Words of Wisdom

A service titled ‘Words of Wisdom’, led by Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall, with reflections by Lochlann Binney, David Brewerton, Pat Gregory and John Humphreys, a reading from Chloe Harewood, and music from Holly Redshaw and George Ireland.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 3:00

We gather this morning to share in a particular kind of community. A community of faith in which each of us is free to quest for our own way of being religious and faithful. We gather this morning to turn attention to our own spiritual journey, the path we've travelled until now, and the road as it leads onward. We are none of us the same as we were twenty years ago or even last week. We are none of us the same as we shall be in five weeks or five years or ten years. As the paths of our lives cover new terrain, may we find helpful new concepts, insights, and understandings of the spirit of the highest good in this life and new ways to interpret those ways we've loved long and hard. And may we be open to the voice of wisdom wherever and however we might find it as we create, imagine and embody religious community here together today. Those joining us from far and wide via Zoom or indeed tuning in at a later date. For anyone who doesn't know me, my name is Jane Blackall and I am minister with Kensington Unitarian. Our service this morning is titled Words of Wisdom. This is something we do from time to time. It probably isn't the first words of wisdom service that several of you have been to. And I've invited some members of the congregation, uh Lochlan, David, Pat, and John, to share their reflections on some words, whether that's a quote or a proverb or a saying, words that have helped to guide them. Something that's given them insight or helped them find a new perspective on life, how to live. Let's light our chalice flame. It is a moment for us to pause, to gather ourselves, to forget about technical problems, lay down any worries we came in carrying. And it's a ritual that connects us with Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists the world over. It reminds us that the proudly progressive religious tradition of which this gathering is part. Nevertheless, we have each other. So let us look to one another for wisdom, be grateful for each other's companionship and seek support when we have lost hope. We like this chalice this morning to signify that we are willing to take this journey together, honouring the inner light within each and every one of us. Time to sing now. Our first hymn this morning is on your hymn sheet. If you're in the building, when we gather here to worship, if you're joining on Zoom, the words will be up on screen, as they will for all the hymns today. Stand or sit as you prefer when we gather here to worship. You might want to adjust your position, close your eyes, put down anything you don't need to be holding. Perhaps there's a posture that helps you to feel more settled and centred, whatever helps you to get into the right state of body and mind to be fully present to yourself, to each other, and to that which lies within us and beyond us. We turn our full attention to you, the light within and without, as we tune into the depths of this life and the greater wisdom to which and through which we are all intimately connected. Be with us now as we allow ourselves to drop into the silence and the stillness at the very centre of our being. Be with us each new day as we wake. Let us know the comfort of your presence and the revitalizing power of your calling. Whatever we have to face, be it joy or sorrow, give us strength to carry it through the new day. Give us to know that when we arise in the morning, we must give thanks for the morning light, for life and for strength. For we are still here. We must give thanks for the gifts of living, our food and our friends, and so many small joys. Joys which might go unappreciated in the struggle of our days. Give us hope in doing your will, in aligning ourselves with the promptings of peace, justice, and love. May the warmth of the fellowship we share here stay with us through the coming week and all it brings our way. May we draw strength from this faith that we hold and this beloved community that we are an indispensable part of. May we show our faith by extending our compassion and care even to those we find challenging, or to those we struggle to understand. May we find strength in humility, courage in adversity, joy in diversity, and a true sense of purpose. And so in the coming week may our ears and eyes be open to tidings of joy and gladness, to hints of new possibility. Bless and prosper the work of our hands for our life and for the larger life as you would see it. The realm of love that is yet to come. And in a few moments of shared stillness, now let us call to mind those people and situations who are particularly on our hearts this morning. Think of all those issues that concern us whoever close to home or in troubled places the world over. And let us hold them gently and loving kindness for a while. 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. Our first reading today is taken from one of the wisdom texts in the Bible. It's from the opening chapters of the Book of Proverbs, traditionally attributed to King Solomon, but apparently a collection of a hotchpotch of words of wisdom gathered from various sources over many years. As a result, it's full of contradictions and paradoxes, which seems about right. Life is like that. The wise thing to do in one circumstance might not be the wisest thing in other conditions. And so there are words of wisdom that appear to pull us in different directions, perhaps in order to steer us to a middle way. So this reading, which is taken from the message translation of the Bible, it used contemporary language to make it more accessible, though I should say it's still got fairly dramatic imagery and unnecessarily gendered language in it, side note. This reading lifts up the importance of learning from the wisdom of those who are more experienced who are further along the way.

