Truth and Freedom 

Truth enables freedom, and freedom depends on truth. 

Order of Service - Script 

for Sunday: February 5, 2023

NIUU, Jeanie Donaldson, Debbie Raby, Pastor Fred 

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Prelude: “Swinging Along” by Jeanie Donaldson

Welcome and Announcements: 

Announcement by Judy Meyer 

Other Announcements for the Good of the NIUU Community 

Who You Are Enriches Us All

By Monica Jacobson-Tennessen

Welcome! What you bring—who you are—enriches us all.

We say “Welcome” to your joy, your hope, your pride.

We say “Welcome” to your grief, your fear, your anger.

And the parts of you that are not yet ready to be seen and heard—

Welcome to them as well.

For we are people of faith:

Faith in our expansive welcome

Faith in our ability to grow

Faith in the precious gift of our truths

Faith in the promise of trying, learning, changing

Faith in our capacity to know ourselves and each other ever deeply.

Welcome to you who are human.

Welcome to you who love and are loved.

Welcome to you who are blessed (which is all of you).

May this time together be a blessing. 

Lighting the Chalice: 

A Community of Faith

By Judith L Quarles

Lighting a chalice

At this hour, in small towns and big cities, in single rooms and ornate sanctuaries, many of our sibling Unitarian Universalist congregations are also lighting a flaming chalice.

As we light our chalice today, let us remember that we are part of a great community of faith.

May this dancing flame inspire us to fill our lives with the Unitarian Universalist ideals of love, justice and truth.

Opening Words: ­­­

Come, all you who seek truth

By Dorothy Boroush

Come, all you who seek truth, abide in love, and honor peace, enter into this house with thanksgiving; come into these gates with praise. Enter into this sacred space, all you who hunger for righteousness. Through these doors, all footsteps lead to the source of our being, where we shall be filled.

For as we come together, as we congregate for holy purposes, two essences are required: First, the assemblage of the faithful—the numberless, nameless throng of seekers; Second, the ineffable presence—the numinous, infinite God.

We invoke both entities; we beckon to the worshiper to join the consecrated rites; and we summon the Spirit of love, the eternal God of all creation.

Hymn #120: Turn Back, Turn Back 

1. Turn back, turn back, forswear thy foolish ways.

Old now is earth, and none may count its days;

yet humankind, whose head is crowned with flame,

still will not hear the inner God proclaim —

”Turn back, turn back, forswear thy foolish ways.”

2. Earth might be fair, its people glad and wise.

Age after age our tragic empires rise,

built while we dream, and in that dreaming weep:

would we but wake from out our haunted sleep,

Earth might be fair, and people glad and wise.

3. Earth shall be fair, and all its people one;

nor till that hour shall God’s whole will be done.

Now, even now, once more from earth to sky,

peals forth in joy that old undaunted cry —

”Earth shall be fair, and all its people one.”

Covenant: 

Love is the spirit of this church, and service its law

This is our great covenant:

To dwell together in peace,

To seek truth in love,

And to help one another. 

Joys and Concerns (with lighting of candles of caring) 

Story: 

The Truth Crushed Down

By Christopher Buice

Once upon a time there was a very greedy king who had lots and lots of gold. But he wanted even more gold, so he decided he would order his army to attack the neighboring kingdom and steal all their gold.

The king called all his soldiers into his courtyard and told them his plan. The soldiers agreed to obey his orders. They drew their swords and lifted their shields and marched off to battle.

But the soldiers were not gone from the castle long before they began returning to the courtyard. Not one of the soldiers was carrying a sword or a shield.

“What happened!” screamed the king. “I told you to go fight a battle!”

“We were on our way, Sire,” said one of the men, “when we came across an apple tree and the tree spoke to us. It said:

‘All men are brothers and all women are sisters.

All the people of the earth are one family.

Be wise and lay down your swords and shields and study war no more.’

“It seemed to us that the tree made sense so that is what we did.”

The king was furious and he vowed to get rid of the tree that had ruined his plans. He waited until midnight and then he crept out of the castle, walking across the field until he came to the apple tree. The king took out his axe and chopped down the tree. But he was still so mad that he stomped on the fallen tree until it was crushed down into the earth. Then the king walked back to his castle with a smile on his face.

The next day the king called his soldiers to the courtyard. He gave them new swords and new shields and told them to obey his orders and go attack the neighboring kingdom. The soldiers were afraid of the king so they did as they were told.

But the soldiers were not gone long before they started returning without their swords and shields. This made the king furious.

“I told you to go fight a battle!” screamed the king.

“We were on our way,” said one of the soldiers, “but we came to the spot where we saw the apple tree yesterday. You wouldn’t believe it but there are twenty apple trees there today. And they were all saying the same thing:

‘All men are brothers and all women are sisters.

All the people of the earth are one family.

Be wise and lay down your swords and shields and study war no more.’

“And the trees made sense to us so that is what we did.”

The king was red with anger. “Those blasted trees!” he thought. “Tonight I will sneak out and chop down every last one.” And that is what he did. But he was still so mad after chopping down all the trees that he jumped up and down on them until they were crushed into the earth.

