 I know we're just a little bit of a mess, but on the jazz band, they were telling me what happened to that song. As David was explaining, it's the same thing with the Hartford, yes, they have to walk, they have to be like, they can't play the guitar, they just have to play the bass a lot more quickly, so it's not a big deal. Especially when it's coming from the band. Generally, the audio is not running anymore with the music services. Because it's on the radio, it's not running anymore with the music. Because it's on the radio, they try to stop it between the services. What we're doing now is we have to run it in order to make it. So in that video, in terms of the audio, it doesn't come down that perfectly, it's not really a service. I was participating in a doctorate in between services. They told me I had to mess with my doctor, but I didn't do my doctorate here. So I was walking around talking to them about what they were doing. What's your name? I'm a doctor. I was in both of them. I'm a doctor. I'm a Brian Roberts. Oh, I think that was Brian Roberts. I can't tell you. Who's Brian? I don't know. I don't know. It's Brian Roberts. What do you use? I don't know. I don't know. There are three of them. I don't know. There are two. You can use them well. I think that one was better. I'm glad they're all here. It's fine. It's all good. I don't know. I don't know. I think it's better, it's better. I'm glad they're here. I don't know. It's not like this. That's the next. Nice. Do they also have a table? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. Do they have a table? Yeah. Oh, okay. Do they have a table? Yeah. Do they have a table? Yeah. Do they have a table? Yeah. Yeah, they have a table. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, okay. Okay, okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, okay. I'm going to miss me a lot. Yeah, there you go. Hey, we got this. This is Mark. There's a book here. Do you want me to put that up on the table? Please join in a moment of centering silence so we can be fully present with each other this morning. And now let's get musically centered by turning to the words for our in-gathering hymn, which you'll find inside your order of service. And speaking of being connected, good morning everybody. And welcome to another Sunday here at First Unitarian Society, where independent thinkers 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. I'm Steve Goldberg, a proud, good-looking member of this congregation. And I'd like to extend a special welcome to any guests, visitors, or newcomers. If this is your first time at First Unitarian Society, I know that you'll find it's a special place indeed. And if you'd like to learn more about our special buildings, we conduct a guided tour after today's service. Just gather over here by the windows, and we'll take care of you. And speaking of taking care of each other, this is the perfect time to silence those pesky electronic devices that you simply will not need for the next hour. While you're doing that, I'll remind you that if you're accompanied this morning by a youngster and you think that young person would prefer to enjoy the service from a more private space, we offer a couple options for you. One is our child haven in the back corner of the auditorium. And the other is some comfortable seating just outside the doorway in the commons. As is the case every weekend, our service is brought to us by a great group of people whom we call volunteers, and I'd like to announce their names so that you can join me in thanking and appreciating their effort. Operating the sound system, I say thank you to Maureen Friend. Our lay minister is Anne Smiley. Thank you very much, Anne. Karen Hill is our greeter upstairs, thanks to Karen. And we have a group of ushers today. We'd like to thank Melinda Carr, Doug Hill, Wally Brinkman, and Allison Brooks for their help as ushers. The hospitality and coffee are hosted by Terry Felton and Sharon Scraddish. Hannah Pinkerton is making sure that our greenery is vibrant and watered. And speaking of our greenery today, the flowers behind me were lovingly donated by Jean and John Tewes in honor of their 60th anniversary. That's 60th with a six. So congratulations and thank you to them. And Richard Miller is our tour guide. Speaking of tour guides, we offer an opportunity for others to be trained as meeting house guides. And at 3 o'clock this afternoon, not 12.30 as listed in your Red Floor's bulletin, but 3 o'clock this afternoon we offer a training session, a brief one for those of you interested in becoming meeting house guides. Now we have a couple other brief announcements. One relates to Passover. Our annual FUS Passover Seder will be held Friday evening, April 22nd. And it's a Unitarian Universalist adaptation of the traditional Passover Seder featuring a traditional, tasty, delicious, and wonderful kosher dinner. It's a family-friendly event. And if you'd like to attend, you can sign up at the table in the