I had the privilege of ministering to and with youth it accotink uu church. And all over the joseph priestley district. I help them walk. Through those difficult transformative period in their lives. By empowering and supporting their spiritual development. I witnessed powerful relational connections that nurtured their sense of community. And in the process. I was part of something which i can only describe as holy and sacred. Human relationship. Elevated to the level. Ultimate. Worth and meaning. So what is ministry. Ministry is that which you cannot do alone. The great religious educator maria harris. Has been an inspiration for people in this particular line of work for decades. It was maria harris who first taught that everything we do in a congregation is religious education in 45 minutes but everything will you do consciously or unconsciously is a part of the curriculum we are actively teaching here in our congregation. I'm just a year or two before maria harris died in 2005 she was still a hot commodity she was very much in demand as a speaker and a lecturer and a consultant to clergy and congregations and one of my colleagues approached her during this time about doing a big speech. To hold gathering up a couple thousand clergy. A ninja climbing course said thank you. But she also said something really powerful about ministry something like. That is in a big shindig like that that was what i was called to for so much of my life. But right now she said. I feel consecrated. To just be in my body. As it starts to say goodbye. That. With my ministry she said. That big active life that talking and sharing and shaping that was my ministry but now my ministry my consecration is to this body in these last days my consecration is to the holy act of letting go. She was that clear about her calling. Totally unapologetic and utterly unafraid. And ultimately what makes a ministry both technically and in the very heart of truth is it's consecration. What turns doing whatever it is we're doing. Driving or building or dying into the ministries to which we are called is our willingness and our ability to consecrate those actions to something larger something that has a claim on us which cannot and will not let us go. Add an ordination we lay hands on a new minister it's very dramatic beautiful moment we consecrate that person to walk with the congregation of the community in a very specific way. But most ministries are consecrated within the sanctuary of the soul. Not in a wooden glass place like this. My colleague rob hardy's is done a whole lot of research about the spiritual practices. The history of our unitarian and universalist traditions and one of the pieces he uncovered. Is this long and proud history. Of our unitarian forebears to practice a three-fold path which he calls. Self-examination. Spell formation. And self consecration. Self-examination you really look at who you are and what your gifts are and what you are called to do self formation you align your life in that direction and self consecration. Once you have identified that calling you give yourself out early over. You consecrate your own actions to that which is worthy of your time your gifts and indeed your very life. You may consecrate your emailing and your administrative office. To the fact that someone somewhere. Might be changed. By your labor. As you search for a job you might consecrate the searching itself to the great worth of your own gifts in the garden you might consecrate each nip of the shears to the beauty of it all and upon your deathbed you might consecrate your last breaths to the idea that fear does not own you. Or any of us. In that act of consecration anything and everything we are truly called to do can become ministry. If we do the work of knowing what we are called and consecrated to if we align our lives accordingly once we have done that the next part of ministry is moving forward with the work you are called to do. No matter what the rest of the world has to say about. Once you are consecrated to a vision. You do not ask everyone else's permission. To lead in the direction. Of that fission. You claim it. You own it. And when it is necessary you defend it. When you are consecrated to a purpose that is so clearly yours. Who are you not to go in the direction of the call. Claimed by something larger than yourself have consequences. And one of them is the struggle. And the clarity. And the challenge. Of leadership. So what is ministry. Ministry of the clarity of vision. It will not let you go. So what i'm hearing. Is it ministry comes from sources larger than yourself something outside of you and at some point. Captured. Always comfortable being so captured. That doesn't. And discomfort that makes you whole but it requires transformation. After all what is transformation if it isn't the breaking of habit that made you comfortable. So what i heard you preaching. Is it ministry comes from the relationships that support us nothing we do in ministry is in isolation or alone and everything is in the context of a greater whole. Sometimes in complex relationships it's harder to see a greater whole and all i can grasp is my teeth. What's great about that. What's really glorious. Is the fact that in relationship to others your piece of the whole can actually change. If you're connected to the real needs and the real differences of a community you might find that the person who arrives at the table is not the same person who leaves it. When i came to river road. I was in the process of surrendering to something. And my two years here at taking that something. And made it clear. It's given me a vision. Find a purpose that i can take out of here out to the world and together with others. Make it happen. When i came here. 2 years ago. I was still in the process of claiming my power. My own capacity. Among these people there's not a whole lot left to prove. Now i find myself increasingly aware of my own dependents. Willing and able to surrender. Intertrust the capacities of all those around me. So ministry not just ours but. Everyone else is in this room. Is too big to be one or the other. Vision to lead. Surrender to relationship. Corner me on a thursday afternoon. And you asked me what are you preaching about on sunday. It is very difficult to get a coherent answer out of me. I left perhaps you are cliff harden who seems uncannily able to pre meditate the direction of my preaching through musical selections it is a unusually specific superpower he has. My family nor my cats are subject to no such torment i don't talk about it much until it's done and even then i don't talk about it much. This is still the case. Perhaps less so now than it used to be but still. A few years ago when i was asked to preach before a large gathering of interfaith partners i did what i usually do. I shut myself in my office turned off the fluorescent lights and muttered to myself until i came up with a sermon like something. And because i was being courteous and collegial and stuff i sent my draft to my friend frank who was the organizer of the event and then i proceeded to forget about it for a while. Imagine my surprise. When frank came into my office a few hours later with a kind word and a copy of my sermon printed out in his hand which was almost unreadable underneath all of the bright red pen i almost gagged about how the lives of ancient peoples are not so very different than our own i had long long ago. I am not funny turned all red and we kept working. And at the end that sermon was maybe the best of my entire career. It was the first time i stepped out of my safe public stage it was big it was powerful and help me learn what i was capable of. Come from me. Or at least mostly me it came from us. From a collective effort a humbling beginning a trusting dance of leading and the following. The changes at all. When i came here two years ago. You asked me. To show up here with clarity. And some vision. I knew that this ministry was from the start consecrated to some important things among them are more supported and empowered staff the felt experience of transformation in worship and a deepening of our relationship to each other. And i have written reports and made timelines and develop strategies i have pushed and i have pulled and i have articulated a vision and for the most part. I have said what i needed to say when i needed to say it. Claimed by something. I have tried to be clear. And now finally. After almost two years i can feel something shifting in me. It's not the absence of my vision but a letting go. An acknowledgment that the vision that consecrates isn't more mostly mine it is yours or more accurately. Hours. Has reverend deb copeland said in the same sermon doug quoted a little while ago. If you let yourself think about the moments in your own ministries you are the proudest of. I'm guessing. That in those moments. You listened. He showed up. Action plan put aside yourself and focused on someone else. At its best. Isn't about one more strategy report. The strategy report is one tool but only one and the rest is about sharing the journey with other consecrated souls. No dog is going forward on the beginnings of his professional ministry and much clarity will be demanded of you. So much clarity that he will be called to name what he is consecrated to to be clear and visionary and bold in front of people you have never met and may never encounter again. Clarity has not for me. And yet now that we. Have each other this congregation and i there is a turning point underway. Interesting lee as doug steps into the clarity and vision of his call it's almost as if he and i trade places. For me. It now has more to do with trust. With trust. But i don't always have to know what to say. I don't always have to have the answers to the most important questions that face this congregation because the trust we hold together telling me that it can only emerge in community. Is that what you cannot. Alone. Ministry is the clarity of a vision. That will not let you go. I got a phone call last week from someone who i consider to be a spiritual mentor of mine. The first thing she asked me was. Are you aligned. She wasn't referring to my spine or to my car. She was asking about my. Am i psychic. Incredibly important question because. When our lives are out of kilter without internal moral. And spiritual resources it's almost impossible to be an effective minister. Claritin. Comes when we are aligned with our values and our unique gifts. My ministerial formation has been a long and arduous journey of finding my center. Accepting what i found. And acting into a new way of being. That is an alignment with who i am. Goodbye last sermon on may 15th i talked about my transition from an intelligence community bureaucrat. To administer. And how hard it was to let go of something that self really secure. It was not right for my soul. I was opposed to the iraq war. Before the invasion i marched in the peace demonstration along pennsylvania avenue with my church's youth group. At work i did everything i could to support our president's national security policy. I was a model employee. I held my nose and followed orders. But when it came to torture. Drone strikes and surveillance of us citizens. I found it harder and harder to hold my nose. As many of you may have read in the recent edition of the yu-gi-oh world magazine. My internal turmoil. Showed up in my polygraph test. My body was telling me that i was not being true to my values. I was not aligned. Under interrogation i told the security folks about my political views. Even investigated unitarian-universalism to see if it was some subversive cult this internal struggle was clouding my vision and preventing the from grasping my true minister. I was working long hours at work and trying to be and trying my best to keep. Some reserve in the tank. For my work here. Clearly i had to make a choice between my ministry. At my job. So about four months into my internship i resigned from my government job on deferred retirement. The security guys they saw me as a potential insider threat so they were glad to see me go. But more importantly. My body my mind and spirit stilt this tremendous freedom to finally speak. According to what i believe. Clarity of vision. Beherit river road has provided the life-changing opportunity the contemplates and articulate my fiala g out loud. How to find ways to integrate my sense of social justice with the vision and mission. Abyss congregation. What had the chance to experiment and fail. The sun the leadership gifts that i bring to this community. You were patient and caring cuz i got up. Oma wobbly legs. Started the find my stride. Initially. I was afraid to declare a vision out of fear that i might be wrong. I was focus too much on what others might think. From the pulpit. Regurgitated stuff that i was learning in seminary. The turning point for me was that first week in september 2013 when our nation was openly debating whether or not to conduct airstrikes in syria does it feel like there's a boo. I had a clear vision of where i stood on the issue and it would not let me go. I feel too strongly about diplomacy and not getting embroiled in the syrian conflict. Worried about whether some like receive my messages wrong or right. I was scheduled to give the sermon that sunday so. I preached about. And universal kinship. I laid out of position of lying to my values and. To my theology. I spoke from my heart. That it was okay. Okay. It was liberating. It was ministry. From the pulpit. When any of us are called. The minister within. And beyond these walls we are living into our mission as a church. A minister's when we use our gifts to the call of this community. The prison outreach ministry that i led this year was a great example of people from this congregation. Sharing their time and talent with people in the community who have been accustomed to ignore. The incarcerated. I can tell you from my experience that those encounters changed me. As i listened to their hopes. And their dreams. And help the makeup take those first steps toward their new future. You may be sitting there wondering. What gift do you have to share. Believe me. Just by being human you have immeasurable. You got the love. I care deeply about another. You have to get to be present to to bear witness to another's struggle. To listen to others with an open mind and a loving heart. You have the gift to speak out when silence is not an option. And you have the gift. To see the clarity of vision. That will not let you go. The question. It's not whether you have gifts. But how will you use them to minister. To the world. The world needs you. It's calling you to move. To be what you must be to do what you must. What is ministry. Vision in your head. In your heart that feeling in your bones. When you know that the world needs you to do that. Which you simply. Cannot. Not do. Buy thank you. From the bottom of my heart from helping me. The live. To my ministry. And i thank you all. For living. Into you.

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3337.mp3

Last sunday i had most of the day off. What's a great gift to me. And i have the pleasure of going to worship with my family at the washington national cathedral. One aside is that when i was a new minister it was always hard. For me to go and listen to other preachers sermons at other churches cuz i was always thinking about how i would do it differently. And now i go and i just feel their ideas. Watch better i think for all of you and her sermon the preacher. She talked about the spiritual practice of a 40-year veteran of the united methodist ministry that she knew. He's got served in some small town in the american midwest. And it's pastor she said was one of the good ones though perhaps not obviously one of the great one. He never served a big church. He never won any snazzy preaching prize. Street and in amongst the everyday lives of the people he served decade after decade. And while other pastors came and went in the town all around him change this man stayed every single day for 40 years he stayed. We have one single ritual that he always performed. Handle that was on the corner of his desk. And anytime that candle was lit the people in his congregation knew that he was somewhere in the building. Lighting that candle was the first thing he did when he got into the office each day. And extinguishing it was the last thing he did before he packed it up and went home in the evening. Someone asked him one day what that whole candle deal was about. And he said. I do it to remind myself that i am not the light. I do it to remind myself. But i. M.. The light. And somehow that ass. Mantra about prayer gave him face to keep doing the good work that was set before him day after day year after year until four decades have gone by. Because he knew he wasn't alone. The conduit of something even greater than the very greatest. Of his own action. He was part and parcel. Of a higher purpose. I found this practice so compelling. Started test driving it a little this week adapting it for those of you who are concerned about fire code i usually blow it out before i leave the room. When i get into the office the very first thing i've done this week is light that candle and say to myself. I am not the light. As i open my computer and the email start to stream by i stay to myself on repeat i am not the light i am not the light and as i contemplate a capital campaign for this our congregation i say it really fast i am not. I am not the white. I am not the light which means i am not alone. I am not a solitary creature meandering my way based solely upon the merits of my own steam and neither are you exactly. We are not the light but we are its bearers. We are conduits of some greater claim. From source we are called to speak into share from. And i know. I know that some of you are squirming in your seats about now worried that i am talking about god. And maybe i am. Maybe i'm not. Whether or not to believe in god actually we do have a few things to say around here about what a god worth believing in might be like. And we have a few more things to say about what life in the absence of the supernatural called human beings to do but determining for you whether the light you might carry forward but cannot create. Comes from a supernatural force are patently does not that is your business not mine. In the more traditional religious context than this one it might more commonly be held that the light shines through us is in fact the light. Of a fairly uniform understanding of god. Might in fact be the case. Your great purpose might be to reflect and refract the source of love which is greater than you and hold you in its arms and you might call that source of love god. The person sitting next to you may not. And your differences on this question maybe as pointed or more so than the differences between the rabbi's forming their minion. Differing perspectives is among the most important aspects of your very identity. Logically politically spiritually socially you may just be moving in a very different direction than the person next to you in this sanctuary today. And yet somehow is a community we are all endeavoring to move forward together. This is why leadership in the unitarian universalist congregation is sometimes quite accurately compared to herding cats. No i want served a congregation that had this film loop. Of a cowboy chasing several hundred self-important felines over the wide-open prairie with his hat flying off and bouncing on his horse they played that film strip and a continual loop behind the action of the annual congregational meeting. I tell him to do me up at 4 in the morning and he sees his litter boxes one viable option. Something they need you when they need you and they come on their own terms so imagine trying to get them going in the same direction by some sort of backward forceful prodding. Open a can of tuna. And they will flow from the barn rafters like water. Hurted not from behind but drawn towards something so compelling they all come along. Is individual than even as a community we or we alone are not polite. Some greater purpose. Shining through us both individually and collectively there is something that draws us toward itself. A purpose strong enough to move even 600 cats forward together through generations of birth. And all of the new beginnings in between. I used to hang out a lot with a group of young minister friends from all around the country and various denominations. Mostly from within the christian tradition. I was the only unitarian-universalist in that group and as such something of a novelty to everyone concerned. I remember awkwardly slipping to the index when someone handed me a bible and asked me to read from the book of jobe this when everyone else's bible seem to magically fall open right on the page by divinely-inspired bookmark. I remember one friend pointedly asking me. What it is that we unitarian-universalist are all about. If we don't all believe in god. The conversation has familiar contours too many of us. For him he said it's clear what the congregation she served was about bringing god's kingdom to earth with all of its implication for social justice in the salvation of souls. But what he wondered are you people about. If you're not uniformly committed to the existence of the supernatural what is it. Effusive us as individuals is left to consider for ourselves what the sources of the light really are. What is there to guide us as a whole. I actually don't 100% by the differentiation he was making between his congregation and ours because you get 10 practicing christians together. And you asking what the kingdom of god on earth looks like and they're going to give you 10 really different answers so the cat hurting to my mind isn't a challenge unique to us. Imagine again with me. The rabbi's sitting together in a room. Some of them couldn't even shake hands with each other some of whom patently believe that other than the room didn't even belong there some of whom were just so hungry for connection they did not care and all of whom knew without even a stout. The saying kaddish for a man in grief was a non-negotiable obligation. There was a lot of comfort. It shines through them. They had a responsibility to gather that light together in prayer nobody doubted that their purpose was clear that united them and held them in one way or another until they found the way to fulfill their purpose. It took them a while to get there. They didn't necessarily change each other's minds but they fulfilled. Their obligation. Because they believed in what they were doing that all of them streams together like water headed come hook or by crook in the same compelling directions. Now the author of that reflection about rabbis dan hotchkiss he's a colleague of mine and in fact some of you know that he came and consulted here at river road once upon a time in our governance process. Trying to put some modest success to help us figure out how to herd our own cats. Has done some writing. Who is or what it is that owns the liberal religious congregation to church accountable. What were traditional religious community may say that god owns the church among us. Animal other community the precious difference the church he says is owned and is claimed and called forth. Nothing more or less than its own michigan. The animating spirit. Stoplight we've time. For traditional religion it might be a particular understanding of god. But hotchkiss says that for us it is the power. Of our collective mission. We are on and claimed and called forth by our shared purpose just as the rabbis were owned and claimed and called forth. Father shared commitment to say a prayer of mourning for a man in need. River road. Our mission statement is stated thusly. To meet the spiritual aspirations. Of people with free face. We worked at a best tools at our disposal meaning for worship religious learning for all ages service as a living prayer and our vision. Think we're all headed toward a congregation where everyone can grow and deepen in fellowship among one another and spiritual growth and in service to the world. Now those are words. And they're good words we had a whole lot of meetings to come up with all of those words. Important and frame what we do in a thousand ways. What are they really mean on the ground. What is the central to our lives together as unitarian universalist that like a minion saying kaddish the fact it must happen is non-negotiable. Perhaps we can start with our own language right. Spiritual aspirations of people of free faith. The operative word. Free face. Not people whose face is compelled by any force to be just like mine. People of a particular faith story not people whose faith conform to my own interpretations of what it should be but free face and therein lies the whole concept of liberal religion itself. The idea that religion can offer a wide welcome without attachment to a creed within the context of a community of other searchers. Bound together. Commitment difference. Rather than just. Splinters into so many shards before it. The concept of religion. It's a heavily freighted one right. The history of it the institution of it the valuing of it it has so often proven. Problematic in this world. And yet all of it combines to form something unlike any other human creation. Religion. And art. Are these human languages in which we are most fluent in symbol and a metaphor. Imagining what we hope to be and what our souls cry out for without always apologizing for our lack of precision in naming it. In our kind of religious community we speak that language of symbols. A metaphor and we do it together. Without a community capable of speaking in poetry and art without a practice or ritual that connects us to more than just our individual convictions. We miss out on what is salvation. In the most personal sense of the word. Because of course our shared purpose is not to save ourselves or others from damnation or the devil's or just punishment. Ourselves from our own self-obsessed alienation. And the loneliness that inevitably results. A religion like ours well-lived has the power to remind us again and again that we alone are not the light. It has the power to save us from self-obsession and invites us to be in service to something larger than our own egos. My enduring bias is the idea that we ought to be proud. To claim our place. As religious liberal. Held by that purpose with anime stuff. The welcome we offer. Do all people have free faith. Including our self. Without a place and a time for meaning-making the bravest of souls grows weary. A place where a person can go to doubt into question and to confront themselves the best intentions moral battle hit the rocks of isolation. But our tradition says. That beauty is bigger. In our own individual understandings of it. Sacredness is sold at our one small individual piece of it cannot contain the whole and the slice of the sacred i have known is made greater. When viewed alongside the experiences of others. And the pursuit of that. A broader experience of the holy. Bigger than any of our individual experiences bigger even than what can be known in any one particular book or doctrine that. Is our great big collective tuna can. The edge of the barn door drawing all of us cats on toward it. This is my religion. Not my path time. For my social club. But my religion. Unitarian universalism disc read last nest. This holy mystery. It is bigger than my belief. And it is bigger than your belief. It is bigger even than our differences. The secret. We hold. Shines through each of us. Yet we each have only just a glimpse. Together our vision is broader the light is brighter the metaphors are richer. We move toward this broader vision not because someone tells us to or because we're afraid not to. We are never heard it. We are drawn. And then being drawn together. On the very best of days. We are made. More hole.

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Healing-Waters.mp3

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1216.mp3

Why don't we just go into the woods or stay home and read the newspaper. When i decided i was going to. This is i was going to preach on this topic. I was going to tell you that this was association sunday at river road. I was going to talk a little about the importance of the unitarian universalist association of congregation. 2 river road. Especially in a year when we are in search for our new senior minister. The services in the work of the unitarian universalist association are so very visible. Materials we use in the religious education program. Supporting publicity for social justice stand especially the standing on the side of love. Activities and training and support for religious educators ministers music directors. Administrators membership coordinator has been support group leaders all come. From the unitarian universalist association. I was going to bring to light how important it is to have a place. A building where community can be nurtured. And we're spiritual solace can be found. I was going to tell you how important is a place. Possible for you to be able to be yourself. To say what you think. And two often have that heard. And being a part of an association of congregations makes that possible. If there were no unitarian universalist association. Hideout. Unitarian universalist congregation. There might be a few community churches. With quite similar values. But only a few. Probably only last a lifetime of one strong minister. Probably liberal voices would be articulated left. And we might remember that the religious liberal voices heard. Differently. From the political liberal voice. There is a death. Of spiritual being. From which a religious liberal voicemail speak. I was going to tell you how important it is to be part of a religious community of people. Love and care about what is happening to you. How do you make stands together to articulate their principal. I was going to tell you. When you hurt. Or feel alone. When you want to celebrate. The unitarian universalist of river road. Are here for you. All of this i see as connected with congregation. And the importance. Unitarian universalist congregation. And then. Our unitarian universalist president peter morales. Just send out a letter called. Congregations and beyond. He called us to recognize that there are a half a million people in our country. Say they are unitarian universalist. And yet are not members of any congregation. It brings to heart. One of the. Core religious questions. Who am i. Or who are we. People. Who voluntarily identify as unitarian universalist. People are people who voluntarily identify as unitarian universalist. Claiming membership to unitarian universalist congregation is not important to them. They are not people to whom we can say. Are you a unitarian universalist and don't know it. These are people who know they are unitarian universalist. It is we who don't know them. So why don't we just go to the woods or stay at home and read the newspaper. Looks like about a half a million people are doing just that. Now you've heard me from the pulpit before say i think people come. Community. To be part of something larger than themselves they come for the music. Program the chance to see people they care about. Chance to sit in a beautiful setting and breathe. Simply breathe. Comfort chance to stand for justice with enough people that their voice might be heard. Become to be comforted. When they're sick. Or grieving. They come to be celebrated to publicly declare their commitments. To a partner. And to dedicate their children. They come for. And we have. A sense of belonging. I think most human beings are seeking a sense of belonging. It is a longing that never leaves us. Even when we feel. We belong. I believe in that sense of belonging. For over 34 years i have been a professional working in unitarian universalist congregation. I'm an institutional. I work hard to see that this institution serves well as many as possible. When i first read peter morelli. Paper especially that line to be limited to a traditional parish. Form of organization in the 21st century. It's like limiting ourselves to technology. That does not require electricity. I stopped reading out that he was talking about batteries. I wondered if i really was a dinosaur. Not long ago i went away for six days and i did not talk on the telephone nor did i read any email for 6. Days. And i have to say. I really like without likes. Special kind of freedom. Baby i am a dinosaur. Kids love dinosaurs that many of us are fascinated by seeing the history of our earth portrayed in ways it connected to dinosaurs. Strength within the dinosaur image. I could possibly wish for a little more longevity myself. There are gift within congregations that are valuable. That's wednesday. I sat at different times with two couples who came to me wanting to talk about getting married. They had start out the values they read about on our website. Don't want to get married by a judge. They wanted a spiritual experience authentic with their value. One of the couples may come to river road more frequently. The other probably won't. But they both came to a unitarian universalist minister. Because i was. A unitarian universalist minister. One couple said they were glad to have discovered on our website. That i was from nebraska. Because that reassured them that i would be able to get to the wedding regardless of the weather. But they were looking for a unitarian universalist minister when they discovered that fact. Unitarian universalist association. I wouldn't be. A unitarian universalist minister. Back to peters paper. If i kept reading peters paper i realized congregations were dead or shouldn't exist. He was saying that if a unitarian universalist association exists only as congregation. And limits our understanding of us. Only to go to sign a membership book. In the unitarian universalist congregation. We have missed out. On the line. And likely will we become smaller and smaller as an institution. Think of it. A million people in this country identify that. At the hospital in the school registration form on the lease. net or in surveys phone or electronics they say i am a unitarian universalist. And how do we say glad to know you. How do we do with ms in congregations the join them. Unitarian universalist not connected with congregation. How do we connect with them how do we join them. First i want to say that if our congregations didn't exist. I don't believe that would be unitarian universalist. Who weren't connected to congregation. I think congregations have historically carried our history of our values are principles our name and our identity. If it weren't. Such things as unitarian universalist congregation i don't think people. Who had no connection with say. I am a unitarian universalist. Congregation. Have been the home base. The hard drive. Holding all the information. We have been a physical and emotional sanctuary. A place and the people with whom we could explore the meaning of life. What it is to be alive. How to say thank you to express our gratitude. We have helped people individual history their family history. As well as providing. A kind of security. Peter morales didn't title his paper beyond congregation. Call of duty. Congregations and beyond. Acknowledging that i don't have to give up congregation. How do i imagine a beyond. He said we need to think of ourselves as a religious movement. Rather than an association of congregation. Inching into thinking about this. I recognize that we do have our foot. In the beyond part. What's a month. Charlotte carol and volunteers from this congregation helpfully the unitarian universalist campus ministry program at american university. Think of themselves as unitarian universalist. And yet most of them are not members of congregation. Every time we join the unitarian universalist by those big yellow standing in the side of love banners. We began talking to people who join us on the mall or in the front of official buildings are on the streets. People who join us to stand up for marriage equality and peace and women's rights. Immigration reform. Identify themselves as unitarian universalist. And yet they tell us they haven't been apart of the congregation for years. Whatever. Are public prisons. Orchestrated often by congregation. Create a place and identity for some of those half-a-million unitarian universal. Outside of congregation. Stop the unitarian universalist church of the larger fellowship. An example of a way to serve those half a million. Unitarian universalist in that beyond group. The church of the larger fellowship is a virtual church. Originally created to serve unitarian universalist. Live in areas where there were no unitarian universalist congregation. For people who contact the church of the larger fellowship. By phone or by e-mail or by plain old snail mail. It provides sermons worshipping ritual information religious education programs counseling services. Information about social justice action around the world. A couple of members of our congregation have even met with the head of the church of a larger fellowship. They helped her utilize electronic communication even more. In her program. The church of the largest battleship has historically health college students. Adults and children living and working far away from congregation. City of our state department people have connected with them. People in the military all around the world. Who can no longer easily leave their homes or go to a congregation. Prison inmates. The church of the larger fellowship is moving into the 21st century electronic with electronic communication opportunities. Faster. Send any other unitarian congregation i now. Interactive computer games. Related to religious education. And are now offering online worship services. Different kinds of worship service. How do we think of ourselves. As a movement. Congregation to the part of the unitarian universalist movement. Also challenges us to focus more on connection. Unless on membership. The annual congregational records. Request from the unitarian universalist association this year after each congregation for the number of people it serves. Who are not members as well as who are registered members. How many people show up on sunday morning is more significant than how many names we have on a membership roster. People peter asks us to invite people to connect to our movement whether or not they choose to join a congregation. Institute for my institutional mind i wonder i wonder just how we can find out who these people are. How do we connect. To the unnamed half-a-million. A group that is probably going faster than our movements registration membership. Maybe we start. A charter school. Or an english-as-a-second-language program. Affordable housing. Join an interface group like action in montgomery. Or do social justice work side-by-side with other communities in montgomery county. Engage more with senior connections and interfaith works. Maybe we can buy people from the community. 2r fall annual retreat. Maybe we spend a year brainstorming ideas like these. Imagining possibilities without stifling them with the practical obstruction. Maybe we look outside these walls. Four ways we can step out. As well as ways. We may invite people in. There are half a million people out there. Think they are us. And we don't know them. There are happening and people out there. Who think. They are us. And we don't even know them. With the strength and love of all those in our congregation. Let us carry this movement. Br. And let us move downriver road to gather after.

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timormortis_96.mp3

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1579.mp3

If i may share for a moment. What it's like to be a minister a chaplain. They asked me for my sermon title a couple weeks ago. I had no idea my first. Processes to do a mental inventory of soul inventory okay what's on my mind what am i thinking about what are my favorite quotes. Anime melee what came to mine is e.e. cummings poem i thank you god for this most amazing day. That was supposed that i kept on my door when i was in afghanistan. And every single morning the thing that brought me joy was to walk outside and see the mountains over kabul. So much. Desolate poverty suffering violence but to see the mountains. Enter mark on the creation and the gifts of the beauty of this world. Inspired me no matter what it happened the day before the night before the knox that came at 4 in the morning i still give thanks. Peggy cummings is what i dedicate. This morning's reflection to. With that i wondered why who and what about you coming. Why are we even interested in the lives. A public figures. I asked myself this question. Then i had you ask an even more important question. And i'm going to ask you this question as well. So why are we interested in public figures. The first question the second one is. How many reality television shows can you name or how many do you watch. Whatsapp. How to admit saisai when i say this masterchef and drag you are my favorites. And yes i can rattle off a dramatic storylines in the season-by-season the rivalries the struggles the public tears. Live there being played out in small streams even how manage they may be. And i can do this to the endless boredom of my friends and family alike. Absolutely pointless knowledge. Guitarist john fahey once told an interviewer american young people can tell you we're an island that the survivor tv series came from that it's located then can identify afghanistan or iraq on a map. It continues ironically a tv show seems to be more real or at least more meaningful and interesting or relevant. An actual reality too many people in society. Super helpful elevated conversation bid to look towards the lives of our artists. Endeavor to contribute to our society not just merely entertain us with mental bubble gum. We appreciate their work. We appreciate their service their creativity. The way they bring innovation or leadership a radical new ways of looking at the world to the four from. The argument for the existence of the earth has thrived for centuries. Because there's a place for defense through creativity. There's a place for challenging society's assumptions and norms and seeking a better or different way. The presence of the yard takes the simple and make some sublime. Text the ugly text the raw and find the beauty. I had an interesting conversation with canadian officer that's stationed in my building explaining to him mapplethorpe. And the controversy of the 80s he had a very hard time wrapping his mind around public use of art. But if you're not familiar with the art of mapplethorpe that displays his conversation very well. American playwright norman mailer once rode the final purpose of art is to intensify. Even if necessary to exacerbate. The moral consciousness of the people. Take a moment to just flip through your mind some of your favorite artists. Perhaps some of their work challenge the part of you. Gave you a space to appreciate effort beauty. Intentionality creativity. You haven't visited the phillips museum in washington dc it's one of my favorites. Part of it's in an old mansion. And is just. Dedicated to pretty phenomenal collection. Personal museum. Some dolly renoir can go. Then it's just stunning. One-room when showcase that eyesore recently was the worst of allison schatz. A large room color the floor is wooden. Put on the wall she has these works of art that are hundreds of males. Together. Buy string. That makes forms of circles twirling inside themselves. It's sort of like a graphic description of a a wormhole leading into itself. And strong one string back. 4. Back and forth. It's phenomenal to watch and 2 to look at into appreciate the creativity that developed this. And made it. Embodied on the wall. The most amazing part of these ecliptic forms as she called them is that it's a single strand. It's an incredibly impressive expression of attention to detail. Not without a single flaw in its endless flow of foam form folding within itself. Immunogen is beautiful fluid weigh. As i stepped back to the hold this piece i have to make my mind did wonder. Who was this person who came up with this. What was she like. What did she think when she see what brought forth is expression within her. I found out later that scorching the science major in computer graphics. Enthusiast and this was an artistic expression of something that's very common in both those worlds. And it's a beautiful intersection of how science and art come together. Which made me appreciate that piece even more. The natural curiosity to get the backstory. So to speak. Natural tendency to draw the lines of connection just as i did with allison schatz and her ecliptic works. We want to know and understand in order to better appreciate. To better judge what is around us. Return to eat coming. An artist of the first rate. Creativity has inspired generations as should his life as well. Every young person here in the youth group. One of my most favorite possessions was the famous you use mug poster and of course the last one is and me. Dozens of heralded forefathers and foremothers lifting first lady abigail adams president john adams. President thomas jefferson adlai stevenson poll revealed thomas paine louisa may alcott. Ray bradbury frannie farmer louisa may alcott margaret fuller beatrice potter frank lloyd wright florence nightingale silver by sylvia plath. And many many more hundreds but any other favorites out there. Yes phone image yes. Actually you use. Carter and. Carter i think. We knew many of the name. We know many names and some of their stories from are you your history and if you heard me preach before i have sort of a thing for you your history. Another added depth to our living religious movement. I went to highschool right down the street i went to walt whitman can walk to it from here. Your first introduction to the poet and artist ccummings can high school just as mine did. When your teacher patiently explained how he did not use punctuation when writing his name or many of his works. It is no surprise they eat cummings born actual edward eflin. Was raised in an affluent unitarian family. My father who's a professor at harvard and also unitarian congregational is minister. Beginning at the tender age of just eight. When many young boys are taking frogs and playing kickball. Cummings wrote poems daily. Recently when i read a quote by a young person. I buy the father of the young person who said you know my son has an ipod. Annie book a nook. Hey xbox. He's got 10 toys when i had just one growing up it was called outside. How many young boys is outside doing their thing chasing frogs. Home. Bailey. Starting at the age of eight. Any continue that habit well into his twenties. Weird that he was going to be a poet. Nurturing his gifts and gold he went on to attend harvard university where he stuttered studied modern poetry. And struck out with his own unconventional use of grammar and syntax. And this is where the story becomes interesting. After harvard he went on to become a book dealer not surprising considering his studies. The world was exploding with the first world war. And then everywhere was serving the military so he decided to sign up. Volunteer for the ambulance corps. And he was sent to paris. Of course life continued on in many different parts of the world in paris is no different and in a break he had four months before you actually begin to service served in the ambulance corps so he enjoyed the city of paris and fell in love. And he went back there many times over the course of his life. Ambulance corps quietly can you imagine. Forno's of spain agree to a time socializing with french soldiers. But they also openly expressed doubts in the war effort. And letters. That caught attentions of military sensors. Directions landed him in a french jail for 3 months. On suspicion of espionage. Incarceration incarceration hero to the enormous room. A lively autographic home. That is sprinkled with french wits and reflections about his situation as a harvard-educated progressive charged with espionage in a country that he loved. It took his father writing an impassioned letter hand delivered to the president. That finally got him released after almost four months. Turn to the us. And after the war he actually assigned up and serve 12 division in new york for a year. After the war he travelled extensively. Spending time again in france. Russia africa and mexico. And later in his life harvard awarded an honorary ft as a guest professor. In the last ten years of his life he spent traveling sharing his stories. And lecturing. Retiring to his country home when she called the joy farm. That he shared with his common-law spouse marion morehouse. A photographer. And model. So the first lesson that i found from reflecting on he coming. We can look into that nurturing that inner voice. Calling. Declared the tender age of eight is i sent that he was destined to be a poet. Any work daily to that end. One of my favorite books that i share with people that i'm doing counseling with his called god yes is louder than my no. It's about african-american culture ministry in the african-american church. I love that phrase god yes is stronger than my know the universe is yes is stronger than my no. The wheel towards the good. Is stronger. Am i now. The chinese down slots for allowed to write be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear. And you will produce weeds that choke the life. From your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions. And you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity. For success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture. Your dream. So i ask you this day how are you nurturing. Your dream. If you are friends with me on facebook after i finish my first half-marathon 6 months ago. I posted the tragedy of life is not is not achieving your goals but not having goals to achieve. And i'm cheating. So what is that dream what is that goal and how are you nurturing that's.. How are you watering the garden of your spirit towards the blossoming. Of your dreams. We are encouraged as spiritual seekers and those on the journey. Flex apartments often. Water your dreams with hope. Compassion. And a path unfold before us. So we nurture the dream but also from eecummings life. We can also see a striving to be oneself. Described as the essential artist prayer. Erodes. May i bi. Is the only prayer. Hi grade or beautiful or wise or strong. May i. Bi. The only prayer of eve's cummings heart was. May i. Bi. That has echoes one of the secret names of god in hebrew is called. When moses approaches the holy in exodus 3:12 and dares to ask the name of god. The supreme being responds with i am. Which is also translated as i will be. What i will be. The mystery of the transcendency of the sacred. Where name is inconsequential to be. There is a will towards acknowledging that at our core we are. Who we are. May i. Bi. Deliberation in recognizing that we are created as we are. Warts and all. May i. Bi. A beautiful story from the life of e.e. cummings is one of hope. For reconciliation. Union. Show pictures. It's not the greatest love stories. Cummings first wife. Was actually the wife of his mentor. When she bore his child. Do deers involved with the wife of his mentor and she conceived his child wiley he was when he was still married to her then-husband. Schofield fair. Elaine works with his four with his first wife. And married he but the relationship quickly dissolved and they separated within the year. And she left the us firelands with their daughter in tow and she met and married a wealthy irish businessmen never to return to the united states. Prevented he's coming from seeing his only child nancy. 4/4 decades. The flash forwards that 40-years forwards nancy's in the us. And she's actually married to none other than willard roosevelt. The grandson of president theodore roosevelt. Commissioned a portrait of who. His own daughter nancy. As well. So in this process of visiting he's sitting in front of his daughter he knows who she is but she doesn't know who he is. Ansari takes a couple of hours a couple of days it's not couldn't find a record of how long he waited to tell her. But in that moment is when he. Reveal to her that he was her father. And what ensued was actually an emotional reunions a family. Animated daughter and then his own grandson. From this experience erodes most successful and famous play called santa claus. Heard of it actually to be honest i read about it and santa claus is about love and hope. Santa claus is actually revealed to be a young man. And he is reunited with his lost wife and son. Story from this separation human choices that gave rise to painful painful consequences. Beauty and renewed relationships. Emerge. Well there was lost there was also redemption and a love born of the trial. Of life. You can only imagine that moment. Tamara crawford and daughter painting her portrait. Meditating over the features of her face. And then say i. I'm your father. I'm spending the rest of his life with her. It reminded me of one of my favorite persian poets ribbon is score. When he rode. Let me pray not to be sheltered from dangers. But to be fearless. In facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain. But for the heart. Tekonsha kankurit. Craven anxious fear to be saved. But hope for the patients. To win my freedom. Grant me that i may not be a coward feeling your mercy in your success alone. Let me find the grasp of your hand. In my failure. We are forged in the mid. Ivar challenges. Our innermost beings are fomented through reflection of how we confront. And how we overcome. One of my favorite books that i keep on my desk for counseling is also a book called failing forward. I used it for counseling because it's talks about it's not. How we feel it's how we recover from the failing. How we recover from making mistakes. That makes all the difference over the course of a lifetime. So tagore access. For the stilling of my pain but for the heart to consta conquer it. Let this be the prayer of our hearts. Always. In the life of eecummings. We hope three gems of wisdom for our journey. Nurture our dream for the waters of optimism and hope. Second the greatest prayer of our heart is. T.i.. And none other. And laugh at reconciliation and changed always has a place in the gentle. Unfolding of our lives. May you find encouragement and strength this day. And all days. No peace as you draw closer to your sense of the sacred. And the divine. May you have the wisdom of the ages. To guide your path always. Amen. And blessed be.

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3624.mp3

Our message this morning is in 3 parts. The story and song that we heard in the story for all ages. A brief reflection now which is historical. And a spoken word piece by audre lorde. The third i'll tell you now was written by audre lorde. As an african-american. Lesbian person. Who thought about all the ways she struggled to survive. And it was a piece i performed often about 20 years ago. That i decided to revive for today so that's my introduction now. The first two short reflections on the history. Conference has been going on in birmingham is last few days is organized by the uu living legacy project. The mission is to reimagine. Social possibility in the world today. By experiencing the jets. Human spirit in the civil rights movement. And this week some of the pictures that have been coming through from the group there include. Colorful mural. For selma voting rights you might have seen it has its african sankofa bird in the middle. Sankofa. Is a word in the akan language of ghana which literally means. Ridgeback. And get it. Reach back and get it and so the mural and selma proclaim. Learning from the past. To build for the future. What can we learn from the past infection anniversary is. Learn about solidarity about courage. action for justice today and in the future. A little more of the stories of the three lives. Who are martyred at selma. Everything. For most of us. We will not be required. Such a moment and yet the fear can be present in many ways but we speak up. And speak truth to power. This weekend. We are honoring jimmie lee jackson. A young african-american man whose death first inspire the short leg of the selma march the one that only went a few blocks. Before they were beaten. Beaten and turned away with tear gas at the bridge. Evans march 7th 1965. And that short march led to the attack. And then the subsequent march. 17 days later. When 25,000 marched instead of 600 people. All the way to montgomery protected by the national guard. Jackson jimmie lee jackson was 26. She was a veteran. He was the youngest deacon in his church. He was a father of a young daughter. And he was shot in the stomach. When he was trying to protect his mother. From being beaten. At max cafe. He died eight days later and speaking at his funeral. Dr. king call jackson. A martyred hero of a holy crusade for freedom. And human dignity. Today we're also honoring the reverend james. Jim reeve was an associate minister at all souls dc where i served he was ordained there. Had left all souls to work in boston on affordable housing for american friends service committee. When he answered a national clergy call that came from dr. king after bloody sunday. He went to selma. Clubbed and beaten. For walking with african-american. And on march. 9th 1960 52 days after bloody sunday and then he died. 2 days later on march 11th. President lyndon b johnson call reed's widow. And father. And on march 15th 1965 when president lyndon johnson went to congress with the first draft. The voting acts bill voting rights act rather. He involved with memory in his speech. The same day that he went to congress dr. king eulogized. Jim reeves at browns chapel in selma. James reid symbolizes the forces of good will and our nation. He demonstrated the conscience. Of the nation. He was an attorney for the defense. Of the innocent. In the court of world opinion. He was a witness to the truth. That man of different races and classes might live eat and work together as brothers. The third person we honor. Is viola liuzzo. Last known story too many she was the only. A white woman to die in the selma voting action. Sold. She was the mother of five. She was a member of the first unitarian universalist church of detroit. And a member of the n-double-acp. She also answered this national call from dr. king to participate at selma after bloody sunday. 1964. The year before i leave choice began attending the unitarian church. And join the n-double-acp. It is said that a catalyst for her activism. Was a friendship. Matt and african-american woman sara evans. At the grocery store where they both worked as a cashier. And the two kept in touch. Eventually evans became the housekeeper four-legged so and they maintained a close relationship where they both shared support for the civil rights movement. She joined the n-double-acp at the urging of sara evans. And i'm march 29th 1965. Viola was shuttling people to the montgomery airport. After the successful march of 25,000. She had a nineteen-year-old african-american young man in her car. And the kkk forced her. Off the road. Shooting them. He died instantly the young man in her car leroy moton lay motionless. Pretended to be dead. And survived. In the aftermath of liotta's death. Her detroit friend. Sara evans would go on. Become the permanent caretaker of. Leola's five children. And so what will we do now. In march 2015 in the present in these times what will you do. Perhaps you will become part of the new jim crow. Movement. Which points to mass incarceration as the new segregation. Perhaps you will. Participate in our. River road shelter week. And help serve three meals a day. Two women without homes in rockville. Perhaps you will give to the college access fund. The concert the jubilee singers in a couple weeks so march 29th. Perhaps you'll look in your workplace you are family life you are friendships. And see how you might know another person's experience better. Perhaps you'll mentor a young person or. Work on literacy. Maybe i'll become involved in the black lives matter campaign. Maybe you'll read 12 things white people can do after ferguson. An excellent piece is circulating widely. Maybe you'll become involved in voter rights protection because the voter rights act. For which. Jimmie lee jackson reverend jim reeves and viola liuzzo died. Is imperiled again. Many events are showing up in selma this week. Many of us are showing up at river road today. We show up in our lives to work for justice. We speak up. To say black lives matter. All lives matter. Every life is precious. We speak out to say we stand in 50 years. Of interfaith history. At the unitarian universalist still working on multiracial. Interfaith coalition. Fighting. For human rights. Still here. Present. Willing. Still here. What will we do. What will you do.

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828.mp3

Well the promised land. Is many peoples. Many practices. Many ways of being. Promised land is. A world in which we all understand that the principle is to care as much for others as ourselves. It is. A beautiful garden. Fruits and vegetables to eat and share. Flowers for scent and color. Cool spiritual place. Water and crops. It's a place that's free from aggressive actions. Do focuses on goodwill towards all humankind. It's right here. But their years of progress and advancement into the future. And some of us can't wait. It's waiting for us not here. But it's in the creating of spiritual energy. As we live in bring that energy with us. Invite you to join me in a litany. After i read each piece i would like you to respond. It would be enough. Who did congregation only be president for one another during the good times and the sad time. Buddhist congregation only hold worship services. But not provide other fellowship opportunities. Who did congregation fellowship throughout the week. But not witness for justice. Good this congregation witness for justice but fall short of transforming this world. Good this congregation transform the world into the beloved community. It is enough. There is enough. And you have enough. Change the world with your love. I want to speak to you about your congregation. I invite the children in youth. Upper river road unitarian universalist congregation to rise and body or spirit now. River road unitarian universalist congregation. Look around. This is not your future. They are here right now. They are the promised land. And they want to help. With the adults in elders of river road unitarian universalist congregation please rise in body or spirit. Children and youth of river road unitarian universalist congregation. Look around. These are the people who want to help you. Either the people who had a vision of the promised land of their own. And we're not there yet. But we can be there if we work together. Please be seated. I know this is going to feel like up down up down but i'm going to ask this to all rise for the people viewing us on the internet. The please rise in body or spirit. And know that congregation is joining us from the internet. This is your congregation as well. And they want to help you reach the farm.

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877.mp3

Wow. I got all kinds of devices. The new music offended the church. Imagine. Elements of secular music. Hagen music yet. Threatened to infiltrate sacred music and change the tone of worship. Someone assalam to frivolous or even lascivious. The church regarded the unfamiliar harmonies as creepy and evil. And forbade the instruments on which this devil's music was played. But eventually with time and the support of a new pope. The techniques gained acceptance and were approved for use in sacred music. This controversy over innovation happened 750 years ago. The music is what we now know as medieval and renaissance telephony and it forms the cornerstone of church music of that.. Most of us consider technological innovation to be largely a blessing. Some of us also consider the curse at least some extent. And of course most of us do kursat technology from time to time even if no matter how we feel about it in general. Unfounded thanks. Which is actually cursed that's close enough. On the whole i love technology it enables me to do a lot of enjoyable and interesting things and it provides me with a pretty decent living. From a technology is basically a blessing. But when i consider the role that it plays in my spirituality. My connection with something greater than myself. I realize that it is a mixed blessing. Let me share a few examples. About a year ago i realized one of my longhills dreams. I joined a group that sings sacred telephony. I have resonated with early music as far as long as i can remember. Even in trials but my favorite christmas song with the sixteenth-century coventry carol. And over the years i had attended several concerts of the group i joined. I'm not by any means traditionally religious but this music just speaks to me. Felicity is a musical texture in which two or more independent melodic lines weave in and out to create complex harmonies and the rhythms are difficult. Someone raised in the twentieth century accustomed to having the various voices saying the same words more or less together. Simplicity is hard. So i'm grateful for the technology that enables me to learn this glorious but difficult music. A month before our first rehearsal the director sent out midi files which convey what the pieces sound like sort of. Midi files produced tones that are very computer ish and the vocal lines all sound alike let me play you just a little of one of these. Fortunately music software can tell the lines apart. So i can put them in addition to a program called phenolic set my part to a french horn played loudly. Other parts to other instruments play more softly and i load the results onto my ipod. What that sounds like. For two months before each concert on live with these pieces. I have this handy little gadgets. Little alchemy 2 play my ipod through my car radio and believe me i do that just every chance i get. Anytime i have a drive of more than about 15 minutes the upcoming concerts pieces accompany me and i have pun intended. One morning this past week i drove through rock creek park singing along with my learning files and feeling intensely connected to the universe. Cherishing the fall colors the flowing stream. And the mystery that this magnificent music evoked in me. My spirit store. Thanks to music technology the washington rush-hour didn't phase me one bit. Of course i found the final result even more satisfying here's what that sounds like. Another area in which technology supports my spirituality is in connecting with other people. Couple of years ago in the lakewood service on dealing with pain and loss i spoke about how an online prostate cancer support group kept me informed and encouraged. During the last three years. Of my husband's life. Keep me sane during his last few months. I have made friends by electronic contact both email listen web-based discussion forums. And some of these have enjoyed for a decade or more. Between my mother's auto accident six years ago and her death 7 months later. I maintained a blog to help keep family and friends informed of her condition without violating anyone's privacy. Or overburdening anybody especially myself. With the need for endless phone calls an explanation. It was a way to keep everybody connected and it worked. Media can be very seductive. I live alone and spend a lot of time in front of the computer i don't have a tv. When i'm online i answer the phone with that's right by my computer table. Sometimes i pay half attention to the phone call and half but i'm doing online unfortunately to the detriment of both. Sometimes my callers mention it and i have to assume that even those who don't mention it probably notice and wonder about it. This serves to create distance between me and people i care about. Distance i do not want. In fact my last phone conversation with my mother before her accident was like that. Mom nursing to take offense at my divided attention but i always felt embarrassed when it happened. And i will always be sad. That this cloud hung over our last real conversation. And if i continue to do it. And i'm not sure what that's about. I've also noticed been in a group for most people have access to information technology those who don't have it can feel left out. It may be for any number of reasons. They can't afford it they find it too hard to use they feel overwhelmed by it all. All they would have to run or just plain aren't interested. Or they just don't use it very often. The difference is the much-publicized digital divide and it affects his right here at river road. A great deal of the work of our congregation tends to be done by email or website. And for those of us who use this stuff regularly i checked email dozens of times a day for example using my trio when i'm not at a computer. It is easy to forget for us it is easy to forget that not everyone has it. And some are going to miss out on information and communication that most of us take for granted. I'm not sure what to do about that either. But i think we need to be aware that this divide exists within our own community and we need to ensure that our members and friends can participate fully in our congregation without needing to have and use computers. I left example regret the choice i have made in my own life to back off from technology and do things the old-fashioned way. I don't put my clothes in the dryer anymore. About a year ago i started hanging my clothes outside to dry. I have already noticed that my hand washing smell better when i hung it outside rather than inside. And i have heard that are dried clothes tend to keep their color in good condition longer. I also thought about the energy i would save. Most urgent that the time that i was at my jeans wouldn't shrink. Don't you close blinds inside my screen porch to avoid having to worry about rain re soaking my stuff. Temperature humidity and wind however all affect both dryness and drying time. And what will draw in one long summer afternoon can pick up the two days in the winter. In making this change i have found it i am out now more tuned in to the weather and the seasons. In addition having to plan around laundry give me the sense that my life is more intentional. And oddly enough i actually enjoy hanging things out on the line. So i say this. Technology per se is neither a blessing or curse. Whether it is a mixed blessing that carries benefits in caveat. And it is entirely i am our use of it that we find its blessing or leave ourselves open to its crew.

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2428.mp3

Reflection today comes from a book. But i really like unlikely. Friendship. 47 remarkable stories from the animal kingdom. And has amazing photographs i'll leave it up here so you can look at it after the service. This is from the story of. Different hog refer and the leopard. Loving an animal awakens the human spirit. Canadian photographer paul nicklen just a brief encounter with one wild beast. But set it dancing. While on assignment for national geographic. Enter the cold blue world of the leopard seal. To document these magnificent and sometimes fears. Marine animals. Antarctica. His goal was simple. Without being attacked by the thousands lb territorial beef. When we talk about these seals the writer says threatening people. The ice flow. Sometimes they're even stories of. Leopard seals. Still protecting their turf. People are in danger. Pause experience even more astounding. A 12-foot female leopard seal. She made effort. Generic hemp. Counter by flashing paul her wide-open jaws. Threat display that let him know his place without harming him. I say we do that in human relationships also. Her dominance established. Cecile's musim to swing in paul's favor. You have her near him in the water. Swimming within arm's reach. At the posing for the camera. Astonishing. Actually brought. Appalled. Repeatedly. Trying to show him ways he could eat as if she was concerned that this slow-moving human wasn't going to survive. In the arctic. Over and over. She brought food in many different ways and offered it to him. It seemed. Perplexed at almost frustrated that he didn't eat the food she was sharing. Her sleek beauty amazed paul. The deadly power turn tender took his breath away. My heart was pounding he said and i was elated every time she'd approach. It was the most remarkable interaction i've ever had. Over the course of several days. This wild creature. Dwarf caiman size and strength. Became a human photographers greatest companion. At the end of the photoshoot. It was hard to leave her behind. Experience something unique. And magical. But i've never. Forget. And there's a picture here you can look at. The photographer is about. 3in from the eyes of the leopard seal and she's just lying on the ice gazing at him. Unlikely friendships that i'd say was full of laughing. One person said to me. They weren't coming this sunday and i said oh you don't do animals see no understanding they said no i don't do blasting. Okay let's unpack that word a little bit. The hebrew verb. Brockman's to blast also tennille. And it's a related hebrew word meaning a blessing or a gif. For present. And then we have other greek words aramaic words in the original judeo-christian text. All pointing to the same thing this idea of skiff. A present. Triple-s. To another. While kneeling or bowing out of a kind of. Respect. To your higher wisdom. To another person. Too many animals on the planet. Meaning of the word is really to do or to give. Something of value to one another. I see that animals that we live with. Never will. Bring us many gifts. Joy. Companionship. Unconditional love. Laughter lisa my household awhile after it my five pets interacting. Friendship. Cheaper than any therapist also. And healing. Healing over time. There's a time.. I was so that i could not go up the stairs in my own house and i lived in the. Living room for about 10 weeks. And my animals kept gathering in and just being with me. That was healing. This morning when we do the animal blasting we are really simply saying. I bless you. You. Maybe the name of the animal that you'll give us. Either one of my dogs named screech. You squeezed. Bless me. Qui-gon pieced together. I bless you you bless me we go in peace together. Is really a reciprocity. I would say that we have left magic. If there is magic to give them then they give to us. And this isn't something we made up in 2013. There's a story on the back of the porter service about that diffuser carrying roots of the spca. This is our uu7 principle. The web of all existence. Of which we are apart. A deeply humbling. Laughing. The gifts that we received. Novaruu sources it was added in. I'm not exactly sure the year and let me know if it's over their head or face practice. For it. Source said. Everth center traditions which celebrates the sacred circle of life. Instructed. To live. In harmony with the rhythms of nature. I bless you. You bless me. Marigot and pieces together. And that's what we'll be doing in this neck. Ritual of blessing. Where you can bring your animals forward. Suzanne. Gabrielle and i will be standing here in the landscape and have many more dogs than cats are others. The line backs up in the dogs feel free to. I want your pets. Name. So please give us that name right into our ear there maybe some barking. Music of the animals. Bless you. You blessed me maybe go in peace together. Maybe live. Humbly in reciprocity in the interdependent web. Of all life. Which has so much to offer us. That's laughing. Maybe so.

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1330.mp3

One night. Several years ago actually. I finally said goodbye. Different things that i didn't. To carry with me anymore. The singing is like this it was. A dark and stormy night. I was driving that night a thursday from where i serve at my church in manassas all the way up here to maryland a far-distant place. It wasn't that dark and it was in fact raining and there were a thousand. Brazilian cars on the beltway as there always are. All those cars seem to be going in similar directions all of those people trying to get home or away from home or towards something. And i was driving. Twitter search. As usual. To a church. And on this particular evening. I was driving toward a meeting of leaders. From several different congregation. It was a meeting that i was to run. Animating that would include at least. A dozen people in attendance most of them significantly older than some of them significantly wiser and all of them. Waiting for me. To arrive in carbon to order. And have something intelligent to say. I was not looking forward. The rain smeared my windshield. And the countless cars streamed by and i was going to this place to tell these people that we could as congregations as unitarian universalist. Get together and grow our movement and extend our faith and yada yada yada. I had papers. And research. Ended notebook. And then agenda. I had all the tools. And all the tricks of my trade. And i was tired. And it was late. I'm all the rain and the other cars. Kept pushing me steadily onward. Suddenly it hit me. The right then. Driving to a meeting of largely upwardly-mobile middle-class professionals wearing my nicest trousers ready with my words of inspiration it hit me that something had happened to me. Almost without my noticing. At least until that very moment. You see what had happened to me. Over the course of a few years previous to that moment was that i had become a yuppie. Are you happy. And not just any yuppie. Go to washington d.c.. Churchgoing. Talking salary earnings yuppie wearing trousers and a hat that matched her coat. I had become someone you will all recognize. A purposeful. Do-gooder european pressed pants. And i have not always been. And suddenly. I wanted to cry. Because i was afraid. Who was i. This person. Who only a few brief years before was a teenager in a little town in southern indiana where nobody's hat ever match their coat. Where young people spent their nights out on a boat in the ohio river drinking it's cheap beer instead of sitting in rain flick cars commuting insane distances. The gobi inspiration. I'm not from around here. I grew up in a culture in a home and a way of life that doesn't match this frenzied pace and not so many years ago i was at home in a place whose denizens pull catfish out of mud bank literally wearing nothing but gloves. A place where everybody eats rhubarb most people watch nascar and not a few smoke marlboro reds out of a hard pack. And no one give them dirty looks. Amazon commuted all that way. In the dark with thousands of other cars whizzing along with their purposeful intent all i could think was. Coupons. And what those people with whom i had not so long before shared rusty boats and cheap beer on a misty distant river even recognize me now with my papers and my agendas and. Browser. Who was high. And where was that distant receding itself. That i had been in existence and sometimes all too rapidly receding pass. Where had she gone the person i was. In exchange for the person i am today. And where were the places in the people that filled her life. Thinking those things. I remember vividly that my hand. Started. I remember thinking that i might not be able to go to that meeting after all that i couldn't stand up in front of all those church leaders and be this person. And that the car and that moment seemed. To guide itself. Not to my meeting. But to a gas station on some random side street in the suburbs. We're for some reason i knew the only thing i had to do. Just once. I needed to remember that other self. The life that could have been. So i got out of the car. I dried my eyes. I walked into that cheap convenience store. And i bought myself a hard pack of marlboro red. Now. I smoked one. I lit it off of match that i had brought to light the chalice. And if i breathe in every sickening and lovely oz of that tainted are. I savored the memories. Of the places where i had known such smells before. Knowing that right in that minute if any of my congregants or any of my colleagues had driven by and seen me there clutching a smoke underneath the gas station awning they would have soiled their trousers. Enterprise. It was fabulous. And it was noxious. And of course it made me sick. And don't think that this is an ad for cigarette smoking because i know that scott has profound concern for the health and well-being of his congregants and i don't think he would appreciate it if i showed up and told you all to give yourselves cancer. But in that moment. In an odd way. It was a tribute i guess. Two different culture i had left behind. A lingering glance back at the river i had crossed. And the beautiful raft of family and friends and culture and community that had gotten me acrossed it i was making a statement. A solitary ember in the dark was reminding me of who i was. And who i had love. Inversions of myself that i might have been. It was like smoke. Rising is hillbilly incense right up into the night air. And it was a prayer of thanksgiving. It was a reminder to me that it was okay to say goodbye that i could move on and be not what i might have been but what i have chosen to be. I went to that meeting. Feeling like i had a secret. Eschewing all breath mints just cuz i could. And i pulled out my agenda and i told them about growing our faith and i did just fine. When i got home i put those cigarettes in my freezer just in case i needed to remember again. And i eventually threw them out. Because i knew that i'd finally moved on. I knew that while those long nights on the ohio river in my faraway friends. With their distant ways. So far away from mysuburbanlife. God created me. I knew. That i was not in would never be in that same place again. I would never be that same person again. I could not attach myself to a memory because i had become something new. I hadn't exactly. Turned my back on who i was. But i had allowed who i was to shift. And change and i didn't need to carry the raf. Of guilt. Or that place. Without faded identity with me on my back anymore. So far. Letting that go. I've always felt a little more comfortable in my skin. And it turns out i'm not really such a raging yuppie after all. I just had to say goodbye. With a marlboro red and a lingering look i had to say goodbye. To who i might have been. And make room for who i am. Even those things we love. Even that which has created us. Even the very culture from which we arrived the beliefs we once held dear the people we once knew the smells we want smelled even the people we once were and the clarity we once had even this. Old friends even all of this. Is bottle grass. That has guided us across whatever rivers we have met. Along our way. Even all of this. Even our most precious memories. We cannot clean to. Because it seems we must ever be ready to turn a corner. We must leave something behind. We must create ourselves the new. Even if it means abandoning the very things that have gotten us. So far. And we are at. Across some very frightening rivers in our lives aren't we. Torrance. That we could never make it. With our arms and my legs alone. But need everything that is available to boy us up and give us strength. The river i had to cross back home. The river that my upbringing helped m to traverse. With nothing so big. It was just good old-fashioned adolescence. But there are so many more rivers so much more frightening than that. How after all. Do we cross from the treacherous shore of pain to the safety of recovery. How do we cross from heartbreak to wholeness how do we cross from self-loathing over into an awareness of our innate blessedness. How do we stop being afraid learn to speak in our own voices. Feel safe again in a world that is so often uncertain. How do we get. From here. When here is anything but we need it to be. To there. When there. Is it the very least. A new beginning. Often. So often. We stand in our lives on one or many of these treacherous shores and we look toward the safety that lies on the other side and we have just enough courage to reach out and find whatever is available. Whatever leaves and twigs and doctrines and people are at hand and use them to build for ourselves the raft of hope that moved us over gets the job done. Texas where we must go. We grabbed what truth is near at hand and we make our way with it. Perhaps you have crossed such rivers. Perhaps you have traveled waters you never thought you'd make it across. And what was your wrath. What was it that got you through. Perhaps you grab the hold of family. The people who knew you best and loved you unconditionally. With them holding you up you made it. Perhaps you grabbed hold of work in the sense of purpose it instilled a romantic love and the vision that it went to life. Or even righteous indignation. And the strength that gave you to go on. Maybe you reached out and held on to a philosophy. An article of faith. A god or gods or representative thereof who made you love life again. Maybe you reached out and it was this very church that caught you. As it has caught so many. Holding them up in arms of loving community. I don't know what you grabbed hold of. When you saw your raging river flowing ahead. I don't know what you're holding onto this very minute or what's getting you through but i know that if you're making it. If you're getting to the other side. Your raft is probably a good one. At least for now. And holding on might be the only thing to do. What about when you get there. To the other side. What happens when we all get there when we're finally safe. And we're ready for the next step. What happened to our philosophies then. Are underpinning. The things of which we were once so certain. When we get across the river. What happens to that which we hold so dear today. Once a wise and overeager student asked the buddha. If his teaching with a capital t was true. If the wisdom he gave to his students was the teaching the way of life for them and the buddha told his followers with humble wisdom. Ob cues. Even this view. Which is so pure and clear if you cling to it. If you fondle. If you treasure it if you are attached. To it. Then you do not understand. That the teaching is similar to a raft. Which is for crossing over. Not forgetting hold us. Old friends even death. Even that what you love. Even this church. And this moment. And the thing that gets you through today is not for getting hold of. Forgetting across. What you need so deeply today may not be what you need tomorrow. And the question remains always lingering. Do each of us have the courage to leave the beloved raft behind us. And go onward toward the unknown. This applies so very deeply to our religious and spiritual lives. For what has helped us. Across the chasm more often and more readily than our face. Or as the case may be our lack of faith. The answers which we have found to life's most important questions or the non answers that we know to be truth for ourselves. Shirley raff. Daidus. And keep us afloat. Like the teaching of the buddha they are light that guides us in wisdom that sorts out the world. But it is one thing to hold to a belief or lack of belief. And it is another thing entirely to clean to it as if it is the only answer. And the only truth. The only way. The unwavering capital t that can never and will never change. Even that. What you believe so firmly. Even that which is pure and clear and which you hold with your whole heart if you claim to it if you fondle it if you treasure it above all else. And attach your very identity to it such that you are no longer free to explore. Interchange. Even that becomes an impediment. In face as in life. We are often called to leave behind much that we have loved. Much that we have been sure of. In favor of what. Our faith is asking us. To become. Faces no static thing. It's not a monolithic structure that never changes and can move along with us on our backs throughout our lives. It is rather perhaps a series of wrath. Siri the river. A set of answers to a set of questions that's always evolving. If we only have the courage to evolve with. Even the teaching of the buddha. That pure light to which he gave his life. He said was only a raft to get us through. Even that which he saw as the sum of all available wisdom the buddha freely admitted was not an end in itself. But the implement by which the journey could go on. Even our dearest beliefs are not in themselves. Bromley implements. For what the car. The real question then. For me. Right now. Something to do. With whether or not we will dare to let ourselves abandon. Our certainties. Let go of the safety of thinking we know the answers. Dare to be unsure again. Dare to imagine that all of our answers are not finishing points but just places. Start. I shared with you a little bit of my story of letting go just because it's the particular journey i know best. Your own life is rich with examples of your own. The rivers you have crossed. The means by which you across them the wrath that you held onto in order to get here. These are stories only you can tell and farewells only you can say. What then is the real question. For you. What must you abandon on the safe side of the river. What are you capable of doing without your precious raft. And what are you unnecessarily lugging around on your long-suffering and weary back. Might you let it go. Or at least stop clinging to it. As if it were the only way. Life can be and indeed usually is a bittersweet journey. May we think with gratitude. About all those people. All those places all those philosophies and all those sureties that have gotten us across life many raging rivers. May we honor them with all that we are. And honored more. When the time is right. By setting them down. Moving forward. Until of course we come in time. To the inevitability of the next river. And the next raft. And the next crossing. The next bittersweet goodbye. Unencumbered. May we move forward. And see what lies around the corner. Just waiting for us.

