\u2018It is true that you cannot escape the consequences of your actions or the chances of the world. But what is not settled is how the story turns out. What is not settled is what the meaning of your life will be… As long as you are alive the story of your life is still being told, and the meaning is still open.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\nIf we are aware of this \u2013 and it\u2019s possible to almost be too aware of it \u2013 that too can go either way: If we\u2019re a bit disappointed in how our life has gone up to this point then it can sound liberating. While there\u2019s life, there\u2019s hope. There\u2019s still time to turn again, make new and different choices. Any day can be \u2018the first day of the rest of your life\u2019 (though, as an aside, I read recently that there\u2019s evidence that it can be beneficial to choose special days such as new year\u2019s, birthdays, anniversaries, or the first day of the month, or even the first day of the week to initiate lasting change). <\/p>\n
Alternatively, though, this notion that \u2018everything matters\u2019 <\/em>\u2013 that the meaning of our life is still open \u2013 if we take that seriously, take it to heart, it puts a lot of pressure on our future decision-making. We can find ourselves worrying endlessly about every life choice, every small fork in the road, agonising over which way is \u2018right\u2019 and which is \u2018wrong\u2019 (and what it says about our life\u2019s meaning). I know this is something I\u2019ve been prone to. And this attitude to decision-making can be paralysing. The weight of unforeseen and unforeseeable consequences weighs heavily on us. <\/p>\nLike Kathleen McTigue, in the second reading we heard today, most of us can\u2019t rely on delegating our decision-making to someone else, a mysterious diviner, in the hope that they will intuit the right way to go \u2013 we generally have to make our own call regardless of how \u2018huge, portentous, and muddled\u2019<\/em> the life issues in question might be \u2013 though we might draw on the advice of wise friends or take it to God in prayer, as the saying goes. But, in the end, as Kathleen McTigue says: \u2018We all come to some decision points when every option seems ambiguous, and we don\u2019t have a clue which way to go. We arrive at a turn in the road that we can\u2019t see around until we take the next steps forward, and we take those steps not knowing whether we\u2019ve made the right choice.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\u2018The right choice\u2019. It is easy to fall into this way of thinking \u2013 to imagine that we\u2019re always choosing between distinct options \u2013 this way is definitely right, that way is definitely wrong. I remember reading about this phenomenon many years ago in Susan Jeffers\u2019 classic (and very helpful) self-help book \u2018Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway\u2019. Susan Jeffers talks about this view as \u2018No Win\u2019 decision making. If you tend to think about your life choices in this way, you are more likely to approach them with feelings of heaviness and dread, and spend a lot of energy and stress over them\u2026 and, whatever you decide, you are likely to look back at your decision thinking \u2018what if?\u2019 \u2013 forever wondering about the road not taken (and comparing your reality with an imagined alternative universe, where everything turned out better, that never came to pass because of your decision). <\/p>\n
Susan Jeffers suggests that we try to switch to a \u2018No Lose\u2019 decision-making outlook instead. More often than not the options we\u2019re choosing between won\u2019t really be a clear \u2018win\u2019 and \u2018lose\u2019. Much of the time there\u2019s not a distinct and unambiguous \u2018right\u2019 and \u2018wrong\u2019 to choose between. There\u2019s no trapdoor that\u2019s going to open beneath us, no sirens or flashing lights proclaiming \u2018GAME OVER\u2019 if we pick badly. As Jeffers puts it, whichever way you go, there will be \u2018goodies\u2019 that come to you: \u2018opportunities to experience life in a new way, to learn and grow, to find out who you are, and who you would really like to be, and what you would like to do in this life\u2019.<\/em> And inevitably, whichever way you go, there will also be challenges, and other effects you could never anticipate. Sometimes decisions aren\u2019t final \u2013 you might have an opportunity to retrace your steps \u2013 but other times life will just keep rolling on and the road not taken will indeed disappear from view. Opportunities will open up (and close down) depending on your decision\u2026 and that might well be OK. Now this is not an argument for not taking decisions seriously \u2013 after all, \u2018everything matters\u2019<\/em> \u2013 and of course there will be some situations which truly do come into the category of \u2018life or death\u2019 and where you would be well advised to give the weighing-up process maximum care and attention. But if you choose to accept \u2013 and adopt \u2013 this \u2018No Lose\u2019 attitude to decision-making, you might find yourself free to take your choices a little more lightly, to be more playful, experimental, in your attitude to life \u2013 you may find yourself saying more often: \u2018why not?\u2019 <\/p>\nAre you familiar with \u2018Choose Your Own Adventure\u2019 stories? I\u2019ve asked a few people about this in the last week and it seems they\u2019re not as well-known as I\u2019d thought so let me explain, just in case: When I was a kid you could buy \u2018Choose Your Own Adventure\u2019 books, aimed at young people, which would start off like any other adventure story, but typically written in the first person, with you, the reader, in the place of the hero. After a few pages you would be faced with a choice. Something like: are you going to (a) try to fight the villain or (b) run away? So you\u2019d either turn to page 10 to find out what happened if you fought or page 20 to see what happened if you ran. And the story would divide, and divide again, every time you made a choice of some sort, into many different timelines resulting in completely different endings to the story. It seems to me that many Choose Your Own Adventure authors used to relish sending you to numerous different disastrous fates but only gave you one shot at weaving your route through all the choices to find a happy ending. I used to love these interactive stories, usually about plucky crime-fighting teenage sleuths, and remember saving up my book tokens for special trips to WHSmith in the summer holidays. Since then, technology has moved on, and there is a whole genre of \u2018Choose Your Own Adventure\u2019 video games too. Completely coincidentally, it\u2019s been in the news just last week, the hit TV show \u2018Black Mirror\u2019 has released the first ever feature-length \u2018Choose Your Own Adventure\u2019 film, \u2018Bandersnatch\u2019. <\/p>\n
In these stories \u2013 whether books, games or on TV \u2013 a lot can seem to hinge on a little decision (What did you choose for breakfast \u2013 Sugar Puffs or Frosties? It can have drastic consequences, apparently). For the sake of maximising tension, \u2018Choose Your Own Adventure\u2019 stories tend to be written from a \u2018No Win\u2019 perspective, playing up the dramatic dilemmas and disasters that await our protagonist at every turn. But real life need not be like that. And a \u2018No Lose\u2019 attitude can help us dial down the everyday drama. <\/p>\n
This service is called \u2018Choose Your Own Adventure\u2019 because I had a playful, frivolous, thought: Why not adopt it as a little motto, or maxim, for the New Year? Choose \u2013 Your Own \u2013 Adventure. A reminder to bring lightness and play to our everyday decisions. Let me unpack this a little\u2026<\/p>\n
Firstly, \u2018Choose\u2019: to remind us that, whatever our circumstances, we almost always have some choices available to us, even if it is just the choice of internal attitude we bring to a situation, such as \u2018No Win\u2019 versus \u2018No Lose\u2019. Of course we are each constrained in various ways \u2013 physical, practical, and financial constraints are just a few that might be hard to overcome \u2013 and we mustn\u2019t deny those factors which limit our available options and our ability to act entirely freely. But some apparent<\/em> constraints are a mirage \u2013 rooted in the stories we tell about ourselves, or that society tells about us \u2013 who we think we are, who others think we are, or who we used to be \u2013 and we can still choose<\/em> to throw off some of those constraints, to reinvent ourselves, discover surprising aspects of our personalities, and maybe do things that we thought were beyond us. <\/p>\nThe second part of the motto, \u2018Your Own\u2019 \u2013 as in \u2018Choose YOUR OWN Adventure\u2019 \u2013 reminds us that our adventure should truly be our own rather than somebody else\u2019s. Wherever we look there are glossy images portraying lifestyles of the rich and famous \u2013 those whose lives are successful by the standards of the rampantly capitalist society we happen to live in \u2013 and which implicitly set the template for what the \u2018good life\u2019 looks like, what we should aspire to. If you\u2019re a more spiritually-minded type \u2013 let\u2019s assume you are, seeing as you\u2019re here this morning \u2013 you might be more interested in the lifestyles of the saintly, the creative, the inspired \u2013 great moral exemplars, we might call them. We might well be inspired by other people\u2019s lives \u2013 that\u2019s a good thing, I think \u2013 but it\u2019s probably not so wise to compare our unfolding stories, our messy work-in-progress lives, to someone else\u2019s \u2018highlights reel\u2019 held up as an ideal. Let\u2019s identify OUR OWN highest values and make them<\/em> the guiding principles that give our lives purpose and direction. <\/p>\nAnd thirdly, the last part of the motto, \u2018Adventure\u2019: \u2018Choose your own ADVENTURE\u2019. Adventuring doesn\u2019t have to mean a trek to the South Pole, or up a mountain, or down a cave, or anything terribly perilous involving those hobgoblins or foul fiends that we just sang about in the Pilgrim\u2019s Hymn (unless they\u2019re metaphorical ones). An adventure is, according to the dictionary, \u2018an exciting or remarkable experience that is typically a bold, sometimes risky, undertaking\u2019<\/em>. Another way of putting it might be to say: \u2018an adventure is a new experience that broadens our horizons and enlarges our experience of life\u2019.<\/em> For you, an adventure might be learning to dance, internet dating, public speaking, travelling solo, volunteering as a warden of a nature reserve, or a night shelter, dying your hair purple, wearing silver shoes \u2013 why not?<\/p>\nSo as we step out into 2019, and brace ourselves for whatever it may throw at us, I invite you to play with the idea of Choosing Your Own Adventure (even if it\u2019s still a fairly modest, cautious sort-of of adventure, at least to start with…) And I\u2019ll close with a blessing for all of us everyday adventurers, to go with us on the journey, adapted from words by Jean M. Olson: <\/p>\n
As you take the next step on your life\u2019s path now,
May you speak your deepest truths,
May you sing the music within you,
May you draw, paint, dance, sculpt and sew,
May you write letters, poetry, biography,
May you be brave enough to expose
May you love even though your heart
And until the end of your days,
Sermon by Jane Blackall<\/strong><\/p>\nAn audio recording of this sermon is available:<\/strong><\/p>\n\nhttp:\/\/www.kensington-unitarians.org.uk\/pod2011\/KU_jane.blackall_sermon_06.01.19.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sermon #33 (6th January 2019 at Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians) Here we are then: it\u2019s the start of a new year. An opportunity to re-focus. And it\u2019s also the start of a new monthly ministry theme at Essex Church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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