Our Best Selves

A service titled ‘Our Best Selves’, led by Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall, with a reading given by Julia Alden, and music from Jack Campbell.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 2:52

We come into one another's presence seeking some part of ourselves. Knowing that we do not live alone. Knowing that we cannot live fully if we are for ourselves alone. We come as ordinary people, each with strengths and each with weaknesses, aware of our own shortcomings. Our lives set before us many tasks, and we are not always equal to them. Too often we fall short of our best expectations of ourselves. We don't know enough. We are always patient. We fall into anger. We cannot find strength. We do not wait for wisdom. Perhaps we lack vision. And it hurts to acknowledge our shortcomings. And yet here we are. Not always perfect, not always wise, but always human. Gloriously and miraculously alive and breathing, wondrously and mysteriously human. So may our time together refresh our hope. May the stories that we share renew our courage. May the music that we hear soothe our spirits. May the words we speak invigorate us. May the listening we experience prove to be healing. May this precious opportunity for human connection, the sight of faces new and familiar restore us in faith and restore us in purpose for the onward journey. These words from Calvin Dane, welcome all who have gathered this morning for our Sunday service. Welcome to those of you who are here in the building at Essex Church. Everyone joining us from far and wide via Zoom, indeed tuning in on the YouTube channel at a later date. For anyone who doesn't know me, I'm Jane Blackhall and I am minister with Kensington Unitarian. This morning's service has the title Our Best Selves. This is a phrase that will be very familiar to regular members of the congregation here at Essex Church. Each week we end our prayers in the same way with the phrase, help us to live well each day and be our best selves. So in the coming hour, we're going to reflect on what this might look like in practice and how we might balance this noble aspiration with an attitude of self-compassion and an acceptance of ourselves as good enough. But before we go any further, let's do what we always do and light our chalice flame. It's a moment for us to pause and arrive to set aside any preoccupations we might have come in carrying. And it's a simple ritual that connects us with Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists the world over. It reminds us of this proudly progressive religious tradition of which we are a part. Every day brings joy. Every day brings us the opportunity to ease the struggle of another and to be the joy in another's life. So may this small frame remind us to carry our light to each other and out into this world. Time to sing now. Our first hymn today is on your hymn sheets, if you're in the building, a new community. When I first came to this church twenty-something years ago, we sang it a lot, but we don't do it much these days. It really expresses this aspiration to be our best selves, both individually and together. If you're joining online, the words will be up on screen as they will for all the hymns today. Feel free to stand or sit as you prefer. A new community. You might want to adjust your position to get more comfortable, maybe to put down anything you don't need to be holding. You might want to close your eyes or soften your gaze. Might be a posture that helps you to feel more prayerful and centered. Whatever helps you to get into the right state of body and mind for us to pray together now and be fully present to ourselves, each other, and that which lies within us and beyond us. We turn our full attention to you, the light within and without.

SPEAKER_03 10:59

We are an indispensable part of the unfolding cosmic mystery. We are whole.

SPEAKER_02 11:09

We're whole even in the broken places. Even where it hurts.

SPEAKER_01 11:17

We're whole even in the places where fear impedes our full engagement with life. Where self-doubt corrupts our self-love.

SPEAKER_03 11:29

Where shame makes our faces hot and our souls cold.

SPEAKER_01 11:37

We're whole even in those places where perfectionism blunts the joy of full immersion into person, place, activity, where good enough does not reside except in our silent longing. Where our gaps must be fast filled with substance, accomplishment or friendly activity.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

We are whole where we would doubt our own goodness, wholeness and death where we would doubt our own significance and profoundness. We are whole even in our fragility, our chaos and confusion, even where we feel fragmented or alone, insubstantial or insufficient. We are whole even as we stumble, even as we pick ourselves up again.

SPEAKER_02 12:43

We are whole.

SPEAKER_01 12:48

And so may we in this shared time of prayer rededicate our hearts and our whole selves, each discerning the shape of our own particular calling in these troubled times, and offering our best for the greater good of all. And in a few moments of shared silence and stillness now, let us speak inwardly some of those deepest prayers of our own hearts, the joys and the sorrows that we came in carrying in our own lives and the life of the wider world. Let us each lift up whatever's on our heart this day, give thanks for the blessings we've already been given, and ask for whatever it is that we most need. As this time of prayer draws to a close, we offer up our joys and our concerns, our hopes and our fears, our beauty and our brokenness, and we call on you for insight, healing and renewal. As we look forward now to the coming week, help us to live well each day and be our best selves. Using our unique gifts in the service of love, justice and peace. Amen. Time to sing again. Our second hymn is also on your hymn sheet, The Tides of the Spirit. It's a lovely, humble, gentle hymn. We don't sing this one that often, so Jack, maybe you can play it all the way through before we sing. The Tides of the Spirit.

