Did you know you've done that? No. He's an archer. He's an archer. Right. I would actually hide. Oh, right. Yeah. He said I'm just going to take some of his hair back. I guess you were supposed to be the mate. I don't think you're going to take it.  You're going to take your hair back. I'm not sure. Start taking out the things that are all of the things that I have. I'm not sure if you're gonna raise something for me or others. No. You want to? Yeah. I'm just gonna do this. It's a... Yeah. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. That's the position. It's not. It's only the answer. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. It's not. I I I Smiling at me nothing but blue skies. Do I see blue birds? Singing a song nothing but blue bird all day long. I never saw the sun Shining so bright never saw things Going so right Noticing the days are hurrying by When you're in love My how they fly Nothing but blue sky from never saw the sun Shining so bright never saw things Going so right noticing the day nothing This morning Well, good morning everybody and welcome to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society Where independent thinkers and brave travelers gather in a safe nurturing environment to explore issues of social Spiritual and ethical significance as we try to make a difference in this world and Speaking of things that are different in this world. I'm Steve Goldberg a proud member of this congregation And I'd like to extend a very special welcome to any guests Visitors or newcomers if this is your first time at First Unitarian Society You picked a heck of a day to be here But I I think you'll find that this is a very very special place And you'll find as we do every weekend That today's service will touch your heart Stir your spirits and trigger one or two new thoughts And the next sound you're about to hear is the gong and as we hear the sound of the gong That's your signal to Join us in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning We're glad you're here Any words come from Leslie Takahashi For those who come before us may our gratitude be long and lasting For those who come after us may we be strong stewards of our commitments May each of us know the immortality of the larger frame Revealed through community and may we always remember that it's transformational power rests in our actions Please remain standing for the lighting of the chalice which is a responsive reading by Elizabeth M. Strong I will read the non-bolded parts, and you and I will read The bolded parts together our unitarian heritage bids us light our chalice In the name of freedom in the light of reason in actions of tolerance we gather in the community to celebrate a heritage of freedom reason and tolerance Our universalist heritage bids us light our chalice in the name of faith in the light of hope in the actions of love We gather in community to celebrate a heritage of faith Hope and love Let us bring this unitarian universalist heritage into our world and our lives today And we'll start off by greeting the fellow unitarian universalists and otherwise among us Today these times I like to think of FUS and the Children's Religious Education program as being an antidote to that As being a sanctuary for children and youth where they are nurtured loved encouraged and safe We have over 400 kids in our Religious Education program So I think I'm stating the obvious when I say that I couldn't provide that sanctuary alone Our East staff couldn't do that not even all of the FUS staff to provide that sanctuary on our own The one and only way we can do that is through the dedication and the commitment and creativity of our volunteer teachers And it never ceases to amaze me that there are so many teachers that year after year will sign up to teach and Give up themselves five years ten years Fifteen years and nine o'clock. We have a teacher who is being acknowledged for his 29th year of teaching. It's pretty amazing So today we're going to take a few moments to acknowledge the incredible service that our volunteer teachers give to our FUS community Your order of service includes an almost full listing of the names of people who recently reach their five year or more anniversary of teaching But at this service we're just going to call up the people who are able to make it at this time in this weather So a much smaller group than what you see listed Our gratitude for all of our teachers goes deep and wide as we all work together To live and promote the UU values that we hold dear So teachers as I call your name, please come join me up here Jim Jaeger Who is teaching his fifth year this year? Mary Kaye did not make it. Is that right Mary Kaye is not here Rene U. Hardy Who is teaching her 13th year Go Rene Andy Levy who's teaching his fifth year Ninth year Ninth year Vicki Jones who's teaching her 16th year Amy Schultz who's taught eight years and Dave Willow who's also taught about eight years Not quite sure about the accuracy of that but pretty dunkless, right? FUS has many heroes here who have helped us to grow and size and scope over the years You all are at the top of that list of heroes. We are so incredibly grateful for your generosity and your commitment Let's give them a hand Thanks to Heather. I would like to invite all of the kids who are here into the steps right here in any teen choir members And any children's choir members. Come on up everybody.  We got a smaller group, but we need lots of singers and lots of help. All right. We got a few people All right, here we go. Now We're gonna teach you all song That we put together to acknowledge these wonderful teachers up here and a lot of these teachers I know my kids had you so thank you.  Don't be shy. Come on up. Come upstairs Come on up. Thanks Leslie for helping And I it goes like this La la la la la we thank you teachers. La la la la teachers. La la la let her play I'm going to the congregation help us up, too. Now this is a song that we can all do. All right. Here we go La la la. I think you can handle it everybody. Here we go La la la la we thank you teachers. La la la teachers. La la la. We make the world a better place Thank you. You get a chance to sing that again a little bit. Here we go Teachers have incurred dust to open our minds and heart Here we go You make our minds so know it's all thanks to you. It was you who said yes When others said no, you help us make our dreams come true Excellent job Our voice are unique diverse gifts You support all the better Seated I'm giving the microphone folks and the audio folks a hard time today I'm actually going to be moving around a little bit because my energy is dropping So if Sean can you give me a thumbs up if I'm like or like a big thumbs down if I'm moving out of the video I want the livestream folks to see me My sit my kids are actually real sick or just getting over being real sick So we've had a lot of late night So I want to be I want to be here with you today 11 o'clock is the service I always went to and it always makes My spirit glow when 11 o'clock is bigger than nine o'clock So thank you for that today nine o'clock was it was sparse Today we're going to have a few readings from america's religious history and we're going to start off with seven principles principle one You can guess you let's do this. Let's guess what religion this comes from. It's not ours. It's although it sounds a lot like our so make a guess Principle one one should strive to act with compassion and empathy towards all creatures in accordance with reason Two the struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions Three one's body is inviolable subject to one's own will alone For the freedoms of others should be respected including the freedom to offend To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forego one's own Five beliefs should conform to our best scientific understanding of the world we should take care to never distort scientific facts to fit our beliefs Six people are fallible if we make a mistake We should do our best to rectify it and remediate any harm that it may have caused Seven every tenant is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility and action and thought The spirit of compassion wisdom and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word Those are the seven principles of the satanic temple america's largest satanist religion Our next reading comes from a Tibetan author Who spent most of his life in america bringing shambhala buddhism to our country? He mostly worked out of colorado His name is shogam trunkpa And this is from his book shambhala the sacred path of the warrior, which I reference in my sermon a few times I remember very clearly says shogam The experience of discovering my connection my own connection to my family heritage I was born in a cowshed in eastern tibet where people have never seen a tree The people of that region live on pasture land that has no trees or even bushes They subsist on meat and milk products throughout the whole year I was born a son of this genuine earth The son of a peasant At a very early age I was recognized as a tulkoo or incarnate lama And I was taken to the surmang monasteries to receive my training and become a monk So almost from birth I was taken out of my family situation and placed in a monastic environment I was always called by my religious name trunkpa Rinpoche Nevertheless, I never forgot my birth When I moved to the monastery my mother accompanied me and stayed with me for several years Until I was old enough to begin my formal education Once when I was about four or five I asked my mother mother. What is our name? She was very shy. She said what do you mean by are you know that your name is trunkpa Rinpoche? But I insisted I asked what is our name our family name Where do we come from and she said well, you should forget that it's a very humble name and you might be ashamed of it But I still insisted saying what is our family name? What is it? At the time I was playing with some pickled radishes that are fed to horses I was picking up these little pickled radishes off the floor outside the monastery kitchen Tulkoo's are not supposed to eat them, but I was chewing on one and I kept saying Mother, what is our name? What is our