But thank you so much for joining us and we're really excited to be able to do this talk today I'm Andrew milk from platform SH I'm joined by some colleagues from our team. So we've got Jerome We've got Leah We've also got Antonella from Nestle and we've got Oriol who's also from Nestle and Without a slide. I will then try and tell a little story about Marginal reduction versus major reduction and Imagine it this way you've got Petrol powered cars and you're thinking about how can I reduce the amount of carbon footprint that I'm actually using one option might be for example to use an electric car and That's great in its way. You're going to reduce maybe as much as 12 percent over time That's because electric cars obviously have a lot of embedded Costs and a lot of it embedded emissions in terms of actually producing those However, imagine that instead of buying an electric car you buy an electric bike an e-bike Now that is going to give you a mind-blowing 95 percent Reduction from your petrol car. So we're not trying to draw any kind of specific parallels here But we're just thinking about how is it when for example, we're thinking about Reducing the amount of carbon emissions that a website produces What can we do that one option is there are certain ideas around Optimizing code. Maybe there are other ideas about optimizing your practice in terms of actually how you actually Make those websites that might even be The way you actually work together as a team. So whether you're actually Coming together for your stand-ups for your scrums that kind of thing But on the other hand if we think about Another kind of optimization that you can also do with code It would be to say how about we take projects that are running in a region that uses quite relatively dirty Relatively dirty fuel mix. So let's say for example coal Maybe they're using gas powered fire stations that kind of thing and move that to somewhere. There's got a much cleaner Fuel mix and I am all the time very carefully ignoring what is going on down there because everyone is working like crazy for this but unfortunately, I've just got to keep going and Pretending that that stuff isn't happening Yeah, so anyway Imagine this right instead Imagine you've got As we said, we've got the petrol car. We've got the electric car. We've got the e-bike Look at that massive reduction 95% and so we're saying how about you know in a similar kind of In a similar kind of metaphor How could you say how can you move from a petrol car to an e-bike? But metaphorically with the way that we are so in this particular case The way that we're saying that is what you do there is you move from a place that has High carbon emissions in terms of the energy mix to a place with low carbon emissions And the example that we've got here more than 80% reduction is taking Websites that are in Ireland and moving those to Sweden or also for example, Germany to Sweden So I'm the guy that's just doing the high concept Beginning of this because we're now going to go back and take this step by step and explain how we came to this particular Conclusion and for that I'd love to move across to my colleague layer who is now going to give us some more. Oh Right. Yeah, sorry There's one thing that I do have to remember and I'm so glad we can show the slide here What we wanted to show is that this is actually a project that we're doing together with the Nestle team and that this actually takes Quite a lot of people to do it I'm not going to give you everyone's name and their rank and their service ID I'm just going to say up at the top We've got all the great people at Nestle who've been working with us on this migration project and down at the bottom We've got the team from platform SH as well And that's a team that encompasses all sorts of different disciplines within the company as well So we've got sales. We've got the product team. We've got our customer success team And of course, we've also got legal and strategy So that's actually taking a really holistic view and on that note. I'd like to pass over to Leah Thank you Hello, everyone My name is Leah Goldfarb on platform SH's environmental impact officer and this is my first Drupal con Thanks, thanks to everyone for giving me a warm welcome here And I'll just mention as we start to talk about sustainability, which is my field of expertise Just like Drupal, it's a technical Subject it's one that may be a little bit hard to penetrate So if there's any questions do not hesitate, you know If I use an acronym that is not familiar to everyone in the room I'm aware of that and we really want to reduce any barrier to communicate Okay, so this is kind of a classic figure in sustainability. It shows the nine planetary boundaries and when this research was first published in 2009 by Johan Oxfam by Will Steffen, Owen Gaffney and others It was a group of natural scientists going around looking at nine Processes that happen in our environment and of course our environment provides the the ability for societies to functions for economies to happen for Drupal to turn and so When this was published in 2009 the first time now It's been updated three times and this is the most recent result from this year. There were Two boundaries that had gone outside of what the authors called the safe operating space for humanity Now that it has been updated we can see and I'm not going to go through all nine planetary boundaries We've linked to the study here and the website where you can read more But the one we're really going to focus in today is that of climate change which has the red star here so Because of what's happening in this realm. There's a lot more Regulations that's coming into place and it's going to even impact your work So that's what I'm here to talk about and what we we can see here is our first Acronym in this area so the European CSRD And we'll get into that in just the next slide. So, oh, sorry. What was sorry? No So this will all deal with how we measure Carbon and then how we report that and I'll just mention in the cloud It's this technical term of scope three. So these are areas that you don't have operational controls over and so Yeah, this is looking at The sustainability Directives that are coming out of the EU. So here we are this is a somewhat long Time frame and what you can see immediately is when the Industrial revolution occurred and then we see these upward ticks in both co2 Which is one of the greenhouse gases that we're talking about when we're talking about emissions and Temperature that's going up and what we're showing here is we're entering into a stage into an And an epoch which is called the Anthropocene that we have as humans never seen before these type of levels of Emissions and this type of temperature rise and what's really shocking about this is is the the speed at which it's happening And we can go back further in time and at platform we have At our booth a slide that shows where you can really see All of where all of humans of civilization has evolved as we know it our culture and everything else in the