Welcome and good morning I'm Josh Cogliati
today's worship
associate today we are bringing this
service from the
uu church sanctuary Daniel Schwen and i
so welcome to this morning this day and
this opportunity
to be together in virtual community
our weekly announcements are we would
like everyone to sign into the chat box
to the right
of this your screen this will let us
know who's joining us
we will be having sorrows concerns and
joys after time for all ages
at that time we'll read those that came
in earlier by email
and we will also read those that have
come in in the chat box
since there's a bit of a lag i recommend
you
send those in after we light the chalice
next week Kerry Shirts will be giving a
sermon
and the week after that we will have
reverend Kevin Ccarson
coming to this church men's group will
be held in Lorenzo Vega's
yard. Jim Sathe can give you
directions
for that and
lastly before we get started we need to
mention how we stay afloat
later in the surface we are going to
have an offertory time there are several
ways you can
donate to us on the screen there is a
photo of our website showing where you
can make our your offering you can go to
the church website and click the give
button in the upper right hand corner
between
search and contact when you click on
this button you pay by paypal there's
also a box
where you can know what your donation is
for you are also welcome to send
your pledge or their donation by mail to
the church's po box number
which you can find on at our website
we will now move into the sacred time of
our worship
as i ring the chimes three times take
deep breaths
and relax so we can move into worship
for this moment in time
let go of your anxieties fears and
worries be in this moment
we will now begin our service with our
prelude
my
since we are not all together i will
read our church covenant for us all
if you'd like feel free to read along
with me
love is the spirit of this community and
service its law
this is our great covenant to dwell
together in peace
to seek the truth and love and to help
one another
we will now be lighting our chalice if
you have a candle or chalice available
please light yours with me
flame of fire spark of the universe that
warmed our ancestral heart
agent of life and death symbol of truth
and freedom
we strive to understand ourselves and
our earthly home
cherish your doubts for doubt is the
attendant of truth
doubt is a key to the door of knowledge
it is a servant of discovery
a belief which may not be questioned
binds us to error
for there is incompleteness and
imperfection in every belief
doubt is a touchdown of truth it is an
acid which eats away the false
let no one fear for the truth the doubt
may consume it
for doubt is a testing of belief the
truth stands boldly and unafraid
it is not shaken by testing for truth if
it be truth
arises from each testing stronger more
secure
those that would silence doubt are
filled with fear their houses are built
on shifting sand
but those who fear not doubt and know
its youth
are founded on rock they shall walk in
the light of growing knowledge
the work of their hands shall endure
therefore let us not
fear doubt but let us rejoice in its
help
it is to the wise as a staff to the
blind doubt is the attendant of truth
and now let us have our opening hymn
guide my feet
348.
god my fears
foreign
hold my hand while i run this race
foreign
stand by me
while i run this race
foreign
search my heart while i run this race
foreign
guide my mind as well
so we will be doing the
sorrows concerns enjoy after time for
all ages so
please add them to your chat box now if
you haven't already
once upon a time there lived a donkey it
was very lazy and always wanted to sleep
one day it was searching for food he
found a lion's skin
he put it on and looked at his
reflection in the river wow
i look just like a lion no one can say
that it is me for i must take advantage
of this the donkey said to himself
the donkey wore the skin and marched
into the village
seeing a lion in the village the
villagers got scared
and started running here and there the
villagers
left their food and belongings out there
in the open the donkey ate as much as he
wanted
and he grabbed more and went back to the
jungle for the next few days he relaxed
and enjoyed what he had
brought from the village when his supply
ran out
wearing the lion skin he walked into the
village once again the villagers once
again ran at the sight of the lion and
the donkey gathered more
this went on for many days every time he
was successful
the donkey's confidence grew the
villagers thought of doing something
about the lion
and so the villagers decided to follow
the lion the donkey went straight to the
week fields talking
and started singing loudly the villagers
who were behind him recognized his brain
they were shocked to see a lion braying
it was a donkey brain in the lion's skin
let's teach him a lesson they said
the villagers caught hold of the donkey
and beat him mercilessly
moral of the story a fool may deceive by
his dress in appearance but his words
will
soon show what he really is
now this is a very special time in our
congregation where each of us has an
opportunity to share major events in our
lives
our joys our concerns and our sorrows so
that they all can be uplifted by our uu
community
as daniel schwen reads the sorrows
concerns and joys that were emailed to
us
i will light a candle
okay first we have a joy from reverend
kevin carson
marty and i are happy and thankful to
have finally arrived safely in idaho
we're looking forward to meeting
everyone in person as circumstances
allow
we have another joy from diane chambers
this is diane and joyce chambers and we
wanted to share a joy that diane's
daughter is doing well with her
pregnancy
and has found out she's having a boy and
has named him
david after joyce's husband the child's
great
grandfather
and we have a concern from karen
shropshire
my 90 year old father passed away friday
night after declining health during the
past month
during his last days and moments he was
surrounded by loving family and
caregivers
confined to a wheelchair for the prior
three years he is now
at last free again
and we have another sorrow from
bill and cindy miller we lost a dear
friend
a 35 year old gay man whose family had
disowned him we do not know the cause of
his death but this is a great loss for
our family
and then we have a joy from elizabeth
clarissa is happy she got new pants
because she grew
and we have a joy from rob logan
who's thankful for the recent visit of
our son
david his wife amanda in our seven month
old grandson max
we have another joy from arthur cool who
celebrated
his or their 55th
wedding anniversary on friday
i will hang on
for a few more seconds as we do have a
bit of a lag between
the recording here and the transmission
to you
it looks like those were all
joys and concerns oh
we have another sorrow actually from
anita
carpenter a friend's father
died from covet 19.