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1270.mp3

Latin america. And maybe just maybe there. Illegal. The pilot will be with us in the second. And today in the united states. There are arguments about what kinds of rights. People without proper documents have. Do they have the right to live here. Do they have the right to healthcare. Do they have the right to education. You have the right to get a job. Do they have the right to stay together with their families. When we ask these questions about children. We know the children were brought by adults to the united states. The children had no choice about coming. And they know no other hole. Will we give ourselves the opportunity. To receive their gifts. Harvard researchers holton and sonic. Call the adult immigrants who came over just before in at the beginning of world war ii. Go to came over before. Marianne and irene. The first wave of immigrants of world war ii. Included in that first wave are people like. Albert einstein. Major contribution. To the sciences the arts and academia. Gifts were documented. Irene and marianne we're in what those researchers called the second wave of immigrants. They were all children. And they brought extensive gifts and benefits to this new land. This group of immigrants. Had a 15 times greater chance. Of appearing in who's who. Then they're american-born pier. In adulthood the same children made on average twice as much money. Graduated from college. Add a three times higher rate. And we're far more likely to enter. Haiyan profession. Among them are five nobel prize winner. As these researchers began looking at immigration of today. Recognized. The continuing importance of education and the work of ord of aid organizations. Including the work of religious organizations supporting immigration rights. Some of the organizations which this congregation engaged. Recognize that new immigrants. Bring that same. Psychological toughness. And the creativity that comes from having to grow up fast. Under adverse circumstances. To become instant adult. These new immigrants bring something new and different. They bring their homeland culture with them rather than trying to ignore it. Or hiding it. They are resisting the idea. Of assimilating like a melting pot. In addition. Bring facility often with another language. Which they use. And they continue that. Immigration admiration. For education. That is one of the reasons it is cell important. To be supporting the dream act. In there in the maryland legislature today. The dream act allows undocumented. Maryland students. Who have graduated from maryland high school. And whose parents. Have paid maryland state income taxes. To a happy hour allowed these students. To pay in-state tuition. A community colleges. In maryland. For the same reason we wanted to educate them in elementary in high school. We want to continue their access to education and community colleges. And because we want all of us living in this country. To be able to excel to the best of our ability. We want that us. To include. Everyone. The title of the sermon for this morning with gifts from the stranger. What we have learned is that so often immigrants are not strangers. In fact. Everyone. Who lives in the united states. Is part of a family who came from someplace else. Even the native americans. Immigrated here or migrated here about ten thousand years ago. Some people came. In bondage. Some people came. Looking for freedom looking for opportunity. Looking to save their lives. But we are all. Immigrants. Or from family. Of immigrant. Summerfest. Have designed and built rockets to fly to the moon. Some of us have created world famous music and art. Some of us had invented medicines to cure illnesses. Some of us have designed building. Handwritten books and taught school and raised families and play professional ball. The tangible gifts. The gift we can actually put. Our hands on. Are in the millions. But the most important gifts from immigrants. Are themselves. The most important resource we have in the united states. Is our people. All of us. They don't just come in suitcases. Her with suitcases. Said gerald holton. And they didn't. They came with themselves and they made us who we are. For this. For the struggle to get here for the struggle to be accepted after they got here. For all the tangible gifts they have given this country and its people. And for being themselves. For all of this. I am grateful. And i say thank you. I say gracias por el amor.

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2138.mp3

The largest. Ingles. Interconnected. Natural system in this world. Maybe even what one could call the largest. Single living organism in this world. Biomass anyway. The stand of aspen trees in utah. The pando grove. Grove of trees whose bastin completely out interwoven root system. Combined with the expanse of the branches above it covers 106 acres. Estimated to weigh about 6,000 tons. Those trees. Need one another. They don't exist without each other. I can't be broken off for considered separately for the very source of their sustenance is in their remarkable. Interconnected. Root system. There are community that does not exist unless it can adapt together. Trees after all or complicated creatures. They live a long time. Incentives through stretches of history most human beings can scarcely imagine. The grow in unlikely places. And they adapt themselves. Just some of the harshest circumstances both nature and humankind can create. The interconnected groves of aspen but all the trees are great adapters in this natural world. They somehow stay in one place yet move themselves internally in response and reaction to the forces of destruction that crowd in on them at every turn they are. In their silence steadiness. Exemplars of the art. Of continued existence. And the tools did they use to persist. Or astonishing. Almost to the song astonishing as the tools and mechanism used by we ourselves human beings in the world that sometimes feel so hostile we don't know where or if or how our spirits. Might grow again. No. An honest cliche to say that i do not have words to describe this week in the life of our nation. We've all been living it and so i don't really need to find the words dua. Sometimes it feels like we've been living some version of this week's events over. Andover. And over again. Senseless violence toward we know not what end. Young people driven by forces we cannot holy name to desperate actions toxic chemicals wrecking the havoc that toxic chemicals are made to wreck. In this case. Not just fumes but fire across the lives of innocent people. Leaving home leveled. And perhaps as many as sixty dead or missing. In texas. Alone unstable person consumed by paranoia sending letters that could kill in the same u.s. mail system that brings our coupons. And the united states senate blocked unable to act. On issues that touch the violence of our days. Because they too were consumed by the mandates of politics and partisanship. In so many ways we have been living this week. Over. And over again. On so many levels a terrible week for the interconnected organism. That is the united states of america and the truth is that i'm tired of it all. I'm tired of speaking to such things and tired. I'm sitting down at my computer on friday afternoons and trying to make meaning out of such things. Tired of reading the headlines and following twitter and wondering who will die next for no reason. Frankly there are times this week when i and no doubt many of us. Simply felt all out of joint. Dent in strange directions. Distorted in my perceptions. Their times. When this age just seems to be reaching out in the wrong direction. And while i'm not exactly afraid and have not been exactly afraid this week i have certainly been just plain weary. Their oppressors in this world. Exerting themselves upon our souls and the souls of our nation there are pressures. And the challenge for us like the trees. Like the city of boston itself like the whole inescapable natural web of which we are a part is to adapt. With a resilient. That astonishes. Is howard thurman reminded us in the call to worship this morning we must look ever for the growing edge. The extra breath in the exhausted long it is one more thing to try when all else has failed it is the upward reach of life when weariness closes in upon all endeavor and to look for the growing edge. Where better to turn. When seeking out a sacred scripture. Into the handwriting of nature herself. Matrix handwriting is of course all over her most exemplary work. And people have been studying it and making meaning of it for as long as we can string two thoughts together. In the 1970s. The botanist named frances hale. Sauce the artistry and the precision of nature's hand work. Develop this kind of. System of identifying the genetic mandates at work in different kinds of trees their defining characteristics as a species. He discovered that each tree. And each tree species has within itself a sort of internal architecture structure that it was meant to carry out a way that it was designed to grow the spacing of its branches the particular curve of its limbs the number of leave that might bear on each twig and when along the span of each branch it breaks in two separate branches each one in turn reaching. Toward the sun. Architecture of a tree it turns out. It's less happenstance than you might think. It's all part of the adaptation. It's all part of the natural wonder of selection in development and if you will allow me to stretch it just. It's all part. The plan. Internal architectural plan of how each tree might grow. That every tree. Is reaching for. There's an ideal biological form that is not broken butthole established in the very evolution of the species so every single tree u-pass is always reaching always stretching upward and outward toward the shape and which is very cellular structure conspires to creative it. Even when the whole world exists. To exert contrary pressures. And it is always true. Both of a person and of a tree. But no matter what ideal form exists those external pressures are always there to push us out of shape. Each tree like each human soul must of necessity develop mechanisms for persisting in the presence of the stressors of all kinds. From a little kid leaning day after day on that same slender branch. To hurricane wind threatening the structure of the whole there are plenty of forces. That distract and detract. From a trees endless mission to grow into the perfect form nature has designed for it. Course when researchers study the life cycle of trees. One of the things i find which will be no surprise to most of you is that the events coeur occurring in the spanning years of any given tree are recorded forever within its internal structure. The oak tree never loses the mark from the droughts. Sparked the dust bowl. The poplar always bears the scar from the pruning hook. It even 50 years later. If you look closely. You can still watch the evidence of subtle resistance at indelibly in the rings of every branch. As writer david quammen has put it the shape of a given tree. Represents an interaction always. Between destiny and experience. So it is with us. The shape the scope the particular arrangement of our being represents an interaction between the great possibility we were endowed with them from our first moments and the experiences that surround us since the wailing of arnedo breath. In the rings of our souls we bear the marks of what we have seen and what we have known some will bear the scars of this week not just metaphorically or emotionally but literally. Forever. And the question becomes. What will we do to persist. What mechanisms are at work already. Setting to write some of what has been broken in us. When stressors exert themselves on trees. They respond in this astonishly astonishingly effective way on a cellular level. Anytime a new pressure from outside is exerted on a given limb either pulling up where to pushing downward pulling things all out of whack and distorting the shape of the whole a tree respond with this remarkable adaptation it produces something called reaction would. Reaction wood. It only develops. In a time of stress. It is always an indicator of an outside force and it is fundamentally different than the regular growth of a tree reaction would the wood formed in the midst of reaction to circumstances that that solitary unmoving tree is powerless to prevent. But absolutely capable of responding to. David quammen says that reaction would. Is a muscle like extra thickening that arises on the radio dimension of growth of a tree exerting opposing force against any distortion of that trees natural shape or posture. And hardwoods it's also known specifically as tension wood. And on a cellular level it's very different than regular wood it's characterized by the long gelatinous fibers in the cell walls that pull whatever has been distorted by whatever violence or pressure the tree has known back into that shape in which it was meant to grow it's like a rubber band developed to pull and pull and pull until what was broken can people put once again to write. That's why. Tie back branches they will grow right through the wire you've tried to encumber them with. Not only closing that wire with new growth but beginning again the same trajectory relief trajectory briefly interrupted by a decade or two. By whatever held them back for a time. Give it enough years. And the tree will pull and pull and pull until the wire you tried to choke it with his broken or subsumed and the planet cellular structure design for it all along has resumed. If you press downward. On a single branch. A single private place. It will end by inch climb and zigzag fashion right back up toward the sun. Such as the growing edge. Is the extra bread for the exhausted long the one more thing to try when all else failed the upward reach of life when weariness closes in upon all endeavor. Osterman reminds as such is the growing edge. The upward reach of life. Right there. Everyday. In our own front yards. Stronger than regular wood reaction wood is more like bulging muscles and scar tissue it exists not to protect the old injury but to pull the whole thing once again to write it is both evidence of trauma and an example of utmost strength it is hard to cut and impossible to defeat for as long as a tree lives the reaction would will grow and for as long as the tree lives it will continue to reach every single day for the inherent design structure it was made to manifest. It will always work to pull right what has been knocked out of balance it will never stop seeking to mend. What is pulled away from the true. Reaction wood isn't the same as start issue. Scar tissue that surrounds in cases it grows of rigid barrier around a wound but reaction what is different it works with literally every fiber of its being to heal the wound that has been inflicted and it never stopped. It is what happens next. Once the scar has been formed it is the biological mechanism for not simply closing the womb. Beginning once again the indomitable reach of life. I'm not quite. Willing to state. That there is an inherent ideal internal architecture for the human soul that i am close. I will say that human beings know what it is to have our perceptions distorted by the forces that bear down on us. What do we do when our souls are all twisted up again and again. By the violence and hatred of a broken world. What do we do as individuals and as a society when the pressures within us and without us distort the direction of our aspirations. We can as we usually do form scar tissue of the soul. And scar tissue of society. We can surround our wounds with newfound toughness we can hardened our hearts and hunker down into categories and protective shells while we seek to identify the enemy as some denizens of the media and the internet propounded this week while one bomber was still at large and boston don't you wish you had a gun now. Don't you wish you had cold steel to protect you say the frightened ones again and again scar tissue of the soul forming around the wounds of their fear don't you know those chechnyan boys are muslims don't you know that fertilizer is the stuff bombs are made of in the scar tissue of community formed layer by layer by layer. Preserving the wound treasuring it even. And the shape and with me we were meant to grow as human beings is distorted over. Over again. By the external force of fear and anger and hate. Until we find ourselves on youtube or reddit. Standing every brown face in the crowd. We're telling ourselves that if we just put up enough barricades. Enough roblox. And enough tsa security checkpoint. We will all be safe again. And so the branches of our souls in the growing life of our society continue to grow misshapen. Failing to reach toward the sun extending indirections utterly alien to the very best of which we are capable of becoming. Until the internal architecture of our society is bent and twisted. Into a gnarled malformation. Of what it could be. Yes we can grow scar tissue with the best of them. Personally and socially we can protect our wounds. But what comes next. Reaction wood is not scar tissue. It is a muscle. It reaches toward healing. It is strength that yearns for wholeness. Pull and pull and pull until what is wrong might be right it is the next. Step not just hurting or mourning the loss or even entrenching ourselves and blame but finding out how to reach toward the sun again it is the next step. The growing edge. The fibers of our communal being that stretch toward wholeness. Which i am looking for in the days in the weeks ahead. I've long felt that after 9/11 we took advantage of the vast network of scar tissue that was formed in our hearts when those towers fell. Will you stop hurt. And the gaping mouth of that wound to propel us into further destruction division and pain. Instead of reaching back towards what we were meant to do as a nation we distorted ourselves through the mechanism of our own fear. Not this time. Not now. We will not cannot turn these tragedies into more reasons to hate the stranger more excuses to hunker down into the perceived safety of our precious fear instead we are choosing to turn these tragedies into the impetus. The lasting change. It's just this once. We really do refuse to be terrorized. We reach upward. Tour gross beyond measure. Reflecting on the tragedy in boston my friend lisa ward road. That we should see him one another a collective will toward wellness. Rather than talking about how paralyzed we are how like a ghost town boston is too became we should see in this nation at this moment a yearning for what comes next. What pulls you up. In the direction of your aspirations when the rest of the world is pulling you all out of shape. Where's the muscle tissue of our national spirit pulling and pulling without ceasing. Until we are moving once again in the direction of our dreams. When we see it. The formation of this reaction would let us gather to support it. Butterfield it ever stronger. But it take us where we need to go. Enough with the scar tissue already. Enough with the protection of our hard-fought wounds. What comes next. How to cross section of any mighty oak. And you can see a history of its wounds. That's right there in the rings of annual growth you can read the signs of drought. You can see the mark of the ax. But today we are called to look closer. To look deeper. Down to the very essence. Down to the cells themselves. And you can see they're all the evidence you will ever need of resilience. The mighty strength that lasts a hundred years and more. Indomitable fiber. Reaching ever. Apored. Ever onward. Tortoise.

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4176.mp3

Greetings everyone from. Universalist congregation of frederick where i'm a member. I've heard good things about you from my minister carl greg and i've actually visited here once it's it's. I really think. Opportunity to get to share with you this morning. And thank you louise phora. For all you've done today. To put this together this morning to. I'm not certain how wise it is in. 2015 to use the new testament text for a sermon in a unitarian universalist congregation. A study about 10 years ago remark that quote mini you use will read almost any scripture but the bible. I actually put that quote in a paper for my old testament hebrew bible professor this year and he. Noted interesting. Until recently i was one of those pretty much have to study the bible if you want to get a unitarian universalist fellowship. Luke timothy johnson who's written a lot about the human and historical character that it lost. Upon imperial appropriation or the accident of imperial appropriation the way he puts it. And everything changed after that divine revelation. Self-defense you sit on. And so if you're in the arms folded crowd this morning. Try to reclaim some of that human in historical character that johnson talks about. Comfort here on the first sunday after christmas where ironically looking at the only gospel that does not have a nativity story. And the only gospel that does not end with an explicit resurrection. Mark 16:18. And i called that the end of the gospel of mark. Actually verse 8 is the last verse of mark only in the best and oldest manuscripts. English translations we get another 12 verses. In modern versus modern versions like the nrsv. Versus come under a header that says the longer ending of mark or the shorter ending of mark depending on which one there. Which manuscript you're looking at the remote. End. The new tesla cannon because the authorized version was translated. From. From the latin we made it into the end of the authorized version because it came from the latin. And that latin itself came from the greek around 400 cee just after the cannon in just after just about the time that the the longer ending was becoming. Popular and catching up. Those purses were added by people who had agendas. Mark agree with. Other new testament. And there were also some more fringe ideas that got into those versus like the virtues of. I'm drinking poison and eating eating poison and end in handling snakes to prove your religious worth. There right there. Poisonous snakes. Stipulate. Garter snakes. Before that. The present day. Both of those manuscripts the oldest. And most complete manuscript of the new testament we have.. With women running from the empty tomb. In terror in amazement. Telling no one. But the story old manuscripts goes back much further than that. In about 200 cee we have two church fathers who quote lost manuscripts of mark. Frightened women. And other church fathers at that time tell us that most manuscripts. For all these reasons the ages of the manuscript verification of from non-biblical sources in historical and literary criticism. It becomes clear that the authentic mark ends at verse 8 in mark simply does not state outright that jesus beat the death rattle. Before you get excited. The authentic mark laxson explicit resurrection does not mean that mark did not believe jesus came back to life. Mark's jesus resurrection 3 times. He has been raised. It works point it been that jesus was an imposter that he said he got it wrong. Then he would have never inferred that jesus book. The body is missing. We have no proof of whether it got stolen. Or if it's alive again or. What. Many of us would not really be disturbed. Mark cindy. Put yourself in this will a first-century people who didn't yet have the math and physics. The show w. Fully formed dead organisms composed to sell coming back to life is just a statistical impossibility. End. Who's cultural history favored resurrections. Add to that the fact that. Many first century christians really believed in jesus directions resurrection because the mediterranean for twenty years before mark was written. Claim resurrection the ones we have claimed resurrection in at least 16 different places depending on how you count. But somehow jesus got deified by the time paul started writing those letters. And if you're interested in ways that might have happened. Let me record recommend bart airmen's great book al jesus became god. Yeah i'd love to talk about that all day but that's another sermon. The question today is why does mark end in what would have been a most disturbing and perplexing way. For people who bet their identity is christmas on the resurrection. Turns out. That's prime. To put fear and loathing into the first-century reader. Throughout more the author evokes uncertainty. Anxiety. In fear at 11 not seen in the other gospels. Mark is often secretive. Confusing. He's not really somebody won't grow up to be like. Create generally aim to create a hero that evoke simulation. Incongruity. Anomaly and enigma. Unusual manson unexplained innuendos and obfuscation. Questioning. Some examples. Mark tells us about a jesus calms the sea while terrorizing. The survivors. We will dismiss it what's your problem attitude towards the parents. Since his disciples on an ambiguous mission with little or no instruction. And that mission makes them outcasts. Who walks on water not as god is in the other gospels but is a terrifying ghost. Mark is where we meet the epileptic epileptic voice father. Jesus for help. Only for jesus to demand some sort of unspecified belief. Which the father cries i believe. Help thou mine unbelief health depart of me that doesn't believe. God to forgive. In the absurdity of self-abuse for the sake of righteousness. Mark is where jesus tonight and where he crumbles in fear is he faces execution. R44 god incarnate. From the scene of jesus arrest. Who many observers believe is a cameo appearance by the author himself. Acquit. Comparison to matthew. The gospel of matthew underscores the relative incongruity is that you see in mark version. Jesus. Written at least. And draws extensively from mark matthew uses almost 90% of mark's versus but cast them in a very different light. For example math. Unlike matthew marks jesus has limited authority and power. Exhibit emotions like pity. Anger. Sadness. Wonder. Indignation and love that are unknown in matthew. The disciples worship him and call him lord and son of god. But jesus is never explicitly worship. Enmark. These uncertainties lead-up to climactic incongruities. At the crucifixion. Lacrosse. He asked question. God why have you forsaken me. He just doesn't know. Really may not cause problems for unitarian universalist but it has led to some amazing theological somersaults for a christian church. They're in tired.. On. Trinity unity in god's faithfulness and omnipresence. Amazement in the last verse. Summarizes the entire gospel really. Marc's whole community. At this point is in terror. Amazement in silence. Who is this. What is he asking. Tentative. The follow the survival instinct. Order proclaim good news in spite of their terror. Amazement machine. Explanation for all this fear and loathing is proposed by douglas geyer in his book. Thira normally and uncertainty in the gospel of mark. Gary proposes that the absence of explanations of what jesus does or asks others to do is the point. Because mark is trying to make a point to his readers about. Uncertainty in their world. In their lives. That is mark intentionally crafts a rhetorical narrative. The challenge in warren christians of what they're in for. Mark was probably written in the late 60s. In between the persecution of nero and the destruction of jerusalem. Peter and paul and all the old stalwarts were gone. In the flock was trying to regroup. It's time now for a new generation of leaders to arise. Who could reasonably expect. The same fate. In this context. Mark uses incongruity. Is rhetorical device to instill fear and uncertainty. Even the reader who identifies as a follower not a worshiper. Consider our commitment. Throughout the book. Mark leaves the reader towards the crucifixion emotionally. Forcing us to consider. The terror of sacrificing our own lives for a cause we think we believe in. Far from being a clumsy rider or an in-depth storyteller. And the spy is colloquial greek. Mark salter producing emotionally convincing arguments. Of those who follow jesus. To paraphrase gier. It's possible. But some such pastoral impulse causes mark to leave his story unfinished. Set markings as gospel as he does because the readers themselves need to decide what happens next. The first century readers of course knew what happened to apostles the original disciples but mark ends his tail at the critical juncture. The readers both first century in 21st century. Need to decide whether they want to continue the story for themselves. Mark wants his readers to realize. But their story is not over. And i asked these questions. For me. What happens next. What do i do now. Those are the questions we need to ask ourselves today. If we think of what it means to be followers not worshippers of a jesus who would certainly have ascribed to our first to uu principles to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity. Of every person. Justice equity and compassion. In human relations. If we take the message of jesus not as about immortality of our individuated souls. Responsibilities for a personal legacy of distributive justice compassion. Run and hide. Or will we stand up for what is right. We must grapple with. Except. A live out the uncertainty. Or else we missed the point of life. The whole point of art used to cause us to question what we're doing. Android knowledge and make informed decisions about the dangers and uncertainties. But laying it on the line for social justice may lead us to personally. Death of uncertainty challenges the emerging church movement. Remember take the walls off the church. Take the church into the streets. The idea of kenosis suggesting hell. Nazareth empties himself of any divine nature he might have had in order to fully identify with humanity. Is. Is an idea that i feel we're called on. To adopt and act out in our own lives. That attitude. Emptying changes volunteering at a soup kitchen from condescension in the identification. It changes relationships from kitty. Full participation in kenosis requires emptying ourselves of human pretentious. And nakedly facing our own fear and uncertainty. Acting in spite of our fear. And uncertainty is the only way to become an authentic human being as marks jesus. What does that mean for social justice today. The world offers is plenty of such opportunities at your own churches website. But for our own personal involvement in social justice to be authentic. We have to be willing to start where we live. I recently faced. The challenge of doing that. When announcing with resident in our own community started putting racist signs in his yard and making not so passive aggressive threats against his black neighbors that the sheriff claims he can't do much about. Nobody really knows what this character is. Capable of whether he's capable of going postal or not. When does came to a head i knew i had to do more than take my turn at the homeless shelter every couple of weeks. And that was when. The fear and loathing in mark. Meant something to me personal. If you have to take a stand. Knowing that there's danger involved. And swap ponied up and visit the folks who live next door to this character and told them to call on me. Backup in the middle of the night when the sheriff is slow to respond and i'm not the only one who stepped up and done this. There are a lot of good people in this world. And. Play shonen sales in my community. If we want a world that's safe and just for everyone including ourselves remember. A friends group to include ourselves. Then we must sometimes put ourselves in our lives on the line. Starting. In our old neighborhood. Embark 16:7. Young man at the tomb says that jesus is going ahead of you to galilee. Galilee is southern maryland and the district of columbia. Invite you this morning to reflect on that invitation. Has remained unchanged. Took it was first heard by those first audiences of mark's gospel. How are we seeing call. A claim in this time and place the good news of god. That was live. Proclaim. In the time. Jesus.

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4657.mp3

For the summer. I did four days retreat. Christ in the desert which is. 15 miles from casa del sol the place of our story near abiquiu. And i was in this canyon. Then i was at this. Right up against the rocks. Most of the time. It's the most remote. And the western hemisphere. It's on the thomas river. It's in the middle of the painted desert. Jennifer and pinion 4s. Amazing rock formations. Guys with millions of stars. In the milky way. The benedictines have a tradition of hospitality that was established in the 6th century ce. The work of the community was and is prayer seven times a day based on the jewish rhythm. And the creation of goods like food honey candles beverages. Beer. All sorts of things they raise puppies. And the welcoming of guess. When you arrive at the. If you share their creed. Or what you believe. You're there with him welcome no matter who you are. Christ in the desert you direct your own. You're invited to prayer seven times a day if you want let's just say i never made the 4 a.m. one. Four times a day which is very interesting. Meals with your lodging. Amazing abundant meals. Did you take place with no conversation. The breakfast is silent. I'm at lunch out of a book. Hadn't happened since grade school probably for me. And then they're playing classical music. You keep silence as much as you prefer in-between. In the united church of christ. There is a liturgical sentence that sometimes used in worship. Express. An opinion. But the seeker presents. Not. But because. You may. This is not you use forte. Coming not to spray express an opinion. And i'm a unitarian universalist now. While i'm retreat. At. The benedictine monastery in july and again for 2 days. This is my inquiring learning open practice. Treasures of this house. Knowing that i don't plan to live there. I am not analyzing theology. Or language for philosophy or authority rolls. I'm not looking. At gender explosion. I am participated in a community. Of monks from all around the world because they have connections to africa asia and latin america. Appreciating arts. Reveling in the beauty of silence. It doesn't matter if most of my reading there is about eastern religions. Or if i'm doing yoga and reading hindu philosophy. Delving deep into a book on shamanism. No one's checking my card at the door. I participate in the liturgy. With the exception of taking communion. Appreciating. Gifts of their home as a welcome guest. Story my family is kind of famous and i won't. Reveal who the relative was but we were getting ready to have christmas eve. My spouse italian catholic and we were going to the feast of the seven fishes for they're actually having for fishes. My family said. On christmas eve. Where's the roast beef. A lot of people eat fish on christmas eve in savannah that you arrived at the house demanding roast beef. Gracious to your husband double hose i think some of the same principle applies here. The beauty. About resides in each container of world religions is not the same. And whether chalice today you see various containers. And symbols. Holding something within that is particular to the space. Scholar stephen prothero has written extensively we are not one. We are not one. In the sense that various wisdom traditions hold buried treasure. And they also carry contradiction. From one another. Troubling beliefs to outsiders. Ways to impress people both within and without. System. That are men. To maintain the status quo. If we think that unitarian-universalism is free of those things we are sadly deluded. Because we're in our house. And yes. Dalai lama has taught repeatedly and a book. Entitled we are one. And john philip newell today we do have a kind of unified field and it is this. We are one in our humanness. In our hunger for. Or present. Or connection and community to others. We are one. And our desire for peace. We are going to do some appreciation of other people's face houses in montgomery county. And our idea is to be in relationship to accept hospitality. To learn and understand and to grow. Sometimes myself included have to check our tennessee. To analyze and critique. In order to see the treasure through others. Eyes. We'll never see it. If we're busy rejecting it. From the moment that we walk in the door. Gabrielle farrell has been inviting you for a few months now to the program neighboring faith communities where. Multi gen groups are going to work together at 11:15 for 3 sundays in a row. Preparation. A visit and then a dialogue after their opinions are such. About neighboring faith communities. Clear website for more on this. This is the team itself creates you decide where you want to go to team leaders. You can participate in 13-week cycle or more and go on this. Different house. Youtooz. The place. And our hope is to also work somewhere the two groups that are in our own house. Best buy a jewish congregation a secular humanist community. And also a insight meditation community of washington. Including the large wednesday night sangha of renowned teacher tara brach. How might we learn more about. These communities. Net bring hundreds of people. Our beloved building all year long. Project is that they love the building 2. They're ready. They're holding medication last wednesday night in the middle of equipment because they want to be in this room that we also treasure. Cedar lane unitarian and rev up dimanche of invited us to participate this year and this ongoing exchange with the muslim community center in silver spring on the big new hampshire avenue row that has so many places. November 13th youth group will be going there we need a few adults to drive and participate beth says. And this large center has seven prayers daily. Again a tradition that the prophet muhammad knew from jewish and catholic customs which. Preceded him. It has a very large islamic weekend school. And it has a mission. To promote human dignity among. Prominently displayed on their website is the prophet muhammad statement. Of the imperative to protect those of other faiths written in 612 of the common era. We're also going to continue to learn from interface events in the county. Organized by a lot of organizations we publicize see if char breaking fast learning opportunities and this last cycle of ramadan will be more things like that. A million project. We have. No trouble coming up with program. I'd like to ask so why. Would we do all this exchange particularly at this moment. And i don't have to. Tell you that it is a particular moment. There is a climate of polarisation and religious difference. That's really ramping up i'd say globally over the last decade. And i lived here concerned for muslims. How does growing over anti-semitism. Particularly in several european countries france may be the most troubling. And we see incidents uptick. Here in the united states as well with a number of organizations tracking them. The rise of white supremacist groups. In this country. Encouragement frankly of them and a lot of the public dialogue. Includes manifestos of racial hatred. Islamophobia. And anti-semitism boldly proclaimed and stated. They don't make distinctions. Lump it all together. Eminem. Strident language of all sorts of people who are. Simply uninformed about other religions in the united states. And concerned about a change from what had been. Not recently but in the memories of some eye dominant christian culture. Outrageous or even know how to say it strongly enough idea. 2 banned muslims from this country. Articulated by a number of republicans including more than one presidential. Candidate. Early. Contender in by the candidate himself. There are the tensions that arise from the ongoing struggles in the middle east. Among islamic factions sunni and she has tried. And isis terrorism. Chronic tension. In the painful polarized situation of. The embattled state of israel and the struggling palestinian territories. And the loss of life around the world in many many countries. If we are to be true. Values. I could be enough. To sit in our house. The treasure. I hope it works out. For everybody else. To be true. To our universalist values. We will really have to embody the first principle. The inherent worth and dignity of every person. And the seventh principle the idea of the interdependent web of existence of which we are all apart. You know that we drop from many you use sources as well and if you ever want to see this it's right in the hymnal the principal is in the sources. We claim our judeo-christian heritage. Reclaim wisdom of the world's religions. Prophetic acts of women and men. In the highest. Humangood and ethical values. Is there are sources to actually live out the principles we say we embody. We are. The change we want to see in the world. We will have to get concrete. We all need to build relationships. Ongoing. We will need to learn. And listen. Because we will no doubt. Bump. Range from. Alarming to traveling to. Completely crazy to us. I think that we have to have this filter of how we listen. How we learn in religious tradition. Because so many of us as unitarian universalist. Come from other faith traditions. That didn't completely work for us alone. Some come bringing us treasures with them. And some have left them behind. Who can be difficult to look at other houses. Toosii. That people are still there. Deepening their own space walk which is not our own. One of the most famous story for me. Tell about it all souls. A visitor at the head of the membership committee said. I'm glad you're here. What kind of background do you have the person said om i'm roman catholic and the membership person said. Yes actually it's my family heritage. And it's part of our history and it does back to the country from which we emigrated so yes i would consider myself a cultural. Catholic. And ahead of the membership committee said. Haven't you gotten over that yet. This is not our model for interfaith dialogue. Remember when you visit the house and see the treasure you don't have to move in. So the only way to be open respectful. Of what you hear and see and we don't. Stop dialogue we don't stop analysis but. Don't ask for roast beef at the fish dinner. Electric close with us. Transcription of the blessings of jesus from matthew that is done by john philip newell as a way to fraction. Language of the beatitudes. Blessed are the humble. For they are closed. Earth. Blessed are those who hunger for earth oneness. For they will be satisfied. Blessed are the forgiving. For they are free. Blessed are the clear and hearts. The living presence. And blessed. Are the peacemakers. For they are born of god. Of the greatest human good. Of the interdependent web. Of all existence. Mary be travelers with respect. In the web of all. Baby stuff.

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4096.mp3

Years ago. I worked at the prosecutor in illinois. Handling especially juvenile and felony court cases affecting children. I was witness to many disturbing stories. The challenge my face in human goodness. One of my first cases involve the six-year-old boy named george. I knew of the chronic alcoholism of his father. And if the bruises george had sustained while in his parents home. After several unsuccessful attempts at reunifying george with them. It was time to terminate. Their parental rights. As i prepare the case for trial. I sat down with george. And ask him about his life. In particular how he was treated by his mom and dad. George hesitantly recounted. But sometimes his dad drank. I got angry. And often when he got angry. He struck george. He told of being hit with his father's hand. And a belt. And at times it being thrown against the wall. I told george. I just made me very sad worried. I asked him how he thought we could keep him safe. Church thought about my question really thought about it. Then he looked up at me. And as if you have an inspiration. With a child's innocence. So when daddy drinks. He gets happier and happier. I was stunned. And the mood by george's. Sweet response. Which was inspirational. Somehow. Despite his father's severe mistreatment of him. George wanted to be at home with its man. George didn't show anger toward his father. Eject him. He wanted the affiliation with him. And had a child's beliefs. In his father's worth. In subsequent years i held onto the lesson george taught me. When i came to know alice. He was a dear rather. Reticent child of eleven. Who lived in a small house with her mother and stepfather. She woke up one night. To the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Leading to her bedroom. And saw the shadow of a man. Hope your first thought was her stepfather. When the man approached her bed. It was apparent. That this was not her stepfather. This strange man. Raped her. Alice was too frightened to scream but told her parents what had happened after the man left. They called the police. Who responded immediately. Alex was able to identify her attacker. As a man whom she had seen speaking with her stepfather earlier that day. In the driveway of their home. Criminal charges were filed. But the defendant fled the state before the case could be tried. He was taken into custody about a year later. And it was my responsibility to prepare the case for trial. By then alice's mother and stepfather had separated. But i needed. Took his testimony. To corroborate alice's identification of the defendant. When i met with alice's stepfather. He questioned why i was interviewing. He disputed that a rape occurred at all. I reminded him that he has been at home the night of the attack. And that he had with alice's mother. Reported it to the police. And it's some forensic evidence had been discovered during an examination of alice. In a moment i've never forgotten. He accused of having invited the attack. You think the crudest language possible. I stared at him. Aghast. Alice was just eleven years old. Sleeping in her own bed. In her own home. When the assault occurred. Trailer. And without this man's testimony i knew that the case could not be tried successfully. I wanted to lunch from my chair and strangling. I stared at him. As a voice inside of me was sang. At the unitarian universalist. I believe in the dignity and worth of every individual. How can i know your dignity and worth. When i feel is rage. Is moment presented a spiritual crisis in my life. As an essential belief. Was challenged to the core of my being. I began a personal search for an answer or answers. They could resolve my torn heart and inner turmoil. Explore the writings of martin buber and paul tillich among others. The search is never really ended. And in recent years i've found additional guidance. In the teachings of the buddha. Martin buber council that one cannot experience the worth of another. If one relates to him as being no more than a thing. This requires that we be in relationship with others from the perspective of i and you. Rather than i in it. I needed to see alice's stepfather as a whole being and all of his complexity and imperfections. To see him as a you rather than it. I can see you the principle that calls us to recognize our interconnectedness. It would belie this principle to decry the behavior of alice's stepfather. While failing to recognize my essential connection to him. I thought about the possible reasons for his profound betrayal of alice. Well i knew very little about him. No doubt his loyalty to alice had been 2 minutes.. If not destroyed by his separation from alice's mother. His unwillingness to be a witness may have been a matter of self-protection. I suspected. That his interaction with defendant was part of a drug deal. My anger lessened. If i understood that the behavior of alice's stepfather. Was influenced by the circumstances of his life. But the teachings of the buddha would term. The cause of them condition. Underlying his behavior. But i also needed to more fully understand my ray. Dylan scott. What is holi. Encompasses all matters. In our our our ultimate concern whether creative or destructive. In this regard the ultimate form of justice. As an aspect of our concern. It's found in discovering what is creative and not destructive. I came to realize. That my rage was part of my own shadow side. Which was driven by my sense of what justice demanded in the situation. What george wanted was something i couldn't deliver. To live with his father. Without being harmed. Did i really know. What alice wanted. Was i in an iu relationship with her. Most importantly. With the rigors of a terminal criminal trial have been in her best interest. Imagined what would have been involved. A year had passed. Since the rape had occurred would it be helpful to her to relive it. Whatever the answer to these questions the in the end justice in the form of a criminal trial wasn't possible for alice. Ultimately. George. Alice. And for stepfather. We're all my teachers. Who helped crack open my heart and mind. In a matter that harken to uu principles that we hold dear. I think this is at the root of. What reverend lads benediction. To do. Recognizing our interconnectedness. We are invited to open our hearts and mind. By wanting for others what we want for ourselves. We are not at. To love them when we don't know. Are home we don't like. Much less. Actively dislike. But we are entreated to want what is best for them. You want whitlow alleviate their suffering and estrangement. In the interest of having. A better world. That's a benediction i can join and sing. With a fullness. Apart. And mind. And now i.

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2082.mp3

Our story this morning that we heard. So ably told from gabrielle it's it's bittersweet. I like the phrase. Mono no arare that it represents. About beauty and impermanence. A glorious and deeply fragile thing. After all. On two separate occasions. On different sides of the ocean. On different continents on two separate occasions. All of the cherry trees burned. When was it monday in circumstances. With the flicking tongues of flame rising to consume not only. The future budwood and leighton blossoms but a rising tides of aphids or. Some sort of bug that plagues plants everywhere in the dc area. And the other fire. Time the trees burned it was a fire across the through see that threatened to burn. Absolutely everything. Along with them. This brief fleeting wonder of life. The cherry trees with torrance crowded all around them snapping pictures. This image of loveliness it couldn't be more fragile. For twice the whole world. Natural or human-created circumstances twice the whole world conspired. To bring them to an end. And twice. In spite of it all. They persisted. Because of the simple goodwill of human being to reach out to one another in spite. Of it all. Easter morning. On this day. What we celebrate. Is it even in spite of the flames. Flames of war and hurt and lost even the everyday fires of failure and the mundane destructions of daily life none of it. None of it so far has had the last word. Because so far. There's always been somewhere. A healthy branch from which a blossom might arise so far there has always been a tree or a thousand trees. So far. Has always persistent. Always there has been something that survived the flames. And so far cherry trees in their brief and fragile glory have continued to bloom and no fire has had the power to lay claim to their glory completely. So far. At least when it comes to cherry trees. Beauty wins. And again it will win this spring. Flowers brief and fragile rising from the flames something that survives glory reborn because of the graciousness of the human heart. Which like the cherry trees persists in spite of everything. Fire. Transformed from a consuming threats into a kindling light. Passing onward from hand-to-hand. Not in violence but this time in love. Perhaps he's the only resurrections we really know. Directions that we celebrate today. And perhaps these are resurrections enough. Forever ever been in this world a more persistent beauty than the care of human beings for one another even in spite of it all. Is there any miracle greater than that. No easter i know. Is a complicated time. For unitarian universalist. We are not so much miracle people around here. At least does that word is traditionally defined. But we don't have to be all in the supernatural miracles to see the wonder of it all their miracles in the. In everyday life there are miracles enough within the easter story itself there are miracles enough in this very room without us having to postulate all sorts of theories about what comes next. There are we know many versions of the easter story. Versions of the death of this man from nazareth and there are many versions of what did or did not happen next. I'm pondering. A story from the gospel of john a little piece of fragment of this narrative that's often overlooked. It's at the end of john's telling of the good friday story. And good friday is a lot of you know in the christian canon is of course the day when jesus is dying. It's the day that he's suffering. When it seems like what he worked for might just come to attend right then and there. It seems on that day that the whole desolate sadness of it all might just consumed. Well. Everything. I didn't johns telling there he is. Almost completely alone. Abandoned by nearly everyone facing down terrible things and below his feet are gathered just a few of his friends. Among them his very best friend that in the gospel of john is never named just told him the beloved disciple. And among them always persistently and unfailingly is his mother. Mary. So there is. His best friend and his mother. And there they are in that desolate place holding on to one another while the one they love is in pain. In the story says that this man history would never forget looks down from the place where he's dying and he has something to say to his mother. And it begins. Like this s*** begins with jesus looking at his mother mary and shane woman. No. I know that greek scholars will probably tell me that the use of that term in such a way with not meant to project any sort of offense. Or any derogatory feelings upon mary at that time but i swear that if i ever have a grown-up son who looks at me under any circumstances and says i do not care if he is 33 years old and possibly divine and maybe some people's messiah i am going to squint my eyes and say yes. What mary does you know saying to piano. Addressing his mother his eyes glance from her to the face of his best friend. This disciple who is loved him. And he says. Woman here is your son. And to his best friend he says. Here is your mother. And from that point on mary goes to live with this man in his own home and neither of them will be alone. Mention. Version of the story that mary's husband had survived past i don't know christmas. Of her other children. The ancient roman empire was that there was no social security check coming to the widow of a carpenter in the mother of a heretic. At that time for mary only her children would have been her security and it 50 years old she was not young but not old. And she would have had a life ahead of her. In which the ground had been ripped out right from under her feet. And not only her love but her security lay dying. And yet in the moment before all was utterly lost. The story says. Better son did the one thing you could do. He reminded her that not even the hatred which was killing him. It consumed all the love there is in the world. Not even the fires of the roman empire. Could overtake the breeze and fragile devotion of human hearts for each other. I'm all the time. With those that we love. And the work that we can do with them together is brief. Glorious is the first buds of spring it does not pass away entirely but it's handed. From hand-to-hand. Generation to generation. Woman he says. Friend he says. Your mother. A short time later he dies. But before he does he has declared with this little affirmation that there will not be in this world one more woman who outlived. All of her children. Not be one more man. Without a mother. And who knows what begins there. In the house that the motherless son in the sunless mother sharon some unnamed place in some unknown part of the outskirts of the roman empire who-knows-what blossoms for those two people who thought they had lost everything only to find that they still had some beauty. In the form of one another's very human care. His mother and his best friend. Walk away from that burning place together. A reminder that all is not lost. But all is never lost. But devotion brief and fragile rises from the flames. Something that survives. Glory reborn by the graciousness of the human heart. Which like the cherry trees. In the fragile wonder. Persist. In spite of everything. Fire. Transform from consuming flame into kindling light by its passing from hand to hand not in violence but in love. Perhaps these are the only resurrections we will ever know. And these are the ones that we celebrate today. And perhaps these are resurrections enough. 4 has there ever been. Amore persistent miracle. In the care of human beings for one another. Even in spite. Avital.

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144.mp3

Well that's a lot of time my thurman's don't i. Months ago. For the miserable killer summer heatwave which we have just survived. Was possible to predict or even imagine i decided to preach this sunday. On the paradox. Of summer. No i chose that title giving myself i admit some spiritual wiggle room. On this topic. But i must admit to you that my real purpose this sunday was and remains. Two words you to fully appreciate and embrace this warmest of the seasons. The extreme temperatures. Humidity in discomfort of recent days. Has sorely tempted by enthusiasm and i suppose. Yours as well in case you haven't noticed. July has thus far been anything but an easy ride. Still. Recent and hot and difficult days aside. I remain a summer enthusiastic. Grateful. Myself. For this warmest of the season. Since the earliest days of my childhood in wisconsin or maybe it's because i grew up. In wisconsin. Paradise. Summer has always been a wonderful. A magical time for me a time. When i feel particularly close to my world. My family my friends indeed life itself. And one particular summer. The summer of 1976. Stands out in my mind is perhaps the most amazing and blessed summer of my entire life. Let me tell you about it on this sunday when we celebrate summer. I was living in 1976 in northern maine servings a little first church of houlton maine. What's like most new england you your congregations then close. The middle of june until september 2nd week. So i have all of july and august.. To be wherever i wanted to be doing whatever my little heart desire. Well it just so happens that in the dead of that previous winter in january. When the jensen flores of summer seem like a distant impossible dream. My parents asked if my brother glenn and i would come to northern wisconsin for the summer. Where they owned eighty acres of wooded wilderness land to help them build a rustic cabin. From the ground up. We both jumped at the chance and my brother george was a nine-to-five job so he couldn't come to the homeless he came up every weekend. To join us it was a truly. Family summer project. While the cabin took shape over july and august and how marvelous it was for me to learn how to build a cabin. To build a structure for my brother glen. Bolivia's and was a master builder. An adept carpenter. Put it in this summer in july in august we all slept in separate test. Scattered around our campsite. Bathed in the nearby wisconsin-river or by the sun shower bag of water that my father hung up in it. Funny clearing with a hose on a little gives more than rodger take a sun shower. We cooked our hearty meals and a huge outdoor cook pot. Next to the picnic table which was under a large tarpaulin. Where we at strung between trees to protect ourselves from the rain. What was so magical about the summer weeks in wisconsin in the deep in the woods. Was the intimacy we experience. Intimacy of course. With the natural environment. And with one another. The summer that summer i remember the constant beauty. Of the pure white summer clouds. And the sunlight filtered to the countless deep green leaves. Shimmered high above. Where we were building the cabin. And the sounds of the woods. Both during the day and at night. The woods were so alive with animals and birds. I remember the beautiful graceful deer. And the wileyfox. That would regularly we would encounter on the wooded pads. And the joy which came with glimpsing the occasional bald eagle. As it soared high over the. Tree canopy. I will never forget. Going soundly to sleep each night. For both our minds and bodies were tired after each day of hard work. We went to bed usually as soon as it got dark. Accordance with the setting of the sun the way people used to go to bed. And the wind through the high trees. Muhammad night of the constant countless insects. The mysterious cries at night of the owls in the songbirds and the coyotes. And other turtle. Critters. Sometimes. Sounded very big. Allowed. Many late afternoon pat summerall working meal routines were interrupted by the astounding power of huge thunderstorms that would develop. In the western sky. Which we watch from underneath. The safety of our canopy. With all and excitement. At the end of each workday again grimy and sweaty from the work on the cabin. We usually bathe before dinner. In this lovely part of the wisconsin river. Did used to be a cc&c camp it's called tap 10. We would. Put our bodies into the rapids. And let the water rush around us as we held onto rocks. Feeling. Clean. Eternally restorative. Way. It is that same spot when after my mother died years later. We took her ashes. Emerged. With all of creation. Right there. In those. That summer. 76. Was filled with countless moments. Lots of intimacy. And connection enjoy but let me tell you about the perhaps the most. Single amazing moment of that singularly amazing summer. One very still and hot knife. Long after we've gone to bed in our respective tents again they were scattered over quite a wide area. I was gently awakened. By the distant rumbling. A far-off thunderstorm. As the storm grew steadily closer and closer. The thunder became a little louder and the inside of my tent. Would light up with the. With the coming lightning. Eversole. Eversole. More. Noticeable. Soon the flashes of lightning were intense. Do the little thin nylon protection of my tents. After what seemed like half an hour of listening and watching for who could go back. Knowing that the drama was about. Crap over us. Suddenly turn up the woods became totally alive with a tree. And whip. The rain pelting down on our tent the lightning on thunder booming and crashing in a roaring and snapping all around us. I suppose nobody would have faulted me for being scared out of my wits. That is one well-versed in outdoor life i know all too well that even in the dark. Forest. Please. Can fall. And do. During thunderstorm. There was surely some very real physical danger for all of us during that storm but. For whatever reason rather than feeling scared and vulnerable i was instead overwhelmed. With this wonderful feeling of oneness with an appreciation for. That storm and all of creation. Powerful rain and wind and lightning swirled around me. I felt. Only embraced and welcomed them blessed. Find amazing creations. Eventually the storm. Moved on. The lightning inside my tent faded. The thunder became less noisy. Soon there was. French. Cool and comfortable. Deepwoods. Return to a. Typical summer hummer. Other things. And i quickly fell back to sleep. Into the gentle arms of all that was. Infinitely richer for having. Thunderstorm was just an hour or so of a long summer. But to my heart is a perfect reflection. A magical that's summer. In wisconsin was. I shall remember and cherish that summer and all of its simple gifts on glories. For as long as i live. I have been the minister of this congregation. For the last 12 years now. And one of the spiritual themes to which i have returned. Again. And again and again. Is what i wish to quietly reaffirm now. I passionately believe. The real human being. Creatures. Suddenly find ourselves. In a rich and amazing creation. The way human beings are intended. Intended by the very nature of life and being itself we are intended. To be in a closed. Joyful. Intimate. A typical relationship. Which everything with with everything that. We are intended. To be in a closed. Joyful. Intimate. And reciprocal relationship. With everything. Which is. I believe that our fullest and beth. We homo sapiens are active and engaged. Relational creatures. Who do not thrive in isolation but thrive in annex. Love life. Passionately taking in our world. And so if we are to reach our full spiritual emotional potential. Evan habitanto abreu. We must open ourselves fully and intensely to the elements. And experiences of the world around us. And regularly refuse. Is our duty. Regularly refused all the easy barriers that keep us barricaded away. From the life. What is our natural hair. We have to resist the barriers. The keep us. From the wife. That is that our bidding. Let me say this another way. I believe our formal spiritual purpose in life. Is to be fully engaged with creation. And the countless living things. Little cabinet. And the descendants full engagement. Where are deepest royal most enduring purpose. In this mortal lives of ours. Discovered and made real. No of course. Every season. That we sequentially have set before us year after year on this planet. Summer. Winter. Spring and fall. Each season offers their respective invitations to us. To be an intimate enriching relationship. With everything about them. Those of you who know me well know that i happen to be a summer kind of guy. While i appreciate the rhythm and the realities of each of the seasons i love this warmest season-best. So much so that i made the choice earlier this year to move permanently to vero beach florida. Which is as close to a perpetual summer climate. As you can get in these united states i know that's not right for all of you several of you said. The florida i just say okay they customer still desperate animist. To each his own. In any case. No matter what your favorite seasoning and season is and i know they're not partisans here. For each of the four. No matter what is your favorite season i hope that you strive. To be spiritually open. To the invitation for intimacy and awareness. Which each season graciously offers up. One quick example of remaining spiritually open to every season if i might. It will be a long long time before most of you and i. Forget the misery and inconvenience we all experienced back in late january with those back. Tabac lizard it was unbelievable. With almost 6 ft of cold slippery snow on the ground. The entire metropolitan area practically immobilized 4 days federal government shutdown keep off for some of you it was no walk in the park. But i also remember last winter. Doing the same month. The wonder with the winter wonderland i experienced up in the adirondacks. Where was this a little more measured every day it just snowed a little bit all evergreen trees. Look like a christmas card. It was a lovely lovely winter. And. It was the best of times and the worst of. For me last winter was both a blessing and a bun. Both beautiful and bothersome. And the truth is that. For us no matter what. Its inconveniences and complications. Invites us into a holy intimacy with its essential self. All year long we are blessed simply by opening ourselves. What is around us the reason i put the chairs this way so you can cliff. A little bit. Summer. This morning. Let me see all this a little differently. In every season of the year despite challenges and inconveniences. We human beings are blessed and enriched by. Are mindfulness. Fire ability to be mindful. And attentive. And knowing. To what is around us. Only by purposely tuning our senses. To the world that is around us where we ever fully inhabit our days and our world. And as i've already said earlier achieve are just. Our spiritual destiny of creatures and critters. Endless creation. The only way we achieve our destiny is my mindfulness. By paying attention. In summer. The season would so generously envelops and beckons us right now. Offers nothing shy of a reckless and miraculous invitation to be fully alive. Fully present fully engaged. It's limitation you can refuse. But the invitation. Is there. Summer by any measure is a season of radical hospitality. Which invites us to be a guest. Integrate lavishly appointed. Living room. A grade. Lavishly. Appointed living room you're looking at it. Think about it for a second. Summer in particular more than any other season invites us to reduce. Or eliminate all together the usual barriers that stand between us and the world. In summer for one thing we piano off clothing. Layers of it. We open windows and doors. We lounge and sleep. Eat outside we spend laying with h under the trees with family and friends. We skinny-dip the bravest of us and cool waters. Weed sweet corn and cold seeded watermelon. We listen to cicadas and songbirds in the high trees. We feel the sunlight on the wind of the rain directly upon our faces and our skin. In summer we can dive deliciously into so many pleasing pools. Simple. Direct living. Summer in tysons. Invites us to know and touch. Without caveats or complications sky and sea. Sunrise and sunset forest. Fieldpiece. And bird. Family and friends. Summer is the time. Which welcomes us to reconnect with life and all of its holy simplest. Summer is the season which invites us again to reduce. So many of those barriers. That exist between ourselves as modern creatures. And the world. And be mindful. Mine. Of the world that is at our fingertips. And all that is required of us. Spiritual richness. Is for us to respond to the invitation. Listen to this poem. About summer by my colleague linda unger. David. Entitled simply watermelon. Watermelon. Key-rite. You know what. Summer taste like. The pink flesh. Of a generous earth. Rounded life full-ride fully flavored how could you be ashamed at the tug. Club desire. The world has opened itself to you season after season. What is summer sweetness. But an invitation to respond. There's only one way to eat a watermelon. Superior face in the wetness of that aerobic rosie slabs and b. The sands the poem. Bury your face. In the wetness of that rosie. Lab. American poet mary oliver. Similarly invites us into summer. Carnality. And mindfulness in this poem the summer day. He describes. The grandson. But she has come upon. On the cape cod. Summer day. Eric weinstein. Who made the world. Who made the swan on the black bear. Who made the grasshopper. This grasshopper i mean the one who has flown herself out of the grass the one who was eating sugar. Out of my hand. Who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down. Who is casing around with her enormous. Complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearm. And thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps. Her wings open. Implode. Away. I don't know exactly. What a prayer is. Oliver wright. I do know how to pay attention. How to fall down into the grass. How to kneel down in the grass. How to be idle and blast how to stroll through fields. Which is what i have been doing all day. Tell me. What else. Could i have done. Doesn't everything die at last. I'm too soon. Tell me. What is it you plan to do. With your one. Wild. And precious. Tell me what is it you plan to do. With your wand. Wild. Alright. So at this point of the thurman. I'm fully into my. Kitty mindful. Celebration of summer. But what about the other side i did promise you the other side the title of the sermon is a paradox of summer. What about the other. An undeniable left glorious downside of these summer drenched months. Like the uncomfortable and very dangerous heatwave we just survive with killed 19 people in maryland. Truly we ignore the challenges. Irritations. And complications of this season also a tarsier at our spiritual apparel. This is why early in the service i had a. Engage in the whimsy of the litany of. Summer litany of things we love. And we hate. Yes. As i've already affirm. Summer. Is it profoundly hospitable and gracious season. But it can also be in this of course is the paradox. Incredibly inhospitable. Incredibly uncomfortable. Incredibly challenging. Summerlin washington. In addition to all the gracious and inviting realities i've mentioned. Also can mean withering heat. And sweltering humidity. An unremitting ultraviolet rays and dangerous unpredictable storm. Not to mention as we did in our litany. Mosquitoes. Antics. And biting app. And poison ivy. As our balance summer let me make clear. This season is all have a bittersweet mix to it. Something. Robin other things we simply endure and get through. All in all of course. Summer anthems yesterday i am i have to admit. Summarize the next day. Riding bike in 104 degrees with a little tough last week i did it. But it was a little tough. But that being said. I must in the end return to my main spiritual point this morning. Each season of our lives. We is mortal creatures are being called. By our destiny as human beings into a close. Joyful intimate. Reciprocal relationship. With everything said. Our wives are saved. Ultimately. And made whole. For the quality and depth of our opening. About mindfulness. Of our willingness to reduce the barriers. That exists between ourselves. And the sacred world. If we close ourselves away from the season of his hands. By barricading ourselves sequentially an air-conditioned car. Air-conditioned offices at air-conditioned home will miss much of what's being given did you happen to see the paper this morning. The outlook section. Department of what is. Try to imagine dc without so much air conditioning he writes. He talks about doing without it at work. Doing without doing without it around town. It is the one that department. We're not going to give up air conditioning. What what read this article. We will miss. If we. Box ourselves away from the world as it is now warm as it is. We will miss the radical hospitality. Of the season sunlight and moonlight. Red tomatoes and sweet corn. Oceans and swimming pools. Songbirds. Cicadas. And lazy afternoons and evenings with family and friends cooking out together. A simple food yes. I know i really know. Summer can be too hot. I'm too humid. Into buggy. And too noisy. I'm too complicated. But i must remind you. It is only in the full flush anus. Of these rich and robots days that you can know and be blessed. Why some of the world. Holiest. So as you move through these july and august days. Open your heart. And open your windows at least occasionally. And open your doors. And open the very center of yourself. To the summer that sings around you. Life. Is moving. Fast. It is a fleeting. Gift. And the seasons. Jackets. And furnaces. And snow blowers are not that far away. So don't miss the summer dance. But has been given you. Open yourself. Tualatin. Be mindful. Visalia mean to you.

