Cleaning the Lens
- Mar 14
- 21 min read
Updated: Mar 15
Sunday Service, 15 March 2026
Led by Roy Clark
Musical Prelude: Big Lady Moon - Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (performed by Holly Redshaw and Jack Campbell)
Opening Words: ‘We Have Come Into this Room of Hope’ by Libbie D. Stoddard
We have come into this room of hope
where our hearts and minds are opened to the future.
We have come into this room of justice
where we set aside our fear to name freely every oppression.
We have come into this room of love
where we know that no lives are insignificant.
We have come into this room of song
where we unite our voices
in the sombre and the beautiful melodies of life. (pause)
Words of Welcome and Introduction:
These words from Libbie D. Stoddard welcome all who have gathered this morning for our Sunday service. Welcome to those who have gathered in-person at Essex Church, to all who are joining via Zoom (including our friends from Godalming Unitarians – you’re very welcome), and anyone tuning in via YouTube at a later date. For anyone who doesn’t know me, I’m Roy Clark, and I’m a long-standing member of the congregation. I’ll be leading our service with a bit of help from my friends.
This morning our service is titled ‘Cleaning the Lens’. We’ll be reflecting on the theme of unconscious bias, considering how we might become more aware of our biases, and what we might do to overcome them and correct for them. In the words of Brian McLaren, which are on the front of your order of service today, ‘We all have a whole set of assumptions and limitations, prejudices and preferences, likes, dislikes and triggers, fears and conflicts of interest, blind spots and obsessions that keep us from seeing what we could and would see if we didn’t have them.’
Chalice Lighting: The Sacred Power of Justice’ by Jami Yandle
Let’s light our chalice flame now, as we do each week. It’s a moment for us to stop and take a breath, settle ourselves down, put aside any preoccupations we came in carrying. This simple ritual connects us in solidarity with Unitarians and Unitarian Universalists the world over, and reminds us of the proud and historic progressive religious tradition of which this gathering is part.
(light chalice)
We light this flame
to ignite the sacred power of justice.
We light this flame
so that it may be a beacon of hope
in moments of uncertainty, fear, anxiety, and the unknown.
We light this flame, and are emboldened by its blaze,
knowing our strength as a prophetic and powerful people
is rooted in the diverse ways we answer the call to love.
Hymn 21 (purple): ‘Come and Find the Quiet Centre’
Our first hymn is number 21 in your purple hymnbooks: ‘Come and Find the Quiet Centre’. For those joining on zoom the words will be up on screen. Feel free to stand or sit as you prefer.
Come and find the quiet centre
in the crowded life we lead,
find the room for hope to enter,
find the space where we are freed:
clear the chaos and the clutter,
clear our eyes, that we can see
all the things that really matter,
be at peace, and simply be.
Silence is a friend who claims us,
cools the heat and slows the pace;
God it is who speaks and names us,
knows our being, touches base,
making space within our thinking,
lifting shades to show the sun,
raising courage when we’re shrinking,
finding scope for faith begun.
In the Spirit let us travel,
open to each other’s pain;
let our lives and fears unravel,
celebrate the space we gain:
there’s a place for deepest dreaming,
there’s a time for heart to care;
in the Spirit’s lively scheming
there is always room to spare.
Candles of Joy and Concern:
Each week when we gather together, we share a simple ritual of candles of joy and concern, an opportunity to light a candle and share something that is in our heart with the community. So we’ve an opportunity now, for anyone who would like to do so, to light a candle and say a few words about what it represents. We’ll go to the people in the building first, then to Zoom.
So I invite some of you here in person to come and light a candle and then if you wish to tell us who or what you light your candle for – please keep it brief – be considerate of others. I’m going to ask you to come to the lectern to speak, as we want people to be able to hear you.
(in person candles)
And if that’s everyone in the room we’ll go over to the people on Zoom next – you might like to switch to gallery view at this stage – just unmute yourselves when you are ready and speak out – and we should be able to hear you and see you up on the big screen here in the church.