SPEAKER_00 17:36

So many people I know want to do better, be different, quit smoking, what have you. I always wonder what kind of community they have to help them. For example, maybe you want to be a different mama than the way your mama mamaed you. But if you're not part of a community that's going to hold you accountable and support you, you'll end up back at your factory settings. For most people, it's just what it is to be human. When I was preparing to defend my PhD dissertation, my advisor took me aside and said, before we schedule your defense, I want you to go home and draw the theoretical section for your project. I said, excuse me. You can do it however you like, computer or crayons, he said, but focus on that methodological section. Go home and try draw it. I was mad. I'd already poured so much into the process, and frankly, the assignment felt like silly busy work to me. But I went home, got the colored pencils out, cussed, and began to draw my project and realized that I'd made a huge mistake in the research design. It could have tanked my desert dissertation. I wouldn't have caught it without my advisor's suggestion. I needed that challenge, that loving joust. In fact, all my years in graduate school taught me how much I need the collective body, the experience of other people to help me make sense of what I was reading and discerning. Putting me in a room and reading everything on the shelf wouldn't have done it. It was being challenged by others that helped me refine my ideas. Iron sharpens iron. As a university universalist, I need the balance of accountability and support that comes only from being in deep relationship with others. I'm proud that our faith is conveniental. I gotta get that word right. Covenantal. Where the evidence of our beliefs is demonstrated in our relationships. And not only confessional, where the evidence of belief is in the words professed in the public square. Sure, accountability can be difficult. We don't always prefer to be challenged by others or required to confront our growing edges. Relationships of accountability and support, the challenge and the nurturing, can make us cuss and feel like just a waste of time. Ultimately, however, these relationships shape us in meaningful and powerful ways that call us to grow, to do better, and to be our best selves. Takia Nur Amin concludes with some brief words of prayer. Holy Spirit, help me accept the truth about myself that is revealed in sacred relationships so that I can grow, thrive, and be fully present to others on their journey as well. Grant me the grace and patience needed to do so gently and firmly as needed.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Amen. Thanks, Julia.

SPEAKER_01 21:18

So we're moving into a time of meditation now, and to take us into the stillness, I'm gonna share a prayer poem by L. Annie Forster, which invites us to listen to ourselves, to each other, and to that calling we feel to do good in this world. After the words, we'll hold a few minutes of silence, which will end with the sound of a bell, and then we're gonna hear some more lovely music for meditation. So again, do what you need to do to get comfortable. You might want to have your feet flat on the floor if that helps you to feel as grounded and steadied. And as ever, the words are an offering. Feel free to use this time to meditate in your own way.

SPEAKER_02 22:55

And listen. There is another sound.

SPEAKER_01 23:01

The breath of our neighbor calls us to be outside ourselves.

SPEAKER_03 23:06

To be companions, to be allies, to be partners. Listen, we must heed the call of our own hearts where love and truth, caring and justice are born. Listen.

SPEAKER_01 23:26

We must heed the call of others to gather together for some great purpose. Where passion and fidelity, compassion and equity are nourished.

SPEAKER_03 23:40

The hammering silence calls us together that we may do the work we cannot do alone.