family name? I like one I like the image of like on the big list of rules in the monastery is do not eat the Do not eat the pickled radishes She was I was about to bite into another pickled radish, which was dirty and she was very concerned and she was so shy But she was also intrigued that I had asked We had an intense moment of relating with each other I remember that it was a sunny day and the sun shone from a window in the roof onto her face She looked old and young at the same time I kept asking what is our family name and finally she said mukpo Mukpo, of course, but don't bite that pickle. It's for the horses I'm afraid I did bite it and I remember chewing it. It was very crunchy and tasted something like a sucumono A kind of Japanese pickle and I liked it very much I looked at my mother and asked does that mean I'm mukpo too? She wasn't quite sure. She said well you are Rinpochi Then I distinctly remember asking her whether I was her son And came out of her body And at first she said yes, but then she said well Maybe I'm an inhuman being a subhuman being I have a woman's body. I had an inferior birth. Please go back to your quarters She took me in her arms and carried me from the kitchen annex to my quarters Never nonetheless. I have kept the name mukpo as my family name my identity and pride My mother was a very gentle person as far as I know. She never did anything aggressive And she was always accommodating and kind to others I learned a great deal about the principles of human society from the wisdom of my mother And there are oh so many stars So many stars the wind is filled with songs So many songs which one is mine? One must be right for me Which song of all the songs when there's a song for every star And there are oh so many stars So many stars godless days The endless nights that I have searched So many eyes so many hearts So many smiles Which one to choose which way to go How can I tell how will I know So many stars So many stars the countless days The endless nights that I have searched So many eyes so many hearts So many smiles Which one to choose which way to go How can I tell how many stars So many stars So many stars So this sermon you'll see in the red floor was billed as a comparison of Unitarian and Universalist and Mormon history I when I got into the The topic I was struggling. I got some good advice from minister once And she said uh and I asked her you know Other churches have these have uh lecture areas that tells them what scripture verses to read from each week And And we don't really have anything we don't have anything that guides us kind of structures us in our sermon So how do you know if you really given a you you sermon and she said She said is there more emotion than a Wikipedia article? And and if you can answer yes to that then you've given a Unitarian Universalist sermon Uh the sermon I was writing had no more emotion than a Wikipedia article So I had to I had to redo it and what I've done is and what I wanted to do and what I probably wanted to do the whole time Rather than explain to you a Unitarian or Universalist and Mormon history Which you can read about on Wikipedia. I wanted to give you something more of an experience of Of what it was to be Mormon.  He actually spoke here. I don't think Michael was he ever a member here? He was a member here. Okay Um, so paul k conkin was a member here. It wrote american originals homemade varieties of christianity I love the book. He did such a great job of explaining it. I felt like I was just doing a book report on on his Um, so I moved away from that But if you if you're if you're further interested that it was a really great read um So this sermon is really about my personal experience But I but but what I want to do with that personal experience Is to invite you to think about the personal experiences The people the places the things that have brought you here To this congregation not just today, but for the first time That made you make the choice The harder choice of getting up one sunday morning or one saturday afternoon And uh and coming here rather than staying home When I when I think back on on what brought me here, uh, my mind is taken to a trip to chicago I took quite a while ago. I actually just came back from a trip to chicago with my family My wife had a conference there. I took the kids to museums and she would bounce in and out from her conference I learned early on not to call a trip with kids a vacation Reverend kelly taught me that So we had an adventure in chicago for a few days Right before and then right out the day after they got they got sick. So it was a good great timing Uh, but that but the trip to chicago i'm thinking of is a different one and i'm thinking of one particular morning of that trip I'd love the early morning hours of the day When as dicken says the night is more actively dying than the morning being born Uh, I get those mornings a lot walking here to work Today was just a miserable. I wasn't trying to experience the walk to work here before my sermon at all But some days I get that just as the world's waking up people are just grabbing the paper Of that time of day This morning. I'm thinking of isn't is a similar morning. It was bright Early Uh, and it was the year 2004, but I wasn't walking to work. I was in a Toyota Corolla with Four of my best friends from high school. It was our senior year of high school And for spring break rather than going to mexico or the more common in our small rural farming town Going to the sand dunes to four wheel or down to southern utah to camp We were going to we were going east to the midwest To look at some of the Mormon historical sites Mormonism started in northeastern New York Was pushed out of there and they slowly they got pushed west and west. They had a big time in Missouri Had their last large settlement in Illinois before they left for the utah valley So there's all there's there's a Mormon pioneer trail that you can follow which we did in our car That takes you to all of the big important Mormon historical sites We called this the plan for this trip plan p Because we knew that plan a for most kids was these other typical spring break trips But we were going to do plan p As our as our trip we we devised it in the back room of our local public library This isn't at all related But I found out the other day that there are more public libraries in america than mcdonald's and that just warmed my soul If anyone here works at a mcdonald's, you know good on you, but I love public libraries more Uh, so back at the public library. It was printed on 14 marvelous laser printed pages full of maps and Printed hotel reservations because we were just on the the edge of the cell phone age But not quite there This would be my first time east of the rocky mountains I wouldn't fly on a plane Until my mission a few years later when I flew to argentina I'm not no, I'm not one to live in the past, but senior year was really awesome I I loved my senior year. I'm not I'm not one of those guys like senior year was the best part It was but it was good. I was co-captain of the track team. My grades were up I'd given up being like trying to figure out how to be the cool kid and was just learning how to be myself And really enjoying it My girlfriend had dumped me not too long before this trip But I feel like getting dumped your senior year it makes your senior year more I don't know more senior year, I guess Our first day of the trip was a full day of driving on this Mormon pioneer tail And it took us to winter quarters, Nebraska, which is just outside of Omaha Winter quarters was the last winter quarter That the Mormons had before they went to the Salt Lake Valley Some of them went straight from Illinois to the Salt Lake Valley But a lot of them stopped off did a lot of prep in winter quarters Nebraska got their last supplies like an organ trail right the last fort on the way So they would they went from winter quarters in Nebraska to Salt Lake a journey A journey that took them Took them several months and that we made in just 12 hours just over 12 hours. So that was That was on our mind that whole time The next day we woke up very early And drove to Carthage, Missouri Now Carthage, Missouri is the site of the former Carthage prison Which where is where Joseph Smith the founder and prophet of the Mormon church would die On June 27th 1844 at just under 40 years of age A mob dressed as Native Americans angry at Joseph Smith's order destruction of a local printing press Would Storm the building shoot and kill him and his brother Hiram and And injured the two other men that were with them We came to that prison Not looking for these historical details But looking for the man who we were supposed to model our manhood after Joseph Smith The small visitor center that marks the site of his death still has some of the original prison walls in it You can see the bullet holes From some of the shots Apparently still see some of the blood I guess On the floor But it was too early actually for us to go in there that the place wasn't open yet No tours were being given So we sat on a bench together and sang rather off-key praise to the man Which was a song written for Joseph Smith almost immediately after his death by his friend An enemy and then friend again Praise to the man it goes who communed with Jehovah Jesus anointed that prophet and seer Blessed to open the last dispensation King shall extol him and nation's revere Hail to the prophet Ascended to heaven Traders and tyrants now fight him in vain Mingling with gods he can plan for his brethren Death cannot conquer the hero again Sacrifice brings forth the blessings of heaven Earth must atone for the blood of that man Wake up the world for the conflict of justice Million shall know brother Joseph again And I I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that one of our one of our deep desires one of our goals of this trip Were to become something of the brethren that joseph smith was planning for in heaven with the gods We Didn't necessarily see a conflict of justice But we knew that we were entering into a part of the world where conflict was real We came from the most Mormon county in america morgan county utah And we knew that this was a place