22nd August 2022 – Theme Talk for Hucklow Summer School Online – jointly with Rev. Sarah Tinker
This talk is in six sections alernating between Sarah (in italics) and Jane (in regular type).
Sarah: Surely the Summer School Panel have come up with the ultimate topic this year – Right Relationship. It’s all in there isn’t it? Life, the universe, the whole caboodle – expressed in that pleasingly brief concept.
We searched to find the origins of this terminology and though we can’t be sure, it does seem to have appeared first in writings connected with the Society of Friends. Not surprising, as Quakers have long encouraged one another to reflect on their relatedness to other human beings, as well as to God. We have them to thank for the ever useful injunction – ‘recognise something of God in everyone you meet’, which some of us use as a guiding principle to this day. In Unitarian circles I’ve heard that re-stated as ‘recognise the spark of divinity in all that exists’ – widening this circle beyond simply human beings. And the Sufi guidance of ‘this too is me’ is one I’ll come back to later on.
The term ‘right relationship’ reminds us of the Noble Eight-Fold Path of Buddhism, also known as the Three-Fold Way, where three aspects of Buddhist life – ethics, meditation and wisdom are expanded.
Established way back in the 5th century BCE, some of these edicts sound so modern. Maybe they can help guide us in life now.
• Right action, behaving in a skilful way and not harming others
• Right speech, speaking truthfully
• Right livelihood (earning a living in a way that does not harm others or cause suffering)
• Right mindfulness (being aware of yourself and the emotions of others)
• Right effort (putting effort into meditation and positive thoughts and feelings)
• Right concentration (developing focus so that you are able to meditate)
• Right view / understanding (remembering that actions have consequences)
• Right intention (being clear about following the Buddhist path)
Again I’ll be coming back to this idea of guidelines for our relating later. But the fact that we have such clear guidelines from ancient times is a sign that the issue of how we get along with one another has been around as long as members of our species have been living together, and no doubt our earlier kindred too. We are clearly relational creatures, we depend upon one another and we’ll have been establishing rules and guidelines about how to live with one another since our earliest days of communicating.
Is anything different in the 21st century? Maybe not, though in some societies the unfettered rule of power and force are challenged in ways that would not have been possible in centuries past. And we could argue that the remarkable development of social media as a means of relating digitally has brought us many new issues to consider, as well as many new possibilities for ways of relating. And in western societies such as Britain we have seen a notable shift in attitudes towards authority, a growing awareness, and sometimes distrust, of hierarchical relationships.
So here we are in 2022, a little gathering of Unitarians, asking ourselves how might we establish right relationship?’. How might we best Practise Love, Peace, and Justice in Everyday Life? This evening Jane and I are particularly focussing on relatedness with ourselves and with others. And I may as well break the bad news to you sooner rather than later – though this probably dawned on all of you a lot sooner than it dawned on me – that there is no static, happy ever after, whoopdedoo, ‘in right relationship’ state to arrive at and then we can all relax. Like balancing on a bicycle, in our relatedness we will be forever in movement, re-adjustments both subtle and large will forever be required of us. And although in this first evening we are exploring the personal elements of right relationship, we also need to establish that every element of human existence is inter-connected. Ethics, the legal system, economics, politics, world affairs, the natural world and environmental crises – all play their part.
As does history. We cannot forget that for much of human history throughout the world people have been treated differently because of gender, because of race, because of age, because of social class and economic status – to mention but a few of the myriad ways we humans differentiate between ourselves. To take just one example, it was only in the 19th century in English law that the slow path towards women being regarded as equals with men began. Children were regarded then as a father’s property. Married women had no rights over their own property. But dissenting voices became louder, campaigns were fought and eventually led to changes in the law. Slowly, greater gender equality was established, which led eventually to women gaining the right to vote etc etc. You know the story. But we still have a gender pay gap in the 21st century – women in the UK are paid 90p for every £1 paid to a man. Ten percent less. And the statistics on violence towards women should horrify us all. It can be painful to realise how much further we need to work towards equality. And to recognise that humanity’s steps forward can so quickly slide backwards once more when there is regime change.
