Sunday, February 22, 2026 @9am ``Of Chives and Butterflies`` - Rev. Kelly Crocker

Okay. All right. So, I will explain what we're doing. possible. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. It doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this. Today, another world is possible. Today, another world is possible. Today, another world is possible. One more time. Today, another world is possible. It doesn't have to be like this. Today, another world is possible today. Another world is possible today. Another world is possible. One more time today. Another world is possible. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. for travel. A king who was more than a king who was more than a king for the libert. Did I miss one? >> Yeah, we didn't do it again. >> We didn't We didn't do the part. >> Oh, we didn't do the round yet. Okay, that's good actually because I I want to make a change. >> So, bases, >> could you and Heat. Heat. And my voice is silent. My soul will always sing in the middle of the heart. Praise that may bring if the sun shining and the moon would never will come. Even if the world turns into pain, even if the Lord would break the darkness and separate the sunlight again and hope our hearts When the winter comes and turns to spring in the sky to cate to help me restless my soul. Have faith. The sun will rise again. Rise again. Bless our hearts. The sun will rise again. Good morning >> and welcome to First Unitarian Society. My name is Logan Walsh. My pronouns are they them and I am the worship associate this weekend. Today I am joined by Reverend Kelly Crocker and by the worship team of Linda Warren, Drew Collins, Steven Gregorius and Daniel KS. Thank you also to our meeting house chorus for the beautiful gift of music this morning. A thank you also to all those volunteering this morning. Our greeters are Anne Smiley and Melinda Gustoson Jervasi. Our ushers are Nancy Daly, Dorit Bergen, and Beverly Duss. And our hospitality is provided by Trudy Carlson, Bis Nichka, Amy Ganoway, and Issa Garusi. Thank you to all of you. At first Unitarian Society, we question boldly, listen humbly, grow spiritually, act courageously, and love unapologetically. If you are visiting us today, welcome. We're so very glad that you're with us. If you would like more information about First Unitarian Society, please stop by the welcome table located in the Commons, just out those doors and to the left. We hope you will be able to stay and join us for coffee hour immediately after service, also in the Commons. And for those of us connecting virtually today, we are glad you are with us as well. And we hope you will be able to take a moment and watch the announcement slides after today's service to learn about upcoming programs and activities. FUS depends on many lay leaders to ensure we are fulfilling our mission and following our policies. We rely on the varied talents and experiences of the members who fill these roles. Our lay leadership consists of the board of trustees and the finance personnel governance and nominations committees. At our May parish meeting, we will vote on candidates for the board and nominations committee. If you are interested in learning more about these opportunities or if you would like to recommend someone, members of the nominations committee will be in the commons during coffee hour today. You will also find a link to the nominations committee form and email address in the red floors newsletter. And now I invite you to join me in a moment of silence to center ourselves and bring ourselves fully into this time as we join together once again in community. Though you have been warned and given plenty of explanations, reasons to do otherwise, you have persisted to claim a life of joy and justice. to carve out this time, this space for the renewal of your own heart. >> Despite all the reasons, the resistance fighting for your attention, luring you toward fear, you persist to practice gratitude for this day, this life that has been given this chance to begin again. And so let us gather that we might offer one another courage, strength, healing, hope, >> and this promise to persist in kindness, persevere in compassion, and prevail in a life that is for more than ourselves. Come, let us worship together. And we invite you now to rise in all the ways we do. Joining together in the words of affirmation as we light our chalice. Let this light be a symbol of all the sources of our spiritual inspiration. The direct experiences of transcending mystery and wonder which open our hearts, renew our spirits, and transform our lives. The sacred, secular, and scientific understandings that help us make meaning and live into our values. >> Grateful for all that moves us. Mindful of the ancestries we inherit and enriched by the diversity of our faith, may we ever deepen and expand our wisdom. And before we join together in song, we invite you to take a moment to turn and greet those around you. I'm sorry. And now I invite you to remain standing for our opening hymn in the teal himnil number 102. Comfort me. Comfort me. Comfort me, oh my soul. Comfort me. Comfort me, oh my soul. Sing with me. Sing with me, oh my soul. Sing with me. Sing with me, oh my soul. Speak for me. Speak for me, oh my soul. Speak for me. Speak for me, oh my soul. Dance with me. Dance with me. Dance with me. Dance with me, oh my soul. Dance with me. Dance with me, oh my soul. Comfort me. Comfort me, oh my soul. Comfort me. Comfort me, oh my