east of the rocky mountains where values were less secure family is less sure And where we had to be on guard of our Of our traditional Mormon values We were boys on the cusp of manhood We're a few years or a few months out from the great Mormon coming of age ritual the mission That would scatter us the fore ends of the globe I went to argentina my friends went to hungary and australia and england And it would be our last close Experience together we all married quite soon after our missions and started our own families And as far as I know, I don't think we've all been in the same place since Our goal one of our goals on this trip was actually to distribute Mormons have these informational cards Uh, they're about the size of baseball cards that have a picture on the front and some information on the back like the Mormon website and stuff They came in packs of a hundred and we had four packs of 100 and our goal was to to give those out We were leaving them on like gas pumps and then like the the napkin holders and restaurants and stuff We didn't get near to 400, but I remember one particular night It was oxy on our way back our card got in a flat tire and it was uh, Easter Sunday So everything was closed so we Pulled over at this at this gas station. The only thing you know one of those like one One stoplight and four gas station kind of kind of stopped places And I found one that was open and they had a tire repair kit So while the three other friends that knew more about cars were repairing the tire um Me and my other friend land and went into the restaurant We couldn't eat because Mormons aren't allowed to buy anything on Sunday, but we talked with the With the woman she was probably 22 or 23 who was working the counter She said no one else had been in all day We said, well, we're not going to buy anything but can we sit and talk and so we talked and You know, it's just two young men just prepping for Mormon missions kind of doing learning the early stages of sharing the gospel and it went well she was receptive and interested and You know talking about our spring break trip and why we would do this Afterwards I was talking to my friend Landon And I said I think you know when I really think about it I feel like I'm called for something big in the church Like I have something important to do and I guess I should have been more specific about which church I was I was talking about um Because When I think about when I think about that time That that's that's that's the me. I always have to answer to that's the me. I always have to think Uh, what would that what would that person think about me? um when We were crossing through Go back a step. We were actually crossing through like I said what felt like foreign territory and One of the things we knew about that foreign territory is it's where our spiritual are in my case In a few other cases literal ancestors have been have been driven have been driven out of the land When we arrived in avu Which was the last great Mormon settlement east of the rocky mountains navu, illinois, which at one time was almost as big as chicago We found What's now a historically preserved city, you know kind of a visitor's a visitor's Center on a city city city wide scale if you ever want a trip it's You I think you'd like it. It's a it's a fun trip back in time Uh, we found there my grandfather's gun shop my grandfather great great great grandfather jonathan browning Uh started browning arms in morgan youth in navu illinois right before right after he converted to the Mormon church uh After befriending joseph smith He started that gun company would make the guns for the trip West to the salt lake valley that the Mormons would use to defend themselves And in morgan valley utah a tiny town with only a gas station Now it had nothing then he started the browning arms company, which is now a multinational Arms company one of the bigger sporting arms manufacturers and in the world Uh, my father actually visited that the the company Just to get in contact with his family heritage and when he did He loved the the valley morgan valley so much that he decided to move our family there And only 10 years later where'd he start working for browning arms Uh as a computer analyst computer something that I don't really understand um We each have our own story of Of what brought us here go back to that point uh and What brought me here was our second great trip to the midwest 10 years after this this first trip Now my faith collapsed as i've said before in a wendy's parking lots Uh at the foothills of the great smoky mountains after we left utah Spent a summer with my wife's family in south carolina And came up here to madison for my wife's master's degree Uh on that trip my faith finally collapsed after years of discernment and Inner turmoil and wondering if I could raise my kids in this church. That was that was the big thing I couldn't I couldn't imagine raising my kids in the mormon church Um But we'd committed we had friends who lived here mormon friends who lived here So we'd committed the first day to go to the mormon church on regent street. We lived in eagle heights um that way And so we walked down university bay To end up on university avenue to end up on regent street It was a long walk. It was really hot. You know one of those late really hot summer days in madison So we walked past f us right as the nine o'clock service was starting because the mormon church started at 10 So we walked past right as people were coming in for the nine o'clock service And we you know one it was much closer And two it just looked like I mean, you know, it's a compelling place visually And it seemed like the people were just very happy to be there So we decided the next time we'd heard about unitarian virtualism that it was a place where Sometimes people went after after mormonism because there's a place where you could bring Whatever wherever you were to So the next week we did come here and we found it to be a wonderful place I'm saving the story of what exactly I felt like we found here to next week And how that led to not next week my next sermon, which is the end of may And how it ended up leading to to me being in front of you today But on this But what I found then And decided to come here was that I'd become a much different man than the man. I was expecting to be I formally resigned my membership The easter after we moved here. So exactly 10 years from our trip to chicago and One of the questions I put this on facebook the other day one of the questions I would have really liked to ask I would have really liked to have someone ask me when I left was where does it hurt? Leaving the Mormon church was incredibly painful But it seemed like each person that I talked to about it had their own agenda Either trying to keep me to stay or trying to You know kind of congratulate me or like you made it out kind of it's so great that you that you're no longer stuck And and what I much would have preferred was some curiosity about About how that felt and how that how that was to me And one of the one of those I alluded to this before one of the main sources of pain was I had a much different idea of who I was going to be when I was 18 And I had a very sure idea of who I was going to be and to leave that idea was was very difficult and to try to rediscover myself somewhere new I'm not sure what 18 year old me would think about seeing me here today I think he'd be a little disappointed a little confused a little worried But I think he'd be very appreciative of how great my hair has become So once more I'd like you to reflect on the story that brought you here And some people don't even remember that's what I found out Yesterday some people are like, why did we come here? You know asking I mean we Do we really want to be here anymore? So I mean I threw some people into some crisis yesterday Um, I thought people came here originally for the coffee. This was the first place Uh, this is the first place I ever drank coffee and I had to it was like 90 hot chocolate and 10 coffee because I just couldn't I couldn't stand it. This was also the first place. I um had a beer And this was also the first place. I uh had wine and The second place I bartended was also here. The first place was at my last year. You church Uh, some people like me are fleeing harmful religious paths a lot of pain a lot of sorrow in their past Some aren't some don't have any religious trauma that they're bringing But something of a religious absence that they're trying to fill some people This is the first time they've experimented with spirituality at all Some people are here for their kids And only come to services because they like having a break And they like knowing that their kids are getting moral and spiritual instruction by talented teachers that have Been teaching here for a long time um And all of those are equally valid reasons for being here come up and tell me after service why you're here and be happy to hear We all bring with us a unique spiritual and religious heritage None of us can none of us no one's past is free of a religious heritage a cultural heritage And while I have complicated feelings about religion, and I'm sure most of you do here today I think we can all recognize that it's one of the more fascinating creations of our evolutionary brains Of our evolved brains that even before we understood what exactly we were doing We found religion as a way to connect with the universe and it makes sense of our stories And we experienced it as valid long before we had any Even our early what we have now our early understanding of why psychologically we need religion Or some of us at least need religion In uh shambhala the path of the sacred warrior trokba says that to live rightly we must recognize our dependence on both our current communities And all of the communities that have informed our past We must become family people aware of our literal and spiritual heritage Or biological and spiritual heritage as much as we can Um he says we should respect life on the mundane level Because the only way to implement our vision for society is to bring it down to the situation of a single household And that if we don't understand the complexities of each household we're