Legal systems and economics are crucial aspects of relatedness yet in this area of personal relationships that we’re considering this evening, aren’t we hoping that each individual will take some responsibility for right relationship – for rules and legislation can only go so far. It’s worth mentioning the work of Martin Buber here – a prominent twentieth century philosopher, religious thinker, political activist and educator. His most famous work explored two ways of human relating to our world, which he named as I-Thou and I-It. Both forms of relating are needed in human existence explained Buber. In I-It relationships we relate to people and objects through their function. Only in I-Thou relationships is true dialogue possible, true sharing, no masks or pretence. But Buber was clear that such connections were inevitably fleeting, that we move in and out of I-Thou relatedness, that it can never be constant or static.
And I’d add that such depth of relating is both potentially wonderful and exasperating. It’s certainly not easy to interact authentically – particularly in on-going relationships is it. Isn’t this where love needs to be invited in, again and again and again? I smiled when Jane read about invoking love earlier on and the description of love not arriving in the form we perhaps hoped for.
To invoke Love
is to never know if it will come softly,
with the nuzzle of a beloved dog,
or pounce right on your chest with the strength of a lioness
protecting her cub, her pride, her homeland. (Sean Parker Dennison)
In the realm of personal relationships, you’ve probably noticed, things rarely go quite according to plan.
Jane: What do we even mean by ‘right’ relationship? Seeing as that’s the theme of the whole week I thought we’d better stick that gnarly question on the table on day one. To speak of ‘right’ relationship implies there is such a thing as ‘wrong’ relationship (and, you have to imagine, a great big grey area in between, which is the space where most of us live, most of the time). People, especially liberal-leaning people, can sometimes be a bit allergic to the very notion of ‘right and wrong’, a bit averse to any hint of moral absolutes, a bit inclined to moral relativism. And of course that’s the territory we’re in, when we talk of ‘right relationship’, we’re talking about morality and ethics, perennial questions like ‘how should we live?’ or, in any given moment or situation, ‘what should I do?’ The very presence of the word ‘should’ in those questions implies the existence of a moral or ethical norm that we are holding ourselves to – that there’s a right answer to such questions (and a wrong one) – or perhaps there’s a whole spectrum of answers that could somehow be graded on their degree of rightness or wrongness.
Ethics and moral reasoning is an enormous topic – and my intention tonight is not to get bogged down in the academic side of things (though I have done a little bit of study in that field) – the scholarly side of ethics which speaks of utility, duty, and virtue, is quite fascinating to explore and reflect on, but it can be hard to join the dots between such theoretical moral calculations and the way we choose to act each day, how we live our lives in messy reality. Even if, in principle, we lean towards one of these theoretical approaches to ethics, working out what it means for our conduct – the ‘right’ thing to do in any given moment – is by no means straightforward. Our lives are interwoven in such a complex web of interdependence, each move we make (or fail to make) in any moment can set in motion a chain of events with infinite reach and unknowable consequences (think of the Butterfly Effect); you would have to have a God’s eye view of the entire Universe to be able to truly weigh up the impact of every action before you make it.
As an aside: this puts me in mind of a splendid little routine from the comedian Bill Bailey. He talks about a typical exchange of greetings between British people: ‘how are you?’ ‘not too bad, all things considered’. Whenever anyone says ‘not too bad, all things considered’, Bill Bailey says he wants to reply: ‘what, you’ve considered ALL things? The tectonic plates, inching around the planet, mocking our brief dance on the surface? Everything that has ever existed at a molecular level? The uncountable stars? The boundless universe beyond which our imagination founders on a distant shore?’ (that’s a highly abridged version of five minutes of escalating absurdity featuring marmite, manatees, Franz Lizst, and the tears of a Patagonian shepherd… and I clearly can’t do justice to Bill Bailey, so do look it up on YouTube for the full joyful experience). My point is: we can’t really consider ALL things when it comes to making ethical decisions in everyday life.
So if this moment-to-moment moral calculus is a bit of a non-starter how do we really make our ethical decisions in everyday life? How do we judge what ‘right relationship’ means in practice?
I’m mindful of the words of the philosopher James Griffin from his work ‘Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs’: ‘We inherit our ethical standards. We start our moral life with firm views about right and wrong, some so firm that they are never shaken. Still, in time we start rejecting others of them. We do not just change our minds about them; we also find them faulty in some way – unjustified, out of date, too undiscriminating. We regard our new ethical beliefs as not just different, but better. Much moral philosophy should be seen as a continuation – more self-conscious and more sustained – of this project of improvement that all of us are engaged in before we have even heard of philosophy…. Our ethical standards are hand-me-downs, and sooner or later we start criticising them. How should we go about it?’