soul. >> And I invite anyone who'd like to come up for our message to come on up to the carpet. Hello. Good morning. Hi everybody. How are you? Good. How's your morning? I like the sunshine. I kind of feel bad for the chorus, though. Is that sun right in your eyes over there? Yes. Uhhuh. Do you see them? They're all kind of squinting and doing this. We need some sunglasses for them. But the sun feels nice even though it's cold. So, this month our theme is resilience. Any idea what resilience means? That's a big word. Grown-ups, what's resilience mean to you? >> Bouncing back. What does Paula mean by bouncing back? >> Yeah. >> Right. Exactly. Sometimes you go through a really hard time and you have to find ways to bounce back to feeling happy. So, I've got a story. Well, hello Chopi. Welcome. It's nice to see you and your backpack. And you found Ada. So, all is right in the world. I love Sunday morning. Be honest with you. I kind of love this part. So, I got a story for you today. It's about a monk who lived in a monastery. What's a monk? Any ideas? What's a monk? Grown-ups. Yeah. What's a monk? >> Are you thinking of We just had monks in the news, right? Because the monks walked all that. Does anybody remember how many miles? >> 2300. >> 2300 miles. I won't walk from Middleton people 2300 miles they walked for peace. So monks are people who live together sometimes in a monastery sometimes they might live alone but they live very intentional lives. And so our story today is about a monk who was really struggling because lots of hard times and hard things had happened and he was struggling with how you bounce back. There had been tons of storms in the area and the roof of the temple was leaking. So their holy place was full of buckets collecting the water that was coming through the roof. And people kept coming to this monk and saying, "What do I do? Here's my problem. help me. And the monk thought, what in the world do I know? I can't deal with my own problems. How am I going to help you with yours? So the monk went to his teacher and he said, "Everything feels so heavy and I don't understand what to do. I keep trying to be strong, right? I want to be resilient. I want to be strong. I want to stand tall, but the storms just keep knocking me over." And so the teacher nodded and pointed to the bamboo. Can you see that up there? That's a bamboo grove. And he said, "Look at the bamboo." And wind came through the bamboo grove. And the bamboo stalks bent almost. Can you bend over? Almost to the ground. Touching almost. You guys are way more FLEXIBLE THAN I AM. ALL THE way to the ground. And then when the wind stopped, they came back up. They didn't break. Then they were tall and steady. And then they would bend and they would get back up. And they would keep doing this when the wind would come. And the teacher said, "Lots of people think that resilience is about how to be firm in a challenge, how to stand up tall, how to just, you know, white knuckle your way through it." But look at the bamboo. It teaches us something different. It didn't resist the wind. It bent and it stayed flexible and then it would rise again. And the teacher brushed aside a leaf and there was this tea tiny little bamboo shoot that was pushing through the soil. And the teacher said, "Look at the tiny one. It's only a couple of weeks old, but it's already reaching upward. It's not worried about how many storms have come. How many more storms are coming? It's simply growing toward the light. And the monk said, "But teacher, what if the storm is too strong? What if we bend so far that we can't rise again?" And the teacher placed a hand on his shoulder and said, "That's when we rely on the grove." So look up there at the roots of the bamboo. What do you notice? What do you see in those roots? Are they each one separate in their own space? No. How are they? Yeah. >> Connected. >> They're connected. Exactly. They're all woven together. Right. He said, "In the bamboo grove, when one stalk is weakened, the whole grove comes together to hold it up." Resilience is not just about you alone. It grows from connection just like the roots. So the wind blew again and the monk watched as the bamboo moved together and they supported each other in the swaying and something inside of him shifted because he now knew that his strength wasn't just his, it was shared. And the teacher said, 'The storms are going to come again, but with this community of support, so will our rising. So, I like that story for resilience because it helps me remember that we're not in this alone. We've got this community to support us. And now we're going to sing What's up, Sophie? >> Yeah, you got to go. All right, we're all going to go to class. Bye, everybody. We're going to sing you out to class. Thanks for listening. >> Oh, you can make the world so bright and you can turn the day from night and share your gifts and spread your light and learn what you know. To know when you hear someone. To know when you smile. To know when you cheer someone. You have always known inside. A hand that touches one in need. A gesture. any helping deed. And who can plant this caring seed? For kindness lights the world. And now I invite you all to rise in body andor in spirit to join in the gray himnel. Hymn number 113. Where is our holy church? Where is our holy church? Where race and class unite? as equal persons in the search for beauty, truth and right. Where is our holy spirit? Where are human heart? The sacred torch of