trying to to bring together Then we won't make any significant change in the world When we look back on our uu family heritage Uh, we can see some interesting things one of the things I've always been fascinated with are how closely linked uu spiritual heritage is our two Mormon spiritual heritage and this was kind of the heart of my my early drafts of this sermon They both come out of the same time period. Well modern modern unitarian universalism As we know it today Both were really formed in the second great awakening America at the founding of the nation was incredibly religious the most irreligious we've ever been With about 10 percent regular church attendance um the first great awakening was The congregationalists which we come out of we became we grew we established we were we were opposed to the anglican churches But then the Calvinists and the Methodists really got a strong foothold and campfire revivals Really brought a new religious fervor to america and it's been that way ever since it's really laid the foundations of the religious fervor that continues to today Mormonism and unitarianism and universalism all responded in unique ways to that second great awakening Now joseph smith and emerson two of the the big figureheads of both those faiths Uh, both came out of uh, the same new england area at the same time. They were born three years apart They were also contemporaries with mary baker eddy and mother ann lee the founders of christian science and shakers and the shakers There are differences, of course But in our differences, we actually end up being quite similar There's a great graph that shows Religious and political affiliation. So Up and down is how big you want the government to up and down is how much you want the government to enforce Morality and left and right is how much you want how big you want the government to be how many services So small government and big moral enforcement Mormons are right up in that top right corner and then at the exact opposite end of the corner Small big government and small enforcement of of religious services of of moral values Are the unitarian universalists? No one's even close to those two circles on both sides so Although our our ideologies are vastly different our insistence on ideological purity is actually very similar No, there's no more republican church in america than the Mormons And there's no more democratic white church in america than the unitarian universalist and we're more democratic than they are republican We have 92 identifying with one party. They're only like 85 Um, I like to argue And if you want to get me talking about something how Mormons are actually the true unitarian universalists of Of modern times joseph smith looking for new models of christianity went back to some very old models of christianity Origin and joseph smith origins and a very early church father He had ideas of pre existence and universal salvation and and and god creating And he was also, you know, I believe that god created jesus We come out of Mormons actually hold on to a lot of those same traditions that also inform unitarian universalism Which we've now abandoned To be kind of all-encompassing and they've they've held on to but I can I can talk about that forever So i'm not gonna keep going What I do want to focus on is the fact that these two streams mormonism and unitarian universalism Ran often very divergent courses But often came very close and i'm very happy For me that those two streams brought two churches very close together so I could make A decision when I really needed to make a decision about which place would work best for me Making sense of our heritage our religious heritage is always going to be very messy work Whether we have a deep connection to it or whether we feel very estranged from it What helped me to make sense of my religious heritage is to realize that all of these figures that I've talked about today Their main goal was to tell a better human story And even though they were often very flawed human beings themselves Their desire to lift up humanity by telling a better story about humanity was consistent And They've passed on that responsibility of telling better and better stories more and more relevant stories about humanity to us today To live in the now we must strive to make peace And make understanding of the then Shogam Trungpa says that venerating the past itself Will not solve the world's problems We need to find the link between our traditions and our present experience Nowness or the magic of the present moment is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present There's no changing what brought us here What brought the church to the point it's at now But I don't think most of us came here because of the way the church has always been I think we came here because we had A vision of what the church could be We had an excitement for the possibilities that we would find here and this established and honored and and storied religious tradition Just the same excitement that emerson smith lee eddy truncpa had for for the religious landscape that they found in america That they would use to form new ideas to form new ways of being They shaped our past for better or for worse and we have to leave that to them But the present they have left to us What really excites me is that we get to make our own stories. We get to make our own magic I'm very excited to see where this journey takes me and where this journey takes this congregation in the years to come Thank you Our offering today goes to open doors for refugees of volunteer run non-profit in madison Helping refugees make a home in madison through providing food and clothing vouchers transportation and employment services Please be generous Just as during our try to be generous in connecting with Others in our community We want to thank those who are generous with their time in bringing us today's service So starting with rich divita and gene hills who'll be hosting the hospitality and coffee in a few moments And smiley who did double duty as usher and as lay minister Uh, and we also thank those of you who volunteered spontaneously to help and with the ushering And elizabeth barrett who was our greeter and of course marine friend who Makes it possible for us to hear the service because she managed the sound system today And speaking of being able to hear the service We want to thank John and nancy webster for their generosity and financing A new technology known as hearing loop hearing loop which enables people with hearing aids to get direct transmission of the service Real time while they're here Think of it as worship Wi-Fi But thank you to john and nancy for that generosity And when you think of our office Tory and the gesture that john and nancy have made Those represent i think quite vividly some of the Things about f us that we really like the most The concept of being generous the concept of connecting And we have something else coming up in 19 days that also reflects generosity and connecting It's called cabaret on friday may 4th. How many days from now? 19 and We're gonna cruise the caribbean on friday may 4th here at cabaret If you've never attended cabaret in the past you're in for a real treat. It's all about connecting. It's all about fun. It's about that Caribbean cruise theme It's a party with food and music will even have a conga line and Above all else there's a wonderful auction And the auction gives members of f us a chance to give something of themselves And share that with the rest of you It could be a dinner at their home a group dinner. It could be a party. It could be Sailing lessons a few years ago. Some woman gave belly dance lessons I give belly laugh lessons, but she was giving belly dance lessons And it makes cabaret the gift that keeps on giving long after the event itself so Encourage you to sign up for cabaret to donate something that represents your skills or your cooking or your artwork and register for child care if you like to bring your kids and also Pay in advance because you save a little bit of money And the biggest lesson to learn from this is Come to cabaret Because when you cruise the caribbean You'll love what you are seeing so we'll see you there on may 4th 19 days from today Please rise and body your spirit Hold time. Hopefully they muted me To this place we bring our whole and broken selves This book or one like it lives outside of the Doors there and you can write in it any cares you would like read from the pulpit It's empty today So we will hold a moment of silence for all the unspoken Needs concerns and joys of this congregation Thank you for being here today Thank you for being here Thank you for being Thank you As our service ends here today our service to the world begins Blessed be go in peace and please enjoy the postlude You can hear from far and near A world you've never know Clear day and sea For ever and ever and look around you and you'll see willow star That the glow of your being Outshines every sigh and joy from far and sea For ever