The next day the king called all the soldiers to the courtyard and gave them new swords and new shields and ordered them once again to attack the neighboring kingdom. The soldiers were afraid of the king so they obeyed him. But the soldiers had not been gone long when they began returning without their swords and shields.

“I told you to go to battle!” screamed the king. “Why did you disobey me!”

“Well,” said one of the soldiers, “you wouldn’t believe it but in the same place where there were twenty apple trees yesterday there is now an entire forest of trees and they are all saying—”

The king didn’t wait to hear the rest. He knew what those trees were saying. He ran out of the castle and there he saw a forest of trees that stretched as far as the eye could see.

The king began to cry and scream because he knew there was no way he could chop down so many trees.

“Can it be!” he screamed, “that a powerful king like myself can be stopped by a few trees!”

“Are you asking me?” came a voice from behind him.

Turning around the king saw an old man leaning against the castle walls. His hair and beard were long and grey and his clothes were well worn.

“Well,” said the king after a moment, “Do you have an answer? If so, please tell me.”

“Well,” said the old man and then he paused for a moment. “It seems to me that you are a very powerful king.”

“Yes, indeed I am!” agreed the king.

“And, since you are so powerful, you can take any tree that offends you and chop it into little pieces and crush it into the ground.”

“You are quite right there,” replied the king.

“But,” said the beggar, “the apple tree spoke the truth. All men are brothers, all women are sisters, and all the people of the earth are one family. You may be a powerful king, but there is no king on earth more powerful than the truth, for truth crushed to the earth will rise again.”

Storytelling Tip: This story ends with a quote by the Unitarian journalist William Cullen Bryant, “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” 

Meditation: 

Eternal God, Mother and Father, Spirit of life,

By M. Susan Milnor

Eternal God, Mother and Father, Spirit of life, we gather grateful for the companionship of hearts and minds seeking to speak the truth in love. We gather grateful for our heritage, for the women and men before us whose prophetic words and deeds make possible our dreams and our insight. We gather grateful for the gift of life itself, mindful that to respect life means both to celebrate what life is and to insist on what it can become.

May we always rejoice in life and work to cultivate a sense of its giftedness, but may we also heed the call to transformation and growth. May we find in ourselves the strength to face our adversities, the integrity to name them, and the vision to overcome them. May we honor in pride the heroines and heroes of our past, but may we also keep company with the fallen, the broken and the oppressed, for in the dazzling of noon day's heat, and in the star-studded shimmering of night's rich blackness, we are they. Amen.

Sermon: 

The truth will make you free! 

Those words summarize the theme of today’s service and sermon. 

They carry a deep message of hope for all of us. 

We all struggle at times to maintain a positive attitude. 

Ultimately truth will bring both hope and freedom, but when people have long been deceived they can find the road narrow and difficult after coming to understand the deceptions they have been under. 

Those deceptions can involve both politics and religion. 

Truth can be a slippery concept because those who want to deceive others often become adept at using partial truths to communicate a larger lie. 

An obvious example is a political leader who proclaims that a free and fair election was stolen. 

That may sound all too familiar because it’s happening so much these days. 

Not only did the attempted deception happen in the Presidential election of 2020, many other elections have been characterized by the same problem: governors’, representatives’ and state legislators’ elections have faced claims of stolen elections. 

Even primary elections have not been immune. 

Part of the problem is that there are always mistakes and sometimes even deliberate misconduct by election officials. 

When there are very few mistakes or misconduct, those who wish to deceive can make false accusations or pretend that there were problems that do not exist in truth. 

Then it becomes possible to convince some voters that a free and fair election was neither free nor fair. 

Our Fifth Principle of UU faith calls on us to use the democratic process in our congregations and in society at large. 

Of course, the democratic process is unwieldy and much more difficult in practice than in theory. 

Yet it has long provided a reliable method of maintaining order and freedom at the same time. 

Order and freedom have to exist side by side. 

Without the presence of both we have chaos, and the longing for a strong woman or man to lead and protect us may come to the fore. 

Difficult circumstances make the practice of democracy much more challenging, and that reality has been the breeding ground of various forms of authoritarianism. 

On the left, authoritarianism has appeared in the form of totalitarian Communism. 

On the right, authoritarianism has appeared in the form of totalitarian Fascism. 

It is a recurring pattern, and our society is as vulnerable as any other. 

The will of the people as a whole is our strongest protection. 

The elections of 2022 are a fine example of the protection of freedom through truthful information and the democratic process. 

Fewer extremists than were expected won positions of power. 

Yet there were still too many extremists who won, and most of them were elected by avoiding the truth about themselves or their communities. 

The end results are hard to foresee, but I do believe that in the long run, the truth will come out, and the truth will keep us free. 

In the short run the preservation of our system of free and fair elections will present problems as the elections are challenged, but in the long run, the truth will prevail. 

Benjamin Franklin spoke to a questioner after the writing of the U.S. constitution: 

“What have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” she asked. 