(zoom candles)
And I’m going to light one more candle, as we often do, to represent all those joys and concerns that we hold in our hearts this day, but which we don’t feel able to speak out loud. (light candle)
Time of Prayer & Reflection: based on words by Lyn Cox
Let’s take those joys and concerns into an extended time of prayer. This prayer is based on words by Lyn Cox. You might want to adjust your position for comfort, close your eyes, or soften your gaze. There might be a posture that helps you feel more prayerful. Whatever helps you get into the right state of body and mind for us to pray together – to be fully present – with ourselves, with each other, and with that which is both within us and beyond us. (pause)
Spirit of Life, God of All Love, in whom we live and move and have our being,
we turn our full attention to you, the light within and without,
as we tune in to 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 stillness at the very centre of our being. (pause)
Spirit of Life, God of All Love,
Who draws us together in a web of holy relationships,
Make your presence known with us and in us and among us.
Remind us that we are not alone in history,
Ignite us with the courage of the living tradition.
Remind us that we are not alone in entering the future,
Anchor us with patience and perseverance.
Remind us that we are not alone in our times of grief and pain,
Comfort us with your spirit, manifest in human hands and voices.
Remind us that we are not alone in joy and wonder,
Inspire us to honour and extend the beauty we find in this world.
Let our hearts beat in diverse and harmonious rhythms,
Cooperating with an everlasting dance of love.
May we move with the rhythms of peace.
May we move with the rhythms of compassion.
May we move with the rhythms of justice.
Source of stars and planets and water and land
Open our hearts to all of our neighbours
Open our souls to a renewal of faith
Open our hands to join together in the work ahead. (pause)
And in a few minutes of quietness now, let us seek a higher perspective, a longer view;
starting right where we are, let us shift our awareness ever outward, in circles of concern.
Let us bring to mind those we know to be struggling this day – perhaps including ourselves –
those friends and family we hold dearest – our neighbours in community –
others around the globe we may only have heard about on the news.
And let us take time to send prayers of loving kindness to all who suffer this day. (longer pause)
Let us take stock of our own lives – the challenges we face – and our part in those difficulties –
perhaps we are all too aware of mistakes we have made, or missed opportunities –
times in this week where things didn’t turn out how we intended or had hoped.
And let us take time to ask for what we need to transform our pain and sufferings. (longer pause)
Let us look back over the last week, taking time to notice what was good, to count our blessings –
all the ways in which others helped or encouraged us, inspired or delighted us –
all the goodness and beauty we have known even in the midst of pain and struggle.
And let us take time to give prayers of thanks for all we have been given. (longer pause)
Spirit of Life – God of all Love – as this time of prayer comes to a close, we offer up
our joys and concerns, our hopes and fears, our beauty and 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.
Hymn (on sheet): ‘Who Is My Neighbour?’
Let’s sing again now – our second hymn is on your hymn sheet – ‘Who Is My Neighbour?’
Who is my neighbour? Every soul who lives upon the earth.
I have been called to treat each one with dignity and worth,
Working for justice, seeking peace and cultivating care,
Offering hope to those whose lives are laden with despair.
When I can ease another’s pain, I know I’ll do my part.
When I can bring another joy, I’ll open up my heart.
When I have more than someone else, I’ll share the things I can.
When I am tempted to be cruel, I’ll strive to understand.
Who is my neighbour? Earth itself and all the beings there:
Flora and fauna, fish and fowl, the trees that graze the air.
River and prairie, sea and sky I honour and respect.
These are my neighbours. These I vow to cherish and protect.
Oh, may we build a world where all have everything they need.
May we be free from hate and fear, from violence and from greed.
May our lives be tributes to compassion, love, and trust
Till we are kin to all the world and all are kin to us.
Reading: ‘Unravelling Unconscious Bias’ by Pragya Agarwal (excerpts, adapted) (read by Chloë)
The following is an excerpt from ‘Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias’ by Pragya Agarwal. She writes:
Have you ever been told to smile more, been teased about your accent, or had your name pronounced incorrectly? If so, you’ve probably already faced bias in your everyday life.
We like to think that we are all fair-minded and egalitarian but we all carry biases that we’re not even aware of. We might believe that we live in a post-racial society, but racial tension and inequality is pernicious and pervasive. We might believe that gender inequality is a thing of the past, but it is still ubiquitous.