truth has it by inspiration to where is our holy one mighty host. The people rise in every land to break the captives. There is a holy land within the human soul where free lives truly seek with care. There is our par in sight where we hope to see our rise 10,000 years Today it is the chives that spur me, seeing their slender green scapes and leaves that have pushed up through the dried clumps of last year's version of themselves. When nothing else in the garden is green, the chives grow smooth, bendable, soft, and yet they have managed to pierce through the hard spring dirt. Unwatered, ignored. In the aftermath of cold and dark they come, and something green in me responds. Pungent and powerful, eager, ready to flourish, ready to meet the world, though the cold is far from over. What is it in us that longs to grow through the previous dried up versions of ourselves? It rises, yes, like tiny spears, unstoppable, bent on thriving, daring us to be that resilient, that willing, that green. The last few days I've realized that I've been singing. This is to myself. While getting ready in the morning or driving to work or making dinner, washing dishes, I noticed that without making any kind of conscious decision, I was singing throughout my day. And yes, this habit, which was clearly annoying for someone, was pointed out to me with an epically dramatic eye roll by my 14-year-old. I have been singing, gonna keep on moving forward, keep on moving forward, gonna keep on moving forward, never turning back. Never turning back. Now, it's a really fun one because here's what happens. You can do stream of consciousness singing with this one. You can change it up. caring for our neighbors, loving one another, keeping our eyes open, standing up for justice. Lots of things fit in this song. And now when it was pointed out to me with great love and respect, you can imagine that uh it was pointed out that I was doing this pretty consistently. I asked myself why. Why was I doing this? And I realized it was my own way, a daily ritual of sorts of checking in with myself, with my head and with my heart. asking how am I doing really? What am I holding on to in this moment? What's alive in my heart? What am I trying to remember? How am I going to keep on moving forward? Because these are trying times. I don't need to lay out all of the reasons we may be desparing this morning. We could fill up the next hour together listing all the reasons, the worries, the pains, the struggles in our world and in our own lives. I am deeply grateful for all those in my circle who are answering the question, how are you? With a very honest, I am not okay. Because I feel like we can say with some certainty, we are not okay. We're tired. Our nervous systems are overwhelmed. Our hearts are broken. We're scared. We're angry. The wins when they come feel so small and the losses so very large. And yet, we're going to keep on moving forward. How How do we stay resilient in the face of it all? How do we adapt and flex and steer through the adversities and the challenges so that we can continue to live our lives moving forward, growing, changing. A clergy friend sent me an article written by one of her seminary mentors, Larry Kent Graham. And Graham wrote this article after the shootings in Coline, which is almost 27 years ago now. She said that she kept coming back to Graham's article in recent weeks. And in that article he wrote, "In the face of catastrophic disaster, when we hold the reality of the vulnerability of human life, we can be sustained by three responses. Lamentation, interrogation, and reclamation." And I think these three responses can help us with the question of resilience. lamentation, lamenting, grieving what has been lost. Lament is that moment when we honestly and fully name and acknowledge all the feelings swirling within and around us. It enables us to find our voice to feel the sense of hopelessness and vulnerability and join together with others who are lamenting as well. It brings us back to community and we see the web once again, the people to which we belong. Lamentation is that moment when we can sit with the anger, feel the deep well of grief, hold the pain, and not rush straight into hope. It is when we can rise up in protest and say, "Let me be angry in the face of injustice. Let me rise up and say no more. May my voice be heard and my passion felt." Graham says, "Lamentation offers us a needed language of pain, confirming the value of life, granting permission to grieve and protest, challenging inadequate understandings of the holy and of ourselves, and preparing the way for something new." Lamentation strengthens our self-understanding as responsible agents, purifies our anger, increases our solidarity with those who suffer, and it revitalizes praise and hope. So if this is where you are this morning, welcome. May you know you are not alone in this place because all of us even the wisest among us sit in lamentation at times. Now Pemma children who is the Buddhist nun the best-selling author the spiritual teacher even Pemma has joined us in the place of lamentation. Now on a day in Pemma's life, she hadn't discovered Buddhism yet. She hadn't taken the name Pemma children. Back then she was Deardra Bramfield Brown. She was a wife, a mother, a school teacher living in New Mexico. And one morning while she stood outside her adobe home sipping a cup of tea, she heard a car drive up and the doorbang shut and her husband walked around the corner without