Words from the moral philosopher James Griffin. So, like he says, none of us work out our ethical standards from first principles, we absorb them from our family, our culture, our peers. Some we cling to unquestioningly; some we examine and retain; some we reconsider and reform; some we outgrow and reject altogether. Plenty of what’s passed on will stand the test of time. But – I hope – as individuals, as a community, as a society – we do have it in us to reflect and grow. Many people here tonight have seen huge shifts in society in their lifetime; for example, homosexuality was illegal not so long ago – anti-gay sentiment was absolutely the default in our society – now, on the whole, the consensus has moved on – thank God – to the point where same-sex marriage is a thing and on the whole people can be safely ‘out’ in most spheres of life (though I need to acknowledge we are facing a significant backlash to this progress around the world right now).
Nevertheless we should expect our moral principles to evolve and change as we integrate new insights gleaned from our collective experience. I find myself thinking of the well-known quote from Maya Angelou: ‘I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.’
I would venture that, perhaps, the longer we have held on to a certain moral precept, the more ingrained it will be in our sense of self, and the harder it will be for us to revise it. What does it say about the person we were before? We might feel a sense of shame about our previous outlook and that can be a very powerful force resisting necessary change. There is a great deal of moral courage involved in coming to the conclusion that some long-held moral principle of ours was misguided, mistaken, or just plain ‘wrong’, and changing our view (and our conduct) accordingly. And in addition to those internal dynamics we can find ourselves almost ‘trapped’ in a certain moral worldview by tradition, peer pressure, social norms, and misguided notions of ‘common sense’. Just because it’s ‘normal’ doesn’t mean it’s ‘right’. That’s one of my key messages tonight! I can hear a thousand mums saying ‘just because everyone else is doing it doesn’t mean you should’.
A lot of ways of being with each other in our society today are, in my view, a million miles away from ‘right relationship’, but harmful conduct often goes unquestioned (or is even celebrated), just because we’re used to it, and ‘it’s the way things are and the way they have always been’. Every day of our lives we will see cruelty, exploitation, bullying, neglect, and carelessness all round us (to varying degrees) – if we’re paying attention – there is bad behaviour in workplaces and schools, (and, yes, churches); in the media where it is often excused, minimised, or passed off as entertainment; on social media, which has a reputation for being a cesspit, and where ‘I was only joking! Can’t you take a joke?’ is used to excuse all manner of nastiness. In so many settings harmful conduct is all too often accepted, normalised, perpetuated, even reinforced by institutional structures and social norms. But so often we prefer not to speak of it, not to name what we’ve witnessed out loud, not to cause a fuss, not to be the awkward sod who initiates the difficult conversation about harm (and really this is understandable as there may well be negative consequences to speaking up). There have been some laudable high-profile campaigns recently where behaviour that was widely considered socially acceptable in the past has been challenged and perpetrators have been ‘called out’ for the harm they have done. I’m thinking particularly of the ‘Me Too’ campaign, initiated by Tarana Burke, which raised awareness of the prevalence of sexual harassment and assault – particularly in workplaces – it was (and is) going on everywhere. And everybody knew – it was almost a cliched joke in every TV sitcom of my childhood – but it’s only now that the tide seems to be turning, and it is taken seriously as being ‘wrong’, rather than just laughed off and dismissed as something only bra-burning feminists were bothered about.
All of which is to say: The first step in cultivating right relationship is to question everything! Don’t just assume the ‘right’ thing to do or the ‘right’ way to be is obvious, or ‘common sense’, or that it’s what everybody else is doing. Don’t just default to going-with-the-flow in order to fit in socially. I realise this is a bit paradoxical (going out on a limb socially does make it harder to be in relationship at all!). But if we’re framing this in terms of attempting to live ‘right’, discerning how to act more ethically, then we are talking about reflecting on our way of being in the world rather than living on autopilot. And – as we heard from James Griffin earlier – this will quite likely involve deconstructing and discarding some of the habits of thought and action we’ve inherited and going our own way. And we can’t stop there! It’s not enough to reject what’s gone before. Having deconstructed we need to reconstruct. If we have discerned that some or all of what we inherited is ‘wrong’ then the next step is to work out what we are going to put in its place rather than leaving a moral vacuum. What are our moral commitments? And what values, principles, or foundations are they based on?