Holocene the last About 11,000 years and now we're moving out of that into the Anthropocene so What's going on here? So you've just seen this dramatic rise in In emissions and what I want to show here is that's what's shown in this part of this graph So this is time on The x-axis and what needs to happen is our greenhouse gas emissions need to go down And they need to go down much faster than the way we came up the curve So we're looking at rapid decarbonization and the question is how to get to that so We have this sustainability directive coming out of the EU and for large companies if you if you work for a company That's over 750 People and you're based in the EU the reporting period starts the data collection starts January 1st 2024 with a report due out in 2025 and If you have any questions about that we have a nice table We can share with you where you just enter your information and we can tell you when you'll need to report But it's not just and this this new directive Will slowly ramp up it'll be a little bit like GDPR was and Encompass anyone who wants to do Business within Europe, so it's something to be aware of in this space. Sorry in this space and the NFRD That's the British equivalent. That's their ninth non financial Reporting directive and then what we're seeing is you know people are aligning internationally to Say we need to start reporting our emissions and we need to disclose them We have the SEC Security and Exchange Commission out of the US saying that and now we have a new California law that has just been passed So there's a lot happening. In fact, there's a lot happening even this week in terms of CSRD We're waiting for the newest guidelines to be to be published So how are we going to do this? Sorry kind of script so This is not Something that we've decided to respond to like in a week's time and we've done it what I'd like to show here is the roadmap and how our Mutual roadmaps began to overlap and this type of overlap Between players in this space I think we're going to see more and more but this is kind of a precursor to that so as We at platform SH. We're looking at our ESG roadmap and looking at how fin ops and green ops come together Nestle was also Working very hard on their sustainability goals, and they'll tell you more about that in just a minute But if you haven't seen it, I would really encourage looking at what they're doing particularly around net zero cutting by 50% by 2030 and so then we had this DCF project that came into being where Jerome and Drew went down to Barcelona to really work on digital carbon footprint Reduction and explaining and there was really a good Exchange of information because this is such a new field and that's why I'm saying any questions in this You know are welcome so but we found that we have this overlap and we came together We created this green action committee We had a lot of possibilities of areas we could work on and what we decided was the most impactful is the green migrations In exactly due to what Drew said at the beginning this 80% reduction and With that I will pass over to Oriole. Hi everyone here real from Nestle In the net light in this light you can see a high-level Nezla green roadmap for 2050 You can see the different pillars but at the end IT Mean is is less than 1% of the total emissions. That's why it's not shown here as a key pillar and But it's relevant for us to bear sustainability in mind for all the the the decisions that we might take in the future and To get and in parallel to raise the awareness to all the different Stakeholders and and employees. So that's like our common goal okay in particular for this project it was a it was an initiative that came after a contest that we had the internal and It was selected this This carbon footprint project The original goals were basically to set up the baseline In terms of measuring and calculating How Nestle websites are contributing to the carbon emissions and Based on that calculations and measurements the idea is to bring all this awareness to the different stakeholders that we collaborate with and and on Align with that the ideas to provide sort of guidelines and best practices for In the future decisions to To what they said before to bear in mind These best practices, okay the deliverables of this first POC was a Diceboard that where we can measure all the emissions For the different asset that we have and and The different that energy efficiency and as well as I mentioned There is this related documentation that is the baseline to to to support future decisions in terms of Well website ecosystem at the end Okay, when it comes to the next steps for this Project well, we started with our colleagues from platform sH and The idea we work also with Akia and Pandion. So the idea is to extend the model to all our vendors and Find other synergies together with with plant platform as well Also increase the and evolve the model with new variables that can be relevant for both measurements and inefficiency, so We don't know we're still exploring what we can add here and And at the end what I was saying create these best practices and and The important thing apply them in the future decisions Okay And I think that's for you, Jerome Yeah, the tree limbs. So we are at that on this edge. We are a past Yeah, we're a past company So we are renting servers and we are deploying application on top of the servers the servers that are provided by different providers GCP AWS So what can we do because you know AWS GCP they say that they do good data sensors So do you think there is a big difference between AWS and GCP running in France? No, there is no real difference. So what can we do? What we think we can do Is start from helping our customers to optimize the application How much do you think you can improve your application in terms of energy consumption and energy consumption is basically CPU usage and memory usage and all this stuff So well one x 2x 3x 10x 10x is gonna be difficult for the whole application So, yeah, we can do that we can provide observability to help you use fewer CPU cycles As a pass provider, we can help with density. So pack a lot more application on Pure servers. We can do that because we know that we are kind of a macro economic actor. We can Rent a lot of servers Contract for a lot of application and try to push more application onto by Mutualizing the resources we can actually do that through overcommit because we are elastic so we can Provision fewer CPU than we are actually selling because we can provide the CPU when it's needed because most application are not using the resources They are contracting for most of the time because of course But how much can we get from there? We consider that we can get like 10x to 12x more density than what is a naive deployment of providing A CPU from the the customer that contract with us we consider that we reduce the number of resources by a factor of that But this is good 10x is nice But what comes up to be effectively the most important move that you can get right now and with Low effort is actually