*Sunday, September 20, 2026 @9am - ``Begin as You Mean to Go On`` Rev. Kelly Asprooth-Jackson

Thank you. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Hallelujah. Heat. Heat. Good morning and welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. My name is Kelly Crocker and I'm one of the ministers here. Today I'm joined by my colleague, the Reverend Kelly Asth Jackson, and by the worship team of Drew Collins, Linda Warren, Daniel KS, and Steven Gregorius. Special thanks to Philip Deloquest for sharing his gift of music with us this morning. Thank you, Phillip. And a thank you to all those who are volunteering this morning. Annne Smiley is our greeter. Our ushers are Alyssa Ryan Joy, Bev Douso, and Ed Zapala. And coffee is being made by Jeanie Hills, Jim and Sue Wilson, Amy Ganoway. Our lay minister is Lois Evenson. Thank you all. At First Unitarian Society, we question boldly, listen humbly, grow spiritually, act courageously, and love unapologetically. If you're visiting us today, welcome. We're so very glad that you are with us. If you'd like more information about the congregation, please stop by the welcome center, which is located at the far end of the commons by the restrooms. There's folks there who would love to speak with you. And we do hope you'll be able to stay and join us for coffee hour which is immediately after service also right out here in the commons. And for those of you connecting virtually with us today, welcome to you as well. We're very glad that you are with us. We hope that you will be able to take a moment to watch the announcement slides shown immediately after service to find about more about our upcoming programs and activities. I have a special announcement for you today that includes a very special prop. It is the Fus Red Hats Project. The Fus Red Hats Project aims to raise $10,000 for the legal defense and worker justice fund of Vosas de la Fonta. To that end, 16 makers in our community have created nearly 200 red hats and red hat badges. Uh these are red tassled hats that have become a symbol of resistance to the current drive toward authoritarianism in our country, including the illegal and devastating treatment of immigrants. Now, a funny story. is a knitter myself. You give us a task and we will do it. So Barb's goal was a hundred hats. You may have noticed that I said nearly 200 because you give us a goal and an easy little happy project and you can't get us to stop. So, if you go out to the table in the commons after service, you will see a wide array of shades of red. Some of them have different flexcks of color in them as well. Please stop by the table. So far, we have raised almost $3,000 toward that $10,000 goal. The hats are $100 each with a sliding scale pricing available and the little badges for your name tag or your coat. Those are $20. And if you don't need a hat, you can make a donation instead. Every time the donations will reach $100, a hat will be sent to a local community organization. You can easily make the donations on our website fusmadison.org. There's a news tab. Click on red hat project. So we do hope that you will stop by the table and look at the hats. You can also learn more about the centuries long history of red hats and maybe just maybe what their connection is to our own government today. Now one more prop for you. Water communion water from last weekend's water communion in gathering service is now available in these glass vials right out in the commons. Uh Kelly lovingly takes the water from water communion and distills it all week. He's got a distiller in his office. It runs all week. So it is distilled water. Um I often take it home and use it to water the plants. Um, one year we were in the middle of a tiling project and so my father mixed it into the grout. And he said, "Your floor is now the waters of the world with a lot of drama." So, however you want to use it, even though I will promise you it has been distilled, I'd still say don't drink it, but use it, take it, maybe you keep it as a reminder of our community throughout the year. And now I invite you to join together in a moment of silence as we center ourselves and bring ourselves into this time. Joining together once again in community Welcome who come in friendship who long for genuine community. >> May you be graciously received here as your authentic self. >> Welcome who come in curiosity full of questions or simply open. May you embrace wonder and encounter new delights. >> Welcome who come heavy with fatigue, weary from the troubles of the world or the troubles of your life. >> May you rest and be filled in this sacred space. >> Welcome who come with joy for flowing rivers and gentle breezes, for changing skies and great trees. May the grace of the world leave a lasting imprint in you. >> Welcome who come with thanks for the altruism of the earth and the gift of human care. >> May your grateful heart overflow and bless those around you. >> Come, let us celebrate together this wondrous life. And we invite you now to rise in all the ways we do. Joining together in the words of affirmation as we kindle our chalice. We call forth the life of our faith by igniting our chalice. This spark of new beginnings invites us into a sacred space to reflect where we have been and where we are going. Even knowing that this particular flame will intentionally end with our rituals extinguishing, we fear not its end. For we know with brave hearts that from every ending of our lives, we are sent forth to make a new beginning. >> And now before we join our voices together in song, we invite you to turn and greet those around you. Heat. Heat. And let us remain standing as we sing our opening hymn number 67. We sing now together. We sing together our song of thanksgiving. Rejoice in Jesus and lead beyond the wall which are for We see the frees. Heat. Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Today we continue our service with a precious moment in any congregation's life, the right of child dedication. This is a time when we who are gathered here have the privilege to welcome a young one into our family and our community. Today it is our cherished assignment to welcome and pledge our care to Julian David Raymond Forth. Today all of us gathered here are more than casual witnesses to life's gifts and nature's marvelous creations. We are all being invited to share the joy which this family has taken in their child and to enter more fully into their lives. I believe in my heart that I speak for all of us when I say we are deeply grateful for the privilege. >> We continue with the timehonored ritual because children are our present delight. By them we are reminded of life's small joys and wisdoms. They are the heirs of the work that we have done and are doing. They shall build upon the foundations that we lay. They are the yet unwritten chapter in the story of our faith. Today, we promise Julian and his family our love and support, a listening ear, and a helping hand in times of trial. We pledge to him a community of openness, a place where his reasoning, his beliefs, his doubts, and his questions are received with gentleness and respect. A place of challenge where we continue to point to the ever open road of possibility. We pledge to give him roots, a tradition to pass on and a place to come home to. Emily, Brian, Julian, come on up. Gonna have you come right here. Will you rise? Do we have the pledge of dedication? We do. Look at us. Will you rise and join in the pledge of dedication found on the screen for the gift of childhood whose innocence, laughter, and curiosity bring hope, joy, and new understanding into our lives. We live thankful hearts. We welcome Julian into this spiritual community and extend to his parents our love and support in the joys and challenges of caregiving. As this child grows, we will share with him our insights, our values, and our dreams that he may enjoy the rich benefits of our heritage of freedom, reason, hope, and courage, building on the foundation of love. Thank you. Please be seated. And to the ones who stand with their child before us, Emily and Brian Forth, as Julian's parents, it is your privilege and obligation to provide an environment both of security and challenge in which this young soul who you bring before us today will grow. Do you commit yourselves to promote his physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being? Will you respect as well as protect this child and bestow your love as a freely given gift? If so, please say, "We do." >> Several are among us today who bear a special relationship to Julian. So, please rise now as I read your name. Edith Fork, Stephanie Minath and Nancy like Mike and Joan Minra, Rebecca Minath and Eugene Wong, Megan Fork and Mike Lyle. Now to all of you I ask do you take upon yourselves the privilege and responsibility to nurture, defend and support the inherent worth and dignity of this child to whom you bear a special relationship? Will you encourage him to grow in freedom and spirit and to always seek the truth? And finally, will you help him to grow in love for the larger human family and to love and respect the larger community of life to which we all belong? And if so, please make this sacred promise by responding, "We will." >> Please be seated. >> In the act of dedication, we use the symbolism of water as a sign of our common heritage. There's no suggestion here of a washing away of inherited sin. This child came into the world with the limitations natural to our species, but he arrived innocent. Water here stands for vitality. It is the essence of life, the foundation of being. Its use here reminds us of our common bond with all embracing and ever sustaining nature. This is also the water of our community. The waters of the world gathered at last weekend's water communion service. Its use here reminds us of the ever sustaining and embracing love of community. Emily and Brian name this child. >> Julian David Raymond Forth. We dedicate you in the name of truth, the promise of love, and the fellowship of this society. May you be granted clarity of thought, integrity of speech, and a compassionate heart. As a token of his dedication, we give to Julian a rose bud, fragrant symbol of beauty, promise, and love. This rose has no thorns, symbolizing the better world that we would give our children if it were in our power. While we know that the world is not altogether as lovely as this rose bud, we hope that Julian will learn to recognize the beauty and goodness which does exist and that he will grow in wisdom and compassion, adding his own beauty, the world. So Julian, as this flower unfolds in all of its natural beauty, so may your life unfold. Also, as a remembrance of gonna eat it, as a remembrance of his dedication, we give to Julian a blanket, a gift from the members of our Shawl ministry program. When you see this blanket, may you be reminded of the warmth, the support, and the love of this community, for your child and your family. How about this? How about this? Take this one. Derek. Oh, I'm so soft. Der Young. Oh, that that's way more fun. We have dedicated this child this day. May we also dedicate ourselves as we contemplate the miracle of new life as we renew in our hearts a sense of wonder and joy. May we be stirred to a fresh awareness of the sacredness of life and of the divine promise of childhood. May we pledge to build a community in which our children will grow surrounded by beauty, embraced by love, and cradled in the arms of peace. May we pass on the light of compassion and courage. And may that light burn brightly within us all. If you will now help us welcome Julian And now we will sing their children to their classes. Oh, you make the world so bright. Oh, heat, heat. You have always touches your gesture any See your kindness lights. Now we're going to sing a new song from our new virtual himnel, Sing Out Love. It's called Heart Opening Song. You may have grabbed a sheet on the way in, but if you didn't, it's fine. The words are going to be on the screen and I'm going to sing the melody which is very simple one time through so you can hear it and at that time I'll ask you to rise and sing it again with me. My heart is open, open wide, open wide to the song of the earth. My heart is open, open wide, open wide to the song of the earth. So we sing those lyrics twice each time. The melody is the same. Stand on up. Open wide. Heat. Heat. Heat. Oh my heart is to the Oh my soul, my heart is open. Open to the song of my soul. These words from Mary Oliver. Hello sun in my face. Hello you who make the morning and spread it over the fields and into the faces of the tulips and the nodding morning glories. and into the windows of even the miserable and crotchety. Best preacher that ever was, dear star, that just happens to be where you are in the universe. To keep us from ever darkness, to ease us with warmth touching, to hold us in the great hands of light. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Watch now how I start the day in happiness, in kindness. Where does your story begin? If you get asked about yourself at a dinner party, maybe you tell the story one way. If you were asked by your grandchildren to write it down for their future children, you might start in a different place. Sitting on a couch in an office having your first meeting with a new therapist. That could have a different starting point for the teller. Our senses of ourselves and what matters about us as people grow out of many different factors and experiences. We tell our stories so many different ways because they begin over and over again in the course of life. We sometimes re-imagine ourselves, sometimes rediscover ourselves, and sometimes we have to reconstitute ourselves. But no matter how far back we go to begin our own story, there is almost always a further back that we could go. The astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson has observed that the molecules that make up our bodies are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of highmass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life so that we are all connected to each other biologically to the Earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. Now, that's not even the beginning of the beginning. There were long stretches of time in our universe even before all of that. But it is a very early potential beginning to the story of each of us and of all of us. And for me at least, it is a powerful one. It established the inescapability of our interconnectedness. How telling our own stories is impossible without involving the stories of a great many others. The Reverend Dr. Rebecca Parker, minister in both the Methodist and the Unitarian Universalist traditions, feminist scholar, activist, teacher, and someone I once had the privilege to be a student of put the same idea a little bit more poetically in an address to our association's general assembly in 1998. She said, "As human beings, our lives begin and never leave the soil of this earth that shapes us through blood, kinship, genes, culture, associations, social systems, networks of relationships, and extended communities. Even when we do not directly know the people whose lives are linked with ours, our lives unfold in relationship to theirs. Her address that day was on covenant, both the history of it, the beginnings of it, and how it is to be begun and maintained. Covenant is so central to who we are and how we are as Unitarian Universalists. We talk about it all the time. And yet, we also need to define it basically every time. That day, Dr. Parker explained covenant as meaning to come together by making a promise. I'm going to expand that just slightly here in a way that I think she would accept or at least would not disapprove of my reasoning for. Covenant is the intersection of promise and relationship and different covenants actually put those two things in different orders. Sometimes people come together in order to make a promise with each other. Sometimes a promise that is already shared by separate people brings them together. And sometimes people are first together. And it is only from the experience of being together that they eventually make a promise. Now, I'm going to continue with a few more lines from Dr. Parker's talk, and then I'm going to cut myself off because otherwise I would be in danger of just repeating the whole address. She said, "We are born into relationship before we shape relationships by our conscious intention. We inherit covenant before we create covenant." And so covenant making must begin with the question, what have we been given? What is the covenant we are already in? A simple example, the covenant between my parents is an essential reason for why I exist. Their promise to each other to love one another and to share in life together led to myself and my brothers and the conditions of our births and our upbringings. The covenant of our family which I am a party to is an extension of the covenant of their marriage which I am exceedingly grateful for but did not make. I tuned into that program already in progress to use a metaphor that I realize has become almost meaningless and this is true for all of us in one way or another. We cannot choose the circumstances of our birth. move to a new city or start a new job in an existing workplace and we are entering into a river midstream. Even if we begin a new romantic relationship or build some new enterprise or travel to some distant point in space untouched by human hands, we still bring with us everything that has gone before. There is a saying that you cannot step into the same river twice. This actually derives from two different quotations from Heraclitus that come to us through his fellow Greek philosopher Plato. In the first, the philosopher says everything changes and nothing remains still. You cannot step into the same stream. This is almost a perfect match to the more familiar saying, and you can probably see why it's become common wisdom. Of course, the river is different. New water flows in, old water flows