warning. said he was having an affair and wanted a divorce. And in that moment, her world fell apart. Pemma says, "You know how sometimes when you receive shocking news and you dissociate, you go numb for a little while?" Well, that's what happened. First, I just noticed the sky and how blue it was. I saw the river. I saw the steam rising from my cup of tea. There was no time, no thought, just light and a profound stillness. But before long, Pemma came back to herself. She bent over. She picked up a rock and she threw it at her husband's head. And I think that's brilliant because the wise and wonderful Pemma children threw a rock at her husband's head. This paragon of mindfulness, this lover of peace and mercy and stillness, felt the rage within her and allowed herself to lament. One of Pemma's teachers said to her once, "Please keep working with negative feelings, hard emotions. You will be an inspiration for others." And she has. And she is. Do not rush me to hope and gladness. Allow me to be in a place of lamentation. As the poet Andrea Gibson said, "Let my heart break so my spirit doesn't." We need to hold our broken hearts with tenderness and care so that our spirits can hold and keep us moving forward. The author and educator Belle Hooks once talked about the time that she brought her anger to ticknot Han. And she said, "It's ticknot Han. It's Mr. Calm and Mr. Peace." And he looked at me and he said, "Well, you know, hold on to your anger. Use it as compost for your garden." And in reflecting on the encounter, she said, "I think that if we think of our anger as compost, we think of it as energy that can be recycled in the direction of good and it is an empowering force. If we don't think about it in that way, it can become debilitating and destructive. Lamentation gives us this opportunity, this chance to take the anger, the grief, the pain and compost it and turn it into an energy that can propel us toward good, toward another response, which Graham would call interrogation. Now, this is the moment when we step back and we begin to question the social and moral order that brings us to this place and this moment. How did we get here where we find ourselves? When lamentation reveals the truth behind our pain, we're pushed to examine the personal and cultural beliefs that we hold about our world. Here's where we begin to create new meaning from all the rubble of shattered beliefs and assumptions. The interrogation phase makes me think of the caterpillar becoming the butterfly. Now, I was raised, as I'm sure many of you were as well, to think of metamorphosis as a purely beautiful process. This caterpillar, it eats and eats and eats and eats. The hungry little caterpillar. It eats and eats and eats. It snuggles into a warm and toasty cocoon where what seems like magic, trust, fairy dust. It emerges this beautiful butterfly. So, I've always pictured the cocoon as this safe haven imagery. You get wrapped up in a warm protective blanket until you magically sprout wings. But I missed something in that metaphor. I missed the fact that the caterpillar turns to goo. You see, the caterpillar in that cocoon is not resting safe, secure, and comfortable just waiting for wings. It's liquefying. Enzymes within the caterpillar work on the tissue and turn it into a soupy goo of organic material and DNA. I know it's a much grosser metaphor when I put it that way. Sorry. But from that gooey soup, the new cells and tissue of a butterfly coalesce. Goo. You can't become a butterfly without it. And when we question our beliefs and our assumptions about ourselves and our world, it could feel like goo. We may lose our solid footing. But what we gain in that questioning is something beautiful. It's the moment when we ask what kind of human society and culture produces people who are so alienated and hostile that they have no trouble and see no problem with hurting and killing innocent others. What is the moral quality of a society that breeds violence, hostility, hatred toward one another? perhaps based on skin color or gender or the way you voted in the last election. How do we hold a political and economic system that favors the wealthy at the expense of the poor? What world are we building? How are we contributing to love and justice? How are we relieving the suffering of the world? And in returning to Rosemary Watola Trummer's words, we see how lamentation and interrogation unite and can bring us to reclamation, to building something new. Rosemary says, "When nothing else in the garden is green, the chives grow, smooth, bendable, soft." And yet they have managed to pierce through the hard spring dirt, unwatered, ignored. In the aftermath of cold and dark, they come and something green in me responds. What is it in us that longs to grow through the previous dried up versions of ourselves? Through these questions, our spirits push up through the dark earth, the dried up versions of our past. And we feel the resilience as we reclaim life and its goodness through community, through spirit, through acts of justice and love. With reclamation, we are challenged to reclaim goodness. goodness as a personal and communal spiritual practice that holds the pain while also seeing the beauty, the truth that's characterized by generosity, inclusivity, justice, and a commitment to transform the systems that we have questioned and found morally bankrupt. What kind of a world are we building? When we can truly lament naming all that we have lost and question the