to optimize for location. You can choose your data center and pick Amazon instead of GCP But it's a maybe one percent two percent difference if you move from Ireland to Sweden as The show you can actually save quite a lot if you move from Poland to Sweden, then it's actually a 40x factor So these three things are the thing that we can optimize for as a pass provider There might be other optimization We don't have a lot of labor can we change digital marketing mobile phone production No, we can't really we can't really change the weight of the pages for our customers, but we can actually work on this Do you have any question on this already? So yeah, as you may know we talk about Location of the service because this may not be super fun here, but This is a map taken from electricity map reputable source lots of good providers for that Actually Google and the most and I'm using that too That shows us the the carbon intensity For a lot of grids because you may know that there are green data centers and not green data centers the reality of that is that most providers that GCP and AWS are buying through renewable energy so that their total impact is lessened because they Receive credits to offset their emissions But the data centers really in every part of the world are actually plugged to the same grid energy grid as everybody else So there is no real green data centers except some that have solar panels in the middle of the desert But most of the time that a center are just in urban settings and not in the middle of the desert or odd to a dam or you know Windmill field so yeah The reason that some grid are different of course is in France. It's nuclear is providing carbon-free energy Sweden is pretty much the same plus hydro plus The same hydro in Brazil, in Canada You can see that there aren't a lot of green options in the US or in Australia Actually there in the bottom in the south there are now some good options So there are opportunities in some regions for instance Let's see one of the The opportunities that we found with Nestle trying to simulate for Many products The impact of trying to move website that were previously hosted in Germany and in Ireland moving them to Sweden Why Sweden because it's close enough for the European Sector as for as Drupal users and you know that most of your traffic is handled by the CDN most of the time So where the origin is is not that important for 90% of the traffic or even more if your CDN is actually efficient and Where I will not move to France because at the time France was not in not as good it was 70 or something like this so still below 100 grams per megawatt hour of electricity produced But still Sweden does matter and if we I think I will get into the details of how much is saved from that But you can see that it's a pretty significant figure of 15x 20x Improvement so for the same same amount of electricity consumed by the website, but they are the The function of the application we get 20% to 20x less A carbon emissions Is it here on that carbon intensity? Then we get to the second thing. What do we do for our job at platform is to optimize deployment? What we do is we replace the previous setup of running, you know 10 servers at 10 percent Which is the general reality that we That we see and replace that with one server running at 100 percent This is not what we do. We don't do the micro thing. We do it at scale so we operate tens of thousands of servers we place them with thousands and so the economy that we get there is Is on the energy consumed because there is a base metabolism for servers that we can avoid that that by running them out But there is also the fact that we don't need to produce The 10 servers will only need one so embodied emissions are much lower considering that so what we consider that the stat that we get from 12x is based off our customers migration and a Study that we don't with our carbon auditor using other Sources and more night deployment on VMs It's very difficult for us to get information to compare us to To you know the wild Kubernetes setup that we can find while all the services that are not very transparent about their density or Overcommit levels You have question on this maybe Is it clear saving on embodied emissions? So I think for you all this one is for you Okay When it comes to the applications itself Well, as I mentioned at the end we all know that 90 plus is shared by the CDN so but there are things that can be done at application level to ensure that at least are efficient know here from nearly we have an ecosystem of 1300 sites and we are Basically We try to ensure the range of reliability. Okay, so what we have is we maintain a Drupal distribution that is used by a big chunk of this ecosystem and With this distribution what we try is to make it Efficient so that Different agencies can take it as a baseline and and and also as a guideline on how it should be built the application on the top of it so and and For sure for sure. It's it's it's trying to be more efficient when it comes to database Optimization and also reducing the execution time and all this stuff that and also we know We have all the different layers all the different catching layers and the idea is to take the best advantage from from all these layers and and basically that For you So Some features we've been working on and delivering recently on the optimization thing is we provide Capability through the API the console everything to get Another view of the when you select your region because you can deploy your own application a bit everywhere platform stage around the world, but if you're Trying to get in the lower emission then you can get the information when you pick the origin you get this information this is a very simple stuff and then Hopefully we will be able to deliver a tool that allows you to migrate your project from one region to the other without our Intervation So just autonomously get the report to get your audit from platform stage saying okay We think you've been emitting that amount in this region or these are the top most contributing Projects to your emissions. You could use the migration tool to migrate from this place to the other Other thing is called something we released recently called pause environment is just a way to Have all your preview environment so development staging whatever on projects picture branch that get deployed because this is a feature That can be put to sleep or posed if they are not receiving any requests for a while then just shut down Of course, we never shut down the production Even if there is no request We are gentle But the other that's fine. The next step will be sleepy environment. So more short-lived So if it doesn't request doesn't receive anything for a few second We can make a slip and reactivate it if a request comes in But this is still requires a little bit more work Yeah, what interesting thing this is the result of our own carbon audit the not specific to nothing But just the wide thing. So we have servers all around the world. So we have different carbon intensity, but