out. Time passes moment to moment, and no object or person is unchanging or immutable. When Alice Walker wrote the story of what it was like to help transform her novel, The Color Purple, into a film, she titled that narrative The Same River twice. The title points to how hard it is not just to revisit something in the past, but also to reach any point in the future along a planned trajectory. Walker talks about plans for the movie that were never realized. A whole script she wrote that went unused and how difficult it is for a creative person to stick to one way of doing things. Difficult for a creative person or for any sort of person for that matter. But there is a second quotation included by Plato that changes and almost contradicts the first. Heraclitus said, "We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not." Yes, it is true. Moment to moment, we are changed. We are different. The cells in our bodies die and are replaced. Even the atoms in those cells are exchanged over time. And yet we are also the same. We retain memories and experiences and still carry the gifts and burdens of the choices we make. We remain responsible to and for the people whom we have been. Our lives are almost like the opposite of rivers. Life's course can change in an instant, but the stuff that is made of. Everything we have done or said or experienced only shifts very slowly over time. Among all of those contents of life that we carry with us, it must be acknowledged that we are often carrying things that we don't want to be. Some years ago, when I was a student in college during the previous millennium, I was in a class discussing a particular work of English literature. And midway through the discussion, which I can no longer remember any other part of, one of my fellow students startled our professor and the rest of us into silence with a loud gasp. And then she blurted out, "She killed her." My classmate, you see, had found the discussion in the seminar less than captivating. So, in order to pass the time, she had decided to finish reading the book that we were all supposed to have finished in time for the night's discussion. And she made it all the way to the emotional conclusion of the novel, the tragic death of the main character. It was not a thriller or a who done it. In that story, the character dies in an accident, drowning in a river. When she said she killed her, my classmate meant that the book's author had killed the likable, sympathetic protagonist of her own tale. Nearly two centuries after publication, that seemed such a terrible and cruel turn of events to her that she was completely unmbarrassed to give away the fact that she'd waited to the middle of class to finish the night's homework. Now years later, although I did read the quite long book and did participate in that discussion, this moment is really the only thing that stayed with me from that class. That fictional death and the honest anguished response to it consumed all other details. Nothing else remains. In a poem reflecting on the death of a beloved, Henrik Nordbrint wrote, "What can I say about the world in which your ashes sit in an urn other than that? Every ending is a beginning, at least for someone. The point from which a new life proceeds or an old life has to go on in some new and previously unimaginable way. And that means that a lot of beginnings stink. They are defined by loss, disappointment, disaster, pain. But there never has been anything so perfectly wrong that no good can ever come after it. Because if there were, there would be no good left in the world. as each thing that happens touches each other thing that takes place eventually. So it is possible, it may be terribly hard, but it is possible to go on to what is next, no matter how bad the beginning point is. In the Hebrew Bible, we read the story of Ruth and Naomi. A refresher if you're not familiar. Naomi and her husband and their two sons left their homeland during a famine hoping to find the means to survive. They traveled to another country and they settled there and the two sons married two women of that nation. Eventually Naomi's husband died and afterwards her sons died too. It was just her and her daughtersin-law in that place and at that time the prospects of three women for survival together or separately were very poor without some husband, father or brother in the picture. The world around them held almost no space for women who were not in some way or another attached to a man. So Naomi prepared to return to the land of her birth. It was a desperate move as she had minimal prospects there. But she counseledled her daughtersin-law not to come with her. If they returned instead to their own fathers, they had a much greater hope to be able to live. After some argument, one of the two women did as Naomi instructed, but her second daughter-in-law, Ruth, refused any path but the one that Naomi was about to travel. She said, "Do not tell me to turn back and leave you. For wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Wherever you die, there I will die and there I will be buried. So Ruth left the land of her birth with Naomi even though it meant an uncertain fate in a foreign country. There are different competing explanations for Ruth's motivation here. That this is an expression of chosen kinship, of profound friendship, or that this is an only slightly veiled example of romantic love between two women in a place and at a time when that sort of love could only happen in secret. or that Ruth's is a model of religious conversion joining with Naomi's people and tradition in the moment of her declaration. I would say that it can be any or all of these depending on how and by whom the story is told. But in every case, it is a promise grounded in relationship, a covenant, which might remind us to return to Dr. Parker's questions from before. What have we been given? What is the covenant that we are already in? I believe these are questions worth asking ourselves at almost any time in life when we feel lost or