i think that's it
we lit one more candle for all those
sorrows concerns and joys
we hold in our hearts and are not yet
ready to share at this time
no we lift up our love for you and we
are all in this together
lies can be contagious this fictional
example is from harry potter and the
methods of rationality
by lisa yudakowski harry ate another
bite of his cereal
his eyes going distant now no longer
meeting her own
think of it this way you skipped school
one day
and you lie and you tell your teacher
you were sick the teacher tells you to
bring a doctor's note so you forge one
the teacher says she's going to call the
doctor to check so you have to give her
a fake number for the doctor
and get a friend to pretend to be the
doctor when she calls
hermione said you did what
harry looked up from his cereal then now
he was smiling
i'm not saying i really did that
hermione then his eyes abruptly dropped
back down to his cereal
no just an example lies propagate
that's what i'm saying you've got to
tell more lies to cover them up
lie about every fact that's connected to
the first lie
like eliza elisa udakowski's example
trying to keep a lie from being found
out often requires more lies
and that results in more trouble than if
you just admitted to the mistake of the
start
lies can be contagious in australia
there was a former judge
named marcus einfeld in 2006 a speed
camera caught his car going 60 miles per
hour in a 50 kilometer per hour zone
he got a 77 australian dollar fine for
this
marcus einfeld went to court and
contested it stating that his car was
being driven by his friend teresa
brennan at the time
after this was investigated it was found
out that his friend theresa brennan
had actually died in 2003. marcus then
said it was a different teresa brennan
the end result was that instead of a 77
fine marcus einfeld ended up sentenced
to two years in prison for perjury
and perverting the course of justice the
truth became the enemy of mark seinfeld
and he tried to make up lies on top of
lies to cover it up
elijkowski said if you once tell a lie
the truth is
ever after your enemy covering up the
truth has happened too many times in our
own country's history
watergate's one example on june 17
1972 security guard frank willis noticed
tape covering the door latches
in the watergate complex this led to
detecting a break-in
of the democratic national committee's
headquarters on august 29th
nixon stated that an internal
investigation
into the june break-in of the democratic
national committee headquarters at the
watergate
office building revealed that no one at
the white house staff in his
administration or anyone presently
employed was involved
despite president nixon's reassurances
by may
1973 archibald cox was appointed to
investigate watergate
as part of his investigation archibald
cox subpoenaed
tapes of nixon's conversation nixon
refused to provide the tape citing
executive privilege
when archibald cox refused to drop the
subpoena
nixon ordered attorney general elliot
richardson to fire archibald cox
richardson refused and resigned instead
nixon told deputy general william
reckelshaus to fire archibald cox
ruckelshaus refused and resigned
solicitor general robert bork finally
dismissed archibald cox
the truth was nixon's enemy because he
lied and then did not want the truth
discovered
fortunately for the united states he was
found out
lying in politics continues after the
first 2012 presidential
debate between barack obama and mitt
romney ursula k le guin wrote
sure politicians always lied but adolf
hitler was the first one who made it
into a policy
american police politicians didn't used
to lie as if they knew that nobody cared
whether they lied or not
though nixon and reagan began testing
those waters of moral indifference
now we're deep in them what was
appalling to me about obama's false
figures and false promises in the first
debate
was that they were unnecessary if he
told the truth he would have supported
his candidacy better
as well as putting romney's fake figures
invasive vagueness to shame
he would have given us some moral choice
instead of a fudge-throwing contest
can america go on living on spin and
illusion
hot air and hogwash and still be my
country i don't know
in some sense the lies of ursula k le
guin was talking about
about things like the exact number of
jobs created and how much health care
premiums have gone up might seem small
but she has a point if we let smaller
lies be accepted
then in the future bigger lives will be
told and like ursula k le guin
i worry for my country too many lies are
numbing and confusing
in 1978 the philosopher hannah arendt
said in relation to lies the moment we
no longer have a free
press anything can happen what makes it
possible for a totalitarian or any other
dictatorship to rule
is that people are not informed how can
you have an opinion if you're not
informed
if everybody always lies to you the
consequence is not that you believe the
lies
but rather that nobody believes anything
any longer
this is because lies by their very
nature have to be changed
and a lying government has constantly to
rewrite its own history
on the receiving end you get not only a