the general Distribution of our impact Yes, the the left hand side is compute. I don't know if you can read it from the Compute so CPU consumption mostly and RAM including a lot transfer cost so network CDN is a bit special there And storage you can see that the network pot is actually Kind of low. So the There are different models, but this is this is quite important CDN and transfer They are not quite as important as compute and storage Which means that if you can observe a website from the outside measuring the weight of the pages Then you don't get any information that allows you to predict your footprint. This is an important There are different models and it's extremely complex to model the network pack You can actually, you know plug something onto your computer and see how a given CPU consumes in terms of electricity Even some some CPUs from Intel have direct reporting of the electricity they consume at any given time for the Math that the same you can't generally access that information on AWS and GCP because they had this information From the CPU itself, but you can have models. We have that there are spec sheet for that. So that that's easy enough transfer From the server to the terminal. There are so many variables that it gets difficult The most contributing part may be the the last mile whether you receive something from Wi-Fi wired 5g 4g the distance. It's it's complicated but the the thing we have now is a good model that we Been working on from the ADEM and free and provider in France So we expect it to be the most representative of the most trustworthy But that's something that is important regarding the location of the server. It means that Wherever it is actually the the transfer port is not going to be extremely significant Because the backbone between countries are not Very important in terms of a mission very Same for CDN the CDN the model that we use for there is a financial one We could not get enough information from the CDN to actually give us a good modeling such as the transfer It's maybe a fallback So we try to get for this information that we declare this it's not a model that we've been doing ourselves We've been providing information detail billing information and all the Observability thing that we could get to an external editor, which we have been working with them with this company for three years called Greenlee Helping us to to improve year over year and redo the simulation from the past year given the progress We do on the understanding of the data because it's not that easy all the time And so we can compare a result year over year. So measuring is something that was not easy to to Do you have any question on this one? Okay, so a small Discussion about the models and the way if you want to start measuring what can you use? Well the first thing you can try which is currently what is on the Drupal.org website is use the website carbon calculator I will tell you that right away It sucks because it's trying to measure things from the outside like what is the average wage the page weight It use a general worldwide average for carbon intensity and we have seen that it can vary from 1 to 40 easily So, yeah, I will not recommend that it's yeah try to estimate things from your Alex arranging and The general weight of the pages. Yeah, that's not super good They are you can ask AWS or GCP whether you're what is your carbon footprint? Google is quite good AWS for us the the carbon footprint is always declining even if we are Provisioning a lot of a lot more area where you're of years. So I would not unfortunately recommend it, but It's it's called market-based So they take into consideration when in the month they give you the PPA so the power purchase agreement that they cite and So you don't have a real estimation and they will never give you the electricity usage so that you could calculate your carbon emissions Because that would open for revenge engineering of their you know server less How do they deploy that? What is the overcommit level? Everybody will be very interested to have it, but they don't provide it But they provide something interesting if you are into all the GCP and the US Services you can have per service per region information. So not Use less, but be worried that Asia Our auditor is not very one thing. This is very interesting is cloud carbon footprint open source model Crowd source lots of verification very interesting the data are a little bit behind They don't have a good source for carbon intensity and such but still they they do they do a good work They don't do the what we call the scope one and two so in terms of carbon accounting So it means that you're very specific a mission your usage of the for the company are not accounted for scope freeze or The emissions you have no control over so the emissions of your contractors so over your providers and contractors So this is just estimating that What we get to with the GAG so greenhouse gas protocol with an auditor that is first fight for this kind of certification is a much more Exhaustive kind of Up fully and it's not always easy They will get at least the quality of this so you can try to benchmark then methodology using that that will be There are many other details that we get into that your CDN As And I think Jerome was going over and I should just say the the motivating factor for this I mentioned before the Corporate sustainability reporting directive that's coming out of the EU is of course based and rooted in the Paris Agreement So that's that's the motivating factor to all of this So yeah, we are bringing forward the these new methodologies the the the greenhouse gas protocol Approved way of doing this There are open-source communities that are forming around this so we expect to see a lot of activity in this area And then as we bring this all together when we discuss With our clients both in the private and public sector we talk about our mode strategy. So we encourage our users to measure Optimize deploy to greener regions and then to educate and as Jerome has just mentioned every time we've done a Carbon accounting with our auditor we have learned so much each year and each year we improve and As he's mentioned we've been had to be changed models and we were able to rerun and we learned like the rest of the community that Transfer which a couple of years back was considered to be the biggest part of cloud emissions is actually quite low as Jerome showed about a quarter. So okay, so we've already transferred one project of Nestle's and Because we're in France. We'll mention the next one up for next week is actually a very large one It's a 2xl coconut V You know live life to its fullest and With that what we're showing here is the electricity and so we're talking about a Project that's running over one. Yeah, one megawatt 1.8 Watts and If we just multiply that by the carbon intensity of where it's currently running which is 7 grams CO2 equivalent and the CO2 of equivalent is for all the greenhouse gases. That's just the shorthand We get something close to 820 kilograms of CO2 