One of the key purposes of church life, as I understand it, is to be a community which reflects on ethical questions such as these – which holds up values, principles, and moral teachings – a community in which we hold each other accountable in striving to ‘know better and do better’. Of course a church is more than an ethical society. But it is one important aspect of what we do.
In communities such as ours it can sometimes seem as if we lack enough shared reference points to come to consensus about what’s ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. We Unitarians frequently speak about the importance of each person searching their own conscience – I had a look at Cliff Reed’s classic text, ‘Unitarian? What’s That?’, and found no less than ten mentions of conscience in that slim volume. Just a few excerpts: ‘We hold that all people have the right to believe what their own life experience tells them is true; what the prompting of their own conscience tells them is right.’ … ‘On all issues of personal conscience, each Unitarian is free to come to his or her own conclusions without fear of judgement or censure.’ … ‘A Unitarian view of sin might be: to sin is wilfully to act, speak, or even think in a way that one’s own conscience condemns as wrong.’ … ‘To be a Unitarian is to take responsibility for one’s own faith. It is to value the intuitions of oneself and others. It is to test one’s beliefs against reason and conscience. It is to afford others the same right to be honest with their own inner authority as one claims for oneself.’ Conscience is actually a big deal for Unitarians.
But conscience can be a bit of a slippery concept and – am I being too cynical here? – occasionally I wonder if people use the appeal to conscience as a shorthand for ‘I’ll do what I like, thanks’ (just using it as a form of self-justification without actually doing the deep reflection to back it up). When I was studying with the Jesuits at Heythrop College a few years back I was introduced to a way of thinking about conscience that has shaped my understanding of the concept ever since. Briefly – as I understand it – the idea is that we don’t just get born with an ‘oven-ready’ conscience. Conscience must be formed and informed. Formed and informed. Conscience is, crucially, formed in community: we draw on many sources of moral wisdom, over time, to form our conscience, that is, to develop our capacity for accurate perception, reflection, and analysis of moral matters (this goes back to what we’ve already considered: sifting through our moral inheritance and the cultural norms we’ve picked up to see what is worth keeping and what we should chuck away). And then, in any given situation, conscience requires us to be properly informed: to find out all the relevant facts (and to discard what is irrelevant, distorted, or untrue) so that our conscience has got good data to work with when discerning the ‘right’ course of action. To live by conscience is demanding. But to nurture our conscience is to cultivate a place within where the voice of God may be heard.
And that’s how I conceive of it, I think – this notion of ‘right relationship’ – it’s about aligning our way of being in the world with some ‘North Star’ which guides us towards love, truth, and beauty. It’s about reflecting on our way of relating to self and other – including other creatures, the natural environment, our planet, the entire universe beyond it – and reaching towards the Greater Good. For me, that ‘North Star’ is something I’m happy to name ‘God’, but you might name it differently.
Still, however we conceive of it, we still need to discern what is required of us in each moment – what God requires of us, what Love requires of us, what Justice requires of us – in order to live in ‘right relationship’ (or something a bit more like it) with self, other, and God, in our everyday lives. Even our best attempts at sincere discernment will rarely result in conclusions that we can be 100% certain and confident about (and often we’ll have to make a leap and act before we are really sure). So perhaps we should just aim, as best we can, to do ‘the next right thing’ (perhaps bearing in mind the wise saying from Ignatian Spirituality: each of us can only discern ‘for me, for now, for good’).
Sarah: Some of us humans put a lot of effort into discerning how we should best behave in relationship with others. Just take a look at those shelves filled with self-improvement titles in bookshops or online. And I suspect quite a few of us will have come away from time spent with others and chewed anxiously over what we, or they, said or did, or how we could have handled things better. Not surprising then that human groups and societies create laws, rules and guidelines to try and help us establish right relationship.