commons and we ask that you sign up by a week from tomorrow, Monday, April 18th, so that we can plan appropriately for this very popular Unitarian version of the traditional Passover Seder. And speaking of special projects and meals, you might know that FUS has a Shelter Meals Team, a Shelter Meals Team. And they need people to help prepare 90 servings of food, vegetables, and desserts for the upcoming Men's Shelter Meal at Grace Episcopal Church Saturday evening, April 16th. So this coming weekend, Saturday evening, April 16th at 8 o'clock. To sign up, the email address for that is listed in your red floors bulletin, but I'll read it for you right now. It's FUS Shelter Meals, again FUS Shelter Meals at gmail.com. So speaking of special projects, who knows how many days until May 20th, which is our cabaret. How many days until May 20th? 40. You were here for the 9 o'clock. That's right. 40 days and 40 nights until a party of biblical proportions known as cabaret. This year's theme is an evening in Italy. You can experience Italian food, Italian music, Unitarian auction items, when this entire place is going to be transformed into an Italian party venue. And come see how this has earned a reputation over the years cabaret has as one of the most enjoyable and entertaining and exciting evenings on the FUS social calendar. You get a chance to raise money for the organization we love so well, First Unitarian Society. And you can buy your tickets after the service, or if you want to wait and pay more money at the door, you can wait until then. Otherwise, come to the cabaret table after the service and we'll take good care of you there. Also, we're still looking and you have all kinds of time, but we'd like you to move quickly in identifying items that you would like to donate to the cabaret auction. And if you participated in the past and select to connect, we're going to be combining those events with cabaret as well. But it's going to be a very Italian evening. I know some of you are wondering, how Italian is it going to be? Well, let me just say, when you come to cabaret, I just know you will say, that's Italian. With the food and the song lasting all the night long, that's Italian. We'll have an auction there, bargains beyond compare, that's Italian. So please come to cabaret, get your ticket today, it's Italian. Well, that concludes the announcements for today. So I invite you now to sit back or lean forward to enjoy today's service. I heard the nine o'clock service and I know that this will touch your heart, stir your spirit and trigger one or two new thoughts. We're glad you're here. See you in 40 days at cabaret. Come to this place where you are invited to be here and present with us in whatever vessel that you came in, whatever its shape or size. And to highlight that, I would like to invoke the words of the late great George Carlin. You probably noticed elsewhere that I use the word fat. I use that word because that's what fat people are. They're fat, they're not large, they're not stout, they're not chunky or hefty or plump. They're not big boned. Dinosaurs are big boned. These people are not necessarily obese either. Obese is a medical term, a particularly meaningless term at that. They're not overweight. Overweight implies that there is some right weight. So there's no correct weight. Heavy is also misleading. An aircraft carrier is heavy. It's not fat. Only people are fat and that's what fat people are. I offer no apology for this. It's not intended as a criticism or an insult. It's simply descriptive language. And if you put a judgment on that descriptive language, that says more about you than the people you're describing. I don't like euphemisms either. Euphemisms are a small form of lying. Fat people are not gravitationally disadvantaged. I prefer seeing things the way that they are. I like seeing things and people the way that they are, and I'd like to see you all better. So if you wanted to rise in body and or spirit as we light our chalice, the words can be found in your order of service. We light this chalice for all who are here and all who are not, for all who have ever walked through our doors and for those who may yet find this spiritual home, for those who we can't even yet imagine. For each of us, for all, may this flame burn bright and warm. And I encourage you to give bright and warm friendly greetings to each other. And young ones at heart who choose to step up for a story. We have a great book today. Does anyone want to come up front for a story? I see some enthusiasm. I like it. Hi, how are you? Fantastic. You can all have the asm. This is exciting. I can't wait to read this book and I just read it now. All right. So this book is called It's Okay to Be Different. And the author is Todd Parr. Okay to be different. It's okay to be missing a tooth or two or three. Yeah, some of you, that's okay. It's okay. Wonderful that your friend lost a tooth on his birthday. I bet that's okay too. Hey, can we read the story? Thank