being released and that's a back of the envelope Calculation just to make clear our auditor who put in the can the embodied admissions the the emissions the greenhouse gas emissions that are Inside, you know the servers when they're constructed and then weighted out over four years It comes up to 932 so just to be clear But already you can get a really good idea of what's happening by just knowing your electricity and then multiplying it by the The carbon intensity and we're moving the same program Project to Sweden you'll have 44 kilograms So, you know, if you just went on carbon intensity alone, you would get to 95% reduction But because of the embodied emissions, we're talking about 80% So this is again that that's that we we want to be clear we want to be humble on what we're doing here We're giving you some a general approach here a way to look at this But we you know We use a carbon auditor some people decide to you know build their own models that with the Cloud carbon footprint and have a carbon certifier. That's another way to go forward But it then we do get to these type of reductions and why again is this type of reduction important if you work for Someone, you know an entity that really does have sustainability goals wants to be compliant like With the car with the Paris agreement that maybe has science-based targets in terms of reductions This will get you most of the way if you know, you're you're a legacy Organization that already has a lot of programs because when when these projects were started they they probably were not looking At where they were deployed in terms of carbon. So as we've stressed throughout this presentation We've learned a lot together We're hoping to learn with the wider community and we also are delighted first that Drupal has made sustainability such a key concept of this Conference and we can see it everything in the meals that serve to the encouragement of the type of transport that we all take and There's two other sessions that we would like to highlight here at Drupal in terms of sustainability If anyone knows of any more, please let us know so we have Yanis session that's coming up on Thursday at 11 30 on ICT greenhouse gas emissions are exploding how Drupal community should engage and contribute their part And then there's also a birds of a feather session organized by Mike Gifford. Thanks on Thursday at 515 so we hope to see you at those two and if not, you know You can always come by the booth and discuss with us more We'd be happy to do that and if there's any questions happy to take those as well The role of web consortium's community group around sustainability Just released a draft report on the web sustainability Guidelines that touches on a whole bunch of items the very holistic approach to dealing with with web sustainability That that happened before you were working in your talk But I wonder if you have any thoughts on the annuals as the platform's not a it's not a web agency that's building websites That's Yeah, thanks a lot for that Yeah, I didn't mention it here So I have reached out to Tim Frick and Alex and I will be giving a talk In November at the end. I think it's the last is it the last Wednesday of the month it's the Wednesday or Thursday of the month where they have their calls and I just to talk about CSRD and Also about moving away from the the website carbon calculator to greenhouse gas Protocol certified approaches. So both of those. Yeah, so we are very in into in discussion Yeah Yeah, yeah, we we have discussed with them One discussion that Jerome and I had was About that they have intellectual property also that they want to protect For example getting the power use efficiency of each individual data center is quite difficult We know it's improving over time, but it's hard But I think as a community as we as as they get more and more requests We're hoping to be more and more transparent and one Small success story to share with you there is GCP now for their scope to emissions are showing Location-based and not market-based it doesn't have all of the embodied emissions, but it's a step forward But even with these type of improvements and we should continue these dialogues because it's it's what's going to change But I would say that with all of these new regulations coming in what they're dealing with is your scope one two and three and So let's say you're a business and you Let me just do this here. What? Sorry, you know, you'll have to report on all three and the web the The cloud emissions are in your scope three, but you know, it's it's good to start thinking about carbon auditor Getting getting the whole process going now And then as we share we'll all learn to get together. We'll have cloud benchmarking, which is which is what I'm looking forward to one day Yeah, and we're hoping yeah as CSRD, which is really an ESG environmental social governance structure comes in it It is that supply chain Transparency that is being asked for more and more. We've already gotten a request from Nestle I think the other one of the precursors it get again and asking for these type of it And we'll see the whole ecosystem has to reduce their scope three. And so we need to be more transparent Thanks, everyone. Oh There's one question enough Averted So On that To be very transparent with you our auditor has Advise us not to go down that route right now because when you think about net zero the first thing you need to do is reduce your emissions And that is really where we're focusing our efforts on now With the European trading Scheme in other ETS, I think we're going to see more and more activity in this area but I would my guess and You can tell me if I'm wrong about this is in order to be eligible for that and really have scoped for Very strong reporting on that. We would need to report to the CDP which is the carbon disclosure project and We're seeing you know Nestle is already doing this with the CDP We're seeing others and they would need to be verified as well, but step one reduce. That's clear. Yeah, and then we can look into Trading, okay. Well, there's no more questions. Don't hesitate