The phrase ‘unconscious bias’ has entered common parlance, but there are still so many myths around it. Our implicit or ‘unintentional’ biases affect the way we communicate and perceive the world, and affect our decision-making, even in life-and-death situations.
We often think that unconscious bias only covers race and gender, but it is far more pervasive than that. Disability, sexuality, body size, profession and so on all influence the assessments we make of people, and form the basis of our relationship with others and the world at large.
Each of us form and carry unconscious biases of some sort. It’s not only the behaviour of overtly bigoted, racist or sexist people, but of everyone, including you and me. So the answer is to go to the roots, to understand the processes that shape us, to be aware, to acknowledge that we are all biased – to a certain degree – and that we all discriminated. We judge, we exclude people, we stereotype. Sometimes that’s a little tough to comprehend. Our unconscious biases can be balanced by bias control mechanisms that turn instinctive responses into socially acceptable reactions. However, what is socially acceptable varies, and our bias control mechanisms are not independent moral guides. There has been an upsurge in diversity training with the aim of freeing ourselves from our unconscious biases, but we cannot erase our biases completely. Awareness and action are possible, obliteration is not.
The consequences of stigma and of unconscious bias and prejudice are enormous – physically, mentally, and socially – and talking about discrimination and prejudice isn’t easy. The truth can be uncomfortable. But at a time when partisan political ideologies are taking centre stage, and we struggle to make sense of who we are, who we want to be, and who we will become, it is crucial that we understand why we act the way we do. This book attempts to view our contemporary society through a lens that enables us to reflect on and consider the forces that shape us. It is about understanding the way we put up walls between ‘us’ and ‘them’ before we even realise we are doing so.
It might seem we are bound to our biases and unable to escape them. However, as Raymond Williams, a Welsh Marxist theorist, said, ‘To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing.’ I believe that by addressing the biases at the individualistic level, we can begin to understand the societal and structural inequities and injustices. This is my hope and many aspiration anyway.
Words for Meditation: ‘Bones’ by Lynn Ungar
We’re moving into a time of meditation now. To take us into stillness I’m going to share a poem called ‘Bones’ by Unitarian Universalist minister and poet Lynn Ungar. It resonates very much with the reading we’ve just heard and hints at some of the biases that are baked into our brains through our evolutionary history and social conditioning. It’s perhaps a quite challenging poem to be taking into meditation so hold yourself gently. Following the poem we will hold a few minutes of shared silence which will end with the sound of a bell. Then we’ll hear music for meditation from Holly and Jack. So let’s do what we need to do to get comfortable – adjust your position – put your feet flat on the floor to ground yourself – close your eyes. As ever, these words and music are just an offering, feel free to use this time to meditate in your own way.
‘Bones’ by Lynn Ungar
You tell me I don’t have
a racist bone in my body
and I believe you. The long
pillars of your tibia,
the delicate wings of your clavicles,
the intricate jewellery of your feet,
all are innocent in their creamy whiteness.
Your brain is a different story.
Your brain, like mine, is tribal
from its prehistoric roots.
Your brain, like mine, was grown
in a laboratory of lies. Your brain,
like mine, tells stories that are thrilling
but unreliable. Your brain, like mine,
is doing the best that it can
to make its way in a broken world.
It is your muscle that scares me.
Period of Silence and Stillness (~3 minutes) – end with a bell
Interlude: Within Thy Heart - Amy Beach (performed by Holly Redshaw and Jack Campbell)
Reading: ‘Inviting the "Aha"’ by JD Stillwater (read by Brian)
This short reflection, by Unitarian Universalist science ambassador JD Stillwater, opens with a quote from the popular scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson: “What history has shown is that when you are granted a perspective bigger than the one you had been harbouring, you end up thinking differently about the world. For the better.”
Stillwater continues with his own story. He writes: All I said was, “Science requires all five senses.” This gentle mentor of mine smiled indulgently, paused, then replied, “Only five?” After establishing that he was not referring to psychic abilities, within minutes I was amazed to “discover” two additional human senses. By the next day, I had three more. They were obvious. We routinely refer to them as “my sense of ___” without ever connecting them to “the five.” (I’ll let you experience the Aha! on your own. There are many.)