Hello, welcome to my talk. I'm Daniel Borkman. I work on Selium itself and also on the Linux kernel. So I co-maintain eBPF in the Linux kernel. And today's talk is about 100 gigabit per second clusters with Selium building tomorrow's networking data plane. So when looking at data center networks, what are the large challenges and essentially, I think you can put them into three big pillars, scale, performance and operations. Probably all of them would deserve like a talk on its own. So scale, scaling out into many nodes, many parts, performance, making the best use of the resources and operations, making changes to your clusters frequently without disruptions, for example. So my question is, what if IPv6 could address both scale and performance requirements from those three pillars? So that's what I'm going to elaborate in this talk. Before going and looking into more into the future, I actually want to take a step back and look into 2016 because then we actually first announced the Selium experiment. You know, we started out with IPv6 only container networking together with eBPF and XDP. For those of you who don't know what eBPF is, it's kernel technology that makes the kernel programmable, programmizable in a safe way. So yeah, so this is how we started out. IPv6 only networking, scalable, flexible, global addressing. You don't need that. So we tried to abstract away from traditional networking models only focusing on layer 3 and above. And we built all of Selium on top of eBPF for maximum efficiency. So until, you know, we were really excited about IPv6 because the way how we can implement the data plane with that until of course reality kicked in. And back in 2016, the state of IPv6 and Kubernetes and Docker in particular wasn't quite there yet. So yeah, we had to basically go back and implement IPv4 support up on popular demand, which probably a lot of people are running Selium with. So yeah, fast forward, 2020. How does the situation look like today? Kubernetes has adopted IPv6 single stack for quite a while and dual stack also. And the hyperscale has also made progress integrating IPv6 into their environment. All for most of it, rather dual stack. So if you look at, for example, the Manage Kubernetes offerings, AKS, EKS, GKE, they all offer, you know, various level of IPv6 support. Most of them dual stack. There's one single stack. So, but that's already great. In terms of IPv6, like, why do users want to go there? And a lot of times we hear they want to have more IPAM flexibility. So they don't want to run out of IP addresses and have enough headroom through IPv6 in particular when they have large clusters with lots of churn. So in general, there was actually a really interesting dual stack adoption panel at the last KubeCon. I can recommend watching that. In general, it's, right now it's regarded as a transitional state. So of course in the future, looking further out, we want to go to IPv6 end-to-end in general in order to avoid the complexity of having both, you know, of having both IPv4 and IPv6 in your cluster. So the typical approach that we've seen users, today they are trying to build out, you know, islands of IPv6 single stack on-trem clusters, you know, as a clean slate, and then trying to successfully move applications and services into their cluster.  So that's unless you're air-gapped or you're, you know, you're really lucky with dependencies. And if you look at the Alexa 1000 sites, it's a bit of a sad state because, you know, like roughly half of the sites support IPv6 and the other ones not, so it's really not quite there yet. You will hit a couple of ecosystem bumps on the road. For example, when looking at that, I saw that GitHub, which is very frequently used by developers, not IPv6 ready yet, but their support in terms of supporting that. So there's work in progress. And yeah, so in a modern v6-only environment, how do you deal with IPv4? So you will have to run somehow a nut46 or 64 so in order to translate between the two worlds. So looking at nut46 and 64 with Linux, it's actually not possible. So there's no such thing in netfilter because simply the Linux kernel is really complicated and it has a lot of protocol information in the packet itself. But we added support for this in eBPF. So eBPF environment is a bit more constrained, so it's less complex to be able to do that there. And so now the question is, how do you ingress v4? Like if you have a v4 client somewhere on the internet and you want to connect to your v6-only cluster, how do you approach that? So the first option is to use Solium with a stateful nut46 gateway. And the way this typically looks, so on the left side you see an external node making DNS requests. You get back the a record with the IPv4 address. Then this issues the SYN packet. You have to go through a dual-stack component. So that will be like your nut46 gateway which will map the IPv4 address and port to some IPv6 address and port. And then you can go into your IPv6 single-stack Kubernetes cluster. And there you maybe have a Kubernetes load balancer service with that front-end IPv6 address, and then you can talk to it. And that front-end address will have backends that we can manage. So yeah, so basically that 4 to 6 gateway is sitting at the edge of the cluster and it's the only dual-stack component. And we map essentially from WIP to WIP, like from an IPv4 WIP to an IPv6 WIP and port. And the only thing that is exposed from the Kubernetes cluster itself is the IPv6 that will be accessible without going to this extra hop to the V4 gateway. So this has a couple of upsides. So the IPv4 WIP and port is completely decoupled from your Kubernetes cluster and from your Kubernetes service. You don't need a special load balancer service. You don't have special IPAM requirements for the load balancer, and any public IPv6 prefix works as is. You can even do, like, with load balanc... Like, you can even load balanc through multiple Kubernetes clusters, like, for example, through weighted maglev and so on. So that's possible. There are also downsides to that. So you need to have, like, a control plane in order to push down, like, the IPv4 to IPv6 mappings. And the other one is the original source IP preservation when the traffic hits. The Kubernetes cluster is lost because you have to do the net. It's stateful, so it needs to do a D-net and S-net, but, you know, thanks to EBPF and you can push it into the XTP layer, like, into the driver layer, you can actually achieve high packet rates, nevertheless, like, tens of millions of packets per second. Option two, that is on the table, would be to have, like, a stateless net 4 to 6 gateway. And the way this works, basically, is quite similar, but here you only do the translation on the layer 3. So there's, like, a special prefix when you translate to the v6, and then you need to have this, like, a load balancer service with this special prefix in your Kubernetes cluster as well to then load balance to the back ends. And then you have the advantage to not have state. So this is really highly scalable because you don't hold state on the node, on the gateway node. It allows for source address preservation because, you know, the original client source address is essentially encoded into the IPv6 address. And you can use things like load balancer source ranges to also filter for that, for external IPv4 clients, and no control plan is needed because the translation works essentially transparent. But the downside is, of course, you need to have, like, a load balancer IPAM which understands this prefix and essentially has, like, a public IPv4 accessible address in there. And yeah, so you need to have this awareness. So essentially when the cluster replies back to the client, this, of course, has to be, then, again, routable in the Internet. So this needs to have some public v4 address that is then encoded in the v6. So now, like, let's bring in one more layer of difficulty. So this was maybe more of this, like, more straightforward part, four to six into the cluster. The other layer of difficulty is, like, when you go to IPv6, only cluster and it wants to talk to IPv4. So here DNS 6 to 4 plays a key part in that. For example, when you're, like, going back to the previous example, when you want to do a DNS lookup for GitHub, you get the IPv4 address, but when you try a Quad A record, it doesn't answer. So how do you talk to it? There's, like, DNS 6.4 proxy. For example, here's a public Google one, and it will return you an address where essentially it has an IPv6-specific prefix, and the remaining bits is the encoded IPv4 address in there. So this is the way how it will look. So now you have on the left side your Kubernetes cluster, on the right side the Internet, and if your node wants to talk to the Internet, you have to go through this proxy. The proxy will make an actual A request through DNS to the Internet. It will receive a reply, and it will then encode this reply in a Quad A record back to your cluster, and now your nodes in the cluster can do a SIN request. To this address, this has to go through the NAT 6 to 4 gateway. It will then do the translation, and it will then go back to IPv4 and hit the actual external nodes. So, yeah, so this... Oh, okay, yeah, sorry. So the Quad DNS, for example, supports this kind of functionality if you want to use this in your environment. So the upside is, again, if you have a stateless translation, this is, again, highly scalable, doesn't hold state on the node, and all the traffic in the cluster can be pure V6 only. So the nodes, pods, even the gateway IP, so there's no dealing with IPv4. The downside here is that the IPM management becomes more complex because the pods node, like a secondary IP address, which has this specific prefix, like the NAT 4 well-known prefix in there in order to reply back. So in order to overcome this limitation, one thing that can be addressed, that can address this is essentially to do the stateful translation on the way out. So the pods reply with their primary address, hit the gateway node, do the translation there, talk back to the IPv4 client. So I have a short demo for the 4266-4 gateway. Given the wireless was quite bad in here, I did some pre-recording the other day. So I'm just walking you through that. So here you have an IPv6 reachable web server, and it has an IPv6 address. It can only be reached there. And now if you go into the gateway node itself, so this is running Syllium as a standalone, you will see now that it has an IPv4 service prefix. And the backend itself is the actual, like the web browser. And you can see you hit curl on IPv4 address and you get to the IPv6 in here. So that's the one case, the one situation. And now the other way around, the NAT 624, it's quite similar, so you have an IPv4 reachable address. And it does not, it cannot be reached through IPv6. Now you go to the standalone gateway node. You have an IPv6 front-end address in Syllium in here. And this is all done through EBPF at the XDP layer. So if you do the curl, it will reach the IPv4 page. So, yeah. Okay, so now we have bootstrapped our IPv6 cluster and it can talk to IPv4, so what's next? So as I said, IPv6 does not only address the scaling concerns but also future performance requirements. So enter Syllium with big TCP. So big TCP is a technology that got merged into recent kernels in 5.19. It has been developed by Google and the goal from Google side, but also for the broader