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4493.mp3

That song is a prayer for peace. Between muslim and hindu it's been used by gandhi had meeting. Creating change for the world. Three offer that as we begin to examine. Vegeta one of the great sources of hinduism. Battle begins the two sides. Are assembled for war. In the northern indian. Kingdom of kuru. A generations-old conflict has come to this big showdown. For two very closely related clans. About to have it out. Are central hero hero is argentina. He represents the pandava clan. Chariot heading to war. When suddenly he asked his driver krishna. Just stop. He looks out at the enemy. Nicaragua family. Many who are his own relatives. By the moment he feels it in his body. A huge dilemma confronts him. My mouth is parched my body trembles. The hair bristles on my flash. The magic bow slips from my hand. My skin burns. I cannot stand. Call my mind. Real. To go forward and battle is his sacred duty possibly his dharma. Yet to accept that role is going to cause tremendous loss. And change. And the death of his kinsmen. Archana does the only thing he feels is possible at that moment. I cannot fight this fight. Any ducks. Down in the chariot. He just sits down. On the floor. Paralyzed. And says he can't go on. Very long into krishna. Krishna who is this symbol for the divine voice. For inner wisdom. For the highest ethical understanding of life. Or maybe just a yearning of the soul itself. You see the first chapter of the book of agita a much-beloved many-layered text in hinduism is just. A setup. Krishna. Is not exactly your average. Driver. He is teaching argeneau how to inquire into who he is meant to be. It said the story is about the truth of your vocation a kind of holy duty. Youtube philosophy every human being is said to have this urge. No matter how covered with layers of consciousness. To embody this urge to be the same that they can be. The inner possibility doesn't pop up. With neon lights around it. It doesn't have an arrow flashing that says go this way. You have to look for hanson signs different options. You seek the shape of dharma. My inquiry. Who you are overtime. You gradually give up being the person. Everyone else wants you to be. In favor of your authentic. The argument fear about action causes him to duct to sit to wait it out. This may look familiar. Much of the story is focused on all the ways that dow's can lead us. Pause. Sometimes a very long pause. Stephen coates book the great work of your life. Has subtitle a guide for the journey to your true calling. It's a wonderful tool to investigate this topic. Explores the number of lives both famous lies and what you might call ordinary ones. Through the framework of the gita. Unpacking the teachings to look at all the ways. We avoid going where we need to go. That's kind of the bottom line. The avoidant. Many of his observations ring true for me both of my own life which is had a number of long pauses along the way. And in observing the struggles of others. The first kind of do that stephen cope names is quite common he calls it. Of closing the door. You've lived a long time in a way that worked. Perhaps in a meaningful career as a parent. In a marriage. Something that once held great interest. And yet the time of the good fit. Is coming to an end. That particular dharma is used up. And change is on the horizon. It's not at all clear what comes next. And you're not knowing is creating doubt. Of major proportions. Your cotton fear. You know the door has to close. It's okay. You simply duck. You jacking your chariot. And wait it out. Is it still. You keep the old life going. And you refused to investigate the new. Disturbia long dangerous docking. Maybe you've experienced it maybe you seen it. Sometimes the consequences are ill health. Extreme boredom. Hangout. Sabotaging your current place. Depression. General stuckness. And fear of closing the door. For sometime. With worsening results over the course here waiting. Cope talks about a second kind of doubt when she calls the slide version. This is called denial of dharma. You're pretty satisfied with your work in your living. Yet you maintain there is no calling simply because it doesn't seem all that dramatic. You never take the time to acquire who you are. What you have to offer. And people are commenting on your gifts. The feedback poison from around you about what is experience. In your presence. But you're always downplaying your own effect. With less clarity than might be possible. With a kind of. Accidental effect. This is what we're talking about it takes active consciousness to embrace dharma. It's a choice. To be in the flow on purpose. Until denial of dharma. Variable. It diffuses your gifts. And underestimate the power. Ever-loving. You have something to offer. You refuse to name it. Drift along. A third type of ducting that kobritz about is called the problem of aim. Know every person has been on a long trajectory of choices each time you choose there's a diversion so away from something that you did not pick. This can lead in a progression. Outcome. Which is. Not your dharma. The place where you've landed could be very close. It could even be semi related. The virgins took you further and further and further away. As you grow older. This one shows up. Mark clearly. Government has a lot to do with aim. And to be off just a bit. Can have a cumulative effect. Example maybe there was something you truly loved. In your twenties and your thirties and now you are three degrees of separation. Away. From the actual target. That you had intended. You come to middle-aged capable of many things you can do. Yet not in the flow. Of what you should do. For the most fulfillment are the most impact. It's doing yoga teaching it's important to live right in the center of your dharma. No matter how how a ring that place maybe. No matter how much it requires courage. Otherwise you start to feel what coke cause. Elated. Of a kind of creeping. Self-betrayal. The accumulated weight. Have a kind of creeping. Self-betrayal. You may know exactly what your true passion is. And yet. You do not follow this path. Her cover today our bulletin cover for worship. Has a word from krishna on this important point. It says. Where is one's own dharma. Curated. Through imperfectly. Another carried out perfectly. For the follow the law of another brings great spiritual apparel. I listen to. People talk about their lives a lot in my line of work. Apparel can be here. Depression. Grieve. It takes some courage. To follow your dharma. Particularly if it involves change. And sometimes you just have to leap into the unknown. Relying on your intuitive knowledge. Of who you are meant to be. Is it drama is not about doing something perfectly. But rather about doing things. Wholeheartedly. As you are. When you don't. Decipher. The great christian theologian thomas martin set it another way from another tradition. Crying into her dharma welcome. Thomas merton said in another way. Man has a vocation to be someone. Understand clearly that in order to fulfill this location he can only be one person. Himself. To herself. Are your self. Over the last four months of group has been meeting a new class of uu spiritual deepening here at river road but we're calling spirit journey. The goal is to more clearly understand who you are at this point in your life and where you were going. How might that happen. In spirit journey we design ways to explore spiritual practices. Choose a variety of methods and styles. We also look at the idea of calling. Maybe rising up from this strong container of practice. Which is often the practice of sitting with yourself. As you are. The group matzim individual history the roots in the traditions that have shaped them to this point in time. And then return to action. Her beginning now to seek the seeds of energy and excitement that might lead in the new direction. Or that my. Inspire you to deepen. The commitments that you already hold. The participants are weaving relationships as they support this inquiry of living. Collectively spirit journey is a kind of microcosm. That shows some of the best gifts of the macrocosm. The congregation. Cuz after all we are here. We are sitting here. Sunday morning. You could say that each of us is looking for their jarma you may call it something else. Consciously or unconsciously how best to live your life. And we gather in congregations for many reasons. One huge maybe to avoid ducking. To avoid jacket the things you know. That may be rising from inside. Riverbed is that place. Set values question. And it poses been regularly. Is a community that honors life passage from birth to come innovage to marriage and death. Sets of ritual. Ways to observe them. We are going to charing universalist learning sight and so we draw from six major sources. We find our way with tools. Wisdom traditions. And all the ways. That we live our vision. Fellowship spirit service. We've decided. Not to sweat it out. Entirely alone. We keep this. Company. Of like-minded speakers. People who want to examine their own spirits. Who want to make an impact. In the world. Let's go back. To the book of enki chauncey what did krishna say to our genetic get him up off the floor. Of that chariot. It may surprise you to learn that the path he taught. Is action in the world. There are techniques for enter mastery for spiritual growth but the whole point. Is to be more effective in action. This is not a treatise on renunciation or retreat. But a way of offering external service. Articuno must find the courage to be in his own dharma. The one you need location. That he can offer the world. At any point in time. The four pillars of. Christian dharma teaching artists. Look to your own dharma. Not that of another. For the follow the law of another brings great spiritual. Apparel. Secondly do your dharma full house. Give it gas stove passion. Purpose. Not perfection. The full engagement. 3d says let go of the fruits of dharma. Detach from the outcome. Really saw the need for success some reward for praise for honor. And then forth in this framework he says turn dharma over to god. The universe. Your inner wisdom your higher power. And complete surrender to all that is greater. Send you. I maybe have the wisdom not to duck. At least not very often. And when we do. Because we all do duck. I pray that this congregation can be a site of inspiration to help you go forward. The one you're dumb a called. I hope you listen. And follow. I wish you the courage. Bu.

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4115.mp3

So this week on thursday. Some of our leaders along with parents and teachers. And other congregational leaders from around the county we were all headed to southlake elementary school that afternoon. We were headed there for awesome things. For second grade science club for reading groups. 25 eager 2nd graders and learn science. And laugh. For children whose promise and possibility is limitless. Children who will grow up to lead in such a way that they will show up for us in time when we need them to. It was a very best kind of work. It was the good stuff. The kind of work that really matters killed your soul the kind of work that works. And those of us who were involved in that moment those of us who are involved in child first. We are savoring every moment we get to spend with those kids. So perfect and so powerful those kids are. That. That's good delightful beautiful work as we are savoring the opportunity in the magics of what we can build together all of this was happening on thursday while in the background the house debated what happens to the thousands upon thousands of syrian refugees trying to find a way. Out of the violence that consumes their homes. And the drums of war beat more steadily. And the world. Is afraid. In one moment one day perhaps not so different from every other day we felt ourselves like e.b. white said torn. Between the desire to savor the beautiful world. And the desire to save it before it all breaks apart. In one day. I speak of thursday but really any day. In any one day the conflict between the desire to savor the beauty of this world and to save it from the very worst of our own impulses pulls at us. Leaving us with a kind of spiritual whiplash not always sure what to do next. The beauty and the brokenness vale around in our spirits. Pulling us from gratitude to sorrow you know how it works. You have felt it. In the exact moment cure clear sunlight shines on a vase. A fresh tulips. And children drown on distant beaches. In the exact same moment friends reach out to find grace connecting them across all partisanship all pain and all sorrow while the battle lines of faith and fear are ever more firmly etched in the same moment powerful poor children find their voices and write poetry that will change the world and powerful poor children are silenced and cast aside by a system that doesn't seem to notice. All of these things are true. And the heart can scarcely keep up. So perhaps it is all the more appropriate that in the midst of this most desperate of news cycles we bring ourselves kicking and screaming toward thanksgiving. Because isn't this always the case. The gratitude is always intermingled with the gnawing pain the abundance of an unimaginably rich creation is always at play alongside the knowledge that half the world remains hungry we are always called to save the world and we are always called to savor it. Go on sundays. And sometimes the call to one seems to ring more loudly. Through the clamor. But i can't remember honestly i cannot remember if i told you the story before. Adult back through four years of sermons trying to find out if i did but my brain gets foggy. It's a story about my ordination to ministry and no doubt some of you have heard it back at my first church in manassas virginia when i was 25 years old. About the charge that i was issued and the charge that the congregation was issued on that day. Particular sunday was preached by my own mentor in ministry the reverend david bumba. A very serious man. And so when he stood up fully in the robes of our trade and he took the pulpit he did so with more gravitas than i have ever mustard. Whatever he was going to say that man really meant. And what proceeded to come out of his mouth. I kid you not. 18 minutes worth of detailed descriptions of all the crimes rock by religion over the course of the entire span of human history. 15 minutes. As i sat there and eager young recruit. Free religion of our face from the forced evacuation of the holocaust of the burning of witches and by the end of it everyone have solutely everyone expected the spanish inquisition. Other charge to ministry. He offered that to me. For that to us. The whole sordid history of crimes in the name of faith of hatred in the name of god persecuting of the ages laid out in full detail not unlike the horrors of our headlines this very week. In about 10 minutes. Litany continued some of us started. Squirming in our seats. I mean. How much of it can you really take. And a rumbling started deep down in my belly and i'm pretty sure i started fixing a bit. And just when i thought the list of horrible crimes in the name of religion would never cease my mentor. Litany of suffering and he asked. So why are we gathered here to ordain this promising young woman to the ministry yes why i thought why i was a brief pause for effect my mentor david a humanist and an intellectual of the highest order she said simply. For the salvation of the world. To affect the salvation of the world and after frankly not a whole lot more explanations just went and sat down world my humanist intellectual mentor said that. She told us is the work of the church in the work of our ministries within it and if you did it wrong well you have the whole other fifteen minutes of the horrible crimes done in the name of religion to listen to on podcast if you must. And truth be told he wasn't really preaching to me. Over the years since my ordination i've actually heard him preach that exact same sermon word-for-word at other people's ordinations potential or responsibility. Together. The salvation of this world to him didn't mean saving souls from hell. We are after all universalist. To him it meant the building of a sort of beloved community that can affect the healing we also desperately need it meant working together to write a different history something other than the sordid story of death after death after death. And what you meant to tell me. To tell us. I think. Is it the responsibility of saving the world is unflagging. And then it will not let us go. No matter how. Hired we are. Of holding it. Universalist theological circles we do not generally look. For a god whose presence is tremendously active in human history god as most of us might understand god. Is not the great chess player moving us about piece by piece. Which means that for us if there is to be saving in this world. If no other world. It must move in no small part to our own hands. Which means that if discord is to have practical saving grace moving through it there is some sense in which weed and those with whom we share the journey we are the 12 we have been waiting for are the ones through whom grace is supposed to move we are the ones in this age who are called the world and nobody but nobody is going to let us off the hook. Alrighty then. And yet i also know that saving the world. Or even saving one person in it or fixing one broken system at 10 not happen if the ones charged with the saving or weary beyond all measuring. It can't happen if our own deep wounds aren't. Solved. If we ourselves are strong and faithful enough to keep trying. So what does it take to save the world. Or at least to save the people who are charged with saving the world what does it take to heal an exhausted and hopeless soul so that it can burst forth. In action and in love. One of the greatest theological disputes and all of history hymns on that point. What's save this. What has the capacity to bring us out of our brokenness and into some new holness. Martin luther was maybe the greatest and most personally torture duvall the protestant reformers. And martin luther famously sat alone for hours in the dark sell contemplating the irresistibility of his own failure. He gave himself a very personal rendition of that ordination sermon i got. In 15 hours are 15 days of focused litany on his own failures and crimes he thought about all the ways he was not the man god wanted him to be. Enemy and he came to the conclusion that nothing. He could do would save his soul. Nothing he could do with knit him back together enough that he could be of service to the world nothing he could do would make up for the smallness of his own heart. Only faced he famously decreed could save him. The only real choice he could make in god would have to do the rest. And so he was saved by faith. And other historical theological circles most notably our own. A soul is understood to be made whole to be saved in the final reckoning not by faith alone but by what we do by acting in the right way. Our theological ancestors historically have long attempted. To be fueled for justice mostly by doing more justice. We have been given the gift of hope not by hoping for it but by carving it out with our own bare hands. Or at least trying to. After all it was a universalist who created the american red cross universalist to first abdicated against capital punishment and advocated for prison reform in this country and universalist who first advocated for public education in the united states of america. Who among the most vocal proponents of abolition almost half of the serving minister is among us marched with dr. king in selma and it was our own denominational press published the pentagon papers. We are the people who are saved by our works by what we do. And most recently unitarian universalist have been active on issues of peace and environmental justice. On issues of gay lesbian and bisexual and transgender rights. We are on the forefront of the current movement for civil rights in this country like no other. And a host of other issues close to the hearts of so many of us. We are not shrinking violets in the civil society that surround us. And we do not need anybody to preach us a sermon reminding us to be engaged. We are dewar's. We do in fact. Perhaps truly endeavoring to save ourselves by saving the world. We take action. And we hope even pray that somehow the action itself will knit our broken hearts back together. And yet that other martin luther. Martin luther king. Even the activist. Needed to be saved. In this world of their own efforts. Anyone he knew that you cannot save the world unless you have some hold on why you are doing it he knew that even the most righteous doing will breakdown in time without a sense of purpose and grounding. Martin luther king on the letters of the apostle paul that he called and a letter to american christian. King said that it is possible for all of the good works to be done for all of the wrong reasons. Without the force of love behind them none of it matters it is possible to do and do and do and do and never find the wholeness we desire. He wrote. American churchgoers your goods to feed the poor. Great gifts to charity your body to be burned and died but even so if you have not loved your work will be spilled out in vain without love benevolence becomes egotism and martyrdom become spiritual pride without love. Without the chance to be overawed by the beauty of what's worth saving without savoring the glory of these days. Somewhere down deep in our spirits all of our actions toward justice. Ring halo. And they leave us hungry for still more meaning. Benevolence can become egotism. Another way to build ourselves up or make ourselves feel better than other people. Martyrdom can be spiritual pride action can be a way to avoid contemplation and service can be a compulsion rather than an expression of face. But there is a powerful antidote to that. There is love. We are saved by what we do as long. As what we do we do out of love. Genuine care and compassion for our brothers and sisters and even ourselves love of the everyday non-romantic garden-variety is crammed full of miracles. And so if we are to save the world together we must love one another first. From the very deepest places in our hearts. We must love. And out of that love we are called to serve in from that service we might even be lucky enough to find our way towards faith. In the possibility of human wholeness. Community. It's not just about everything we do together. All the activities in the meals in the events and committees. It's about how we choose to be together. How we live into respectful challenging and life-altering relationship with each other. Savoring the beauty in the abundance of each person along the way. We share the food this morning and our food drive and we do the work. And we attend the committee meetings and we unpack the donations to the bizarre not just because we want to eat and we want to work and we want to sit around conference tables. But because our relationships matter. And because the real sustenance that comes from the feast is the presence of those we love. I'm convinced that we cannot even begin to save the world let alone be saved by it. If we are not able to love this world and everyone in it so deeply that we savour it down to our bones. If we are not grateful. If we are not willing to sing hymns of praise to a creation crammed full of glory how are we ever to find the courage. And energy it takes to preserve it. And to make it more whole. Personally. We are not saved by faith alone. Nor are we saved. By our works alone. But by our continued ability and our willingness to see beauty and to savor it. To love what is worth savoring into manifested in the work of our own hands. The world then will not be saved by me. Or buy what i do. Or even by you and all of your strategies. The world will be saved. Bite beauty. And the way that beauty feeds us for all the saving work we cannot put down. The world will not be saved by faith alone. It will not be saved by all our works. The world will be saved by beauty. It inspires at all. And so gets thanks this season. Without gratitude to the heavens contemplate tulips in a clear glass face. Favor gray. Because it is only in the store knowledge of such glory. That we might move together in. By inch. Toward.

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3353.mp3

I wonder. How many of you have seen it or maybe even. Chance to walk adjacent to it. Is giant face on the national mall. Right. I open the newspaper this week to see it. Stretched across the space between the lincoln memorial. And the wwii memorial it's 6. It runs parallel to the reflecting pool. And it was composed by cuban-american artist jorge rodriguez gerardo. It was made of 2,000 tons of sand. 800 tons of soil wooden pegs and no less than eight miles of string. A man or i think the whole deal is a person. Skin and a slight smile lines creasing their face. The artists. It's not the face of america. It's one of hundreds of millions of possible faces that america has. It is a monumental a beautiful piece of art. But what is most compelling at least to me. Is the shared understanding of what is ultimately going to happen to it. Like a tibetan mandala made of colored grains sure to scatter with the slightest touch this work of art is designed to be in permanent. It is a monument that is not meant to last it is an artwork that is beautiful precisely because of its brevity. Winter winds will not hold off forever and a week or two weeks or a short-season from now that face which is one of the faces of america will be utterly gone. Not because someone went and stamped it out because someone went and hung in another gallery but because all things are caught in this great impermanence. And we would do well to see beauty and when the time comes. To let it go. Well we make way. For something new. Like so many stones cast into the water the season of repentance. Is not just about letting go of our own wrongdoing. It's about letting go of anything that keeps us from being cold. People. We are. Transforming ourselves into. Sometimes what we're called to let go of is our illusion that anything including ourselves is going to be around in the same way forever. I've always loved. The idea of impermanent art right jetties made a stone & sand out reaching into the title waters aren't that like the souls of people live on only as an idea delimber a set of feelings made real by those who once beheld it. Great and beloved architect. Bernard maybeck who particularly put his fingerprints all over the san francisco bay area. He was once asked what the people should do. To protect his spectacular architectural designs. After he was gone. And what he said in response was. Plant redwoods. Instead of preserving those gracious columns are ensuring his place in posterity as a great man among great instead of creating his own egocentric deathlessness in marble and in tile he said the best tribute would be the plant redwoods all around his masterpieces and watch his marble palaces crumble. Underneath the ever. Reaching arms of the trees. A reminder that even the greatest accomplishments of human creativity are impermanent. Invited those who came after him to watch the water run through the walls that he had built. To watch the open-air claim the sanctuaries and the illusion of unchanging things fade away under the beauty of impermanence itself. Let it go. Will the artist. An addict goes let all of us watch and see and not mourn the loss of beauty but pray that slowly creeping transformation into something. Altogether new. And just as beautiful. No i'm not sure i went and met back to guide our decisions when it comes to building maintenance. At least for now i would very much like water not to run through it. And rodriguez guitar done the monks of tibet with their blowing sands they have much to guide us in our spiritual journey. Because few challenges we put before ourselves. Or that the universe puts before us as humans and its spiritual searchers are harder than this. To let go rather than hanging on and even in the greatest challenge of all. Tool of the tragic. Beautiful. I'm fragile circumstances. Of our own existence. My colleague forest church used to say. Religion is the human beings make sense of the dual reality of being alive. And having to die. Religion indeed can be and have been for age upon age used as a sort of salvation insurance. A method of preventing the wrath of god or ensuring a just reward in the life to come. Yet. In one of the few pieces of dialogue i actually understood from hbo's existential recent hit true detective. A person from decent is the expectation of a divine reward than brought that person is a real piece of expletive redacted. As much as i have thought those sentiments myself. I don't actually endorse that kind of attitude after all this easy to dismiss the idea of a divine reward when you were privileged enough. To actually receive rewards. In this present life. For the isolated the oppressed the endangered in the hungry some of whom are in this room the idea of a reward in the life to come. Just makes sense given the persistent deprivations of these days. It is not all wine and roses on this earth. And faith in a place beyond can be faith in a better world. And yes. And yet for many of us the reduction of faith and practice too so much salvation insurance is a tool we have developed. In order to prevent ourselves from having to let go of our certainties. And embrace the great and terrifying truth that even the longest summer turn that last. And even those newest to the gift of life are moving with steady pace. The great mystery that lie that agenda. A mystery. Which whatever it may or may not be. It's likely something quite different than a shinier continuation of everything we already know. For most of us are brevity on this earth. Is are seldom discussed little secret. Until of course it isn't. Until it escapes its carefully wrought chains and presents itself in full view here before us with the death of a loved one. With the passing of another sunset in the turning once again. The tides. And we find ourselves. And those we love and those we do not love. Together. And the position of the man from the ancient buddhist folktale. In the story the man is chased by a lion. Run to preserve his life ahead of the jaws of that beast and he flings himself in front of those snapping jaws over the lip of a great chasm only to be caught by a little vine. He looks below and he sees there another tiger. Vicious as the first way it is precious behind even as he clings to it there is no doubt as to his fate. All of us and always an end no matter what there are tigers up and tigers down the end of presumably final awaiting him in either direction and yet and here is what is born when we let go and yet. It really isn't and that matters is it. It's the moments between the inevitability. That matter. In this case it's the moment that the man hanging there sees a bright. Beautiful strawberry. Growing out of the sheer cliff face that he would never have found from the safety of his sheltered passed a berry that only grows on the cliffside blocks that strawberry and he eats it and he finds it to be so good as to be unspeakable so bursting with joy that there are no words to capture it. And the story tells us something that. Modern commercial culture has also often fought to ignore. The truth. Only in the presence of the inevitable. That such pleasure can be known. Only with the supposedly horrible chasm below that the grace in the beauty of this one living moment can be fully realized. Only when we let go of the idea. Of our immortality. And we taste something close to the infinitely beautiful. And what a blessing it is. So great that angels might fall from heaven for a taste of it. These fragile glimpses of perfection we can only know when we let go. Of the idea that anything anything at all that we love. Will last forever. In the same way that we know it now. I am. Full of stories today parently. And here's another one that's been knocking around in my brain for years and i keep trying to re preach it and figure out why. Lovers whose pads were never meant to cross. If you are just a little bit nerdy like me you might have heard of them abelard and heloise. Abelard was an 11th century french scholar and a month and heloise with his wealthy and cosseted young student of theology. What goes with many lovers in history and literature their paths were tragic the tale full of novelistic flourishes frankly to purple to even mention in the sermon. Discovered. They were torn apart but there was a moment during their romance when they had free arranged to meet together at a certain spot abelard got there first and saw heloise coming from the distance the object of his adoration approaching under the light of the stars. Superior and so real and the inevitability of its in-store parent. His response is marked in history.. For this. For this the envious gods denias immortality. For this. For this abundant beauty for the grace that lasts but a moment all the gods in heaven trimble lightly in their immortal loafers from indy. For that one taste of a bright and brief berry. For one's lover coming down the path for a day at the beach or a morning at church for this. All the gods in every heaven ever imagined look down and eat their hearts out with. For such magnificent. And who are we to spend our days brooding about the end of the story when the end is always the same. Who are we to spend our time fearing the inevitable when right now the whole point to things the very marrow of life spins over and around at dividing us to break through our fear. And into our sense of wonder that it is ours for the taking. And the only thing we have to give up. Exchange for it. Is the shallow comfort. Avenging timelessness. If you're the end. When we are called to taste the journey through and through. To look down at the gaping jaws below us and laugh for we have pulled off the greatest trick of all to live while knowing we are dying and to know that that miracle is what makes us human. Here. Where the leaves turn to flame in october. The brief interval of life is played out. Over and over again. It is played out before us reminding us of the vastness. In which our beginnings and our endings are always held. Last story for the day i promise. John and i were married in the first unitarian church of chicago. Now almost 10 years ago. And i remember during the rehearsal for the ceremony as we were milling about as nervous people about to get married off and do. Someone looked up and happened to notice. Two carbons that were worked into the stone services of the great gothic chancel of that church. To one side of the chancel in a place only the preacher might actually see it there is carved in that unitarian universalist church of cradle. And the floating disembodied head of a creep. That's right it's looking down over the proceedings. Opposite side of the chancel we're also mostly the preacher can see it there is carved coffin and a skull. Over the proceedings in the way only a school really can. True. And not without a challenge. Cradle and the grave for every preacher who ever entered that pulpit to see we actually set up our wedding buffet table in that chancel actually the smoked salmon in the coffee bars between the cradle in the grave both literally and metaphorically and it was humbling to have those faces. Because all that we do exist. Between those poles. All that we as a couple will do in our lives stands between that cradle and that raved and it is all the more precious because life is happening now not back at the beginning and not over there at the end but right here in this place right now in the middle. Series of new beginnings. A series of goodbyes. But the truth of it is. The most of life. Is there some place somewhere between all that was and all that will be. Debussy once said that music is the space between the notes. And why. The real thing. Is the space between every the genin and every ending. The space between our efforts. The time. Between the dawn and the dusk. Suspended between two infinities. We didn't go in this bright finitude of hours. Encompass by beauty that can only be known by we limited ones we flawed ones. We fragile ones. We spent so much time thinking about the end. And about what comes after the end. But what if the end doesn't matter really. What if our legacy is found mostly in our ability or lack thereof to live well and fully within the confines of every moment. What if i legacy is nothing more or less than our life. And the brief days that encompasses. An old buddhist saying reminds us. Do you think of all this fleeting world. A star at dawn. A bubble in a stream. A flash of lightning in a summer cloud flickering lamp andalusian a dream. Do you think of these days. A briefing beautiful interval. Align cast out over the mystery which brings us. Before beauty. In a way that no safe eternity could muster. Impermanence friends is not simply tragic. It is the glory and which we move. The ever-present turning the constant call to live these days with all the fullness we can muster. And so. In this season of turning. As summer. Had let go at long last. I believe get all gotti in the first cold morning bid us good welcome today. Let us go forward from this place ready and willing to soak up grease from every corner of our limited bat. Able to comprehend even for a moment. But that which we fear is also our blessing. To all of it. Do everything that passes us by to life. Let us toast. In breakable. Glasses. For this is a story. And the ending. Which is after all our greatest gift. Will surely take care. For him is number 15 the lone wild bird it's a lilting little number to take it slow. Rise in body or in spirit.

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2984.mp3

Let me start by saying that i'm not a big fan of bridges. I'm not talkin about the little ones in the woods across the stream so we can stay on our path. Kind of bridge that makes me queasy. Is the big one like the chesapeake bay bridge. The one in which you are suspended high in the air for a long time. Take a look. At the front of your order is service. That's the kind i'm talking about. Notice how you can't see what. That is a perfect image. The transition. When your life is in transition. It feels like you're suspended between two worlds. The one that you left behind. But fading from view. And the one that you can't see yet. Once i was traveling on the tampa bay bridge. Driving rainstorm while lightning crack. Thunderstruck my car. I feel. Completely vulnerable. All i could do was surrender to my situation and just keep pressing forward. When our lives are in transition. And we find ourselves. On a bridge to nowhere. It is that act of surrender. Letting go. Open spots apps to new and creative possibilities. Because only then. Can we begin to see through new eyes. A new reality. On the horizon. And transition. Or separate but related. Is a situational shift like being laid off from your job. Graduating from high school. Moving to a new city. But losing a loved one to death. Hit these big changes that throw our lives for a loop. Elite cases. Transition is the process. Letting go of the way things used to be and taking hold. The way that they become. Is the way that we come to grips. With change. Guinness book the wave transition. William bridges an appropriate name by the way. We resist transition because we can't let go of that piece of ourselves. We have to give up when the situation changed. In our dramatic reading this morning the man sent. Something had changed in his life. Opportunity popped up that he thought he was finally ready to go for. When he got to the bridge. That's when things got real dicey. Before he could go in further. He had to make a life-altering choice. The hold on. How to let go that part of it. It was clinging to his old life. At the height of the struggle to tell themselves if i let go all my life i will know that i let the other die. Letting go. Is not a simple active release. It is a long drawn-out process of exploring whether or not a broken connection can be re-established. William bridget says we don't let go of anything important. How do we have exhaust. Possible ways we might keep holding on to it. In our story the man's journey actually began. When he decided. To let go. I came across an anonymous quote recently that sums that up nicely. The trip becomes a journey after you've lost your luggage. But then. Comes to grief. In the morning. Confusion and chaos. Bridges called this phase transition the neutral zone. The bridge of life. An in-between state right after the ending. Number for a new beginning. The time was bored. Boundaries breakdown and you feel like you're drifting. Heart desire is to hurry up and get through it. But it takes. As long as it take. And hebrew scripture. The israelites whine and moan while they wandered around in the sinai desert 40. They kept longing for the security of their old lives under the uncertainty. Have their future. But there's no going back. Not so far. I described transition as a painful process. Wherever there is loss involved a certain degree of pain. His presence. I think the beauty of the bridging ceremony. Bra graduating seniors. We mark the letting go of youth. And an emergency as an adult. It's a chance to say goodbye and wish them safe passage. Journeys that lie ahead in their lives. As they step onto their personal bridges of life. Still interested i'm a personal growth and exploration. The time. It will be scary. Other times it will be exhilarating and breathtaking. And there will be many ridges. For them to cross. If i had invited everyone who was going through a transition in their lives right now to walk across the chancel with them. I'll bet that half the congregations would have come up. We've been even more crowded. Because transition is that dynamic part of our lives. The stable x. For the weigh stations when we stopped catch our breath. But eventually. Something stirs again. An unexpected change occurs in. Right back in the thick of it. It is when we find ourselves to spend it and transition. That we can most readily encounter. What's sacred. Many cultures experience i mean stimulate that experience. Walkabouts in the desert or. Vision quests in the forest. The participants seek their spirit guides to help them on their journey. But even without the ritual. When we are in that in-between state. We have access to our creative energy that was released. When are old reality died. It is when we are in transition. The most alive. The presence. There's no technique. What prescription for how to make it across the bridge. But the path. Always seem to reveal itself after we stopped struggling. And surrender to the sacredness. About rebirth. There's little to do except wait watchfully. Has the closer edge of our new life. Begins to come into focus. I remember about 6 years ago. I haven't expressed a joy of sorrow in a long time. Am i in a rut. And then almost immediately. I got my answer. I began having issues at work that may be questioned whether i belong there. Started having serious health issues and over the course of several years they both died. Then that nagging question about finding one's purpose in life kept getting louder. Louder as i got more and more disillusioned with my career. It was like i was going from one bridge. To another. Then one day i realized. I was the most fulfilled and the most in sync with reality when i. Was engaged. In some form of ministry at my church. Those were the times when my soul shine. So i decided to take the leap. And enter the seminary. Onto another bridge of life. But i had this brilliant plan. I continue to work so that i could maintain the lifestyle that i was accustomed to. And i was trying to just write that one is so that i can retire right when i was ready to finish seminary. I figured that i would go my whole life in a nice. Scroll banner. The universe at different plants. The tiger i held onto my old identity as a. Intelligence community. The more i think my life became. Like i was caught between two opposing magnetic poles. Burger i went into my ministry formation. The more my old career. My old me. Felt like a stranger dangling from the rope. It was january 2013. I had just returned from three weeks. Intensive classes at seminary. When i decided to let go of the rope. I wasn't eligible for retirement yet but. I made my choice. I thought this tremendous sense of relief. But it was also scary and disorienting for a long while. No hands. The more look bono paycheck. All i could do. What's the render to my new situation. Embrace the formation process. I threw myself into this internship. Listen to my heart. And just kept going. With your support. With a growing sense of confidence. I looked into the mirror one day. And i saw a minister. I'm standing right here. Preaching from my heart and i realized that i was no longer the same person who started that journey. I had changed. And that. I was reading an interview recently with a with the star forward nanay of the washington wizards basketball team. Last year he was traded from a successful team in denver for the wizard who at the time we're pretty lousy. He considered it to be a banishment to siberia. He thought his career was over. We went to see his pastor. The talk about how we felt. His pastor told him. Sometimes. Little door. Is a big door. And the big door. Is a little door. Surrender to the transition and lo and behold his banishment. Turned into a blessing. All the sudden the wizards are a good basketball team. And he has found a new lease on life. What is that door. In your life that looks so small because it seems so far away. The only way to find out. Is the let-go in life. Since you with a time of ending. Abandon yourself to the bridge. When that. Is where you find yourself. When that little door. Becomes a big door. You have to be ready to step inside. Nancy cell. And may you all. Be the one. To make it so.

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3096.mp3

It was a fourth of july party. Has the sun set. The temperature started to call. From hines of 125. The music was great. Don't band members had that they feared assassination on their way home. Or host the american consul in bus for a rat. His own party. Heavily guarded compound within a larger more heavily guarded compound. Stanford later confided that the console feared for his safety. But still. It means you want to dance. And there was a beautiful young woman. Myostatin what is compound nearby. Quit dress. Education in an outfit is. Different. From the full-length black black abaya's at the women wore. As was humanly possible. Flaming. Flaring red dress. And it showed a lot of skin. This was nine years ago. After the war in iraq could turn really bad. It was kind of a reverse summer vacation for me. My son was old enough to go away to summer camp. And i was finally free to travel for work. To go back to iraq. Where i spent so much time as a foreign correspondent. And see what was happening first hand. And frankly to get away from a unhappy marriage. I'm trying with women. And karen is one tough. Has the british press counselor. In the city were foreigners. Professors. Politicians and journalists. We're being assassinated or kidnapped almost daily. $15 to take particular relish. Breton down journalist. Including me. But i miss night we all had the evening off. And the music was tickling my toes. I cannot sing. As some of you have recently learned and i'm not particularly grateful on my feet. But i was born with a sense of rhythm and adjoining music that's how i love to dance. I haven't danced in years quite a few of them. I'm at 9. Shyness in the lack of confidence help me back. I tried to sit my dear. Part of the problem is i hardly drink. And make political small talk. I kept on karen. Grown up with standing a red dress. Hugging the shadows away from the dance floor. What is the party started or trenton to start winding down i finally got up my nerve. Only could see and see adroitly covered for all my missteps. Remove hauntingly around arm and arm. Run around the dance floor. Find exhausted we were giving a little ovation. Funny impressed onlooker. 14 minutes or an hour i had come out of my shell and become fred astaire. I felt a lot. That feeling of being alive with even more acute. Painfully so. When i learned a few days after i left bus run. But the only other american journalists who is there with me it's just been killed. In the beautiful arenki translator who worked with him grievously wounded. There's was a professional relationship to the taking the dangerous romantic turn. With these tragic consequences. It was karen who would have to deal with the aftermath. Okay so maybe traveling the warm zone is not your idea of a summer holiday. But isn't there something to be said for taking a few chances. Escaping the routine of relaxation by taking a risk. Reminding ourselves what it's like to feel alive. For me. Bigger risk was overcoming my shyness and asking karen to dance. That felt great. Nfl good about my ability to survive in a war zone and in the world's hottest city. But there was a more important payoff. After i came home i was asked to talk about the trip. At the river road retreat. I felt a bit risky for me. Bring up to that point under-the-radar at river road. Watching from the sidelines like the wallflower at the dance. Invitation was key to my achieving some recognition here. A more connected. Like i belong. I have the dance. Address. To thank for that.

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4615.mp3

I love you too marvelous weirdo. Put a gift. I begin today with two stories. About. The forces. Of creativity. One began a very very long time ago indeed. Longer ago than any of us who are not astrophysicist. Can fully comprehend. Deep in space. Two massive black holes many times larger than our sun. Slowly drew together in the death spiral. Drawn to one another by a mutual force neither could avoid and headed toward and inevitable explosion more powerful than any human beings have theorized or observe short of the big bang itself. Black holes you know. Are themselves products of cataclysms. Ultra strong gravitational fields left behind when gigantic stars collapse on themselves into a tiny point so dense it draws all things toward it. Black holes are as some have said. Stellar. Ghost. They are the ghosts of stars. And the ghosts of two stars out there in space fun closer and closer and closer together at half the speed of light. Until at one point around 1.3 billion years ago they collided. Emerged. Or blended in some way through some great force those two ghosts of stars became one. And the collision was so great. Ripples through the universe. The whole of space itself shuttered like a kid on the playground shaking off a bad fall on the monkey bars. Ripple's move. From that math is collision out-and-out and out through the cosmos actually folding the fabric of space and time along the way. And as they passed. Everything in their path. And contracted. In their wake. And then. On september 14th. 2015. 1.3 billion years or so after the explosion itself about 10 months ago in our limited understanding of time those very wave drizzling out from that explosion crashed over this earth. Over you. Andover me. Andover this place. Over your house and your dog and your two car garage. Over ferguson missouri and washington dc and paris and nice and turkey and iran those same waves crashed over all of it and in that moment your own body and mine and everyone else's and the earth itself expanded and contracted by one 100 thousands of a nanometer. You might not have noticed it. We were moved by forces greater than ourselves. Without our knowing it. And we were all moved together. Much as we have been moved expanded and contracted over and over again by the gravitational waves generated by the cataclysms of the cause most of the course of our entire existence. But this time. For the very first time in all time we human beings notice the wave. As they passed us by. We measured them. Like a pokemon hunter. We caught one. For the first time ever as the massive gravitational currents of existence itself. A second-story. An apple probably did not land on newton's head. But in 1686 the great ciara's first put forth the laws of matter and forth we now know is newtonian physics. The analysis was able to show mathematically how objects and particles pool with each other with the force that bends their trajectory in space. He could show the existence of gravity mathematically but he couldn't really describe it the force that works on all of us. But one man. Was curious enough to keep asking the next question in the next question in the next. He built on the platform of newtonian physics until he stepped curious man albert einstein was able to show in his general theory of relativity how this mysterious force of gravity working on you and me and every sold the same how this mysterious force we cannot see but are bound to actually works. Some have said. The gravity is like dropping a heavy rock. In the very middle of a trampoline. It works. Space. Around. Hawaiian stein showed how these forces are at work in the world and in 1916 as a part of the general theory of relativity he predicted the existence of gravitational waves that send out ripples not just in the smallest are like a boat moving over the water or rocks sending shutters through a trampoline not just on the smallest butt on the cosmic level. He predicted. Gravitational waves. Powerful enough. To send ripples moving out through the very substance of space-time. And einstein's framework. Facetime. Might be considered a sort of fabric and it seems only reasonable that the presence of incredibly large amount of mass or energy might distort that fabric. If we knew how to look. Or perhaps more accurately he said if we knew how to hear we may eventually be able to detect this wrinkling of time and space the bigger the moving object for the transferal of force the more powerful the waves and if enough force is exerted in one moment energy. The curious man theory. But there was no way he could prove it in his time. And. Einstein was not perfect. After all. He was a beginner. He was doing a new thing. The first two ever really think of this new and beginners make beginner's mistakes. Some other scientist came along and they were curious too and those scientists corrected einstein's mistakes and in time not a whole lot of people in the scientific community that the fundamental truths of einstein's theories that we were all interconnected all moved at 1 in the same time by forces greater than ourselves no one doubted it but no one but no one could prove it. The scientific community. for the last 100 years these great forces moving and working in us all the time and if we could observe them and if we can measure them they might teach us about the beginnings of the universe. Self. The birth of son. The band behind the bangs that make. Of that there was relatively little doubt. What people doubted was our own capacity. Our own ability to measure to observe to know and to prove the truth that we have been curious about. For eons. You see up until now. What we have been able to measure about the universe. Have largely been in the sensory framework of the light. And its attendant wavelength throughout human history we have used the cosmos in a similar way. First. We viewed the cosmos with our unaided eye. We looked up at the stars. We told stories of their birth. And then with telescopes we learned again to broaden our vision to see a broad variety of radiation infrared light x-rays gamma rays radio waves and yet scientific consensus tells us that only about 10% of the matter in the universe can be viewed in this way. I'm so. 100 years of scientists as what new tool can we learn so that we can understand more. About the 90% of the matter in this universe we cannot. Currently detect. What can we use to open ourselves to the possibility that we might use more senses to observe the universe than simply our perception of light. And that is where everything changes. Because 1,000 physicists right here in this country laboured for 40 years to build the first-ever instrument that would allow us in some sense to hear the sounds of the universe. Capturing those gravitational waves as they go by. Some scientists. Work with laser inspirometer gravitational-wave observatory which dido for short. It's a gigantic instruments right here in the united states that is essentially two massive super-sensitive l-shaped rulers each leg of which is 4 km long. When the wave passes. Do giant 4-kilometer arms expand and contract just like our bodies do and ligo. That instrument 40 years in the making it hears it captures it once and for all. Imagine a deaf person processing information through the sensory input available to them seeing touching casing all of it and then imagine in one moments that. deaf person can also hear. It's a whole different way to process information about the world. There is a rough nalagi. To what it means to suddenly be able to observe ably note the existence of gravitational waves it is like being able to hear for the first time. Previously we could only put universe through this observable in ultraviolet light but now we can perceive here feels the expansion and contraction of the universe itself we can hear it pulsing with energy we can measure the heartbeat of dying neutron stars. The final crisis of two black holes if they become one. 1 physicists at ligo has said it's like galileo pointing the telescope. The sky for the first time. You're opening your eyes. Or in this case our ears. To a whole new set of signals from the universe that our previous technologies would not allow us to understand. And the amazing thing. Is it the signal we have only just begun to hear. Exactly as i am dying theory predicted it would be 100 years ago what his math. Says it should be. What was first formed in his imagination. Is now entirely observable today. We know more about who we are and where we stand in this universe because of the curiosity that led to his questions and that knowledge may in fact lead us toward advances we have only begun to imagine today. And why does it matter. Why do we care. If we can observe the sound of two black holes colliding. While the world around us bleeds. An actual human body is collide in death spiral every single day why do we care. About in minut. And nearly imperceptible wrinkle in space-time we never noticed anyway. Because i think. If we are in curious. We are doomed. If we are in curious. Either on the small scale or the large we are left with only what surrounds us and what surrounds us in this world of blood and fire and racism and tribalism what we are left with is not a state of being that is adequate or okay or enough to foster the well-being of even one person on this planet let alone the planet ourselves and so i say if we are in curious. We are doomed. And because the death of curiosity. Is the death of possibility it may just be that curiosity is the supreme spiritual practice. Of the human creature. Science. Is humanities. Collective. Spiritual practice. Curiosity. And curiosity is the seed of possibility. Possibility we have never needed the hope in the power inherent in new possibilities more than we need it right now. And when curiosity is paired with compassion we are able to ask and keep asking the important questions even on the very human scale of our interactions and are collisions with each other. My friends without those two. Without curiosity and compassion all possibility of real change or real hope withers on the vine and surely we are utterly lost. Without curiosity and compassion we are susceptible always to the untested and untrue narratives and theorem of those who only wish to divide us. But through the collective spiritual practice of the scientific endeavor we are coached every day to keep asking the next impossible question. We are coached. To keep asking how much further we might understand not only the universe but the depths of our own souls. And our responsibility to inform each other. Billion years ago. Two black holes collided in space. All this time the waves from that massive cataclysm have been rippling out through space. They moved through your body. And they moved through mine. They moved through the bodies of every human being stretching us and contracting us however minutely. The furthest distances became immediately impactful and we were all moved in the same way. We were all expanded. All contracted. Just as we are expanded and contracted right now quite literally by the collisions of black holes in the explosions and neutron stars. The pulse of the universe. Beets in you. And it beats in me in like measure. It emanates from places we will never see your fully know but connect us one and all to the mystery from which we spring into which we will ultimately return. And as long as we are curious. As long as we ask questions. The reality of our interconnection might become ever clearer. Guiding us onward to a shared perception of a beauty that belongs to each and everyone. And it's worthy of both our gratitude. And dollar off.

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3289.mp3

My front door and the dairy queen. It seems perhaps a rather large commitment when you think about it 10 miles round trip over questionable to rain for a dilly bar. When you have a mother who tries to pass off yogurt is desert you just have to do what you got to do you know. Along with my childhood and adolescence ran it was the conduit to every single thing that mattered to me can forth and back and forth i went on that road i wrecked my first car on that road in fact. Remember to remove the tape from the tape deck but did not turn off the ignition of my home it was a landscape i came to know like the back of my hand and not long after i left for college somebody had the bright idea of investing in my hometown. Which resulted in both a brand-new spur of the interstate and a releveling and straightening up the road into town. What's the most dangerous s-curve and even the steep grade of the hill were gone which meant that it was now possible to get to dairy queen without risking your life which meant that the drive was shorter in the trip was safer and everyone seemed happier except for me. Except for me. When i came home to visit twice a year and spent the entire time grousing about all the change. Home didn't look the same and i became sort of a cranky purest for old times. I found myself saying things like well this road just isn't as much fun to drive on anymore. Broken dirt which was all that remained of the old ass curves sometimes i would actually steer off the perfectly smooth pavement and drive the unnamed pained road just out of stubbornness. In fact i still usually refuse to drive the highway bypass to this day i call it the new road even though it's been 20 years. If my mom were here she would roll her eyes and say well. Nancy never was that going to change. There is a sort of nostalgic outsiders detachment that is necessary to begrudge the changing of a town you no longer live in. My parents were there better. It's still home just different. And it's only in my outsiders imagination that home. Can never change. The factors that everything we know everything that is precious to us everything that matters in this world is fluid. Even that which seems so store so i'm changing it to be marked on the landscape of our souls even our roads are rivers. Friends. Flowing differently and taking us along new and unexpected ruth even when we resist with every stubborn fiber. Almost always possible to go home again. It is not now and never have been possible to go home to a place unchanged. Upon a road that has not moved. The greatest philosopher heraclitus insisted insisted that the universe itself is changed. A sentiment he made famous with his dictum no man ever steps into the same river twice. Because of course new waters are always flowing. New courses being charted. New road beds cut into the fabric of our memories and our imagination. One school of thought known as process theology holds that in fact this movement ever forming and reforming landscape of our lives is god itself. Process got his in the change the recreated happening this very moment it is the ever reaching flow of the river that bring sacredness. And so today on the occasion of our homecoming from the summer season even if you never left. I want to welcome you home knowing. That we truly have gathered together on this river road. It's flowing change and growing thing. It's in turkey made sacred by all that we bring is caught up in chains that honors our identity and will carry us along. Into something we can only begin to imagine. As i said i believe it's usually possible to go home again. At least for the most part. What we cannot do is staunch the flow. Stop the road from moving or return to an imagined place where nothing ever changes. Welcome home. Even if you just arrived. To a place to change right now this minute by your presence. Welcome home knowing that you yourself are different than you were when last we gathered even if you were here last week. Welcome home. To a process of becoming. Along this river road. Created anew. By all that we pour into it.

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891.mp3

Thank you very much for that beautiful music. I want to be clear and direct this morning. About my personal experience of unitarian universalist congregation. Being part of our denomination helps me get through each week. With a sense of meaning. Purpose. Adequacy. Satisfaction. Personal integrity. I need to say this at the beginning of my sermon. Argue nomination and the congregations that are its members especially. The people and the principles it represents. All of the elements. That make up our unitarian universalist congregation. Are especially important to me. I have thought long and hard about what elements of my experience are. And this morning i want to focus on what i have learned. In the hope it will stimulate you to think about what river road congregation. Means to you. In the reading this morning steven johnson begins his story. With an expression of what unitarian universalist might describe. As a religious sense of awe. At the immense beauty and power of nature. Within the safety of their apartment. He and his wife are able able to observe. And appreciate the enormous. Fluctuating forces of weather. Nature's colors of gray and white and red and gold. Her gossamer billowing or threatening shape. Her undulating majesty. And then her swift and mighty movements. Looking out the window is a time they share together. It's an experience laced with aw. An appreciation. An intimacy. They both sent. That they are part of something. Far bigger than themselves. But suddenly all changes and what was safe and beautiful becomes deadly. In a few brief moments which he experiences. In slow motion. Johnson watches the window blowout. And he finds himself immediately relieved. First that he's unharmed. And then terrified that his wife maybe dead. Gladly he reports she too is safe and unharmed. He goes on to explain that after this traumatic experience. So the replacement window is constructed to withstand winds of a category 3 hurricane. He finds himself. Fearful. Whenever he hears the wind whistle outside the apartment window. The traumatic experience. Has left its mark. And he is a fearful man. Unable to relax. And enjoy. What he wants associated with beauty. And pleasure. Because he cannot shake the terrorists associated with the experience. Like a good unitarian universalist. He begins to study. And what did he study. Neuroscience. To learn more about how the human brain. Processes traumatic experiences. You laugh i did too. He also seeks professional help. To deal with what mental health professionals call. Post-traumatic stress disorder something we've heard a lot about since we've had both of these wars. Ongoing. The window breaking in on him and his wife. Has propel johnson on a journey. Define new meaning and understanding of his life. And his place in the universe. All of us encounter life experiences. In which our trust. Or face. That the world will treat us well. Is shaking. We lose a job. Someone we love becomes ill or dies. An important relationship salters. A dream we had for ourselves is crushed. Such experiences are park. Of our lives. We cannot avoid them. Our unitarian universalist congregation. I think. Are especially designed. To provide what we need. When we encounter such blows. Johnson sought professional help. And there are times when our spiritual or emotional pain. Can be so intense. The best appropriate. But i think our congregations provide a community of support. That enables us to keep steady in the more expected ups and downs of life. And i think there are three elements of our life. When we are part of a religious community liberal religious community. Set buffer ice. From the inevitable disappointment. And tragedies of life. In other words they help us maintain our hope. And our faith. First of all. And all speakers so i'm part of this congregation. This congregation. Represents. A set of values. And principles. That we have each decided are important. And our effort. To live with integrity. It's a choice off. We don't have to. We choose to become part of a unitarian universalist congregation. Because we cherish its liberal religious values. Respect for all human beings. A desire to keep learning and understanding our world. Belief in the democratic process. In human affairs. Hear this congregation we are reminded that these values are part of what gives our life. Meaning. And purpose. On sunday mornings were reminded in opening words the sermon. The closing words. The church mission. The spoken and written words of our principles are tools our god. We use as we go about our day. For instance. One of our principals. Pics of the continuing search for truth. Meaning and knowledge. Like steven johnson. When life deals us to blow. We often find ourselves. Seeking out all the information we can. About the subject at hand. We understand full well. The impetus. With which johnson threw himself. Into learning what neuroscience. Had to tell him about how the human spirit heels from trauma. Reason knowledge and the scientific method. These are resources. We may take for granted when we are together. But you will not find them in every church. They are a very important part. Of being a unitarian universalist. But of equal importance are the people here at river road. I know this without even knowing you yet. You serve as a source of inspiration and guidance for one another. You're a tremendous resource. You are living examples. Of people who have devoted your whole life. To the furtherance of liberal religious values and principles. Some of you working government to support the democratic process. Or your scientists seeking to advance scientific knowledge. Or you provide service to others in the fields of law medicine mental health. Education. Or you create art. That is quite beautiful. And is an avenue of expression for the human spirit. And you foster the development of human beings. By creating loving and nurturing families. I like to sing. That many of us. Come to worship on sunday morning. Because we think we might hear a sermon the stimulating. I spent my entire adult life studying about religion. And human personality. And yet i continue to come to worship on sunday mornings. To learn more. And to be inspired to live a more ethically responsible and faithful life. But i also come. Because i anticipate seeing a friend. Person may be further along in life. And i listened intently to how they dealt. With some experience i'm in the middle of. Or they may be younger. And remind me a new of what it's like. To begin a special relationship or a marriage. Or the creation of a new family. When i talk to them. I am given the chance. To remember the excitement. Of those early beginnings. Perhaps this happens for you. River road. Provides us people and ideas. And principles and values. That we can use. As guys in our own life. Second i think we're drawn to our church. Because we know that the people here. Believe that we. Our special. And deserve good in the world. I'm not talking about a sense of entitlement. That reflects the belief that we're better and more deserving than others. I'm talking about. That sense. That in the very core of our being. We are special. And there is no one else on this earth. Quite like us. Others are special in their own way. We are special. Because we are ourselves. I think most people come in the hope. But others want to see us. Want to hear what we think and feel about things. Care about how our life is going. Respect and care about us. As a religious person. That is an experience that is something to be treasured. In this twenty-first century of impersonality. Are you ua principles and purposes state. That's simply because we are human being. We possess dignity and worth. We deserve justice equity and compassion. We need acceptance and encouragement towards spiritual growth. And we're on a journey. Toward personal truth and meaning. We say in many different ways. That the human soul or spirit or personality is special. Some of us feel quite comfortable. Using the word sacred. Some of us. Feel comfortable talking about a god with him human beings are in relationship. Others simply talked of the spark of divinity. In every human being. Historically. We can trace our optimistic view of human personality and possibility. To the left wing of the reformation. When men and women were burned at the stake. Rather than we can serve you. That human beings. We're not. Sinners. In the eyes of god. Finally answered i think we come because we're we're. That in our friendships in our experiences and adult dead in the social justice programs. We've worked on shoulder to shoulder. We are not alone. Others in this congregation. Have the same range of feelings and values and aspirations and goals. That we have. Perhaps you've experienced this. When you banter about the latest triumph of the wizards or the orioles. Or when you remember the horror you felt. As you watch the world trade center explode in flames. Or when you came together to celebrate the life of a much-loved congregational leader. Or the birth of a much-desired child. I think it's these deeply meaningful and passionate experiences of similarity. That also keep us coming back. I hold fast to my belief in the sanctity of the human spirit. I believe that there is something special and every person. Aspirin. Or a soul. Something which is divine and which seeks to grow and develop. When unimpeded by outside circumstances. I believe that there's a creative energy or process available to us. With asia's in our growth. And supports us as we seek to heal. Our wounded spirits. Eyewitness that process many times. As i've been in the parish. And as a pastoral psychotherapist. I believe that ultimately there is a mystery at work in that process. It is the resilience and tenacity of the human spirit. Coupled with that creative process. Which brings healing. To our spirits. Whether it happens in my consulting room. Or hear on sunday morning in your worship hall. Or in the coffee hour afterwards. I know the power of professional. Therapeutic help. When life deals us. A devastating blow. I made a decision many years ago. To put myself. And that kind of place. Off.. In my life. I want to be there. When people are hurting. And seeking their way through. And quite frankly it's the source of my own inspiration. I'm in awe of the resilience of the human beings who come to see me. Weather there. A young woman from a very christian denomination. Who finally was able to say she was lesbian. And he thought to be a minister. And experienced great pain when she was rejected by her denomination. Or whether it's a middle-aged woman. Made a plan for retirement with her husband. And then he suddenly died. And she was at a loss as to what her meaning and purpose in life was. Or whether it's the young adults who come to me. Because someone in their family who means a great deal to them. Is alcoholic. And they are frightened and feeling helpless. And again. Wondering how to make meaning out of it in their lives. These are just examples of the kinds of things that we are born into. And that it is up to us. To figure out. How to navigate through and remain whole. Human being. For all these people. The disappointment or blows of life. Had become overwhelming. Only overtime as they told their stories. And a safe supportive environment. Did their sense of helplessness. Sadness and anger slowly shift. They began to feel the more tempered hope. And again to you. That they had some. Control. Over their own line. Let's return to steven johnson. After the window blew out in his apartment. We would say that johnson was traumatized. He found himself fearful. Of the whistle of the wind. He could not move past experience. He began to seek out knowledge because that helped him deal with his wild anxiety. He sought professional help. And part of its healing involved simply telling his story. Over and over. To someone who could listen. The story began to change. For johnson. The fear drained out of the experience. I think johnson will tell you. That once again he is filled with awe. When there is a snowstorm. Or a child is born into his family. Or he has a deeply satisfying intimate conversation. With a friend. Or his wife. He sealed tempered he feels tempered safety. And hope. In the face of the enormity of the universe. He's able to appreciate the beauty. Even the complexity. Of the experiences that life. I'm going to close by reading to you a story that he's tells at the end of his book. Which again i would say is religious in nature. Is search for a scientific understanding is over. Is no longer seeing a therapist. It's been several years since the window incident. And he and his wife. Have had. A child. He says. When i watch my son's sleeping. And seal the contented shiver of opioid release. As i gaze into his crib. Part of the wonder of that experience. Is this connection with a history of mammals. And their evolve child-rearing systems. The miracle. Of the tending instinct. But another part of the wonder. Lies in the details. In the knowledge that this precise pattern of neurons. Firing in my visual cortex. The pattern that correspond. To the soft edges of his face. Illuminated by the nightlife. Belongs to me and me alone. If there is not grandeur in this vision. Then grandeur has become meaningless. It doesn't make me love my son any less. Standing there in the dark. Side of the crib. Knowing something more. About where love comes from. I would say. Steven johnson. Spirit. Is healed. Let's have a few moments of silent meditation.

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4379.mp3

Going to do. With courage. Resurrection's they always start with courage. Sometimes in the face of almighty odds. And resurrections always have one other thing we might love to dance around but is ever-present. Resurrection go from courage always to loss. I told you earlier that jesus had a lot of followers right that people came from all around to be apart of this thing that he was trying to build and jesus also had some very special friends. People who work with him he calls them the disciples at times and jesus is very best friends the one he's loved so much the one he walked with him worried with was named peter. Jesus called him peter which means in greek rock. Because peter was supposed to be the strong one. Wouldn't break he was supposed to be the one that kept it all together with everybody else one. What happened to that great big city in jerusalem and they all went there together in the police came and they grabbed jesus now haul them off and everything was scary and everyone but everyone was afraid you know what peter she's very best friend id. He ran away. Any kid. Garden where people sitting around a campfire were sort of gossiping and yammering and talking about the politics at the campfire and did not tell anybody who he was and it one time a servant girl came up to him he said she said you. I know you. We're hanging out with that cheese's guy weren't you were. She said. I have no idea about. Non roasting marshmallows or whatever it was they were doing around that campfire for another good 45 minutes or so until another person came up to him since said. I know you i know you had he said i will not have such libel i know nothing of what you speak i do not know this man. And a third time. Time someone came up to peter and he said i know you. Best friend. You were there with that man you're a part of this rebellion you're the one of those dangerous people i know you and peter said for the third time no i do not know that man. Three times he denied his best friend three times he denied what he believed three times he was so afraid that he gave away his courage. Our lives. No way. To get to easter without going through good friday 1st. You can't have a resurrection without first having a loss. Without losing something without falling. Failing or even dying. Peter lost something. He abandoned it. His courage. And jesus in the end lost his life. Because all of our living is only in the context of the ways was falling short and the ways we've suffered and what we've lost and we deny the holy every single time we turn our back on the poor or the lonely or the hurting every time we don't say what must be said. Every time we stop listening to the ones who need us most every time we lose faith in our power to make the world whole we like peter deny and deny and deny. There is good news here. You cannot find yourself unless you've lost yourself first. And you cannot find your courage. To be a better man or a stronger woman unless one night when you were very afraid you gave that courage way. Even when it mattered most. Rebirth literally and spiritually. It only happens. When first we have no law. At the unitarian church in st louis. Services monday thursday good friday and easter. The congregation was primarily humanists then as it is now. Sno-way. Maybe because it loved its fierce minister. It loved. Stories. Easter egg hunt go long before due in part because of the installation of the memorial garden. Including enter dashes of a handful of congregants. For me. Sold to dues. Spring around the co. With spring around the corner much colder than it is here my day that week were filled with one small task after another. Top of that list. Was. The goldfish aquarium. It was midway through my tenure as its religious educator and i thought how small animals would add a missing dimension to religiously educating young children. I had tried to gerbil or was it a mouse. At home. Goldfish. In the small cylindrical aquarium. The fish named wanda. For the recently-released movie. Listen to head start classroom. Are overwhelmed and caring for her and gave her back. Wanda became. The office set. When i had left on palm sunday. Yep they did that story 2. Was cloudy. It screamed clean me. Another stop took turn. I have been saying aloud i was going to do it. Tuesday morning. That was my plan. I was the first one in. Opening the office suite door and they're almost in front of me lay wanda. About 4 ft. From her tank. Breathing ever so slowly. As she lay. On the purple speckled rug. I was so startled danielle such a thing. Before taking another look. I thought now really cloudy water. And understanding that. Bekfast do really fly. Especially when they can't breathe. Women who work in the office came in and we said about in motion. One picking wanda up and putting her back into the tank. She fell to its bottom. Resting on the gravel. Upright. Ever so slowly. In-n-out. Praying. One of us grab the small fish bowl nearby where we kept her while cleaning the tank filling it halfway with freshwater decillion aided it was dropped and then added some water from the old fish tank. We waited a minute and put her in the freshwater bowl. And lay on her side. Cargill moved. Her gill moved out. And then. Add stop. We stood there. Somewhat stunned. Believing in our ability. To save her.