you. Okay. It's okay to need some help. It's okay. Hold on, let's read the story. It's okay to have a different nose. That's any of you ever seen a rainbow zebra? Now you have. Have no hair. And it's okay to have big ears. And it's okay to have wheels. Okay to be small or medium or large or extra large. And it's okay to wear glasses. And it's okay to talk about your feelings, to eat macaroni and cheese in the bathtub. And it's okay to say no to bad things. And it's okay to be from a different planet. What's this, or a different place? This says a different place, but the picture makes no sense. He is saying, it's okay to be embarrassed. And it's okay to come in last. And it's okay to dance by yourself. I'm glad I do that all the time. And it's okay to have a pet worm. It's okay to be proud of yourself. And it's okay to have different moms. And it's okay to have different dads. And it's okay to be adopted. Pretty much okay to have any kind of family, right? And it's okay to have an invisible friend. And it's okay to do something nice for someone else. And it's okay to lose your mittens. And it's even okay to get mad. Okay to do something nice for yourself. And it's okay to help squirrels gather nuts. It's okay to have different kinds of friends. And it's okay to make a wish. Adpar wrote you a letter. He said, it's okay to be different. You are special and important just because of being who you are. Love, Todd. And I hope you all enjoy the special different parts about yourselves as you go to your classes. We're going to sing him number 118, this little light of mind. And if you know the words, sing it while you're leaving. And if the rest of you want to rise and body your spirit, please do so. I love it when the choir is fat girl Facebook rant that I share with permission. Dear men in bars in California, this may come as a shock to you, but I do know that I'm fat. I do in fact have mirrors hanging in my home. And despite all of the rhetoric that tells me I shouldn't enjoy living in them, I actually think I'm attractive. I appreciate that you also think that I'm attractive. But it's not necessary to tell me that you do so in spite of or even because of the fact that I'm a big girl. You don't get points for offering to sleep with me despite my figure. And I don't care if you've never been with a big girl before. It's not that different and it's not going to happen. Hey guys, here's a hint. You might think that you're doing me a favor by finding a fat girl hot, but I have news for you. You are not a unicorn. You are not a snowflake. You are not that rare guy that looks at me and feels tingly things in his no-no bits. Our culture insists that I'm not beautiful, but our culture is wrong. So what you're feeling is reality pushing against the false sense of beauty, our plastic, obsessed society enforces on you. And guess what? If it's happening to you, it's happening to a bunch of other guys too. So I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I am truly sorry that our society's unrealistic beauty standards are impacting both of us tonight. But right now, I am here to have a drink with my friends and butcher some Adele songs in the karaoke machine. So I can suggest some books for you to read. I can suggest a website for you to peruse, but I really don't want to help you work out your conflicted attraction to me. I don't want to have a discussion about why you're telling me about it in the first place is totally inappropriate. And I'm certainly not going to participate in some fetishized experience for you. So can I go back to having fun now? Because dude, honestly, you're not even my best option in this place. Even if you weren't standing in a crowded room trying to talk to me about my weight. And our second reading comes from Marilyn Juan, who is a fat activist. Lost my page. Hold on. On October 26, 1993, I had a really bad day. First, the guy I was dating said he was embarrassed to introduce me to his friends because I was fat. Ouch. Then Blue Cross Blue Shield decided not to give me health insurance because of my weight. Double ouch. I was stunned, hurt, and outraged. Now, if you've ever been stunned and hurt and outraged, you know how hard it is to feel all of those things at once. Pretty soon, you've got to pick one feeling. Stunned and hurt are great emotions, but they really aren't very useful. So I chose outrage. All my life, I've done everything I could to make sure people accepted me. Maybe even liked me despite my fat. I was a good student, a trustworthy friend, an obedient child. I didn't speak unless I was sure I had something interesting or abusing to say. I went out of my way to be considerate, supportive, a good listener. But if no one wanted to hang out, I was quite content with my own company. As a fat teenager, I never expected to wear trendy clothes. I never expected to get invited to the prom. I had friends, but never felt like part of the crowd. Instead, I focused on the areas that I knew I could succeed. All of the