community is to support future data center workloads for single sockets where you go 100 gigabit per second, 200, 400 and beyond. So that is the aim for that. And you would say, why care? Well, if you have big data workloads, AI, machine learning, or other really network intensive workloads that have bulk transfers, so it's really useful for that. But even if you don't have it, it will free up your application resources so that you can use that instead of the kernel stack and spend cycles there. If you look at 100 gigabit per second, it's really constrained. So if you think about 1,500 MTU, you would only have 123 nanoseconds per packet and you would have to be able to process around 8.15 million packet per second. So that itself is quite unrealistic for the kernel stack, so you really need batching. And the kernel has batching. It has GRO and TSO, so generic receive of load and transmit segmentation of load. If you look at the way how the kernel receives and transmits packets today, so for example, packets going into the application, you have the network card, you have EBPF layer, and then there's something like GRO. And this really tries to aggregate many packets. So what you can see here, many MTU size packets are coming in and it tries to aggregate this into a single supersize packet up to 64K and it will push it up to the stack so that you have to traverse the stack only once instead of multiple times. And the same way also works on the way out. So the kernel stack typically tries to aggregate a large packet and then on your hardware NIC, it will typically, like most of the NIC supporters today, it will then chunk them up into individual packets. There's also GSO, that's the software equivalent for that. So yeah, so once the NIC chunks them up into packets, usually they are received as a train of packets like for TCP streams and then the GRO will pull it back together so there's not too much latency where GRO would have to wait. But there's an upper size limitation. So the 64K is really the upper size limitation that we have today. The reason is that the packet size is encoded in the IP headers total length and that is 16 bit and therefore it's limited to 64K in the same way of course on the way down. So can we make bigger batches? So here IPv6 is to the rescue. So big TCP basically overcomes the 16 bit limit with just a small kernel change so it will insert a hop by hop IPv6 extension header. And this is just local to the node because the GRO aggregation, you don't have to make any changes on your network on the wire or you don't have to change MTUs. So the way this looks is basically it's like the IPv6 header, it will have a length of zero and then in the hop by hop ladder, in the hop by hop extension header it will have a jumbo extension there like a payload length field for 32 bit so it can theoretically go to 4 gigabit as a packet size which is of course unrealistic today at least but that's the theoretical limitation. And with that you can actually bump the aggregation size for GRO and also TSO like for the way in and for the way out. Right now the kernel has set this to 512K but this can be raised in the future but IPv4 is stuck essentially with 64K limit and we implemented support for this feature in Syllium 113 that is released approximately towards the end of the year so there's just a single knob and then all your parts will go into use it. So Syllium will essentially set this functionality for all the parts, for all the devices and the host and then there may be less obvious parts this will also help for request response type workloads. So we did some latency measurements in our lab and what we found is like on the last bar here if you run Syllium with big TCP disabled which is basically just a stock Syllium and if you then enable it you will see like or at least we've seen in our tests 2.2X lower P99 latency which is quite good and it also helps like for the transactions like we have request response transactions and it improved them by 32% and looking at the bulk TCP streams so the default when you run for example IPERF in your network from part to part when it was off we were able to reach on our test systems 52 gigabit per second so those test systems they are just like in our lab they are like gaming systems but with 100 gigabit NICs because they had PCI Express 4 and then if you turned it on we just got so we got a plus 8 gigabit per second performance improvement so we were able to get to 60 gigabit per second and then if you look at what else would be missing so if you look into actually the trace profile you see like a lot of copy to and from user that's a limitation because IPERF does not yet use memory map TCP so there's a good net dev talk from the Google TCP maintainers into memory map TCP and how you can even go beyond that so that's essentially now the limitation here so yeah so more broadly big TCP is one piece of the picture if I look at Syllium with tomorrow's data plane in mind so how can we get to a high-scale opinionated data plane and if I look at Syllium as a standalone gateway so we achieved this through EBPF on the XDP layer to a layer for load balancing which has a programmable API it supports mark left, DSR, graceful backend termination and then the new things with the net 4.6 and 6.4 gateway so that you can build V6 only clusters and then the other side so Syllium inside Kubernetes as a networking platform so there are like a bunch of pieces of the puzzle to get it really to high scale so one of the things is the EBPF-based Q-proxy replacement which uses also XDP and a socket load balancer in the kernel then we have a feature which is called EBPF-based host routing for lowering the latency I will go into that a bit we have a bandwidth manager I gave a talk about this at the last KubeCon if you're interested so this essentially installs FQ Q-discs on your physical devices and this allows to do pacing and this is BBR for ports which would otherwise not be possible and you can do bandwidth limitation which with the lower latency than the usual means and then the new pieces that we added now in the new Syllium release is IPv6 big TCP support and last but not least a new meta driver as a weave device replacement so I will go into that as the last part of the talk so what is a meta device in order to explain you the rationale how we got there I want to first show the typical data path how it looks in the kernel so typically you go to the upper stack for packets in and out of the pod you have to go to IP routing net filter and so on and we added an extension a while back into the kernel where from BPF we can directly push traffic into the pod just in one go so without having to traverse the CPU back lock queues in the kernel for weave devices so that really helps to deliver latencies you can wake up the application right away without having to go to a rescheduling point on the way out we added the helper to push traffic into the neighboring subsystem so it can do a L2 resolution so you don't have to go through the upper stack and so that's basically the eBPF host routing feature and it really helps with the performance and now the new component is basically a weave device replacement and that essentially helps to be like the goal of that is essentially to have eBPF programs as part of the device inside the pod of course without the pod being able to unload it or change it in any way because you don't want to do that you want to control it from the host namespace for example and the whole idea is to shift the Selenium eBPF programs from the TC layer where we had this originally into the device itself and this helps reduce the latency even further so if you look at the flame graphs for the kernel so this is the typical weave case so what you can see is like clears some of the metadata into a Persepure Backlog Queue also on the way out and then in the worst case the kernel software Qdemon issues another thread so you have this rescheduling point so basically the call graph goes here then it does an nqueue and then it has to pick up the packet again to then process it and with the new device type that we built in tailored for Selenium you just do everything in one go you don't have this additional queuing for this rescheduling and that really helps to reduce latency so our main goal with the eBPF host routing this was all the way for packets going into the pod and now with this device this will basically solve it for packets going out of the pod so this in combination the goal that we had in mind with that is basically to reduce the latency and to increase the performance in the same way as the application would run inside the host namespace and if you look at the latency here you can see in the yellow line is essentially the latency for applications running in the host and it's essentially the same same with the transaction rate like if you have more request response type workloads they will also be on par with the host and throughput as well so that will basically solve it so essentially the pieces of the puzzle like for a high scale data plane that I talked about that are really critical in this scenario is like the eBPF base cube proxy replacement the bandwidth manager that I covered at the kubecon in April the eBPF host routing the new IPv6 big TCP support in the meta devices so when you then run Solium you will get all of that yeah last but not least I want to thank a couple of folks in the linux kernel community bpf and Kubernetes community also those who from Google who created initially the big TCP support in the kernel because I think it's a really exciting feature which has a lot of potential and as you can see it's maybe not like an obvious thing when you move to IPv6 you will get from that so yeah with that I would like to thank you and open up for questions all right so if you have multiple clusters then you would have to have such a gateway in front of your IPv6 only cluster so they would have to talk to each other you would have to talk through that web if you expose it as a service yeah I mean you would have to make that gateway aware of this yeah so well I mean this is still like behind network namespaces right so you would have to get out of the network namespace in the first place you cannot just cross this barrier or like break this barrier in that sense I mean this will also work for a pod to pod so it will also like directly go into the device inside the pod without having to go to this backlog queue yeah of course no it's not tied to yeah I mean this is definitely shared it's a virtual device in that sense which overcomes the limitations that the weave device has oh one thing I forgot to mention while I was actually preparing the talk I noticed that there's actual progress so the GitHub will have v6 support so this is really great okay so yeah so if you have more questions please either come to the so you move or ask me directly or you know thanks