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4371.mp3

Thank you for that beautiful arrangement cliff. Him by the reverend fred small which is in our teal hymnal if you want to look at the words. March theme story. We explore how about we believe is true. Can shape. Delineate. Consciousness. Instrument is part of a pear. Flotsam and jetsam. Which is nancy's creative idea. You may have heard her preach last week that flotsam. That is floating out on the water is swept there. Events beyond our control. Maybe there's an actual rogue wave or a tsunami or a big rainstorm to the northeast is impacting our weather today. Metaphorically standing for story. Flotsam comes from the wave. Which could be an accident. Illness. Death. Divorce. The job loss. School closure. A big change. Flotsam on the water may be evidence that your story has shifted. Usually. Ready or not. Record. Is found floating on the sea. To which return this week jetsam has intent. At some moment those who are on a boat or a plane ass acid there is too much weight. The choice is made to jettison. To throw something out. Probably to improve stability in a kind of emergency. Suggest some is a word that's just a shortened version of jettison. Indicating. In distress. Just because the cargo. Has become the obstacle. It must be discarded at times for survival. Individually and collectively we all have stories. Stories that have become obstacles. Stories that it is time. To discard. We hold on to them. At our peril. We could tell an infinite number. Really. I chose three that are i think both universal. And consistently undermining. They all live in the world. Of measurement. With his endless variations of character plot dialogue drama. So much drama. They are destructive stories they are dangerous. Do our twenty-first-century global challenge. They are delusions. Netcom from the measurement world yet they seem true. Unless we recognize that the assumption on which they are based. Is hidden from our weariness. The first. I am here alone. Disconnected. The 2nd. My identity. Are fixed. Static. I will never. Enough. Starved. You could shorthand them another way. Disconnected. Static. Starved. Dss. Is a distress call my friend. You will most likely be living in. Blocked by obstacles. Holding heavy burdens. In survival mode. And all the while. You may be a person with many more resources than seem apparent. We are thinking poor sad me all day all night helpless at elect flailing. Messing. Of us. So we can all. Myself included. Lose our sense. Of creative action. Because this cognitive framing has us in a very small prison. And i storytelling. Is ensuring. Our pain. That's the irony. You never guess. Assistance. Because you are sure there is none. You are convinced. Of who you are. So you never allow. For growth. You never do get enough. Because you just know. There's little to be had. It's a story that you wrote. It can be truly. Difficult. To perceive. That you're in the cons drive.. That you belt. A short humorous tale gets at this point well. A shoe factory sense to marketing scouts to a remote jungle of latin america. To study the prospects for expanding business. One scout sends back a telegram saying. Situation hopeless. No one wears shoes. The other scout writes back triumphantly. Glorious business opportunity i have no shoes. How might we jettison these three stories. The first one i am here alone. I know this one well. Despite. Countless experiences of actual connectedness over decades. It's infrequently will pop up as a kind of stress. Indicator. That's how these stories are vert to them. Under pressure. Something triggers the old story. I may be flooded with this memory of the experience of severe disconnection. And then there's a kind of limbic brain survival story that takes up a very. Mournful violin song. I am in the shattuck. When it arrives now. I don't try to smash it away. I welcome my sad and lonely 11 year old self. I'm compassionate now and i see it operating and others. I know that it feels lonely. It feels painful and it is. Yet there is no doubt in my true or body spirit alignment that the survival mind story is. False. A very partial view now. So much comes in when we simply replace this i. In suffering. With a kind of we. Consciousness. We. Ar. Interconnected being. You just have to fake it. Do you make it. He did say it until you actually mean it. And that's what i learn to do to get very cautious and skeptical when my eleven-year-old self attempted to hijack my lizard brain and hang on. To this cargo. It needs to be jetsam. For me to move ahead. Now. I'm going to confess. Just happened to me in costa rica at yoga teacher training. Amazing crazy true i'm in paradise and is fantastic experience. A small group. Sometimes the bane of our existence. To which i was assigned for my graduation project. Was a hot mat. Disjointed it was scattered it was dysfunctional it was sniping. I resisted trying to facilitate his not going to be the minister. Hi nash my cheese. Over this luck of the draw. Didn't have the group i yearn for like the one my friend laying had which seems so easy and so fun. I went all the way in the downward. Spiral. To i am here alone. It took an overnight arrest. And some verbal processing with my friend. For me to cautiously wonder. To whom i might actually be connected. What was i not. Because of a stock. An old story. I decided to invite in my group. Who i thought was the best prospect into a conversation. I learned she was feeling the same lonesome way. We got all that out in our mutual lament first. You have to grease. You have to say we're in this group. Kind of sucks. Then. We made a simple creative plan to shift the dynamic. We modeled what was showing up as missing. Collaborative partnership. And i said to each other. We are interconnected being. And you know how the story ends it's true. With a level of this warm and authentic small group connection. That i would have. Warren was truly impossible. Barb. Spirit. The two women. Who had been feeling alone. The more honest enough to admit it. We wrote this new story we replaced the old one simple as that sometimes it is that quick once you get through the process. And it move the energy in a new direction. The second story to jettison. My identity. Difference in our cultural landscape right now. And it has consequences that are far-reaching. The more we hear the lived experience of those who have discovered a fluid or a changing identities. Plural. The more that some react. And double down on their static. We see it every day. Whether it is gender expression. Sexual orientation. Construction of race and ethnicity. Immigrant status. The centrality of economic class. The culture of identity formation is changing rapidly. Tectonic shift. Threaten a very central story. My identities are fixed. Human beings like to say. I know my people. My pride is homogeneous. And therefore safe. But the new story is way more open-ended. We are fluid self shaped by language culture family education. And identities switched shifts. Over lifetime. This is hard. Essential norms that create a kind of stasis and predictability. This is ross. On the psyche. It's not easy to move this jetsam overboard and yet it's crucial for our growth. No one giant leap that we're witnessing is in gender expression. Gender identity. Wow the very vulnerable and honest articulation of this has been going on for decades. I think it's fair to say the cultural shift in 2015 was that. Is extremely brave and high-profile transgender people. Caitlyn jenner the most recognized. Have been saying loud and clear i am a fluid person. We are fluid self. And a clergy colleague that i respect tremendously the reverend allison robinson. Is a transgender american baptist minister. Lgbtq advocate. She's been a leading voice. Her story is inspiring and it's dramatic. Reverend robinson. Went to west point. As daniel. Robin robinson was married parent before. A former army officer. Career retirement. Who has been attending classes at baylor university divinity school in texas. Not your hotbed of progressive change. Imagine. The new gender identity story emerging for her had hard consequences but the cost. Of keeping the old story going with getting. Happier. Even deadly. One day she actively pondered suicide. Driving her car to a nearby river. Continuing in. And as she puts it. Kind of surprising grace. A very clear and sudden feeling came over her that this was not the right way forward. Of course it took time for her to jettison the story on which her entire life was based. A lot of courageous steps of change. She started seeing a sympathetic psychotherapist. She began to study in the school library collection which had to her surprise a huge collection. I'm faith sex and gender. And then she started. To speak our truth. Because. That is what we must do. Attentively when the story changes. Reverend robinson was fortunate. To receive the support of her wife danielle at that time. The support of her four children. And the support of many. But not all. Her friends and relatives. No doubt experience something. Darts in her articulate and passionate speaking. The old. Story. With killing her. And the new story. Was required. To save her life. Do each of those moments of interior knowledge. That we are living a story. For the false. Front. One that has ended. And ultimately. Something needs to change. Ark survival depends on it. And this leads us to the third story that we must jettison to thrive in the 21st century there will never be enough. I think this one calls for a note of. Adjustment and disclaimer from the zanders and the art of hustle bility. Lives are in daily jeopardy. And they must and do concentrate on staying alive. As any of us would if we were held up on the street. Or lost at sea. That is not the same as survival thinking. Which is the undiscriminating ongoing attitude that life is dangerous. And that one must put one's energy into looking out. For number one. This attitude prompts us to seek to acquire more for ourselves no matter how much we have. And to treat others as competitors. No matter how little they have. And real scarcity. Our interactive. In the simple sense that the frenzied accumulation of resources by some. Leaves others. Without enough. In a world. That has the means to supply the basic needs. Of everyone. Disturbed story is playing out. Large. Allowed. Ugly. On the republican candidates campaign trail. Ted cruz donald trump are strategically fanning the flames. Ebony normous. False. Version of this story. There will never be enough. It should alarmas. And truly worried sometimes in our country. And when small-minded or narcissistic people one of them. Will be the republican candidate. Continue to blair out does oblique story. We see xenophobia violence. Ingrate escalation of tension. And rage. A dream my 2 weeks out of the country's only one question kept coming from non-americans. What the hell is happening over there as if i knew. At the same time. Polarisation. Against this means. Awesome races story. Is to be stuck. In the world of measurement. We address it. By ditching the entire chess game. Defiantly boldly even exuberantly inhabiting the world of possibility. To lift off from that life of struggle. Ever acknowledge it as real. And sail into new options is xander say. We will need to affirm. With conviction there is a world of many possibilities. Say it until we mean it. And not just say it. But make it so. We will. Ally ourselves with people organizations and movements. That are actually building the world. About which we dream. And thriving only comes if we inhabit. The different game. Otherwise we risk. The devolution that accompanies increasing raise back and forth. In the world of measurement. Take note. Please. Cuz i'm sure i'm going to get any mail. I am not criticizing the counter protest. To trump and cruz. There are times. To stand against hatred with our own anger without our own outrage. It has to be done. But to live there permanently. Is to inhabit i feel the wrong story. There is a difference. Story. I believe our largest and most complex are most effective responses will be to create. The places we want to see. To be the people. Who are citizens of generosity. And generativity. To persevere. In our faith in the world of possibility. And that is a story. Of the future. I want to inhabit fully. The poet david white's words always encouraged me to make the best unique contribution that i can muster. In this. Story project. Of being me. But being off. And i close with his teaching on story. One of the most beautifully disturbing questions we can ask whether a given story we tell about our lives. Is actually true. And whether the opinions we go over everyday. Have any foundation. Or are things that we repeat. To ourselves. Simply so that we will continue to play the game. It can be quite disorienting to find that a story we have relied on is not only not true but actually never was. Not now not ever. Another form of obsolescence confrey. At the cocoon that we have spun about ourselves. The story was true at one time and for an extended.. But the story was even true and good to us. But now. It is no longer true. I no longer have any benefit. In fact our continued retelling of it simply imprisons us. White says what if we acted. As if. It wasn't true anymore. One of the interesting mercies of this kind of questioning is that it is hard to lose by asking. If the story is still true. We will soon find out. Then we can go back to telling it. And if it is not. We have turn the key. We have worked the hinges. We have walked out in the clean air again with a simple. Queen of the door. As we design new stories we recreate. The worlds of possibility. And so much awaits are telling. A million stories are possible. Choose the stories. That are large enough. To live into. Tuesday. Or we can thrive. Make it a new day.

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1965.mp3

Whenever there are soldiers that need bringing home. I had a hometown tree. In my case. It was across the street from the junior high school at all. Stateless. Which branch is just low enough for the adventurous to get a foothold for climbing. And the tree in my hometown there across from the junior high school in mount vernon indiana. Was the place where the elementary school kids would gather to play jacks in the dirt. After school. Now i'm sure it would be a place for the elementary school kids to get together and play angry birds. Other smartphones but it's the same concept. The place where the junior high kids would hang out underneath it gossiping at recess. And the teenagers would all congregate there by cover of darkness leaving whatever detritus their evenings created behind them and archaeologists waiting treasure trove of discarded b. Of late 20th century society. It was a craggy old big that tree. And no doubt the ages for it was an old tree went on. It's service is talentry i think steadily war on it. There was a bubble gum. We were not supposed to have bubble gum especially in the junior high school every junior high student at mount vernon junior high school in mount vernon indiana when the bell rang at the end of recess. So imagine generations upon generations of built-up bubblegum that with the weight which the tree was expected to bear. Eventually the town tree was so covered in multicolored that it looks like a magic and rather gross fairy had waved her wand over it and forced it to burst out with pink and blue and purple warts. But there were also memories carved into its trunk. Loved one and lost. Bobby love jane. Jane loves alan forever. Joe and jim were here 1986. You know those carvings. All of them the same stories carved into the trunk of every town tree all over the earth were carved into that one. Intuit surface decade after decade romance after romance into the soft and yielding surface of the woods. Until eventually the town tree wasn't so much a tree anymore. It's simply a tablet. Athletes for writing on. And a place to stick your gum. Instead of a treat the talentreef eventually became merely a useful thing a place for people to record their memories implant their hopes. Annex out their own enduring importance. With the scraping away of ancient bark. Think of your hometown again. Or at least the place that seems like a hometown. Perhaps the club pta. A league of women voters for half the household congregation perhaps this one. Do you recall the hometown martyr. Who always stays the latest. Cleans up after everyone else. Volunteers with a warm smile and a willing shrug shoulders the burdens of so many things and extends branches of welcome to all who come asking. All those needs. All those wounds tended in the stories heard and tasks well done all those duties accomplished and all that coffee poured and the were the actions taken down into the soft and yielding surface of a person's spirit. With commitment after commitment and meeting after meeting and soccer game after soccer game. Until eventually the town martyr isn't really an individual person anymore. But are you stupid. A tablet. Athlete. Upon which others may right. And you will if you will forgive me for stretching it a bit. Place for people to stick their gum. Engaged joyful vibrant individuals in the community becomes a place for people to plant their hopes. Person to seek out with a numerable needs and a way for people to act out their own enduring important. On the surface of someone else's soul. You know what town martyr. You know perhaps a dozen. Are you married to one. And surely. For some of us on some days. And it sometimes the town martyr is in fact you. My town tree is not there anymore. I knew school was built and because the town tree was dead already and probably hazardous to everyone safety that dunk it up. Long before that. In fact i never did see its leaves or if i did i never noticed them. I never did see it blooming or watch it drop one seat or one solitary sign of life into the surrounding ground come to think of it i am not even sure what kind of tree it was. Like everyone else. I never did see the town tree for itself. I saw it for what it did for us. I thought for how it's served me. How true also for the town martyr. Did you ever. The italian martyr. Blossom. Mary oliver didn't. And when she wrote the poem that we read this morning she reflected on this then instead of blossoming generous individuals she looked out at the world and she looked inside herself and she saw a society of town martyrs. She realized that she had forgotten what kind of leaves she ever had in the first place and she remembered a crucial difference between the town tree and the town martyr the town tree you see is stuck there. The child martyr can move. Can begin a journey the town martin choose not to be a martyr anymore mary oliver wrote. One day you finally knew what you had to do. And began the all the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles and my life every voice cried but you didn't stop. Have you left their voices behind the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds and there was a new voice. What you slowly recognized as your own. The kept you company. Have you throw deeper. Deeper. Into the world. It was a new voice. Which you slowly recognized. As your own. And that you heard. For the first time in new. As you strode deeper and deeper into the world. One day the town murder in all of us finally knows. What he has to do. One day she began the journey away from everyone else's demands of what we should be. And toward a vision of what she must be. Now or in the future or sometime ago and the business the cacophony of voices when the need to be all things to all people prove the fallacy mary oliver tells us we might just hear our own voice. Clear for just a moment. And we might find that we have been missing the sound of it. For a very. Very long time. We take the individual spiritual journey very seriously here at river road. Great deal about it as well. About the fact that each of us is engaged in a free and responsible search for meaning about the fact that nobody not even the one you love the most has the right to impinge upon your search for truth and meaning. Is that in the leylide service. 2 weeks ago. Had testimony more vibrant and beautiful than i could ever give. About the ways in which we might contribute to the community and the people around us by boldly saying yes to that which only we can do. It was an invitation to lean into a call. What you uniquely must-do is this community at this time. In order to find your way. In order to hear your voice you must know what to say yes to and when. And you must not be afraid to do so. In order to find your way to hear your voice you must likewise know when to say no. Is the great poet ee cummings road. Be nothing but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else. Means to fight the hardest battle any human being can fight. And never stop fighting. Nothing but yourself. And world that is doing its best night and day to make you everyone else. Is the fight hardest battle you can fight. To fight it to the end of your days. The truth within as our guiding light even we who espouses ourselves. Beyond the voices of the multitude even we sometimes forget. What the self is were supposed to be trusting. Discerning what we are called to do and what we are not called to do even we become slates. Upon which everyone else may right. Even we become places. Where everyone else can stick their gum. Too often even for us the sound of our own voices the call of our own spirits. Is stifled under it all and we find ourselves lonely for our own company. Hungering for the honor of choosing our own pads instead of feeling as if our choices have all been made for us. I don't recant shoes. But we must. And it is in the very nature of a human being to do so. There cannot be a guess. Without an o. Forever yes. Is a tacit no to something else every no is a tacit yes to something else. The word no carries within it this mighty power the opportunity to make choices to choose as mary oliver's poem reminds us that we can step away from the demands of others and find just a moment long enough to listen to the still small voice. That leads us on. No is a one-word boundary. It's a single syllable statement of intent that starts a journey it's a symbol little little noise that differentiates what one chooses to be. From what one chooses not to be. And to be fully engaged in a demanding spiritual life is nothing is not a series of difficult choices. Informed by practice of deep listening. Send yes. Saying no. Are about choosing your life rather than having it chosen for you. The sconces consciously choosing our own pads rather than having them dictated for us. Involved having the strength of will. Control both our yeses and our nose. In this world controlling our glasses and our nose is easier said than done. Especially since it means living consciously in the face of a global marketing system that exists. For one singular purpose mainland to make people unlearn their capacity to say no. In our homes in our communities. It means leaving consciously in relationship with the people we love. Sometimes people who want or need so much of us whether or not we have much left to give. In our own hearts that means consciously valuing ourselves enough to know that we do not need to prove our worth. By doing and doing. And doing. Set a tree is worth more than the carvings human being sebastian to it. Far more difficult to see that we human beings are worth more than the sum total of the things we do for others. In fact it's theologically challenging. Somewhere in the heart of every town mart arrest the persistent message of their own inadequacy somewhere in the heart of every town more martyr including me. That's the part of themselves that is never sure they're good enough. For the love they receive from a generous universe. Somewhere in the heart of every town martyr. Perhaps somewhere in your own heart. Is the never quite absent sense of self doubt. And the hope that if you do one more thing well. If you take on one more loving responsibility if you hold one more mountain on your shoulders you might just prove once and for all beyond the shadow of a doubt that you are actually a good person. Or a decent mother. Or good friend. Or inadequate steward of your congregation. Enough. If you extend your branches for other people's uses enough maybe they'll make it official at some point. Maybe a hat that says good person on it what you can wear everywhere. Enough. Can you do it enough times maybe that will no longer be room for doubt especially inside your own heart. Geology as unitarian universalist. Particularly that second view of universalism. A radical and important message. About all of this frantic self-justification. We here in this room. Whether we choose to accept it or not. Are the inheritors of the good news that people across the ages fought for and died for the vibrant message of universal love. Our forebears. For people who stood bravely in the face of the fire-and-brimstone profits of their day. And declared that no one. Not one single person on this whole earth was so broken has to be deemed unworthy and permanently cast out. Declared that no one not one single person was outside the expansive reach. Avidlove. That embraces all. We were talking in. Coffee hour in the lounge between services. About how. We are so impacted by the reasons we do things. And in traditional christian churches sometimes i have this tendency to be very frustrated by what i call salvation insurance. Klein's to do a thing. Infant baptism for any number of other things. That their salvation their eternal soul might be guaranteed so we do things in this world in order to ensure that we will be safe and some other world. Unitarian universalist have no need for salvation insurance. And yet. We have a parallel pattern where we do things. All sorts of things. Not to prove our salvation but to prove ourselves worthy of the blessings we experience. It's the exact same behavior. Logically framed in a different way. But it's the same self-justifying and in my heart i want to do good things not just because it proves i am worthy or because it's salvation insurance for some other life because it but because it is the right thing to do. Because it is what i am called to do. Not because it's something i feel guilted into. And there is this idea. Is radical idea theologically embedded in our tradition which tells us that there is something as true and lovable about being a human being as there is something true and lovable about being a tree. Undergirding message the inherent worth and dignity of every person and the good news for us. Is it true if there is inherent worth and dignity of every person. We don't have to prove ourselves here among one another. Embraces all this love is truly universal you are already justified simply by your being. Attorney asked you not to be all things to all people. Rather to listen to the voice of the spirit within you. Among us. And beyond our understanding. And it when you're listening you do what you're called to do. Not everything else besides. This is true. If we are in love. Beyond measure. If we are worthy just as we are if we need neither salvation insurance nor justification by every little deed we do. Somehow. We don't have to prove it to each other. We have only to share. Define those places where are true obligation are deep joy in the needs of the world around us coincide. Life is an adventure. Impersonal department. And finding our way. Choosing our guesses in our nose and listening for the particular direction of our own callings and loving ourselves enough to follow them. The primary purpose of saying no isn't to shut us off from options. But to give us the freedom to say yes. The something else. And just maybe to allow someone else to freedom to say yes as well. No means you value yourself and others enough to make room. 4shared community. It means you trust other people to do the job as well as you could. It means that you yourself participate in the system held together by love. There's room for you here among us. There is room for you to share those precious treasures those gifts you hold in your own hands and when each of us has the courage to follow our own callings to share what is uniquely ours to share to take control of our gases in our nose. Our congregation and our homes. And our communities. Can lovingly and generously give back to us as well. A people who would discover the depth of their spirits cannot be a garden of martyrs. People who would help heal the world cannot be bedraggled by its demands hunched over by its burden carried forward by guilt. Or self-justification. A people who would deepen into their own true calling. Must be a garden of living diversity. Thousand different kinds of trees. Leaves of many colors. The town tree. In mount vernon indiana is gone. Whatever leaves it had i will never know. It's just their bearing everybody's everyone's burden than everybody's chewing gum until it frankly could stand no more. Difference between the town martyr in the town tree. Italian martyr can move. The town martyr can choose. His path. If we know. That we are loved. That we are worthy enough already. The town murder in each of us can choose to begin a journey of discovery. Not to prove ourselves. But to follow the direction of our calling. And somewhere along the line. I'm not complex and beautiful journey. We might. Just here. The sound of our own voices. Calling. May it be so. Indominus. A closing hymn is number 15. Rise in body or spirit to sing together.

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4790.mp3

Hi okay so. This is kind of a speech hannah like a spoken word thing. Our lives are determined by a series of numbers. Number to finding some significant life events. 0. Begin school. Teenager teen adult. The numbers define not just our lives but also everything in them. One slice of pizza 8 hours of sleep and 10 values. 10 things that define who you are and what you believe in. When trying to decide upon my values i realized that like everything else in my life. They can only be defined by a sequence of numbers. But i was zero i was christened brought into the world and a catholic church and welcomed into the world in the eyes of god. I got that i never truly connected with. What i was eight. I receive communion accepting the body and blood of christ in the form of a cracker and a glass of wine. And that's that change can only be explained by my values. Things i believe in. Ar. Number one. No one is born good or bad. We start off at zero and each thing we do either add or takes from the beginning total. Doesn't matter how people are inherently or her bad they are at age 10 because by age 30 they could have added 50 points their scoring when the nobel peace prize. People are always changing there is no bad there is no good it's not constant. It's not flag and it's not white. People like everything else. I'm more of a gray and off-white color. And must be treated as such. Which brings me to number two. I have a little sister. She's almost six years younger than i am. I hated that you can get away with things that i couldn't. And i thought i was being treated unequally and that's on fairly. However as my dad pointed out in any occasion. I could be treated equally or fairly. Because in the reality of the world. People are not all equal. The same standards that you hold the president of the united states for example is unfair. Because i'm a sixteen-year-old girl and he's the leader of our country. You can't hold my eleven-year-old sister to the same standard you hold me too. Because i have and should. More expected of me. If we want to hear 2. All human beings are created equal. We have to treat people fairly. And fair is not always equal. Lastly. I believe we shouldn't live our lives based on where we want to go after we die. Because for all we know are heaven or a hell. Could be right now. In this moment. And to live in the moment and most importantly buu.

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4076.mp3

17 every night and every morning even though it's printed nowhere so surprised. Surprising route. You think you're headed down one road and train takes off another direction. This is something about which i don't feel complete control so. Global tour so bear with me. Awesome kinder the roads that we journey in this life from place to place. Accumulating stories. Making meaning of our travel. The overlapping strands of history are fascinating to me particularly around this season of the year. Because we fall back in time today. We mark the turn of the celtic wheel of the year into winter. We might investigate the places. Of the ancestors that's allen and all saints day. In the poem that we heard by li-young lee. Evokes all these layers. All the complications of living. And dying in a single peach. He says oh to take what we love inside us to carry with ennis in orchard. As if death were nowhere. In the background. From joy to joy. Enjoy. I came across this poem. It started to read. About the poet. It took me in a surprising way. The poet li-young lee and i were born. In the same month. In the same year. August 1957. Jakarta indonesia. Son of chinese refugees from very public families. His great-grandfather had been the first president of republic of china. And lee's father was the personal physician to mount si tongue. After two years of the child in indonesia. One with his father in prison. His family fled the country to escape anti-chinese sentiment. And after five years of migration. They eventually landed. In the us. In 1964. And then quite surprisingly to me dr.lee his father. Denver seminary. And became a presbyterian minister. In a small community. Pennsylvania. By 1964 the year that lee had just learned in the united states. Back in el paso. After some american. Domestic. Migration. I sojourned as a child with my parents for 4 years to manhattan for a year of seminary for my father. And then. To austin to la school. When his face fell apart. Once we return to el paso my father's birthplace. The traditions of the mexican day of the dead were a common part of my childhood. We also honored our ancestors. Not in the graveyard for the home altar. It was more like an annual presbyterian. All saints day service. But the images of mexico infused our border city. If you lined up my grandparents. And leon lai's. They could. Have conceivably overlap. Somewhere. In vast china because my maternal grandfather was born in shanghai. He was the son of two american presbyterian missionaries and ministers in that area. 1 humana hospital. And one who helped. Administer. School. And my grandfather that maternal grandfather is a decidedly mixed. Ancestor. The kind that you struggle. To forgive. He brought great gif. He brought tremendous to my family. We see it in for generations. He was a complicated so if there ever was one a harsh calvinist. An emotionally abusive person. When i think of the traveling previous generations he's at the top of my list. A trouble. And i hold both the promise and the suffering together. Because it impacted so many around me. Lee and i share these strands of shared experience so much that is different. And yet this humans fart in biology and spirit. And i wonder about his relationship. The parents and the grandparents. Great-grandparents in. How he makes peace. For the generations. Lee young lee's father perhaps. Had presbyterian roots as a doctor in china. Perhaps he was influenced by the missionary tradition. I wish my great-grandparents were apart. A tradition. About which i also have extremely mixed feelings. Personal public. History of. Complex. Who knows how all of this aligned with political life in china. Oppression in indonesia. Or finally. In dr. lee small presbyterian congregation when he was a minister. Really. How it impacted his son lee young lee. Who came to writing. Later in life. As a way of making meaning. We hold the good. The difficult. The searing. Baby stuff. The painful. And enjoyed together. We try to make a path. And all this pain during reminded me that first and jess and travel and migration and ancestors and history are constantly fluid. Both the people we remember in the stories fat. Raquel about them shift. Overtime. We dig deeper. Bbqs not to. Iron description. Of what happened. May change dramatically. We uncover different truth. As we. Adapt. Our understanding of human limitation. Does receipt. Healing. We offer forgiveness. Ali's poetry from this. Poem from blossom's evokes a kind of multi-layered living of history that way. The story. Of the hiroshima children's drawing. But which i have not forgotten is also a complex history it's a tail and which i lived many chapters as minister of social justice. At all souls. By the time i got involved the original drawing. Which was so precious to the japanese had been found in the closet. Of a former board chair. And the reclamation of the story in the art was well underway. My work and gabrielle's included stewardship of a filmmaking project on the story a journey of multiple twists and turns. They say sometimes ministries cat hurting. This was the largest group of cats i had ever. And also. Some of the most poignant. Poignant memories of my all souls ministry were witnessing the survivors of hiroshima. On pilgrimage. To see the drawings at the all souls library. Every august. They come to commemorate the hiroshima dead. And also for the japanese ancestor veneration that's at the summer festival of o-bon. Experience these talismans of conflict with such. Devotion. Improbably rendered by children beautiful color. Was. Steering view of the sacred. We eventually took the restore drawings to you general assembly. Where i was present with members of our japanese. Buddhist partner of the uua recircle sakai. And ultimately the drawings went with a delegation. To the first hiroshima museum exhibit. Of this work. And out of one of the most dreadful human acts. A committed. Children. Creative what they dreamed about and sent them to an american congregation in the country. Of the former enemy. Humbling realization once brought me to tears. As i stood before a group of japanese at ga. Explain the story of how he wanted to take the drawings back. Japan. For more people to see. And the full impact of. What we had done with the atomic bomb hit me. When i was. Looking. Directly into the eyes. Of the hibashi. The survivors. The japanese. Countryman. Women. And in addition. The one of my. Ancestors. My great uncle fred. Had worked on the creation of the bomb. At los alamos. As a physicist. The layers of history. Almost impossible. To witness into bear. You heard that there's an amazing documentary of this. Story the pictures tomorrow beauchemin schoolyard. We're going to be privileged to show it here on the night of november 14th. It's houses story. In the central voices are the artist who made the drawings they went and found them in japan and interviewed them. Either seniors or those who've now passed away along with some of us at all souls who worked on the project. I hope that you'll come see the film and witness this reshaping of time in history that occurred. Over and over again in these gifts. Commiseration it surprising. Guess. Imagination feels like lian-li with understand the power of this hiroshima story. Ironically despite the centuries-old conflict. Between china. In japan. And despite the fact that neither he nor i. Airborne. When it occurred. Lee is a somewhat mystical poet in the tradition of classical chinese poets i could name but don't know really. One critic said that lee is fully engaged in life and memory. While building and shaping the self from words. And another writer said that leaves remembrance of childhood and father. In a book called. The city in which i love you. We've this remarkable web of memory. From the multifarious fibers. Of his experience. Lee himself spoken this interview about his belief. That we are all. 1. He wrote if you rigorously dissected if you realize it everything. Is the shape of the totality of causes. The cosmos. Everything. Is a shape. Of cosmos. For god if you would name it. And it feels like something bigger than me. Like something i can't possibly fathom. But am embedded in. I feel liam lee in my. Interdependent web. The one that has strands connecting our families. Somehow. In other parts of china. The web that connects our presbyterian history. Into our shared experience. The knowledge that a single. Summer peach. Can hold the universe. The annual japanese festival at obama honors the dead in. You put lanterns at the door and on the water. You guys are sold back to us and forward again. The mexican day of the dead altar. Has lights. Letting remembrance marking the divine light of the spirit and samhain a celtic wheel of the year observes this harvest festival. Like firelight. Until we hold. Fire. A primal element in tribute. Anna memory. And it hard. Knowledge. The damage of burns. Aquino. The terrible ways that lives are taken and conflict. And the great emotional. Spiritual cost generations. With both. The fire. Avoiding the flame. And so maybe learn. Traveling forward maybe. Hold the lantern to illuminate our path. Play sing on the water to float away. Maybe ponder the letting go. Old pain. Embrace a new forgiveness and a new healing. We might expire. To the generosity of children. In her oshima. The year after. After a war ended. Attending school in a bomb building. Sending us. Crayon. Love letters. Across the miles. Happy song.

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1400.mp3

I am. A walker i'm one of those persons who given a day without meetings in half a chance. Walk without ceasing in any general direction just to encounter whatever may be out there. My husband has learned to never ask the question is it within walking distance because i will always say yes resulting in those moments that you know all of you have had when it's 95 degrees on the washington mall and the washington monument has receding as a mirage in the distance. Those are the kinds of things i get myself into on walks. In any case a few weeks ago. I had this wonderful occasion while on retreat. To take a walk. Down a country road right here in montgomery county. I was in comas which if any of you know what it's it was a crossroads during the civil war that's remembered as a site of rearguard clashes. Doing antietam in 1862. Does walking on this country road in civil war country. Places memory and landscape not unlike manassas. Where i now serve in virginia. A place still scarred by old battlefields. Sloping ancient fortifications in the long-forgotten patches of grass. We're long forgotten soldiers breathe their last. This particular country road was remote enough that the only vehicular traffic i encounter during that hour and a half of walking with the postal truck. Making its rounds. It was a beautiful. And blustery day. And the wind blew just so and the streams were coming down cold from sugarloaf mountain bright and clear on such a day let's be honest it's hard not to get lost. Somewhat overly pensive. And as i walked along that day. Stuck deep in thoughts of time and landscapes and history i saw something just ahead of me at the crest of a hill. It was peeking out from a grove bearing trees and it was what seemed to be a mighty fortification holding the high ground the top the surrounding countryside. Who's like a ring fort. Or an ancient temple. Crumbling coliseum looming over top of everything else. Commanding a place of power. It held the defenses. On that country road. Against all possible comers. Which at that moment consisted entirely of me and a few very loud crows. And looking upon a time marvel. At the enormous size of these huge blocks that made up the structure where had they found such stones how far had they moved them to bring them here to displace to hold this ground if i kept walking shortly i thoughts there will be a historical marker. To provide some context for what i'm seeing. Somewhere there is just around the corner and i had just encountered the post. This place was something significant those stone was old and worn marked by time. Annexed into the landscape. And if i kept walking. And i kept wondering. Finally i turned down the tiny side road that led to the castle upon the hill and the stand of trees. Parted their skeletal arms so that i could reach you for the first time what i had been approaching. It was a mighty fortification indeed. A ring of large. Powerful. Beautiful. Hay bale. What i had mistaken for monumental architecture was simply the yield of last summer's hayfield ruled and bailed and stored atop the hill from which they grew what i had mistaken for a castle was cows food. I'm where i thought i gazed upon beautiful form that rose up from the land around them and that would return in just the turning of one-season back to that same earth. From which they grew. When the horses got hungry. 151. The stones is my massive fortification would be rolled down the hill. I will become a part of the process of eating and living and dying and growth. What i thought was forever was only a season. Impermanence. Masquerading. That's a little tea. Process. Posing as structure. How often do we all mistake hay bales for castles. Mineral mud living organic. It was my eyes that deceived me but so to do our hearts convincing us that whatever is before us in our lives is a solid form and unmoving force until time and clarity and proximity all shift our days and we finally see that what we have been hanging onto so tenaciously all these years. It's just a hay bale on top of the hill. There for a season. Ready to succumb to the family of things. To be a part of something infinitely grander. Then itself. We unitarian-universalist you know are apart of a dissenters tradition reaching back to the very earliest days. On the shores of this land. Our roots connect us back to the early puritan dissenters who found their way across an ocean to this place and we draw are beautifully cantankerous. Rebellious spirit from all those who in time would test. Are puritan forebears by becoming the heretic. Condemned by those who were once condemned as heretics. And one of those early puritan forebears. A man whom one might argue is uniquely responsible for imagining what religion would shape up to be in america. John winthrop he was. Governor of the massachusetts bay colony and while he was still on board the ship in the belly of the beast coming here from the old world he preached the sermon. And what you told the gathered company that this new nation. And the religious world within it would be quote a city upon a hill. A place observed and seen by the entire world and example of how to live with strength and moral fortitude on display for everyone to admire and in time for everyone to conform to. As well. And there's power in that image. What strength. And solidity in the foreground the religious community stands as a light to those who look on from below and hold secure when everything else around it changes. Hundreds of years later ronald reagan got into the action with the same metaphor. When he accepted the republican nomination in 1984 he famously said i've spoken of a shining city all my political life. But i know don't know if i ever quite communicated what i saw. In my mind there was a tall proud city built on rock. Stronger than oceans windswept. And teeming with people of all kinds. Living in harmony. To be fair. They don't call the guy the great communicator for nothing. And the whole context of reagan speech pants and awfully appealing picture at all proud cities built upon rock. Stronger than oceans and edifice reaching out above and over the landscape begging to be seen refusing to be ignored holding the high ground against all comers. It is a place you cannot defeat. An edifice that will not go away a city upon a hill. Solid. Drawing. Incorruptible. And that image-wise. At the heart. American understanding of our own exceptionalism. And to some degree the heart of religious life in this nation. The idea that communities like this one ought to be examples for everyone else. Down below. Solid evidence that some things in this world never change. Built strong will not fall and generations of rain and wind and heartbreak cannot tear down what your hands have built. Here. But what have you built here. What have we. Begun. To build together. What is this place really. An edifice. A location. To be seen. And admired. Fortress against incursions on our freedom to believe in to do as we choose. Sometimes i would venture to guess it's all of those things the one place in our lives it's always here the one place that even as it changes doesn't slip away a place of strength to come home to when storms of the spirit do rage within our souls. And sometimes. Sometimes i would argue this congregation this community you have built i really believe sometimes it is called to the anything--but and unmoving fortress upon a hill. Times when river road is called to be a lot more like what i saw on that walk. So many hay bales rising up from the land rising up from our surroundings and ready to roll right down this hill and become once again a living part absolutely everything. That gives us birth. Let me take us back to that image for a minute. Country road. And perched atop at these gargantuan forms bearing all evidence of permanence and power well down in the valley below there are hungry horses. It needs to be fed. And a dog is going to need something warm to lie down on when winter comes. And flowers in need of some of a warm coat of hay to protect them from the last frost before summer all of those hay bales so mighty and strong would be good put to good use in no time at all. Each of them would serve a purpose so much greater than its own existence. Every bit of that fortress would feed the world around. And in so doing it would be transformed over and over again. Instead of a protection from the world around at my castle on a hill. With a resource for the world around it. A component of its own surroundings constantly being changed and changing the world around it. So2 with the congregation. So2 with this place. This congregation does not exist. To perpetuate its own continued survival. We are not here. To be strong and solid. In the face of an unsafe world. We are here to be vulnerable. I'm gentle enough to transform that world into something closer to what we dream about. I remember when i first came to the church i serve. Did manassas know been there eight years now so you think i look young now you should have seen me then. They're fresh out of seminary and just all full of ideas i was busy as a one-armed paper-hanger up in that place running from one meeting to another typing emails as fast as my fingers could fly and in that first year from time-to-time weary people would find their way to my office door hungry or loss. Or just plain at loose ends. Sometimes whole families would come. Women with two still in diapers knowing that if they were going to make the mortgage payment this month they needed somebody else to buy the formula. And inevitably those people would come to my office. And their sadness when i was very busy doing something else. I remember feeling overwhelmed by all of this. Even annoyed. Cuz i had things to do. I had a job after all. Which wants to support the church and not insignificantly from falling down all around us and all of these people with all of their needs or frankly becoming a little more than i could bear. And so i asked good people to help me. And we started out by handing out bag lunches when we had them eventually we got this huge crate of military ready-to-eat she know what those so many of you have spent years eating those. And we connected with a local homelessness advocacy agency who could do triage and started operating part-time out of our conference room since we didn't have an office and within three years three years after feeling that i must protect. That institution from those people and they're very pressing needs. We were running a food pantry that feeds to this day 80 family. Every time we open the door. We're supplementary food site for the usda we teach english as a second language 245 adult learners and lo and behold. Some of our food pantry clients have become volunteers. And some of our members are food pantry clients. The sting. Is congregation that i thought i was supposed to protect. From all those people. That was supposed to shine as a rather distant lovely example became instead of living part of its environment place not just for us. For all of the people and we were useful in a way that i never could have dreamed when i thought my job. Wish to be there and hold up the edison. Instead of transform that congregation through survey. And you know. When the congregation shared that calling. The truth is that i still had time to go to all the meetings and kept the building standing to boot. The part of our environment isn't just about feeding hungry people and offering direct service. It's not even just about social justice or community engagement it's about all of us. Our willingness to be transformed by the love we experience here the fellowship and the dedication we encounter. When it comes to the life of the spirit so many of us are hungry horses down in the valley of sustenance ourselves. We are the eager buds of spring risking the possibility of late frost and needing this placed our place to keep what has begun to burst forth from our souls warm. That it might come to full fruition. Buddhist monk tick not han famously said. But it is foolish to speak of falling rain or blowing wind. You shouldn't say the rain is falling or the wind is blowing. What is rain if it's not falling. And what is wind if it's not blowing. The falling is the rain. The blowing. The wind. Likewise. The transformation rot out of our work. The congregation. The congregation. It's service. We shouldn't speak of the transformative service of river road unitarian universalist congregation because this we have created here is synonymous with its actions the congregation does not exist for institutional maintenance it does not exist to perpetuate itself. Pay bills on a hill. Instead of a castle made of stone. Instruments of life that are ever-changing ever nurturing ever dying and being reborn that's what time vacations are. We gain our strength. From the level to which we are willing to be useful to one another and to this world. And we will go on. We will be perpetuated long into our future not by our strength. Not by the shining model of our example not even by the sheer dedication of our committees but by the degree to which little pieces of this place go home with everyone of us. When we walked out of these door. River road does not belong here in this sanctuary. It must not stay here in this place. This is only a container. For our congregation. A beautiful and glorious one for which we are grateful but a container nonetheless. The real substance of this place must never. Stay here. It should go home with you. Roll down the hill with you. Become a part of everything it touches. River road belongs where you live. And we're hungry people are. And most of all it belongs in the low places beneath our hearts where fear lives. And loneliness persists. Our congregation belongs. Out there. And in here. Where is needed. So take it home with you. Take it home with you every brick and every luminous beautiful window every metaphor and every story and every song every child and man and woman and memory take it home don't leave it here take it off this mountain and share it for this transformation is our congregation the congregation the transformations wrought upon your life. Take it home. Don't leave it here. And diamond.

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2254.mp3

Allow me to introduce you to my father. Call harmon. Kenwood war 2. The actual uniform you are. 70 years ago. Let me keep. 1947. And which i wore 50 years later and is renewal of vows. I sent early on that my father saw himself in me. Which i like. He was insane burnt daughter is family. Mother would affectionately referred to him as my little mistake. And line when i asked you could even say that there's a certain family resemblance. My first memory is my father came and i was about. 4 years old. Retired after day's work. Tiny guest room and sat on the edge of the bed and ministered to spanking. Do not very hard. And before him with tears in my eyes. I could see from the expression on his face as much as i did. And he reached his arms and we hugged each other. At some point baseball became our bond. Countless hours either watching the cleveland indians on tv or listening to them on the radio. Members of our extended family. Indians won the first 10 games in a row. Tickets to opening day. Miss work which was. You never did that. School. My science teacher. Send me a message. Don't get me wrong my father did care about my grades. Whether i could do better. He made no pretense of having been a straight-a student himself text eddie benavidez oakhurst. Mike. in fact it's not pretentious at all hit his father to come to ellis island at the turn of the last century. Gatlinburg washing windows. Building maintenance company. But my father never talked about his father. Pack of time. College. Commercial. Coming for like father's day for an hour. Summer. I work for him almost every summer from when i was 14 until i went off to graduate school. I went through, cranky adolescent phase outside the store. You would have liked to take over the store in sandpoint. By the time i l. Weather. Analytical balance. High school and college. When i open the envelope. Bursting with pride and and that was important to me. There.. I'm not sure. At what point it happened. Program started but my father began asking me whether i was proud of him. In fact he'd only had a store. And whether i thought. Smart. And i told him that wasn't the case. Father and husband. Work ethic. He's really convinced. When i experienced a professional setback. Later on. Emotional intelligence. Is my father. When episode when you fundamentally different we are. Ski mask on. Holding a handgun. Having my father and sister tied up. So they went home place. In the door frame. Other room. Having caused a mirrors facts for head. Money. I got over all the money for sunday. White leather seat at my dad's. Order for first-time years thereafter. My father did not. Preston my messenger. Not want back. How is that possible. Traumatized by that events and. Questions. Yes other questions on a repetitive cycle. Losing its memory and sometimes we get to the app store for 30 years. When i call. He always remembers my name and he always remembers to say. I love you bennett. I love him too and i. Always telling stuff. Relationship is giving me a chance to reflect on. What really mattered. I've stopped focusing and how similar or different we are. I've stopped living for the pride u2 of my accomplishments and he stopped caring about what i was proud of him. Strong as ever.

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2668.mp3

My reflection today comes from. What i wrote for my friend and a sassy as ordination. And installation the minister two weeks ago. In indianapolis. A kiss in the room that means that all the many years of school and jumping through the hoops. Do end. And people say yes. You're at is become. Whatever in this case. It's all the possibility that you sought for years is finally realized. And a big party happen. In this case. I gave the charge to the minister a kind of touchstone. A shortlist of advice for a living well as a minister. Of course anytime you have to say something like that it makes you humbly realize that maybe you should take your own advice. I like running an action on your own life. As a touchstone for being away. An alive and present in your calling in your life. High road. 5 b's of being. And more and more i think this aden complicated professor the ministry. About being not doing. Who you are not what you do. Great actions it doesn't matter. A lot of times it's about. Your presence and how you show up. Reflection to my sister kathy. Maybe that's true for all of us for living in general we have to be present. Awaken show up. Possibility. My own touchdown for life and invite you to. Find yours. And because we have all ages in the room we're going to have a little bit of interaction. Is going to have a musical sound. Tommy brock. The sound might match the b of being. Then we'll hear the sound. I will practice. The first one is. B-real. And you said. Not real. We're not true to our own hearts and minds we really can't last very long and balance. Will probably suffer a lot inside and trade a lot of pain around us. You have to be around best oh-so life continues to flow. I think it's the foundation for the whole deal. The compass that lets you know your bearing. Magic compass some of you may have never seen one you can find one on your iphone. It's a little arrow that points. North. Or to put it another jeeps. If you are a dog. Don't try to be a cat. This is what my pets teach me everyday just show up as a dog or a cat. Completely yourself. Who you are. Remind me. Be real and you say. Grounded. Life has been around. I can throw you in a wash cycle. Kind of crazy. The be grounded man find your roof. And it spread out. Support the way the branches are wide on the top. And everyone knows that life spins fast. We're all in this same world of non-stop stimuli news music electronics gadgets. Never ever side dramatically and let the words i am so so so so busy leave your mouth. Instead. For your ground. Find your roots. Understand you're going to be your own worst enemy so intervene with yourself regularly for sanity. Find the things that ground you. Maybe you run. Lice. Play medicaid or you play drums or you do yoga. Do something regularly that helps to develop. Route. Be grounded. I think i got more grounding the second time. Committed is the third one. Your integrity and your word matter. Maybe most of all so keep your promises. If a friend or family member asked for need support. And be fully in the room. And if you find yourself. Kind of a drive-by life. Just a set of photo opportunity actions. Correct course as soon as possible. If your life actually does resemble your facebook page. If you have a problem. Living is full of opportunities to fully participate. And go all-in. Honor your word. Each day each month each year. Be committed. Fourth one. Connected. I think relationships and community are really what it's all about. The most important things we have. So get to know the people around you especially the ones you live with. One by one. Not just in small groups or large flocks together. Your family your close friend so you actually ask and listen. What's going on under the surface. Don't forget to connect to your own sources daily however you name them. From the earth. Ponder the vast universe of your own to-do list. You are well then in this interdependent web. And be carried a bit. Letgo. Don't try so hard every minute. Take a deep breath. Connected. Bald. Peoples in your living take a rest. Unexpected. And try some new things. Instead of always coloring by the numbers. Get messy. Images find that deep passion of creativity however it looks to you. Mix it up with some action. Could you have more fun. Make a list of fun things and put it on your refrigerator and actually do some of them. A little while because they're a lot of people on earth. Who need you want you to rock the boat. Break out of the box. And be bald. Let's see that laughing again cuz it'll tepid. Like that. After going to indianapolis i went to el paso texas where i grew up. Visiting my mother. Of an elementary school that's named for my grandfather. The president of the school board at one time and i'll paso and he was passionate about equal education for everyone. But he did a lot of volunteer service for the school board. Is the green elementary school actually took five short things that he said and painted them on a wall. And laminated little cards for every student. And my family went for the dedication and got the little cards. Are preserve out of school wall and going forward into the future. If you're 5. We're put on a little card. And carried in your wallet. Or passed out at some school. I put in the offering plate here at river road. What is your touchstone. R54 being. But guys are living. And he want to be in this world. This month of possibility. Just might be a great place to begin. Maybe so.

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whereveryougonow_32.mp3

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4093.mp3

David. This report. I don't think you even want to listen. I refuse to put my name on that. Where i work is going through restructuring. Start committee with assembling a set of recommendations. Side on the school's new academic structure. Jobs and salaries might be at stake. Emotions were on edge. Palpable. Are committing leader a man i'll call david. Theme to take things in stride. Breakdown. Lose his temper or strike back with verbal jabs. But what most amazed me about david was his effort to listen. To everyone who had a complaint. Who voiced to fear. Comedic event. Even when the venting was directed at him personally. He tried to move beyond the complainers anger. And find a solution. David the sphinx. With always met with. Let's talk about how to make it better. When our committee wrapped up i asked david how he managed to maintain his equanimity. A treat people more kindly than he had been treated. I guess i learned that from my fate tradition he said. Really. What tradition is that. I was certain he would tell me that his years as a quaker had taught him to listen. Or maybe he was a buddhist flowers of practicing meditation had paid off. Or perhaps his roman catholic upbringing had encouraged him to be just. And kind. Like pope francis. You really want to know david asked. He replied. I'm a unitarian universalist. We don't have much of a doctrine of proof crazy but we do have these principles. One of them is to respect the inherent dignity and worth of every human being. David went on. I don't have to love someone or even like them to believe in their worthiness. Which means i believe they are worth listening to. They are worth trying to understand. Whatever connection we can make. Remembering that gives me the patience and courage to look past the venom they made these doing. And get to the place where understanding is possible. That i said. Unitarian universalist. I'll remember that.

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705.mp3

As i wake every morning. My first concert sensation is one of pain. Freight years now i've lived with chronic lower back pain. And while i'm able to manage it with a cocktail of pain medications. I don't want to. Do my mind too much. I want to remain fully engaged in life. Lucid. And where. By choosing not to dull my senses. My life is now always. Includes an awareness of pain. It is not a choice i wanted to make. But it is how i must live. Ben even know what i'm talking about. Are personal pains from the small and more persistent aches. Any motive pains of life eventually intrude into our lives. At some point we all. Have to manage and live with some form of pain. Our own human suffering. My first experience with human suffering came when i was 17 years old. At the time i was working a summer job in caracas venezuela or my family had lived for years as expatriates. As a factory worker i would walk through the slums of atari. Pass children sniffing glue. Piles of garbage. We're going home to a comfortable life. Not too dissimilar from the homes here just. One protected by walls. The poverty the rich-poor divide seem too big. Too harsh for me as a teenager. To make any difference. But a desire to stop injustice and reduce human suffering. We're starting to shape who i was becoming as a young man. Actually possible to do something of substance. At the end of the day i would go home tired. Frustrated. Overwhelmed. And at times my day would end in tears. I asked myself puff questions. Is it possible. To reduce human suffering particularly the pain caused by widespread poverty destruction of war. Can i help build. I'm more just. And therefore more peaceful world. These were not abstract queries like each of you i. Waterdog meaningful life. And for me meaning seem to be tied to. Taking action to improve the human condition. But how. How. Could i as a teenager make any difference. As the president of interaction the largest association of us humanitarian development nonprofits. My career is focused on alleviating global poverty. Supporting massive relief efforts. And responding to the human cry. For justice. I'd like to share with you how i came to understand that we all have the power. To do something positive in the world. Our challenge is not to turn our backs. Countryman suffering and pain. We need to dare. To risk. And try and take concrete actions. We must stop ourselves from disengaging. From ignoring painful realities. My answer to the question i asked to the teenager is now yes. We can. Do something. Not necessarily all that needs. But something. Our individual actions. Do make a deferral difference. In the lives. A million. How decades after my first exposure to abject poverty my questions have you volved. I no longer to find my success but what i can do to raticate poverty. Or mitigating justice. But what i can do to support the resilience in the power of the human spirit. What is it a myth. Widespread human suffering. From starvation to. All forms of scars from violence. That actually enables people to transform their lives and lives of others. Heading taking action. How can i enable others. To act. Over the years i've lived and traveled overseas work. In some of the world's poorest. Community. My work is made me an observer. Eyewitness. Two events that to speak. Two are common. Humanity. Let me take you back to a trip i made 15 years ago that is still vivid in my mind. It was a trip. That almost killed me. Lying on her deathbed. Talking. The hiv aids virus run its course. And her body was reduced to a small lump. Lying on the floor. I sat nearby and. I wouldn't stool. And a small my hot outside mary kenya. Our conversation was about dreams. And the possibility of a better future. Her hopes. Her aspirations. For her child. Her seven-year-old debbie. Shy girl. Age of my own daughter at the time. I was picking at me from outside the hut. My attention was caught between them. Mother. Daughter. One living her last days. The other. Tentatively embracing life. But debbie's mother knew she had one hope to cling to. It gave her peace. Her daughter. Would be placed in the caring hands over sister and brother-in-law. I said my farewell and went to meet debbie. New adoptive parents. If there was hope. You would end up. In a loving home. I left the compound of my colleague a doctor feeling. Happy about the meeting. And meeting debbie's new parents. My colleague trying to me and then ass soberly. Had i to. Noticed. But they had lesions. It could only mean one thing. That they too. Headache i v a. That a girl my daughter's age was going to witness. Yep more dad. More pain. After the shock i. The visit continue much as others i made over for your. to the heart of the aids pandemic. Once again i knew i would come home haunted. Goodbye. The vastness of the human suffering i was witnessing. All that death. Over there. But life took an unexpected turn. For my return i. Contacted the deadly and rare and highly toxic strainer shigella dysenteriae. By the time i reached home it is packed my. Intestinal tract and. Migrated to attack my heart causing of perry myocarditis. I was lucky to survive. But i found my recovery woodchuck hearty is golija sza. Massachusetts general hospital like into a quadruple heart bypass. Very slow painful process. For over a year. I had plenty of time. To reflect on life. Deaf. My family my pain. My growing fear. My fear of going back to the world slums. As i fought to recover the sphere challenge my professional and spiritual identity. Putting a spotlight on the wrist. Associated. With my sense of purpose. Tulley gate suffering in the world. But eventually. All i could do was marvel. I am. I knew that my life. And the path of my work. Must continue who i am is rooted in both my family and in taking action to improve the, human condition. Has a return-to-work we created a partnership called the hope rafting children if it is. It focused on orphans and vulnerable children. And i could reach 950 3,000 children a year with range of services. From helping mothers plan where their children would lived after they died. And grandmothers better. Manage expanded household. Tube supporting property rights for women and. Batting medical services. Harper's been solve the age orphan problem. But it was part of a comprehensive response. To millions of children who are being orphaned by aids. We tapped the determination of individuals to live their lives of dignity. Create. Something even when there was little hope. To love. An offer compassion in the midst of pain. To passionately a firm. And reaffirm their beliefs. That there could be a better life for their children. Their spouses. Their families themselves. And to make changes that could better their worlds. Millions. Respond. Talking about our program makes me think of michael a boy i met on the shores of lake victoria. At the age of 15 he lost both of his parents. Two years later michael and organized a small group of orphaned children. Into a local co-op effort that was generating services within sewing services within his village. Their efforts generated enough resources to feed 103 children everyday. Accomplish this feat. With no. Outside. Michael was asking for assistance. He was looking for someone to meet him halfway. The further develop is enterprise. He wanted to transform his village his country. From the ravages of a pandemic. In michael we recognize the spark. What the human spirit can do. When is touched by compassion. And strength. His actions are not unique. Like millions of others. Michael is a remarkable human being. Who wants to turn his hopes into reality. All we need. Is the courage compassion and strength. The fairies. I've also witness. Human cruelty. War. And poverty. Kill people. Indian action of many. Debaser. Individual human beings. The destructive side of humanity is. Alive and well. I've seen very real pain. Causes around the world from darfur to liberia. The quest for power over others is pervasive. Across all cultures. But i've also seen. Compassion. Love. The willingness of people to sacrifice. And act to help one another. People everywhere. Have the potential to live a life. That built on their hopes. The app tunein advanced concrete dreams. No matter how poor. Deprived marginalized people everywhere strive and succeed. To better their lives. So while it's extensional to. Acknowledge. Human suffering in our pain. We must also celebrate and take steps to advance the power and the dignity that comes from our dreams. Have a better life. Together. They form. Collective basis. Of our drive towards greater human dignity. Hiking. Succumb to my back pain. We could all justify our inaction. But let us drink. Let us act on the dream of dignity and peace for all. Let us not stand on the sidelines. I supported michael and help debbie after her mother died. I know we can touch. The lives of millions. To advance their dignity. It doesn't take much. Just a small step. You're not trying to solve the world's problems and you don't have to become a humanitarian worker. But we all must act. Stop yourself by saying. I don't know what to do. Figure it out. Take that first step. It doesn't matter what it is. Deported health clinic a school help a child. Respond to a disaster. Important political action around the world. Millions benefit from these and other programs. You. Can make. At the end of the day. As i close my eyes and drift off to sleep. My pain is as always. Still there. But there's also a personal sense. Of peace. Cuz i let it go. I know where human spirit. Is alive and well. And that are compassion. Issa foundation. Harbor collective well-being.

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2393.mp3

Thank you. It's a delight to be with you here today is. Tell me if you know i'm not preaching much anymore since i have retired but i am. To come here as you probably. No i've been here before i have both spent some time with the board i was here for. Installation with lightful wonderful. Events and when she called and said i wonder if you could preach the first sunday in august. And we think the baby will be born before then you could come see the baby there was not much hesitation on my part pretty easy deal to cut so i am glad to be here and. Birth and with the other grandparents here when you're spreading. Our joy. Mcdonald's mcdonald's ladd. Forum. For every yes. When i was thinking about his sermon and what i would say today. As i can to do when i'm thinking about such things i was in a receptive mode looking for something that would preach as i say. I was in that mode when i listen to a livestream video of a keynote address given by. Tim cook. The ceo of apple. He gave it this year to the worldwide developers. Conference and if that's a little. Out of your brain we put it into context there were representatives from 60 countries. The conference sold out in 71 seconds. And then it was live streams all over the world people writing code creating apps and in general to squirt eager to have apple teach them how to be effective creators of web web-based product. Before tim cook so he showed a pre-roll video that was brilliant. If you search for 1000 snows forever yes you will find it. It is visually captivating and it's simple presentation makes an elegant point. If everyone is busy making everything. How can anyone perfect. We start to confuse convenience with joy. Abundance with choice. What designing something requires focus. The first thing we ask is what do we want people to feel. Delight love surprise. Connection. Craft around our intention. It takes time. There are 1000 nose forever yet. We simplify. We perfect. We start over. Until everything we touch enhances each life it touches. Only then do we sign our work. Apple of california. No i'm not here today to endorse apple. Complicated subject for our time together i'm not qualified to do it anyway. For the worldwide developers conference in june is a place to start. 1000 knows. Forever young. Because the capacity to experience an authentic yes in life grows out of our capacity to say no. It's true in our parenting. It's true in our choice of spouse or job or house or what to what end we will use our courage as my colleague burton carly says to what end will we use our courage. All these questions require authentic no so we can say an authentic. Yes. Only we're not designing products for app. Cell phones or ipad. Weird discerning. The tone color spirit effectiveness wisdom the uses of our time and energy. We're not finding product. We're signing the time of our lives. Everyday. And every moment. We are given name. Anyways to talk about the yes and no of life. Sometimes i know comes from circumstances the eternal the external factors that shape us. Tell us how old generations are affected by the particular times in which they come of age. The world in which they found themselves had special demands which in turn shapes them. The importance of security for the depression-era generation. The importance of autonomy for the generation which came of age in the 60s. The importance of achievement for women to enter the workforce in the 70's and 80's would only be a few example. This is sia t-shaped loss in so many ways. Often unseen and unexpected especially when we're young. Yes and no of life having a power often beyond our ability to control our manic. And of course we're learning more and more about the effects of privilege and constraint in our society. Each of us representing privilege in certain areas of life in constraint in others. There are yeses and knows of life that are important for us to become sensitized to in ourselves and in others as we work for justice in 4p. There are the nose that come with life. The man i love when i was young married someone else. That was a big no. I got a job out of college and moved to a state where i hope to shape an independence adult life. Started working mostly yes. Bad marriage wonderful baby boy. And dreams of generations of women pushing me along. I had my heart on. Call to a different and in many ways better congregation for me. Another no-bake yeah. Two wonderful ministries. Lost the election to become president of uua. Retired and married to biggie. It reminds me of a story some say it's an aesthetic story i heard it introduces a buddhist story i heard it from a unitarian universalist holly gets about the old farmer perhaps you know it. The old farmer works as well as he could to the land but he was poor his family was for. Wednesday. Wild horses came down out of the mountains down into his farm and he and his son were able to control them to corral them. His friends from the village came out and said this is a wonderful thing that has happened you will have horses to pull your plow your son will have a horse before his plow. The old man said maybe it is food fortune. Maybe it is not. But then his son was riding one of the horses and he was swept off and he broke his hip. And the villagers came around and said oh this is very bad fortune. Maybe it is sad. And maybe it is good. All the young men for war. But they didn't take his son because his son as an insured. And so it goes. Maybe it is good. Maybe it's bad. Life. Will keller. We have dreams and hope. Half of these and mixed together with the ways of the world to save our lives. If you make the choices we do. In the world of spiritual traditions the word for making these decisions is discernment. We know what it means to be a discerning person. It is the capacity to choice. During all that we are and have and no to the moment to the way we live our life. To be wise and knowledgeable and intuitive. Stanley kunitz found that some principle of being a buys from which we struggle not to stray. Some principle of being applied in each of us. And the struggle. Agnostic. What were the century certain spiritual practice has practices have developed to help us practice discernment in our lives. Practices of boldness and humility. Courage and caution knowledge and wisdom. Oh that one. Because getting to yes is not easy and sometimes the most obvious yet. Is it one. We don't need. Sometimes the yeses hasty sometimes the know comes from fear and coming to either can be fraught with doubt. So what can help. Person i agree with apple ceo tom took on this one. It takes time. It takes with a poet rilke called living in the question. Is important to take the time to ask yourself what question are you living. And then ask it over and over again. The simple thing what question are you living. It is a profound practice. The question may change your answers may change but in time and this has been true for me and time usually much much longer than i want. In time the answer emergency. Has will more questions to live. Second. True discernment comes in the context of our commitment. That is to say we don't ever make these life decisions in isolation. This congregation is a wonderful place to bring your life in the questions you are living. The best of our small group through this friendship family. Coming in this place. Easter sunday. You don't have relationships to serve this function function in your life. The question for you today is how can you find them. Ask that question. Until you figure it out. Some people have a spiritual director. I do. Have for years. I will say when the big-nosed of life come along a spiritual director is a big help. This is not a person who tells you to straighten up and fly right. Stereotype of a spiritual director long gone and most quarters. This is a person who listens to remind who reflects back to ask questions for reflection and once in awhile even gives advice. Mine has fostered a resiliency in me that i don't think i could have had without our monthly chat. And prayer. I know prayer isn't for everybody. But for me it is helping the taping of my unanswered questions. In the articulating of my earnings. In the fostering. But my spoken gratitude. And allows me to move into a world where there aren't clear answer. It's been an important practice as i have faced big unknown in my life. Keep a journal. The main purpose for me is to keep track of what i know. I discovered that i know something long before i think i know it. I often write things in my journal i'm not even conscious that i know. When i go back and re-read what i've written over the previous couple of months for example i am often surprised. Give me more confidence in the flow of my life and thought. Act with strength when the time comes to do something i've been considering. When the time of discernment is accomplished. I know no place in my life where i'm off and looking back at what i did with my life trying to make sense of it all. It occurred to me recently as i thought about this tournament that what i'm doing now is. Retrospective discernment. Practices that have shaped my life decisions as i move forward. Only now in retrospect. Sorting out the meaning of my days and years is i have listened. Where the words i read earlier saint stanley kunitz have helped live in the layers he said not on the litter. The first i thought those words were awed in this lovely poem about time. Is wonderful poem about finding an abiding principle of existence. But after living with this phone for a time i came to appreciate the words more and more. I began when i found myself ruminating over mistakes i have made over relationships gone in the rye the word live in the layers not on the litter. Came to my mind. And i could feel myself to a deeper sense of what my life has been over a longer arc of time i commend it to you. But i live in the layers i see my life in contacts. When i live in the layers i'm better able to forgive myself and know myself ultimately as forgiving no matter what my daily circumstances. When i live in the layers perhaps especially when i'm discerning retrospectively i can be renew. Do i lack the arch decipher it. Me too. I don't know what it actually means either. But i know he's onto something important. He says it himself so i left the ark to decipher it no doubt the next chapter in my book of transformations is already written i am not done with my changes. Personally i don't think our lives are planned ahead of our living then. I'm not sure what kunitz thought about a grand plan. But i also know in my own experience that i may have already written in my own journal what i will soon discover our transformative sauce. Realization. For the future does grow out of what we already know in amazing way. So just taking into account the ways life limitations can be in no. Acknowledging that history is still in the making and the limits of freedom and justice are another know which we can continue to work to change. People institution. Group. Say no sometimes because they can't see what we see sometimes because they are too limited sometimes because they're no contains a deeper yes for us as we seek our purpose. Discernment. And then there are the yeses and knows that are part of the small. Sliver of life fitted actually discretionary. The parts of our lives where we make decisions consciously. Where we do set our own course and hold our breath because we don't know how it will all come out. The best we can do. The best we can do. It's craft around our intention as the video suggests. Craft. Our lives around our intention. Become truly discerning people. Show me about design after product. Put in the depth of our human experience of life in our time. Sending our courage where it matter. All of our days.