independence and communication skills I developed as a fat child started to pay off in unexpected ways. I loved to write and became the editor of my high school newspaper. I was good at school, so I earned two degrees from Stanford. I wasn't afraid of being alone. So I traveled all over Europe and Russia by myself having adventures. In fact, I wasn't really afraid of much since I figured the worst thing had already happened to me. I was fat. In that fearless mode, I learned how to fly an airplane. In college, I threw brilliant parties and developed a wonderful circle of friends. And over the years, I learned to trust that my personality and charm could attract men. But some part of me always discounted that attention. Some part of me was afraid that if I stopped trying, I wouldn't count for anything. After all, I was fat. Then, on October 26, 1993, my worst fears came true. None of it mattered. The accomplishments, the personality, the extra effort, being fat, outweighed, everything else about me. I am five foot four inches tall and I weigh 270 pounds. My blood pressure, cholesterol, and blood sugar, the three best health indicators are all normal. I have no history of serious illness. I don't smoke. I exercise and eat my vegetables. I brush my teeth, I pay my taxes, and I wear my seat belt. Yet, from my most personal moments with that guy to my official business with the insurance company, I was shut out because of a number on a scale. So I sat there on that really bad day deciding between stunned and hurt and outraged. And I thought about what my date had said. I thought about what Blue Cross had said. And I realized that I absolutely did not agree with them. Fat is not a death sentence. It's a fact. I decided that if that guy couldn't accept my weight, then he didn't get to date me. I decided that Blue Cross's label of morbid obesity wasn't a diagnosis. It was a discrimination. I decided I had to speak up about the kind of mistreatment I experienced on that really bad day. Staying silent would mean that I agreed to being mistreated. That I agreed to being banished from life and from love. And I most certainly do not agree to that. In Madison for about eight and a half months now, I can find most places without using GPS. I've found a lot of my favorite little spots that I go to. But I believe that you have fully integrated into a place when you understand its humor. So I'm going to tell you a couple of stories. And by your reaction, I'm going to judge whether or not they're funny. Okay, so first story. It's the deep south after a hurricane. A couple of AmeriCorps workers decide that they're going to go out to a bar to get a drink after a hard day's work. Now, what they don't know is that this is an all-white bar. They don't know this because it's illegal to post it anywhere, but the locals know this. And one of the AmeriCorps workers is a person of color. When she goes to the bathroom, the people in the bar drop the door and tie a rope around the door handle. And then they tie the other end of the rope to a bar stool and somebody sits on it. So when she tries to leave the bathroom, she's like pulling on the door and yelling, and they're like yelling things at her. This is not funny. This is not funny. Okay, all right, it's not funny. Let me try again. So you know those displays in the grocery store that jut out past the aisles of food? They've got special merchandise they're trying to sell, and they have these little hooks that you can hang price tags or small merchandise on. So this one time, a person in a wheelchair is going around the corner and the spokes of their wheelchair actually get hooked on one of those little hooks. And they start to push their wheelchair. There's stuff like falling off of this display and it's like hitting them and then they do one big push and the display holds. And they actually like fall half out of their wheelchair and they're just laying. This is also not funny. This is not funny. Okay, okay, that's good to know. I guess I'm a little bit confused because the other day I was on campus and I saw a bunch of kids laughing uproariously to a video. They were calling their friends over and very publicly showing this video of a fat man stuck in a bathtub. So I want to make sure I understand. Even in liberal progressive Madison, it is not funny for someone to be stuck somewhere because of the color of their body and it is not funny for someone to be stuck somewhere because of the ability of their body. But it is hilarious for someone to be stuck somewhere because of the size of their body. Our society has by and large admitted that it is morally inferior to discriminate against people because of things about their body like gender, color, or ability. And I want to be very clear in saying we are not always good about recognizing when these discriminations are happening. We are not always good at doing something about them. But we have in the public sphere, at least by and large, recognized that it is morally inferior