SPEAKER_03 16:12

Written down so we'll know how to live well and right, to understand what life means and where it's going, a manual for living, for learning what's right and just and fair, to teach the inexperienced the ropes and give our young people a grasp on reality. There's something here also for seasoned men and women, still a thing or two for the experienced to learn, fresh wisdom to probe and penetrate, the rhymes and reasons of wise men and women. Good friend, take to heart what I'm telling you. Collect my counsels and guard them with your life. Tune your ears to the world of wisdom, set your heart on a life of understanding. That's right. If you make insight your priority and won't take no for an answer, searching for it like a prospector panning for gold, like an adventurer on a treasure hunt. Believe me, before you know it, fear of God will be yours. You'll have come up upon the kingdom of God. And here's why God gives out wisdom free, is plainspoken in knowledge and understanding. He's a rich mind of common sense for those who live well, a personal bodyguard to the candid and sincere. He keeps his eye on all who live honestly and pay special attention to his loyally committed ones. So now you can pick out what's true and fair. Find all the good trails. Lady wisdom will be your close friend, and brother knowledge your pleasant companion. Good sense will scout ahead for danger. Insight will keep an eye out for you. They'll keep you from making wrong turns or following the bad directions of those who are lost themselves and can't tell a trail from a tumbleweed. These losers who make a game of evil and throw parties to celebrate perversity, traveling paths that go nowhere, wandering in a maze of detours and dead ends. So join the company of good men and women. Keep your feet on the tried and true paths. It's the men who walk straight who will settle this land, the women with integrity who will last there. The corrupt will lose their lives. The dishonest will be gone for good.

SPEAKER_04 19:11

Thanks, Chloe. Time to sing again now. Our second hymn is number one five one in your green hymn book. It's a classic, Be Thou My Vision. Hymn one five one.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

James spoke to us about the temptation of despair in the face of the world's troubles or our own personal struggles, and the need to resist it, to at least wrestle with it. What people often say in the face of despair at the rising tide of fascism and racism and everything else is that you have to have hope for a better, fairer world, that you need to believe that the arc of the universe bends towards justice, even if recent evidence doesn't bear this out. Personally, I find this advice difficult and even counterproductive. The idea that we should always be striving to feel that buoyancy and optimism, that things can get better, is exhausting to me. It feels like a lot of pressure to put my energy into feeling the right thing rather than in actually doing something. And it usually ends with a lot of self-recrimination for not feeling hopeful enough, instead of with action. When I'm despairing at the state of the world, it doesn't help me to be told I just have to hope, even less to be told that hope is a moral imperative. Instead, I think about J.R.R. Tolkien. His epic, The Lord of the Rings, is full of characters who give in to the temptation of despair and as a result make choices that make everything worse. There is also a lot about finding hope in the darkness, about trusting that a higher power will come through for you, despite the dire straits you find yourself in. Neither of those touch me as deeply as the thread running through the book of, let's just keep going, regardless of how you feel or of how much hope you can muster. When one character despairs at a serious setback, saying, This is a bitter end to our hope and to all our toil, his friend doesn't say, keep up your spirits, we can still have hope. Instead, he says, an end to hope, maybe, but not to toil. We shall not turn back here. I find this very comforting and galvanizing too. It makes me feel that it doesn't matter if my feelings are correctly hopeful or not, or if I really believe a positive outcome can be achieved, because there's still a way forward, regardless of what the ultimate outcome will be. There's still a next right thing to be done. As that same character says a little later, come, with hope or without hope, we will follow the trail. Even when we've lost hope, we can still find the next right thing to do. We can still follow the paths our conscience sets us and keep going. I find this a much deeper consolation than exhortations to hope, and much more likely to spur me on to useful action, which is, after all, the only thing that really counts in the face of despair.