“A republic if you can keep it,” he answered. 

Keeping our republic is the task of every generation in the U.S., and in our time the task requires our faithfulness to truth. 

The most important qualification of truth in any context is that it is not optional. 

Of course, truth does depend on one’s point of view. 

Obiwan Kenobi said to Luke Skywalker (in the first Star Wars movie), 

“You're going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” 

The truth does not change, but it has many facets, like the precious gem that it is. 

Our point of view will determine which facet we will see at a given time. 

One of the best ways to understand truth more fully is to broaden our perspective of time and place, to step back from our own closeness to it. 

One person’s truth is not different from another’s in terms of the truth itself, 

but it may often definitely seem that way. 

A wider perspective provides more power to the truth to bring us freedom. 

A democracy cannot function if it does not value truth. 

Likewise, it cannot long function if it gives more value to one person’s truth than to another. 

An example of that would be the different points of view of a slave and a slave owner. 

The truth is that no human being can rightly own another. 

The slave understood this truth very well; the slave owner, not so much. 

The owner was caught up in a system that limited her or his vision to the perspectives of economics and need for dependable labor. 

The truth has set both of them free, although both sides have experienced freedom quite differently. 

The former slave has not always been recognized as the equal of the former owner. 

This sad reality is the source of many of the conflicts among the people of our theoretically free society. 

Democracy as a form of governance is still evolving, for which we can be thankful. 

Former slaves and their descendants are becoming friends and colleagues - and at least equal citizens - with former slave owners and their descendants. 

It’s part of the story of many of us and our families, including me and mine, especially if we have ancestral roots in the South. 

Coming face to face with our history is another way in which the truth is setting us all free. 

If we try to hide from the truth, especially the difficult truths, we will limit our own freedom. 

If we admit that we have been caught up in a harmful system of devaluing certain human beings, we can begin to be set free from that disability. 

The very first principle of UU faith is a key: 

We believe strongly in the inherent worth and dignity of every person. 

If we truly practice what we preach in regard to this first principle, we will surely seek equal rights for all people regardless of race, gender, and any other distinction that could be used for denying humanity to some people. 

Another meaningful quote about democracy and freedom comes to us from Winston Churchill. 

“Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” 

Churchill was all too familiar with the necessity of democracy in a society and culture as well as the need to fight for it in the face of an authoritarian alternative. 

Our battle may never become as difficult as his, but we are fighting attacks on our freedom from many different directions. 

It is a battle that has had to be fought in every generation of humanity, and the opponents of truth and freedom are more and more willing to use violence to meet their goals in the U.S. 

In addition to the civic struggles for democracy, there is a battle brewing on the basis of religion.

Nobody’s religious faith gives them the right to control the lives of others, but a contrary impulse is gaining prominence in our nation. 

Our faiths are meant to draw us closer together, but too often they have the opposite effect, setting us in worse and worse conflict. 

A tragic example of separating people would be the Orthodox churches of Ukraine: Some of them are served by the Patriarch of Kyiv; others by the Patriarch of Moscow, with obvious results of conflict. 

The division between Moscow and Kyiv has its roots in religion, and it has wider consequences in their societies. 

The attempts by so-called conservative Christians to affect elections and courts in the U.S. is another example. 

The lies of Rep. George Soros of Long Island include disturbing untruths about religion, where he has claimed to be Jewish although he is a practicing Roman Catholic. 

Our own UU tradition is facing conflicts, which we have addressed previously in various ways. 

Most of the conflicts are not serious disagreements about our faith, but rather about the wider church’s policies and self governance. 

There is no need to allow these things to turn us away from our commitment to our open minded and open hearted way of approaching the living tradition of UU-ism. 

We have an opportunity to bear a strong and needed witness to the possibility of disagreeing without being disagreeable, even more than ever in our own time. 

We are a strong and faithful people, but we do not fit the common definitions of either. 

If we remain true to ourselves, our truth will set us free, and not us only but those who hear and heed our message of an open faith with freedom of inquiry. 

Amen,

So let it be, 

Blessed be! 

Congregational Response 

Offering Information 

Community Library Network Foundation

Mission: We are the catalyst in sparking private funding to ensure our libraries flourish.

Through fundraising and donor relationships, the Foundation provides funds to enhance the library experience for over 150,000 members and guests across the Library Network.

Help libraries flourish by joining the Foundation or inquire about projects in need of funding.

The Foundation is a 501(c)(3) and is accepting members. 

Community Library Network Foundation

821 N Spokane Street

Post Falls, ID  83854

(208) 773-1506

NIUU

P.O. Box 221

CDA ID 83816

Extinguishing the Chalice :

Daring Vision

By Maureen Killoran

We extinguish this chalice flame,

daring to carry forward the vision of this free faith,

that freedom, reason and justice

will one day prevail in this nation and across the earth.

Closing words: 

The Truth That Makes Us Free

By Anonymous

May the truth that makes us free,

and the hope that never dies,

and the love that casts out all fear

lead us forward together,

'till the day breaks,

and the shadows flee away.

Closing Circle