to have these discriminations. And you might say, well, yeah, the same thing is true with fat. People, those were just kids. They were college kids. College kids are mean. College kids can be mean, but I would bet you in liberal progressive Madison, I would bet you dollars to donuts phrasing intended that if those kids were watching a video of a person of color stuck in a bathroom or a person in a wheelchair on the ground, they would at least not so publicly be laughing and sharing. But we have decided, we have decided as a society that it is okay to publicly shame fat folks. We have decided that fat is still one of the things that it is not okay to be. And an argument that I hear often for why this is the case is that folks of color and women and folks with disabilities, they don't have any other choice, but fat people could just lose weight. There are at least three things really wrong with this statement. The first is the assumption that if folks of color or women or people with disabilities suddenly had the power to transform themselves into able-bodied white men, they all would. Because clearly, that's the kind of body that is right. That is the kind of body that is correct. I don't have to spend much time with a group of people as emotionally and intellectually intelligent as you all to discussing why that assumption is not correct. The second thing that's wrong with that statement that fat people could just choose to lose weight is that it puts a lot of agency in the hands of fat people that I'm not sure they actually have. The National Institutes of Health, the NIH, says that 90% of all diets fail. 90% of all diets fail. Well, but fat people are lazy, right? There was a woman at Columbia University. She was a professor and a nutritionist. She deeply understood the effects of food on the body. She deeply understood science and research at its place. She was familiar with the NIH study that 90% of all diets fail, and she was a fat woman. She was a fat woman, and she knew what I know, what most folks who go through this world in a fat body know, which is that if you could get rid of all of the hatred and discrimination and at best invisibility, that fat folks have to undergo. If you could get rid of all of that simply by choosing celery over ice cream most days, that would be an easy sacrifice to make. And yet 90% of all diets fail. 90% of all diets fail. So she did a study to figure out why is it so hard to stick to a diet? And she found something interesting. There is a place in the hippocampus of your brain where your body knows what size it wants to be. It has a natural size that it wants to be. And if your body goes below 15 to 30 pounds of this natural size of this set amount of fat that your body wants to have, you will feel like you are starving. No matter how much you're eating, no matter how much you weigh, if you deviate too much from this set size or set amount of fat, you will feel like your body is literally starving. Another interesting thing that this study found is that this set point is set in childhood. It's set in very early childhood. And there is a direct link between obesity and poverty. There are some folks that cannot afford good food. There are some folks that it isn't even available where they live. And then even if it is available where they live, if you're having trouble putting food on the table, fresh organic produce is much more expensive than the dollar menu at McDonald's. So these kids have this set point in the hippocampus of their brain that tells them they're starving. And just like the cycles of poverty get passed on to the next generations, cycles of obesity get imprinted in children's genes, the next piece of evidence I don't have anything to give you that would pass the scientific method. But I do have lived experience. Being a fat person and publicly exercising is like going into a paintball range with no armor and no gun. People are gonna throw things at you that mark you and that sting sometimes to the point of bruising. When I moved to California, I was enamored with the topography. I'm a Midwestern girl. I had never seen hills like this. There are places in the San Francisco Bay Area that they actually have poles driven into the earth on the sides of the sidewalk because it's difficult that you need to assist yourself getting up the hills because they're so steep. There are places where you can reach out in front of you and touch the sidewalk where your feet are supposed to be in a few steps. And once you get to the top of those hills, you are rewarded with this rush of endorphins and the most beautiful scenery. I was obsessed. I wanted to do it over and over and over again. Every day I had a day off, but I'm a Midwestern girl and I was not used to those hills. So I took my free student gym pass and I went to the gym at UC Berkeley and I set the treadmill on the highest incline possible and I decided I was gonna climb and climb and climb until my legs were strong enough to get to the top