SPEAKER_01 23:47

So let us heed the calls that come in the silence. That we may be well and do good in this world. He draws on the teachings from medieval theology, which was often shaped by the idea of the old seven deadly sins. But that terminology, which might understandably uh put us off, you might bristle at it, it often contains surprisingly relevant insights that still I think speak to our modern condition. The bit I'm going to share is from a chapter on pride, or superbia to use the Latin term that would have been used in the Middle Ages. There are two bits of context I want to give you for this reading. One, which I'll come back to at the end, is that the author, Peter Jones, had gone to Siberia to teach medieval studies in a university there on a bit of a whim. He said he can't really understand why he did it in retrospect. When he was there, he lost his way and he drifted into depression. And the other bit of context for this is the excerpt I'm going to read refers to two people, Pierre Murray and Guillaume Bailey Bast, who were members of a religious sect in the 1320s called the Good People. In broad terms, it seems Pierre was quite a decent person and Bellybast uh behaved like a narcissistic rotter, though both of them fell foul of the Inquisition in the end anyway. Jones writes. If the medieval conception of pride has a single essence, it is this. It's failing to see yourself for who you really are. If Bellybast had taken the chance to look into a mirror the f in the days before his execution, what would he have seen? What does any acute sufferer of superbia pride ever see? There are actually two ways we can look at reflections. One of them can help build self-understanding and growth, but the other can lead to self-loathing and moral decay. When people like Belly Bass look into the mirror, they see a reflection that is both dark and scattered. Sometimes they only see their faults, other times they only see their own good looks. But eventually they become so confused with all this honour and shame that the two become almost indistinguishable. What they miss in this oscillation, what these sufferers of pride almost always miss is the face that's really there. By contrast, people like Pierre Murray, gentle hearts, look in the mirror for both positive attributes and faults. In fact, they hoover up every tiny detail. Instead of only seeing honor or shame, they see a set of behaviors to repeat and a set of behaviours to work on. They see themselves as works in progress. By looking this way, people come to understand that the best way to move forward is to balance self-criticism with forgiveness. And as John Gower's poem Confessio Amantis put it, these mirrors give you the example to see what it is that your heart indulges and in which manner and which form they can help you to change your life. Guarding against medieval pride counterintuitively doesn't mean we need to look at ourselves less. Rather, we have to look at ourselves even more. Ideally, as that poem says, we should keep a mirror with us night and day so that the lessons we learn about ourselves stay in the heart forever. The important thing is to pay attention. We have to look not only with criticism and delight, but also with compassion and honesty. And then seeing that fragile face in the mirror, we have to find a way to love it. And this, it turns out, is how medieval superbia can transform into self-aware modern pride. It's not enough to be humble or to avoid being self-conscious. Although valuable, this can lead to what Thomas Aquinas called pusillanimity. A failure to stand up for ourselves, a failure to use the talents we possess for good. The flip side of pride is to work with the grain of our self-obsession, tempering it with some honest self-awareness, and this means seeing our limitations for what they are. Pride is a blindness to ourselves, a delusion that stands in the way of self-recognition, self-acceptance, and ultimately self-love. When we try to be more perfect or more highly regarded or respected, it's a sign that we haven't yet learned to live with the face that we see in the mirror. Still, there's a reason pride has become such a powerful virtue today. Ego can be self-love so long as it's grounded in recognition rather than projection. Mirror gazing can be valuable when we gaze in self-scrutiny and not self-obsession. It's okay to throw around our talents, provided they don't work against other people. At the end of the chapter, Jones brings it back to his own life where he's stuck in this Siberian university, depressed and having lost his way. He says all of this is a way of saying, I suppose, that I need to stop staring out of the window here by the exit doors of my university building. Stop dreaming of doing something heroic and start doing something useful instead. I need to recognise my limitations and find a way to be valuable for my students and colleagues here in this submarine of a building, while this job is still mine. Words from Peter Jones. We've got a bonus hymn again this week. A favourite of this congregation, hymn number 181 in your purple hymn books, Wake Now, My Senses. As usual, we're singing it to the tune we know rather than the one that's printed in the book, so don't get confused. Hymn 181. Help us to live well each day and be our best selves. I wonder what that phrase means to you, how it lands with you. For me, it's an important part of our purpose as a church to aspire for 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, maybe even, in service of our mutual flourishing. What do we mean by best, though? Is a phrase that gets bandied about a lot on social media. I'm living my best life. In context, it seems to me, the phrase can take on a rather different meaning depending on the spirit in which it's said. There are more and less wholesome versions. I can imagine someone posting a clip of themselves drinking champagne on a yacht and having the caption, I'm living my best life. I mean this is a bit of a caricature, but for some people it is about personal happiness, even hedonism, creating an image of the good life that can be captured in a selfie, which is not to say I'm against selfies, I'm very pro-selfies. There's another way the phrase is used though. Someone might say I'm living my best life when they are acknowledging that they're making life choices that are authentic and intentional and meaningful for them, perhaps even especially to celebrate and affirm life choices that might seem a bit quirky or eccentric to others. It can be something to say as we take stock of our life and the person we've become, I'm doing alright. I've consistently tried to learn and grow to make good choices, and despite all the setbacks and the ups and downs, I'm living my best life. When we pray, help us to live well each day and be our best selves. I think, I hope, we're praying about something more than our own personal happiness and well-being. It's not really about praying for more privilege, not praying for a life of leisure or to be rich or fit or popular. For me, it's about fulfillment of our human potential. Making the most of our unique gifts, whatever they may be, and consciously developing them to the full throughout the whole of our life. Perhaps it includes being creative, expressing ourselves, making our mark on the world. But it is also about best in the sense of moral goodness. If