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3637.mp3

Jonathan roumie. The world simply as rumi. Islamic mystic who lived in the 13th century. Often credited with being the father of the whirling dervishes. Practitioners of the mystical islamic tradition as known as sufism. People come closer to god to the holy within themselves by dancing and dancing and dancing and dancing either enjoy or in sorrow. Until the whirling of the cosmos in the whirling of the person become one. The story about how rumi chose the path of wonder. The whirling path of the dancer. He would follow for the rest of his life. It begins as so many stories in the great mystical traditions of the world do with the wandering teacher going across the countryside and this particular teacher was named sean. Wandering from village to village on a quest to find at least one person in the whole vast world who could be to him a spiritual protege and a true companion. And the trouble was. Sean had no difficulty finding followers in fact sounds way more followers than he ever wanted. The following that was the problem. Thumbs down that his friends became his followers he also found it in lifting him up as a paradigm of wisdom they tended to forget the higher truths they were supposed to be about. And so every time people stop searching for the holy and started just following him around sean would just flat leave. Abandon them going onward silently to his next short-lived destination and it so happened that one day this traveling teacher this cranky source of wisdom came upon a public square in a village called qonja in what is now afghanistan. I'm sitting there in that public square by the fountain of the village was a young man reading intently from a holy book. That he held reverently in his hands. Anon that book in the wisdom in it was unwavering. What the book that held the wisdom of the sages this was a window into the very mind of god the sacred book a book of science and of letters and a story. Young man the student was doing what is good and proper for him he was reading he was learning he was intent on discovering some truths about the world and without hesitation sean's walks up to him from the midst of the crowded square. That sacred book the young man was reading and threw it headlong right into the waters of the fountain. The young man stood. Confused just flat-out angry. Sacred get all the wisdom in it was lost to him. And the wandering sage sean's the story said. Reached into the clear green water of the fountain and pulled out the text. Still dripping but miraculously unharmed. Offering the young scholar whose name was of course. Rumi. A choice. The choice was simple. Rumi could reach out for the book and continue with a worthy life arrive in which he would strive to encounter truth and wisdom through scholarship and study alive in which he may even answer some of the greatest riddles of the universe a life in which he may in fact reason his way to truth or. The young man could choose differently. He could walk away from the scholars thoughtful pursuits. He could leave that sacred book behind. Abandon all the reasonable arguments in the useful tools and he could choose simply to experience god in the world around him he could. Choose the book. Or he could choose the great mystery and poetry of life itself. Go through life of reading or he could go through life dancing that was the choice that was laid before him andrew me of course chose the latter path. A choice that reverberates throughout history chose to go through life dancing. And then she did. He's one of the great poets of all time. Ecstasy in half named sorrow that the sufi mystics are dancing even today. Ruby came to understand that the point of being a spiritual person or even a wise person with not to know the answers to all of his questions. But to live in the presence of a love that transformed everything around him. T'god. And this understanding. Of the encompassing and ever-present nature of the holy became a hallmark of sufi mysticism. There is for them. No effort to find god. Or even to find the truth in any absolute sense there is only the effort to feel what you feel be at sorrow or delight to pour that feeling out into art or dance or music and to love what presents itself. Before your eyes. As if everything depended on that love because of course. It does. One great sufi mystic kabir always with a sense of humor captured the mystic sense of the ever-present holy. And our sometime failure to understand that we are surrounded by it. When he said. The fish in the water that is thirsty. Need serious professional council. To the sufis. Water in which we swim. Is god. And every moment is or at least can be an experience of revelation. The world cracked open for them through their mystical paths and for them if one could see with a lover's eyes everything we encounter there is no end to the beauty we may perceive. And yet. And yet even after contemplating that story of rumi at the fountain in the dripping book for some years as i think on that moment when roomie draws his hand away from the sacred book in the wisdom of the ages in the rational mind in the pursuit of truth when he walked away from that turning instead to the poetry in the unknowing beauty of the dance i am not sure i could make the same choice. Even knowing that the whole story is set up to pull us into solidarity with the mystical the devotional choice even so i do not know what choice i would make. Do you. Reason or mystery. Experience of all-encompassing grace i do not know which i would choose if given the opportunity. We unitarian universalists are after all nothing more or less than human beings endowed with rational minds. I'm blessed in our chosen path we do not have to check our mind the door of our sanctuary. We bring our questions with us into our spiritual lives. And we trust that the age-old cleaving of reason and religion into two distinct separate pieces ne'er the twain shall meet. I've always been too sharply drawn. The scientists thinkers civil servants suffers leaders we know. But the denial of objective truths of our existence really just shields us from the work we need to be about. And we trust. Somebody better live the life of the book. Somebody better find real solution somebody better point the objective way forward if we're ever going to get much of anywhere. And so i could never choose the book or the dance i choose both and so do most of you. The balance between the reason and wonder thought and experience knowledge and devotion it needs to freely shift along with the winds of our lives. Even if we cannot choose between the two. We must sometimes allow ourselves to move within and between them. Amphibious creatures. Bound to neither land nor sea. Moving from reason to wonder and back again as we are called and compelled. At this precise moment. On my own path. I must admit that i am in fact rather to sorrowful to live entirely in the realm of reason. And rational solutions. And clear ideas. Like the dervishes i am dancing at this time. More in half forms yearning and incomplete sorrow than in delight. Having just returned with our delegation of leaders from selma in birmingham last week i cannot get to strategy and wisdom and knowledge and a clear path forward just yet. I am simply not in that place. Important pieces of my journey and the truth that might emerge from it or still unformed the meaning and the wisdom that might present themselves so that i might share them with you and present with you away forward just haven't made themselves clear yet and so of necessity i am dancing in the mystery. Not knowing what comes next. Because i cannot. That trusting that in time i will pick up the book again and make plans and do things and declare things and start again. I am living in the dance of not knowing the neck. Step forward. Which has been shared with 18 other river rotors including my six-year-old daughter. And after that trip. To soma in birmingham i am awash in reasons to be in love with humanity. But i am also lost in reasons to grieve our failure. I'm swimming in a prayer of wordlist lament i cannot quite shake. Quarreling. Positively whirling. With the fact that selma. That historic and precious and real place. Is so much poorer today. Then it was in 1965. But the schools in that place are still in a spot of near-complete segregation. Even today the white people live almost entirely separately from the people of color and that the story just keeps getting told just like dr. king knew it would and that it's all wrapped up in the persistence of poverty that we do not yet know how to address. Just like dr. king knew it was. And incursions on the voting rights act. Set those marches on selma one with their courage they're happening all around us and one of the men who beat our own unitarian for bear reverend james reid to death in selma. With clubs and rocks and sticks. Who runs the local selma car dealership. One of the most prominent businessmen in town having spent not one single day in jail for killing him. The word of course many martyrs of the civil rights movement the vast majority of them black men and women whose names we will likely never know. But the three most prominent martyrs of the selma marches we do know. Jimmie lee jackson. Who broke the hearts of the whole nation. The minister who once served all souls church right here in dc. And viola liuzzo. Unitarian universalist slave woman from detroit who was shot in the head while ferrying marchers back and forth down the long road. From selma to montgomery. We do know them. And while we were in birmingham last week we myself and the other river rotors who were there we had the extraordinary honor of gathering with their families. To honor their lives. And their sacrifices. There's one moment from that experience that i cannot wholly explain to you. But can only recount. The moment when james reid's son. Viola liuzzo daughter and jimmie lee jackson sister caught each other's sight lines in the crowd and literally ran to embrace each other. It was like a family reunions when they saw each other. The cousins you haven't seen in years literally lift each other up off the ground with the delight of their embraced james reed's children viola liuzzo daughter at daughters and jimmie lee jackson sister they love each other they are each other's people and the only thing they have in common is the shared and searing tragedy. They are a family born of martyrs blood they are each other's people through and through. A family. And if i were following the way of the book right now. I would tell you exactly what that means right. I would look for the truth in that experience with a capital t maybe i would quote you something about the psychology of human nature and how it responds to share trash maybe i would tell you something about how many times those families have been in the same room over ian these fifty years always with the cameras pointed at them and a nation watching. That moment all i can feel with astonishment. Wonder. And heartbreak. I don't want to stand here today and tell you. What that embrace. Buy a family of martyrs means. I just want to leave the experience of the moment. Affable wonder of their connection and let you interpret the poem of there bloodborne family. In the best ways you know how. I am whirling. With these things. And then there is this. That the people of that place selma. People who have every reason to be nothing but suspicious down to their core of a whole bunch of unitarians from bethesda come down to march across their bridge they came out of their homes to shake our hands as we walked by they came out of their homes to thank us for being there and so i and we are whirling like the dervishes in a weird and not entirely rational and heartbreak and exhaustion. There is no book. There is no wisdom or knowledge or truth or even specific policy choice that can capture what the embrace of the martyrs children memes. None of that can capture what that moment means to me. To those families. What u.s. state and nation that has alternate lee demonize forgotten and mythologize. Their loved ones now lost. I cannot write a reasonable paper about it. Read a logical path toward the next steps. If i could dance i would dance. Some mournful yet devoted steps pointing to love and loss. And my anger and their tears. But i cannot dance. And frankly i write really terrible poetry. Until you get this. Is my attempt to stand with the mystics. The paint a picture of the world rather than make a case. I can't tell you what it all means. All i have at least for now or the experiences themselves. Like tragic and beautiful poems pulled from our lives and these experiences do not come with handy cliffsnotes to tell you what the subtext indicates or where the story is going to ultimately go you just have to put down the book. In moments like that. An experience life on its own terms. Fruit beauty and its heartbreak knowing that in time knowledge and plans. And process. Strategy will come. The truths to be gleaned from it all will present themselves in time. I'm living for a moment in the shared dance of the unknown is enough. The great rabbi abraham joshua heschel. Actually walked in selma with dr. king 50 years ago. And he later wrote that when he crossed that bridge arm-in-arm with other people of faith he was in fact. Praying with his feet. Experience of those times. Dancing the dance of history. And the wonder in the heartbreak of it all laid claim to his spirit for decades to come. Along with others haschel later did work for specific policy responses to the racism in the south ski open the books he did the work he sought the truth but he also lived in those moments. For the prayer that they were without jumping too fast to explain it all away. I said above that when it comes to the two worlds of reason and mystery we are amphibious creatures. We move from the solid land of reason and knowledge to the unfathomable seas of wonder and experience. And this concept of terrestrial reason an ocean-going wonder is straight from abraham joshua heschel. Imagine that these two reason and wonder the book and the dance of but one another but never fully intermingle like the ocean and the shore it is only we ourselves to our amphibious. Set out in one direction or another. Over the tracks of solid land and solutions are upon the unknown seas. A feeling and wonder. Not because one of the other is right but because it is in our nature to seek after both truth and love. To not know. Castle has said that we human beings are in fact citizens of two realms. In his words. We must sustain a dual allegiance. We sense the ineffable in one realm. We named and give states to reality and the other. Between the set up a system of references but we can never really fill the gap. As far as close to each other as time and calendar as violin and melody as life and what lies beyond the last breath. Something. And that hug among the children of the martyrs. There's some wisdom and some truth in it. And then there is simply the experience of seeing it. Witnessing it. And there is defining what it means and what it demands of us and how it indict sus2 act. Dance of it. And then there is the call to actually make a reasonable tangible real difference in the world because of it. I cannot choose just one way. The unformed experience. Or the strategic thought. I cannot live on poetry alone nor sustain myself solely on good political and social analysis of the world is it is. I am amphibious. We are amphibious. The world reasonable and useful response. In the world where things do not. And maybe cannot. Ever make sense. Within the space between reason. And wonder. The meanings of things in the poetry behind the things themselves. And so we dance while we must. And we put pen to paper and make sense of it all when we can. Or laugh when we can do nothing else. And perhaps we practice whatever sort of art we can muster and we gather around ourselves both the poetry and the knowledge both the wonder of the given moment and the rational steps forward and the book of truth still dripping from the fountain yet miraculously unharmed. Waits for me to open it. And make rational sense. Something's again. Just not yet. Now. I dance in my own ignorance. And with my grief. And my wonder. I wait.

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2241.mp3

I am too pregnant and it's too hot to wear this road today so i'm taking the cover. Don't forget today about justice as joy. Role model for that in our congregation in this world and in religious life. And one of my role models in this work is father greg boyle he's a jesuit priest. And he lives in los angeles. He is an activist by every definition and he's a person of very deep face. God. But capacity to change and to be changed by love they feel for one another. In the first place because when he was hanging around an activist circles in the sixties around the vietnam war counter their jesuit priest. In places of protest. And power who had this weird combination he said. Of the prophetic and the hilarious. And he said that was hard to resist you just wanted to hang out with those people those people who were both passionate about being change agents in the world and who could laugh at themselves then it's a world at the same time. About time for those people. The work of social justice and social change was about standing with all that is holy. In the lowly and difficult places. And doing it with humility and joy. And fire they were fighters who loved life and there was an emphasis for them on the love. With the fight as merely a container for that love. Boil went on after his theological training with finish. I found something called homeboy industries which if you don't know about it look it up it's amazing in los angeles. Collection of communities and services and agencies that range from work placement to tattoo removal. But all serve to connect gang members and former gang members to their sense of purpose. In the world. In fact the la times once said of homeboy industries how much bleaker and meaner would our city be without it. He is a servant. He's not a judge or jury or even an advocate for these young men. He's not a benefactor or a philanthropist or an angel of some means dropped from heaven to share those memes with those who are without. Agent. In love. With the people he serves. And like many true change agents and servants of the world he doesn't do it because he's a saint and he doesn't do it because he's perfect or because he's got it all figured out he's selfless 24 hours a day but partly because the work make them come alive. What she's done here for so long. Although she may be ashamed it's partly because the works makes her come alive. And there's nothing wrong with a little bit of self-interest when it creates in us a capacity to change the world. Summarize his own personal view that service leads to connection and connection leads to delight father boyle tells the story about this kid louis whom he's worked with throughout much of his time and homeboy industries questions never totally listening sometimes being a little goofier than you would rather have him be and when we was in the midst of lying about something or another one day at homeboy industries he came up to father boyle and he said yo how about a blessing g. And father boyle reflects on this memory when he says. I said. I'm proud to know you and my life is richer because you came into it. When you were born you know the world became a better place and i'm so proud to call you my son even though. And i don't know why i had to add this at this point at times you can be a giant pain in the. The feeling's mutual fire and you know suddenly shift so quickly sort of delivery systems but maybe i help him return to himself and there is no doubt father boyle says. You're not this sort of delivery system. Your soul connected in kinship to another soul do not changing the world because it's your duty or your obligation or the tax you were somehow supposed to pay in exchange for all of your blessings. But because it is the greatest joy in the world. The share that kind of humble and honest connection with another person. Perhaps especially with a kid. Who made the whole world better just by being born. You would never know if you did not engage in that kind of service. And that's why he doesn't. Because service is a delight. But you can only find through human connection. Story about cesar chavez many of you know about chavez he was as great organizer of the united farm workers union. His work raised awareness perhaps in this country for the first time in a widespread way of the plight of laborers in california and other produce growing states. In fact you have heard it many political rallies yes we can see safeway day it was not barack obama who invented that it was cesar chavez. United farm workers union. And travis's birthday is still celebrated as a holiday in some western states. Once when a journalist. Went up to him and said wow those farmworkers sure love you. Chavez shot back immediately with that. Same line. The feeling's mutual. Justice for him with not for others. It was not dispensed or given but sounds like father greg boyle through mutual devotion and the simple old-fashioned delight of human beings loving each other. That was his motivating for. Not. Not obligation. But love. John ruskin was a. Victorian art critic kind of guy and he wants wrote that what we really have in this world. The moral obligation we hold he called it. A duty to delight. Special obligation. Present to the joys of this life. And to serve not simply because we ought to but because we are interns served by the work we have a duty to delight. Because the feeling is mutual. Not top-down or vertical but mutual among those whose lives like ours are made whole. I work that we do. Work that we do for justice. For change. And while i'm at it let me tackle that word just. For just a second. I imagine some of you hear that word and your skin starts crawling just a little bit. And yet it's such a part of our congregation like where the social justice council with social justice task force it's one of these phrases that just rolls off my tongue hardly thinking sometimes i even have an entire email category of filed under the heading social justice which i must chuck a dozen things into every single day. It's part of my life this is justice. And yet it is a complicated word. For starters the word justice implies the presence of a judge. And if we don't believe in such a making rule enforcing being which even the most theistic among us usually doesn't. The troubling thing. Is it there's only one person left to wield the hammer of justice and well. If each of us. And i'm not here. The judge the whole world. Where to find exactly who deserves punishment and who deserves reward in this complex world of ours i don't know what that's why you weren't here to do social justice but it's not why i'm here. Social justice. Where the work for social change is it it's faster form of service. It's about doing what i can. But it's also about prophecy. About speaking the truth. Especially truth society-at-large isn't paying attention to. Like the fact that gang members aren't inherently evil or disposable. Like the fact that workers and economically marginal communities around the world make pennies. Devices that run our lives like the irrevocables truth that gun violence has something to do with both guns and violence and the only real solution will address those mental health issues and access to the weapons themselves. Is it true that somebody's got to stay in austin. We both. And perhaps above all with actual love. Because nobody really changes the world for the better. At the dispensary of service. Orange justice. We change this world. People devoted to the well-being of souls like our own neighbors. We change the world first and foremost out of our duty to delight. Uncle over-the-top here and ask people to raise hands. But how many of us. At one time or another. I felt so overwhelmed by the call to do justice in the world me even in our own congregation that we find ourselves just sick of the whole darn thing. How many times did we see a little bit bad and yet walk right by the street corner servants or the coffee hours signup table templates about asian africa or any number of perfectly wonderful organizations and causes that we simply cannot attend to in the course of one lifetime. I'm from that arises guilt. And from guilt arises. Well. Nothing useful. At all. So what makes it possible. Cannot only say yes on occasion to the work of servanthood and social change but to actually delight in it once we do what makes it possible to live out justice as an experience of joy instead of one of obligation and guilt. Now generally i like to keep you guessing about where i'm headed in the sherman sometimes you are shocked and amazed at how i will ever get to a point but for today i'm going to give away my four main theories about what is necessary for social justice work. To be joyful right. Justice cannot be joy unless we are actually passionate about what we're doing. Unless we can actually make a difference. Unless we can allow for creative tension. And unless we do it alongside one another preferably. In diverse communities. We actually have to care. We can make a difference. We have to allow for creative tension. And we have to do it alongside each other. In diverse communities. So let me start with the first. Simple enough changing the world will not be unless you're actually doing something you are passionate about. You can't manufacture commitment. And while we can certainly inspire it and others we cannot exactly adopted. From someone else. Without doing our own hard spiritual work first. You have to find out what you were passionate about. And you have to be brave enough to follow that we're at least. Which often means saying yes to something and saying go to others. And i've said it before and i will say it again. If you are doing something and service or injustice making that you do not actually care about but merely think you ought to care about. Stop. Doing it. Because the moment you do it out of obligation the grumbling starts. And the moment the grumbling starts the joy leaks out and wants to joy leaks out it will never work anyway because people can tell when you're tired. Spiritual challenge for each of us there. To find a name what we ourselves are passionate about right now what breaks our hearts what makes us laugh or weep or laugh or pound with our fists. Is a fire that burns somewhere in your soul and how ready are you. Tufan those particular flame. Don't wait for me. Are the social justice council. Or the church or amnesty international or anybody else to tell you what you should be passionate about. Find it and follow where it leads. It just might be that we overlap more than we ever imagined. In fact that's where we're starting the whole fall next year here in our congregational life with conversations among all of us. Not what you wish you could do or join or but asking fundamentally what do you care about. Not what committees you could join or what project i can enlist you to be a part of but what do you care about. So start thinking about that. Somebody here is going to ask you that question sooner or later. And they won't have the answer for you. The second qualification for justices joy is the simple idea that what we do have to have the power to make a difference. Difference we can see and understand. I found the paper yesterday probably a lot if you did that meals on wheels being cut in various places across the country including hyattsville maryland is apart of the sequestration. Am i still the truck carrying chicken and rice and cornbread to elderly and disabled persons may well stop rolling. Imagine. Fighting for that. And imagine showing up 6 months from now to give food to a beautiful fundamentally decent hungry person whom you love and who would otherwise be eating crackers for the 6 day in a row that is effective that is real that is food where there was no food before and that. Joy in service. Are aspects of social justice and social change more pressing right now. And those related to environmental degradation. The fact that our planet is in need. In fact there are fewer movements plagued by more overwhelming duty-bound exhaustion than the environmental movement. In the united states today. People walk away. Because they are overcome by sorrow. Or because they don't know where to start. Mary pipher who leads in organization. That was one of the pieces behind the fight against canada canada's keystone xl pipeline. Overwhelming amount of information. On the desperate state of our planet. Often leads merely to stress. Willful ignorance. Differentiate between such overwhelming distraction herbal intelligent she called it. Actionable intelligence. Actionable intelligence that called. To change what is right in front of us with concrete steps and so her call is ignore the distractions. Follow the next step. Find a way for actionable intelligence in your life toward what you know must be changed. Justice is only really joyful if we admit that we ourselves personally on our own do not have all the answers. Are the peanuts cartoon tape to my office wall. Work newbie is typing away at a keyboard sitting on top of his doghouse and charlie brown walked up and he said snoopy i hear you're writing a theological text. I hope you come up with a really great name for it. I have the perfect name. And then he starts typing. The title is. Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong. This is true for social justice and social change as well. Remember your friend said your perspective is not the only one and be ready at the outset to be changed by what you've started. There have to be room for creative tension. Is cornel west said the jazz freedom fighter moves to their own rhythm all the while transformed by the steady beat of those around them. We cannot expect to delight in the work if we think the whole rest of the world simply must come around to playing our tune. We have to let the tune change. Impacted by. And created by those who are making the music alongside us. And finally those who make the music alongside us must be true collaborators. Not people to whom we dispense our benevolence. Social justice for the future of this nation and this congregation must be collaborative. Not vertical not top-down we must work within marginalized communities not for that. We listen to learn and love gang members not patronising we fix things for them we find a way for the feeling to really be mutual and there is nothing more spiritual than that. We have a history here at river road. Have a truly changing social justice life. The kind of work that changes our lives. And changes the world. River rotors march with dr. king. Alice taylor davis founders in 1959 fought for fair housing in montgomery county when it was anything but a given. Not everybody believe. But a person had a right to rent own or buy a house without restrictions in regard to their race or national origin but she did. Chevy chase was founded in 1890. It was formally and informally designated as a place only for wealthy white people. And their servants of color. The segregation line was right. Here. Analysis thought it her whole life. She loved that work until she died. And that's just one example. Among so many others of people here at river road who lived out a mandate of justice enjoy george tony who chaired the social justice committee more times than i can count mary rose family in her fellow fighters. Some of whom are you. Are social justice leaders clergy and staff are working and thinking a whole lot about what our future looks like here. How do we act out of passion rather than obligation how do we find the actionable underneath the distractions what do we really care about him what is it high time to let go of. I invite you in the next year to do the same. Not just regarding our congregation but your own soul. Because profits don't just foretell doom. They also tell of life and love and fellowship and power. And the underlying power of our engagement with social change i thing. It's what father greg boyle was referring to when he reflected on his love of and work with louie in la. You know suddenly kinship so quickly. You're not the sort of delivery system but maybe i helped him to return to myself and there was no doubt that he is returned me to myself. Justice. Prophecy change. They aren't in bunch of themselves but beginning. Doorways to kinship of the spirit. A means by which we might not only alter the lives of others but sustain our own souls. So let us not be dispensaries of justice. But participants in devotion. Captured by fire deep down in our souls duty-bound to delight and let that take us where it will. Even to the difficult places. To which we may if we are lucky. Go with joy.

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1326.mp3

Go cliff and choir and practically levitating. I'm also suffering from a severe case of church and z. Kevin gates. For the awesome food and. Hilarious. Program. Last night you should know that in one of my lives i'm on the board of the unitarian church in westport connecticut. Why don't we just begin last week of pledge drive. For $870,000. I can't wait to go home and. Number you've already reached. In front of my colleagues and co-religionists. From the retirement of a longtime senior member a senior minister and so we're going to go through the two-year interim in the search. And the whole thing and i sent it last night and saw it. Oh i wish we were is ready in westport as you in river road are. For a really great. Future. Which. I have known you all for a very long time. Let me tell you you deserve your future. And if i were you and have already pledged that i would go and make yet another pledge. It couldn't hurt. Mario of a wrote. I want to make poems that say write out plainly what i mean. Looking for laces of elaboration puff. I want to keep clothes and use often words like. Heavy. Heart. And to cherish the? and her bowl sister the dash. I want to write with. Quiet hands i want to write while crossing the fields. Or fresh with daisies and. Everlasting an ordinary grass. I want to make poems were thinking of the bread of heaven and the cup. Of astonishment. Let's indie songs in which nothing is neglected. Nautical. Not a promise. After 54 years of marriage i was widowed and november of 2009 and subsequently. Insect just a little over a year ago i moved. Into a new home. A first for me. In my life. Occupied a space i alone had chosen. And i alone. Had furnished and arranged. My new space. Elegance. And spaces. I am the first time occupants so everything is new and shine 8 and everything works. My favorite room is the one i spend the most wicking hours in my home office. On the wall just to the left of my desk. Hungover touchstones from my career as a marketing professional. My family life as a wife and mother and grandmother. And my longtime commitment to the unitarian universalist association as a volunteer. Essentials of the wolf so close to where i sit at my laptop computer. Easily look up and read the verses is a framed copy of marge piercy has to be of use. April of 2001 at a dinner in boston that mocked. Retirement. It contains all the names of the trustees who served on the board. I presided. Precious to me. My colleagues. Is a favorite poem. A mantra. An expression of my work ethic. A philosophy. Guides and provokes. Prods. The people i love the best. Jump into work head-first without dallying in the shallows. Amorphous sure strokes. Out of sight. I want to be with people in the tasks who go into the field to harvest. And work in a row and pass the bags. Who moves in a common rhythm when the food must come in or the fire be put out. The work of the world is coming as mud. Crumbles to dust. But the thing worth. Doing well has a shape that satisfies. And evident. I am like i'm too many of you a poetry freak. Contemporary women poets. May sarton. Mary oliver marge piercy speak. I listen. Tell-it-like-it-is. The phrases are elegant but they do not up for skate. The poet means to tell me something and the message is pretty darn direct. Who wrote. It is a naked. Time that bears are slightly worn down hopes and cares. And cessnas. Listening for frogs. And send those to seed catalogs. Barrier stars eyes and noses. Extravagance of roses. When we have had enough of reason. How it is for most of us. Enmark. Perhaps. This very afternoon. Pay attention then hatch a few words together and don't try to make them elaborate. If someone had given me that wisdom of mary oliver's about how to pray. When i was an adolescent. I might not have left. The faith tradition. Of my childhood. Plainly. And directly this morning. I have a message and i am eager. For you to hear it. Of the free in thy dear name the costly heritage. We claim. Free what are airplanes vile or vial liberty xylite. Shelby are blessed. Possession. Unitarian minister wrote those words sometimes i think in the early 1940s. Foreign ministers meeting i have the impressions revive live. This fantasy that suleiman. Just wrote it. I have always found those words. Inspiring and frankly i do sometimes people refer to that him as. Old fashioned. This is some sort of the growth of his. Our faith. As destiny. As a people with a mission. Cared about where unitarianism was going. As a movement. Enough. Colleague a man by the name of a powell davies. Methodism and come and play in the unitarian sandbox. That was a 1933 when power was serving the pine street methodist church and solomon solomon was at the first parish both in portland maine. What a gift. That turned out to be. More about daisy's later. And by the way. When was the last time you convince the family member or a neighbor or a co-worker to try worshiping with you here in the river road sandbox. Recently i came across. A letter i wrote to the ua nominating committee in the summer of 1988. Requesting that they consider me as a candidate for the board of trustees as a trusted large i wanted to be elected at the general assembly in 1989 which indeed i was. And it made me laugh to see what i had written you know the old story about ministers having only one sermon which during their pulpit careers they cultivate and form and preach in different styles but it's always the same message. I too have only one sermon. I will nearly 24 years ago august 9th 1988. To be precise. Crisis. We need to increase our numbers. People in dollars. We need to increase our effectiveness as religious liberals and is public policy influencers. We need to address and spiritual life. Is there a ministry at optimum effectiveness. Original agenda items i wrote but i think they are and i intend to remain focused on them. Well yeah. I have indeed remained focused. And things have not actually gotten better. The free. Our loyalty. Commanding. Numbers sizes for the certification reporting system used by the ua indicate that unitarian-universalism in america continues in decline. For the past the exit number of unitarian universalist congregation. Around the united states its membership. Numericals. The only numerical measurement beacon reference. Decreased. So has the number of children enrolled in our religious education programs. Denominationalism in america is in decline as well we are just micro of the macrocosm. What used to be the dominant reticent. Online. Now considerably weakened moving toward the margins of the nations. Religious life. The most americans worship. The fastest-growing category is. None of the above. The so cold. Growing tide of secular. Society. Is an amazing opportunity for unitarian universalism. And i would agree. I learned a great deal of my sociology from the style section of the sunday new york times. The wedding announcement. Any sunday and knows how many of the services. I presided over by someone other than an ordained clergy person. The story about this just last sunday titled the officiant among us. More and more wedding ceremonies are presided over by friends or relatives of the couple who get themselves. Ordained. For ten bucks at the universal life church website. The times article notes that quote. Ties that bind american religious institutions. Are eroding and many pockets of the country and interested marriages around the rise. I recently went to a memorial service for friends who self-identified as jewish but wouldn't set foot in the. Local reform temple in westport. So her family held a service in the auditorium of the westport town hall. We're drowning. End secularism. Sure there are many people out there. Identify as unitarian universalist. We are told as many as half a million. Affiliated with a congregation. Standing up to be counted. Not contributing talon and money. To support us institutionally. They are part of the problem. Rather than part of the solution. What to do. How can we get are fiercely independent. And frequently rather narcissistic congregation. Not youtube. Move past the comfort of rituals unchanged. Bremen. Unresolved. Surprising. Unacknowledged comfort. Of same old same old. How can we get them to find some room on their agendas and in their hearts. For rescuing unitarian-universalism. The water movement of our mutual covenants. So any dillard. Captures it all for me. Who shall ascend into the hill of the lord or who shall stand. In this holy place. There is no one but us. No one to send nora clean hands nora pure hot on the face of the earth. Only us. A generation comforting iphones with the notion that we have come at an awkward time that are innocent fathers are all dead as if innocence had ever been and a children busy and trouble and we ourselves unsit. Not yet really having each of us. Chosen wrongly may 4th start. Yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures. Exhausted. Unable to see the threads weak and involved. But there is no one but us. Never has been. Sounds good. I hope i do because i am. The plain fact. Or the inlet report from uu headquarters. March. 2012 10 days ago. There are 161 502 of us. Adult members. Is 10054 congregations in the unitarian universalist association. 160 1502 people hysterically charged with keeping our faith going. In a rapidly changing environment where folks don't look like us. Don't worship like us. Mostly don't even though our free face exist. Heroes of a of every age farsi. Denying road and increasing heritage monarch and creed flying. Of the free in thy dear name the costly heritage reclaimed. My friends it's 2012. Are we going to claim our heritage costly as it is. Is it all going to go down the tube on our watch. Your commitment and talent and money anita's. Also out there across north america and indeed around the world. I sure did. Statistical bad news coming out of uua headquarters and boston the good news. Is that gross. Substantial growth in membership. Re-registration and attendance is in your own joseph priestley district. Something about this beltway area. In the air. It's in the walls of our congregations it's in your culture. I mean overflowing shelves in my home office devoted to books written by the lake forest church the thinnest in size is titled without apology collected meditations on liberal religion. By the reverend powell davies. Forest road. And i quote. Like harry emerson fosdick minister of the riverside church in new york city before him. Was the most influential liberal minister of his generation. He preached to senators and supreme court justices. He led the drive for integrating washington restaurants. Equal eloquence against communist totalitarianism and the american activities of senator mccarthy and his minions. Above all he advocated a principal faith-based on the marriage reason and democratic principles. Illiberal religious evangelist. Seven churches in the washington area. From encounters over the year. I know forester throw that many individuals trace their spiritual development to davies tireless witness. And compelling faith. Tireless witness. And compelling. Face tireless witness. And compelling faith. Vincent sulaiman in portland maine be friends holly powell davies and bring him into fellowship with the american unitarian association into the face of the free. Is cole stupid paul soles on parvin and 16th in washington. He writes 10 books. 11 x 50 years old in 1957 and how he could preach. Listen. What he wrote. And preached. And i wish i could have heard it in that welsh. He was a native of wales. With that. Wonderful. Welsh. Deliverance. Emotion liberating religion as well as religion that makes. Yielding claims on conscience. We shall not be such people as deserve to be saved and we shall know it. No matter how much we beat the air in pretense tassels be lost. We must have the words that such religion brings and we must have the spiritual power of it. For this. I need is desperate. Personalized go on to change homes and communities and flow out into the world. It must change a time of cruelties and atrocities into a time of restored humaneness. It must make people care as they have forgotten to care. Tenderness must come back into life. Even while the realities are harsh. Or we shall not be human enough. For the task before us. We shall not be fit to be saved. Unitarian universalist. Shall not be said to be saved as the great. In the world that calls out to us. For succor and sustenance. Very wise consultant churches is more hopeful than i am. Blog just. This past week. Liberal religion have a future. As long as our congregations offer a welcome home to those seeking the spiritual community as long as they convey their principles and values in ways that are relevant to the spirit of the age as long as they branch out in service to the thirsty long souls who might be nourished and sustained. Even saved a positive and progressive faith. Yes. And not just any future. What i know for certain is that liberal religions will not have a promising future without us. We can be the beginning of the end through complacency or resistance to change or we can be the agents of its transformation for a new generation. The harbingers. Of its future. Religion have a future. I hope so. 560. For the sake of the world it had better. The free what are our plight. The lure. Liberty. Shelby our blessed. Possession. There is no one. Thank you danny. And there's no one but us right now to sing hymn number 40. 40 the morning hangs a cig.

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3801.mp3

About a month ago. I sat right down the hall and the fellowship hall with the whole bunch of trusted colleague. Clergy i know from all different traditions in that room. Started the day by going around the big gathered circle with responses to one question. We all happened to be social justice leaders in that room are prompt for the occasion asked us to consider where our own hunger for social justice came from. Where our desire to be a part of the broader power structures of the day and changing them from within really originated. And almost to a person. Said that their hunger to change the world came not from direct experience of searing injustice and not from learning and education about injustice. But from their families. It was their parents. And their radical big sisters. It was memories of their honored ancestors who had gone before they planted the seed and one colleague from baltimore told me that her own family dinner table was deeply. Where all the important lessons got taught. Even when she was a tiny little girl just trying to make it through another school day every evening at dinner they would sit down and her father would ask every single person around the dinner table the same question. What did you do today to make the world a better place. And he fully expected every one of them to have an answer. I'll tell you i started half-heartedly floated that at my dinner table not so long ago and i mostly got puzzled expressions but none the less. However they might or might not have answered their struggle to find an answer that question stuck with her and it changed her and it stands as a witness to the idea that the formational place for the moral imagination. Our first and most important religious education happens at home. Among the people who love us or challenged us or set us up in a thousand ways to succeed or to fail to conform or to fly. Michelle richards wrote in her book tending the flame the art of uu parenting. We may take our children's religious education classes to give them the richness. Participation in a community offers. Most such programs only last an hour or two. But his parents. We are the primary religious educators of our children. For better and for worse our parents are caregivers we live and move among our our religious educators and almost everything that happens. In the context of our connection to these formational partners. Is a kind of curriculum. Teaching whether we intend to or not whether we are aware of it or not there is learning at work in all of our interactions and not just an individual family units but is a congregation brought together in community there is learning there is teaching happening here happening now. The wonderful scholar of religious education maria harris taught that our curriculum as a people is the entire course of the congregations life. The congregation the curriculum. Parents and caregivers need to thoughtfully ask what it is they're teaching us what our congregations are teaching us all children adult. Programming our worship. Are architecture. Are aren't. Imusic. Our hospitality. Our budget. Are staffing. Everything we do and say explicitly or implicitly teaches and everything we don't do and don't say. Teaches to. And so what are we teaching. At home and here whether or not we even know it. No unlike most of my colleagues around that big circle my family of origin did not teach me how to engage in social justice. My home growing up wasn't the origin point of that commitment at all we were completely apolitical as far as i can tell. Doesn't mean that my family weren't religious educators. What they taught me was not how to organize or how to vote. Or even what to believe. But honestly. How to pray. My parents taught me. The show up every sunday morning. And acknowledge the presence of something greater than myself. To sit quietly alongside other than relate to that greater thing. And when we missed church for family camping trips as we sometimes did. We would actually sit beside whatever misty lake or campfire was adjacent. And pray a rosary together. Or pasties little pre blessed communion wafers my dad had somehow pilfered from the church sacristy around the circle of the lawn chairs. My family taught me. But when i was scared or lonely i could connect to that large or something and i could give voice to those fears and that longing and honestly i'll tell you the truth i do not bust out my prayer full capacity so often here among you. Give me half a chance. And a grief to name. Or a joy to speak. And i can ad-lib a prayer with the best of the baptist. My first religious educators gave me that. And underneath the practice of prayer or even a particular connected to a mystery and wonder so encompassing that i am but a part of it and then i don't have to wrestle out all my questions alone. Parent william daughtry once wrote that his seven-year-old son looked up at him one day and said i'll believe what you believe for now and when i grow up i'll make up my own mind. And so perhaps the curriculum of the home the curriculum of the congregation at its best isn't one of indoctrination at all but a way of being that makes room for what will become. It makes room for all of our uniqueness our individuality our talents are gifts our struggle than indeed our disagreements. It occurs to me that the best of congregational life is much the same. Curriculum at work here among us in this place. And while we are many things to one another perhaps the most foundational aspect of our purpose in this world. Is the function as a sort of school for the soul. We're each and everyone of us is engaged not an indoctrination but in exploration of a particular way is being in community together. I said earlier that it wasn't my family of origin that taught me about social justice which is true. It was unitarian universalist congregation like this one. And the others i have served which taught me that. Religious educators one and all it was the implied curriculum of unitarian universalist that helps me translate prayer into action i learned it my friends from watching you. And most of the unitarian universalist i'd learn this commitment from weren't even aware how deeply. They were teaching. We are for one another a school for the soul. Says that dysfunction could be the primary purpose of anyone of our congregation. Imagine he said a group of you you to proudly proclaim that our congregation is where you go if you want your children to grow up to be morally and ethically strong and open-minded and curious. About a world of differences. One big sunday school. Among other things the power of interconnection and action and for me i think our implied curriculum is not just how to be out there in the world among difference and diversity with open hearts but how to be in here among one another connecting across boundaries of our own difference with the sort of kindness and grace. But it takes commitment. Intentionality to offer day after day. Year after year. And when i teach the new members class here at river road. One question that almost always gets asked to some version of. How do you ever preach sermons in this congregation when everyone believe different things. Essentially how do you keep everyone happy. Well of course i don't. Because none of us do. But my answer to that question always points back to the generosity of spirit and gracious difference that underlies everything we do here. We don't just forgive each other for preaching a different thing than you would like to hear we're believing a different thing than our neighbors or holding a different opinion we try to really make respectful space or whatever it is that makes us different we try. To preach messages that challenge. That gold. And we try to meet those messages each and every one of us with a big hardness and openness that makes face for honest difference across all that divides. I'm still at our best with each of curriculum about how to relate in community. Moving as the world must learn to do. From distrust of difference to curiosity to appreciation and when we have done our work well. To try. Real trust. Not in spite of the many ways we walked the path in different directions but because of it. And so on this flower communion sunday with a multitude of blossoms each unique each precious each beautiful and each flawed i invite you to take one and appreciate it for all of its lumps and bumps. It's wilted petals and it's utterly glorious ones. Take one and know that is but one lesson in the larger curriculum that we teach here in our school for the soul. A piece of fragile and flawed beauty like all of us. As we consider it the core curriculum taught in our homes and in our lives. We are also invited to take with us a few of the lessons at this place. And our curriculum within it. Which at its best teaches us to always seek to be a little bit kinder. Countercultural when it really matters. To be real even when it's hard. And to trust somebody enough to be challenged. And renewed. By their difference. And their beauty.

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3064.mp3

I'm not sure if it's the heat for the humidity that i hate more. Honestly i am not a fan of summer. And when i make that statement people are really surprised to hear that i grew up in southern california. Seasons. We're only subtly different. Got a little bit cooler sometime a little bit hotter sometime. Littlebits smoggy or sometimes but really the weather was generally pretty nice. I moved to maryland. It was an abundance of meteorological experiences. It was hot and humid in the summer. It had the joy of thunderstorms. Fireflies. Explosion of oranges reds and browns greeted me in the fall. In winter there was a wonderland of snow and the need for a good coach. Completely different color palette in the spring. I finally figured out why apples and pumpkins were associated with the fall evergreens with winter. A new life of spring. My really kidding. I spent so much of my time inside. Staring at one scream or another. Any climate controlled comfort. I get up go to sleep and even eat by the clock. Not the daylight. I like many people in our society have become increasingly disconnected from the natural world. Last winter my son successfully argued. His way out of ever having a coat. Because he's from home. To the car to school and back again and is only outside for a fraction of a second. Our food to is increasingly disconnected. We can get strawberries and tomatoes year-round now i don't know where they grow all the time but definitely not here. We know and read but none of this is really all that healthy for us so how can we make some small moves to reconnect. For me it was through engaging in these seasonal pagan celebrations called the wheel of the year. Where did the marking. What's going on in nature at regular intervals throughout the year. I began attending the uu church of rockville. Some friends of mine recommended attending the winter solstice celebration they're saying that would be great for my kids. Well i couldn't convince my kids to go. I went and i loved it and i've been hooked ever since. They gave me such a wonderfully rich way to honor and reconnect with nature. It also makes sense with my unitarian-universalism. I ordered service you have this. Seven principles listed but what's left off is something that we call the six. Sources. Of our living living tradition. Draw from. Deform ruu values and teaching. I heard you to look them up if you're not familiar with them. The fix store. Is listed as. Earth center traditions. Which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature. Now even though our seventh principle is respect for the interdependent web of all existence for which we are part. Stores with actually a late addition. It was voted on at a general assembly in the early 90s. The great example of how are the living tradition open to change. Ideas. And inclusion. Principal go together. Equinox celebrations of the perfect way to honor and affirm disrespect for the connections that we have with all existence. Br one small way to counteract the disconnection that i feel in my day-to-day life. One element of these services wheel of the year services. Have something to give or take with you as a reminder of the celebration. Today we're going to be everyone's going to be getting one of these. They're actually made a seed paper. Even better than the paper. Since i'm done talking i'll have you passed them out. Well you're holding on to your son. I'd like you to. Think about all the connections you have. And you are interconnected web. Including his congregation. Play the sun help you to nourish these connections. You can take it home as a symbol of the celebration. And see what comes up. The four corners of the room near baskets that have the flowers on them if you are the suns in them. The road pick it up and pass it along. We'll start from the back and the front that way. Everyone will get one quickly hopefully. For those in the balcony there is also a basket in the corner. And now we'll hold our sons. All the wonderful energy has congregation as we listen to joe and barbara play.

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291.mp3

M234 pictures of me left up on the screen. So i'm not going to be using flipcharts in vero beach but we don't have any. State-of-the-art projection equipment so we've got a flip chart this morning for my swimming about. Everything i know about unitarian universalism. In 30 minutes or less. Almost 40 years ago when i was in the spiraling minister and seminary out in california. One of the great unitarian-universalist preachers of the day the reverend dr. joseph barth of kings chapel fame. How to format the formidable challenge of teaching me in the other greenhorn ministers. How to preach the art of preaching. One day in class after i had offered a far too complicated sermon with way too many points. He looked me square in the eye over his glasses and in that gravelly voice of headsets. When you get your own congregation. Don't try to tell him everything you know on the first sunday. Because you might succeed. Over the subsequent years of my preaching career i've always tried to remember this advice. But this morning as i preach my second to last sermon as your senior minister. Before i moved to florida. I want to attempt in fact to do just that. In the next 30 minutes or less i promise. I want to summarize hopefully in a useful and coherent way. Everything i know about unitarian-universalism will not really every last. Where are there cuz i think you know a very complicated. An intricate religion. But everything that i believe is essential and important about a religion i want to try to summarize this morning. You think i can do this will hold on your hats because. Here we go and yes you can start your stopwatches. I believe. But there are four essential components. To our face. Our eschatology. Our engagement with the world which is arminius. To the world. Already pissed them ology. The guide's the way we do. Andorra. And cosmology. Let me take each of these four components intern. Firstar eschatology a big word. Which is simply a fancy theological words words that asks the biggest and most enduring of all religious questions what is the straight dope. What is the real story. About life. Adele. Eschatology question. Different religions of course answer this biggest question differently. Hindus and pagans talk about reincarnation. Christians talk about heaven. An eternal life jews talk about the lasting immortality of influence. Buddhists talk about nirvana. Transmigration and the great wheel of life. What foremost unitarian universalist. The real story about the meaning of life and death. Is firmly rooted in this temporal. Earthly existence in which we find ourselves. My colleague go to staniel who's now in chico california. Once wrote this. I have spent decades. Triangle succinctly summarize unitarian universalism. And i finally got it down to just three words. This. Is it. There was actually an ancient gaelic word for this is it. It is shinsei. Sensei. Mean this is it folks. This is all you've got. This is it. Foremost unitarian universalist and i'll talk about the exceptions in a minute. For there are some which we must acknowledge and honor. What foremost unitarian-universalism this is our eschatology. This is it. What are. This is what the illusions call a realized eschatology realized here and now in this world. Which means that as a religious people. Wii u use are fiercely and joyfully rooted in this world. And in this time. That we have on earth imperfect and difficult. As they often are. And we most of us are not waiting for not spiritually betting on another world. Or another time. To live out our humanness. To make our contribution to creation. Or to play out the purpose and destiny of our lives. While some you use to believe. But they will continue on past this life. In some sort of spiritual or mystical form. And while many of us believe and take real comfort from. The jewish idea of the lasting immortality of influence ted. The life is like a pebble you drop it into a pond and it ripples out. Horion while many of us take. Comfort from that idea. In general. We do not devote much. Any spiritual energy. Toward earning a ticket toward heaven. Or some other eternal place. Or spiritual dimension of bliss but rather. Most of us have spiritually decided. The fifth life. And this world are at wonderful yet. And so. All that we have to do at it and so because this is it. It matters profoundly. Profoundly how we live. If our lives are to have purpose and meaning. Dignity enjoy richness and satisfaction if wherever. To find those mysterious things called salvation. And satisfaction. Goodwill in blessed with spiritual fact. Be here. No. Amidst the whirling imperfect stuff. And relationships of this world. As it comes to us in all of its vexing. Imperfection and sometimes pain. The most other religions. Find such a realized this worldly eschatology firmly rooted in the fleeting days that we know we have. Many religions find this to be emotionally and spiritually insufficient. They seem to want. Something more. A promise of eternal life. As a reward for striving in this life. To be golden purposeful. But not us. Because we believe that this is it. We strive to live our lives. With as much intention ality and goodness and decency. And purposes we can we don't need a reward it carries its own reward. A life well-lived out of character and strength. Carries its own heaven. Let me speak personally for just a moment about my own realize. Phytologie. It is precisely because i believe my life as i know it in my world as i know it. Is all that i shall ever have. It is because i am convinced. That this great gift of life. Is not being given to me forever. But i strive to live my life. With all the emotional and spiritual passion. That i can. The fact that i never realized eschatology makes my life to me more important than if i had it forever. I do not ask the great flowing mystery of it all. To give me something i don't believe it can deliver. This unitarian universalist. You spiritually satisfied. And genuinely grateful for the gift of the temporal life. That i experience and know that i have. Without demanding or dreaming that i shall have this gift or some other gift forever. I spiritually then seek to rise to the challenge of living my life. As best and purposely as i can. Even though i know that someday i must. Perhaps reluctantly. Maybe even sadly. Relinquished yet. So i say without spiritual fear or regret. When it comes to my life this is it. And because this is if there is no time. And there is no relationship. 2 waist. No time. And no relationship. To waste now is the time. To love and to live and to risk. What purpose. Compassion. And care. So the first thing you need to know about unitarian-universalism is it a calzone. With a holy urgency to get about the business of living. Holy right. Now and that leads me to the second. Essential part of who we are. Or another way of saying it. Ministry. We unitarian universalist have a ministry. To live out of the world and amongst ourselves because we know the urgency of life. Put customer first foundation. Look for a moment at the seven principles we print on the back. Of the order of service. Every sunday of just for a moment. You will notice each of these outward-looking life-affirming principles. Which primarily come from our judeo-christian roots. And i've been enhanced over the generation by the insight insights of other great spiritual traditions. Most noticeably including humanism. Each of these principles. Call upon us challenges us. To live responsible. Responsibly. To live loving reciprocal and well-ordered lives in the world. Nurturing relationships that's a keyword nurturing relationships of caring and connection. With other life. Whenever i am asked to summarize our religion i say and i realize this is just a bit of a run-on sentence. But i believe the being a unitarian universalist. Means that you devote a lifetime. To developing your ministry your particular ministry to the world. A ministry of right relations. Of death relation. Of caring relation in every sphere of your life. First ministry to yourself. Developing an interior architecture of both joy and compassion. Which provides you with a spiritual center that energized and motivates you. To develop. As a person. And then a ministry outlet in ministry. To the firm and defend as best and broadly we can. Inherent worth and dignity of every person. And every community. That shares this tender planet with. There is a ministry we have to community and culture. It's finally a ministry. To all of creation. Itself. Working with others. 2nd. Starvation. 2 and enslavement. Twin violence and poverty in all of their horrible form. To ensure human rights and freedom for all. To work as i've said for the containment of war and violence. And most pressingly now in this 21st century. To restrain and and the environmental destruction. So threatened. Ariix. Heatwave. Is not. Unitarian universalist. Both individually. And then our individual in our separate lives. Together as members of organized communities. We are called. Why the seven principles of our faith. And by hundreds of years of liberal religious tradition. To practice a ministry. Responsibility. And tenderness. And justice. What does y the world as we can. We are not. As many other orthodox traditions are in this town. A religion of belief. Or dogmas. We're salvation and meaning are obtained by the sheer adherence. Do certain beliefs and convictions know we are. A religion of character. A religion of ethical action. And everyday engagement. A religion of deeds and duties. Commitment and character and everyday spiritual. Living in a certain right way. Contrary. To the old tire jokes they tell about us. Unitarian universal. Which make us look like a wishy-washy religion. Ours is in fact the most serious. And demanding. It's a religion you must live out. Live with diligence. And discipline in your daily life. In this fragile fleeting gif. And duty. That is called earthly existence. You cannot be a stealth. Or a closeted. Unitarian universalist life and the famous. Sermon title. By harry meserve decades ago if being a unitarian universalist were against the law would there be enough evidence. You cannot be a stealth. Unitarian. Universalist. To be a part of this face. You must promise. To intentionally mole. Every aspect of your life into a ministry. A purpose. And care. Pure and simple. Engagement. And a certain kind. Noble. How. How do you engage the world. Epistemology another one of those highfalutin philosophical theological word. The third essential and distinctive components. Unitarian universalism. Is our custom ology which is not shared by most religions. Epistemology is simply. The science or theory of knowledge. And the question with which epistemology always asks is. By what authority. By what authority. You was a religious person. Assert that something you believe in and follow. Is real. For true good arrive by what authority do say something is. True. For many religious. Most especially the conservative one. Thrive so well in this culture. Authority for what is real and true good and right. Lies clearly and immutably. With god's immutable word. Or scriptures. Absolute inerrancy. Or some prophetic. Leader. Proclamation or things or the pronouncement of the church. Hierarchy. Or some combination of the above. Truth is given. Once and for all. Golden hour. But we do value. And honor these classic sources of religious truth. And have an honored place in our face. For scriptural wisdom. From all the world's great traditions. And church tradition. And prophetic utterances of great men and women. In our faith tradition. The most enduring locale. For religious. Spiritual authority lies. Closer. To home. In our face today. Authority. For what is real or true glittery. Lies primarily when everything is said and done. Within. Each of you as an individual person. As you discern it. By the light of your reason. The clarity of your conscience. And your own direct everyday experience. With the world. Always has been since its earliest humanist beginnings in the protestant reformation. A religion that affirms as our first principal does the inherent worth and dignity of every person. And that means we trust. Your reason. And your conscience. We have place. A great. Assistant confer. House of faith tradition. Human nature. To see and do what is good. What is true. And what is right. Again. But we do see athora tatum sources. For truth and morality. Beyond the reason. And conscience and discernment of the human individual. Things like scripture. And history. And faith traditions. We have always hesitated. To dictate. Do any of your reasons or your consciences. Some dogma horse little truth. Which none can question or doubt or reject. This is why preciously. There was always a diversity of beliefs. And conviction and perspective in our congregation. One of my colleagues charles magestro put it this way. If you want to come to a church. Where everyone agrees with you. And thinks just like you do you've come. To the wrong place. Fortin this unitarian universalist congregation there is a necessity. A wide diversity. Perspective and belief. Because we trust and reason and conscience and character. We refused here. To tell another precisely. What to believe. Yes. We are commonly guidance. By these shared principles on the back of your orders of service. And by the clear and reliable direct. Hundreds of years 500 years. Communitarian. And universalist thought and practice. When all is said and done it doesn't. Logical approach. Which sees many valid sources. For spiritual truth and ethical action. Which means we will have diversity. And on occasion disagreements. About what is real. What is true. What is good. And what is right. In many dogmatic religious communities you all know this. Things look. And perhaps actually are less messy. What are the unitarian universalist congregation. Are open-ended epistemology. Means that we understand ourselves on a fluid evolving journey. Both together and individually. For truth. Towards understanding. And toward that which might be called holy and good. We may stumble we may disagree but we're moving toward these. Sing. Again. This is a very demanding. Religion. 4th ave. And expect all who say they are on this religious path. To do the hard intellectual and spiritual work. A finding by themselves. And in conversation with others. Both ethical and spiritual truth from which they cannot escape. You are on a journey. Discover that which will hold you captive. Which will make you oblige you to live a certain way. And not live other ways. That's hard work. Of this faithful once. Figure out what it is. You must. Follow your own. Truest. If you are not at least a little scared or chasing or intimidated by this. You haven't gotten unitarian-universalism in your head. Yes. This is not a church. Where some like to imagine you can believe anything you want some. Wishy-washy. Spineless spiritual place. All worthy of garrison keillor says they're here to teach the indians interpretive dance. This is rather. Well that's one of his favorite jokes that the unitarians came to minnesota to teach the native americans interpretive dance haha. Rather. A serious. Religious community. Where you are free at obliged. To spend a lifetime. Moving toward truth that both serve you. Intrude. Tell you to live. In a very special. And not to do. Many. Other. It is a paradox. When you think about it. The freedom. The binds us. Eventually. To a certain way. A living. It's a paradox. Ours is freedom not from religion. But freedom for the hard work. Of religion. Is a religion of discipline. And of discipline and diligence. And then there's more and now we moved. I'm doing pretty well in my time. The last one here. The last. Element. Is our ontology. And cosmology. Either big again theological words would stand for something pretty simple. Ontology and cosmology or simply the study of the shape. And structure and reality of the universe. Because here in the few your community. We don't try to tell you precisely how the universe. Is structured and how it operates as many religions do. People come to different conclusions. About. How is the how does the universe work. Sitting here this morning for example we have humanists. Who do not believe there is a god or any sort of higher power in anyway directing the universe. Sitting right next. Who to believe. But this creation. Escaped. Or guided by an animating spirit or some sort of overarching presence. Dinner dinner diversity doesn't stop with humanism and theism. Let's not forget those of us or just don't know. Diagnostic. Here in the sanctuary this morning. We are people. Who find the ethical teachings of jesus. Davita central guide of their lives. Sitting next to folks. Who find buddhist. Jewish or neo-pagan teaching. To be the most spiritually rewarding. We have people for home music. Is the primary pathway. To the deep places of their spirit. And others for whom prayer and meditation. Serve the same purpose even if they can articulate. To what they pray. On and on the diversities and distinctions here could go. Suffice it to say that is unitarian universalist. We agree to be together. On this wide path. Toward meeting and responsibilities and truth. Even though we see the tape. And structure and purpose of the universe. In far different. Terms. This diversity of belief and the worldview and perspective. Well disconcerting and threatening to those who are not secure in their own understandings of life. You've actually to watch liberating and exciting. Not only do what unitarian universalist get to consider. The possible worth and rightness. Someone else's view. Which differs far from our own. We all forget to get the clarify our own belief. Through the process of dialogue and engagement. Which are encouraged here. No i won't lie to you. Of course sometimes it is hard even for you use. To truly listen to and respect the views that are different from their own we have fundamentalist. Sitting in this room. Fundamentalist humanist. And fundamentalist others. What am i. Colleagues in florida describe the small group in her church. Azhar shiite humanist. You get the idea. Rigidity can come and liberal cloth as well as conservative and if you're guilty of that. Get rid of it. We know both the excitement and growth. Results. Truly engaging ontological. And cosmological difference. Rather than beef. Buy someone else's theism or someone else's humanism or someone else's. Mystikal blah blah ism. We can use this difference. Grow in the ways of the spirit and deepen our understanding of. How rich. The world isn't how wonderful it is it people. Well. I'm running out of time i got to summarize ever so briefly. Unitarian universalism is a religion. Eschatology. We are engaged. People. Serious and busy about developing our ministry our particular ministry. To ourselves and the wider world. Guided by our 7 principles. And guided by the hundreds of years of heritage. But our faith has given us. And we move toward developing a ministry. That's a logical place. Which honors every individual's reason and conscience. And therefore welcomes and expects diversity. And the last is that we are blessed by a movement. Psychological and cosmological soup. It provides us. With a tasty and diverse diet. Different ways. The universe. Unitarian universalism. Is assyria. Demanding and yet leslie fun and liberating religion. That puts you in charge. Of your own spiritual destiny. And expect you to live up. To your highest. Human potential and values. Use your mind. And they use your heart. The use your hands. For the holiest purposes you can discern. This faith calls us constantly. Two more love. Two more purpose. Two more justice. Two more service. And two more joy. All the contacts of intellectual freedom. And spiritual rigor. This free and challenging religion is i assure you not right for everyone. Many in our culture. When it comes to sunday. To be spoon-fed. And told precisely what to believe. How to live how high to jump. And what. The l. But i hope that this free and rigorous religion. Is just right for you. Just right for you. As you take charge of your spiritual destiny. And shape. Your life. This life. Inderal work. Joy. And purpose. 29 minutes. 47 seconds. Wakemed.