of any hill in San Francisco. I didn't realize that I was putting myself on a hamster wheel that I couldn't escape from where everybody who wanted to could come up to me and point out that my body was different and make comments and assumptions about it. I didn't wanna lose weight, I wanted to climb and yet these are the comments I got. Good for you. It's so inspiring to see you at it like that. Good job. Good job, honey. It is really amazing that you have decided to take this weight loss journey. I am here for you. I just want to let you know I'm a personal trainer. If you ever need anything, let me know. I mean, I'm not hitting on you in any way, though I don't date fat women. You know, doing that incline work, it's just gonna add muscles to your legs. You're not gonna lose weight. It might actually be counterproductive. You should try interval training. But it wasn't until I stood in the shower and consistently had people give me weight loss advice looking at my exposed body that I realized that I needed to stop going to the gym. If you need any empirical evidence to show that my experience is not the only one, go on YouTube and there's a YouTube channel called Fat People Running on Treadmills where people are sharptitiously video-recorded and those recordings are put on the internet for public shaming. So the argument that fat people could just lose weight if they wanted to, that's giving them a lot of agency and I love fat people. But I don't know that we have that much agency to overcome nature. Sometimes income inequality and public shaming, that's a lot to ask of a person. But the third thing is actually, the third thing that's wrong with this argument is actually the most harmful. The third thing about this assumption that fat people could just lose weight is that it's assuming they should want to. It's assuming they should understand that there is something wrong with their body. It's assuming that it is okay to publicly call someone out because that shame, you're not putting it on them, they already felt it. They know they inhabit an inferior vessel. So if a fat woman can perverse the world of tiny cafe chairs with little arms and airplane seats and the forest of polyester that is the plus size section in most department stores, if she can get through all of that and still believe that she's worthy of love and respect, society doesn't disagree with her. It simply assumes she couldn't exist in the first place. Now some of you might be thinking, it's good to love yourself, don't get me wrong, but being fat is really unhealthy, isn't it? Thank you for bringing that up. Obesity is linked to higher instances of breast cancer, higher instances of heart disease, higher instances of hypertension and higher instances of diabetes. The New England Journal of Medicine noticed that more fat women died of breast cancer than thin women and they wanted to know, but they also noticed that they didn't get cancer at different rates. They got cancer the same amount of rates, the same amount of thin women and fat women got breast cancer, but the fat women were more likely to die from it. They thought, whoa, what is the effect of fat cells on cancer? This could open up a whole range of studies. But when they looked into it, they found out that if you controlled for early detection, fat women didn't die more than thin women. But what was actually going on was fat women were just less likely to go to the doctor. Up until the Affordable Care Act, it was legal to discriminate against someone because of their weight. It was legal to deny them health insurance because of their weight. But the New England Journal of Medicine also found that even fat women who were insured were less likely to go to the doctor than thin women. Marilyn Juan, who I read from earlier, created this zine. A zine is an independent magazine for people who are cooler than me. She created this zine called fatso, or, if you want to add in the punctuation, fat exclamation point, so, question mark. And in this zine, she collected stories of people living in fat bodies. And there was an entire zine that was dedicated to stories of fat people going to the doctor. Fat people, they have all of these stories about how going to the doctor is just really shaming because you're always told, just lose weight, just lose weight. Just lose weight. But not only is it shaming to go to the doctor, you get worse medical care because doctors are looking at your body and assuming that everything that's wrong with you is due to your fat. I'd like to share two stories with you. There was a woman named Betty. Betty had this persistent cough. She wasn't feeling well. She had to go to four different doctors. The first two doctors didn't even touch Betty physically. The third doctor examined her and told her that she needed to lose weight, that clearly she couldn't breathe because she was in this bigger body. The fourth doctor diagnosed her lung tumor. There was another woman named Candice. Now Candice was a stunt