In that moment I felt three very different emotions all at once: I felt stupid for not seeing the obvious, wonder at what else I might be missing, and determination to find other mental blocks I might carry.
“The five senses” were described by Aristotle some 2,350 years ago. Since then, textbooks and teachers alike have simply repeated the phrase without question. Kindergarten teachers pass it on to children as self-evident. It’s conventional wisdom, and it’s wrong.
I became obsessed with uncovering other examples of cultural inertia, especially in science. Critical thinking and self-questioning are the essence of science—more essential than any concept in the curriculum. I encouraged my students to question authority, especially my authority, because only rarely can we recognize our biases without help.
Those biases get installed early in our lives. Studies of implicit bias show us that racism, sexism, and all kinds of binary thinking are deeply-ingrained habits of thought. Like “the five senses.”
When I’m lost and don’t know it, I need someone else to point out that I’m on the wrong road. When someone does this (or gently asks, “Only five?”), it can be tempting to lash out at them for exposing my ignorance or bias. But if I take a pause to self-question, it can reveal vast new vistas to me.
Then it takes humility to admit my error, and effort to get back on track. Experiencing the world clearly and openly, with all our many senses, requires vulnerability and authentic self-questioning. I think it’s a spiritual practice. (pause)
JD Stillwater closes with a few brief words of prayer: Source of all truth and clarity, bless us with companions who disrupt our inertias, curiosity to hear them out, and courage to seek the truth.
Reflection: ‘Cleaning the Lens’ by Roy Clark
Before l retired l was a teacher. A college and University lecturer specialising in media design primarily film making and photography.
As l would tell my first year students, choosing the right lens for a photoshoot is critically important. For example a wide-angle lens is great for landscapes but ill-suited for portraiture. Likewise a telephoto lens is a great tool for photo journalism or nature photography but not so useful at a wedding shoot. Other factors such as choice of lens hood and/or lens filter also figure, and of course the importance of keeping the lens clean and free of marks and smudges makes a big difference in terms of outcome. In short, the lens selected might look fine but can produce a distorted or false image.
In everyday life as in photography, we often like to believe that we see the world exactly as it is don't we—clear, objective, and true. But writer Brian McLaren offers us a necessary, if humbling, reality check. He reminds us that: "We all have a whole set of assumptions and limitations, prejudices and preferences, likes, dislikes and triggers, fears and conflicts of interest, blind spots and obsessions that keep us from seeing what we could and would see if we didn’t have them."
Think of it this way: we all walk into every day situations wearing a pair of glasses we didn’t know we had on. The lenses of these glasses were ground by our upbringing, our culture, our fears, and the stories we’ve been told about "other" people. These aren't just abstract thoughts; they are the filters that tell us who to trust, who to avoid, and who to ignore. The trouble with these blind spots isn't just that they exist; it’s that they act like a smudge on the glass just like on my students camera lens. They keep us from seeing the person standing right in front of us as they truly are.
When we live behind that wall of suspicion, it feels safe, but it is incredibly lonely. We lose the ability to trust anything we didn't build ourselves. Suspicion doesn't look at people; it looks for evidence. It builds a wall. On one side of the wall is "Me"—the one who is right. On the other side is "Them"—the "object" out there, the category, the problem. Once that wall is up, we stop knowing people by their likeness to us. We stop seeing a human being with a story and start seeing a "subject" to be analysed and doubted.
There is a terrible cost to this "us and them" architecture. The 20th century stands as a grim testament to what happens when unconscious bias is allowed to harden into state policy; history’s darkest chapters began not with violence, but with the quiet "othering" of our neighbours. In the tumultuous times we are living through today, as populist rhetoric again finds a foothold, in social media and increasingly in mainstream political discourse we risk repeating those same tragedies by trading human complexity for convenient stereotypes.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. knew this well. He saw it in the form of physical racial segregation and felt it in the heat of the Montgomery bombings. During the Civil Rights campaign in 1957 four Black churches and two pastors' homes were bombed in Montgomery, Alabama.