I mentioned the Buddhist Eight-Fold Path earlier on. We have Moses staggering down the hillside with the Ten Commandments. We have Jesus’ graceful response when asked which was the greatest of those Commandments: Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
Various cultures and religions have developed versions of what became known as The Golden Rule – do unto others as you would have them do unto you. As a Religious Education teacher back in the day, a happy lesson could be spent exploring the many versions of this rule and designing a poster illustrating all the ways we could treat people nicely. But there was usually at least one thoughtful teenager who would query whether everyone on this planet would actually want to be treated as we want to be treated. Aren’t we all different? And of course we are. The so-called Platinum Rule (platinum being considerably more valuable than gold) has been variously attributed and suggests that we treat others as they would wish to be treated. It’s certainly an improvement because it elicits an empathic response to the other person. It requires us to be interested in them rather than leaping to assumptions about how they would like to be treated based on our own preferences. We need to discover, through dialogue, what the other person wants and needs. But that has problems too. Some people would want to be treated in ways that aren’t in their best interests or the wider grouping’s interests. People’s yearnings have to be balanced against the wants and needs of others.
So laws about relationships can be very helpful indeed in protecting us. Rules and guidelines can be useful ways of clarifying required behaviours in particular settings. But all such codes have limitations and drawbacks. And when we enter the area of personal relationships we are stepping into a space that has little clarity about the ‘rules’. It is open for negotiation.
No wonder we get into a mess! I’ve long had pinned on my noticeboard this little statement:
‘I know that you believe you understand what you think I said,
but I’m not sure you realise that what you heard is not what I meant.’
It makes me smile in rueful recognition of just how very tricky communication in our relationships is – so tricky that I can’t imagine ever claiming that I was in right relationship with anybody. I think the best I’d ever say is that I and others are fumbling around trying to communicate effectively with each other, trying our best to understand each other, doing what we can to express what’s inside us, how we’re thinking and feeling, what our hopes and dreams currently are, alongside our fears and anxieties. Working on our communication skills has to be the key way in which to build right relationship. And what might that look like? Probably different for each of us – but for me I have to overcome blocks of niceness, anxieties about upsetting someone, of fear of the other and what I might hear, I have to carve out time to actually be with the other person because communication takes time, far longer than I’m often ready to give to it. Building right relationship requires me to lean in towards another person rather than backing away when there’s a difficult situation. Aren’t most of us quick to back off when things get difficult or heated or awkward and embarrassing? Fill in your word here for the personal situations you dislike the most. Fellow Unitarian Michaela Von Britzke wrote of the need for ‘sturdy intimacy’ in our church relationships – as a way to overcome the shallow, superficial niceness of our culture.
And along with that sturdy intimacy we have to develop our skills of curiosity, of gentle questioning, of expressing our interest in another person. We have to be willing to express our confusion and to seek clarification. We have to rein back our assumptions and any illusions that we can read another person’s mind. When we develop such skills we help the other person self-disclose. We encourage them to tell us something of themselves, to express their vulnerability. This ability to tell others something intimate about ourselves is one of the first planks of the bridge we hope to build between ourselves and another. It says: I’m here, I’m vulnerable like you, I’m interested in you, tell me more.
And let’s not forget that when it comes to personal relationships we do need to be awake to the differences between us in terms of power and privilege. That is not said in any way to put us off seeking relatedness with people who are different from us. Because that’s exactly what our world needs – more of us getting to know people who are different from us. But when some of us already have a more established place in the world, when life is stacked in our favour then it’s our job to stay aware.
To invoke Love
is to give up self-deprecation, false humility, pride,
to consider yourself worthy to be made whole,
willing to encounter Love that will never
let us let each other go. (Sean Parker Dennison)
Jane: My first encounter with the phrase ‘right relationship’ was, if I remember rightly, just over twenty years ago. I came across the concept when Thandeka, the Unitarian Universalist minister and theologian, visited our General Assembly meetings to give the Essex Hall lecture back in 2002. In this lecture, Thandeka introduced the notion of Engagement Groups to Unitarians in the UK, as a very particular way of gathering people together in small groups within our congregations. These groups are also known as ‘Covenant Groups’ or ‘Small Group Ministry’ – I think there are a number of variations on the theme – and when they’re run properly they’re transformational. Indeed, the heart of Summer School, when we’re able to gather in person up in Great Hucklow, is built around these Engagement Groups. So I am positively evangelical about this sort of small group process.
But – take note – not every small group is an Engagement Group. You can’t just stick a dozen people in a room (whether in-person or on Zoom) and call it an Engagement Group. Nope. The defining characteristic of an Engagement Group is its particular purpose and intention. The way the groups are formed, and framed, and facilitated is all with that purpose in mind. And – for twenty years now – I’ve been repeating this purpose over and over to myself and anyone else who’ll listen – the defining purpose of Engagement Groups is to bring people into right relationship with themselves, each other, and God (or that which is of ultimate worth).
