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Sermon #63 (4th September 2022 at Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians)<\/strong><\/p>\n It\u2019s that time of year again. Even if you\u2019re not personally going \u2018back to school\u2019 this week \u2013 even if nobody in your house is gearing up to return (and there\u2019s not been a last-minute dash to buy a new school uniform) \u2013 there\u2019s a certain back-to-school feeling that descends on most of us in September. Perhaps, like Vanessa Rush Southern in the reading Lucy gave for us earlier, you\u2019ve been minding your own business in Tesco or WHSmith when, under the influence of a \u2018Back-to-School\u2019 display, you\u2019ve suddenly become overcome by a pressing urge to get yourself a new pencil case or a lunch box. These rituals which mark a new school year, a new start, suggest \u2018all is new and all things are possible again\u2019.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n For most of us gathered here this morning, our schooldays are far behind us \u2013 at least in the sense of being students on the receiving end of compulsory education \u2013 I know that we\u2019ve got a number of teachers in our congregation \u2013 and I also know that some of us are perpetual students who can\u2019t resist going back for one more course, and one more course, as there\u2019s always more to learn. And that\u2019s something that we\u2019re affirming in this morning\u2019s service. Our learning is never done \u2013 we learn in all manner of different ways over the course of a lifetime \u2013 and a commitment to lifelong learning is something worth celebrating. As Jiddu Krishnamurti said: \u2018There is no end to education. It is not that you read a book, pass an examination, and finish with education. The whole of life, from the moment you are born to the moment you die, is a process of learning.\u2019 Words from Jiddu Krishnamurti, which are printed on the front of your order of service if you\u2019re here in the building, if you\u2019re at home you can find them on the church website along with the full text of the service.<\/p>\n Unitarians have always tended to be people who value education highly. When our non-conformist forebears were excluded from higher education on the basis of their faith \u2013 250 years ago you used to have to subscribe to the \u201939 Articles\u2019 of the Church of England if you wanted to graduate from Oxford or Cambridge \u2013 so Unitarians helped set up \u2018Dissenting Academies\u2019, where radical thinkers took in those who could not in good conscience profess to believe in things they didn\u2019t think were true, and educated them to university level. Additionally, our forebears advocated for the education of women and girls.<\/p>\n Often when we think about learning, about education, we think about it in terms of institutions \u2013 schools, colleges, universities \u2013 and I did give today\u2019s service the title \u2018Back to School\u2019 after all. I wonder what that word \u2013 \u2018School\u2019 \u2013 evokes in you? Maybe your schooldays were \u2018the best days of your life\u2019 \u2013 maybe they were more of a mixed bag \u2013 maybe it was a downright traumatic experience. I\u2019d put myself in the \u2018mixed bag\u2019 category. I loved to learn, and academic-type learning suited me pretty well, but rubbing along with other kids who didn\u2019t love school had its challenging moments. But \u2013 weirdly \u2013 before I\u2019d even left primary school, the idea of \u2018lifelong learning\u2019 had caught my imagination. Once a year \u2013 this would be in the mid-1980s \u2013 the council would pop a fairly weighty brochure through our letterbox detailing all the courses available in \u2018Night School\u2019 across Tower Hamlets (and possibly also neighbouring boroughs). Oh! Poring over the pages of this brochure was right up there with studying the Argos catalogue for potential Christmas presents in my childhood! The smorgasbord of possibilities for adult education in those days was quite phenomenal and I used to dream of working my way through all the options one day. Would I sign up for woodwork? Or pottery? Jazz guitar? Sign language? (Me and mum did sign up for pottery class together when I was ten and the results are still on show in our front room; dad signed up for woodwork and then he built his shed and our outhouse). These sort of accessible self-improvement courses were life changing for many. But within a year or two, of course, government cuts meant the range of courses began to shrink, many adult education centres were downsized or closed altogether, and I never had another brochure to get excited about. That was, and is, a crying shame. Anything that curtails access to education \u2013 which makes it a privilege only for the rich \u2013 or which saddles people with life-long debt \u2013 is, surely, to be vigorously resisted.<\/p>\n Still, there are many different ways to learn, and arguably only a small proportion of our learning happens in classrooms. In our earliest years we learn, less formally, from family and caregivers. We pick stuff up from the world around us. From TV. If, like me, you grew up in a family that were big on TV quiz shows, you probably committed the capital of Burkina Faso to memory at an early age. And this sort of rote-learning-of-facts has its place \u2013 especially if you want to try your luck on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire someday \u2013 but there\u2019s so much more to learning than just memorising stuff. We learn practical skills by watching others and copying them \u2013 we might learn how to make pastry, or jam, or jumpers, just the way our nan used to \u2013 we might pick up the know-how for car or bike maintenance while hanging out with an older relative during weekends of tinkering in the garage.