Welcome to the First Unitarian Society of Madison. This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore spiritual, ethical and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment. Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as together we seek to be a force for good in the world. I'm Rosalind Woodward and on behalf of the congregation I'd like to extend a special welcome to visitors.  We trust that today's service will stimulate your mind, touch your heart and stir your spirit. And right now we'll take a moment of silence for contemplation, meditation or prayer as we settle in to come fully to this time and place. Our ring hymn is hymn number 83, Winsby Still. Please remain standing for the opening words. They were written by Jane Hirschfield. Poetry's work is the clarification and magnification of being. Each time we enter its word woven and musical invocation. We give ourselves over to a different mode of knowing, to poetry's knowing and to the increase of existence it brings unlike any other. And now if you'll join me in the chalice lighting.  Each of us has caused to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within. Please turn to your neighbours and greet them. The Poetry Service has been an intermittent ongoing tradition here at FUS. The role of the Worship Committee is to fill gaps, particularly in the summer when staff are not available. This summer has opened up more opportunities so it made sense to ask poets in the congregation to reflect on the inevitable changes life presents, especially as we face major transitions in this community. The committee received many worthy contributions. We were not able to use all because of time constraints and have chosen those that best reflect the theme. The submissions serendipitously fell into broad categories and in your programme you'll see them gathered under these headings. It's a risky endeavour to share something as personal as a piece of original poetry with a larger audience so it is with gratitude we welcome those who are willing to do it. For those who are unable to do so their poems will be read by others and their authorship will be acknowledged and appreciate. For most of human existence poetry has been used to pass stories between generations. Before writing and mass education poetry was the medium by which a culture's historic and spiritual values were passed on, often through metaphor. Think Beowulf, the voyages of Odysseus and many native tales. The rhythm, structure and rhyme made them easy to remember and thus they travelled across space and time. The poet or bard often held a sacred place akin to a shaman in many cultures, Egyptian, Druidic, Norse, Hebrew, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist to name a few. For people struggling for daily survival poetic inspiration seemed to channel unseen forces and provide visions that explained a complicated, often painful and confusing world.  It served to illustrate our common humanity and while we certainly trust the summer's changes will not fall into the category of a fight for survival a service such of this will hopefully serve to strengthen connections and enhance our sense of community. And if you will stand as you are able and join in the next hymn the children can go out for some of fun. It's hymn number 209. My name is Patricia Ferris Stinger. I am the editor of the poem and quotations feature in the monthly newsletter and I am grateful for the opportunity to help organize this poetry service. Our first group of poets will present poems on the theme of seasons of growth. The first poet is Hannah Pinkerton who was not able to be with us this morning so I will read Hannah's poem. And Hannah would like you to know that she wrote this poem to honor her husband Tad who is celebrating his 80th birthday today. Happy birthday Tad. Hannah's poem is titled While Sleeping. Hosta uncoils a new yellow green leaf. Pink cherry bud opens to five white petals. Those written in distinctive cursive disintegrate into sterile email. Sun speeds winter to summer in scarcely a wrinkle of time. Smooth skin on arms turns into puckers and pleats.  The hay field west of town holds hundreds of new condos. Legs no longer paddle nor arms paddle. Still, the heart remembers fondly. Changes happen all around me, though the marrow of time is now. Melting icebergs leave polar bears hungry, stranded or homeless. Once change under a new baton, lovely music continues to rise. While he was sleeping, today's calendar turns my husband into an octogenarian. And my name is Sanny Oberhauser. I'm going to read my poem The Art of Growing. Being with a quote by Marcus Aurelius, all that exists is the seed of what shall be. Gardeners place rose bush into soil rich with nutrients. They plant more and more until there is a garden. Each rose reaches for nourishment from the sky. Bushes grow, bushes change, soon they support one another. The garden is a haven where all may thrive, survive adverse conditions. As petals unfold, they enhance the neighborhood. A congregation has a gardener, a leader who shares wisdom, sets example to encourage growth in individuals and entire congregation. The leader draws inspiration from all members to enhance community, offer protection, reaches beyond to gain support, to lend support. Individuals merge into their own community to help it grow. My name is Jeff Glover. I'm going to read my poem entitled Raspberries. The raspberries I did not pick in my little lot. The very ones where canes were thick. The truth is, I forgot, they grew and waited just for me, sweet and red and ripe, hoping someday I would see them, at least I might. But as you know how life goes, I was too distracted, hitting by and feeling woes. Many things protracted, and so my berries went to waste. Like many days, I failed to taste. Good morning. My name is Sandra Pomponio and I wrote this poem about my mother this spring. She was affectionately known by many as Mamaji. I woke up this morning remembering you and all the things that I love about you. The blood roots are up, offering cheer this May morning, but tomorrow perhaps they will not. The ferns are unfurling, fiddleheads playing a soft song of spring to the warm accompaniment of a shimmering morning sun. Each year you awaited these suggestions of spring with the anticipation of a child on Christmas morning. Your signs of springs gifted you with endless joy year after year as you lived your well-lived, well-loved life. I venture out in the soft morning light to pick the first offerings of spring, a small tradition created by your beloved, my father. The first small gift is a gathering of simple violets, shy white and periwinkle beauties, their delicate flowers well hidden amidst the dew laden grasses. A second offering is one of ferns and the bleeding hearts you planted carefully and nourished by the home you lived in for more than 50 years. I put the flowers by your chair empty since November. My heart aches with the longing to once again share so very much, especially the joys of spring. The season of rebirth arrived each year before your time on earth, and it will continue to arrive after my time on earth. But for now, the artistry of spring envelops and quiets my heart with the timeless assurance of my mother's love. Our next group of poets reflect on the idea of change of place. My name is Fran Raul, R-A-L-L. And I'm reading a poem called The City of Lost Objects, which is pretty much the way the life goes. The City of Lost Objects, excuse me. Billions of papers, both written and printed, that last pillow I needed for exercises. Did I put those shoes in the goodwill? Did I use goodwill for making myself feel helpful or just wanting to feel useful? Where is that spoon? Did I throw it away? Papers? Papers? Papers? Who cares besides me? Do I care? Great old photos. Lost dates. Lost people. Who wants them? I need millions of friends.  