When you eat bacon and pork and things like that, that comes from a pig? Yes. You know that? And where does the beef come from? Do you know where beef comes from? It's a cow. A cow, yeah.   It's not very nice. A vegan is someone who doesn't eat animal eggs that come from a chicken.  So vegans don't wear skin. They don't use makeup that's been tested on like a bunny rabbit. They test the chemicals on a bunny rabbit, which hurts the rabbit. So a vegan doesn't use anything tested on an animal. But there's vegan everything. You can get vegan ice cream and vegan milk and everything. Show your mum the book if you want. So we don't ask us for money for anyone or nothing like that. We're just asking people to choose like a vegan option over an option that does that to like a pig or a cow or a chicken. We're saying we don't need to for our health. You can be healthy without eating animals. And so we don't think there's a good enough reason to put an animal in a gas chamber or to bulk on a cow in the head or we think that animals deserve a life without suffering or pigs, lads. The animals that people forget about. We always think about animal cruelty as in dogs and cats and you know. This is where most of the animal cruelty actually happens. I did my research project. Oh really? Did it change your eating habits at all? For a while. But then you fall back into the old habit, isn't it? It's just too hard because my parents are like meat eaters. It's just too hard. Yeah, so am I. My mum's vegan now. Yeah, I mean, what's hard about it do you think? I struggle having to try and change diet around them. Well most of the food people eat is already vegan. Potatoes, beans, rice, pasta. Just things that you put. Yeah, but you can get fake vegan meats if you want. You can get substitutes, beans and lentils and vegan chicken. There's heaps of vegan alternatives now. The majority of animal suffering happens because we eat them. And it's unavoidable. You might think that there's humane ways to do it but it's just not a reality. If everyone wants to eat meat they have to produce it efficiently. Well, I would take one of these. Have you ever thought about it? Yeah, I have already. I have thought about it. It's really easy. Like if you think about... I suppose the only way I actually eat now is chicken. Yeah, well chicken, yeah. We think of chickens as individuals with rights like a bird, like a parrot. You wouldn't have heard a bird if you've seen a pigeon on the side of someone kicking a pigeon.  And I know we look at chicken, we just think it's food but there's something that happens before it makes it to your plate. And if you've seen that you would not want to eat it. A sane person wouldn't want to eat that. But yeah, obviously they don't televise this. Chicken companies don't advertise it. So it's hard for you to know, isn't it? But there's activists that go in, leave cameras, get the footage, bring it out, show people this is what's happening. Because we pay for it. We want it. And basically they're supplying a demand. And it's not necessary for health. We don't need meat for health. Supply for personal purpose. When it's habit, convenience, tradition, parents did it. And it's accepted as moral, but people are against animal cruelty. It's kind of a double standard in a way. We say we're against animal cruelty but we do this to animals for our food.   So veganism just means you try to reduce the suffering of animals in your life. We're lever or byproducts that are tested on animals. We just try to leave them alone as much as possible. As humans we're going to affect the habitat by existing but it doesn't mean we should cause the maximum amount of harm. We're killing trillions of animals a year.  Always finding new efficient ways of killing them and breeding them and growing them really fast. We just think they're conscious individuals that deserve the right to a life without suffering. We expect for our dogs and our family members and us and people are good. They don't want to treat animals like this but we're just letting them know that without our money, paying for the meat, without our consumption of it, this can end eventually. No worries. And the internet is massive right now.  There's literally millions of videos about what you can eat, what you can make. Just know the things to avoid. You might not like store-in-the-earth. Almond milk, rice milk, chocolate almond milk. There's vegan cheese, vegan meats, vegan chicken. You might not like one brand. You might find another one. Oh, that one was really nice, did you taste that? And it feels good to know that you're not eating the flesh of an animal that had to suffer for no reason at all. We're all right. Thank you for that. You look sharp to hear that. I'm all right. This is Australian footage, current footage of abattoirs, how their bread, the conditions they're kept in. What do you think of that? That's a gas chamber. That's sticking the pig to drain them out of the blood. So basically all animals get stabbed in the neck to drain them off the blood after they've been however they're stunned. Bolt gunned in the head or electrically stunned or chucked in a gas chamber. Then they're decapitated or... So, yeah. What do you think of Australia's treatment of animals? Not very good. So do you think we have any power in what happens to them all? What do you think we could do to help? The best thing, what do you think it is? Well they're not by me. Stop eating them. And a vegan's not just someone who doesn't eat meat. We don't use animals. We don't eat their eggs. We don't enslave them for their milk. Because where does the milk, who's the milk for? Do you know? The children. The cows, the calf. And where does the calf go, do you know? Probably the slaughtered. The veal industry. So yeah, it's a horrible industry, dairy, eggs. But on top of that we don't agree with animal testing, things like that either. We don't want animals to be treated how we wouldn't treat a human being. Because we just think that moral value, like dogs and cats, you know. Horses, we want them treated nicely in the book. It's really easy. You get burgers, hot dogs, ice creams, you know. We eat starches like rice pasta, potatoes, beans. You know, we get all the good foods. We can get vegan nowadays. Anything you can think of that you love. Get the vegan version. And you know, it's obviously not healthy to put flesh of your animals gone through this suffering into our bodies. You know. So it's healthier to be vegan? Cool. Yeah. Well heart disease is our number one killer. Saturated fat, cholesterol, aren't found. Well some plant foods contain saturated fat, but no plant foods contain cholesterol. That's an animal, from animal flesh. So. Right there. Well, have a look. Thanks for listening, mate. Take care. Man, fast, you know it. Mama, I worked. Yeah. It's very important for the head. Yeah. Yeah, a bolt gun. A bolt gun in the head. Yeah. See this is a gas chamber. That's how they eat. Yeah, that's pretty scary for the pig, yeah. So we just think like from the animal's perspective they don't want us to do that to them. We don't really need to. It's not. We don't need to eat animals for our health. So we can be healthy without them. So we just think why are we doing it to them, you know. And it's because people like the way they taste and we just think like that. That's not a good enough reason to put them in these conditions and to kill them, you know. A lot of these are in South Australia.  Yeah, I know. My ex-girl. Yeah, but a lot of farmers aren't cruel to this. They treat them well, but then they put them in the truck and they send them to the slaughterhouse. So that's where we're saying at the end of the day they still all get pushed in a gas chamber or their heads cut off and that's what is the matter with it. It's not always the treatment, you know. Some people treat their animals really well, but not at the slaughterhouse. This is how you can eliminate or reduce this animal's suffering from your plate. Hot chips, pasta, rice, potatoes, beans. You can get all these fake meats. The Lord of the Fries just down the road on Highly Street. All vegan burgers, hot dogs, chips. Everything, man. You can get vegan ice cream, vegan milk, you know. It's made out of plants, nuts and grains. It's healthier for you, bro. And, you know... No, it tastes killer, bro. You get the so good one. Man, you can't even taste the difference. You can't even taste the difference, man. All walnuts will have it in the freezer section. So good. It's made out of sweet. It's creamy. It's ice cream, man. It just doesn't have that in it. Thanks for listening anyway, bro. Thanks a lot for your time, man. You're not missing out on anything. You know, feel healthy, you know.  And the animals don't have to go into a slaughterhouse. Yeah, think about it. Thank you. Just have a read through that. It's really easy. Honestly, the easiest thing I've ever done. Healthier for you. Lord of the Fries. Lord of the Fries is up there on the left-hand side on Highly. All vegan burgers, vegan hot dogs, vegan chips. There's no violence or suffering or cruelty in it. It's all easy to do, man. There's supermarkets now. Vegan options everywhere. You can get almond milk instead of dairy milk. You can get all the tofu, all the fake meat. You can get beans, pasta, rice, potatoes, fruit. There's fast food places. Lord of the Fries is all vegan. There's burger places, hot dog places, all throughout the city. You don't miss out on anything. Pizza, if you want pizza. Okay. This is not uncommon. This is standard. Thank you. No worries.