powers and forces from without and within that bring us to this place. We can see that we are still here that goodness still exists that there is beauty to sustain us and we can see the work that is ours to do. So, I have loved seeing all of the people talking about the movies of their childhood and their teenage years and saying, "What did you expect when we grew up with these messages of resistance and strength and standing up to a regime?" So people talk about I grew up on Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, even ones like Chicken Run and A Bug's Life, Lion King, Brave. These movies taught lessons that we may have not realized then. And the one that was pointed out to me recently is Monsters, Inc. So Monsters, Inc. was released in 2001. And if you don't remember it, it's a film about monsters who work for this massive company called Monsters, Inc. Now, their job is to scare children in order to generate power for the city. The company's motto is we scare because we care. But the company is struggling to meet the city's growing demands for power. And so they begin to use more and more ruthless strategies of fear. The systems they have built are entirely based on fear. Monsters are trained, measured, and rewarded for how effectively they frighten children. Fear is framed as power. It's the only energy source the system knows and no one initially questions it. Fear is simply how things work. What makes it so compelling as a narrative is not that the system is cruel. It is, but that the system is normal. Everyone is just doing their job. Everyone believes they're contributing to the greater good. And over time, the system discovers something unexpected. Laughter, joy, and genuine delight produce far more energy than fear ever could. Not incrementally more, but exponentially more. The monsters do not need to perform acts of terror to be effective. They need to be themselves. So they become comedians and storytellers and companions. They step into authentic roles and then the entire system becomes more efficient, more humane and more sustainable. Power is no longer extracted through fear. It's generated through connection and joy. What does a system look like that is built on and powered by delight, curiosity and love? Because no matter how powerful we think fear is, joy and laughter, they are exponentially more powerful and they can fuel us for what is to come because we're going to keep on moving forward. You know this one. Keep on moving forward. Gonna keep moving forward. Never turning back. >> What helps you reclaim the goodness in life? What rituals and habits help you to still see life as good? Maybe you journal in the morning or the evening. Maybe you walk in nature. Maybe you sing to yourself in the shower where you're not overheard by the epically dramatic 14-year-old. What helps you to remember never turning back? What helps you remember who you are and what you hold dear? Maybe you share coffee with a friend and you grieve and you question and you claim what is yours to do. What do you love? How do you hold on to that? How do you ask those questions that make you feel like goo so that you can remember the beauty? Because in the midst of it all, there is so much beauty that remains. And that beauty will fuel us and will keep us resilient, keep us marching and fighting. So I'll leave you today with words of the poet Aurora Levens Morales. And these are words that I've got printed and I will often read them to myself as a ritual of resilience. They write, "Say these words when you lie down and when you rise up. When you go out and when you return, in times of mourning and in times of joy, inscribe them on your doorposts, embroider them on your garments, tattoo them on your shoulders, teach them to your children, your neighbors, your enemies. Recite them in your sleep. Here in the cruel shadow of empire, another world is possible. Imagine winning. This is your sacred task. This is your power. Imagine every detail of winning. The exact smell of the summer streets in which no one has been shot. The muscles you have never unclenched from worry. Feel them go soft as newborn skin. The sparkling taste of food. When we know that no one on earth is hungry, that all are fed and nest under a flock of roofs that keep multiplying their shelter. Lean with all your being toward that day when the poor of the world shake down a rain of good fortune out of the heavy clouds and justice rolls down like waters. Defend the world in which we win as if it were your child. It is your child. When you inhale and when you exhale, breathe the possibility of another world into the 37.2 trillion cells of your body until it shines with hope. Then imagine more. Don't waver. Don't let despair sink its sharp teeth into the throat with which you sing. Escalate your dreams. Hold hands. Share water. Keep imagining so that we and the children of our children's children may live. Keep on moving forward friends. Another world is possible. May we make it so. Let's say those words again. Another world is possible. >> World is possible. >> Going to need your help with our next anthem. You have a part. I'm going to teach it to you right now. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. >> One more time. >> We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. >> We're going to sing this song. And every once in a while, I'll turn to you for you to do that one more time or two times in a row like you just did. Here we go. We're going to start with you. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. It doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this. Today, another world is possible. Today another world is possible. Today another world is possible. One more time. Today another world is possible. It doesn't have to be like this. It doesn't have to be like this. Doesn't have to be like this. Another person today another world is one more time. Today another world is possible. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. for our king. Our king was for the libertas for a li time. The for our king was king. Our king was We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. They didn't know that we were seeds. They didn't know that we were seeds. We're strong though. They tried to bury us. We're strong though they tried to bury us. We're strong though. They tried to bury us. One more time. We're strong though. They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. They didn't know that we were seeds though. They tried to bury us though. They tried to bury us. We're strong. Though they tried to bury us more though they bury us. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. We are unstoppable. Another world is possible. I invite you into this time of giving and receiving where we give freely and generously to this offering which supports the ongoing work of this community and the work of our outreach offering recipient who this week is 350 Wisconsin whose mission is to mobilize grassroots power to change hearts and minds, laws and policies and humanity's massive systems. to make transformational progress toward environmental justice and solving the climate crisis by 2030. There are multiple ways to share your gifts this morning. You can donate directly from our website fusmadison.org or you will see on the screen our text to give information as well. And also baskets are being passed here in the auditorium for cash or checks. We thank you for your generosity and your faith in this life we create together. Each week we gather bringing with us the joys and the losses of our days and we share them here knowing they are held in love. This morning we light a candle of grief and gratitude for the life of Reverend Jesse Jackson. He reminded us that our votes matter, that dignity matters, and that a shared future matters. We give thanks for his life, his legacy of justice, his leadership, and his love. May the spark he lit be carried forward in each of us as we walk the long road toward justice. May he rest in power. And we light a candle for all that lives in our hearts. Our joys and celebrations mingled with our sorrows. May we know we are held in love. If you'll join now in a moment of prayer and contemplation with these words from Carter Smith. Spirit of life and love moving within and among us. We seek to know grace so that we might honor our interconnectedness with each other and those who've gone before. When we witness suffering in ourselves and in the world, may we know compassion. When we are at a loss for words, when we are unsure of the path ahead, may we be guided by this compassion to be witnesses still to know and to feel the truth that this human family is broken and that it is breaking with every life lost and with each time someone's dignity is denied. When we find ourselves exhausted, unsure of where to go, may we keep witnessing, turning ever further toward that still small voice. And spirit of life, remind us too that the experience of suffering does not close us off from the possibility of joy. May we know that our interconnectedness is a miracle. May it be a refuge for us felt in the voice of a friend, in the touch of a loved one, in memories of days spent in good company. May we remain grateful for the goodness we've witnessed. And may the warmth of our lives together hold us in love as we move into a future that is uncertain. We ask holy one to know your presence that it may remind us of what is sacred in each moment. May you teach us that sacred presence too. That we might know ourselves here and now that we may be present for this one wild and precious life. May we be together for a moment in the silence. Amen. There is a love holding us. There is a holding all that we love. There is a holding on. We rest in this love. Now I invite you to rise in body andor in spirit and join us in the teal himnil for our closing hymn hymn number 1015. I know I can. For days be dark with storms and burdens with my heart. No truth. I know I can go on. When sorrow heals my soul and burdens make me strong. Though trles return, I know I can go. My sister in my heart, my brother in my soul. The trles wait at every turn. I know I can go on and the journey is long. The destination is near. The truth I know I can go on. So brother take my hand and sister sing my song. with all the way at every turn. I know I can go on. We have blessed each other with word and song. We have embraced the greater truth of our resilience. One that is terrifying to systems that would keep us isolated, afraid, and angry. For when we come together, we remember who we are and whose we are. We are a living tradition of people who love fiercely, serve mightily, and journey humbly with the spirit of life. May we depart in peace. May we depart as beloveds held together in spiritual community wherever we are, wherever we go. May resilience cascade within us until we are together again. Blessed be go in peace and please be seated for the postlude. Heat. Heat. Heat.