conflicted or confused when we feel comfortable and complacent. In either case, it is worth reflecting what promises am I already a party to by dent of my relationships. Maybe I want to change something. Maybe I want to break something. Maybe I want to build something new. But first comes the consideration of things as they are. Everything that happened happened happened for us as human beings. I believe there are some simple and important answers to what we have been given. As the astronomer said, we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically, and to the rest of the universe atomically. And from this I propose a mutual responsibility to attend to the quality of those connections that they should nurture life rather than harm it. And for we who are a part of this congregation, we have our own simple and important answers too. Back there, etched into glass, is a copy of the bond of union, the promise the founding members of this society made when they first came together. If you or I were to write it entirely a new all by ourselves, I do not doubt that it would be different. We are not each beholden to it now in the sense of having to follow some uniform model of behavior that was set down by its words. But we are each in relationship to it individually and we are all in relationship to it together. It is part of our story and what we write with our lives follows from it. whether we lionize or repudiate those words not chosen by us. When the British preacher and evangelist Charles Spurgeon coined the phrase begin as you mean to go on, he was talking about starting new plans, relationships, or other endeavors wisely and healthfully. But in considering all of those countless parts of the past that we do not have a choice about, which in this moment includes everything that has happened before, right now, even the things that we did choose at the time, because none of us can go back and unchoose them. It actually points to the power that we have to tell our own stories. If we are honest with ourselves, we can't change what happened, but we can decide what is most important to us about what happened. What do we want to live from? Rather than just have to live with, we can begin our stories as we mean for them to go on. And we invite you now into this time of giving and receiving for an offering which supports the ongoing work of this community as well as the work of our outreach offering recipient who this week is Freedom Inc. a black and Southeast Asian nonprofit organization that works with low to no income communities of color. Their mission is to achieve social justice through coupling direct services with leadership development and community organizing that will bring about social, political, cultural, and economic change resulting in the end of violence against women, gender, nonconforming, and transgender folks and children within communities of color. Freedom, Inc. works to challenge the root causes of violence, poverty, racism, and discrimination. There's multiple ways to share your gifts. You'll see on the screen you can donate directly from our website. You will see the text to give information as well and baskets will be passed here in the auditorium. We thank you for your generosity and for your faith in this life we create together. Heat. Oh, heat, heat. Each week we gather bringing with us the joys and the losses of our days. We share them here knowing they are held in love. This morning we light a candle to celebrate the life and mourn the death of the author Annie Dillard who died this past week. a celebrated writer of fiction, non-fiction, and on the subject of writing itself. Let us remember the gift of her pen in this moment with one of her most well-known and insightful quotations. We are here to abet creation and to witness it, to notice each thing so each thing gets noticed. Together we notice not only each mountain shadow and each stone on the beach, but we notice each other's beautiful face and complex nature, so that creation need not play to an empty house. And we light a candle of love and care for John Powell, who is in the hospital this morning. We send our love to his family as they journey the difficult days ahead. And we light a candle for all that is living in our hearts. The joys and celebrations mingled with the sorrows and the loss and the love that remains through it all. If you will join together now in a moment of contemplation and prayer with these words from Michelle Collins. Holy stillness, help us to honor the beginnings that happen before anything noticeable changes. A decision made in silence. The shift in heart no one else can yet see or feel. The seed cracking open underground while the surface looks the same as always. Not all transformation announces itself. Some of it simply happens. Hidden, slow, and true. Be with those of us who feel we haven't started anything yet, who wonder if waiting counts as beginning. May we trust the invisible work, the quiet becoming that precedes every outward change. And may we extend that same patience to others whose growth may still be emerging and whose path we can help clear. May our hearts hold tight to trust, knowing that we do not travel alone as we tread step by step into the new day. May we rest in the silence for a moment together. Blessed be and amen. Yeah. Heat. Oh, God. >> I invite us all to once again rise in body andor in spirit so we can sing together our closing hymn. If you're using a gray himnel, it's number 347 or on the screen. Heat. Heat. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Yeah. Heat. Heat. Heat. Oh, heat, heat. Oh my god. to celebrate again. May this be our promise as we leave here today. Mindful of truth ever exceeding our knowledge and community ever exceeding our practice. Reverently we covenant together. Beginning with ourselves as we are to share the strength of integrity and the heritage of the spirit in the unending quest for wisdom and love. Blessed be. Go in peace and please be seated for the postlude. Heat. Heat. Heat.