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3555.mp3

Since it says any order of service bulletin. But you are about to hear a sermon. Let me correct that you are about to hear the first half of a sermon. Second half. Didn't turn out that way because i couldn't write the full when it just turned out that way because that's what that's what it was planned and however at age 82 you want sometimes wonder if. If it isn't better just to always to do a half into the hole. Description to say who and what river road unitarian church. That was her name then. Was all about. We knew ourselves to be a warm and friendly congregation. Welcoming visitors. Incurring about one another. We were also a seaking. Questing and questioning people. Person to find what his or her own. Thought to be true. Talk to be meaningful. And moreover we were at congregation. In the importance of service to the larger world. And in social change. Describe ourselves. So to describe ourselves. We came up with this phrase. The church. With a warm heart. An open mind. And the social conscience. Warm and friendly. Caring about one another. Caring for others. About what happened in the in the world. Outside our walls. Story of my first experience. Unitarian church. Before the unitarian universalist emerged. I was 22 years old. First-year seminary students. I was raised. I decided to look into the unitarian. It was a good size gothic building. Conceited about 400 people although there were fewer than 100 people there that sunday. I heard a very good sermon. But nothing else impressed me. There is no choir. No one greeted me when i arrive. If there was a coffee hour after the service. I did not know about it. Because no one invited me. And there was nothing in the order of service about it. Still no one speaking to me. Ensure. It was the coldest most unfriendly church i've ever experienced and i did not go back. As a result i was lost to unitarianism for over 20 years. Tell that story to this congregation once-a-year urging them not to let that kind of thing happens to someone who comes to river road. Friendliest congregation around the beltway. The church. With a warm heart. Before i came already become a caring community. I remember when the daughter of one of our members lucy pirtle. Was shocked and killed by an estranged boyfriend. I heard it on the evening news. And rushed over to lucy's house. When i got there. The house was already full of river rotors. Who had gone to comforter. Had to do what they could to help her. In this time of grief. And loss. The church. With a warm heart. My first year here are adult education program. Consisted of two adult discussion discussion groups in bed regularly. Scott textbooks the road less traveled. It was at the top of the bestseller lists washington post and the. New york times bestseller list i read it. And decided to offer a discussion group. For adults. Based on that book. I meant to limit the enrollment to the first 15 people to sign up. But somehow i feel to get that message out. And before i knew it. And could stop it. 64 people inside.. So rather than. Cancel cancel. I decided to give to discussion groups. And more benjamin director of religious education of the time. Decided to give to also. So we had four groups. 16 people each. That was the beginning of our adult education program which in a few years. Under leadership of. Of the hank beasley at later of. Shirley patterson grew to. About 900 registration. Yes i feel the same way and over 40 different groups. Church with an open mind. River road has always had a number of members who were active in community service work. Tutoring children of low-income families. Giving food to the annual thanksgiving food drive. Working for fair housing. Sending petitions to congress. Sermon on the problem of hunger. In 1981. Ii. Caucus. Always try to do. Simplify members decided it was not enough to talk about the problem. So they started to collect money every sunday in a little redbox. That money would go to 8. Sex addiction is now 33 years old. A warm heart. The social conscience. In 1989 i testify before the county council regarding an affordable housing issue. After the meeting i was on a net on the elevator with a council member. Remember from the far northeast corner of the county. He asked me what church was with. When i told him you said oh yes. I know that church. Your church is well-known for its good work in the community. With a social conscience. It was here in one of our meeting rooms that to affordable housing groups were born. Montgomery housing partnership. But today has over 1,200 units. Apartments for rent. For low-income people many of whom work in the county. But could not afford to live in the county if they had to pay rent. At the market rate. Affordable housing corporation was also born here. To that wonderful organization which during part of its life had to river rotors on the staff. River road member for many years was executive director. Of your uniform housing corporation and gladys clearwater's. Assistance. It has now emerged with other affordable housing organizations. The forum. Opendoor housing. The church. With a social conscience. River road. So that's who we are. A vital influential and caring community. The congregation with a warm heart. An open mind. Social conscience. We are people who care about one another. And about the larger world. People that do creed. But who was an open mind seek truth and meaning wherever we can find. Them. People for whom love and service to our fellow human beings are more important. Then religious ritual or personal piety. We are in congregation. Pitbull. Social service. And. Giving to others. The more important. Then religious ritual. Are personal piety. Religion is not about what we say. Or what. The kind of person we are. In that sense of religion. River road is a religious community. I've spoken in my career to over-50 uu congregations. I cannot help it get a sense of the spirit and the culture of each and although i admit to being biased. I have not sent than any other congregation. The kind of spirit we have here. There are many excellent congregation. But i really do believe. Did rruuc. And special. Vineland karen congregation we have been. And we are. Requires our ongoing dedication. Requires that we not rest on our laurels. Build for tomorrow. Provide intellectual congregation. This congregation. With a warm heart. An open mind. A social conscience. Now for the other half. Minister emeritus and the man who let me into seminary so it is all his fault. Months ago. The board asked me to do a little bit of research into strategies and best practices for a possible capital campaign. In support of this original building here at river road. We thought it would be best to ask smart people how to do this big thing right. Until i dutifully went off. And i called a bunch of the smartest ministers and lay people i know. Amongst the other senior ministers of large congregations. Truth be told i have never done this before. Until we launch this combined operating and capital campaign biggest special congregational fundraising i had ever done was a grand total of $30,000. That our annual operating budget is over $1000000 in the total capital need he reproaches 3.6 million a little different. All the help i can get. I wrote down pretty much everything that might smart colleague shed and i remember one conversation in particular with a friend i dearly love. She said. So what exactly do you need capital expenditures at river road for. What exactly are you trying to do she asked. And i told her the basic we're not exactly what we really need is a new hvac system. Sometimes really hot. I went on to say all of the windows need replacing lighting in the parking lot in the kitchen and as i was talking somewhere in the midst of my camera and she sighed and said. And the next words out of her mouth were terribly jazzy there and after a very pregnant pause in which i said nothing she added an important addendum. I am not sure how i ultimately responded i suspect that i did not. At the first blush i'm pretty certain i was afraid. Because after all. It's not the response / say you are embarking on a 3.6. For a while about that boy. And the more i thought about it. The more i think about it now the more i love it. Because what we're about at this moment in time at river road is everything i want us to be about. Everything i yearn to serve and have. Since bill let me in to meadville lombard 15 years ago. We're not about being jazzy or shiny or new. Yes. Brave. Yes. But always always connecting where we are going to the brave heritage of those who came before us. With one foot planted in a heritage heritage that challenges us and the other learning and leanings creatively into the future that we will build together. No we are not building a new building. Or even as some have rather awesomely proposed a treehouse in which to host the meetings of the youth group so wouldn't that be sweet we're not about anything particular about instead is something very real. Powerful. Grounding. Transformative. Literally. And light. And warped. A safety. And the very ground beneath our feet that sustains us as we serve and grow together. Nothing shiny or flash or even all that new but rather something so much better. A commitment to the very best. Of ourselves. The heart and soul of this place that has nourished us for over 50 years. And that will nourish all who come through these doors. For the next 50 and beyond. No i have been unusually blessed. To serve growing congregation. In my time of ministry. Not just in numbers though there is that. Programming envision. Growing congregations are really fun to serve. And river road is a prime example of that truth. I am and have been lucky enough to serve congregations like this one from time to time people around our denomination call me up and ask about my grand philosophy for growing churches. What's the secret you know what programs what strategies what bottom-line commitments make it all happen. Where did the magic come from. And the truth that i always say. Is it congregations grow. When they do churchwell. When what we do on a day today. Week-to-week month-to-month basis. Is nothing short of excellent. When we are kind to each other. When we are welcoming to the stranger. When the music is our sold and the words are heartfelt and nobody but nobody is faking it within these walls. When we aren't afraid to take some risks. And we aren't too shy. To be both honest and humble at the same time. Congregations grow when we do what we do with excellence. And gentlemen. And there is nothing jazzy about that. Secret. There's no magic solution. Just at. And that. Is what we are about right now. At this juncture in our life together excellence in the way we do community in the way we weave a story in the way we show up for each other and for a world in need excellence undergirded by commitment. Both inside and outside of these walls that we make sacred by coming together. Boy. Indeed. And i can think of nothing better to invest in then that. And for that reason we don't need and aren't going to do the hard sell in this combined campaign. Going after the bottom line or the single number what the combined needs are and we are responsible and smart enough to strategize our way towards success. But at no point in the visit we have planned for every family and friends of this congregation will we put you on the spot and expect you to come up with an answer. Instead will show up. And will bring all the pictures and the stories we have gathered and will articulate our shared vision. And we'll talk. Hear what you love and what you struggle with and what you yearn for here in your community and in your spiritual life. We'll share what it takes to get where we're going. And will drink a cup of your very most warming teeth and we will smile. After those meetings which i swear are so much more fun and so much less pressure than you'd imagine. We'll walk out of each other's homes glad to have gotten to know each other a little bit better. And we'll each invite ourselves to make the bold commitment that works for us. Weather to the ongoing work of our operating budget. What are the capital support of this beautiful space or to both. A bold commitment that works for you in your way. That stretches and affirms your values. That uphold what you love. And then we'll show up the next sunday and we'll do churchwell. Congregational life well that is. We'll keep doing what we've been doing at the congregation with a warm heart and open mind and a social conscience. People growing and deepening in fellowship spirit and in service. We will seek out the deep kindness. Within us. We'll find our toes tapping or our hands clapping along with the choir when we leave. Will laugh alongside each other and be forgiving when the senior minister leaves her microphone on it inopportune times during the service. And our bold investments of time of talent and of treasure will become a part of the continuing story of this place. So many generations to come. And 50 years from now. They will save us. That we made great things possible for them. That we crossed all of the divides that could separate us and did the good work that was uniquely and expressly hours to do they will speak our names with smiles on their faces and say. There were some people. Who took good care of each other. And you kept the ground beneath their feet strong so that it could hold us up to. That's what i want to be about. Nothing jazzy. Everything real. That's what my family and i are investing in. And that. But i invite you to join in. And to celebrate today.

www_rruuc_org

154.mp3

That's the last installment for a full choir until september can we give them a round of applause. I got a 310 wire and barrel about 20 people but. They were quite compared to what we do here at river road i know that full well. A few months ago i got one of those. Startling existential wake-up call that happened to ministers have been in the business a while. During a coffee our last winner. In the new fellowship hall and attractive woman i guess a mid-thirties came up to me and with her with her husband and two down a little. And she said that she came up to me and said we've met before reverend. And i said something about having an iota of a recollection of ever meeting her i totally like oh i'm sorry i don't remember what that occasion was can you help me. And with the teasing smile on her face. She said to me. You christened me 35 years ago. After i got over the shock. I really have been doing ministry long enough that i could have christened an adult woman standing in front of me with 35 with the two kids in the husband. Where was that. And she replied houlton maine which indeed was the location of a little rule conjugation i survived. 35 years ago just out of seminary. With mining curiosity who are your parents. And she said jim and judy mckenna a wonderful farm couple couple that i had a good time and she said i have no idea. All i can tell you is you welcome to me into the world. You could have knocked me over with a feather. A grown woman telling me i was the minister who it welcomes her. To the world. I guess i have to face the fact that i've been doing this thing called dentistry. For a long time. I tell you the story this morning by way of affirming the ministers. When they're reflecting on their work and their ministry over the year. Need always to take the long view. Over a career that spans decades. Ministers like congregation. Need to remember that this complicated work. Is comprised of countless events. Ceremonies. Ritual. Moments. Relationships connections and counters. Decisions. Crises. Achievements and milestones. Nfl rules that we play in the congregations that we. Minister. Are varied and complex and interconnected. And in large part in the end always nfl. There's a mystery. About this. So it has been over the 36 years i've been privileged to serve. In four very different congregational settings and so it is. With this congregation river road which i have served. For a full one-third of my career. 12. Yes. It wasn't fact 12 years ago. This very sunday. Define nearly unanimous and enthusiastic folks is congregation called me to be. They're only minister. And a quick and important aside here i would remind you. But in the ensuing years we have usually had. 223 ministers andorian turn. Serving on our staff. Most noticeably those five years. From 2000 to 2005. When lynn strauss. And ginger luca die all served this country gation full-time. But it is important to remember that when i came in 98 i was all by myself. The entire ministerial staff. So much has happened in the intervening dozen years and it's hard for me at least. Turmeric zactly what we as minister in conjugation were like. When we began our journey together. And because more because more than considerably half of you. Have come to this congregation. Since that time many of you arriving only over recent years. A majority of you in this room right now do not have a long-term perspective. On how we have matured and evolved over the long term of these twelve years. So i wanted to set aside this sunday my last annual meeting with me i'm going to preach for five more times over the summer but this is my last annual meeting with you. Before i begin my brand-new ministry. In florida. To attempt to honestly and accurately look back. Over these eventful years. To see if we can't both articulate and yes i think with cars. Celebrate how far we have come together. Because by any objective measure i think. We've come a good long way. 12 years is a long time in the life of a congregation. And a lot cannon did happen over the span of years here. And i believe it's incredibly useful for both of us. To pause and stick to take stock of how far we've come. Rhode island minister. Can move on and take stock. With my successes and shortcoming. Because i'm going to keep doing this work. I'm so that you was a congregation. Can take stock of your success. And your shortcoming. Could you can better and more thoughtfully proceed into your future. Which begins in just a few weeks with a wonderful interim minister. Marine killoran. Begin that new chapter. With realism. Perspective. Excitement and joy. I want to begin my reflection analysis of these past twelve years. What a simple overview summary statement. Waldorf younotus with pockets of institutional disappointments and goals unrealized. And i'll be more specific about those in a few minutes. I take pride. In the fact that in the overview is a congregation. Over the past 12 years rruuc has taken. A significant step up. In almost every dimension. In our life as a religious community i want to repeat that statement for clarity and emphasis. Over the past 12 years we have as a religious community. Unmistakably taken a significant step up. In almost every dimension. How about institutional life. I can only hope that as your lead minister i played some sort of important role. In some or all of these positive developments. Since my first days with the congregation in 98 as i said. Over and again to staff and lay leadership. This should be our overarching goal here at river road to simply and always do church right. That's our goal to do church right. What i have meant by the simple statement about us doing church right. Is it the institutional girl we should constantly have before i. Is to live out as collectively and individually our unitarian universalist faith. As best we can everyday. Through our program. And are activities for interactions with ourselves. And the wider community doing religion right is living our faith and living it well and vibrantly. Everyday. I take it on faith. The life of any religious congregation. Everything is fundamentally related. To everything else. Which means that there is no aspect. How about life is a congregation. Which stands successfully in isolation from the other parts. And so if we're doing church right. Again which means serving our faith. And achieving excellence in the congregation and strength so we can live out that face. We simultaneously must do each and every aspect of institutionalized. As best we can so when it comes to a congregation. That is important we do absolutely everything. In accordance with the highest and best standards. We can imagine that we have just to give a few examples of what we have to tend to. Quality music. And clean bathrooms. Strong and wise preaching. And comprehensive and inspiring religious education for all ages. And wonderful adult enrichment opportunities. A meaningful community service. Defective social justice advocacy. And wonderful art. Anesthetics. Attentive. Pastoral care. And enlivening and fun social events. In the devoted hard-working available staff came in if you doubt any improvement over the last 12 years your staff. Is a tentative. Alert. And strong visionary and lay leader. Just to mention a few of the things. The required for doing church right. How do you say. And it has always been i think for its entire 50-year history. Is the congregation. Of high expectations and standards. I believe. It is this aspiration on our part. To systematically do church right. It has a large part of labels off to take a step up. In almost every aspect of life here. Now let me quickly catalog some of the particular positive healthy changes. But it happened. On the most basic of institutional level. Since 1998 when i arrive river road has seen a market expansion. Both financial and staff resources. We are bigger than we were. Our budget and staff have doubled over this.. A market expansion of on-the-ground resources. Which has allowed us to provide a greater range and depth. Programming and services. Both of the congregation and the community beyond. One of the most important changes this increase in staff resources. Which i would point out includes the expansion of full-time. Cliff harden. His first day of full-time was the day i arrived. And the creation of the position of the director of communications and outreach. Which cherry blanchette how could we live without her so ably fill. The expansion of a religious education staff. The highwomen of enough generous to keep this place clean for a change. And the financial resources for additional administrative intern. Smith. But we could truly become a year-round congregation. With a fully staffed worship and re 52 sundays a year. It is important for us to remember. The one i arrived in 98. Ruc didn't the habit of essentially shutting down over the summer months. When is the sole minister. Took most of his vacation. That's providing. Rather poorly attended lay-led worship. With spotty music. We are now a year-round. Full-service high-quality conjugation. Which is better great differ. First of all most visitors come in the summer. And if you're providing real church. Guess what you got them. And so we will take a real step up in terms of our being a full-service current location. Every summer service. Is at the light. Beyond the significant growth in our yearly budget and staff for sources other financial markers. All of the 12. Remember giving in the stewardship campaigns as way up. Reflecting our shared commitment to properly fund our congregation and its programming. Additionally our congregation reserve. Have grown from 170,000. 2 more than 470 8255. Percent increase. Hello endowment fund has grown by more than 54. From 60000 to 530000. Providing our congregation with a b. Breathing room. For unexpected nice. And while we're on the subject of money. Let me briefly digraph and address this year's stewardship campaign. Over the past 12 years. The generosity and reliability of our congregation are giving has dramatically improved. With congregational giving increasing every single year. Including a healthy 10% increase. Last year. But this year today. Many of our members and friends have yet to respond to our campaign. Leaving us significantly short of our goal for next fiscal year which begins in just three weeks. It is slowly come to my attention. From a variety of sources. But a significant portion of this hesitation. Maybe due to the fact that dozens of rruuc families. Are particularly attached to my preaching and ministry and maybe at least temporarily. Sitting this out to watch to see what will happen. While i appreciate this enthusiasm and support for my ministry. I must urge all members and friends. To pledge and to pledge now. And generously for next year. Rihanna with minister. The reverend moring killoran. Which i am the other board members enthusiastically were able to vote for it's a wonderful preacher. And the pastor and a minister. And i've every confidence that in just two years from now. You'll be calling a wonderful capable new settled minister to lead you. What if river road is. That's we make this transition. We must have the full and unwavering support of all our members and friends and we have to have that now. You can't be attached to any minister you have to be attached primarily to the institution. That's what sustains our faith and our religion. It's not ever about one individual minister. So please if you have yet to make your pledge. For next year. Make that threat today diana is here in her office or go online as soon as you get home. Let's continue to keep rruuc in a strong and sure financial footing. Generosity. Which has allowed for every for growing levels of activity and programming here. We have similarly in our very important to acknowledge. Taking a step up a real step up. In terms of our congregation at home. The condition and capabilities of our building and grounds. As almost all of you are well over the past decade yes it took us that long. We purposely in the product we moved. Do first plan and then pay for and then build. Renovate. Our award-winning building and building new edition. Indians just last year finally providing herself. With fully one-third more space for all of our activities and outreach to the community and our needs. With the recent completion of this process with e. Beautiful repaving about parking lots of beautiful rebuilding about plaza. And the renovation of all of our doors unlocked. We are now blessed with an adequate and inspiring building. To serve the congregation for decades and decades to come. The truth is. The one i came 12 years ago our physical plant. Was adrian. Evan adequate. Neglected. And it looked like it and it was cluttered. The first sunday i arrived 12 years ago there was a broken snowblower with to open bags of sand all over the floor of the. Of the coat rack. Laughing about a day. In 1998 we were crowded in a dirty and rundown facility and we've taken a big step up in both a maintenance and cleanliness of our building. And the availability of inviting space for everything this congregation wants to accomplish. This is a huge accomplishment. Bricks-and-mortar matter everything is connected and if the building doesn't look like we're not respecting our faith and our neighbors and ourselves. The step-up in our physical facility is a good thing. Because we've also seen over recent years of dramatic and important increase. In both congregational programming and community outreach. Why we lack forsyth data on building use over this time and kanye selectivity. The staff and i believe both have just about double. In the time i've been with you a dramatic increase in activity. And a dramatic increase. In the number of community groups and organizations that we welcome on a regular basis. Indoor flying facility including now a variety of regional musical group. The car building home. The lifelong learning program of american university and many many other groups at one time we had for congregation. Meeting here in this building. This increase. Community interaction. Is reflected favorably low rental income which has more than tripled. Since i arrived. And because we have purposefully opened our doors to so many. Ruby amethyst in groups in a community we have a much greater profile in this community which has helped us to attract. New members and friends there's no doubt about it the building matters. I also believe it over my tenure here and now i move on to what his nearest and dearest to my heart. We have seen a deepening. Expanding of arse of the spirituality and spiritual expression. Of the congregation. I believe it both in terms of our worship and our religious education program. And the dolphin richmond. We have grown in the depth and breadth. Spiritual exploration. And a willingness to participate in meaningful ritual. The take us to a deeper level. Self-awareness in connection with the wider world. Just one small but important example if i might i know there was resistance to it. But the lighting of candles of joy and concern which we initiated in my first year. Has become. Very important ritual i believe in the life of this congregation. The simple sabbath ritual may seem inconsequential the song. Or a distraction to others. But you're me and the many many many others of you there about 40 of you that lined up today to take a moment to light a candle of prayer. This is a meaningful expression from deep within our hearts. To reach out to other life. With compassion and connection and death. And speaking of depth enjoy on sunday morning how about our three youth choir. How about that as something in the whole music program in the rule but the children involved in music in our churches just. Exploding ammo. Wonderful way over the past 12 years. This to only possible because we spiritually understand. The importance of including our children and youth and worship which we do regularly. Lot of unitarian universalist church. Don't do a very good job of that. I want to quickly mention several other significant steps up weave. 12 years ago pastoral care here at river road. It was a rather haphazard thing. Beyond friends caring for other friends which they did very well. Who are the password care with largely dependent on the minister. But today because we have spent years nurturing this program. With both lay leadership sylvia friedman and others. We have an attentive devoted team of lay pastoral care providers. According a pastoral care with the ministerial staff. We have taken a step up. In the way we systematically. Pay attention to one another's pastoral care needs and we should be proud of. Seminary are social justice and community service work. Which was always important the current gation we've always been. Leaders in this area in this regard. Nonetheless it is expanded in deepam since i came. Arthur for justice giving. We currently give away about $100,000 to worthy causes and groups. Has more than doubled since the time i came. Initiated the wonderful. Annual action week. It's spring. And the many task forces and liaisons of the social justice council. Increasingly active in a wide rain. Of concerns both local and global. Ar. Salvador trip is about to go off a perfect example in july perfect example of this outreach. Well there's always more to do. In this troubled world of ours. As unitarian universalist here. In the nation's capital i think we should be proud. How we. Expanded in the region effectiveness. Of our social justice and community service work. Another aspect. Ivar congregation license has been strengthened over the past 12 years. Is layla and worship. With the steady support of our ministers. And cliff harden. And the choirs. Leyland worship has become significantly more integrated. End of the wife of the congregation. The positive results. But attendance and participation at leyland services. Is now legal to that of the other services. And then there's the adult enrichment and small-group ministry. In reflecting over the past 12 years i would suggest. But this is an important area of our congregation life and programming. Morning expandable shrinking. Has been evolving. And changing form. Elsa needs and tastes of the congregation and community. Have been changing. It is true. I think because of these changing these. We've been offering fewer traditional multi-session evening adult enrichment courses. Which in part reflects. The busyness of life here within the beltway. Which makes such classes less attractive. Two members of the congregation. But we have quite a few active men. And women's support groups. We have covenant group. And well-attended spiritually focused courses and classes. Not to mention the cc and c program. Which continues to experience. Cry participation. This diverse aspect of our programming in ministry. We'll need a lot of attention. As you move into your future. In large part i think because of the again. Needs are changing. We can't just do with adult enrichment. What worth 15 years ago that will not work in the future. It's going to take different forms perhaps none of it will be. Online or i should say a dial-in course is where. We people are talking on the telephone or or web web. Seminars. I'm not sure exactly what form it will take. We should take pride in the high level of small group work that we do. And realize it will continue evolve. Conclusion i believe it's obvious. So many aspects. How about congregational life rruuc. Does taking a step up over recent years. Achieving the level of programming. Staffing. Financing. Outreach in activity of which we should be proud. But no one else has for the past decade or so would be complete or honest. If we did not name our disappointment. What is a congregation we have not. Significantly numerically grown. Both in terms of membership. A religious education enrollment. Well the annual membership number we will report to the union way this year. Is slightly higher than it was in 1998. The truth is. But this congregation is almost exactly the same size as it was. When i began my ministry here 12 years ago that being approximately. 600 members. Another hundred 250 friend. At approximately 250 children and youth. It should not surprise you by the way. That the largest numbers we ever reported as a congregation. Wua about 700 adults and close to 300 youth and children. We reported that high numbers. During the five years. From 2000. Open 2005. When we had three full-time ministers. That's when we were the biggest. Ginger luke. Lynn strauss and myself. We're on staff providing program. Support and services. As we grow. I think it is undeniable. Protracted building program. Which through significant financial and staff resources. Away from other areas of congregational life for several years. May have contributed. Torrent ability to grow this congregation numerically over recent years. But many other unrelated factors and forces. They also have played a role. Which are difficult. To qualify. Always is in a connotation setting. In a religious congregation. It is usually difficult if not impossible to accurately pinpoint all of the factors. Which effect membership growth. Or decline. But it must be acknowledged that despite our staff and our ministers. Starboard all running. Does kanye's to become larger. Such growth has eluded us. And what the future will bring i cannot say. We're the same size. As we were 12 years ago. That being said. I want to return to the obvious truth about where we stand now where you stand at the congregation. Facing your future. As i personally leave you for warmer climes. A new challenges and opportunities with a very very different congregation. Messi retire they said would it be okay if most of our. Meeting happen in the daytime but we don't like evening meetings i think i'll help somehow. Very different congregation. As i leave you. You should rest assured. But the table is set. Free to take the next step up. To whatever you want to be as a complication. The two-year interim. you begin soon with reverend killoran at the end of the summer. Is it opportunity this interim. is a clear. Leo opportunity. For you to determine together. Who and what you want to be. As you proceed. Of the congregation. That's the work she understands she's coming to do that's the work your board understands they want to do with her. That's your work. What do you want to be different from what you have been. And then to begin taking. Concrete steps. That will get you to that place. I assure you. That. I strive to provide you with the best and most attentive leadership of which i am capable. Over these last 12 years as have ginger in. And lynn strauss. And together we've come a long way toward doing. Church right. But i have no illusion. As i move on things can or should. Stay the same. Every ministerial transitional elsbeth administering the current location. The set a new course. With new goals new dream new energies and aspiration. Nuface i. I am moving on the vero beach. To grow and deepen and evolve. It was my ministry of new challenges in a hole. Different setting of quirks and character. None of you none of your personalities will be there i got a whole new set. It's emily. I have every assurance and hope that you heared river road. Will also be selling at a brand new car. Without my personality with new ministerial leadership. Fresh and bold innovative and strong. As i affirmed in assuming a few months ago. I believe that as you face your future. Because of the necessity. That you're facing limited resources. And energies that exist in all kinds of gation. Everybody has to live within limits. You must. As a congregation be willing. To increasingly make real and difficult choices. About what you're going to focus on. You cannot be all things. To all people. You need to make choices. No healthy congregation. Can be all things. To all people. All the time i realized you're all from lake wobegon with beautiful children and everybody's above-average. But not everybody can be there. I am persuaded. Set up river road instead of strong and sure future. It must more keenly focused its energy and resources on what it deemed. To be most essential. And of highest value. To yourselves and the wider community. Enclosing. I want a clearly expressed to join satisfaction. Is experiencing your minister over these last 12 years. I believe this is been a good match. Between minister and congregation. Minor problems along the way. We had a lot of fun and success together. And we should all feel good about the very many concrete thing. We have accomplished together. Both you and i know face and open. And exciting. An undetermined future. Many unknowns. Some anxieties. Countless. Possibilities. Or i can ask. Is it we may both be blessed. As we turn the page. And step into the future. And let it take us. Whatever it will. I'm in.

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2786.mp3

Charlotte moser emailed me this week. She might be in here somewhere she emailed me this week. From the very middle of her very good work charlotte is a member of our congregation who is currently writing an article that touches on the issue of resilience in the natural world and about the role indigenous women have in resource management. The keep their environment their ecosystems that they're dependent upon resilient. And by the way that's just another example of river rotors living their values charlotte writing about indigenous women and resilient ecosystems but she emailed me and shared a little bit of wisdom with me particularly this logically based definition of resilience. Wichita. Resilience is the capacity to survive disturbance. It is the system's capacity to undergo stress and yet recover or even to transcend it. Resilience. Is determined by the self-organizing ability of the system and its ability to respond to the stresses and shocks imposed from external sources. Here's the real kicker. Resilience. Conserved opportunity. For renewal. Resilience. Conserved. Opportunity. For renewal. In the natural world and in social groups. And i would venture to say within the system. Of the individual human spirit. Resilience to serve. The opportunity for renewal. It is that force which makes it possible to say without a smirk on our faces at the end of each service that we are held by a hope. That will not die. Because so long as renewal is possible. No matter what external forces bear down on us. The capacity of the system of our souls to be renewed remains intact. We are not undone. Seeker was not undone. Decade after decade when the progress he dreamed of seemed so far away he kept believing harmony among persons and in this world was possible and he kept playing his old banjo. Which. Some of you i'm sure remember with inscribed with the words. Surround. And forces it to surrender. Remember that. This machine surrounds hate. I'm forces it to surrender. As if his whole life depended on it. Which perhaps in fact it did. Candy lightner was not undone a woman whose thirteen-year-old daughter was struck and killed by a drunk driver and who went on to found mothers against drunk driving. An organization that has changed in certainly saved so many lives. Viktor frankl was not undone. A nazi concentration camp survivor and wanted psychology's most famous examples of astonishing resilience. He was not undone the even in the very midst of hell. When he imagined himself at some point in the distant future away from that place lecturing to a hall full of students about the lessons he was learning even there. And what is it. It makes such renewal possible. There is of course the astonishing power of the human spirit itself. Asserting its capacity over and over again such that it astonishes. A character in bram stoker's dracula actually is amusing when he says. It's really wonderful how much resilience there is in human nature. But any obstructing cause no matter what. Anyway even by death and we fly back to the first principles of hope. And enjoyment. And yet there is more to it i think in the innate capacity. Of the human creature to correct course. There were also practices ways of being that can get us through and get us there there are lived tools. For the resilient life. And i don't know if it is enjoyment that my soul flies back to. And the times when my own life calls for resilience but at the very least it's appreciation. Gratitude. For the imperfect glory of being me. And there were some practices of resilience. But others have gifted me with. Some tools deleting from the journey that have seen me through and that carry me as yet onward. Sometimes i. Come here for a services and i preached in pretty broad elusive strokes about my own experiences. I do that so it's clear that it's not all about me. When we talked about resilient it's hard not to get real. And i'm thinking today about giving credit where credit is due namely to the people in the practices that have been the greatest sources of resilience for me in my life. When the pressures were great. And i did not know where to go next. Some of you have heard me speak at one time or another. About how i became a unitarian universalist. About the foundational experience i knew in my life of rejection within the faith of my upbringing. And my landing here because in some ways it was the one club i knew would have me it was the one cable i knew would set a place for me no matter what. I've never told you the paul harvey version of that story the rest of the story as it were. Because i've never actually preached that version of the story in 10 years behind a pulpit certain things take time. And the rest of the story is not just my experience of being rejected by the face of my upbringing but the reason why i was rejected. The time in my own life that does not define me but that does very much define my personal experience of resilience. The one and only time. Doors have been slammed in my face over the course of my nearly sickeningly blessed life. It wasn't really about theology. It wasn't about believing or disbelieving one thing or another it was very deeply personal. The summer when i was 17 years old. I was before h fair queen of our small town. Miss posey county the corn queen herself i was captain of the swim team i was dating a football player. I was also. Pregnant. Alone. I'm terrified. It was not quite as norman rockwell ask as the first sentence makes it sound but it was closed. And as for that second sentence. I would venture to say i am not the only woman in this room. Who knows just how that feels. I actually found out that i was pregnant. On an afternoon in july. During the 4-h fair. When i was scheduled in my duties as miss posey county to give prizes at a livestock competition. I remember showing up at the cattle barn that summer day in my tiara and my dressy overalls. First-place ribbons on little kids jackets. I'm trying not to look like i was dying inside. Which i was. Missing my family literally helped build and maintain the facilities of the local right-to-life chapter. My grandfather volunteered there every saturday. When i was a little kid after church on sundays i would sit at a little table outside the church door and then it's sing-songy voice while selling little paper flowers for the cause sing right-to-life roses. Which in my unexamined adolescent mind wasn't really a cause of abortion or choice or anti-choice but it causes being a good person and promoting good person stuff like life. And here i was. In my life. So much more complicated and so much more alone. 17 years old. In a tiara. Surrounded by prize-winning cattle. Pregnant. And no one knew. And for a time the whole world sort of caved in on itself. Sherman. And perhaps some advocacy work i need to find the voice for on another day. About the fact that the access i had by crossing state borders to a safe and legal abortion probably. My life. But that really is another day. I had that abortion praise god. Because well so many young women have the resources both internal and external to support a new life i didn't. I also didn't have the internal resources to process my experience into something like resilient purpose. And so i stumbled. I didn't tell a soul. But i did keep moving. And life wasn't the same. I dropped out of sports. I took a job at a local hardware and hunting store weighing dead deer. And filling propane tanks. I alienated most of my friends and after a while i started taking church very seriously. Sometimes i would even sit in the sanctuary and hold my breath as long as i could. I just approved i could control anything. Even air. It took me two full years of isolation before i managed to tell anybody at all. Adjust with priest in fact. My philosophy professor no left. Chat with me once and then a dozen times and more and told me that i wasn't going to fall apart. My story didn't register as shock to him. Justice kindness. And he got me to stop holding my breath in the fuse. Guide me to a different way of being religious. One that wasn't about tenants but about grayson he got me to thinking that maybe just maybe. There was a way for me to live a powerful and committed. Religious life. Still. I thought for a time that life might yet take place in the context of the faith of my upbringing. Until i told the novice mistress at a community of sisters not only what i believed the illogically but also. My whole story. And not only that. But that i didn't really regret it. Because it had transformed me from a pretty average not-so examined kid into a human being who could feel pain both myself. And others. I told you about that bit before. The realization that there was meaning to be made from it all all of it including the parts that hurts. And i told you about the moment when i said these things and the novice mistress who 10 minutes before had thought i was the best little thing in the world looked at me with true revolving. And was done with me. Because my life. Specifically the fact that i had had an abortion drew a circle around me that would ever. Ever separate me. From her understanding of grace. And so for me. I need to find some source of resilience in my life and merged from to pressures on the ecosystem of my soul. Did the billeting power of isolation. And the foundational experience of rejection. That more than anything else in my life was what threatened to undo me. Now i know that those pressures for my own life don't come anywhere near what so many of you have experienced. I haven't lost the person i loved for 60 years. Struggled with the pain for which there are no words or even come close to looking my own mortality in the eye. So many of you have. The circumstances in which you are called to find your resilience. And such as they are. Isolation and rejection those so far are the circumstances in which i have been called to find mine. I tell this story. Because it helps me and reflect on what my life is all about right now and how those destructive forces of isolation and rejection. Flights in the grand scheme of things but mighty for me. We're held at bay long enough for hope to reassert itself in my days. For me. The sources of resilience i have found are twofold. 1. The power of people who here. A community that love. + 2. A commitment to give meaning to my own experience. Even the experiences that break my heart. I don't know that i am necessarily a resilient person but when i have found my inner resilience it is from those sources. Resilient people do not go it alone. And resilient communities populations and ecosystems are not isolated but interconnected. Come back to the ecologically model of building resilience that charlotte brought to us this week resilience and natural environments is undercut first and foremost when we forget that all of our activities economic social spiritual and otherwise. Exist within the context of a fundamentally integrated system. Ecologically and spiritually it is not even really possible to go it alone. And resilient systems on this planet and of the human person are built around the fundamental awareness of how each part connects to the whole. Speak the words. To reach out and not bear it alone. To build community. These are the building blocks of mythological and personal resilience. Which is why i think building community the kind of thing we're doing here might actually be very good practice for saving the earth. It's a part of what saved me. Encounters with people including unitarian universalist who would not say that my life drew me out of their circle. And that led me to what i believe might be an even greater source of resilience. All of us. Namely a commitment to making meaning out of our experiences. No matter how difficult. This is not the same commitment to making lemonade when life throws you lemons. I was recently talking to someone in the congregation i said that all that talk of lemonade is really a bunch of crap anyway. Not about turning a bad thing into a good one. Instead it's about telling a story in which the suffering in the lost don't have all the power a story in which even that suffering can exist as a part of a larger vision. Resilient people make meaning from their lives. Not lemonade. And not silver linings are rainbows or anything else like that meaning. Human beings are meaning makers and the first thing we are called to do to make meaning of our own experience. Is to tell our own story. As a meeting maker. You might choose to actively perpetuate a narrative about your life wherein all the external forces of predation or degradation or pain or whatever do not have the final word. You tell your story. Your story might be all you have. And together with the ones who love you in a community that hold you accountable the wonder of it all if you get to decide what your story means. Viktor frankl the concentration camp survivor who made it through and part by imagining the psychology lectures he would later give. Reflected for the rest of his long life. On what outside of physical and medical circumstances caused some people to wake up each morning and keep going. He concluded that one of the major determining factors for survival survival in even the most horrific of human circumstances. With the ability of each person to make meaning of it all. He turned it into a psychological study. Whereby he said i succeeded somehow and rising above the sufferings of the moment. And i observe them as if they were already passed. He connected with a mission even larger than his suffering and he turned his suffering into a vehicle for that mission. He made what he felt matter. And he spent the rest of his life encouraging others to tell the stories of their lives in such a way that everything they suffered played into a narrative of ultimate purpose that they chose. In my own little way. I am here because this work. Makes meaning of the jewel experiences i have known of isolation and rejection. I'm doing what part i can to help build a truly welcoming community place. Because that's the way i make meaning out of my experience of being alone and shut out. My own rejection made me want to build a place among people of faith. It would have room for me. Even the me that i was all that time ago. And to me that's a mission worth working toward. That's what i found the pole before word. Community but a community i could help create and the two things that threaten to undo me in my life isolation and rejection are no match to the meeting i can usually make out of that. It's not the meaning inherent in the task or an idea or a thing of beauty it's demeaning that we choose to give to it. That's the story of our lives is not told flores by the circumstances and the pressures we encounter. Is tobias. In the context of those pressures. We tell the story. We get it meaning. Or we don't. Theologically. We know that we don't really have ready-made answers their meanings for the pressures of our lives. This is not some sort of trial run for the afterlife god isn't testing us or only giving us what we can handle because of god exists he certainly isn't his petty is all that. It's not all happening for a reason. But we can. Persistent effort in the occasional flow of tears choose to give meaning to that which fills our lives. We can let the beautiful coat were wearing fall apart all around us and hold onto what we still have a story where a loss is transformed into creativity. Resilience is the system's capacity to survive disturbance. Is determined by the self-organizing impulsive the system resilience conserved opportunity for renewal. Is born out of strategic thinking. Actions and stories and circumstances we can choose that make whole30 for us. For the systems of which we are apart. There's nothing so extra special about it. But for my part i choose to tell a story of my life that makes meaning of my hardest days. Mine is a story that includes a memory of standing pregnant and alone in the midst of a crowd at the 4-h fair with my tiara and my unfilled tears. It's a story whose meaning is made manifest now. In the work we're doing together. Building a community of grace instead of judgement. This is me. Making meaning. Of that memory. Right now. This is me exercising the practices of resilience as i know them. And what you do today. Tomorrow. This week. That's you making meaning of your memories 2. Telling the story only you can tell. Making it matter. All of it. I'm conserving once again the opportunity ever present within you. Within all of us. For renewal. May it indeed be so.

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1074.mp3

Which reminds me to say that. Ohio state university. Church tomorrow at 6. And researcher had concluded that the more frequently you go to church to lower your blood pressure. Presumably because you're getting so much exercise. I'm going to tell you in a moment about our work. Direct support from the uua from martin nomination we raise every single penny of it from people like you. I hope that you're not a member that you'll take the envelope in your order of service and fill it out or go to the table in the coffee hour and support uusc. Thank you for your support. But first i want to tell you about that. Give me your 590 by pope gregory the first and they are now part of the catholic catechism then i'm willing to bet. It is associated with frequent church-going. Those of you who are sitting there thinking low blood pressure you might be right too because if your blood pressure is too low and you're feeling sluggish you may be guilty of another one of the second deadly sins. Banana force. There are rap and greed and pride and envy and gluttonous. Were the early churches road map to helen's hideaway i should say it is not just christian to worry about. Orthodox christianity. Who was close to death his wife and daughter at his bedside is there anything we can get you. Yes he said get me a ham sandwich. The family was a gas but. And why she said well it's like this i'm about to die and when i get wherever i'm going the lord will say to me more. I know you've been a good man but. Remember. Remember the time you raise your voice to your good wife. Remember your daughter married against. As soon as he gets them. What is the seven deadly sins i can well imagine construed as a virtue. Without wrath of the evils of the world there would be no social progress. Without lost the human race could not procreate. Type a personalities could use a lot more sloth. Pride in ourselves we are said to suffer suffer from low self-esteem. Wondery, we have probably all been guilty at one time or another that in my book trump's the mall is worse than all of them. Hard for me to think of any circumstances. What's not included in the seven deadly sins why was that. The first place it was because the god whom the early christian church worship. What's a cruel god. Included in the seven deadly sins god himself might have had a lot of explaining to do. Cruelty heretics. Fires of hell was this small price to pay for salvation. Church's official list was because as i say virtually everybody doesn't. Not everyone can be accused of being angry or lost or lazy or taking an extra gluten. Surfer heart that is one time or another we've done something. He had a bit of a temper temper tantrum tree never to blossom again. Very common. But cruelty is despicable he's not just the obvious one but it causes suffering yes that's true of course. Cruelty. The connection between the beauty of the world and the imperative of justice between the stirring in the blood of the sound of rain the beauty of the world and the sickening of the heart at the side of misery. Justice. If unitarian-universalism teaches us anything at all. It teaches us but despite all its carnage and privation and disaster and disease the world. Full of blessings the warmth of the sun. The reform of the earth. Healing power of our bodies. Companionship of animals. The complexity of our minds the generosity of our hearts that are a breath of life itself. Ever giving universe what the theologians call manifestations of grace. If you have too little water to drink. Becomes. Fill it full of toxins you no longer have reach of that. If you have too little to live on your complex mind your generous heart shrivel up. If you're her after tortured and raped. Comes a company not by choice agony. A reason cruelty is despicable is not just because it causes suffering it is because it is erect. Roblox. The blessing. It turns what is awesome. About life to ask. It makes what is gracious about life. So much more difficult. Your help and on your behalf is to combat cruelty in order to set radians. Just a few small ways. Darfur sudan. Are not supposed to be raped. And policeman. Who are supposed to be protecting them but that's what happened for far too long when the women went outside of the refugee camps to gather wood for you and police themselves assaulted them. With usc's help the un has adopted a training and monitoring program fitted put a stop to that you did that. Access to clean water is about as basic human need as i can imagine. Putting to many places on this planet water is priced out of reach of the poor or simply not available pearson astonishing statistics. 13% of americans of native americans of american indians have no access to potable water more than one out of 10. You are working to change that. A hundred thousand people were massacred in guatemala over the past 40 years most of the mayan indian virtually none of their killers were brought to justice until uusc partnered with forensic scientist in guatemala. The bone kind of test that will draw evidence to bring at least a few of those killers to justice you did that you are doing that you and uusc. No one in this country. $15,000 earning the federal minimum wage but that is below the federal poverty line for a family of three and consider this it is also less. Average 500 company earns before lunchtime. Uusc is working to raise the wages. Upholstery workers in arkansas. Restaurant workers in georgia and $0.13 an hour. Countries if you speak out for religious tolerance or the rights of women you are harassed arrested torture. Are partners in the muslim and arab world uusc is working for more tolerant progressive islam indeed our partner in egypt hamza has been instrumental in the recent amazing transformation there. She had had translated into arabic. To teach people about martin luther king strategy of non-violence was being passed around tahrir square in the middle of the revolution and help to keep it nonviolent you are doing this you and uusc and know where are you doing that on a larger scale or a more effective ways than in haiti. Most of the world has forgotten haiti unitarian universalist contributed two and a half million dollars after the earthquake to put haiti fact together again and today uusc is bringing one group of unitarian-universalist after another to haiti. To help repair that. Corn country. Medical professionals. Brickultra professionals people who just are willing to. Move stones and build eco village in the central plateau of haiti we will not. Forget haiti. Arguing that you and uusc and in all these ways and so many more that i have no time to mention. Uusc your vehicle. Evangelical preacher. Your unitarian universalist values. A lot more radiance in the world a lot more happiness a lot more grace. Carbon offsets. In which. People pay for the planting of trees let's say in order to neutralize their own contributions to greenhouse gases. I like to think of you you are safe as my own personal cruelty box set. You'll feel you'll feel a lot less guilty of cruelty offset. Not only save the world you save your own soul as well. I was in san diego a few months ago at a congregation about the same size as this and. That congregation signed up close to 75 new members for uusc now i can't believe that. Metropolitan washington area are going to allow a bunch of sun worshiping bikini-clad thin blooded southern californians to best you in that contest. We have winters up here. I love the uua i work for the denomination for 15 years it deserves your support to the u usa exist often people at what is the difference between the uua in the uusc the u.s.. To serve the needs of our congregations. And the uusc exist. Unitarian universalist. Serve the needs of the world. Because you see in the battle against anguish and despair. It's not enough to wish. Enough to pray but they're not enough. Because in the face of tyranny and repression and greed and fear what is required is not just a prayer worship what is required is to join hands to use our power. To combat. To make our voices count to join our sisters and brothers to join the vanguard of the torrent to make our values live to make our face shine to join uusc and together. Collect. Everywhere around the world. Collect. Let's close with that magnificent. Spiritual number 348 guide my feet.

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3835.mp3

I was maybe seven or eight. I was digging in the dirt and i found a treasure. It was one of our regular family camping trips that we took throughout my childhood. Treasure x who-knows-where some nondescript but lovely midwestern campground no doubt. And all was as it should be. I would happy and silly and little. And i remember rummaging around in the dirt beside our tent and finding there a tattered little scrap of cloth all unraveling around the edges is old cloth does. And the color is starting to fade the red the white and the blue fading out to that sort of creamy color that's underneath. A small flag it was maybe a foot across. It was a forgotten treasure of some lost age i was certain and i had found. About the same time on a similar camping trip in a similar circumstance when i had come across a small piece of an animal bone and my papa told me it was not just a squirrel bone as one might suspect but all that remained of jimmy hoffa. Which means of course that i had some great mystery and i should be praised for my keen observational skills and so i was a treasure hunter in those days. And after i excavated that tattered cloth. And likely took it to my dad or maybe my papa which is nancy speak for grandfather. I don't remember how the conversation went but i do remember that that little clot was met with great pride in my intrepid discovery and it became for us our camping flag. Whenever we pulled into a new campsite it would come out of the boxes of camping gear next to the marshmallows for the s'mores and it would be tacked up on a tree right in front of our tent. Place with pride for all to see. And i was proud because i had found it. And they were proud of me. And somewhere along the line the camping flag disappeared though i don't know where to. And i didn't think about it again. Until graduate school. When i found myself in one of those workshops you take when you're learning how to be a more responsible and engaged citizen of the world. It was a workshop about race and racial identity. Specifically it was about learning to be white and the idea that being white means something and places us in this world in a particular way as my colleague meg reilly has said it was about admitting that i am white not sometimes when i am thinking about it but all of the time. This is something that white people like me tend to forget. And the instructor asked us to think back. And to imagine the first time we ever had a weariness of race or racial difference or racism the first time we might have seen a sign or a marker is children or used that there was more it works in differences in melon and content. And it hit me all of a sudden. And how i have not seen it before. An image of that little flag raised up from the dirt. The pride my family had in me and suddenly i saw what i had literally never seen before. The camping flag how did i not know. The camping flag red white. And blue was a confederate. Battle flag. The same flag waved by white supremacists and brandished by dylan route. Hang on a tree in front of my campsite. When i was 7 years old. And they were proud of. And how much do proud of myself for finding it. Camping. And god knows what it meant to my grandfather when he accepted it for my child's hands with a smile and hung it on a tree. My papa. Funeral brought out 800 people to speak of what a good man he was. My top on known for his community service his humor his rugged handsome grace a good man my papa who in the 1970s had two labrador retrievers one brown and one black whose names were brownie and inward and no not in word but in words the dog was named. Word and he called out over the fields at night. Home for dinner shouted out those names without a shred of shame. And though it made my dad all curdled up inside to hear it nobody not once. For years ever told my papa to stop. And i remember sometime in my formative years riding along in the backseat with our dearest family friend when she was cut off in traffic by another car and yelled stupid fat black man. She yelled at the driver in question and i said. You wouldn't have said stupid fat white man would you and she shot me that i rollin look we've seen before that told me not to be such a pill. And shut up already. I remember those things when i look back on my life. And i remember them not as the stories of some other people. Or some other place not as the guilty recollections of a family i have rejected or left behind but as the stories of my people. My place. My time. Me. It is not them who hung the flag or shouted the name or shut up when they were told to stop being such a pill already i do not speak of some caricatured racist right-wing people about whom i can log on to facebook and express my high vaunted liberal outrage i speak of my people not just them me. I love my people. My family really are the salt of the earth i am them and yet do you know who my people are. You might. Because they maybe your people too. My people. Are they nice. White. Braces. The nice racist. The silent majority indeed who hold ideas and preconceptions and fears and prejudices down deep in our guts and unchallenged ways. Literature. About the construction of white identity and a historic sense. The great scheme don poor and working-class whites to convince them that whiteness was something they had to defend and that's voting against their own economic interests wasn't is a good idea. And while i won't elaborate much. I'll say that my people are in fact working-class white people several generations removed from an immigrant history. Laseraway at the power plant of the plastic smell. Enough with the black men they labor alongside to strike up a friendly banter but they're never going to get invited over for dinner. That man's house. Or vice a versa. My people are the nice racist. Wearing hoods the riding manifestos they're not some grainy flickering image on a movie screen of pure racist evil they are the quiet ones not making a fuss but imagining how far they've come and thinking that it's all just because they're the salt of the earth hard workers and why can't we all get over this whole race thing. These are my people. The nice white racist. And that's when one asks what it means for me to be white the two words that come to mind are safety. And silence. Whiteness in my cultural milieu has been safety and silence not complete safety and not utter silence but enough of both to be self-perpetuating and the two work together. Other. Because for a white person to break the silence when it comes to racism in america is to threaten the perception of one's own safety to go and make things all unpleasant which is after all the last thing that the nice white racist want to do ever. Make it all unpleasant i mean. The last thing the nice white racist want to do. Ever. Is naked all on play. I'm here is an important point. I don't necessarily like to tell people what to think because good like who am i but. Here's one thing i asked you not to think brave because i am telling you this nor that i am being all confessional about the ingrained races of my racism of my family narrative in order to make myself feel better about it. I'm not brave. I'm not confessing anything special. Honestly what i am. And in this country what my people the nice white racists are is nothing more or less than normal. I am not giving you my confession i am telling you. An american story. And it is important because it is special or unique or surprisingly awful or particularly strange to be from a culture of unexamined racial privilege and ingrained racial bias in this country the tragedy the searing tragedy and indeed the call is that right now. Such things are normal. Or at least normative. This is america. And whiteness in america. Comes along so often. But just that safety and silence i knew as a child. And sometimes feel even now. I am not leaving a history narrative just telling the truth because it's not here then where. And the truth is that we here gathered. Are a largely white. Largely middle to upper middle-class progressive and highly educated subsection of the american population. Of course who we are as ever-expanding ever changing the identity of what we largely are is not the whole of what we collectively are and you may not have the identity of whiteness orwell. Or privilege or silence that i call normative today. But most of us in this room do. And that's just the truth. As my colleague sean parker dennison recently preached the great irony is that the closer you are to some normative ideal of power the less likely you are to even see that such an ideal and the privilege that comes along with it even exist. And then denying that racial inequality exists we seed the very system that creates it and dust the ones most in need of deep personal and spiritual church of racism is to be dismantled in this country. Are not the far-right fringe radical burning crosses and carrying guns into churches it is the nice white racist to must be transformed it is the quiet unexamined ones the silent majority in the middle of the road holding down their hours. Stubborn insistence that we got here all by ourselves. The ones who need to be radicalized for better or for worse. R us. The normal ones the nice ones the ones. With a particular kind of power. Milford today i'm not going to unpack the whole reality of white privilege for you it just got too hard i gave up like thursday morning. I might have done that before charles didn't but not now just google the phrase unpacking the knapsack of white privilege will get everything you need just do that. So for the moment let's hold as a given that is a white woman people are much more likely to listen to me when i speak. Black. I have so much left to prove that my body is seifert and my intentions assumed most of the time to be good. This is not the case for african-american leaders in this country nor even sometimes in this congregation. And i preached before that it doesn't take much ingrained racial bias for the trigger finger to be lighter. And the defensiveness to arrive faster in the deadly consequences of the whole math to emerge and underneath all of our conversations about privilege rests and often unspoken stetzer of white supremacy from which this privilege is born and it inside. Absolutely everything it touches. It infects even the good people. In combating it is an active and not a passive choice. You might not be from the same social and ethnic and cultural background of nice white racism that i am. But we are by and large the truly deeply privileged people. And it is not confessing anything to say so nor should it be the source of shame to admit it it is only the truth in the only way we can lie to each other in these days of all days. Is to deny it or ignore it or pretend it doesn't matter. Because the lure of likeness that's really at work in our nation today. If the lure of safety that comes along with silence. The acceptance of the byproducts of white supremacy. And the path of disregard for a system of oppression that includes us. Yet also calls us forth to share in the creation of something wholly new. At the great theologian walter brueggemann has written. We are a people of privilege and entitlement. We are among the have. Vegetation connection power and wealth too often we are indulgent and self-sufficient consumers. We speak of our achievements and accomplishments. Sometimes we offer god liturgies of disregard. Litanies that make the self too big. And yet we hear faint reminders. Of a better way. I know this sermon has not been an easy one so far. And so let me give us the bomb to the soul of a faint reminder of a better way. Astoria glimmer a little seed planted in the heart that hit me all shiny and lovely when i needed it most this week. It's not here last sunday if you actually do this when i'm not in the pulpit i go to other churches you think that i would just not go to church and read the newspaper but can't help it. Go to other churches in last sunday i went to hear the reverend cynthia moore co-founder united methodist church. Forevermore cocoy is the district superintendent for the united methodist church of the baltimore region. And she also served for a number of years on the board of the mount auburn cemetery right in the urban core of baltimore city. Auburn cemetery is one of the largest and most historic african-american cemeteries in baltimore indeed in the country. It wasn't that founded in 1872 by black methodist clergy in protest to the widespread segregation in the white methodist churches and today it holds more than 55,000 people. Auburn was founded it was this past rural landscape this quiet place a corner of the city where african-americans could finally honor their hallowed dead and by the mid-1990s mount auburn was in horrible disrepair. The weeds were up 21 chest in most places you can even walk through the cemetery the place was completely overgrown and pollution had left its thumbprint on almost every headstone. Until the board of the cemetery discuss their options about how to clean up this mess they thought about just flat-out hiring a plane to drop a big load of round up down on the whole thing and start from scratch. Even thought about setting a controlled burn fire to manage the overgrowth clean-sweep everywhere. But somewhere along the line they were sorted before they were sorted to such things someone happened to think of calling in horticulturist from the university of maryland just to have a look at the property. Major dramatic solutions would be a good idea. From the university of maryland and they took soil samples and they clocked out bits of this planet that when they took him back to the lab for analysis. Only to discover. But they're among the choking weeds. And the pollution and the trash and the overgrowth. Was a long-established population of rare plants endemic only to west africa. And the conclusion that the scientists drew was that somehow someway all those ages and ages ago when the victims of african kidnapping came over to the splat thriving slave markets of charleston and made their way to baltimore they took with them a few precious seeds. From their homeland. West african plants and flowers smuggled in through the darkness of the middle passage were somehow held on the slave ships and cultivated on the plantations of maryland until finally when the ancestors of those same slaves had a place to lay their honored dead do seeds were planted by their graves. The flowers of home bloomed. Within the perimeter. Of the burial plots. And so they did not bomb the cemetery with roundup. And they did not set it all aflame. They preserved it and protected it and they beat back the encroaching pollution in the weeds in the forces that would strangle the very life of that place and the people's legacy and they made it whole again. In this country african-american identity is not unlike those precious seeds those plants growing in the midst of an encroaching and hostile environment held treasured preserved by those bold enough to take it forward even is the poison of white supremacy in the deadly force of racism crowds in. And threatens to choke them out. And somewhere along the line people had to start paying attention if anything was ever going to change. People had to stop the cycle. People had to preserve and protect and defend the legacy of those who came before and now we sit at a point in american history for the choking weeds. Whiteness threaten the very integrity of all of our communities. We're the very lives of our black brothers and sisters continue to be understood by a hostile and threatening environment and we pretend that those plans so let's not make a whole thing of it. But who will change the world. Certainly people of color in leadership with space to share the searing honesty of their experience the precious treasure of their legacy in their story and you know who else. White people. Who are willing to stand alongside. And when it counts. Stand behind them. In the effort to bend the arc toward justice. As my friend chris craft has written we need to support other white people to tap into their grief pain and sadness about charleston and turn it into a commitment to the destruction and abolition of institutional racism. Abolitionists. We are in a historic moment in which white people in large numbers must step forward and not only look long and hard at the devastating injustice and brutalities of institutional racism but also take courageous action against. Yes all lives matter. But at this time in our nation's history we speak black lives. Specifically black lives because we have the power to focus a spotlight onto the systemic encroaching strangling injustice experienced by black people in this country. And we know that saying black lives matter doesn't mean white lives don't matter. It means we had all better be paying attention. You're the lack of your freedom and no one's freedom can be won through my continued silence. And so today. We christen and we dedicate our own congregational statement. Solidarity and sell food for all of us. Black and white and newly radicalized and still a little bit worried about this whole blacklivesmatter thing. You see a sign there. Go to north carolina as our members work and organize for voting rights and one even bigger and even brighter will soon hang right outside on river road on one of the busiest thoroughfares in the dc region to show that we are not silent anymore. It will preach a word. Out in the world. Evidence of the faith we have the seeds that have been planted with commit to protect. To defend. The treasure. And in the months to come is louise and the racial justice task force and i and all of the people who came back from selma transformed and all of you explore what it means here at river road to build a truly multicultural multiracial welcome we invite you to let whiteness means something other in this place than safety and silence. For your part i invite you to find whatever spaces in your world feel conspicuously safe and fur tile for the choking seeds of oppression. In your world of the breeding ground for racial bias. I invite you to speak into those spaces. The nice white racist. Don't want to make a whole big deal. But the new abolitionists. The good salt-of-the-earth normal people radicalized by the continuing assault on the lives of some among us will make us wherever we may. And however we must. In love. In the words once again. Of walter brueggemann. We did you stir up those who can change things. Touring in the jaded halls of government do your stirring in the cynical offices of corporations do your stirring amid the voting public too anxious to even care do your stirring in the church that thinks more about purity than it thinks about fair wages. As your people were moved in ancient days the water than the flocks and herds toward new statutes and regulations new equity and shared freedom. Given. On the cheek. Let this be our work. A neutering. Born here. And shared. In the world. A new dignity that puts our white skin on the line. Idignity. That cannot be given. On the cheek.