double. Candice had a toned body. Candice had what all the magazines would put in a bathing suit on their cover. Candice was feeling tired. She was feeling more and more tired. She was getting sick and dizzy. She went to doctor after doctor after doctor who did tests after tests after tests. And they kept telling Candice, there's nothing physically wrong with you. There's nothing physically wrong with you. We've done all the tests. It took Candice falling into a diabetic coma before her doctors would recognize that she had type 2 adult onset diabetes because no one's going to check for that in a thin body. This fat hatred and fat fear, it affects everyone. But fat people are more likely to die of heart attacks, right? That's true. That's what all the studies say. So actually the New England Journal of Medicine, they looked at all of these original studies about fat folks. And they found that if there were one or two things that were controlled for, they found that there were one or two things in each one that were not controlled for that made those studies scientifically invalid, meaning they didn't do a control which means the whole study needs to be thrown out. And in the last decade, there have been two books written by thin white men called Obesity Myth and Big Fat Lies. And both of these books chronicle the retesting of these studies or the looking at information from these studies and what could have happened if the controls at the NIH, I'm sorry, not the NIH, the New England Journal of Medicine put on them happened. And it turns out that actually there is no correlation, between plaque that builds up in your arteries that we used to call fat and fat on your body. They're not even cellularly similar. But we've all heard all the stories, right, of the fat people dying of heart attacks. It turns out that the things that the NIH wanted to control for was the use of a fedron drugs. These studies were done in the 90s when the market was flooded with things like fennfen and redux, things that had a one in 30 death rate if used consistently over a period of years, things that the FDA had outlawed for, things that literally led to heart attacks. And also, the New England Journal of Medicine wanted to control for yo-yo dieting. But these original studies were done on people that were rapidly, rapidly losing and gaining weight. And what happens to you when you lose weight really rapidly and really quickly? Your muscles deteriorate. Your heart is a muscle. If you try to lose weight too quickly, you will literally break your own heart. We've all heard of Mama Cass, right, of the mamas and the papas. Big, beautiful woman, 300 pounds. When she died after the vicious rumors that she had choked on a ham sandwich subsided, when she died, everyone said, well, yeah, of course Mama Cass had a heart attack. She was huge. The thing is, Mama Cass had been touring for almost a decade, keeping up a rigorous schedule, performing every night. When she died, the four months before she died, she had lost 80 pounds. When you control for use of effedrine drugs and yo-yo dieting, there's actually not a higher instance of heart disease in fat folks. These people, they weren't dying because they were fat. They were dying to be thin. And what about hypertension? Those studies weren't actually redone, but other interesting studies about hypertension were done. There's a 20% higher instance of hypertension in the African-American community than in the white community. And that is after you control for things like access to good health insurance. That instance of hypertension directly correlates to the amount of people who feel like they are persecuted and discriminated with on a daily basis. In other words, it has been scientifically proven that if you feel persecuted in your daily life, you can develop higher instances of high... You have a higher likelihood of developing hypertension to a rate of 20%. Guess what the rate of hypertension is in fat people over thin people? It's 20%. It's an interesting statistic, if not scientifically backed up. And what about diabetes? Yes. Diabetes is the one disease that is scientifically proven is linked to obesity. If you are fat, you have a more likely chance of developing adult onset type 2 diabetes. And even in this instance, what people found when people were trying to control their diabetes without using medication that actually wasn't reducing weight that helped, it was their diet and their exercise that really helped. In all of these instances and all of these studies, it is true that more active people are healthy. It is true that people who eat whole nutritious foods are more healthy. It is not true that thin people are more healthy. There are sedentary thin people who are not healthy. There are fat people that run marathons and do yoga that are healthy. And yes, diet and exercise do correlate to body type and how much you weigh. But not directly. We all have a place that we want our bodies to be. So how did it happen