Learning How to Live

Reflection #120 (15th February 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

I wonder how you respond to the story of the devil tempting Jesus, or the story of Mara tempting the Buddha? On today’s hymn sheet I’ve included an image of the latter story – which we’ll also show on screen for a moment – it’s a fantastical picture, by a Buddhist artist called Aloka, of the Buddha sitting serene in this bubble of light and flowers while every kind of snarling demon gangs up on him! All manner of beasts and horrors closing in.

Reflection #119 (8th February 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

I feel I should issue a disclaimer before I get into my sermon – this might be a relief for some and a disappointment for others – but as I asked Sarah to warn you last week, despite the title ‘Free Love’, this sermon is not going to be as racy as you might have anticipated! I’m not talking about ‘free love’ in the euphemistic 1960s sense of sexual liberation and orgiastic revelries (though by all means go for it – in your own time! – if you’ve got the stamina and the full consent of everyone involved).

Reflection #118 (25th January 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

‘Being fully alive requires both finding trusted others as well as being a trusted other. For trusting and being trusted allow us to blossom.’ Those words from Mark Nepo are at the heart of what today’s service is all about – and I believe his message, it rings true to me – we humans need to trust, and feel trusted, in order to be fully alive. Yet I guess most of us will have had experiences – some small incidents, some devastating – of having trusted a person, or an institution, and having that work out badly for us, when our trust was broken, or abused, or taken advantage of. We know, don’t we, that this troubled and often terrifying world is full of peril and risk. So it’s understandable that we might retreat into a state of being wary and defended to protect ourselves from harm.

Reflection #117 (11th January 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

‘We live and learn’ – that’s how the saying goes – but do we? Do we always, inevitably, learn as we live? Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s entirely guaranteed… it seems to be perfectly possible for us poor humans to bumble our way through life in a fairly unreflective and oblivious manner, and miss a lot of the lessons that come our way. But by the very fact you’re here this morning, I guess that you aspire to lifelong learning – not primarily the sort that you might pick up by going to evening classes or the U3A – but the learning that comes by being open, attentive, and curious in the face of whatever new, potentially challenging, experiences life brings our way.

Reflection #116 (4th January 2026 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

I want to ask you a question. And I want you to ponder quietly in your heart this morning rather than answering out loud: are you religious? What do you reckon? For some of us it’s not a difficult question. For me it would be a wholehearted ‘yes’ (though I haven’t always felt that way about it). For some it may be a definite ‘no’ (I know some are very squeamish about the word). Perhaps many of us would respond ‘well, it depends what you mean by “religious”…’)

Reflection #115 (28th December 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

‘Roots hold me close, wings set me free’. So wrote Carolyn McDade, composer of ‘Spirit of Life’. What’s your relationship to roots and wings, I wonder? What do those metaphors suggest to you?

When we think about our roots, we might think of our family of origin, our culture or community, any traditions (including religious traditions) we were born into, and everything else we inherited as a result of that. Or we might think of being rooted in a network of relationships we’ve built up for ourselves over the course of our life so far – our chosen family, perhaps – the communities and cultures we’ve become embedded in, by choice or by chance, where we feel some lasting commitment, some sense of rootedness, belonging, or stability, an anchor in the storms of life.

Reflection #114 (21st December 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

The Christmas story is a strange story – maybe we forget that once we get a bit older – when we’ve heard it so many times. And it’s so many stories all at once. We could choose to focus on so many different dimensions of the Nativity that might speak to the times we are living in. But this morning, as I said at the top of the service, I want us to take this opportunity to focus on the idea of incarnation.

Reflection #113 (26th October 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

We need each other. It seems such an obvious thing to say, doesn’t it? But when I look at the world around me it sometimes seems to be a truth we have collectively forgotten. Remarkably it’s 30 years now since Robert Putnam’s famous essay ‘Bowling Alone’ was published (the book that sprang from it came along a few years later). There was a time where this was being referenced left, right, and centre – the essay looked at the decline in ‘associational life’ in America in particular – but I think the same is true in the UK: we just don’t hang out with each other so much these days. And, I would guess, that trend has only accelerated in recent years, firstly as a result of austerity policies and public cuts, secondly due to the pandemic. A one-two punch that it’s hard to pick ourselves up from.

Reflection #112 (21st September 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

It’s good for us to set aside time once a year for a special service like this – a service of thanksgiving – and by timing it to coincide with the traditional harvest festivals (around the time of the autumn equinox) we can situate ourselves in a long line of generations who came before us and who held similar celebrations. In centuries past, I expect people would have been rather more keenly aware of the precarity of the harvest, particularly the vagaries of weather and disease, and all the factors that had to align for them and their families to get enough to eat. So it was natural to get to September and say ‘the harvest is in, thank God, and it will see us through winter.’

Reflection #111 (7th September 2025 at Essex Church / Kensington Unitarians)

A couple of weeks ago, I was on my way back from Hucklow Summer School, which is in some ways – for me, at least – a little slice of heaven. For one week a year we create this little bubble in which we try to live like we wish the world would live. Fifty-odd Unitarians (and Friends) squashed together in one place and doing their best to build beloved community – looking out for each other – attempting to work around each other’s foibles and accommodate each other’s needs as best we can. We often speak of affirming ‘the inherent worth and dignity of every person’ but in this setting we really try to intentionally embody that key principle and put it into action. We try to practice right relationship. It’s hard work, and we don’t always get it right, but it’s a space that brings me hope. It’s a little glimpse, a vision, of how things could be.