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2836.mp3

I recently read a book by canadian journalist charles montgomery. Montgomery is the great-grandson of protestant christian missionaries. In the south pacific. It was his people generations before him. Who boarded ship. Loaded down with the spiritual and economic interests of her majesty's british empire. And made their way to the far corners of the world to convert the pagan and the unbeliever. To the face that then defined the western world. What those missionaries encountered in the remote islands of melanesia and across the south pacific was a world. Full of magic. And mystery. Where ancestors helped great powers and seemingly common men and women could bend the elements to their will a world where walking sticks turned into snakes and the spirits of shark god's carry their chosen ones to safety. Over the limitless water. And in time the missionaries like charles montgomery's grandfather. Made their message heard so effectively that in many places the old ways of custom and tradition either vanished completely. Or were grafted onto the christian story. And the believers in ancient magic became fewer. Or at least fundamentally different than they had been before. But still there were. Andar. Some believers in the old custom magic. Some faithful few within and among the hybrid traditions of imposed christianity who held out. In the places of their ancestors. And who still dance the ancient dances. And call up the presence of the spirits with words that history has nearly forgotten. Just a few years ago. Charles montgomery boarded a succession of rickety planes cars cargo ships and bark canoes. In route to his ancestors mission field. Answered she said of the last. Heathens. Final holdouts of those faiths of their fathers in their mothers before them who persisted through it all. Not like our world the world of this particular canadian journalist in the early 2000s cause and effect of action and reaction of logical consequences and logical for logical actions in which miracle simply do not occur and magic lives only in particularly fancy full movies. Until he wanted to go to this place and live among the face of these people to somehow touch the ancient story his grandfather had tried so insidiously to recast in the image of a bearded white christ. So he followed his great-grandfather's path to the islands of melanesia. And when he got there he tracked down every shaman and village chief. Each struggling next generation leader of a wwii cargo cult and every medicine man perched on the lip of a steaming volcano. And he begged them. With increasing fervor. To feel him some matches. Something. Anything to prove the power of their ancestors in to verify the faith that they had held onto in the face of empire wanted to see that magic wasn't dead that is great grandfather hadn't killed it that wonder still the world could witness and so he went to the people and he said make it rain for me. Raise the dead he said or at the very least he'll a sick person or two. Levitator transubstantiate or make something out of nothing whatever read my mind he said just do it. Just show me some magic. To prove that the old faith isn't totally gone. And of course some people took his money. And did a quick little dance. The earth beneath their feet in a rhythm more akin to a luau themed resorts in an ancient act of worship. They showed him what stone to blow on to bring rain but only in the middle of the monsoon season. And it seems like he was always arriving at each successive island just after the dead had been raised just after the miracle had happened and never in time to encounter the magic. Face to face. Prove it. He said. To the people whose land his ancestors had colonized prove it. Tea-bagged. And they refused. Or failed. Or declined to be co-opted into his narrative. And their face remained as elusive as it had always been. Because that is the way with faith. And maybe always should be. Elusive. It is whispered in the hearts of the faithful. Never broadcast for the eyes of the spiritual tourist. No matter how hard we beg to see it. The worst. Or even the truth behind our various fades. Is impossible to prove to demonstrate without a doubt because that after all is the nature of faith itself. It is that which we cannot definitively know yet choosing our own way. To imagine. Into reality. Isn't that little bit of magic we each asserts the possibility however remote of a different world. I think might lie at the intersection of hope. An imagination. Is what we do not wholly know and yet dare to imagine. And it is made manifest not in the big flashing drama of miracles. In the way it works. In our own interior lives. Down deep beneath the surface. We're quiet voice might yet whisper. I might yet be heard. Until faithfulness to us might not be allegiance to a particular god or gods. Not even to a particular doctrine but to a way of imagining what is possible in this life. A way of believing that can only be perceived when we ourselves choose to listen carefully to the urgings of our own spirits. Is mark nepo wrote in our poem this morning. Like light in the sun. Spilling out of the sun. The spirit within through all of our cracked until our most treasured walls come down and the coming down of those walls at the blessing we crave and resist. It is to hear the call. Call. From this to our own calling. To the whispered word within ourselves. It is difficult to come by in the frantic days. And since it is a message inherently spoken only within our own hearts not shouted from anybody's rooftops or even legislated. From anybody's desk it is a faithfulness no spiritual tourist could ever demands that we prove. Since our story today. About elijah. This man not so different from that canadian journalist and his insistence on proof. A man who went to the mountain to see some miracles. Elijah fled for his life. He went into a dark wilderness where people could not find him he abandon his hope his sense of purpose he crouched under those juniper trees and inside that cave somewhere until a voice came to and said come out of that cave and stand on the mountain. And he did just that. Elijah dustin self off he gets up out of his self pity his misery and his hopelessness and he goes out to the mountain to await the holy. And at that time there was a great and mighty winds that split the mountains and that shattered the rock. It was just the whole world crash down. But the wind would just a win. In the holy one was not in the wind. After the win there was an earthquake that shook the ground and shattered the walls of the cave that set the whole sky to shaking and set fire to the mighty oaks but the holiness he looked for was not in the earthquake and it was not in the fire and it was not in any of the drama that surrounded him. And then there was a soft murmuring sounds like a gentle stream. Still small voice speaking somehow from within his own hard and beyond it and when elijah heard this whisper he knew that he was finally in the presence of the sacred. Anyone out of its hiding place. Started living his life again. Holiness is not in the wind is not in the earthquake it's not in the fire. Holiness is in the whisper contained in the smallness of a quiet prayer. And the object of elijah's faithfulness all the time was within the heart and soul of the prophet himself. And when the sacred speaks. Voice. That whisper emanating from the inside of the soul. The story never tells us what the message was it spoke. The whisper that came to elijah with a whisper for him alone. As to what it contains the story is resolutely silent. Too often i think we look for proof or disproof of one another's fades. We look for earthquakes or fireworks or military victories or magical healing than we think that's what it means to be god. To be dramatic. Speak loudly from the heaven. And be able to work magic tricks upon demand. And indeed there are plenty of stories in the scriptures of all the world traditions in which god seems to be just that. Story the only trick of the whisper. The still small voice within the voice of compassion and challenge. His whisper many of us could stand to listen for. Whether or not we believe in a force or a presence we might call god even the rationalists among us sometimes expect miracles and when we don't get them when we stop believing in them when we stopped believing in magic tricks we think we've lost our faith. After all. Once we look with much-deserved scorn on the magical healing is a fundamentalist snake oil salesman once we put one stinking tenuous toe into the pool and begin to suspect that jesus didn't really walk on water. Once we learn the hard way that god can't wave big invisible fingers and cure ones cancer. We imagine there is no reason for faith of any kind anymore. For what good is the face that doesn't work magic. What good is an ancestor who can't intercede with me in my hurt. When the lord is no longer in the fire or the wind or the earthquake we think the jig is up the game is over we think nothing's magical and nothing sacred after all. We think that faith is indeed dead. That's what charles montgomery are canadian journalist.. Time in melanesia. We finally conceded that there were no magic tricks to be worked no foolproof evidence to support the faithfulness of those people his great-grandfather had tried to convert. And you're not yet all around him. Well he was in fact out searching for miracles the political and economic conditions of those island nations he was visiting or spinning out of control all around him. Is it that time in the early 2000s. Ethnic tensions between leaders and various sub roofs within the solomon islands were bubbling out into all-out civil war. That nation. It's still what some might call an unformed state. A political entity piece together by the political purposes of an outside empire that never really coheres and its own right. And they're in the middle of that was our white journalist. Poking around the islands of civil war approach looking for miracles in the wind and the rain while whole billiges were threatened by fire. On one occasion. He hitched a ride on the island of guadalcanal with a local pie soup. Kind of spiritual brotherhood endowed by their community with a power to heal that was blended together from imported christian and indigenous traditions again and again the tysu this brotherhood of priest. Where the last stand does war closed in on those islands and they built up legends around them that are astonishing. The tysu were said to drive out demons and to turn their staffs into snakes that were said to dodge bullets like neo and disarm guns with a glance. And montgomery wanted to see this magic. So there he was bouncing along in a jeep with these brothers over recently bombed-out bridge. Whenever pulled over on the side of the road by men with guns. Negotiation was underway. Between militants and a father whose son they held in captivity the militants said the boy had blown up that bridge they said he was a terrorist the father said he was just a boy turned him over the father begged let him die the militants demanded the standoff with tents. Many things hanging in the balance. And both sides agreed on only one thing. But the tysu. The priests of their people. Called up from among their people. We're powerful. And then only their magic. Could bring forth the truth. With guns drawn on all sides the tension mounted. Until one among the thai soothies shamanic priest step forward his name was brother francis and he was in this moment of magic and mystery as montgomery right. Gazing at the trampled earth as though he would look right through it. Gone to say that the priest turn toward the deep fold the highland then looked up at the sky then bowed his head the militants on all side seam transfixed by his movements like charm snakes. The bickering trailed off. And brother francis spoke softly. His voice is like a breeze blowing through the yard rustling through the dry grass. Erasing the weight of the human weight of the humid afternoon. I could barely hear him. At first i thought he was reasoning with the militants. What is murmurs were to milotic for that. I realized he was praying. When i noticed two dozen others bowed heads. The militants on clench their fists. An immense calm fell on us all. And that was it. Within minutes the problem was settled. The boy with braids. Family members which it turned out had in fact been used to blow up the bridge were surrendered. No one died that day. And the last time charles montgomery saw the tysu brother francis who it turned out would later give up his life in that same civil war. The shaman wrote a single word. In the white journalists notebook. Belize. He broke.. Believe. And it seems to me the call is not to believe in miracles. But in the quiet power of a whisper. Almost inaudible. It somehow reminded the people that there could be another way besides the death all around them. That was the only miracle. The only proof and perhaps the only true manifestation of faithfulness that spiritual tourist ever saw on those ancient islands. A whisper that drew down the guns. The proof was not in the wonders and sign but in the power of a quiet moment. When the people could together imagine an alternate reality. In which no one needed to die that day. And keep faith with the possibility that it could actually come to pass. Faithfulness. To a way of imagining the world. Alternate reality we hope to make real faithfulness to an idea as long as we can imagine a different world or a different life for a calmer heart or more peaceful day then we can in fact keep faith with its possibility. As long as we can imagine it. Underneath the layers and layers of dizziness and bluster long enough to hear the whisper of our own imaginations we can work. To make what we imagine true. And so we might have faith. And keep safe. With nothing last or more. Then our own highest hopes. So here is my question. What idea do you have great faith in. Or what idea are you currently struggling to keep faith in. Say that you cannot prove but must hold what whispers beneath the busyness of your heart speaking only to you and calling you to make it real in the world. During this month. In which we speak of faith. Along with that question. I offer you a heartfelt challenge. Don't waste your time debating who believe in god and who doesn't. Don't do this like it's a sophomore philosophy class. Don't point-counterpoint each other's faith statement. Or demand like so many colonial tourists that others provide proof of their assertions to you. Instead. The still small voice within. Define the ideas that you personally are willing to struggle for the truth spoken in the depths of your own heart the message that you alone must hear. But doesn't mean you must be faithful to the same ideas forever and ever that your commitment stange can't change. But simply that there is a truth you urine to keep faith with right now. And once you find it and once you know it. Believe. Believe. Not in miracles. But in the promptings of your own imagination. Believe that what you yearn for is possible. Faithful servants of life. Go ahead and believe in something. Each in your own way. I made that belief transform itself. By step. Into a transformed reality.

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3420.mp3

I have a. Frankly sort of strange preoccupation with the lives of christian monks. I don't know where i get this except maybe a catholic childhood spent idealizing the ideal of what it would be like to be a nun. Just go someplace beautiful and pray all day. But there it is and if a work of history or literature has monks in it especially rogue monks which are my favorite time i will most definitely be one of the first readers of that particular work. Anyway when year 1 decade. I hope to hike in the mountains around a place that is occupied my imagination for a long time. La grande chartreuse. It's the ancient house of the most ascetic order of christian monks. The carthusians. Some people say that the carthaginians are perhaps the toughest monks in the world. Call them into mere complete isolation and silence. A lifetime. In one's own company. Punctuated not by doing but by this constant and endless stream of being. Where the sound of bells is more common than the sound of voices. And the man confined to small cells dive deeper into the soul of a human being then perhaps. Even wise. The monks of the grande chartreuse. Many things that seem to me quite unpleasant. Spiritual challenges i would personally rather not face. Loneliness of it all the cold and the borden the terrible boredom of one's own company relentless. Unbroken. Reasons i can think of to leave the mountaintop or the monastery. Most people do and perhaps most people should. In my weirdly fascinated reading over the years i've been struck time and time again. Not mostly by the testimony of those who have stayed but by the testimony of those who have left. After 6 days or 10 years or 20. And what challenges met them most acutely. During the long silence. Up their soul. Over and over again. The monks who leave. Save it the hardest thing of all to overcome is not the loneliness. It's not even the boredom itself or the cold or the deprivation it's they say the hopelessness. The listlessness of the spirit. The great empty spaces that creep into the days where it is difficult to remember why any of it matters anymore and difficult to feel much of anything anymore but just the open space. The silence where a song once played. The stultifying hum of not feeling. We're love. Or outrage. Or pain. Or joy. Ought to be. The hardest thing to overcome they say is the hopelessness. Which after all sounds a lot like life both inside and outside of a monastery. In this world and in our lives but the hardest thing of all is somehow to incorporate that loss into the continued pool of life even when we can't make meaning of it all. Christian moral theology actually has a word for this creeping hopelessness that stalls and stops the pool of life. It's called acedia. The ancients in. It's some monks called the noonday demon. Exception sometime after lunch when you're particularly tired and the monks say that's what drives them away from the silence of theirselves it means more less. Camphor or spiritual listlessness. It is the inability to only enough to begin something begin anything it is an absence of the golden forces that drive us to change and to be changed it is the stultifying force that shuts us down. The spiritual overtones make this experience of acedia. Arguably distinct from that other encounter so many of us know. Melancholy and her deeper sister depression. Well perhaps not the deep clinical hurt we grapple with in so many different ways. Is an existential state that's related to both the interior of our hearts. And the state of the world all around us. As the theologian to put it. It is a knot. Feeling. It is a self-protective response to whatever it is that presses in on us. Thomas aquinas said that it arises from a sorrow of the world. From either aging or laughing it is a steady nothingness. In which the world cannot pierce are sold nor enter our hearts in any transforming way at all. Better at describing these sorts of things in the rest of us. And wordsworth captured it. Better than any creature i ever heard. When he wrote. Good world. Lay waste our mighty powers. Little that we see in nature is ours we have in our hearts away assorted bun and the sea that bares her bosom to the moon the winds that will be howling at all hours and are gathered up like sleeping flowers. For this for everything we are out of tune we cannot see it moved us. Even the great winds that task about the moon and stars they move us not we do not see we ourselves are out of tune because in the state of acedia of spiritual torpor we are untouched. World moves up not and our powers are great and astonishing powers to heal ourselves and others. Just by the force of our sheer exhaustion. I'm moved by aquinas's idea that acedia is born out of a sorrow for this world. Action which enables or even an action that ultimately leaves room for such great suffering it's not just laziness. It's not boring just out of a lack of tearing but out of the fear of what will follow if we let ourselves care too much. The noonday demon. Defying nothing we're a song of praise or of honest lament should be. It's perhaps simply the fear that if we let this world and all of its great winds that howl at all hours really pierce our hearts. If we are the poorest. We might be what could that mean and how might that hurt. If we are free to feel. Really feel. How can we keep the winds from flat blowing us away. And the hurt from claiming us entirely. And so. We turn on the tv right. With news of another school shooting. With an intractable series of overlapping battle looming in the middle east and the quiet possibility of another intractable war for the united states and we saw and for most of us the world is indeed too much with us. And we click the channel. Can we move on. And we move over it. And we do not feel that this may or the frustration or the hurt. We even stay home from the poles. As so many did in this midterm election. Convinced that is none of it matters anyway why. Bother. And so we turn it all off with tune out with submerge into the passage of time we failed to see or be moved. And at what price. At what price do we make the self-protective sometimes fearful choice to close off. I have worried lately. That the self-protective distance we have provided for ourselves than american people. Prevents us from really feeling the impact even of war. Both its suffering. And it's self-sacrifice. This veterans day we know that soldiers coming home from afghanistan are sometimes met with shocked surprised by the people back home. As if we have collectively forgotten we are still sending soldiers to afghanistan. That sons and daughters are still fighting. In wars we don't like to remember even exist. Ticker tape parades. There are few hometown heroes. Only another leaves another deployment and another piece of the ongoing struggle to make meaning out of the mess of middle eastern violence. And the tenuous and sometimes poorly planted seeds of democracy. That those soldiers keep risking their lives for. It is as if the people do not feel the pangs of war anymore. Nor honor its sacrifices in the way we did. Tell you and they are right that this is partially because modern warfare is a different entity. Drones are different than infantryman long-distance warren precision targeting do not stir the heart and grainy pictures on wikileaks are not the same as a photograph of a boy with a weathered peace sign on his helmet neck-deep in the creeping vines of a vietnamese jungle. I wonder if some of this distance we feel. Some of our inability to face and to see the violence still going on is not just due to technology but to the fact that we just feel so overwhelmed. Show cops in the expedia. The torpor of these days. That we cannot let the headlines in the sacrifice in the service. Of men and women in war touches andrew versus they might. And protecting ourselves from feeling the pain we protect ourselves from our gratitude to. And our advocacy. And our responsibility. And not feeling we retreat into not caring. And then not caring. We let brave men and women come home to a va system that may not help them a job market that may not make room for them and the nation that forgot they ever served. There's a cost. To feeling. There is a cost to letting it all in. We protect ourselves from that cost as perhaps we should. But there is also a cost to not feeling. And so we turn it off we tune out we submerge then we fail to see or be moved and at what price. At what price do we make our self-protective fearful choice to not feel. In the reading this morning araya mountain dreamer hold. But there are some things that at the deepest levels do not matter when we encounter each other. And there are some things that so profoundly do the poem says it doesn't interest me what you do for a living i want to know what you ache for. Dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me what planet square with your moon i want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow been opened by life's betrayal or have become shriveled and close down. For fear of further pain. I want to know if you can dance with wildness it doesn't interest me where you live or how much money you have i want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done. For the children. And that. That kind of honesty death. Vulnerability capacity to act. All of those are the wards that come along with the risk of letting ourselves fully feel. The joys in the sorrows of this life. When we consider breaking through our list miss miss. Are self-protective not caring we invite ourselves into this dramatic and wild dance moving between our own worthwhile pursuit of control in the freedom to feel to fall to face life for all the wonder in the challenge it brings. After all. Life for most of us is always more and less. Then we had hoped for. It is always in every year and every turning moment. A gift of astonishing beauty compared with a kind of suffering that shatters long-held dreams. Is act of living it is infuriating and exhausting and glorious all at the same time. And we exist in the middle. Of all this. Is pulsing paradox. Always just short of holy and control of our environment. Always just short of having everything in order. Control is as necessary as air and water as and bread. Dangerous as a well-aimed cannonade. Control is the only thing that keeps us from falling the one thing that guides us to the edge. And yet. There is that other power. There is freedom. There is freedom. Which in this country has very nearly been robbed of its meeting somehow when the french fries in the senate cafeteria became freedom fries that word started to devolve at the edges except for those for whom freedom is very real. From oppression from death squads from poverty the freedom indeed to feel again to climb out from beneath a collective self-protective slumber and engage the world in new is life-giving for so many. And real freedom has never been the same as he's or order. It is not a gift that can be won only by the blood of soldiers are the egos of politicians. Freedom. As philosopher philip simmons rights. Is about loosening the bonds that hold you back. And jumping headlong. Into the joy in the pain of human living. Freedom is not a gift. It is a process of actively turning away from the safe and shallow places of the numbed foal. And toward the insubstantial stuff of truth. It is embracing the mystery. If we challenge ourselves as religious liberals and is fully and powder powered people to pull out the stops. The open our lives to even the gentlest of shifting winds we go ben or unbidden forced or willingly. Into an uncertain and tumultuous reality. And this going willingly. Into the world as it is with all of its hope and it's heartbreaking that is the stuff of hero making. We honor the people who put the prophetic vision of a world made new. Before our eyes. Wework near those people who question the particular veneer of safety we have created and take the chance to imagine something new we hold those people up as heroes and sometimes as idols. Not just courage that causes people to take mighty risks and their lives. It was not just grandiose valor that spurred black leaders to hold their ground in the civil rights movement. And it's not just guts that causes modern people to stand against the pressure controls. The people we revere. Are indeed prophets of truth beyond the propaganda. But they are led forward not just by courage but by the power of their outrage. And the strength of their deep caring. Forward sometimes even by their fear. The whole world will settle into a numb quiet unchanging order rather than pursue for ourselves something wilder. More honest. More deeply true. It has been said that choosing the good over the saints. Is the primary qualification for the ethical life. This is of course easier said than done. But an ethical life is not one that is lived in the sovereign he's. Of an unfeeling heart. The ethical life is one where we take great risks. The risk. That change things. It matters what you long for. What voice is rouse your spirit. What makes you mad and fierce and brave it matters what delights you what pulls you out of the slumber of everyday normal despair. In this place we are called to speak of those things. Not in safeway but in dangerous one. Where our vulnerability is as real as our wisdom. If we are to meet this world. And it's great need. We must be free to feel the pain. And to celebrate the beauty. To comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. To admit that we are frightened. And to stand in the tumultuous places of our own lives. Knowing that we are not. Alone.

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3736.mp3

Begins one spring morning. When i'm 15 years old. On the other end of the line is a boy. It's victor. A really sweet boy i used to know for my old grade school and. Victor is iceland having a prom. Do i want to go into state. Go to my first prom with victor. I love to. I hang up the phone. But i turned in my mom and i say to her. What can i wear. That might seem like a funny question for teenage girl to ask her mother but. This point you know the only thing in my wardrobe is my school uniform that i've been wearing all of my life it's a blue blazer a blue skirt white blouse. Knee socks and. Regulations that are shoes and that suits me just fine i'm not into closer shopping. And my mom has an id. I love this dress. Long. Frock. I have no memory of shopping for it i just came home from school one day. It would spread out there on the. On the bed. I better try it on cuz it's been a year ago to make sure it still fits so. We stand in front of the address. We both realize i changed. Curves and bumps now and. Address accentuates it's snug. And i decide i look great. No problem solved no shopping. My mom is quiet and there's a small wrinkle. On her forehead. Prom night 2 weeks later. My preparation consists of taking a shower and washing my hair. And then. It falls over my shoulders and sews to the floor and my mother buttons up the back. And then i freeze. Something has gone. Horribly wrong. I have no bust i have no waste i have no. The dress just. It's not addressed anymore if i turned my mother. And i say. You let. Out the dress. Now my mom is as white as the dress itself but. Recovers her composure and she says to me. I really think it suits you much better this way. The doorbell rings and. Am i billing shack i go to victor i have this. Sick feeling in the pit of my stomach but i stopped feeling. Rowlett. I don't want. We go to the prom it was 15 it's awkward i think we have fun and actually. He showed up on my doorstep pictures later and asked me to marry him many times. The problem wasn't the first time my mom or the last time that my mom. Start to sabotage my wardrobe i have a big high school. Diane von furstenberg. The night before on the bed is another dress. Perfect. But i'm 25 and there's a big big goal weight on the front of the traffic she is so delighted with her friend i don't. Have a heart to disappoint. I wear the bow to my high school reunions some years later i'm working downtown indicia the think-tank and organizing. U.s. senators in former cabinet officials and for the first time in my life i feel like. The world. Taking me seriously. The night before my biggest event yet. Snappy. I bought for the occasion parklabrea come home late. And there's another outfit on today and it's a gift for my mom and my grandmother who's visiting and they're so excited. This outfit. Is cotton candy. There's a long funky skirt and it's pink and spa. So delighted. So i go to the conference dressed as cotton candy i have one memories just one memory of that day very early. Until is my boss. His name is semen. Chemo is the most. Elegance. Stylish leotard person our entire building and. And he removes his cigarette from his mouth. Adjust his french cuff. And he says to me. You're looking very. Today. Where we go from being children to adult children and. Resistance. Begin to subside. We start seeing our parents with fresh eyes. It was about this time that i started seeing my mom in a new way. Gorilla. Intervention. On the eve of all the major events of my life had nothing to do with sabotage. Keeping me safe. Package me in a way that would. Deflect attention. And maybe deflect harm. And then it dawns on me for as long as i can remember my mom has a uniform of her own that she's born everyday. It's all loose-fitting polyester it's a baggie. Jacket and saggy pants and. A baggy blouse that she wears on top.. For most of my memory. My mom's trouble with her weight. It was a quiet struggle. Never gave voice to it and she never inflicted it on my sister in me. But we felt her pain. Self-loathing. We saw the attempt to hide. The camouflage until her. Better self. Was ready to re-emerge. It never occurred to me to wonder. If she felt like the world took. Her seriously. If you had dreams and plans of her own. As a young woman. We grew older and there was a series of small jobs she tried. Equan ending quickly and each time gif. Feelings of inadequacy overwhelming her. Didn't have the operating resources didn't have. The community. Let her know that it's allen's. Was. Okay. The younger child. Upon an old black-and-white photograph of a man and a woman sitting in a restaurant. Laughing. The man was good-looking fight. You couldn't take your eyes off the woman. Starlet. Glamorous in concert. Dress with stripe silk. Drop dead gorgeous. Who are they i wanted to know. When my parents said. I practically fell on the floor laughing. Could not connect. Bold gorgeous creature. With my retiring. Mother. What happened to her. Like so many women of her generation. My mom smokes cigarettes. At least a pack a day. When my older brother and sister became. Quit. Like that. He was determined not to be a bad example. Good job. But to protect. But without cigarettes to fall back on she gained. Wait a substantial. Lair. For her. That was the price of keeping her children safe from addiction. Looking back now. I'd like to think of her. Uniform. Forever suit of armor. A warriors uniform worn to protect your family. Hurt that was the cost of mother. Calvin first. So. Some years later. I come home to tell my parents. I'm getting married. But not to victor. They're ecstatic and so my but i'm dreading all the hoopla and i'm treading. Shopping for a dress. My mother and i say. What should i wear on and then i have an idea and i paid her just for fun how about i try on your dress we both know. 5 inch shorter than i am. Address out of 40 years of mothballs and. Something inconceivable happen. The dress fits. Perfectly. In every way. Simple. Duncan ivory. And i like it. I look at my mom in the mirror we both know two things instantly. I found my dress. And this time. There will be no. Alteration. One last thing. My mom went into the warrior mode again. He went on a radical weight loss plan. Jazzercise he left the house every morning at 6. What circles around montgomery mall. Started eating whole grains. And. As an additional weight loss measure she started smoking again. She wanted me. To be proud. As if there wasn't already so much to be proud of. But. How he looked. When she walk down that aisle. Arm of my brother. I will never forget this silvery blue dress you picked out how it. Gillard and swan. The joy and the energy in her step. She was a woman. Her job was done. Maybe. It would be hard for now.

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1250.mp3

What if. We wanted to move out of our comfort zone. Uncomfortable. If we committed ourselves to building the beloved community. Would it be uncomfortable to realize. Wake up. Each morning. Paradigm that has been created by dominant culture. My favorite definition for paradigms come from joel david barker. Is a set of beliefs. Rules and practices. Where the boundaries are. And how to succeed within those boundaries. Who what if we committed to building. The multicultural beloved community. We are carefully taught. How to succeed. In the dominant culture. What. We understood. If we should. To a different paradigm. If we shift to a multicultural. Paragon. Each of the two paradigms. Different boundaries. Different conversation has different sets of rules. And different questions to ask and different outcome. To be realized. Beloved community is the realization of diversity. Inclusion. And right relationship. And all aspects. Of congregational life. My home congregation. All souls church in washington dc. Embodies the dream of the multicultural beloved community. You should come and visit sometime so you can see and experience. What it means. In our brief time this morning i am suggesting five things. Important for building the beloved community and a congregation. The multicultural vision must always be present. Division guide us as we learn to translate it into everyday practices. Ground are unitarian universalist principles. In the multicultural community. The vision is manifested in a multiracial multicultural ministry team and program staff. It is important to have diversity at the table as day-to-day decisions are made that shape our congregational life. The vision is manifested in decisions that guide our social justice efforts. The church becomes relevant to the multicultural community. Publicly-listed community. On things that matter to them. And fourth members of the church are all transformed in the process. Paypal davies many of you know about. Is just a chance to grow a soul. But what if we say it's the discomfort of saying that we haven't finished growing our souls yet. Members of the church who are holding and catching hoes. Of the multicultural vision. Learning and experiencing. Personal change. Our present. They come together. Kormakur group. And then model being the change that they want to be. This core group helps others to find the curiosity. And resources that support personal change. Helping the church to become more inclusive. Division is contagious. And it must be caught. By the board. By the ministers. And other parts of the church. And the stories of individuals that have this change. Stories like nancy's and davis. Are very important because as they are told they become the new culture of the church. And they help support greater multicultural inclusion. Remember this. Multiculturalism is a design. We'll deliver it when we design our sunday services. When we design our church building or effort structure. Our committees and our programs. Multiculturalism requires the same deliberate design. We must be able to talk about diversity and inclusion in order to expand our ministry. At all souls church in washington dc we have a theological statement that says. Our vision is to witness. And model the human family. Whole and reconciled. Remind me of your story this morning. In the late 1990s we form the core group of people. Who came together monthly for 10 years. The dialogue about the impact of race on our lives. And that core group did a lot of things in the church. We brought training to all souls to build a critical mass of people. Who's there a way of looking at race and inclusion. And the class that you talked about this morning as one of the ways of doing that. The first people to be trained 12 years ago where a search committee. The board of trustees and a nominating committee. In the search committee negotiated with our board before i we called our 10-year minister. A commitment to the multiracial ministry team. And that matt whoever we call this the first minister had a direct influence. On who we call second azar associate minister. Which was also a vacant position. The first part of resultant and the call of reverend robert hardy. Years ago. Associate minister that was called next was reverend shawna lynn good. Who was a woman of color. Who is a woman of color. And we worked on the church committee committee committee. Board committee on ministry membership religious education engaging as many parts of the church as possible and imagining their work through the multicultural paradigm. Anti-racist anti-oppressive lent. Edwin reverend linwood moved onto new ministry a couple of years ago. We kept our commitment to the multiracial ministry team and a new ministerial search process resulted in calling reverend susan newman. Who is a woman of color. Progressive and an ordained united church of christ ministry. At the church we held jubilee to anti-racism training every year for about 89 years our goal was to see how many people we could get trained. Eventually we settled it on martin luther king birth martin luther king's birthday holiday. So that new members of the board who were elected and december could be trained right away so we could keep our momentum. And if you don't do that on a 3 to 4 years. devore turns over and you can really lose ground. So we were very very deliberate and retooling church leaders to maintain and expand our multicultural ministry. By the way the church is now over $12 for 1000 people about 12. 1200 people are in church now. Every sunday all souls church embodies our commitment to multicultural inclusion and theological pluralism. You will hear the message of inclusion from our pulpit every sunday. The services or multicultural. Helen january the old search committee that called robert hardee's had a 10th anniversary dinner with him. Amaya. Knowing what you know now. About multicultural ministry. What would you say to ministers and to unitarian universalist leaders around this country. Any thought for a moment. Didn't really have much to say. You just have to experience it. You just have to experience that he has been transformed by all souls. Requires risk. Comfort often resist. Breathtaking. And i began this morning by asking. What if we wanted to move out of our comfort zones. Endclothing. I would like to reframe the question and ask. What will it take. To find a new comfort zone. Ana multicultural paragon. How many of you are ready to build and expand. A multicultural ministry here at river road. The rewards of a vibrant ministry are worth your efforts. Craig i did meditation.

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2365.mp3

So i am not wearing. A robe today for obvious reasons. Cuz it's too hot and the velcro will not meet over my belly anyway. Little bit lately about why most of the time i do choose to wear this. Sort of antiquated looking garment when i stand to preach in the pulpit. Ultimately for me it has something to do with the sacred. What was an overwhelming humility regarding the possibility that something sacred might happen here. Moments that we spend together on a sunday morning. I put that thing on. And it seems to me that i'm acknowledging something in front of all of you that no matter what we believe or don't believe. No matter what the ologies we affirm or what poetry brings our hearts to sing we are gathered to do something. Profoundly unnameable sacred. And i have the honor of bearing witness. Alongside all of you. The something we may choose to call holy. That garment i guess is a way of saying that i get it. How sacred this hour canby. And i'm committed to doing what i can to shaping something every sunday. It will serve you well. What is a sunday morning for. What is it that we are experiencing earning for together. One of the greats. In the truly honest ministers of our movement rob eller isaacs. He tells this wonderful story from the beginnings of his ministry that reminds just how holy and how powerful and how complicated a time like this can be. No older than i am now in fact probably quite a lot younger rob elder isaac's was headstrong and excitable rookie preacher and he had visions. Truly grand things. Nothing less than the beloved community a place where people come together to serve one another to change the world to be transformed. He wanted to facilitate the creation. Actual community of difference in care. He was serving as a student minister in what is now one of our more vibrant congregations and i'm moving to arlington street church in boston are coming of age. Go to that church when they visit boston. Have you ever been to the arlington street church you know that it boasts a pulpit so large and so looming that it evokes. Some normal size pulpit and some large amount of growth hormone it is a daunting pulpit indeed. And the church is proportionately massive it hold many hundreds of people and they gather their full capacity under the crowning glory of that sanctuary which is an exquisite collection of tiffany stained glass windows. Proper christian personage. As angels. Gospel writers. And jesus himself i'm pretty sure. Arlington street church is growing and vibrant church now. And have been throughout the history in the changing theology of unitarianism in boston and in america the point when my friend rob served them in the seventies let's just say this congregation was not at its high point. Less than 100 people would gather some sunday mornings in that cavernous structure to watch that young preacher up there cat dancing and bobbing and weaving using every trick in the book to try to inspire them. Many of those hundred people. We're getting up there in years. What's some of us. Is every sunday some of them for decades. Always finding a reason to come back. Loyal persons. Distinguish creatures of habit the faithful of rob eller isaac's smallest flocked they scattered themselves around that great church like dots on a map. With a bird's-eye view of the pulpit some who could barely see it no matter how enormous it was. And one sunday morning rob. up there in that great big pulpit and he had the bright idea to encourage the people to come on forward he said. Rounds get closer i won't bite he preached. Sentiment for reflected in his sherman and certainly a few people came forward excitedly right. A few people no doubt begrudgingly parted with their long-held puce. One very senior member of the church merely set. Right. There. Where he always sat. Underneath the glass dishes that had looked over him for forty years of st peter or some other saints there. And he looked down at that he looked up at that young minister with the surety that would never waver. Acerbis this gentleman who had been a member of the arlington street church for longer than anyone remember he came up to rob. And she spoke his mind with the message that has never yet been forgotten. You got close enough to make his point clear. And he said. Initial astonishment individual joy of the rookie minister he said young man. I do not come to church to see you. He said. I come here. To be alone with my god. I do not come here. Fdu. I come here to be alone. With my god. Left we forget. Old man's words echo in the walls of every sanctuary. I come to church to be alone with something holy. It would be unnecessary speculation i think to say who or what exactly that particular man's. was she knew. Silence of his church he encountered at the sacred mystery to which he was drawn. For the brief space of worship every sunday that man's fought back the estrangement. Of the other six days of the week. In so doing he met the sacred. And he met himself. And he would not budge. Nor would he have that sacred aloneness taken away in the name of something as simple as let's all get together now. We come here day after day decade after decade for so many reasons. At least partly we come here to see each other's faces. The blessed fact that we are and can be one another's people. Who are precious to us or could one day be precious to us and to simply enjoy each other's company is gift beyond measure. We come here to have our minds and our hearts expanded and thought and action to be pushed toward what to be pushed beyond what we thought we knew and toward what we can only just imagine and sometimes. We come here to be among like-minded people. And though i hate to say it sometimes. We come here to have our previously held ideas and biases confirmed. Personally want to hear i don't know about you but i do that olympic. Story reminds me that we also come here and waste both conscious and unconscious to be present to the ineffable to whatever it is. Gone home in the hustle and bustle of this day is over and we stand somehow in the presence of the sacred. Alone but not lonely. Companions and hell. By the great mystery of which we are apart. We come here to be. Alone. But not lonely. Because somehow we are tapped into something greater a source that carries us through. However we may choose to name it or not. And that matters to. As much as the fellowship of great people and the ideas of great minds that simple presence of something sacred that matters to. The great. Protestant theologian paul tillich. He wrote that we human beings particularly in the modern world exist in the state of near permanent estrangement. From the sources of our own strength. He wrote. We do not know where we have come from or where we are going. We are separated from the mystery the jepson the greatness of our own existence. We hear the voice of that depth but our ears are closed. We feel that something radical total and unconditional is demanded of us. But we rebelled against it. Try to escape its urgency. And will not accept its promise. We who's busy lives. Sometimes compulsive doing. Carry us forward on an endless quest for achievement. Are too often fundamentally. Estranged from ourselves. Estranged from each other. Estranged from the ground of our being. Estranged from that which is sacred in our lives. Estranged from that which is with us always. Even unto the edges of life itself. I remember vividly. Sometime in the 80s. When my grandmother's laugh. Friend died. Remember when your grandparents are your parents last friends died doing if you remember when your last. Friend died. My grandma was born in 1909. And though she didn't make it to her hundreds birthday she did make it a lot longer than every single one of her friends. Honestly my grandma didn't have that many friends. She was a tough broad and she managed her own life. For the fifty years or so between her husband's death and her own and she was not prone to asking for help from really anybody but i do remember when the last one of that very select group of her friends died. Peggy was her name and she actually wore a pink pillbox hat like jackie kennedy there in the cough and i didn't know people actually had those hats. Times i remember my grandma crying. She'd already remarked that she had now outlived all of her friends. And when i asked her if she was lonely. To her complicated tears of grief and memory she said. No. I'm not lonely. Just alone. They're different. They're different. Lonely and being alone they are different. And sometimes we are called in this life to be alone but not lonely in the presence of forces like memory like hope like purpose like peace. Horses that are at once very very real and very very mysterious. And a spiritual exercise. A service of worship. A moment such as what we try to create here can serve at its best as something like practice. For the time when life will demand. That sacred aloneness of us. Practice for those inevitable times when we are called out of the constant quiet simple partnership. Between ourselves. And the sacred. Such moments. When the presence of the sacred is made manifest in the blessed of loneliness. Holy time becomes real. They're not reserved for the end of things. 4 deaths and goodbye. And memories. Approach just such a time right about now any moment in fact. Literally any moment. So ready to have this baby i am so. Walking is hard and breathing is hard and sleeping is well-nigh impossible it is a wonder i have not already had to leave this pulpit to go to the bathroom it is count time and when the time comes to make his way into the world. And everything changes. In the moments of that transition do you know who will not be in that room with me. A single one of you. Not a single one of you. About how long the boiler in this building is going to make it my responsibilities. Nor even my heartbreak. For those of you who are hurting. Or my devotion to the free face with spouse together or my fervent hope always with me. Progressive religion will not die during my lifetime. None of you. Will be in the room with me when the contractions come. Or the surgery looms. None of it. And while my husband will be there let's face it i'll be the one doing all the work i will on some fundamental level be alone. But not lonely. Me and the impending power of new life just me and a whole new beginning just me and the unnameable ineffable extraordinary possibility of the future and what could be more sacred than that. The sacred will be in the room with me. Which has no name. I know fancy-schmancy theological underpinning but only presents enough to help me know that a moment such as that is what holiness is all about. For my own somewhat dense self it takes a moment like that. One so dramatic is the birth of a new baby or the death of al aspirin to knock me out of the constant presence of my worries. Of my obligations my commitment. And even. The practice fellowship of friends. It happens so rarely. It only now. When the holy this is so obvious as to literally knock me off my feet do i cease to be estranged from his constant presence in my life. And i'm not alone. In that estrangement. My friend eva b serova is a native of the czech republic and she came here to the united states. To study ministry. Image for this estrangement estrangement from our own selves are complicated. Glorious messy self. She likens. The culture of the united states to a massive centrifuge. Zoe spelling. And spinning and spinning each of us. Into this mad world of activity. Really separated into our component parts. Mother friend partner fighter parts. So effectively separated by the world. Broken apart so fully that we forget how to ever put them back together again. And cannot then experience ourselves as the whole complex entities we are but only know the parts. We feel. Mirror pieces. And so we are estranged. We are estranged from ourselves. An estranged from others estranged from the ground of our being estranged from the sacred by whatever name we may or may not have for it. But neither the theologian kill it. Nor the wise man. At the arlington street church. We're content to leave it at that. Paul tillich said that this fundamental estrangement. Inability to be alone in the presence of the sacred was one of the greatest problem facing human development. And that the only way to begin healing that divide was to first know your whole self. Weather. Once we know how to be in the presence of that holiness then we may begin to approach the holiness of unnamable powers. Present even when all those we love are absent. The worshipper at the arlington street church chose one very specific way. To address. His estrangement. Every single sunday. 440. For 50 years. Any shot in one place. Listen to beautiful music. And he listened to the efforts of dozens of different preachers some more successful than others. Given sunday he may be. Was moved by the service or the sermon itself and maybe he was not. Greeted. A friend and maybe he was not. Maybe he drank some coffee and nibbled at the same cookies always present in the fellowship hall every sunday or maybe he did not. But every time. Every sunday no matter what was going on in that place he found some way to keep the company of the sacred and it was enough to keep him coming back for an entire lifetime. And of course places like this. Are only the beginning. We may go anywhere anytime. To place ourselves. In the company of the sacred. Doesn't have to be a sanctuary. It doesn't have to be the end of alive for its beginning but go. Go as you can. And when you can. Return. The poet may sarton said in our reading. To the deep. Sources. By whatever means are at your disposal. Inlet that sacred time. Alone. But not lonely. Guide you through whatever. Layaway.

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9.mp3

Clothes for certain clip harden as well. And addie. I have given over 500 sermons here at river road in the last 30 years. Yeah really. But i have never talked about creativity. And i'm not sure that this is actually a sermon although it says so here in order to service. It's more like a meditation about and on creativity. Because recently i have been thinking a good deal about the importance of creativity in my life and our lives in general. Creativity is simply the process of bringing something new into being. And it is fundamental to human beings. Each of us has come into being as a result of the creative process. It began with the union of the sperm and the egg. And continued with our growth into something new. A unique person like nothing else. And like no one else in the entire universe. And many of us. Have experienced the joy of being part of the creation of new life. The lives of our children. We are part of the creativity of nature. Nature's creativity is absolutely extraordinary. And amazing. During the billions of years this world has been in existence. Hundreds of millions of living formed have come into being. And many of them are still in existence. And millions have become extinct. For example just think about the number of birds in the world i have a book at home entitled. The birds of north america. The book has. Pictures and descriptions of over 2,000 species different species of birds and bats in north america alone. What time do the number of animals or the numbers of marine life in the ocean some of which are live so far down in the ocean depth. But we are still in the process of discovering them. Or think about the number of trees and plants. On this planet numbers that bottle our minds. Each one the results of the creative power. Of nature. Or as we like to say mother nature. To me one of the best things about being retired is to have the the time to to watch television programs like the planet earth series which always leads me to feelings of amazement. At the incredible diversity of life. On this earth. As well as the beauty of it all. Stuart kauffman is a well-known scientist. Whose most recent book is entitled reinventing the sacred. Like most of us. He has left additional religion behind. But he wants to retain a sense of the sacred nature of life and he finds that sacred quality inn. Creativity. Is at the very heart of thing. And in the very nature of the universe in fact. He identifies creativity with god. Suggesting that what he means by god is simply. Creativity. You right. God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity. In the natural universe biosphere. And human cultures. He comes to this conclusion because he says. This creativity is stunning. Awesome. And worthy of reverence. Bi-rite. Is it then more amazing to think that the abrahamic transcendent omnipotent omniscient god created everything around us. That we all. Participate in. Or the duros with no transcendence creator. All on its own. I believe the latter is so stunning. He continued. So overwhelming so worthy of all gratitude and respect that it just got enough. For many of us god a fully natural god is the very creativity. Of the universe. And of course. What are the creation stories in the book of genesis says that god created human beings. In the image of god. Some theologians have taken that to mean that human beings are capable of love is god is. What others have said that the image of god refers. To human rationality our ability to reason. I think if i were interpreting it. I would suggest it refers to human creativity. In other words we are created being. Being just as god. Is supposedly a creative being. Kaufman is probably not aware of it but he's not the first to make the connection between creativity and divinity. Over fifty years ago the unitarian theologian andre nelson wyman. Identify creativity with god. And talked about created interchange between people. Has the f. A religion. He suggested that when we engage in creative interchange. We are participating in the creativity of god. Just doesn't quite work to think of god is creativity for one thing i don't know that why we should give creativity. The name of god. Seems to me that the word is perfectly sufficient by itself. Without having to add. Another word. I guess the main problem is that i spent too many years thinking of god is a personal supernatural being and that idea of god is too deeply ingrained for me to embrace a different concept. And so i am a non-theist ecumenism. Never lift. I think that those who think of pete got his creativity are telling us something important. Namely. The creativity is at the center of this universe. And since we are the product of the creativity of the universe. Very much at the center of our lives as well. They are telling us that the very nature of matter energy. That is which this. Universe is composed is creativity. And the creativity of is worthy of being called sacred. And that. I can agree with. But however you feel about thinking of creativity is god creativity is certainly an important aspect of what it means to be human. Kaufman. Suggested we are. Quote co-creators i'm quitting again co-creators of a universal biosphere and cultures. I'm endlessly novel creativity. We are part of nature. And our creative urge is part of nature's incredible creativity. It has been going on for billions of years. Think of what humankind has created during the millions of years we have occupied the earth. Magnificent cathedrals and beautiful temples and amazing mosques. Houses and apartment buildings. Shopping malls. Mammoth skyscrapers that defy gravity. Highways and bridges in. Trucks and automobiles in jet airplanes and rockets that pierce outer space. Monsters cruise ships that house and feed more people than a small city. Works of art. Music. Whose beauty is beyond description novels and poetry to feed the spirit. Works of philosophy in psychology and sociology and anthropology and on and on and on almost infinitum. The creative impulse has led to great works of art and architecture and music and literature to scientific technological engineering innovations. Inventions and discoveries. New devices. And two social political religious and philosophical in innovation human creativity is truly incredible. Can i delete mind-boggling to me. And it goes on. It will continue as long as we human beings. Continue to inhabit. What are the best selling books of our time has been the purpose driven life by. Evangelical christian pastor rick warren. Interview reddit. And i have not but i've read. About it enough to know what it says. Well if you're ready to publish aim to admit it but. Just kidding. He has he has written an important book. It represents a perspective which i did not share. But he has. Annapoorna very important concept mainly. The fact that we human beings need purpose and meaning to our lives. One believes that god has a purpose for everyone's life and it is our task. To discover and follow it. His book is a contemporary version of what people in western civilization have believed for centuries. They make that their lives were significant. Because they were part of a grand a divine grand plan. Creation and redemption. Culminating in the future realization of the kingdom of god. Human life. It's meaningful because of its role in god's larger purposes. Any person finds both meaning in the present. And hope for the future. By being allied. With god's great plan. When one can no longer accept these teachings. This loss of faith may lead to a sense of emptiness and even despair it is critically important. In other words to be able to affirm. Our lives do have meaning and purpose. Whether or not we can follow. Rick warren's. Augusta. If the new testament scholar bart ehrman recently said in a radio interview on pbs that he has found his life to be more meaningful since you became an agnostic then when he was a christian. Because without a belief in life after death this life becomes more important and living it means more. Having a similar background to his. I agree. Like many people i find a great deal of meaning and purpose in being creative. Each of us has a creative impulse. Adhesive us is in the process of creating a life. Lemonade, davies who's wonderful widowers you know. Died recently in. Life will be celebrated. Herein. 3 weeks. Hey paula davies once said that life is just a chance. To grow a soul. Going personally intellectually marlene spiritually is another way of saying we are creating a life. Something unique. And like no one else. Or nothing else. In the universe. Creativity is involved when we think outside the box. To solve a problem. Express ourselves by creating. By making something new. We can be creative with our lives. The opposite of creativity i think it's conformity. To accept the status quo with no interest in our motivation. To improve something. Conformist. Is a creature of habit uncomfortable with change. The creative person seeks new ways. New ideas. Is comfortable with change that is constructive. Several of you have become painters in your later years. And your paintings are beautiful. I've seen exhibits. Is the gene her intervention. Earlier today that. Dividend. Fellowship all others created beautiful quilts. My wife peach beauty on the ice. One of my sons make stables in his spare time others of you. Have been creative artists all your life. You've made your life meaningful. By creating beautiful works of art. Which you can enjoy and so can others. Who see them on exhibit are purchasing. Cliff harden composes beautiful music. Which all of us can enjoy a thing of beauty wrote keats. Is a joy forever. I would love to be able to compose music or the paint but the only painting i have any talent for is limited to the walls and wood work of my house. Instead i write. Fletcher's. Sermon. Particles books. And i find that both pleasurable and meaningful. And of course i am pleased if any of these creation part of value to others. There are many things. Each of us can create a person can be created in the kitchen. By finding new recipes. Buy sewing new designs. By decorating new colors in using new colors. Arrangements. In the garden and landscaping we can be create. Buy woodworking. By creating a new organization. Is living estate is didn't a new movement it's on. It is possible to be creative in anything we do. Just look around. And they probably are already in the process. I'm being creative. In one or more activities. Did you follow. Being creative adjusting enjoyment and satisfaction. To our lives. Those about to our parents. Have experienced the joy of creating new life. We have created new biological life but we have also played a large role in creating the kind of person our children become. As i mentioned our oldest son ryan is with us for a couple of weeks. And i keep seeing myself in him it's kind of frightening but it's also kind of. Satisfying as well. At least the good parts of me some of them. He also has his own uniqueness thank goodness. The joy of creating new lives and molding those lives and positive directions. Is one of the most important creative task. Any of us. Can engage in. Those of us who have grandchildren can even see ourselves and our grandchildren so our creativity goes on through another generation. We create things of beauty and inside and inspiration that bring joy. To the creators. And to those who see and hear our creations. When we create things we are also creating ourselves. We express ourselves in what we create. But we don't necessarily know what we are feeling or what we mean until it takes tangible form. Until we created in the form of art. Our music. Or in written form. Our creations are part of ourselves hidden objective form. For that is available to others. As someone once said. I don't know what i'm thinking until i've said it. So in fact in the act of creating a painting a musical composition a new recipe or a sermon we are not only creating something exterior to ourselves we are also. Creating ourselves. The process. I'll be coming. Creativity. Is one important way in which we. Bro. In fact for each of us of courts are most important for you to task is the creation of our own self. The self is not something given to us at birth as you know. We are not determined by our genes. Although they play an important part in who we are. Brother. Ourself who we are. Is shaped by a lifelong. Creative process. I'll be coming. What we read. Conversations with engaging. The friends we choose. What we do at work. Whom we interact with. It worked in other other. Venues. Our participation in this religious community and other communities we identify with. The television programs we watching someone. Living involves creating. Shelf. Everything we do or at least nearly everything. Is part of the creative process. When davey said that life is just a chance to grow a soul he was saying that life is a chance. To create. The choices we make. Determine the kind of self. We are becoming. Choose our friends determined. At least it makes a difference in the kind of person we are. Detroit of application. Kermit the great deal. About the kind of person we are becoming. We spend a lot of time. It work. The choice of a life partner also helps to determine the kind of self we are creating. I know that i know that had i chosen to become a lawyer instead of a minister i would be a different person. That i am today. Had i married someone else i would have created a. Someone different self. That i created when i married barbara. I'm not saying that it is better to be a minister than a lawyer i'm just saying that these choices. Lead to being a different kind of. Even less important choices involve creating ourselves. Cultural influences of all kinds. Adrian to the. Processor. The chances are you became a member of this church. Because you agreed with the values of congregation stands for. But by coming here. You are helping to create a self. The continues to honor. And practice those values. And it gets support for those values from this community. Here you have friends who share your values and the ideals. Pictures that you have and support you and living those values and ideals. People sometimes ask why go to church can't you be a unitarian universalist. Alone and the answer is yes you can. But it is much more difficult. We're all bombarded with values from many sources materialistic values that hold that money and wealth are what make life worth living. Values the teach the seeking power is the road to the good life values the tell us it's fun and pleasure. Are what is important and so on. Hear the values and ideals we care about our reinforced. Don't use the tell us the people. Are more important than money. Or things. Corepower. The love for others injustice for society are more important than our own personal desires and values. And ideals of peace and freedom. And a better life. For all people. Those other values. Every jerry. The ideals of this community. So i say three cheers. For creativity. It gives meaning and purpose to our lives. It is a form of personal and spiritual growth. It is the way we become who we are. And what we will be. Cuz it is a continuous process. Until life is over. It is our small share. Of divinity. You will. And it also helps us to become more truly. And willfully cumin. When we create we are co-creators of the universe. And a human culture. When we create we participate in the creativity of nature. And we engage in an activity. It is. Secret. May you all have a creative. And therefore sacred. And many meaningful. 2000. Her closing.

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2683.mp3

Give the people a story they can believe in. And you just watch him make it come true. There is a lot i think. To be set for strategic plan. I'm all for strategic plans good friends. The board will begin working to update and create a new strategic plan for our congregation in the foreseeable future and i have approximately 8,000 emails with the subject line strategic plan. Make their way through my inbox over the course of the next couple of years. And yet. For all of our planning. For all of our projections and are tracking of data and are crunching of numbers a plan is just a plan. It's easy to forget and it's hard to shape your life around. But a story. At least the good one. That's something we can get ahold of. I want the story sneaks into our imaginations once it lays claim to us in some way a story is something we can live with until we live it out. So let me tell you a little story of us. The story you have chosen actually to tell about yourself. All the meetings in the surveys and the conversations that comprised our visioning process we did over the course of the last church year we ask not just who we are but where we're going who were becoming we asked ourselves to cast a vision for the future to tell us a story. About who we are that determines what we do in the present. I'm so. You told the story about a people. In a place that could be us. It might be us but she's an awful lot like us except deeper and more thoughtful in just a few key ways. Deeper and more thoughtful in our fellowship with each other. Deeper and more thoughtful. In the spiritual growth that reaches down to our souls. And more thoughtful in our service. It stretches to the world outside our doors. To grow and to deepen. Fellowship. Spirit. In service. Chose for yourself. It comes along i think with the story so let me tell you a little bit of that story it is not a point-by-point plan or process which we will carry out exactly as it is written on a spreadsheet so i have got those processes and those point-by-point plans to. That is a story. About a community with the vision for who they can feed. So there was this congregation. Sissy. In bethesda maryland right. In the midst of one of the great centers of the world's thoughts and commerce where politicians and powerbrokers spun around one another like tea cups at disneyland. It's going in their own direction and everybody getting dizzy. The center of thought and commerce. The capital of a great nation in which this congregation was inextricably connected this place was riddled with discontent. In this great. Capital of thought in commerce the people that seem to have forgotten the art of compromise. Forgotten even the basic human capacity to disagree with grace. And violence both in word and in deed haunted the nation at least in part. Because there was no room left for people to be different. And to love one another. And the whole thing was crazy making. Confusing exhausting and most of the people in this congregation spent their days surrounded by this culture of individualism and division by this almost obsessive pressure to choose your side and take your stand and know who opposed you and how. The people in this congregation decided that they didn't have to prepare chu8 that business. Anymore. In fact. The people found that they came to the congregation in this place at this time to find one brief moment where the splintering bickering brokenness of the world outside its doors not hold sway. Didn't come to debate each other. But to make room. For each other. And in so doing they existed together for reasons very. Then almost every other place. In their lives. Had many different kinds of people with many different ideas in life stories and commitments. Some of the people gathered there with a very powerbrokers who felt stuck in the middle of detentions around them. Somewhere living at the edges of this abundance just trying to find a way in. And this congregation were weary one. An energized funds. And people with certainty and people with quite a lot of doubt. They believe different things feared different things trusted different things they were not all the same nor did they all agree and yet all of them decided together that how they choose to be together was more important. Then what they chose to do together. They also decided to a person that transformation of our spirits. Is more important. The institutional maintenance. In fact even the committee chairs who laboured our upon precious hour. Understood that the building that they held out. The finances date ended. We're just important means to the greater end. A feeling the people. Spirit. With joy. In a bold countercultural moment of wisdom this congregation also decided that doing it together is more important than getting your own way. In the advocating for one's neighbor or even for a stranger you never met is more spiritually sustaining than pushing your own agenda. Basically they decided that they wanted every day of every year to be like the very best parts of the bazaar. Do maybe a little less intense. The people helping each other. Doing something together making room and making do assuming good intentions having big open hearts and willing hands all that not just when the clothes needed sorting but everyday all the time. And so the people chose to intentionally make themselves comfortable. So that they might welcome. The wisdom of others. Loading a few people in tears during the sermon they thought was really kind of just dribble. Actually asked for more sermons like that. They did. Because it said the sole of their neighbors. And they boldly felt it was more important to make a home for others then to shake this place. Around themselves. The conversations in this place from debate to discussions too deep and meaningful relationship with grace and gentleness and there was always always room for difference among them. Was everybody advocating for one another instead of for themselves. Things got really interesting really fast. Several retired members of the men's group started working in the nursery and a new family with two small kids kids felt safe enough to join. Because those gentle gentlemen were always there to cuddle their little one. Even though grandpa live 500 miles away. The humanists group and the pagan circle instead of looking wearily through the corners of their eyes at one another decided to team up and take care of each other. So the humanists cook dinner for the pagans while they danced around the maypole. And the lunch for the humanist when they hosted a big debate over the place of darwinism and contemporary religious. and both of them have the honor of cooking for the unitarian universalist christian fellowship. Similarly people over 50 cease to feel out of place at the all-ages potluck. Treehouse in the back and installed a wheelchair ramp leading up to it because who says you don't want to visit a treehouse just because you are mobility-impaired. 9:15 or sometimes came to be 11:15 11:15 or sometimes came with the 9:15 and cats living together mass hysteria. The people decided that in this place it was more important to make a home for someone else. Did you get your own way. And who knows what else became possible for them. And the world continue to spin. Evidence that the art of compromise with still awfully hard to find with still abounding and most people lived a life that was mostly about themselves and the power center of partisanship and division was not really left divided but that place the edges of the world and its divisions. Softened. And the people felt less alone. And they kept telling this new story about how to be together in community not for oneself but for one's neighbor demonstrating with their lives that pluralism is a real possibility knowing that eventually some maybe even many would choose to listen to their story. So it might be for us. People. Who together. Might turn the bitter individualistic competitive norm of our society into a pluralistic. Kind-hearted. Radically welcoming expression of community. A group of people who are willing to make ourselves uncomfortable. To make another person feel welcome. Until honestly have a hell of a good time. Doing it. We've asked ourselves. Within the next few years growing and deepening and fellowship. Spirit. And in service. And so it has to be in there. With how we are with one another in community. And how radically we are willing to extend our welcome. If we really want to grow and deepen in fellowship. We first have to expand our very definition of what our fellowship entails. Whose story is welcome here whose bill boner ability is honored. Whose perspective will get shared. To put it simply. Here's the really bold message in our vision. If we are going to grow in this way. We have to move together. From simple inclusivism. Toril pluralism. And we have to commit to it. Every single day. Let me describe a little bit about what that means about why it's hard about why it's important and to do that i have to back up and talk just a moment about what it is that comes even before inclusivism namely that old chestnut. Call lauren. The step before inclusivism is tolerance and in this world i have frankly had just about enough of tolerance. It is i think bonita. With tolerance. You pretty much just say. Different from our norm in anyway we'll put up with you if we must. It's just another expression of privilege. And then. Inclusivism. Which is essentially where we are at right now in our fellowship together and involved welcoming other than to our own theological and ethnic context is sensually inclusive this message says. Come on inn. Here's what we're doing here you are welcome to join us if you like that sort of thing. It's stating a community to norms. Holding firm to those norms and inviting others to get on board. This is not inherently bad. But neither is it inherently all that welcoming. What culturally radical in the way our vision cause us to be. Pluralism. Real pluralism is a different beast entirely and ever so much harder the kind of fellowship to which we are called is a truly generous and welcoming response to an increasingly multifaceted world. That kind of pluralism is beautiful and difficult the new expression of the humanism in our heart. We are the congregation with the warm heart. The open mind and the social conscience. And how we do things here can be remade. By the presence of every precious person who walks through these doors. That kind of pluralism takes courage. It takes work. Sometimes it involves putting our judgments into the context of our greater love. Stration me tell you a story a story from a congregation very different than ours. It's called seekers it's a little church of maybe 60 people in washington dc that is a collection of perhaps demos progressive christians you're going to find anywhere in fact they're so progressive they redefined god in the biggest broadest ways possible they even comprised compose the list. Different names for god which includes i kid you not like. Hopeful dancing breath of kindness. Fabulous loving baker of the faithful. Is how progressive they are as christians. Not long ago a group of members were sitting around in a discussion group talking about theology and his they went around the table largely highly educated upper-middle-class going on and on about how the idea of god as father is something they had moved beyond long long ago all of them didn't match that with their feminist critique. Who had up to ben been completely silent. The name with james. Young man not far from the life on the street and just a few years sober after a long addiction. James looked at that group of people with their very clear cultural story and they're marvelous spiritual abstraction and he said to them. Actually. The one thing i need most in my life right now is stability. And so i like to think of god as father. And there was silence in that room for a moment. Well all of those enlightened men in the group who had moved beyond all that kind of thinking quite a long time ago decided to themselves while they're somehow they said gently correct. And then just as quickly. Cervesas softened. And the conversation moved on. And they let james be james. Knowing that his difference in rich them all. That's the difference. Between inclusivism. And pluralism. That's the difference between us to be transformed by each and every person who walks through these doors it's the triumph of what the great rabbis called. That quality that moved someone to act for the benefit of others without ever asking what's in it for me. And that. Kauai at the core of our identity as a people. What happens if you choose to live together in this way. Actively chooses to make room not just for others like us but for others unlike us what if we lived in hestand in this place. For one thing we will come to know that we are safe. That we are held. If we can take whatever risks our spirits call us to take without losing the embrace of a community we call our own. I-41. Have already been rejected once in my life from a religious community. Deformed being shaped me. The church of my childhood. I for one have already been rejected once for taking a spiritual risk. And encountering a people. Who closed the door. And i came to unitarian universalism in part because i never wanted to hurt that way again and i wanted to be a part of building a welcome big enough that when others took spiritual wrist the line in the sand would not draw them out to. We can deepen and we can change and we can spin and believe in denying feel and think and every bold way we can dare. I know that unlike almost every other place in this world we will be like motel 6. Leaving the light. On. And if we are held. Jennifer spirits are fed. And if we are brave enough to welcome real difference what happens next. We might find ourselves willing to serve. To offer up some of what we have to make the world better for others the journey inward leaves always outward. The old chestnut said you will know they are christians by their love people might save us. He will know they are ripper rotors by the strange combination they there. I shouldn't finish this morning. Without actually telling you a little bit about the real plans that i have for this vision to grow and deepen and fellowship spirit in service. But i won't belabor it too much. You know the story is more important anyway. Fellowship at the beginning. And this entire church year would i and our leaders to plan tackled fellowship in one way or another. Ar 121 campaign was the first of those the chance to deepen our relationships the next key element comes the first saturday in january with a special retreat built around the kind of small group ministries that can connect us more deeply. Next year we have multiple programs targeted toward our spiritual lives. Including an intensive spiritual deepening program called wellspring. That's for just a few people deeply committed and ready to approach the work of their own spiritual life through study. Practice. In regular conversation. We will also be asking next year how everything including our committee meetings might be and become a spiritual event. And my whole heart and sometimes occupied with thinking about how we might grow in service to one another and this world. The social justice council and i are working on it but one thing i know. Is there anything we do in the world that matters we will not do it alone. Talking lot about multi-phase action across congregation things like action and montgomery community organizing because i believe in it. It's a beginning but it's not an end. All of it. Every plan i and your leadership make. Isn't some way my own small prayer. My prayer. And this work that i do. In this work that we share. My one wish. But i wish you could see you. The way i. Cu. Pci is your senior minister have a front-row seat. On this roller coaster of life. At river road. I get the inside scoop. Folks. I get to listen. I get to talk i get to pay attention and i wish you could all see what i see the reasons i believe you are capable of being the most pluralistic big-hearted welcoming congregation anywhere. I wish you could see. Vulnerable. And how spiritually courageous. The people sitting next to you are. I wish you could see. How much it means. For the kitchen ministry to bring a chicken pot pie to a person who is sick. And alone. I wish you could see how much it meant for betty wilson to bring me a bunch of fried chicken when i was home with a newborn baby and how she does it over and over again i wish you could see how when i tell people i am don cherry's ministered they respond like i just said on personal friends with george clooney i wish you could see. Tell your board scores over the decisions they make and every bit of it with all of you in mind i wish you could see how people in this community light up when i tell them i am a part of this congregation the person at the front desk at my gym when she asks what i did said all river road everyone know that congregation you're awesome. You are a haven for the weary i wish you could see how huge and how scary it can be on the first sunday when someone walks through our doors hoping that you're finally might be the place that will not draw them out of the circle and i wish you could see how very important it is to be the one place in our lives that takes pluralism more. Seriously than individualism. That's my prayer. But you can have the vision. Did i do. You can see with the eyes eyes that you can see you as i see you in your minds and hearts 2. Indeed. Perhaps these thoughts of ours will never find an audience. Mistaken road will end up on the stage. Perhaps. However. When we sing praises to the sun the sun might pray the stack. Perhaps every heavy burden we bear including every risk we take will strengthen our philosophies perhaps. Perhaps. Is commanding air resistance mission of ours. To be a place that welcomes. Welcome and welcome. Will guide us forward to every single risk. Because we have no choice. Perhaps. Because of our irresistible mission. We have no choice. Until friends. Hardin. Let it be as gracious. What is daring. As we will allow ourselves to imagine. What is begin here. And fellowships that knows how we choose to be together then cently more important than what we choose to do together and in that may we be propelled. Spiritual growth. The kind of service. We have always yearned to do. May i have the sole.