then? How did it happen that we got this story that fat is bad? How did it happen that we focus so much on what a body looks like, even though you can't tell if it's healthy by looking at it, rather than how much that body is moving and what that body is eating. Why is it that the first lady of this country goes around telling young children that my body is an epidemic? Wouldn't it be better if the story was, you should enjoy your body, you should celebrate being in it by moving? Wouldn't it be better if the story was, you should celebrate the gifts of the earth by eating full, whole, nutritious foods? Isn't that just a more lovely thing to concentrate on? It turns out that our good friend, Al Koop, Everett Koop, Al Everett Koop, who's a former surgeon general, after he retired, he had some time on his hands and he had a lot of standing because he was a surgeon general of the United States, had some gravitas. He is the person that initiated most of these studies, most of these studies that found that fat is bad, that fat is a death sentence. Guess who funded these studies? Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig. Weight Watchers and Jenny Craig put millions of dollars, much of it going into our friend Mr. Koop's pockets, millions of dollars for us to concentrate on, not what the studies actually said, which were that we should move our bodies and eat nutritious food, but that we should discriminate against fat folks. What would it be like? What would it be like if we simply had a revolutionary act and decided that we were going to love our bodies? What would it do to the 40 million, 40 billion-dollar diet industry that profits off our self-hatred? What would it be like for the fashion industry and the magazine industry that give you images of why your body is wrong and then sell you things to correct it if we just said, I'm good, I love this. The most revolutionary thing I've ever done in my life is decide to love my body. After all, these. These are the only vessels through which we get to experience this miracle of human living. So what would it be like if we just said, all bodies have worth and deserve dignity and compassion? What would it be like if we fell madly, head over heels, totally, completely in love with our bodies? Our fat, then tall, short, hairy, wrinkled, veiny bodies? After all, these are the bits of stardust that we've borrowed from the universe for this span of life. What if we just soaked them in love? Could we not then learn to be more loving and compassionate to others? Would we not be more accepting of people in different body forms if we were not devastatingly afraid of becoming them? And if we soaked ourselves in goodness, if we soaked ourselves in bright, happy, accepting, loving, powerful things, then might it not be possible? Might it not just be possible that when they go back to the earth, when they become dust again, they will have more love to inject into the cycle? Isn't that a lot of the reason why we're here, to learn to put more love into the cycle of life? What if one of the first and most revolutionary steps you could take to doing that is simply to love yourself, to accept yourself as you are? It's not simple. It's not easy. But man, it feels good. Blessed be an amen. Our offering today will be taken for the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families. The Wisconsin Council for Children and Families is working nonstop to create a nurturing and just community for every child in Wisconsin. Let's hope they're teaching them to love themselves. The offering will now be taken. Most weeks, there's a book out in the commons next to the Cares of the Congregation sign. It's an opportunity for the community to be able to share what's going on in our lives with each other. Jody Stryker-Bremmer is thinking about her friend Louise, who went from feeling perfectly healthy to a diagnosis of stage 4 cancer in a couple of weeks' time. Wishing her well as she starts chemo and transitions to the new phase of her life, send thoughts and prayers. We also hold Joe Murphy in our hearts who's recovering from a recent surgery. All's going well and we send prayers that recovery continues to be smooth and uneventful. And y'all, I'm excited because the Waxlers are back in church. It's great to see you guys. If we would all rise now in body and our spirit to sing our final hymn, Standing on the Side of Love, it's number 1014. I've had a whole bunch of things that are counter to a lot of the things that you've heard in your life. So if you have any questions, I will be sipping coffee in the commons shortly. But until then, I would like to invoke the spirit of a bowling ball. A bowling ball is shapely and purposeful and unabashed about announcing its weight. And if anything gets in the way of a bowling ball, it knocks those pinheads down. Be like the bowling ball in your lives. Roll through with purpose, sure of your mass and gravitas. Go in peace, return it in love, and please be seated for the postlude.