Lost, lost, but still here somehow. Real and unreal. Why do people care so much about bones? I'm Ann Smiley reading a poem for Sparrow Sentie. I'm honored to be reading for her today. Leaving a home you've loved. There's something sad and melancholy about leaving a home you've loved and lived in. To have your possessions taken, knives, forks, your favorite teapot, beds, couches, pictures off the walls, books, children's toys, one by one, packed into boxes and piled into the huge cavernous moving van, leaving every warm, friendly room of your home bare. The floors, the walls, the ceilings echo and re-echo the emptiness. Suddenly, the van is filled and the driver clicks, the door is shut. You stand there watching as the truck drives off, taking away everything you own except the memories of living here. Those you keep in your heart as you travel to that new place where the melancholy and sadness transforms into an excitement and anticipation of adventure as all the boxes are unpacked. Their contents put into place in new rooms that will become home again. I'm Robin Chapman, reading The Lawrence Transformations. What is it like shifting frames to step from the riverbank into the river and be carried away? To hop on a beam of light with a slight lift the way the trapeze artist grabs the swing and lifts off and out over our heads or the way we open a book and surrender to words. Time, place, life shifts. The aerial is still in the center of her swinging arc, high above, but now a split-second exchange of movement and trust, and she swings from the wrists of her partner, game shifted again, or the way our eyes lift to the sports bar screen, lock into flash flood sweeping cars and people away as we drink our beer while we cheer a tackle in a football game, slowed thump of brain against skull. And that constant trickster, light, links us faster than the speed of thought. We are older than what we see, the halftime score, the Dow Jones feed, the faces of family in Brazil's mudslides searching for family, the houses in Brisbane underwater, the trapeze artist once aloft, suddenly airborne, caught, dropped, bowing now, grounded again on our spinning earth as we cheer. My name is Fran. The next poetic theme is personal change. The first poem in this group is by March Schweitzer, who could not be here today, so I will read her poem for her. March's poem is titled, Old and Well Used. Our daughter said, so now you've got scary old lady hair. I told her, do I care? I've earned every darn strand of it. I remember when I was a little girl, thinking how old my godmother looked, with her white hair and face furrowed by the sun and years, only to find out later, she was younger than I am now. When you're young, you worry so much about how things look. Everything must be shiny and new. Why keep that bowl? There's a chip on its lip. That tea towel looks so worn and used, and the elastic on that contour sheet sags, disgraceful. As you get older, though, your perspectives change. Because are no longer of such consequence. And one becomes comfortable with things looking well used, like me and you. And another poem by Sparrow Senty, A Matter of Getting Older. My body is older each day. Lungs tell me so, when I hurry and find I'm breathless. Slow down, they say, walk slower. My body is weaker each day. Hands fail me when I open jar lids. Help, they say. Ask for help. My body is fading each day, eyes dim and blur as I read or knit. Glasses, they say. Close your glasses. My body is stiffer each day. Bones, creak, joints crack when I sit or stand. Go easy, they say. Move carefully. My body is tired each day. It tells me so as I dust or sweep. Just less, it says, sweep less. My body talks to me a lot these days. Take a nap, it says. Some things, some things change. Some things change, and many don't. A million will while others won't. We're won't to say the things that may, the new that do, while old decay. To stay as current as a river, we need to move, also deliver, what will work at least for some advancing forward to become, what may seem at first for not, yet might stay worthy to be sought. Tools that thrive in time and space, the best of them with love and grace, to place ourselves within the range of better days well worth their change. Our next four poems are about love and change. Ben Friend-Roll, R-A-L-L. Love is abstract, but not abstract enough for me. I want a wide, white border around it so I can stay on the border and not get into the subject. The subject is something full of not wide borders, too much talking about how love goes and wanes, how it changes, how it has degrees, and talking about it with large cups of coffee, not abstract, just distances from details about it. So in camaraderie, my name is Claire Fox. I wrote this poem as a prayer, as a prayer for the inevitable suffering and challenges of life for all of us, but in particular for those of us suffering with cognitive challenges in the name of love, let gratitude flow from our hearts. No denial or withdrawal from the tragedies of the world, rather embracing compassion. We awaken to this moment, present to what is right now. May gratitude give us courage to step into the unknown, perhaps afraid, perhaps afraid to engage knowing this journey will demand everything we can do and are, whether we are sick or well, rich or poor, religious or not. May we join together sustained by gratitude, listening, being, holding each other in love, acceptance, kindness, and resolve. I'm Susan Harvey. The name of this poem is Meditation on Love and Death. I wrote this in the fall of 2008, after a dear friend had died long before his time. Meditation on Love and Death. As I reflect on the unanticipated, unwelcome events that have suddenly become part of my life, I realize with fall, apple, Christmas, what it means to love unconditionally. When death is involved, the previous hesitations, fears, conditions in a relationship dissolve. All that is left is the pureness of caring for another, another who barely has a functioning body anymore, certainly not the previous attractive self with eager smile and ready desire to engage as the body fades, the spirit becomes more apparent. And in the end, all there is left to love is the spirit. My name is Lori Schwartz. This poem found its name yesterday at the rehearsal. It's called Reclaim Now. Strange to rearrange, memory can become an enemy, lost in thought, confusion distraught. What was it I fought to keep the same and for what and for whose gain? Control is not ours. Those are another's powers. Our tightening grips is how everything slips away, away and farther every day, longing, my dear, in memory you appear, the sound of your voice, mysterious sunshine's choice. But who created the sunshine? Who made the love appear? Are we really just dirt to dirt in pine with random moments of cheer? Could change be a gift in a plan, not a drift? It must be for only God was with me, facing fear. God's hand becomes clear, understandings appear. When love don't veer, see joy in the mirror, become silent to hear home, and return to our unconditional home, love, peace, fears cease. Love is on lease, trust and release. Waves in the ocean, mesmerizing magic potion, illusion