Dr King knew that you cannot tear down a wall of suspicion with more suspicion. He lived in what he called an "already-and-not-yet" space. Already-and-not-yet, in other words, he knew the world was broken and split, yet he acted as if it were already whole. His answer to our blind spots wasn't a complex theory; it was a way of living he called the "Inescapable Network of Mutuality"
What’s that? Well, imagine a spider’s web, if you tap gently on one thread, the whole thing vibrates. Dr King insisted that we aren't just individuals bumping into each other; we are links in an unbroken web or to use another metaphor a chain of shared humanity. For him, this wasn't abstract spirituality. He understood that when we allow our biases to turn someone into an "object," we are actually cutting a thread in our own safety net. As he famously said:
"The agony of the poor impoverishes the rich... We are inevitably our brother’s keeper because we are our brother’s brother."
Dr King was very familiar with, in fact lived by, a theological concept known as Imago Dei. This holds that every human being, regardless of race, class, gender or belief, is created equal. Imago Dei or "In the Image of God" (not literally as in physical appearance of course but in essence), is a Christian concept, although there are similar ideas (i.e. the belief that every human being is created in the image of the Divine) within the Islamic and Jewish traditions too. But you don’t have to be a theist or indeed belong to any other faith to recognize the profound truth hidden in the concept. Whether we call it the 'divine spark,' the 'inner light,' or simply a person's inherent worth and dignity we are talking about the same radical reality: that there is something in every person that is original, precious, and irreducible. It is the 'original goodness' that exists before the fog of bias ever settles in. To see through the lens of affinity is to look past the labels and the 'object' we’ve created, and instead, to recognize that same spark of life—that same likeness—reflecting back at us from every pair of eyes we meet.
It demands that a person see the inherent value in every individual, forcing the mind to look past superficial group categorisations and actively resist biases that lead to prejudice or unjust judgment. It transforms the "out-group" into a member of the universal human family.
But how do we actually do this in practical terms in our own community? Well, speaking for myself, l see this work happening in the small, quiet corners of social action. I see it at Simple Gifts, the Unitarian charity for social action where l am privileged to be a trustee. There the goal isn't just to provide a service, but to dismantle the "subject-object split." When we serve, it is so easy to see ourselves as the "helper" (the subject) and the other as the "needy" (the object). But the true work of Simple Gifts is about finding the affinity. It’s about realizing that we are all part of that same web and that the flourishing of our neighbour is the only way we truly flourish ourselves.
I see it, too, in my work with Mental Health support here in West London which is often a topic where the fog of suspicion is thickest. Our biases tell us to keep a distance, to categorise, to analyse someone’s struggle from afar. But when we sit down over a simple cup of coffee, the wall of suspicion begins to crumble. We stop building a case about someone’s diagnosis and start seeing a person. We move from being strangers standing over and against one another to being companions sharing a table. In these moments, we aren't just being polite. We are cleaning the lens. We are restoring the web, that allows every one of us to be who we were truly meant to be.
One of the things community work has taught me is how our unconscious biases can get in the way. We all like to think of ourselves as good people... and we are. But because of the prejudices we hold, our good-person identity can actually be a barrier to the goal of learning and improving. Lets be honest... we often act in ways that don’t fit with our good-person identity. But when we’re confronted with that, we might close down, because we have to defend our identity rather than opening up to the possibility for a moment of learning.
When you have a fixed mindset, you believe at some level, there is nothing to learn and no way to grow. But with a growth mindset, you can always get better, no matter where you started. When we are in a growth mindset, when a mistake is pointed out to us; we will be more open to learning when our biases come up. However... that is of course easier said than done and l am standing here speaking to you today very much as a work in progress! Our goal isn't to be "perfect" our goal is to be connected.
This l have found begins by admitting we are looking through or wearing those smudged or distorting lenses. Maybe when we find ourselves fitting the pieces together to judge someone, we can stop and ask ourselves: "Am I seeing a person, or am I building a case?" Instead of looking for what makes them "other," look for the affinity. It might be as simple as acknowledging: They love their children like I love mine. They are navigating a hard world, just like I am.