lie a lie which you could go on for the
rest of your days
but you get a great number of lies
depending on how the political wind
blows
and a people that can no longer believe
anything cannot make up its mind
it is deprived not only of its capacity
to act but also its capacity to think
and to judge and with such a people you
can then do what you please
wrote hannah arendt not being able to
believe anything is a problem
truth can be hard to find but it is very
useful
on the other hand believing the wrong
things too strongly can also cause
problems
so for example if you believe the bible
is literally true
and then from that you can read the
genealogy of all the people from adam
and eve
and add them up and come up with an
estimate the earth is about 6 000 years
old
of course to do this you have to ignore
or explain
any evidence that contradicts that
theory
so in order not to contradict the earth
being about 6 000 years old
you would have to stop believing in
geology since it has events that take
millions of years to happen
and you would have to stop believing in
astronomy because it has light that
travels for millions and billions of
years
even subjects that seem unrelated to the
age of the earth like nuclear
engineering become suspicious
some my nuclear engineering books
contradict the earth being 6 000 years
old
pretty soon you would stop trusting the
scientific method as a valid method for
finding truth
start arguing about ideas like what a
theory means
for example some young earth
creationists have said that since
evolution is just a theory not a law
like newton's law of gravitation
gravity evolution is much less certain
newton's law of gravitation scientists
are not absolutely certain about
anything
so ideas are called theories and
acknowledgement of that
and for what it's worth the theory of
evolution fits the facts
but we have discovered that newton's law
of gravitation is only an
approximation so
we started with a seemingly innocent
belief that the bible is literally true
and we end up messing with our
epistemology believing the little
literal truth of buddhist scripture
scriptures would have the same result
basically any belief for which you are
willing to bend your perception of
reality
and your methods of figuring out reality
can cause this
on an individual level absolute beliefs
cause mental failures on a societal
level absolute beliefs
cause faulty epistemology be careful
what you believe
be careful of how you come to what you
believe
when you discover something is false
admit it
and get it over with before the lie
compounds
now for our offertory
hmm
ah
um and now
we can listen to our closing hymn the
star of truth
number 297
the
no immortal ones could ever know
we may
we shall not leave
i will now extinguish our chalice with
the following words if you wish
join me in reciting the reading we
extinguish this flame
but not the light of truth the warmth of
community
or the fire of commitment these we carry
in our hearts
until we are together again
and after our post loot i invite you to
participate in our virtual coffee hour
which begins after that
the link to this was sent out with
today's service
now for closing words
this sermon was originally scheduled for
the 4th of july weekend
so in celebration of the united states
of america and on the theme of truth
i want to read what made me most proud
to be an american this last year
this and related events was also part of
what led me to this sermon
this is a portion of lieutenant colonel
alexander s vinman's testimony to the
house permanent select committee on
intelligence
on november 19 2019.
next month will mark 40 years since my
family arrived in the united states as
refugees
when my father was 47 years old he left
behind his entire life
and the only home he had ever known to
start over in the united states
so that his three sons could have better
safer lives
his courageous decision inspired a deep
sense of gratitude in my brothers
and myself and installed in all of us a
sense of duty and service
all three of us have served or are
currently serving in the military
our collective military service is a
special part of our family's story in
america
i also recognize that my simple act of
appearing here today
just like the courage of my colleagues
who have truthfully testified before
this committee
would not be tolerated in many places
around the world
in russia my act of expressing my
concerns to the chain of command
in an official and private channel would
have severe personal and professional
repercussions
and offering public testimony involving
the president which surely cost me my
life i am grateful for my father's brave
act of hope 40 years ago
and for the privilege of being an
american citizen and public servant
where i can live freely of fear for mine
and my family's safety
dad my sitting here today in the u.s
capitol talking to our elected officials
is proof that you have made the right
decision 40 years ago to leave the
soviet union
and come here to the united states of
america in search of a better life for
our family
do not worry i will be fined for telling
the truth
and now our prelude
foreign
me
um
do
so
hey
you