SPEAKER_04 25:02

So we're moving into a time of meditation now, and to take us into the stillness, I'm simply going to invite you to meditate on your own words of wisdom. That is, those wise words that you've had that made a lasting impression on you, words that you've heard and internalized, words which help to guide you as you make your way through life. These reflections will take us into a few minutes of shared silence and stillness as usual, which will end with the sound of a bell. And then we're going to have some more other music for meditation. So do what you need to do to get comfortable, adjust your position, put down and you don't need to be holding you not want to close your eyes. Whatever helps you to be centered. And this is just an offering. Feel free to use this time to meditate in your own way. So I encourage you to think about the wise people you know or you have known. Perhaps they're family members or friends. Perhaps they're spiritual teachers or guides. Maybe the wise voices who have influenced you aren't people you know personally. Perhaps they're authors or artists or activists. People who have inspired or challenged you. Allow their words of wisdom to bubble up in your mind. The ones you carry with you. Maybe a saying or a proverb that you associate with them. Maybe a teaching. Perhaps some guidance that they offered you when you most needed it. Let us sit with those words of wisdom as we enter into a time of shared silence now.

SPEAKER_05 33:57

Wise words. Words of wisdom. There have been so many. From parents, teachers, friends, blokes leading out the windows of their vans, advising me how to ride my bike. Now one of the many beats I had as a journalist was covering the commercial property, real estate, seen during the boom of the early 1970s, and the bust that inevitably followed. A highly successful property developer who was worth millions, said to me one day, I always leave something for the next person. What he meant was, if he was selling a building he reckoned it was worth a million pounds, he'd be happy to accept 950,000. That way, he gets a quick deal, and the buyer believes he's got a bargain. Smiles all round. I've thought about this from time to time. Although simple, it is a piece of advice that, like bread dough, can be expanded in all directions. In one of the books of the Old Testament, Leviticus, we have God telling Moses, When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Patricia and I frequently holiday on a little French island, the Isle de Ray, where this seems to be followed well religiously. One of the island's products, alongside wine and salt, are potatoes deemed to be so special that in the early spring you can pay ten euros, yes, ten euros or more, for a one kilo box of these in one of the smartest food halls in Paris. The famous pompe de terre de Ile de Re grow in the earth like any other potatoes. And despite the spud's significant value in the posh shops, the farmers do not bother picking up the ones that remain on the ground when the harvesting machine has passed through. Those gleanings are for anyone anyone who wants to pick them up. The farmer has been generous, the gleaners are happy. Again, smiles all round. But the advice from that property developer can be applied equally to the philosophical. The recounting of journeys, for instance. It is more usual to want to boast of the best or the worst travel experience than to invite somebody else to top your story. Most of us want to command the moral high ground at some time. We say Oh, we don't fly, we take the train. Yet a few weeks ago I took an aeroplane three times in the course of ten days. Do some of us want to be the most virtuous to claim we go on more demos for Palestine or the environment? Never tell lies. Give to charity whatever. When telling others what we do, why not leave a little space for them to do better? We'll probably have more interesting conversations as a result.

SPEAKER_04 37:55

Thanks, David. Time for another hymn now. This hymn is on your hymn sheet. We haven't sung this in ages. Um it's got a slightly unusual rhythm that makes me want to bob around. Uh it's a so feel free to bob around. It's apparently based on a folk tune from the Philippines, and we're going to hear it through once before we sing. Thanks, George. Oh, the beauty in a life.

SPEAKER_02 40:30

I've attended countless workshops, sat for hours on retreats, read what seems like hundreds of books, and every time I go online, there's always more wise quotes or motivational kicks to show me the way. So I felt well equipped for this task. So here are the wise words that brought me back to God. The finger pointing at the moon is not the moon. When I heard this incredibly simple Zen Buddhist quote, it felt like the most important message that I could receive. I saw that my external searching was disconnecting me from who I truly am. I had followed so many paths and in so doing it had had forgotten my own heart. My addictive thinking had kept me in the outward search mode and was never going to lead me within. Of course, I feel privileged to have been with so many wise teachers who helped me to realize that I do not need to do or be anything because I am already whole. But I still did not believe this was true. I needed to embody this truth to be fully present in my body. I gave myself space and learned to stop thinking my feelings and started to really feel them in my body. I found myself naturally slowing down and lightening up. I began taking myself less seriously. And I felt calm and open. There's more ease and laughter. I don't deny there are problems, sorrows, and upsets, but if I catch myself trying to fix them, I now find that I can mostly surrender and wait for guidance from within. The more I can trust my heart, the more I go direct to source and learn to know myself as love. As time went on, I felt guided, guided to be part of a community where truth, justice, and freedom were sacred, where shared experiences are encouraged and space is given to discuss different spiritual practices. So on a Sunday morning in 2018, I found myself attending this Unitarian church where everyone is welcome, whatever their beliefs, their gender or race. And in this church, I feel that together we can grow in love.