<\/p>\n Or you might be a life-long bookworm \u2013 many of us are voracious readers, I know \u2013 or latterly audiobook readers \u2013 the Heart and Soul regulars are always swapping book recommendations. These days the internet has opened up a whole world of information to us \u2013 including access to many resources that would previously only have been available to a few \u2013 if I can\u2019t call a certain fact to mind, or I don\u2019t know how to fix something technical, my first port of call is to \u2018Ask Google\u2019. More often than not, Wikipedia will sort me out, or a discussion group will put me on the right track, or someone will have created a handy YouTube tutorial to lead me through a process step-by-step. Of course, internet-learning has to come with a health-warning of sorts, as along with this great democratisation comes the lack of any pre-filtering, the lack of any guarantee of accuracy, of the sort you might assume (rightly or wrongly) when learning from a more traditional source or institution. The internet is a wonderful resource and we must always use a bit of discernment, question the accuracy and agenda of our sources, and be alert to misinformation and manipulation. In truth, the same goes for any source of learning, but perhaps both the risks and rewards are amplified online.<\/p>\n Another hugely important way in which we learn is from personal experience. Sometimes you might hear people joke that they\u2019ve been to the \u2018University of Life\u2019 or even to the \u2018University of Hard Knocks\u2019 \u2013 it seems to me that such things are usually said with the intention of disparaging academic learning and implying that it has no relevance or value in the real world \u2013 but surely learning-from-books and learning-from-life are both valuable and complementary. The reading from Barbara Rohde, which Jeannene just gave for us, suggests that when we have a noteworthy experience in life \u2013 it might be an \u2018negative\u2019 or \u2018positive\u2019 feeling experience \u2013 either way the suggestion is that we should ask ourselves \u2018what did you learn from that?\u2019 or \u2018how did that change me and my understanding of reality?\u2019 And we can also learn from the experience of others \u2013 the learning can be especially rich if we mix with people of different ages and backgrounds \u2013 people whose life experience are very different to our own. The internet comes into its own here as it can enable us to seek out other voices, people whose paths we might never cross in our everyday lives, and to listen and learn about life from their testimony.<\/p>\n All these forms of learning \u2013 and doubtless many others I\u2019ve not mentioned today \u2013 are vital. We reach out and grab such opportunities to learn, however they present themselves to us, throughout our lives. And it\u2019s important to remember that we generally learn in a way that\u2019s appropriate to our age and our stage of development \u2013 at first we might be presented with a simplified way of understanding something \u2013 and over time our understanding will gradually become more sophisticated as greater nuance and complexity is introduced into the picture. It\u2019s generally an error, I reckon, to get too attached to what we were taught in an earlier stage of development. If we don\u2019t remain open to refining, revising, and rethinking, we can get stuck. It\u2019s important to keep our knowledge and understanding up-to-date \u2013 scientific understanding in particular is being refined all the time \u2013 so for example it\u2019s perhaps more important to comprehend the scientific method, and be statistically literate, in order to interpret ambiguous data and news stories more wisely (rather than simply memorising specific equations or holding tight to supposed \u2018facts\u2019 we were taught 40 years ago but which have been superseded by more recent insights). Or in another domain, our understanding of history is being reassessed, as we slowly become more aware of the privileged lenses our history has often been taught through, and the voices and perspectives that have long been suppressed or distorted are at long last coming to light.<\/p>\n Sometimes, it is important to be ready to unlearn, and to let go of what we thought we knew, in order to adapt to a rapidly changing world. Maybe some of our prior understanding was mistaken, or distorted, or an oversimplification of a far more nuanced and complex reality. Some of what we\u2019ve learned is good, truthful, trustworthy \u2013 some is not-so-much \u2013 and we need to discern which is which. We might think of that process of discernment as the spiritual dimension of learning. It\u2019s something we practice together, here, at church \u2013 we pride ourselves in drawing on wisdom from all sources and learning from diverse voices and traditions \u2013 but we\u2019re also discerning, critical, and discriminating (in the positive and constructive sense of that word) as we attempt to sort the wheat from the chaff. We hold up new sources against what we already trust to be true, we measure them against our personal experience, and we check for coherence and congruence with our values and principles. And I know many of you are engaged in the same sort of search in your own individual journeys. Seeking truth and understanding \u2013 cultivating virtue, discernment and wisdom \u2013 doing the work. We are changed by what we learn \u2013 it becomes part of us \u2013 it shapes our way of seeing and being.<\/p>\n Learning is a lifelong process and \u2013 if we\u2019re doing it right \u2013 over time we will come to integrate what we have learned from so many different sources along the way \u2013 and, perhaps, we will pass the learning onward. So as I bring this to a close I want to return to the words by Leslie Owen Wilson which Antony read for our meditation \u2013 just some abridged fragments \u2013 it\u2019s written from the teacher\u2019s point of view but as she says \u2018I came to teach but was changed in other ways, and now remember that life is still a two-way street.\u2019 \u2013 it reminds us how transformative the process of learning (and teaching) can be.<\/p>\n \u2018I came to teach, to see what I could find inside my students\u2019 deeper selves\u2026 So, in that spirit, may we remain ever open and receptive to opportunities for learning. And may it be so for the greater good of all. Amen.<\/p>\n Sermon by Jane Blackall<\/strong><\/p>\n An audio recording of this sermon is available:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n
\nI came to try and open minds\u2026 I came\u2026 hoping to connect hearts to heads and hands.
\nI came to entreat, to coax ennobled thoughts, ideals, and love of self and others\u2026
\nI came to probe, and sometimes poke, to make them think, and laugh at small and narrowed views\u2026\u2019<\/p>\n