Ladies, gentlemen, and people of all gender happiness, please welcome Michael Wommer.

Well, Sanjulis, so good to be with you. I mean, I live here, but so good to be with you while I'm on a stage.

That curtain opening thing is a funny thing to do when you're just sitting on a chair.

It doesn't feel epic enough. I felt like I should have done a pose or something.

Welcome, welcome to tabs and wafers. We're the liturgists and some of you are the liturgists as well.

So glad to be here. You are so welcome here. Welcome. It could be like sort of the mission statement of the liturgists in a way.

I think of well, when I think of where the word comes from, the word wellos in Greek, I mean, the invitation in Kome, I'm just kidding, I have no idea where the word welcome means.

But I have a decent layman's understanding of the word. And it's just that I'm happy you're here. And I feel like I need to say it because there's been a lot of people on stages when you talk about spiritual stuff.

That have made people feel lesser than and that they have to achieve something or be something that they're not in order to fully be welcome as you are.

And so that's part of why we've we made the liturgists because we didn't feel welcome in a lot of spaces that talked about spirituality.

And you are welcome here. Regardless of your gender or your orientation or your religion, your beliefs or lack thereof, regardless of your ability levels or your body type or any of it.

You are you make us feel less alone. And actually the weirder that you are kind of like the farther out of the norms that society has for what people should be in the power structures, you know, the farther out of that are you make me feel safer.

Because I haven't typically belonged. I mean, you can see my pants here. But I so thank you for making me feel safe.

Speaking of that, can I tell you about the first time that I got drunk?

It was at Darling Chex House. And that's really actually kind of the whole story.

Darling Chex, you don't know who that is. It's like the shout to the Lord, the like the worship woman of all time.

Apparently, she was like when I was in high school, she was the worship woman. And so if you had told my 15 year old self that the first time he would get drunk would be at Darling Chex House.

He would have flipped his shit. It would have been an element of like, you get to meet Darling Chex. It's pretty cool. But then there also would have been an element of like, do you lose your self Asian or what's going on with you?

And then of course, if you would have told that 25 year old self that was first dipping his feet into having some wine with those crazy Australians that drink wine.

If you had told him about the 32 year old self who was kneeling in a bathrobe in a luxury spa and letting go of God becoming an atheist that guy who wouldn't, he wouldn't have been okay with that.

And if you had told the 32 year old self about the 35 year old self who was in a shamanic ceremony having some sort of spiritual awakening and there's magic mushrooms involved.

He wouldn't have been cool with that.

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