we are to be our best self, surely that means a life spent pursuing and prioritizing the good. There's an inner dimension to this, cultivating virtue, developing our character, and an outer dimension, which is about acting in ways that serve the common good. If we're aiming to be our best self, then at the very least, perhaps we'd hope to have a net positive impact on the world. Not just on the people who are close to us, but we'd hope to create positive ripples that spread out into the world that are far reaching. We'd be looking for opportunities to help others, especially those who are worse off than us, and remaining conscious of the impact of our actions or inaction. The impact to uh in order to minimize the harm that we cause. Perhaps we should also be praying for self-awareness, to see ourselves clearly yet compassionately, regularly taking that long, loving look in the mirror, like the medieval theologians advised, and remembering that we are works in progress. We can still change and develop our whole life long. Between aspiration and execution. We might end up judging ourselves too hard in the list. He said improvement is important. Any good effort is important. Not allowing yourself to give up is important. Realising that your value does not depend on your achievement. I also want to hear a card from the Donald Miguel Reeves. One of the four agreements he proposed, an agreement that can make with yourself, with others and regard agreements that can help show you a good life while you always do your best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment. It will be different when you're healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, though, simply do your best and you will avoid self-judgment and regret. Our circumstances, our context, the particular time and place we've been thrown into, and the societal rules that come with it, our inherited our inheritance of genetics and customs, and all those wider political and economic currents that we're being tossed and turned about by, all of these come together to shape our opportunities in life. So our best might well be limited by factors that have got little to do with our inherent potential or our active effort. But most of us will be constrained to some degree by our resources and our responsibilities. So a realistic sense of what our best self might look like, we could have to take into account not just our standard human foibles and flaws, but also the bigger global picture that we're embedded in. When we come together each week as a church, we can insistently and gently call each other back to these highest aspirations, nudge each other back on track, and perhaps challenge each other when necessary, but within the context of this big-hearted, generous and compassionate community, a place where we can ultimately know ourselves to be good enough. As Tiki and Or Amin said in the first reading, the church is where we build relationships of accountability and support which shape us in meaningful and powerful ways that call us to grow, do better, and be our best selves. So let's keep praying that prayer. And I'm going to close with an echo of those familiar words as we look forward now to the coming week. Help us to live well each day and be our best selves using our unique gifts in the service of love, justice, and peace. Amen. One last hymn. Number ninety in your purple books. Let us give thanks and praise. Hymn ninety. Thanks to Jack for lovely music and for stepping in at the last moment, and to Benge for supporting our singing. Thanks to Julia for reading and also rushing out to put the kettle on. She'll be making the tea in a minute. Thanks to Juliette for greeting in the foyer. And thanks to Vita. Where are you, Vita, for doing the lovely flowers once again? Thank you. If you're here in person, you can have um it's not my best cake effort ever. There's some uh chocolate beer cake that went slightly wrong, but I'm sure it'll it's just cosmetic. I'm sure it will taste fine. Uh or orange squiggle cake and loads of bits left over from last week as well. So I think you've got a good cake buffet on today. Um if you're online, perhaps the fact that the cake was wonky will console you in some way. So please stay on for a chat with Janine anyway. At half twelve today, Margaret's offering her Finding Your Voice Singing Class, do stay for that. Uh, that's free and all are welcome. That's about 45 minutes, right? Till about quarter past one. Um tonight we've got the Better World Book Club uh talking about is this working? If you're expecting to come along to that and you haven't yet had the link, let me know. I should just say also as a general public service announcement, people have been telling me that my emails have been going into spam. So if you're expecting to receive anything from me and haven't, it might be rather than I'm slacking that it's just in your spam box. Do check. Um next month in the Better World Book Club, we are reading just about coping. Uh that's about mental health. It's written by uh London psychologist Natalie Cawley, and we've got a few copies to lend out. If you want to join, they'll be at the back and we can take this one off the left hand. Wednesday, we have the poetry group with Brian. Have a word with him if you want to come along and uh give him a copy of whatever poem you want to share so he can make a copy for everyone. Sonia's got her last near class until the autumn this Friday at half twelve here in the building. On Friday, uh Rita uh who is actually online today, Rita will be covering heart and soul on the theme of the weather. Uh sign up with her for that. Next Sunday, Jasmine's leading the service. Give me a week off. Uh and the title will be Start Where You Are. Me and Charlotte are running a six-part course over the summer titled How to Be a Unitarian. Um, even if you attended it before, you can come again. It's always uh good to meet new people and chew over the ideas in a different group. We've got friends, I think we've already got about 25 people signed up from all over the country, but surprisingly few from Kensington, so please come. Um what else have I got to tell you? On the 21st of June, we'll have our mini retreat, Summer Solstice Labyrinth Mini Retreat led by me and Sarah Tinker. Sign up with me for that one. And uh Vita is going to be offering an Indian head massage workshop on the afternoon of the 5th of July. Uh they're all free of charge. So have a word with Vita if you want to know more. And I haven't got a copy to hand, but the summer newsletter is out. Most of you will already have picked one out up on the way in, I hope. If not, please do take one and sign your name so that we know you've got it so that I don't spend twice on the postage. I think that's all the announcement. The congregation's very much got a life beyond Sunday morning, so uh do what you can to look out for each other and nurture supportive connection. It is time for our closing words and closing music now. Our chalice is about to be extinguished, but its light shines on, burning within each and every one of us as faith and hope and love. So in the days to come, whatever life brings our way, may we always be guided by the light of that inner beacon, reminding us of the beloved community we have known here, and recalling us to our highest aspirations, our best self. Maybe so for the greater good of all.