SPEAKER_06 43:34

I learnt that Hockney was not religious, but that he did hold a personal spiritual sense of wonder about the universe. He was also known to quote Billy Wilder's take on Christianity. In one part of his obituary, I was particularly taken by one of his drawings of a plinth in a desert landscape called Carl Sagan Quote. This carried an inscription from Sagan's book The Pale Blue Dot. I thought initially that it was a drawing of a tombstone, but in fact it was done the year before Sagan died. And the inscription reads, In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering all. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, this is better than we thought? The universe is much bigger than our prophet said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed. Instead they say, no, no, no, my God is a little God, and I want him to stay that way. A religion, old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and or hardly tapped by conventional faith. Sooner or later such a religion will emerge. So these words they spoke very powerfully and coherently to the scientist in me, and yet it also described a religion emerging, or perhaps already existing, which would require me to trust that my not knowing could be the basis of my faith in God. This has been a major shift for me. Previously I had sought refuge in the certainty of atheism, the cycle of birth, reproduction, and death, together with an with a need to know what behavior constituted a rational and ethical life. But Carl Sagan's description of how I might go beyond this secular humanist view requires me to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe. A lifetime of reading has given me access to much greater teaching, but I find I must look beyond words to progress along my spiritual path. The silence of meditation and an increasing awareness of the interconnectedness of our existence on this tiny planet are essential ingredients. But so is the power of art, especially music, in allowing me to transcend the limitations of language. So in conclusion, I said that I thought that the drawing was of a tombstone, and it was perhaps not surprising that I'd made an a can an immediate connection to my mother's grave, on which I inscribe some further words of wisdom.

SPEAKER_04 47:36

Thank you, John, and thank you, Pat, for your words of wisdom. Time for one last hymn now, one of my favorites, number two eight four in the Green Book, Good Night Hymn. I always feel the need to acknowledge the absurdity of singing this in the morning, but the sentiment is too good for us to let that get in the way. Hymn 284, the Good Night Hymn. Thanks to Lochlan for co-hosting online. Thanks to Holly and George for Lovely Music Bench for supporting our singing. Thanks to Lachlan, David, Pat, and John for uh the reflections and Chloe for doing our reading. Thanks to John for reading for greeting, and indeed Pat and Anna and Akiko and everyone else who's been helping out in the kitchen. Um if you're online, stay for a chat with Loughlin if you can. If you're in person, please do stay for lunch. I'm sure there'll be enough to go round. Or you can just stay for tea and cake if you're in a rush. Um any thanks to Liz for organising the lunch. She's already gone off to work in the kitchen. I'm sure she'll be grateful for help with the cleaning up if anyone's here that long. Tonight on Friday, we've got our online heart and soul contemplative spiritual gathering. We've got a bonus one tonight because the book club was off this month. The theme is humility. Sign up with me for that. And although this month's book club is off, next one is very much on on the 30th of August. We'll be reading Upstream How to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath. Um, I've got a few copies to loan out on the shelf at the back. Just let me know if you take one and you're planning to come along. Next Sunday, we'll be back with a service on practical mysticism uh featuring special music from our quartet of singers, and that will be followed by Margaret's singing class. I also want to plug a little opportunity that's coming up next month online. Hot Close Summer School is sold out in person, but you can still join the online talks and engagement groups uh via Zoom. That's daily from the 22nd of August. It's £100 to sign up, uh, but you need to book as soon as possible. Let me know if you want to know more about that. All these activities are listed on the back of your order of service, they're in the Friday email. As you know, this life has the church has very much got a life beyond Sunday morning. So do what you can to look out for each other and nurture all those supportive connections. So just time for our closing words of music. May the blessings of life be upon us, upon this congregation. May the memories we gather here give us hope for the future. May the wisdom we receive prompt new growth and insight. May the love that we share bring strength and joy to our hearts, and may the peace of this community be with us until we meet again. Amen.