of power growing, no. The creator is invisibly blowing, the fall of the wave is not so grave. For love divine, we bravely find that no one and nothing is left behind, calm, peace, bliss, increase, trust, know, love will grow, enjoy, in fun, in sun, play and run, until our time is done and we all return to one. This poem was written after I received my genome information from the National Geographic Genome Project to which I had submitted a DNA sample. It's called Genome J1C1B1. I arose out of Africa, wandering, pulled by hunger and the need for shelter and sustenance that keeps life moving forward into an unimaginable future. Drought and starvation push relentlessly towards resource and satiety. Others too are pushed and pulled by unseen forces, life clinging to life, hounded by hunger, disease and death. These are different, make unfamiliar sounds, have unusual form but are recognizable. They have eyes, ears, hands and feet. They seek food and shelter. We tentatively make contact, play together, labor together, share skills, tools and resources drawn toward each other for comfort and curiosity. Others withdraw and hide, afraid of the unknown. Those who resist inevitable change disappear into oblivion. Hidden by desert sands, they await archaeologists who will uncover their bones and artifacts centuries from now. Greet me among the wanderers from Mongolia and the steppes of Russia, farmers and herders, settling for a while and moving on when necessity drags a reluctant traveler away from hostility toward food and safety, until finally may be a promised land. Greet me by a river that flows with milk and honey, green and verdant, plenty for all. Plump brown-skinned babies play in the mud, laugh by streams, yet there is still not enough for all, greed, fear, violence grip the earth. Discover me covered in filth, slave to another, follow me, wrapped by the chains of servitude across rivers, oceans and plains, toward unimagined and unfamiliar places. Forced to live away from beloved landscapes, yet still I survive, urged on by life itself. Find me searching forests for game and berries to feed the children, to stave off starvation that nips at heels like a young wolf puppy. See a community building relationships to find safety within another's presence. Catch a glimpse as I merge into the stream of life fighting for existence, over rivers, through forest thickets, finding refuge in secure caves that eventually transform into houses, villages and towns that replace the trees. More terrifying turbulent waters lead to a small green island lifted out of the seas by those same life forces that placed me here. It is now possible to settle down for a breath in the passing eons, birth, death, toil, rest, sickness, health. Leave behind traces of the past in skin, bone and sinew. Travel other kinder waves, pulled and pushed by survival. See before you, risen from the roots of many different mothers, another woman. She carries within her a history of ancestral genes, black, yellow, brown, beige and pale skin, forebears. So who is she? Do you judge her by the color of her skin? She has seen all of those. Do you believe she is from her most recent place of origin? She is more than that. Do you see her for the place she presently holds? There have been many for her skills, for her interests, for her accomplishments, for her failures, for her children, for her relations. See her instead not as a wrinkly old woman, but a finely cut diamond, cleaved from ancient rock by the acts of time, honed into unique form, here for an instant to leave behind small traces in another's hair, skin and bones and maybe spread a glow of kindness, compassion and understanding along the way. The name of this poem is Maintaining Hope. I wrote it in December of 2012 after the school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut. How can I respond to the paradox that persists in my mind? The clear presence of human tragedy and waste alongside the fuzzy vision of a nurturing and caring human community, I must maintain the hope that a greater, all-encompassing arc of the universe is still bending toward compassion, equality and peace. And that a wiser knowing and all-creating spiritual energy is present with the human race on its very, very slow evolution toward these qualities of the arc. Interrupting destructive mutations and smoothing worthy designs along this long, long path over eons and eons of time, it seems to require a huge, heartful of blind and reckless hope. Today is the day we are a talented new music director. Thank you, Drew, for everything you've done for the service today. I don't know where he went. Where is he? Our offering today is for the continuing work of this congregation. Our sincere thanks to all of our poets participating in today's service. Thank you. And then we appreciate the many gifts of all those who helped our service this morning. Our greeter was Pamela McMullen. Our ushers are Anne Smiley and Allison Mix. On sound, we had no volunteers sign up for this hour, so our talented staff member Dan Carnes has kindly stepped up to fill in. Hospitality is being provided by Richard DeVita and John Mix. Our lay minister is Anne Smiley. There are no further announcements, but please check the red floor's insert in your program for ongoing details of community activities and needs. The cares of the congregation. We join together each week, a community who gathers with joys and sorrows written on our hearts. In this place, we love and are loved. We forgive and are forgiven. We give and we receive in turn. We come together to find strength and common purpose, turning our minds and hearts toward one another, seeking to bring into our circle of concern all who need our love and support. There are two entries in the Book of Cares this morning. The first one reads, Our deepest gratitude to Carol Clongland as she steps down from leading our dance fellowship. Carol has brought beauty and inspiration to our congregation through her choreography and creativity. Thank you, Carol. A second writer writes, Grateful for the bounty of our gardens and farmers markets. And we thank Larry Johnson for the beautiful flowers that he brought here this morning. Our closing hymn is number 326. Please stand as you are able for the hymn and the benediction. Blessings from what's new.  People of the new, the modern and the strange. Advances sent like storms with computers ever faster, upending daily norms with protocols to master. In suburbs and city hives, from technology and waves, that rearrange your lives in unfamiliar ways, that gobble up your time, seduce you by the hour, like Facebook, yours and mine, that wants us in its power. Blessings be upon you, all who do not fear the challenges of the new, yet endure and persevere. Not just survive, but thrive. Take wisely what is good. Change but then arrive with values understood. Keeping as your goal to thine own self be true and never lose your soul to the latest thing that's new. And now if you'll be seated for the postlude.


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