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2565.mp3

Good morning everyone. Recently i was moved by an emotional story on npr about a young woman and her sister who were moved from foster home to foster home. When she was 11 another family adopted her kid sister. I did not want her. Alone in the foster care system. She felt she could no longer trust anyone. Not even her sister. Engaged to be married. He told her fiance. I love you dearly but i can't trust anyone. Will this be okay. When i heard that. My body became tense. My throat was dry and i ate since i'd. I had to pull off the side of the road and gain my composure. That story brought back sad memories. 12 year old girl when our son julian was 7. Earl with the granddaughter of a member in our church community living in a foster home. We've been wanting another child in this could be the opportunity. We invited ariel to live with us. 4a. Foster adopt. of 4 months. Our commitment to her was made open heartedly. We had a wonderful adoption. Celebration with over 100 friends in our church. There were many challenges for each of us. To adjust our new life together. We were loving her. He was loving us. At our family became grounded and bonded. Over the years our church community and brace for tenderly. And she became. Friends with many. Earl is working hard at school to catch up and was on a solid track. College plans were being dreamed about. But when ariel was 17. He ran away. Our lives changed so unexpectedly. It's been about seven years. My wife kim speaks with her often. Offering much comfort and support. Earl has just landed a job at americorps in california and seams on a good path. Gilliam keeps in touch on facebook. But i have not wanted to. Probably because i stopped trusting her. Earl's early years were difficult as she moved around in the foster care system. He probably become hardened. And not learning how to trust. I hope one day. She will find a husband to love and to trust. I'm thinking about the npr story. And i'm preparing for this talk. I find myself needing to connect with arrow. Anime. Happily yesterday i spoke with her. And i still didn't. Moved by my. Stepping forward to do that. For many years i've been delving deeper trying to improve my own emotional maturity. An understanding all the complexities in relationships. There are many levels of trust. Circumstances are continually changing. Others have different expectations at different times then you may have. So by consciously trying to be better at listening. An outwardly expressing patients empathy and kindness. I continued. To learn how to more easily build a friendship. And to keep openly connected with my work associates. And more importantly. I've learned how to repair some misunderstandings. With my loved ones and from friends from the past. When i was about 45 had two delayed but much appreciated opportunity to reopen. An important relationship in in my life with my twin brother. Bruce and i are fraternal twins in good panels from the very beginning. We comfortably coexisted together. Not being identical. Paternal twins mostly develop different interest. Habits. And their own set of friends. As we later learn together in a psychology. Class. Fraternal twins develop their lives in a complimentary manner as a result of one twin stepping out in one direction. Bruce was introverted. He was content being alone. And was enthused pursue any constructive activity with his hands. Awesome in solitude. Is a very peaceful soul. I was extroverted. Be out with others. And was happiest when immersed in competitive sports or. Debate with others. His senior yearbook was signed. With sincere messages about. You can be the one. To always be counted on. Mine was signed with brief messages about. Getting ahead in life and most likely to succeed. Person i trusted each other. We shared many good times together and acknowledge some differences. After i school years. We went on our own separate ways. Some things were missing. And we did not stay connected. About 20 years later. I felt a strong urge to reconnect with bruise after being deeply moved from a personal growth seminar i had just for taste participated in. I called bruce and invite him out to california to experience the seminar with me. His emotions are flooded over with gratitude. I must have struck a deep emotional chord within him. The seminar was called temenos. A greek term that carl jung had used to mean. Spot where mental work can take place. This intensive workshop was focused on rebuilding relationships with our family. Much of our life potential is held back. Because we let personal disappointments and hurts. Get in the way of our family relationships. I learned so much about myself. In this temenos seminar. Early years i must have let bruce down. In reflection. I realize that might early years were all about me. And not nearly enough about us the twins. Over the three-day workshop we relive their early lives chronologically together. We shared our disappointments. About each other and recalled her from our fun memories together and with mom and dad. It was her own time capsule had been discovered. Bruce opened up and shared that he was not whether he should. Whether he should stay with his wife. All the open heart and trusting support from our group. Help him to clarify that his love was still with his wife and son. The most important most important persons in this life. He would return back home. With a new reinvigorated loving relationship that is still strong to this day. In this safe trusting environment with others also feeling confident to share personal family issues. Bruce and i knew then that our bond would be forever deep. We've wasted far too much time being disconnected. We made a commitment to carol of. Be there for each other. No issue no excuse. Would ever keep us apart again. I love you bruce. Love you too carl. It's now how we always end our phone calls or when we're saying goodbye at family gatherings. From a personal perspective i've learned over the years to company rely on my inner strength intertrust. My own philosophy is life is really a journey. Whatever steps forward i have made and will be making the outcome will probably be a okay. Don't be weighted down by challenges. The curiosities of life that i wanted to follow. I believe there are many. I believe they're always three options. But you can take after any decision you've made. 1. Any decision could be modified. To reverse. Or even cancel. This philosophy has given me the confidence to take on many spur-of-the-moment riff. And try many new things. For example while in college i changed my major midstream and still graduated in 4 years. I asked the former employer to please rehire me back. After i had hardheaded lee resign from the job. I look back at my life's journey as an unfolding and of a deepening adventure. Go forward young man and adjust as you need. Upon reflection my early steps forward after high school or a little raw maybe even a little reckless. I've learned so much from my mistakes and have been humbled. Every time every time i risk stepping. Into the unknown by moving to a new city for to a faraway country. The precious opportunity for a personal new beginning and brand new friendships. I trusted that the experience itself. What's the goal. And the outcome was merely the result. I can now say with much gratitude. I'm one who was engaged fully in life. I've trusted my instincts. Using my knowledge required along the way. In my natural ability to expose. Accept any outcome. With complete trust. My ongoing journey. Weather relearning to trust arrow again. Or intuitively placing trust in the unknown. Is really what makes me who i am. Expressions. Maybe more eloquently said in the beatles song the rose. It's the heart afraid of breaking. It never learns to dance. It's the dream afraid of waking. It never takes the chance. It's the one who won't be taken. You cannot seem to give. And the soul afraid of dying. It never learns to live. Thank you my friend for allowing me to be me this morning.

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7.mp3

It may seem like a little moment too many of you but to me it was spiritually huge. A couple of weeks ago columns and i were driving through the rolling hills of northern new york. As we journeyed home from a few relaxing days. Indiana rondex. It was a long drive seven and a half hours actually. This is early in the morning. I was behind the wheel and columns as he's occasionally want to do was sleeping quietly in the passenger seat beside me. The radio was off. And i was just. Driving. With my thoughts and my world all to myself. What all the sudden for no particular reason that was clear to me anyway. All of a sudden that was filled with an overpowering sense of heartfelt gratitude for my life. Gratitude for simply being alive. There in that moment. It was a beautiful call me momin. Highway gently riband ahead sneaking through majestic adirondacks hills. The last of the brilliant autumn colors could still be seen on the tenacious trees. The sky was at pleasing dancing only happens in autumn of. Deep blue sky in bright white clouds. And the strong november winds were causing thousands million. Of leaves to cascade through the year. In one lovely patterns of airborne dance in front of me. Standard it was a beautiful day. But even the striking beauty of that moment cannot explain the fullness. The satisfaction and peace that i felt in my heart. For no particular reason as i quietly drove. I was simply overwhelmed with a sense of simple serene gratitude for my life all of it. My being. My breathing. My surroundings. My place in creation my world even my slumbering spouse blesses her. In a moment. It just all came together in a perfect dance. Simple. Heartfelt. Thanksgiving. I know you all have moments. This morning i continue my sermon series on unitarian universalist theology and practice 101. Where does my intention all year long. To reflect on the fundamentals of our liberal religious tradition. And it's thought and practice. Early on in my planning of the series i knew of course that i had to conclude a sermon in the series on gratitude. For gratitude is one of the spiritual anchors. Of our proud and historic faith tradition. It is essential and an essential strain in liberal thought and practice. It's hard for me to imagine someone thinking themselves a unitarian universalist. Without regularly having some gratitude on their hearts. For more than 300 years we american unitarians. And universalist and since 1961 unitarian universalist. Have understood. The gratitude for life must be a core aspect of spirituality. And in our daily living. Listen to these famous words. Spiritual gratitude written by unitarian bar. Ralph waldo emerson. These are the words with which he began his address. To the graduating class of the harvard divinity school. On a warm summer evening. July 15th. 1836. It's known famously as the divinity school address. You can google it. He said. Looking out at the 8th graduates and their family and friends in the small very hot chapel. Harvard divinity school. In this refulgent summer. It has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows. The bugs first the metal was spotted with fire and gold in the 10th of flowers the air is full of birds. And sweet with the breadth of the pine the balm of gilead. And the new hey. Night brings no gloom to the heart. With its welcoming shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars. Or they're almost spiritual raised man under them seems a young child. And his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river and prepares his eyes again. For the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature emerson sad. Was never displayed more happily. The corn and wine have been freely dealt to all creatures and the never broken silence with which the old bounty goes forward. Have not yielded yet one word of explanation. What is constrained. He handed. To respect the perception of this world. In which our senses. Converse. A wide. How rich what invitation for every property again. To every faculty. Of man. Ours is a spiritual tradition. Long and the habit of expressing heartfelt gratitude. For the totality. Acumen and earthly existence. We began our service by singing together at the top of our exuberant lungs i will remind you. Kim number 21 for the beauty of the earth the most popular him in american unitarian-universalism. This him begins. By having us sing our gratitude for nature for the beauty of the earth. For the splendor of the skies and then it moves on and versus 2 3 and 4. To have us think thanks. For the heart and minds to light. For the mystic harmony of our life. And for the love of sister-brother parent-child even more broadly. For the kinship we all share with humanity everywhere. Always has never been a grumpy or depressed or despondent religion we've never made very good piriton. Indeed. It was our optimism about and gratitude for the goodness and worth and beauty of life. That did first set us apart as an american religion. From the grimm puritanism. That spiritually rained america during the early generations of the americas american life. In the 1700's and 1800's when calvinists and others were proclaiming that life on this earth. Was a veil of tears. And the dark depraved temporality for a sinful humanity the unitarians and the universe. What universalist for singing things like emerson. Proclaiming that god. And life. And persons were good. An inter woven thing. 41. Cool math. So we've always been a faith tradition. Marked by gratitude for and faith in. The gift of life. In fact 20th century british unitarian lp jack. Once famously said. Religion is primarily an affair. Of gratitude. Religion is primarily an affair. Of gratitude. But for this to be a meaningful affirmation for us. We need a sink to go a bit deeper. And purse out. Precisely what spiritual or religious credited looks like. And how it differs from some sort of. Vague. Satisfaction in life what does it really what this spiritual gratitude. Really look like and how do we get it. Show me gratitude the kind i want. To live at the very core of my spiritual life. Is about 3. Separate but interrelated things. Gratitude is always about mindfulness. Second creditors always about not. Taking for granted. And third gratitude is always about keeping first. First. Let me take each of these in turn. Mine. Gratitude is about mindfulness. Purposeful attention. The kind of gratitude that has the power to transform and bless our lives on a daily basis. Comes to us only when we are intentionally paying keen and thankful attention. To the world around us and the life within us. It's a sad truth i think. Although none of us fall into it on purpose. The fact is that many if not most of us. Substantially or at least sporadically. Sleepwalk. Through our lives. We get so easily distracted. Play all the demands and pressures and fast pace of daily living. That without meaning to we often fall into a kind of. Casey garvey stupor. The blinds us to the rich and amazing texture of the day in front of us. Whether we are commuting to work. Cleaning house. Chauffeuring noisy kids around town in a can of a beat-up minivan. Answering now endless emails at the office. Paying the bill. Brushing our teeth. Raking the lawn. Most of us regularly forget. The key to a life richly and joyfully leds. Is simply paying attention. In a focused way. Whatever is at hand be at cleaning house. Or brushing teeth. Or answering email. Indeed. Attention. And remind ourselves. The slowdown. The sit-up. To look around and the focus are full spirit renewal and. Physical attention. On what is in front of us. I want to hear just one. Story of a recent moment again of my own simple grateful mindfulness. That makes all the difference to me as you all know how many of you know. Everyday i commute 11 mi. From my home in downtown washington up the capital crescent trail. And then back at night with my fancy high-tech headlights. No. Like any repetitive physical routine. Most especially in this case because biking is after all one dumb stroke after the next. Cycling can put you into a kind of. Mindless stupor where you cease paying attention. To what your body is doing or to the nuances of the world you are moving through. I must honestly tell you that sometimes my biking to work. Tune from work field just. Like so much boring repetitive uninspiring drudgery. Hardly the stuff of song or poetry. But the other day as i was cycling down the capital crescent trail. Justice the intense autumn sun was about to drop beneath the horizon across the potomac river. I decided to kick myself i decided. To kick myself out of the growing stupor i was sliding into i decided to focus. My full attention. I'm a moment in front of me suddenly. And i am sure this only happened because i was intentionally. Paying attention. I found myself zipping. Through a perfectly enchanted world. As i glided effortlessly down the long hill to that bridge across the c&o canal the black metal bridge. I became aware that i wasn't fat. Moving through a cozy natural tunnel. Framed by friendly tree branches ablaze. It was still in autumn color. Intensified by the embrace of the hot red. Of the setting sun. Leaves were spiraling and spinning down and beautiful patterns. Carried by the strong winds to their winter resting. Squirrel. What absentmindedly screwing everywhere with huge nuts. Protruding from their mouth and dozens of healthy happy looking people. We're sharing the path of me some of them on rollerblades some on bikes. Some just walkin and talkin some skating. Some cycling suddenly. And remember this was simply because i was paying attention. My whole world came alive and it kind of holistic beauty. That i rarely see but. Is almost always. In an instant was just like that morning driving alone on the adirondack highway. I was intensely grateful simply to be where i was. And to be alive. Where i was. It was mindfulness. That allowed me my life to break open. In life-saving gratitude and such moments. Make all the difference in the world. At other times in my life i call my back took myself back to mindfulness. Buy a simple meditation i told you about this. Before over the years i call it. My meditation of the senses. No matter where i am listening on the c&o canal walking. I will simply intern focus my attentions on each of my sensory apparatus. First i say to myself. I am now looking. Am i intensely look. At what i am seeing in front of me after i'm in here till i say now. I am hearing. And although i don't close my eyes. I focus my attention. I was coming in through these two little funny things with these flaps around. And then if i. Can we move to the other senses. Now i'm smelling. Now i'm stealing was against my skin. Just a moment a minute or two focusing on each apparatus. Through which i know my world. My world becomes keenly alive sometimes it will repeat it twice. It's a simple. Meditation exercise a simple spiritual practice. You can do it anywhere. Reading a book. Driving with three noisy kids in the back of the van you can do it anywhere. Anytime. It's a simple. Meditation. That allows you to focus. Unaware. You are. And there are of course. Many other mindfulness practices that leads directly to gratitude. Yoga. Journaling. Each night. Knitting. Getting out in the garden. Cooking. Mindfulness. Writing poetry. Going bird-watching. Or just plain old. Or walking meditation. The point is that no matter what no matter which of these practices works for you. It is mindfulness. That will bring you to a grateful place. And let calm. Enjoy. Flow into your. The second aspect of gratitude i think is always not. Taking for granted. It is so easy for us to slip into taking. The ordinary miracles of life. 4 g i like the way. Creation center theologian matthew fox. Articulated this. In one of his books he right. Gratitude changes our lives. It fills us with energy and vitality when i was 12 years old right. I had polio. And suddenly could not walk. The doctors could not reassure me that i would ever walk again. As it turns out the right i did get my legs back. 6 months later. But i learned a lesson in the process that i have never forgotten. Don't. Take for granted. Are you taking my legs. Fox rights i have taken my legs for granted. Legs at work legs that could run and play ball legs at take me exactly where i want to go. When my legs return to me. I was filled with gratitude not gratitude for the miracle. Of my legs being healed but rather gratitude for having legs at all in the first place legs that works. Nnem. I was filled with energy. And i promised myself. That i would never again waste my legs. For as long. As i live. Hazard transcendentalist forebears emerson. Thoreau channing whitman and all the others pointed out. A couple of centuries ago. The world we have been given. Is filled. With everyday miracles. Simple miracles we are the only ones. Who can appreciate and acknowledge. Whether it is the astounding calm. Ava november sunset cast. Hot red against the delicate tracery. Capri's it will happen again in just. Few hours. Or the boundless excitement of a wild ocean storm crashing against the beach. Or the amazing intricacy of these bodies we get to live in. Or the noisy joy of listening to your kids. And your friends whooping it up in the back. Of your minivan or around a messy thanksgiving table on thursday. Or the nuances of thought and emotion which enable you to shape and understand and give meaning to your world. My god think of. Simple intricacy and joyce thought. End up emotion. There is so much. Not. To take. For granted. Gratitude always begins with not. And leslie gratitude can only freely flow in our lives. When we spiritually keep first. Sings. And refused to allow ourselves to be distracted or distance. From the holy fundamentals of our lives. That alone will make us rich. Let me talk about this danger of distraction in terms of something we are all coping with right now in american life. And something that i've talked about several times over recent weeks since. Summer. That is of course. The growing economic crisis and recession. That is gripping our nation in fact. The entire. Globe. I doubt there's a person in this room. Whose life has not been at least somewhat affected or jeopardized by the economic upheavals. Of recent weeks. I know mine has. And of course it's only natural for us to pay attention and feel anxiety. What are financial security is threatened some in this room are severely threatened with wondering how they're going to pay their bills. And put food on your table and ever see their children. With an airline trip again it is serious. Formatting. But if we are to maintain spiritual balance on health and joy in our lives. We must. Keep even this in perspective. I have. Friends here in dc who have confessed to me. The same now find themselves fretfully checking what the dow jones averages doing 10. 12. 1416 times a day they keep the icon right there on their computers. It's not that the dow jones average doesn't matter. But what matters more is the weather. And your coworkers. Children. I'm getting a good night sleep. There's so much more than checking the dow jones 14. 18 * you check on those things 18 x. You're looking to miss the other things you really are here. In this world. If we are to have gratitude for life at the center of our days we must remember. To keep. First. And focus on those aspects of our lives that truly have the power to bless us. And make our portfolios. Things as i have said again and again to you over 11 years. Like spending quality time with family and friends. Chicken time. To get out in nature. The folding part of your evening to a free concert. Or being curled up in your favorite chair with a good book. Or joining with other good neighbors down to local soup kitchen. To ensure that no-one. In our community. Goes hungry. In these stressful uncertain times indeed in all time. If we are to be spiritually centered. In life-saving gratitude. We must keep first things first and refuse all the easy distractions. The keep us away. From the holy things. That are right ahead. My time is not this morning. I hope i have persuaded you. Not just. For thanksgiving week. But for the whole fabric of your life. That is important to cultivate gratitude. The center of your lives. Sometimes. The blessings just come to you but many other times you have to do the cultivation. Remind for me. True not taking for granted. Mspy keeping. First. Things. I hope you all. Have a wonderful rest of this day. And a wonderful week. With family and friends. Remember. Keep first. Let us sing. Give thanks. Him 6.

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192.mp3

It is mother's day today. Just a few moments ago. You heard some of the saying out loud. The names of our mothers. Grandmother uneven great-grandmother. Stories of those people their faces their deeds. And our feelings about them. May have arisen in our heart. We may be delighted that some of them are sitting right beside us. We may be wishing they were here whether they are living far away or no longer living. We may be feeling uncomfortable. Because our relationship with them is or was not. What we wished it could have been. We may be remembering the kind of food they cooked. For the songs they sang. With a game they played with us. I invite you now to leave that private world of mothers. And to enter a more public world of mothers. I want to tell you the story of three women. Who are remembered for what i call. Public mothering. It seems to me their children were all of us. Our entire society. We probably don't know their faces. What kind of food they cook their songs they sang or games they played. But everyday. We take for granted and are nurtured and our lives made more whole. Buy some of the fruits. From their life works. Because of the circumstances in my life i have chosen three women. The choices could have been endless. But these three lives on lies that spoke to me at this moment. Margaret fuller. Because it is the bicentennial of this very important unitarian woman's birth. Frances perkins. Because i recently read her biography and as i watched the debate over the health care bill i was struck. Similarity of the social structures. In her time and hours today. And finally. Dorothy height. Who's life became known to me at the time of her death just a few weeks ago. We aren't they all reminded me. Event first mother's day proclamation so strongly stated. By julia ward howe. It wasn't to call to make us breakfast in bed or bring us flowers. It was a call to all women of the world. To claim their wisdom. Very existence is dependent upon valuing and respecting the lives of each other. It was a call to claim their wisdom. And to do something about it. I would say they all knew that the common good was at the heart of humanity. At the common good could not drive unless we spoke out. Engaged in it. And grew with it. Go for just a few minutes. Let us reflect on some of the stories. Of these three women. Margaret fuller was born in 1810. Pretty obvious that this is the bicentennial right. Former was educated at a very early age in the classics by her stern father. She learned english latin german and french and read widely in these languages. But she was born into a world. Remote professions were closed to women. And the world in which women could neither vote. Nor own property. The lot of women is sad she wrote. She is constituted to expect anita happiness. The cannot exist on earth. He must die for such aspirations within her secret heart and spit herself as well as she can for a life of resignation and consolation. Speaking of what she thought women should have and do she said. We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to women as freely as to men. What woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule. But as a nature. Too grown. As an intellect to discern. As a sole to live freely and unimpeded. Competed to unfold such power as were innately given her. I think you would have loved that song we sang. Find unitarian universalist married. Tokyo brokolija. That we sang after the child dedication. I know the road will open. Fuller always aspired to grow and develop. Fuller had a deep spiritual life which began by an awakening when she was 21. She described leaving a suffocating church service. And walking for miles along oblique thanksgiving landscape. Stopping by a stream or a vision released her pent-up soul. I remember how. A little child i stopped myself one day on the stairs and ask. How i came here. How is it that i seem to be this margaret fuller. What does it mean. What shall i do about it. I remember all the times and ways in which that same thought had returned. I saw how long it must be before the soul can learn to act. Under the limitations of time and space. And human nature. But i saw also. It must. Do it. That it must make all this fault. I'm so new and immortal plants in the garden of god. Before it could return again. I saw there was not self. The selfishness was all folly and the result of circumstance. But it was only because i thought self real. That i suffered. That i had only to live in the ideal of the all. And all. Was mine. This truth came to me. And i received this unhesitatingly. But i was for the hour taken up into god. And that true rei. Most of the relations of earth. Theme to mirror films. Phenomena. He came to the conclusion that the only object. In life. Was to grow. Former believe that people needed to go through a personal transformation that would liberate their minds from the inertia of prejudice and habitual thoughts and awakening to the plight of society's victim. And in that life for five years she conducted. Conversation. They were with women a series of gatherings in boston that we're consciousness-raising gatherings drawing on classical mythology and literary themes. And the women presents wisdom. She became the only regular female member of the transcendentalist club. This nurtured her long friendship with emerson who urged her to become the editor of dial magazine. Publishing articles some of what she wrote from a transcendentalist point of view on religion. Culture and society. After a trip to the midwest. In 1843. Fuller road her first major publications summer on the lake. It was going to be a travel literature. But turn into an impassioned. Critique of the mistreatment of native americans. End of the plight of women living in social isolation. On the great plains. As a result of summer on the lake. Horace greeley ask. Like to write for his newspaper the new york daily tribune. She became the first prominent woman columnist. For an american newspaper. With a fun page byline covering everything family review of books plays and concerts. The social criticism of topics such as. The treatment of women prisoners. Prejudice against immigrant groups. And the american expansion. About publishing of women in the nineteenth century in 1845. Feminist elizabeth cady stanton and susan b anthony said. Four-wheeler possessed more influence upon the thought of american women. Any woman preview. Give her time. I know for us today is a fuller argue for multiculturalism as she supported immigrant immigration. She insisted that the ethnic group including the irish and the italians. Contribute to the country's greatness. She insisted and friend while they should be blended into a new and jenna's nation. Their uniqueness must be preserved and appreciated. In one of her last dispatches. Before she and her family drowned off the shore of long island. When they're shipped from italy went down. Bubba said to the people of the united states. Do you own no ties to heaven. For the privileges it has showered on you. For whose achievements so many hearing she was writing a letter in italy. Have suffered and perish daily. Deserve to retain the privileges heaven has showered on you by helping your fellow men to acquire those same privileges. Rest not supine in your easier live but remember. Mankind is one. And beats with one braid heart. Her short life of only 40 years. What's filled with the drive for growth. Injustice. And an understanding and willingness to work for the common good. Especially the marginalized. I mistreated. After margaret fuller died. Frances perkins. She was to become the first woman appointed to the united states cabinet. Franklin delano roosevelt secretary of labor. She is known as the mother of social security. She was sponsored she was responsible for authoring it. And one of the major player than getting it through congress. She championed much of the new deal including the civil conservation corps in the public were tooken ministration. In addition to social security. She drafted and was instrumental in pushing through unemployment benefits. Disability insurance. Minimum wage 40 hour week. Child labor law. When roosevelt asked her to be his secretary of labor she presented a list of accomplishments she wanted to complete if she took the job. A national system of unemployment insurance. Public works jobs prohibition of child labour and aid our a day work. Birthday minimum wage. Workman's compensation for workplace injuries. Safety regulations across the country and old age pension. Do the elderly people paying who paid into a system when they were young and received payments later. Which was to become social security and the last on the list. With national healthcare. It got delayed by the war and poverty. But all the others became law during her tenure. As secretary of labor. Politics wasn't any easier then. There were congressmen who tried to impeach her. Predominantly over immigration issues. Responsibility for which were then removed from the department of labor into the department of justice where they are today. People put out lies in the media about her there were great struggles as you might imagine between labor and government and business. Again and again and again. And this little social worker weathered it all. Her training was in social work and two events seem to me to have shaved her purpose and mission throughout her life. The first one. What's that she lived for a while working at the whole house. And volunteering at other settlement houses in chicago. The whole house with the nation's leading settlement house started by unitarian jane addams. Settlement houses. We're actually boarding houses for people lived in eight community as a large extended family dedicated to civic improvement. Social workers and community activist live there in exchange for working with needy families. Four people also court took him settlement houses hospitality by attending classes. And learning a skill or hearing music performances are listening to lectures and political debates and they create a childcare centers and things like that. The whole house with the place. Where the rich and the poor intermingled. Sometimes for the very first time. Perkins thought of the whole house workers as her true family. People passing through the whole house while she was there. Included. Walter s gifford who became the board chairman of at&t. Sidney hillman. An aspiring trade unionist. Gerald swope. The future president of general electric. W mackenzie king. Who became canada's prime minister. Jazz musician benny goodman. And ramsey mcdonald's british statesman. And regular visitors included clarence darrow. Frank lloyd wright. Ann upton sinclair. When did have been an amazing place to be. Many of these influenced her and became important contact for her in her further work. The other event. That's so strongly shaped her life. Was witnessing the triangle shirtwaist shirtwaist factory fire in new york. This was the fire which immigrant women working in the shirt factory burned to death. Or jumped to their deaths from windows. Because the exit doors of the factory were locked. Despite her place of privilege in life. Perkins never forgot the people from these events. Perkins place of privilege was predominantly one of being in the company of powerful decision-makers most of her life. Her personal finances were always very tentative. She benefited often from the generosity of. Privileged friends. Shedding normous medical expenses. With her husband which probably contributed to her desire for health insurance for all. She died in 1965. Still teaching. For income. At 85 years old. United states department of labor headquarters building in washington dc was named the frances perkins building. In 1980. But fifteen years. I'm just thursday may 13th. Is a feast day. On the liturgical calendar of the episcopal church for which she was always very very faithful. Honored. And today 44 million people in the united states receive social security payments. Because of perkins work. Call felix. Frankford arashi step down from secretary of labor. I came to work for god. Fdr. And the millions of forgotten playing common working men. The last conversation she said i had with f.d.r.. What does such a nature that i could say with the psalmist. My cup runneth over surely goodness and mercy. She'll follow me. And in 1912. Just a year after that terrible triangle shirtwaist fire. Dorothy height. Was born in richmond virginia. When she was small the family moved from rankin. Pennsylvania near pittsburgh where she attended. Integrated integrated public school. It was there as a teenager that she began for her volunteering on voting rights and anti-lynching campaign. In high school does height 1 and oratory contest sponsored by the elks. 4 subject with the thirteenth fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the constitution. She was the only black contestant. The contest awarded her a four-year college scholarship. He was accepted at barnard college. When she arrived at the college they said indeed she had been accepted. But they had already they already had their negro quota of two students killed for that year and she would have to wait until the next year to enroll. Hydra called that she was too distraught. To call home. With that kind of news. So she took the subway downtown to new york university with her barnard. Acceptance letter and she was admitted at once. It was at nyu where she earned a bachelor's degree in education. And in 1933 and a master's degree in psychology in 1935. She became a social worker. And then assistant executive director of the harlem ywca. Where she called attention to the exploitation of black women working as domestic day laborers. Black women were congregating on street corners in brooklyn and the bronx. Known locally as. Play market. And were picked up and hired for about $0.15 an hour. Buy white suburban housewives. Who cruised the corners with their car. Hike with elected to ywca natch national leadership. Where she was responsible for desegregating all of the wise facilities. She became executive director of the phillis wheatley house in washington dc. To eleanor roosevelt she met mary mcleod bethune the founder of the national. Council of negro women. Heidi payne president of the national council of negro women. During the most urgent years of the civil rights movement. She held the presidency for 40 years. She became known as the godmother. Of the civil rights movement. She worked along with dark doctor martin luther king junior james farmer john lewis. A philip randolph roy wilkins and whitney young jr. Yep was often discriminated within the civil rights movement. Because she was a woman. He wasn't the only woman on the podium during dr. martin luther king's i have a dream speech. Many other male civil rights movement leaders were invited to speak. Even though she was one of the marches organizers. And an accomplished orator. Purcell. He was not invited to speak. I was there. And i felt at home in the group. But i didn't feel i should elbow myself to the front. When the press focus. On the male leaders. He told the press. Along with gloria steinem shirley chisholm at freddy's redan and others. She helped found the national women's political caucus. She started a pig bag program in the south where poor families were given a pig to raise and sell and then they could give back one pig to another family. Kind of like a micro farming project. Started wednesday's in mississippi. Program that flew interracial teams of northern women. To mississippi. To meet with black and white women there. You know the rated the black family reunions in the mid-80s. For hundreds of thousands of people gathered to celebrate their history culture and tradition. She counseled every president from dwight eisenhower. To the present. In his eulogy president obama said. She had stopped by the house white house. 21 times since he arrived there. Height width 98 years old. When she died that means she was 97 and 98 and she was stopping by the white house to advise the president. She received the presidential medal of freedom for president bill clinton and the congressional gold medal. From a president george w bush. 36 honorary doctorate degrees from colleges and universities across the country. I'm 75 years after barnard college turned her away. They designated her an honorary graduate. Accomplishment go on and on like that. I didn't even recognize her name. Until i read it in the newspaper when she died. So what do these three women's ways of mothering society tell us. They were not especially model family mother's. I didn't have any children. Perkins was estranged from her only daughter in her later life. And former left her only son with a wet nurse in the hills of italy to engage with her husband in the italian revolution. And yet. There are few women maybe none. Who have done more. For the children of this country. And whose work will continue to influence the lives of all here. Their life challenges all. It is a time to put down our cynicism in our fatigue and our discouragement. It is time to take stock of our lives and consciously commit. To at least one more effort for the common good. One more effort everyday and every day. And everyday. Alice walker said that well in her poem. Remember. She remembers how oppressed and is quran. Discouraged her early life was she remembers how she moved out of that and became optimistic about life. And she concludes with these words. I am the woman. Dark repair. Healed listening to you. I would give to the human race only hope. I am the woman offering. 2 flowers. Whose roots are twin. Justice. And hope. Hope. Injector. Let us begin. On this.

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4329.mp3

To say i am not a secure relativist. I don't think that the truth necessarily. Or even often changes with the circumstances. I do believe that when it comes to the world. And to ourselves. Much of what we know of the truth depends heavily on our own perception. There are truths all around us that we may choose to see. Or nazi instasize or diminish raised up or buried down deep we never have to look at them. Dirt routes that we may not perceive their aspects of the truth we may choose with every fiber of our being to ignore. The most searing of which are truths about ourselves. Truths that remain invisible unacknowledged. Because perhaps in a given moment they must. Or they can. And yet i also believe that the truth we do not see about ourselves in about the world about each other. The truth we cannot see our holy as important. Adult ruth we shout from the rooftops with our mightiest voices. There is this marvelous midrash midrash is of course it's a jewish teaching story. The rabbis in the jewish tradition used to expand the pain and interpret the sacred scriptures of their faith. And there's this marvelous midrash that talks about what many understand to be the greatest miracle of the hebrew bible you all know the scriptural story the one event that jewish children here over and over again and hebrew school and before which all of history stands in awe and wonder. The parting of the red sea. When moses is said to have brought the israelites out of bondage only to stand before that bathwater spread his hands with the might of god behind him and split that see into. You might imagine. And a story like that. Everyone who would have such an event never forgotten it would have become a formative event in their lives. And yet the midrash that i remember today. It recalls to israelites the rabbi said. Two israelites proven and shamone who had a different experience of the wonder and the witness. In the story of the rabbi's told at the bottom of the sea those perfectly safe to walk on was not completely dry but muddy and kind of gross. Like the bottom of a river. Sarubin stepped into it and he curled his lip in disgust. Simone scalp all over the place. Play put one foot in front of another and so it went for the two of them step-by-step grumbling all the way across the bottom of the red sea. And because they never once looked up they never understood why on the distant shore everyone else was singing hymns of praise. For reuben and simone the rabbis teach. The miracle never happen. The lesson here. Is that there is often truth that we simply fail to see. And that truth. Glorious. Albeit difficult. It deserves. Somewhere in the midst of all the mundane and the distinctly awful and sometimes glorious realities of life somewhere in the middle of the middle of the muck and the filth and the pain and the trudging somewhere in the middle of it there is holiness. That story says. As jacob said in the hebrew bible surely god was in this place and i did not know it. Surely there are wonders we may choose not to witness. Surely there is holiness we simply refuse. Inner story today the story that our children and youths will be traveling with and unpacking over the course of a whole month it comes from the upanishads which is the sacred traditions of the hindu. Face and we are reminded in that story of an essential truth of human nature. That what you don't know. And what you don't see. Is holy as important as what you do know. And what you do see. And that the essence of human being you are right now or what you know right now or the mastery you were able to claim over your surroundings right here in this very minute the essence of a human being is not what you are today but the extraordinary and fearful potential of what you may yet become. You heard the story from gabrielle discourse story. And the scriptural version in the upanishads says that this smart young man super smart like obnoxious lee smart. The smart young man named fedakar to he goes off to school at the age of 12 to study at the feet of the wisest masters in the kingdom. Smart and gathered up so much knowledge so much truth in his learning that when the master finally gave him leave to go forth and learn the final most important lesson the secret of his own essential nature it was to the boy's father. That he sent to me. And so the father welcomes the much too wise for his own good son home from princeton or the equivalent thereof. Sunset akatu. Which is the finest essence. The whole world has that is itself. Reality that art thou in the original pot to vom icees. Art thou. Illustrate his point he continues directing his son bring him from that tree son and sir divided he says it is divided sir. What do you see there. Of those please divide 1 it's divided serve what do you see there. Nothing at all. Then the father said to him verily my dear. Truly my most beloved that finest athens what you do not perceive. That finest accents. From that the great fig tree that's arises believe me my dear he said. That which is the finest essence. The world has that is itself. That is reality. Pop pharmacy. That art thou. That art thou my son. Instead of copies lesson that day is a mystical reality which was seemingly kind of esoteric might be something we can all intuitively grasp. The idea that we human beings are neither inherently good. Nor inherently evil. But inherent. Potential. And that's our responsibility is to keep faith with the ever-present pool of our own possibilities not everything we already know but everything we may yet and must yet become valar the nothingness. From which everything arises. The father says to the sun. We are neither inherently broken. Inherently hole. Neither inherently good norton errantly evil neither originally blessed nor originally damned but the beginnings of the beginning. Of what will come after us. Composed of a sort of pregnant nothingness. From which the enormity and the terrific uncertainty of the future will arrive. I wonder if it's scared that young students petikot to. As much as it surely scares us. The beginning of a beginning. Very substance of hope and the raw material for terror at the same time i wonder if it scared him as much as it surely does scare us. Because if it is in the nature of a human being to be neither inherently good nor inherently evil but astonishingly powerful unformed potential. Then it is not just hope. That is born in here. In the inner recesses of our hearts. In fact it is within us that the potential for evil arises as well. No devil poking us or sitting on our shoulder. No metaphysical source of discord stirring the pot and telling us what to do but right here right here at the origin point of possibility with us. That that which kills takes root. And some essential way evil is a series of very human choices. Further and further away from other more life-giving possibilities one-step. One breath one compromise at a time. Evil is born about out of our own perception. Better choice. I'm more loving choice. A more moral choice is no longer possible or feasible for us. It is basic faithlessness. In our own potential. And that perhaps is the most fundamentally original sin of all. There is an amazing. And heartbreaking and baffling morality play in the works this week in our country. It's been happening on the floor of the house oversight committee recently assembled to review the unbelievably high price of prescription drugs in the us healthcare market have you guys been watching this it is. Amazing and. Across party lines. Across all the candidates platforms pretty much everyone agrees and holds a commitment that drug prices in this country are too high. Americans are paying a deadly price across all boundaries people agree on this it is consistent and the poster child for this phenomenon the so-called bad boy of pharma as he has been called. Particularly unsettling character by the name of martin shkreli. Not really is amazing i've been obsessed with him all week. Like a villain out of a comic book she's like batman's nemesis his astonishing and it's so hard to believe that he is even real. Recently the head of a drug company. The price of a life-saving interventions in emergency aids cases of the price of this pill by 5000%. In the process of doing that. He personally made enough money to spend hours on early absurd nonsense. And to line his drab manhattan bachelor pad with bottles of chateau latour it is amazing that such a person exists. Hospital found that can no longer stop the medicine. Navigate to bazaar labyrinth of paperwork in special priority request to access it at a price anyone could afford an all of it all of it honestly sounds an awful light lot like the painfully complicated american healthcare system. Of which mr shkreli is but a single load some part. Indictment for securities fraud brought him before this house oversight committee this week and the video what the whole thing is nothing short of captivating theater it's like shakespeare writ large on cnn. Like a grad student with a pretty decent suit. Entitled mocking dismissive demeanor of that comic book superhero planted right there on the floor of that house committee. And the congresspersons dutifully ask him anything wrong questions freely responding the exact same way which should be utterly unsurprising to all of us on the advice of my counsel i invoke my fifth amendment privilege against self-incrimination and respectfully decline to answer your question. He says that again and again. Hour after hour. Smiling. Considering with his pencil like a board freshman in a mandatory study hall and again until finally longtime representative elijah cummings of the great state of maryland. Bearing and stature in the house he takes the mic. And he delivers to that young man. A speech about the always present potential. Inherent in even the most broken among us. They always present potential to choose our power for wholeness in this world he delivers a sermon that cannot have been meant only for mr. shkreli. For himself and his colleagues and perhaps for all of us. To the petulant smirking young man before him. Elijah cummings says. I want to ask you. No i want to plead. With you. Any remaining influence you have over your former company to press them to lower the price of those drugs. You can look away if you'd like. But i wish you could see the faces of people who cannot get the drugs they need. You have a spotlight. Sure. You have a platform. You could use that attention to come clean to become one of the most effective patient advocates in the country and one who could make a difference in so many people's lives. To which of course mr. shkreli smirks. Roll two dice. And turns his head to look knowingly at his council. And elijah cummings continues i know. I know you were smiling he says. But i'm very serious sir and i truly believe i truly believe that you could become a force of tremendous good. Of course you can ignore this if you like. All i ask is that you reflect on it. There are so many who could use your help. God bless you. Thank you. Whereupon shkreli grin the cheshire cat grin. And shortly left the chambers to tweet to the world what idiots the members of the us house of representatives really are. And people around the world looked on and loathed that young man because he is. Lonesome. But beyond that. The world watched as he repeatedly justified his choices by reminding us that raising the price of one drug doesn't increase anyone's insurance premiums and not many people take that drug anyway and this is just how the economy works and its insurance companies that we really have to blame and he's not doing anything different than what people are doing and if you don't like it well. Too bad. Which would be a horrible defense if it were not more or less entirely. True. Really. With dramatic turns. Was the same thing that has been done and will be done by thousands of others each of whom in turn will justify their actions choice by choice step-by-step compromise by compromise until innocence in the face of the law is viewed as dramatically more important than innocence in the face of a moral imperative in this world. This is how the system works. And his place in the system may in fact not be as deadly as that of a thousand others. But beneath that justification remains an immoral assumption that is in fact this is how it is done this also is how it must be. And what mr. shkreli demonstrates in his justification of his actions. It is really a fundamental lack of faith in his own potential. Or our own potential. Build a new way. It is a turning away from the possibilities inherent in himself the possibilities inherent in all of us it is an assumption not held only by him but by so many everywhere and on some days and some dark hours held even by us that our broken system will not be made more broken by our actions nor evermore whole by our efforts. This is the way it is the pharma bro proclaims. This is a system. Like ruben and simone on the bottom of the red sea all i see is mud and i am watching it just like. You. What representative cummings was saying in that hearing however. Is the closest thing to our universalist theology that i have heard in a political setting in sometime. And it couldn't preach not to that one young man but to any of us. Who find ourselves trying and fighting to believe that the way it is doesn't have to be the way it will always be. You have a choice the congressman was saying. You are not finished yet. You have power and potential and the seed of great things is planted in you even this minute you can choose to see another part of the truth around you and you can choose to be a part of something greater than the mock in which you trudge i truly believe he said. Good. And you can ignore this if you like but all i ask is that you reflect upon it. Universalist to our spiritual forebears they believe that no person was ever wholly separated from the great love of god. But nobody could be condemned to hell forever because nobody but nobody. Whatever holy law. That is the good news. The gospel at the root of our historic universalist tradition. And if it is true that we are pure potential. But we can choose. Can't believe something at the same. But nobody but nobody is ever wholly lost because the same essence lies and all of us the same substance the same potentiality the same power and it is only in denying one piece of that potential and refusing even to reflect on it that we sign ourselves away and given to the idea that the die is cast. And we cannot choose to be more whole. Beginning of a beginning. Is a daunting task. Like young spitta cockatoo and even young martin shkreli. We2. Are composed of both body and idea. Physical manifestation and unrealized potential we are the living breathing walking cussing hoping failing and commiserating beginnings of all that will come. We are but a pot tiny potential. And yet that tiny potential wealth had intended is all it takes. To give rise to the great fig tree. Henry david thoreau beautifully roads. So i do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been. I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seeds are. And i am prepared to expect wonder. Our spiritual work then. Is to convince ourselves even when it feels almost impossible that there is a seed. There. That there is a seed here. Always no matter what. That there is a possibility. We want to remind ourselves of it time and time again. When meaninglessness and apathy and justification creep into our lives when all we see even of ourselves as so much mud. And mock. And stock ness. There is a seed there. Something more beautiful. More rich in meaning more capable of loving a seed that is carried about somewhere deep inside all things including ourselves. So if we are to build a better world. We must first keep faith with the reality of our own potential. And then just maybe start to expect. Not just great. Fundamentally decent things. That. Art. Devon. The finest essence. The beginning of the beginning. The whole world has that is itself. That thou art. And from you so many things. Might yet arrived.

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4381.mp3

My dear you just keep on lighting. And i'm going to tell you a story. Resurrection suno. The kind. We're celebrating remembering. Resurrection's of the spirit of hope. Courage. Well they may be happening everyday firing the very light of the prayers and hopes of these candles resurrections may happen all over the world even hear resurrections are not normal. Surprising. Opposite of the litany of loss and suffering in this world in the news cycle we have come to expect everyday resurrections are bazaar. Images of story is full of bizarre surprises to. Especially for the ones who loved him most. Because the roman authorities condemned him to death because he was brave jesus died on friday evening and his friends they gather them up. And it took his body and they wrapped him in cloths and they took him to the best tomb they could find like a cave or hole and they ruled a great big heavy like heavier than i could push it i work out like heavy stole against. I'm just a day later. Some of those friends. In this case the women who loved him most the ones who worked alongside him. They led the way for so many others those women and they came that next day after he died and to think about how much they missed his friend and how much they had lost and they brought with them all the stuff you're supposed to bring when you're remembering someone who died two thousand years ago. Oils to robin to its skin. Scented perfume. Good clean water to wash the body and because they were reasonable people they left their homes that day to go to that tomb expecting to see more death. Where dad had been before. And that is all they expected. The cry together next to the one they have loved and lost to feel just how awful it is. To lose one so precious to you and if they got close to the tomb that day they were fretting among one another as we sometimes do before memorial service is watching us in this place it's like a hive of bees buzzing everywhere where will the appetizer tray get put out flowers. Anxiety and hope. We roll away that stone the women said it's so heavy and i don't know if we have the strength to do it and if they turn the corner and they approach that grave right there in front of them they saw to their astonishment. That the stone was clear old. Away. Nobody knew why nobody knew how about that heavy stone that worried them so much it was gone and their friends. Friend quite simply not there. Jesus was not there. She was gone. Not dead or at least not dead in that place at that time he was just flat-out gone. And they were gone. Of the oldest of the christian gospels in. Right there. With utter shock. With disbelief. With an empty tomb a shock and a surprise where once there had only been death. And the rest of the story. Still untold. Realizing wanda. The goldfish had died. We decided to bury her in the memorial garden which we could see from the office. Fox 4. Poetry. Others. The other woman words about easter. Another went out to dig a hole in a garden and i scooped her up and then at this time wrapping her in tissue because we didn't have a box. Small enough. Decatur out. We later in the hole and wrapping the tissue a bit so we can see her. One of the women recited the poem. All women of a certain age. Who's there. For a few moments quietly. We haven't yet had a pet blessing in that church. But one of the other women was a true lover of animals. And she was very sorrowful of wanda's. Death. I like towanda. Guilt. I should have taken better care. As we were ready to cover her work with dirt. We saw a gal move. We drop to our knees into the damn saint louis spring ground to get a closer look. Alcon in. Her gills move. Evine live. One of us screamed. Small that under her we ran back into the office and slowly removing the tissue i lower the net with wanda back into her home. Another one of us poured the pressure water from the goldfish bowl into the aquarium. To the bottom. And lay on her side. She was still. Every part of her. Whetstone. Cold. We were heartbroken. All over again. We were about to move away wanda towards the top of the tank or back fence pushing as if she were a whale almost ready to jump out of that tank again. And then she swam. And swam. Breathing in and out. I noticed she had a bit of tissue still tux. I misread the mood with her like when isadora duncan. Where she lay in the dirt. A large brownish silver spot. Admits her golden orange. One of us whispered.

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1597.mp3

And i would be made strong. That is what life in itself can do because it is so noble. So full of pleasure and so powerful. But if i could not have a child with me. I would like to have at least. I'm living animal at my side to comfort me. Therefore to bring about wonderful things in their big dark books. Take an animal to help them. The life within the animal. Give them strength intern. For equality gives strength in all things. At at all times. There was a time when my daughter and i were in sort of a desert. Her father my husband had just died and there were lots of loving and spins and family around. It's just what would happened where and how wasn't very clear. There were lots of decisions to be made and the future looked almost without shades. Endless question. Decision. And the unknown. It was a bit like walking in the desert. One of the first thing she said to me was. I want to get a dog. We looked for dogs and she settled on an alaskan eskimo puppy out ball of white fur. They're a little bit like a miniature husky. Sasha she called it. And sasha grew up to be a beautiful yapping dog that jumps around all over. And who would always pull on the leash. I went to classes i did everything it always pulls on the leash. And sasha with brush up against your leg gently and cuddle up in your lap. And look at you and tilt her head. When you were feeling down or frustrated and then she would try to lick your face. And when my daughter was at school or the event and i would walk into the house. I would be greeted by this burst of energy so excited to see me. So wanting to be petted and hugs and yet to do the same for me. The difference in walking into an empty house when you are alone. And walking into a house where a dog is greeting you. Trulia. Something living and loving is there to say welcome i've been waiting for you how come it took you so long. Glad you are here. And when i would go out with sasha. I felt. I felt like. Meister eckhart headset. Stronger. Crazy eye thing. This little dog would not have been able to save me from anything not from an attack that somebody trying to steal my purse. But i felt safer. And i am sure i walk alone with my dog. Way more than i would have walked totally by myself. And. I could talk. To the dog while we were walking. I had many conversations massage about important things in my life. I am sure it went the way of talking to myself out loud. What people do. Look at me like i was crazy as i was walking by cuz i have a dog i was talking to it was perfectly okay to be talking to a dog. And then i moved away and i gave sasha to one of my very best friend. Who are really loved her and i think she spent more time as what's really better for sasha than i was a gave her way more attention. Years later i just did that friend. And i was there for a couple of hours. Around me as if you know i was kind of a stranger and didn't really pay much attention. All of a sudden. She jumped out she jumped up she dumped in my lap she started licking me all over and i said. Do you think it was the tone in my voice of the way i moved my head. Something happened and then i was sure if she remembered me again. I didn't really feel good you remember. The life within sasha had been a gift to me again in a blessing that gave me. Kind of renewed thanks for being in this world. And then i have one more story. There is my mother. And her betta fish. My brother rescued this fish actually. I haven't heard too many stories of fish being rescued. But my brother was driving down the street i saw this plastic bag in the middle of the road. Pull over the side and picked up the plastic bag. And inside this plastic bag was a betta fish fight a japanese siamese fighting fish. Eddie took this fish home to my mother who is in her 80s. I put it in a container they're very easy to take care of any god or some pallets instead you should have an animal. And this one won't take very much. Work. And you're a little pellets and you only give it to a day. It doesn't need very much. My mother wasn't very excited about getting this fish and she thought my brother just giving her something that you going to have to take care of more. And a. And she. Started feeding this is just to add a. And she would complain about this fish she would complain about what a nuisance it was and there was on her table and all these things. And then she would say but i think we should be changing the water. I bet you would say. You know it. It comes up to my hair. Every time i feed it. Adventure. When i walked by it. It moves with me when i walk by. It's a terrible nuisance of an animal isn't she would say she still said and just a few weeks ago. Globe with little globe she has it in. From her retirement community apartments. To the cabin that she spent time in the summer time and she was proceeding to teach. Her great-grandchildren how to feed the fish 22 pellet of food everyday. But she would that also puts his little note on the in. It's really a nuisance it doesn't pay very much attention. Only i can call her the phone and she'll start talking about this fish. So. The littlest of animals can do amazing things for us. It gives her against her something back that she. The almost unconscious house. The life with that little fish gets her a kind of strength. The move through the days and she would miss it if it were gone. I don't have any animals with me right now. I think i'm not home. Enough during the day or evening to be a good companion for them. And i care how they would be treated. But even those of us without anime. Can see how important they are. If people's lives and actually in our own life. Whenever you see a puppy walking down the street kind of. Not really figuring out how to be on a leash doesn't bring a smile to your face. When you see someone with a cat in their hand. You see a bird fly by animusic wonderful way. Our caring for the environment. And our appreciation of animals in other people's lives. It's a way of blessing them. Either way of blessing our self. So with gratitude. We have blessed the animals today. And for all tomorrow. If i were alone in the desert. I'm feeling afraid. I would want a child with me. So that my fear would disappear and i would be made strong. That is what life itself can do because it's so noble so full of pleasure. And so powerful. But if i could not have a child with me. I would like to have at least. A living animal at my side. To comfort. Amen. And blessed day. I invite you to ride in body or in spirit and join us and singing him number two of the. All creatures of the earth and sky.

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4303.mp3

Story of. Ancient truth. Young and beautiful again. I thought about it a lot and should be honest i'm not entirely sure what the moral of that story is but i'm not entirely sure i care. Something in it. Rings of poetry. And it is in fact not an isolated story but a part of a larger cannon. A stories throughout various religious traditions particularly from the eastern world in which the unvarnished truth. Presented just as it is. Grapple. With wanting to be a bit more conventionally lovely. The great jewish storyteller kenny hannah strom tells a story where truth walks down the street stark naked. Right there for all to see. But nobody notices her. Until the heroic figure maher michelle which translates roughly as mr parable until mr parable walks up to her and says truth. Let me dress you up a bit like you so much better if you wear beautiful clothes. Don't we like r-truth. A little bit better when we can dress it up a bit. Prettier narrative we've already been telling about ourselves. And i live. Don't we like it better when truth is pretty and then unchallenging conventional way. When we can walk away feeling not just. The weight of it or the hard-earned gravity of truth but the freshness the affirmation and the moral certainty that makes us feel like we have got at least one thing all figured out. We always like r-truth better if she's dressed up a bit. I wonder what it would take. To let the truth truly age and change right before us. To let the truth evolve and grow into something different even if that means something rather less. Conventionally unchallenging or stereotypically lovely. And perhaps the truth we had once known. Tell them i'm young and beautiful the truth in tones. Tell them i am lovely. But what if the truth that changes with time. With wisdom with history and context and understanding. What if a wizened in ancient truth. Is in fact the very loveliest of them all. And i know that even in speaking of an evolved in truth i am leaning toward relativism right i actually warned you this warned you about this two weeks ago i was like coming up i'm going to talk about the idea that the truth might change and some of you are going to hate it. Because after all isn't the truth the one thing we can rely on isn't the truth that one fixed unmoving reality the one thing we can hold onto and i have preached from this pulpit before about those truths that we will never must never let go of. Fruits that are so essential to our being we will cleave to them even unto the gates of hell we do not believe in. Those kind of truth. Reverence for the truth is often considered to be at the very core of our liberal religious tradition. Is what we do here or what we're supposed to do on the good days. We're liberal religious people love to preach about the truth. Camden unsullied by superstition or obligation or precedent the truth as it is on varnished unrevealed. Discovered by the rational mind. Is the measure of an ideas worth among us. And this is the work that are proud unitarian forbear a pal davies call this to. In fact he said that this work of claiming truth with the whole point of membership and participation in our congregations. Specifically he wrote. Truth for yourself in the undimmed light of your own conscience. And wherever you find it you must faithfully follow it. Worship your god as you discover her in your own experience. In the power of your growing thought in the voice of your conscience in the revelation of beauty seen through your eyes and in all the fills the open heart. You are mercy calls and in these things deal honestly with the best of your thought never pretending that the falls is true or that wrong is right never muddying the waters he said. Never pretending that the false is true that wrong is right. That's the ancient endeavor of liberal religion. Which seems to indicate that the truth is generally clear enough to be discerned assertions that on most. And in most times i can wholeheartedly support that the truth does not become more or less true based upon how based upon how many people all around us do or do not agree with it. Except there are times. When the good news and the bad news are not entirely clear. Except there are times. When discerning what is true and what is false and what has changed and what has slipped away is decidedly more complex when the elegance is best left to the tailor and the truth takes on a bit of messiness. Clearance to an unchanging truth becomes something altogether different. When it he rents to an unchanging truth becomes not a vehicle for righteous living but it kind of idolatry in and of itself we are called to question. Weather in fact the truth does yarn. To become more true. Among many of us to try to nail down the truth. To keep it contained. Non-moving. Perhaps enshrined in marble upon the courthouse lawn. Or written in your own heart in indelible ink. But the truth is a thing that inherently wants to develop onward for the form it takes now into something new. Dressed-up version of what we've always known but a truth that is fundamentally evolving into something even more true than we could have previously imagined. Schneider preacher formerly of foundry united methodist church he wants argued that to attempt to hold down the truth. And keep it from changing. Is to steal its power to transform on. We take an inherently good thing the truth that we have known the truth that we have found we take perhaps even the very best thing the truth and our instinct is to hold it to us to cling to it to never let it go. Tightly can steal away not just our own capacity to evolve. Responsibility to keep on discerning. We are never in a static state. And neither are most. Croods. The truth wants to become more true. To grow when to deepen. The challenges and even to change. And when the truth becomes more true we may even become more whole. Classical chestnut of a preacher story. About the 1870 united methodist indiana conference in the great state of my upbringing. United methodist indiana conferences methodist from for throughout the hoosier state. Can make some important decisions and to direct the future of their congregations in their movement and they gathered at some local college here in 1870 and during the convention the president of that college he stood up and he has this huge rousing speech about futurism about how they were living at the cusp of a great age. It was a moving and exhilarating and worrying speech for those faithful methodist. Called for the kind of passionate zeal in the clergy person who was there to preside over the convention the united methodist bishop of indiana at that time. Always believe that this was a great age and which god would work great wonders. Secular academic in the tradition-bound bishop agreed this was the time when wonders the world would witness and so the bishop says to the college president before all those gathered at the united methodist convention what do you see in this age of possibilities. Whereupon the college president told him that they were living in a time of such great invention that men would surely soon fly through the air. Blackbird. And for all of his interest. For all of his commitment to the great age in which they lived. That particular expression of the truth was just a bit too much for the old united methodist bishop. He proclaimed the bishops in the end he proclaimed the professor's imagining to be quite a few steps too far. And he said they would hear no more such talk. In that faithful methodist convention. Conference with over. Even in spite of himself still fired by that share conviction conviction of an age of wonder. United methodist silence wild talk of men with wings. A man whose name was milton wright. Went home to his two sons. Wilbur. And orville. And he told them the wild things he had heard at church. Kenmore true in ways their father could never have imagined himself. In time the face that bishop milton wright had in god's ability to do great things would not go away but through his sons that would change all the gather. Not so much usurping the old. As incorporating the new. The truth he always held couldn't be forced into static unchanging relevance. It needed to change. And in time it did. The truth can and does become more true. And this process doesn't so much negate what we have known as allow it to evolve to change to grow in ways we never expected or planned. How many times has that which you are utterly sure of. Been wrong. Or at least not large enough to contain all the truth. But we know for a fact wants to be expanded beyond our own imaginings what we think is a permanent state of our existence wants to be untethered. And put to the test of time and experience. In fact this willingness to expand and evolve the truth as we know it is at the heart of the scientific endeavor. Sometimes we speak of science as the pursuit of objective reality of naming what we see and what is it work in this world. But science isn't about the fearsome klingon capture of objective reality it is rather about the leading edge of what we do not yet know science always begins with a question and in some very significant way everywhere the scientific endeavor does not end so much with an answer. As with another. Creative. Question. The truth cannot be shackled and contained and kept like our pet. The truth now and always leads forward. And the people with the capacity to expand and develop the truth of the ones. Hold what they know gently and humbly enough that there is room for the truth to become more true. So often. Waseca truth so stereotypically lovely. But it's dressed up and whatever it is we like. An affirmation of our own long-held ideals. But the truth that has the power to bring healing is most often the truth that challenges. More than it confirmed. A treat that questions as much as it affirms. 4 l and social justice and in political action this means that truths have to come alongside forthright and honest and even humble question. Tallahassee coates is one of the greatest social commentators of our time. We have a whole group of people reading his amazing book between the world and me right now and his writing has brought this whole new level of honesty to america's conversation about what it means to be black in this nation. And what the systemic persecution of blackness means to our collective identity as americans. Assure. Have a great many things. Including the high cost of racism. But he's also an early faithful not just to the static truth of the world is it is but to the evolving question of the world as it could. Conceivably become. In his words i don't know that i have ever found any satisfactory answers of my own. But everytime i ask the question is refined. The old heads meant when they spoke of being politically conscience awake to the world. As much a series of actions is a state of being constant questioning questioning is ritual questioning as exploration rather than the search for certainty. Because the leader for justice who knows that they are right knows for a fact that their perspective is the fullness of the truth knows that the truth knows the truth in such a way that it fundamentally acts as a shield against connection rather than an invitation to deeper understanding. That leader for social justice so clear. So sure. And so fundamentally closed-off to connection with others. Is not necessarily the leader who will change the world. Our staff last fall we did a workshop. With a prominent uu religious educator mark hicks. I'm here to work with us on how to leave river road into the multicultural future all around us and one of the things he taught us is it with every social justice issue indeed every cause that matters at all including the very most important ones there will be people so utterly convinced of the justice of that caused so so totally bought into the commanding truth of it that they will effectively become a black hole of justice making. The black hole he said. Everybody's energy but never spit sandy thing back out. A black hole on a justice issue was that person who was so certain there right. I'm so utterly committed to their particular perspective on that essential truth that they make you feel really really really sad. For not getting just as thoroughly on board as they are. Have you ever met a black hole of justice making. Have you ever been one. You love them. You do. But you don't necessarily want to hang out with them on a regular basis. Because mark titus if you want to change the culture of your congregation in the world it is not the black hole of justice making who will lead it is the people who are committed to the cause and their interpretation of it but who remain open to real conversation it is the level just outside of the black hole the dedicated ones who are their certitude with genuine curiosity those are the ones who draw people in and send them back out from the conversation as leaders for he told us. We're looking for. I know that the leaders were trying to be. Dino. For a fact. There are also things i do not know for a fact but will die asserting is a matter of faith because those truths undergird the way i live my life. And perhaps in both categories the things i know and the things i choose to believe there are truths that i might never abandon. But hold with such openness that they evolved alongside me. I am strong. I say. I know that this is true. This is objectively real in my life. But my strength will change. Overtime if i let it. As will yours. This world is not and will never be a utopia. I say. That is a central tenet of what i believe to be true. And yet the measure of that truth may change the depth of the distance between the world as it is in the world is it should be may vary in the challenge of my cynicism a surprise me yet. The truth won't always be pretty. It won't always be dressed up. It was sometimes getting really. Really messy. And yet it will be there. Changing and evolving as we change and evolve growing with each new question we dare to ask. As a towel davies admonition reminds us we must seek out the truth and follow where it leads. For truth he preached. More than reverence. Or even then face. Is how old is the highest virtue in our tradition. In his words you must seek the truth for yourself in the undim glide of conscience. And wherever you find it faithfully following. You must faithfully follow it even when it leaves you away from a format once took. Toward a new place you never dared imagine. Even when it dries you from certainty. And back out into unknowing. Even when the words chiseled on your own heart melt away. And something previously unimagined. Takes their place.