and welcome to our live broadcast of the sitting of the Senate. Today is Thursday, July 14, 2022. I am your host or your anchor for today Jack Hingson Compton. We should be commencing in a few minutes where the proceedings will begin by the president of the Senate, the Honourable Claudius Francis, walking through the chambers. As I said, we have a few minutes before we can start. Unlike Tuesday where we saw a sitting of the House of Assembly, today might be a little shorter as we have a shorter agenda. Today we really only have about five motions directed at borrowing funds from international donor agencies and foreign governments for a national development agenda. We also have one bill on table for discussion and debate and presentation and from the agenda that I have seen, we should start off with prayers and announcements by the president of the Senate, appointments of session committees and to wrap it up we would have papers to be laid. As I mentioned, we have five motions and one bill to be presented. The one bill is just a first reading so the proceedings for the entire day should go by fairly quickly. I believe what may take some time or what where the debate may be extensive is on the five motions. Now if I could just read some of the motions which I have right here in front of me. I also forgot to mention we will have a few statutory instruments which will be read during today's proceedings. So the first motion scheduled to be debated for today. If I could just read it out by the Honourable Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Investments, Creative Industries, Culture and Information and Leader of Government Business. Number one, I do apologise that that first motion will actually be read by the Leader of Government Business. I apologise for that, not the Honourable Parliamentary Secretary. The first motion be resolved that Parliament authorises the Minister for Finance to borrow the amount of US $10 million from the Export-Import-A-Back Bank of the Republic of China to finance the implementation of national development projects and initiatives. It's further resolved that A, the loan is repayable in 30 consecutive equal or as nearly equal as possible semi-annual installments. The first of which must be made on the last day of the 66-month from the date. The first advance under the loan is made by the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China and thereafter on the last day of each successive six-month period. B, in the full amount of the loan has been drawn down, each principal instalment must be in the amount of US $333,334 except that last principal instalment must be in the amount of $333,314 US, otherwise the amount of each instalment shall be adjusted by the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China on Taiwan. Interest is payable at a rate of the six-month secured overnight financing rate plus 0.20% plus 1.5% per annum. D, the loan is repayable in 20 years commencing from the date of first displacement of the loan inclusive of a grace period of five years. And that as I mentioned is going to be the first motion that will be presented and debated for today. That is a loan from the Export-Import Bank from the Republic of China on Taiwan. That motion was actually presented by the Prime Minister on Tuesday, July 12th. That was a loan of US $10 million and those funds are going to be used to finance the implementation of various national development projects and initiatives. Several of those initiatives, as was discussed on Tuesday, were initiatives that were presented by the Prime Minister earlier this year, in April of this year, during the Prime Minister's budget address. So if you need to go back and re-watch the Prime Minister's budget address, you can check out our social media platforms, the Government of St Lucia's YouTube channel and the Government of St Lucia's Facebook page. You can also catch us live anytime there's a sitting of the House of Assembly and the sitting of the Senate on the National Television Network. As I mentioned, several of the initiatives that will be funded by this loan from the Export-Import Bank from the Republic of China on Taiwan include an expansion of the craft and CMOS industry, which is quite an emerging industry that should provide a lot of employment to our youth, hopefully in the future. It falls in line with the Prime Minister's promises to inject funds into the youth economy, hopefully looking towards a very prosperous future. He mentioned during his presentation, I'll be the Prime Minister, that the equivalent of 7.2 million Eastern Caribbean dollars from the total loan amount will be injected into the youth economy program. Four million Eastern Caribbean dollars will be used for the Millennium Highway West Coast Road project, a very timely project that should be coming on board very soon. And over 3 million Eastern Caribbean dollars out of that total of US 10 million dollars will fund the improvement of street lights in the country. What's going to be happening is that we will be replacing those bulbs with energy conserving bulbs, that's with the street lights across the country. As mentioned earlier, when I read through the order paper for that motion, the loan is repayable in 20 years and is inclusive of a grace period of five years. Now if I could only read through the other motions that are on the table for today, on the agenda for today, be it resolved, this is number two, the second motion, be it resolved that Parliament authorizes the Minister for Finance to borrow from the European Investment Bank the sum of 13 million 500,000 euros to finance emergency operating expenses in the health sector related to the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Obviously for the past two years we have the entire world has thoroughly suffered with through the advent of the coronavirus or the COVID-19 pandemic. In this motion, be it resolved, be it further resolved that A, the loan is repayable over a period of 20 years from the date of first displacement of the loan inclusive of a four-year grace period, B, the loan payments shall be made in consecutive equal semi-annual installments, C, the loan payments shall commence after the grace period of four years expires, D, the interest is payable at one at a fixed rate of 1.35% to 1.45% to be termed by the European Investment Bank at the time of displacement for each tranche, 2. At a floating rate of three months, Euro Interbank offered rate plus 110 basis points to 120 basis points per annum, a lot of technical jargon in there, but I'm sure a lot of you finance aficionados and bankers would understand a lot of the technical jargon being discussed in the motion. Number three, the third motion, be it resolved that parliament authorizes the minister for finance of finance to borrow an amount of US $8 million from the International Development Association to finance the organization of eastern Caribbean states data for decision making project, be it further resolved that A, the service charge is the greater of one, the sum of three-fourths of 1% per annum plus the basis adjustment to the service charge, and two, three-fourths of 1% per annum on the withdrawn credit balance and B, the maximum commitment charge is one-half of 1% per annum on the withdrawing of the withdrawn financing balance, and C, the loan is repayable in 40 years, commencing from the dates of displacement of the loan inclusive of a grace period of 10 years, and D, the principal amount of the loan is repayable on each 15th day of March and 15th day of September, each year commiserate with the following terms. Under D, we have one 1% of the loan amounts commencing on the 15th day of September, 2032, and including the 15th day of March, 2042, and under two 2% of the loan amounts commencing on the 15th day of September, 2042, and including the 15th day of March, 2062. The fourth motion to be debated for today, be it resolved that parliament authorizes the minister for finance to borrow an amount of USD $18 million from the International Development Association for the Implementation of the Unleashing of the Blue Economy of the Caribbean Project. Be it further resolved that A, the service charge is the greater of 1, the sum of three-fourths of 1% per annum, plus the basis adjustment to the service charge, and two, three-fourths of 1% per annum on the withdrawn credit balance, B, the maximum commitment charge is one-half of 1% per annum on the un withdrawn financing balance, C, the loan is repayable in 40 years, commencing from the date of displacement of the loan inclusive of a grace period of 10 years, D, the principal amount of the loan is repayable on each 15th day of May and 15th day of November each year commiserate with the following terms. So these are the following terms. The first one is 1% of the loan amount commencing on the 15th day of May of 2032 and including the 15th day of November 2041. The second term, 2% of the loan amount commencing on the 15th day of May 2042 and including the 15th day of November 2061. The fifth and final motion to be presented and debated for today be it resolved that parliament authorizes the minister of finance to write off the debt in the sum of EC 546,264 dollars owed to the government by the Forse Jacques Credit Cooperative Society Limited with respect to the Mocha Housing Development Project. So that was the five motions. We should see a very, very heated and intelligent debate coming up in today's sitting of the House of Senate. And as I also mentioned, we have one final bill at the end and that bill will be presented by the honorable parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Investment, Creative Industries, Culture, and Information and Leader of Government Business. And that bill is called the International Banks Amendment and we should have a first only the first reading of this bill. So hopefully it will not be a long program today. But you never know when these debates get on you get a quite a heated and intellectual debate from your senators and your upper house of parliament. So we are still waiting for the president of the Senate to enter the chambers, but please stay tuned to the national television network for our live broadcast of the sitting of the Senate. And we are streaming live on our social media platforms, which are our Government of St. Lucia YouTube channel and our Government of St. Lucia Facebook page. Thank you. I am Jacques Kingston Compton. Please stay tuned. We'll be for the proceedings. This is the live broadcast of the sitting of the Senate. Today is July 14, Thursday, 2022. We hope that you have been enjoying our broadcast so far, but we're going to take a short break and resume as soon as the president of the Senate walks in. And before that, our sergeant and arms should give us a signal as to when the proceedings are going to begin. But we want you to please stay tuned to the national television network and view us live streaming on our social media platforms. And we should be back very momentarily in a few minutes with your live broadcast of the sitting of the Senate. Please stay tuned, be very patient, and we should be back very shortly.