I know some people here tonight will be very familiar with participating in Engagement Groups, or leading them, and I expect there will be others for whom the concept is new. As a very abbreviated introduction to Engagement Groups I will share this description adapted from ‘The Covenant Group Source Book’ produced by the Centre for Community Values (which was founded by Thandeka):
‘An [Engagement Group] is a small relational group of up to twelve people who meet regularly to establish and nurture themselves in their own beloved community. [Such Groups] provide an opportunity for group members to build strong relationships with each other and with the larger organization of which the small group is a part… Members may tell their life stories, offer support, and engage in work to serve the larger community. [Engagement Groups] offer expanding opportunities for growth, caring and connection within a congregation. [Members] experience a relational individuality which affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person. People experience themselves and each other as part of the interdependent web of existence of which we are all a part. Together, people establish communities which embody the values of justice, democracy and human dignity. Each person is treated equitably. Each has a voice and is heard. And each person is respected for his or her own intrinsic humanity. The defining purpose of [an Engagement Group] is to bring people into right relationship…’
Why am I telling you about this? Well, partly, I admit, in hope that some of you will be at least a little curious about the big claims I’m making for the transformational power of these groups for individuals, and communities, and the wider world. Maybe a few of you will be as intrigued and inspired as I was by the prospect, you’ll read up about how to do it, and you’ll take the leap, like I did, to set up an Engagement Group of your own, in your congregation, or another setting. But mainly the point I want to make tonight is that you can think of Engagement Groups as a case study in cultivating the conditions for right relationship. And by considering some of the typical features of an Engagement Group we can learn some lessons for life-in-general.
Quite often when people participate in an Engagement Group for the first time – or at least, this was the case 15-20 years ago, when they were first gaining traction in the denomination – on first encountering an Engagement Group people can find them a bit awkward. Uncomfortable. Because, by design, they interrupt our usual habits of conversation in order to enable something better. Engagement Groups are counter-cultural; they help us intentionally unlearn some of the harmful habits of behaviour that are prevalent in the wider culture which undermine ‘right relationship’. These groups generally have their own covenant, a set of agreed ground rules, tailored to the group by the group. At summer school we usually offer groups a set of suggested ‘ground rules’ (along with the rationale behind each of them) and a facilitator encourages people to stick to them once they have been agreed.
So in these groups we encourage people to share their stories, their truths, their authentic selves, and to listen to each other without comment or interruption – without turning it into a head-y debate, or coming in with our own brilliant anecdotes – and when what we hear in these groups is difficult or complicated we refrain from trying to ‘fix’ anything or ‘make things better’. What we are called to be is loving witnesses to each other. As the wonderful Parker J. Palmer says: ‘When you speak to me about your deepest questions, you do not want to be fixed or saved: you want to be seen and heard, to have your truth acknowledged and honoured.’ In my experience, in groups with these sorts of covenants, ground rules, they act as a sort of ‘scaffolding’ – or perhaps more like a set of ‘training wheels’ – a source of stability and support to hold us upright while we get the hang of this way of being with each other that is… different. They create a safer space where we can take a few more risks, be a bit more vulnerable, go deeper. Perhaps be more real with each other than we might typically manage at coffee hour on Sunday. And, crucially, they are spaces where everybody gets an equal chance to be heard; those voices which usually dominate are required to make space for the voices that are usually dominated. In the ‘Heart and Soul’ contemplative gatherings that I run – which are run on Engagement-Group principles – I always say ‘this is a space where silence is welcome and we don’t rush to fill it’. That one line serves to say ‘we’re doing something different here – don’t worry about keeping up the chat’. And when we create such spaces we may discover that other voices – the ones usually crowded out – find the courage to speak into the space that’s been created.
