Learning How to Live

Reflection #130 (27th September 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

The harvest festival is meant to be a time of thanksgiving. Once a year, we are reminded to pay special attention to our where our food comes from, and all the stars that have to align in order for even the simplest meal to turn up on our plate.

For those of us who are reasonably well-off – in global terms, at least – and I’m not making the assumption that we’re all that comfortable as I know times are tough for so many right now – but still many of us take it for granted that we can put food on the table tonight. Indeed, that we will have some choice in the matter.

Reflection #129 (20th September 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

Today’s service was originally inspired by this book – ‘Unreasonable Hospitality’ by Will Guidara – which was recommended by my colleague, Rev. Stephanie Bisby. At first glance, it might seem a surprising choice of text to use as a jumping-off point for a service, as it tells the story of how a struggling New York brasserie, Eleven Madison Park, came to be awarded the title of ‘the best restaurant in the world’.

Reflection #128 (2nd August 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

I have a question for you to ponder: Are you a mystic?

Mirabai Starr says that you are – we heard that in the reading from Jasmine earlier – and that view turns up quite frequently in writings on mysticism. Mysticism is not just the preserve of some kind of spiritual elite; it’s a way of being that’s available for all of us. We don’t have to go and live in a cave, or stand on one leg for 40 years, or take a vow of silence, or spin like a dervish, in order to follow a mystical path. Yes, there are all sorts of esoteric practices out there, but there are also mundane ways of being a mystic.

Reflection #127 (5th July 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

‘Freedom, Reason, and Tolerance’ – this is a phrase that has historically been an important statement of our core Unitarian values – perhaps we don’t use it quite so much these days. Since I first stumbled into the church 27 years ago I’ve noticed that we’ve softened our view on reason a bit, acknowledging that there are other sources of wisdom and insight that transcend the rational, and which may be found through emotion, intuition, and direct experience. We’re not just a religion of the head. And that traditional emphasis on ‘tolerance’ has been questioned a bit too – it can feel a bit grudging – it sounds like ‘putting up with’. We’ve moved towards the language of ‘celebrating’ and ‘affirming’ when it comes to our relationship with difference, be that religious and theological diversity, or other dimensions of culture and identity.

Reflection #126 (28th June 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

This idea we’re exploring today – the notion that modest, consistent, actions can bring about positive change, and enable us to achieve great things over the long term – it’s a well-worn idea. There are so many proverbs and sayings to remind us of the fact. Eric Zimmer reminded us of a few in that last reading we heard: Rome wasn’t built in a day. Slow and steady wins the race. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time (that one’s not my favourite – I feel sorry for the elephant!).

Reflection #125 (14th June 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

I feel some trepidation in setting out to speak on this subject! AI is a hot topic, in a developing area, which requires some degree of technical sophistication to grasp, and which people seem to have very strong and diverging opinions about! So I feel I’m stepping into a bit of a minefield here but I’ll give it my best shot… My one, flimsy, credential for speaking on such a topic is that I did take a module on AI and machine learning as part of my MSc in medical engineering down the road at Imperial – I even coded my own tiny little neural network! – but that was nearly 30 years ago. And the landscape has changed so much since then that it might as well have been 1000 years ago. (And I feel the need to say that though this was billed as a mini-reflection it’s turned into a maxi-reflection as it’s a big old subject with a lot of key points to mention)… But with all those caveats out of the way, let’s dive in.

Reflection #124 (30th May 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

Every week we say it – we pray it – ‘help us to live well each day, and be our best selves’. I wonder what that phrase means to you? How it lands? For me, it’s an important part of our purpose as a church – to aspire to better things for ourselves and for the world – to keep reminding each other, and encouraging each other, to learn and to grow, to engage in self-reflection, self-discipline perhaps, in service of our mutual flourishing.

Reflection #123 (24th May at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

I’m not sure how many Unitarian churches will be marking Pentecost Sunday today – but it’s always been a story that has spoken to me – though I tend to focus on different aspects of it than are emphasised in more traditional interpretations. Many years ago, I read a sermon by the UU minister Robert Hardies, who makes that case that Pentecost is ‘the Creation Myth of Unitarianism’ because it describes ‘a diverse group of people, speaking about God in different languages’ who ‘come together with a… faith that though we speak many tongues, we will all be understood [and] we will all understand… [so] the Spirit is found in translation.’ That take really stuck with me, so I keep coming back to the story, though I want to take a different angle today, and use the story as a jumping-off point to talk about speaking up and speaking out.

Reflection #122 (26th April 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

At the top of the service, I said that we’d reflect on the idea of belonging to each other, in both the universal sense and also the particular sense of belonging to this, our beloved community of Kensington Unitarians, aka Essex Church.

Last week I put a call out to members of the congregation and asked them to say, in just a sentence or two, what being a member means to them. Thanks to everyone who responded – I’ve put all those responses in the service text that is up on the website (scroll to the bottom of the page) – they’re more-or-less anonymised but some have identifying features! We’re just going to share a few fragments of those responses now – I’m going to ask Brian to help me read them out – to just give a sense of the variety of things people said about their sense of belonging as members of this community.

Reflection #121 (5th April 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

We don’t know what happened. That reading from Daniel Budd, which Roy read for us earlier in the service, has become a fixture of our Easter services here at Essex Church because it feels like a necessary disclaimer for Unitarians. Our denomination emerged from the Christian tradition and we still celebrate – and wrestle with – its core festivals and stories. But some of us find Easter challenging.

As I mentioned earlier, last week at the GA, the annual meetings of Unitarians in the UK, a colleague commented that Unitarians sometimes want to rush to the happy ending of Easter Sunday without first facing the horrors of Good Friday. But I’m not sure that’s quite true.