The Unitarian tradition affirms the inherent worth and dignity of every person. That is a call to heal the split. It is a call to stop looking at people as objects of our suspicion and start looking with people as partners in a shared destiny. When we dismantle the walls of suspicion—whether at a meeting, or a community centre or sitting on the bus —we are cleaning the lens, we are coming home to each other. As we go forth, may we move from the suspicion that divides to the love that restores.
May it be so.
Hymn 36 (purple): ‘For Everyone Born’
Time for one last hymn, it’s number 36 in our books, ‘For Everyone Born, a Place at the Table’.
For everyone born, a place at the table,
for everyone born, clean water and bread,
a shelter, a space, a safe place for growing,
for everyone born, a star overhead.
And God will delight
when we are creators of justice and joy,
yes, God will delight
when we are creators of justice, justice and joy!
For woman and man, a place at the table,
revising the role, deciding the share,
with wisdom and grace, dividing the power,
for woman and man, a system that’s fair.
And God will delight
when we are creators of justice and joy,
yes, God will delight
when we are creators of justice, justice and joy!
For young and for old, a place at the table,
a voice to be heard, a part in the song,
the hands of a child in hands kind and wrinkled
for young and for old, the right to belong
And God will delight
when we are creators of justice and joy,
yes, God will delight
when we are creators of justice, justice and joy!
For just and unjust a place at the table,
abuser, abused, how hard to forgive,
in anger, in hurt, a mindset of mercy,
for just and unjust, a new way to live.
And God will delight
when we are creators of justice and joy,
yes, God will delight
when we are creators of justice, justice and joy!
For everyone born, a place at the table,
to live without fear, and simply to be,
to work, to speak out, to witness and worship,
for everyone born, the right to be free.
And God will delight
when we are creators of justice and joy,
yes, God will delight
when we are creators of justice, justice and joy!
Announcements:
Thanks to Jane for hosting and Aisha for co-hosting. Thanks to Holly and Jack for lovely music. Thanks to Chloë and Brian for reading. Thanks to Liz for greeting and David for making coffee. If you are in-person do stay for cake (apparently it’s Biscoff Cake or Apple and Pear Cake today). If you’re online stay for a chat with Aisha if you can.
You can stay around after today’s service for our crafternoon. You can do your own craft project or rummage in our many boxes of art materials and hang out and be sociable.
Tonight and Friday at 7pm we’ve got our online ‘Heart and Soul’ online contemplative spiritual gathering – this week it’s on the theme of ‘Self-Compassion’– email Jane if you want to join that. And this week marks six whole years of Heart and Soul online so it’s a bit of a landmark week. We also have an in-person Heart and Soul this Wednesday at 7pm so let Jane know if you’re coming.
Sonya will be here with her Nia Dance class on Friday lunchtime – have a word with Sonya.
This month the Better World Book Club is reading ‘Afropean: Notes from Black Europe’ by Johny Pitts and you’ve just about got time to read it if you’d like to join online next Sunday evening.
Next Sunday we’ll be back here at 11am when Jane and Azita will lead the service on ‘Wonder’ and we’ve got a special treat as our musical offerings will include a full-size concert harp! And after the service we’re going to have another labyrinth mini-retreat, that’s co-led by Jane and Sarah Tinker, to mark the spring equinox after the service. PLEASE DO SIGN UP FOR THIS ASAP.
Details of all our various activities are printed on the order of service, and also in the Friday email, so sign up for our mailing list if you haven’t already done so. And the spring newsletter is out! Do take a copy. The congregation very much has a life beyond Sunday mornings; we encourage you to keep in touch, look out for each other, and do what you can to nurture supportive connections.
Just time for our closing words and closing music now.
Benediction: based on words by Rebekah Savage
We have come to the end of our service but not our calling in the world:
We close our time together with the humble reminder
that Justice and Equity are our spiritual practices to embrace.
Each day, every day, we are blessed
to be the embodiment of what is possible,
when Justice and Equity ground us in all that we do.
May we go forth with the light
and warmth of our chalice in our hearts
until we are together again. Amen.
Closing Music: Waltz - Michael Rose (performed by Holly Redshaw and Jack Campbell)
Roy Clark
15th March 2026