One other feature of Engagement Groups that supports right relationship that they are based around autonomy and consent. So many of the everyday situations in which we find ourselves involve some degree – whether it’s overt or subtle – of compulsion or coercion. Perhaps it’s not something you’re especially aware of in your own life – it is perhaps more obvious to those who are less privileged, or less powerful, in various ways – those whose choices seem more limited, those who feel they can’t afford to say ‘no’ or ‘rock the boat’ by going against the flow in social situations where others have more power and status. But I would imagine most of us can think of occasions where we’ve been bounced into doing something we didn’t want to do through peer pressure. Engagement Groups, at their best, start from a point of really respecting people’s autonomy, and operating on the basis of genuine consent. The group facilitator might present a suggested covenant or set of ground rules to the group but it is an invitation for each person to accept, or reject, or negotiate, until they are happy to proceed on these ‘terms of engagement’. The facilitator explains what activities are planned, so everyone knows what’s coming up, and each can make an informed decision about whether or not they are willing to be part of it. While everyone is encouraged to join in, it is typically made explicit that this is an invitation not an obligation – we’d say there is always a ‘pass option’ – and sitting an activity out, or finding an alternative way to participate, is a genuine option; participants know they’re not going to be socially punished for opting out. Because one of the foundations of right relationship is consent. I think there’s perhaps a widespread lack of awareness of consent issues in everyday life, and I wish I had more time to unpack this – and to give you some examples of ‘doing consent better’ in daily life, and congregational life – but I wanted to flag it as something that deserves more attention.
The point of telling you about Engagement Groups is this: some of the most valuable ways of cultivating ‘right relationship’ are quite hard to sustain unilaterally in a world where our culture and our economic system train us to treat people like things – valuing others only in so far as they are ‘useful’ or ‘productive’ – rather than treating each person as an infinitely precious soul with the inherent worth and dignity we so often speak of. When we intentionally and repeatedly practice deep listening, authentic sharing, making space, and honouring consent in Engagement Groups – all of which are practices of right relationship – practices of love in action – we begin to internalise ways of being which spill out into the rest of our lives, our congregations, and (hopefully, eventually) the wider world. We truly encounter other people, we hear their stories, and we begin to understand and appreciate the infinite variety of human identity and experience just a little bit better.
We listen. We learn. And we love.
Sarah: This term ‘right relationship’ inevitably asks us to question where we’re getting things wrong. A quick scan of the world’s news will spotlight some of the areas that I reckon most of us would agree are in need of healing – our relationship with our planet earth home, our race relations, gender inequalities, attitudes towards migrants, issues of identity, our treatment of animals, to mention but a few – and some of these will be explored by other speakers in the days ahead.
But in this section this evening, as we consider our relationships with ourselves and our personal relationships with others, I want to encourage our processes of self-examination in life. I’m not going to use the famous quotation attributed to Socrates that ‘an unexamined life is a life not worth living’ – because I imagine that you, like me, have met people who live simply and lovingly, and don’t spend hours worrying about what so and so said, or about the choice they made yesterday. There are many ways to be human aren’t there and an unexamined life can be a life filled with love and beauty. Those of us who are blessed, or cursed, with busy minds and turbulent emotions – we are the ones who need to hone our reflective powers. We are the ones who need to be aware of the gaps in our understanding and to seek actively any educational opportunities we can to understand other people better.
As a Unitarian minister I want to trumpet the possibility of using our churches, our congregations, as places of exploration and education. Churches are a great resource and they are one of the places we might just occasionally meet people who are different from us. I wonder if there are people you are particularly glad to have met in a church setting. For me it was gay men. I don’t know why but 30 years ago I had never knowingly met a gay man, to speak with and listen to in depth, until I started attending Unitarian events. That changed my life. It gave me new perspectives on the world. It taught me a painful and useful lesson about my o so human tendency to generalise about groups of people. I’m embarrassed to remember the gently humorous way I was put right about some of my assumptions. And of course, before too long, spending time with members of a minority shattered any illusions I’d had about our Unitarian movement and its supposed openness to all. I heard stories, true stories, of ignorance and oppression: someone losing their post as a minister because of their support for equal marriage, gay couples ignored at social events, congregations that quietly let it be known that their pulpit would never welcome someone who was ‘openly’ in a gay relationship. This was nigh on thirty years ago now. I sincerely hope such attitudes have changed. But there will always be new issues for us to be educated in. We are late as a denomination to be considering our inherent racism and the work of awareness raising is unfairly left to just a few people. We are at the start of an educational process on trans issues. We are as dangerously slow as many other parts of our society to respond appropriately to climate emergency.
Minority groups rightly tell us that it’s not their job to educate us. Can we utilise our church resources to take on this educational work? Indeed, isn’t that what this Summer School week is all about? Education. Sharing our insights. Telling our stories. Bringing one another some new perspectives to consider. Making space for other voices. Only by such processes of personal and collective education, processes of consciousness-raising, can we develop ourselves as potentially useful allies to invisible and oppressed groups.
The digital realm enables us to hear some of those other voices that most of us would not encounter in our everyday lives. We can now read and hear of other people’s experiences and their needs. And perhaps that can then strengthen us in seeking out face to face encounters with those who aren’t like us in various ways. It can be salutary to realise what bubbles many of us live in, sticking to groups and situations and individuals that mirror ourselves. Taking a step towards the ‘other’ rather than away from them is a vital task I believe for our world society now. It may well be a tentative, hesitant step. It may well lead us to realise how little we can actually offer the ‘other’. But it’s a step of great spiritual significance to face one who we do not know, do not understand, may even fear, and genuinely hold that Sufi message within our very being – ‘this too is me’. We are one. And all this, dear friends, is easier said than done.
To invoke Love
is to guard against assumptions,
take care with our words and practice forgiveness,
not as ethereal ideal, but right here,
in the messy midst of our imperfect lives. (Sean Parker Dennison)
Jane: To live in right relationship – with ourselves, with others, with our planet and all its inhabitants, with God (or whatever we consider to be of ultimate worth) – that is a beautiful thing to aspire to. And, as we’ve just begun to explore this evening, it’s potentially quite a demanding aspiration too.
I don’t know about you, but I’m finding life quite tough these days, in a variety of ways. The last few years have been particularly hard going for many of us – so much loss, change and uncertainty – so much conflict and instability on both a local and a global scale. It’s relentless and it wears us down. And I wanted to acknowledge that, as we bring this talk to a close, because when we are struggling and feeling besieged as individuals, we might find it quite a bit harder to extend ourselves to others. We might find ourselves instinctively drawing inwards for self-preservation. Like a little armadillo.
So as we begin to draw this first theme talk to a close I want to remind you of the need for balance. On the one hand, yes, let’s strive to know better and do better, to change ourselves and the world. Let’s do that rigorous self-examination that Sarah was talking about and let’s not be complacent. Let’s do what we can to resist and disrupt the ways of the world which inhibit right relationship. BUT: Let’s remember to be in right relationship with ourselves too. Because we need a bit of self-compassion in the midst of all this. There’s a balance to be struck between, on the one hand, this – wonderful, virtuous, noble – striving for change and, on the other hand, the need for acceptance of the limits of what we can personally do (especially given that the world is burning, the pandemic hasn’t actually gone away, and many of us are variously dealing with hardship, insecurity, and trauma on a daily basis as the world seemingly unravels). It is understandable that we might not always manage to put our best foot forward in the circumstances. It would be understandable if we just stayed in bed and refused to come out from under the duvet. And yet, we aspire to something more.
Despite our best efforts, we are bound to screw things up on a fairly regular basis, in relationships of all kinds – we’re likely to say or do the ‘wrong’ thing (or fail to say or do the ‘right’ thing) – to disappoint and hurt each other – perfection is unattainable and it’s good to keep that in mind from the off. So this is a reminder to lay off the self-flagellation when things go awry! Life is tough enough already. Most of us know people – and it might be you – who tend towards self-sacrifice and martyrdom, who instinctively give themselves away for the sake of others, and risk burning themselves out altogether in the process. AND: Most of us know people – it might be you – who tend to lean the other way, towards self-interest, and away from engaging with other people’s needs – perhaps more often it’s not so much out of active selfishness as a passive lack of interest in others. Still, I suggest we each need to discern and maintain some kind of proper balance between compassion for self and compassion for others. The two are inextricably linked in any case; I can’t help but recall these wise words of Parker J. Palmer: ‘Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to our true self and give it the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.’
Over the next four nights we’ll hear a number of perspectives on ‘right relationship’ in context. I’m looking forward to the insight, inspiration, and – no doubt – the challenges we’ve got coming to us! So, in the days to come, let’s keep in mind that balancing act. Let’s keep our aspirations high – even if we know the messy realities of life mean we will probably fall short – and let us be kind to ourselves when we do. We try, we fail, and we will try again, in our attempts to practice love, justice, and peace in our everyday lives, as we try to help create a better world. Still, let us set our sights on that vision of right relationship – with self, other, and God – and may it be so, for the greater good of all. Amen.
Talk by Sarah Tinker and Jane Blackall
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A video recording of this talk is available: