Harming and Healing

Sunday Service, 16 November 2025

Led by Rev. Sarah Tinker

Musical Prelude: Sentimental Melody (from Forest of the Amazon) by Heitor Villa-Lobos (performed by Holly Redshaw and Andrew Robinson)  

Opening Words: ‘In Need of Healing’ by Maureen Killoran

‘Welcome, you who come in need of healing, you who are confused, or have been betrayed. Welcome, with your problems and your pain. Welcome, too, your joys and your wonderings, welcome your need to hope, your longing for assurance.  Instead of answers, here may you find safety for your questions. Instead of promises, may you find community for your struggles, people with hands and hearts to join you in engaging the challenges and changes of our day.’

Words of welcome from Maureen Killoran welcome us to this Sunday morning gathering of Kensington Unitarians, here in-person in our church in Notting Hill in London as well as online, welcome all of you on our screen here and a special welcome to anyone listening to this service in the future via our podcast or on video through our YouTube channel. I hope life is treating you well.

I’m standing here with a broken arm – a useful reminder of our human fragility. If we’ve not met before I’m Sarah Tinker, a Unitarian minister, and it’s good to be with you this grey autumnal morning.

Our service title today ‘harming and healing’ is making a connection with the United Nations climate change gathering, COP30, which is currently meeting in the Brazilian coastal city of Belem, where thousands of people are engaged in conversations, arts activities and so much more, all working for agreed and shared ways to progress.

So would you join me now in a moment of quiet as I light our chalice flame and allow its one light to connect us with all beings, all life, all that exists within this amazing biosphere, our earth, our planet, our very source of shared existence …….

Chalice Lighting: 

(light chalice) 

And may our simple chalice flame, symbol of a worldwide progressive religious movement, that is delightfully varied and richly diverse. May this flame guide our ways of being in the world towards empathy and shared endeavour as we bravely face the issues of our common lives. May we learn to share together the great feast of living here on earth, one wondrous table welcoming us all.

Hymn 407 (grey): ‘We’re Gonna Sit at the Welcome Table’

And our first hymn today picks up that message of all being welcomed at the table of life. It might not be a song we often sing so let’s have a listen to a whole verse played through before we join in and do feel free to then stay seated or stand, sing or simply enjoy listening to its cheery message.

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table.

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days, hallelujah!

We’re gonna sit at the welcome table,

gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

All kinds of people around that table.

All kinds of people around that table one of these days, hallelujah!

All kinds of people around that table,

gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

No fancy style at the welcome table.

No fancy style at the welcome table one of these days, hallelujah!

No fancy style at the welcome table,

gonna sit at the welcome table one of these days.

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:

COP 30 stands for the 30th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It is the thirtieth annual meeting of the 197 countries that have signed this international agreement to discuss and negotiate actions to combat climate change. COP 30 is being held in Belém, Brazil.

So today as we here in some parts of Britain again have floods to deal with after heavy rainfall, let us join in prayer for our changing world, for all those who suffer and for all those involved in negotiations which could lead to the possibility of healing and the limitation of harm.

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 works for you. Do whatever you need to do to get into the right state of body and mind for us to pray together – to be fully present here and now, in this sacred time and space – with ourselves, with each other, and with that which is both within us and beyond us. Let us pray. Let us align ourselves with something greater than our small selves, with the inspirational spirit of life and love that helps us to think bigger thoughts and to make space in our hearts for all beings who we share this gift of life with.

Many of us feel powerless in the face of huge shared problems like the climate emergency. We may be struggling in the living of our own lives or with the issues faced by those we love. May we understand that any small action of loving kindness will help to increase humanity’s capacity to face life’s difficulties.

When we reach out a hand and ask for assistance we help to create a web of loving care that can strengthen us all, reminding us that none of us exists in isolation.

When we reach out a hand to help another being in need we strengthen that web of shared existence. We are not alone.

Help us to face our world’s troubles rather than pretending that life goes on as usual.

We mourn for communities across the world already suffering the effects of climate change, and the shattering loss of flora, fauna and species too many to name.

We recognise our own society’s part in the suffering of others, through systems that exploit resources and misuse lands far away from ours.

God grant us resilience in adapting to things we can no longer alter, resolve to shape what we can, and unyielding imagination to re-envisage a future of justice and sustainability for all. And may this be so for the greater good of all. One people sharing one planet earth home with one magnificent web of existence, ours to care for and protect, this day and all days, Amen (with thanks to St Ethelburga’s SoulSpace gathering)

In-Person Reading: extracts from ‘We Will Not Be Saved’ by Nemonte Nenquimo & Mitch Anderson

We’re going to read a short extract from Nemonte Nenquimo & Mitch Anderson’s memoir of life in an Ecuadorean forest which begins with the words, 'I'm here to tell you my story, which is also the story of my people and the story of this forest.'

Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador's Amazon rainforest, Nemonte Nenquimo was taught about plant medicines, foraging, oral storytelling, and shamanism by her elders. Age 14, she left the forest for the first time to study with an evangelical missionary group in the city. Eventually, she returned to her own people and her own culture.

Two decades later, Nemonte has emerged as one of the most forceful voices in climate-change activism. She has spearheaded the alliance of indigenous nations across the Upper Amazon and led her people to a landmark victory against Big Oil, protecting over a half million acres of primary rainforest.

In this memoir she explains that indigenous people do not want to be saved nor need to be saved – not by white missionaries, nor by well meaning campaigners and certainly not by oil company executives – however ‘helpful’ they think they could be. Indigenous people want to be free to live their chosen lives in their ancestral homes without interference. Her people, the Waorani, know the value of their culture and their societal structures, the strength that comes from living in harmony with all other life forms.

We’re just going to read a short extract from her memoir – part of an anxious conversation with her husband Michi shortly before the Waorani won their court case and established that their ancestral lands could not be auctioned off to oil companies.

Nemonte speaks: ‘We are threatening what makes the cars move, what makes the planes fly. We are threatening the white people’s comfort, their very idea of happiness. For us to win, the judges will have to betray their own people, betray the government that pays their salaries, betray the cities where they were born.’

Michi was searching for words. ‘Or … it’s an opportunity for them’.

‘What do you mean?’

‘To be brave enough to heal.’

I shook my head doubtfully.

‘The judges are part of a society that refuses to see you, a system that makes war against your people, against the earth, and ultimately against itself.’ Michi said. ‘By recognising you, by seeing the humanity in your people, they have the opportunity to stop the violence against you and against themselves. The opportunity to end the hurt and harm, to begin the healing.’

It’s worth reading the whole book if anyone would like to borrow it or get their local library to stock it. And keep an eye out for news of the Amazonian forest people of Ecuador. They won this court case in 2019 and Nemonte Nequimo’s memoir was published in 2024 but there are still oil companies who hope to start drilling on their precious rainforest homeland. May that never happen.

Hymn 174 (grey): ‘O Earth You Are Surpassing Fair’

I suggest we all stay seated for this next hymn. It’s sung to a wonderfully mournful Welsh tune called Merthyr Tydfil and we’ll hear the tune all the way through before we join in, from our seats.

O Earth you are surpassing fair,

From out your store we’re daily fed,

We breathe your life supporting air

And drink the water that you shed

Yet greed has made us mar your face ,

Pollute the air, make foul the sea:

The folly of the human race

Is bringing untold misery.

Our growing numbers make demands

That e’en your bounty cannot meet;

Starvation stalks through hungry lands

And some die hourly in the street.

The Eden dream of long ago

Is vanishing before our eyes;

Unwise, unheeding, still we go,

Destroying hopes of paradise.

Has evolution been in vain

that life should perish ere its prime?

Or will we from our greed refrain

And save our planet while there’s time?

We must decide without delay

If we’re to keep our race alive:

The choice is ours, and we must say

If we’re to perish or survive.

In-Person Reading: extracts from the works of Joanna Macy on ‘Active Hope’

Some of you may know the name of Joanna Macy, who sadly died this year. She was a Buddhist, a writer, a community activist, a really inspiring thinker about our world and about our human ways of being.

In her book titled Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're in Without Going Crazy – which was based on decades of teaching an empowerment approach known as the Work That Reconnects, she guides us through a transformational process informed by mythic journeys, modern psychology, spirituality, and holistic science. She worked to equips us with tools to face the mess we’re in and play our role in the collective transition, or Great Turning, to a life-sustaining society. It was Macy who made popular the concept The Great Turning to describe a necessary civilizational shift from an ‘Industrial Growth Society’ to a ‘life-sustaining civilization’. Macy framed this great turning as the ‘essential adventure of our time’ and a period of profound transition comparable to the agricultural and industrial revolutions. She’d say we’re witnessing three concurrent human narratives at this time in which we’re living, each news broadcast giving evidence of each story.

Macy wrote: ‘When we come together for this work, at the outset we discern three stories or versions of reality that are shaping our world so that we can see them more clearly and choose which one we want to get behind. The first narrative we identify is “Business as Usual,” by which we mean the growth economy, or global corporate capitalism. We hear this marching order from virtually every voice in government, publicly traded corporations, the military, and corporate-controlled media.

The second is called “The Great Unraveling”: an ongoing collapse of living structures. This is what happens when ecological, biological, and social systems are commodified through an industrial growth society or “business as usual” frame. I like the term “unraveling,” because systems don’t just fall over dead, they fray, progressively losing their coherence, integrity, and memory.

The third story is the central adventure of our time: the transition to a life-sustaining society. The magnitude and scope of this transition—which is well underway when we know where to look—is comparable to the agricultural revolution some ten thousand years ago and the industrial revolution a few centuries back. Contemporary social thinkers have various names for it, such as the ecological or sustainability revolution; in the Work That Reconnects we call it the Great Turning.

Simply put, our aim with this process of naming and deep recognition of what is happening to our world is to survive the first two stories and to keep bringing more and more people and resources into the third story. Through this work, we can choose to align with business as usual, the unravelling of living systems, or the creation of a life-sustaining society.’

What will we choose?

Words for Meditation: 

‘What the heart loves is the cure and what cures the human heart can help heal a broken world.’ Michael Meade

We’re moving into a time of meditation now. To take us into stillness I’m going to share a short quotation from Michael Meade that can be found on today’s order of service. Meade is a renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, and psychology. He generously puts a lot of freely available material online to share and like Joanna Macy and many others he directs his wisdom very much to the unique needs of our time. It comforts me to know we have wise souls around to guide us through the challenges humanity is facing or is refusing to face.

These words will take us into a few minutes of shared silence which will end with the sound of a bell. Then we’ll hear music for meditation, based on a beautiful love song The Rose and the Willow by Carlos Guastavino. Guastavino came from Argentina in the mid 20th century – a pianist and composer, wrote many songs, often infused by the folk melodies of South America – the tune we’ll hear is probably his most famous composition, deliciously sad.

So let’s do what we need to do to get comfortable – maybe adjust your position – put your feet flat on the floor to ground yourself – close your eyes. As we always say, the words – this activity – is just an offering, so feel free to use this time to meditate in your own way.

‘What the heart loves is the cure’ makes me think of the natural world and its many delights to us humans – sunrises and sunsets, stars in the night sky, the song of a bird and the frolic of a young creature, delighting in movement for its own sake. The caring touch of a hand, a smiling face, a forest canopy protecting us from rainfall, the sea air in our face and lungs, effort rewarded in a garden, where soil and water and light combine in growth, in new, green shoots and new possibilities. The chance for renewal, for learning and understanding, the opportunity to change and move, and be delighted. Let’s enter the fellowship of silence together.

Period of Silence and Stillness (~3 minutes) – end with a bell  

Interlude: The Rose and the Willow by Carlos Guastavino (performed by Holly Redshaw and Andrew Robinson)   

Reflection: ‘Harming and Healing’ by Rev. Sarah Tinker

There are five more days of the United Nations COP30 gathering to be held in Brazil. Unless someone finds a magic wand, I doubt it will resolve all the world’s issues on climate change but the fact that such meetings are held each year can give us some hope. From what I hear from these current meetings, there is a lot happening around our world that is positive, much of it happening at a local rather than at a governmental level.

The town of Belem on the northern Brazilian coast is at the edge of the Amazon region and these COP talks are holding the health of our world’s forests to the fore as well as hearing the voices of indigenous peoples, who experience at first hand the effects of climate emergency.

I’ve been listening to some speakers at COP and I’ve heard about drought conditions in that part of the world. South America is a long way from Europe yet they too are experiencing extremes of drought and floods – as we are experiencing here in Britain this very week. These weather changes have happened in our lifetimes – we didn’t have floods like we do now when I was a child.

Our lives are interconnected aren’t they. It was such a pleasure to receive our musicians music choices this week – of pieces from three South American composers who themselves had many connections with Britain and America. We are indeed one people, living one life, on one planet earth home. Most of us recognise that climate change is happening, simply from our own lives. But let’s remain vigilant to what’s happening in our media and in our governments. Vested interests are controlling our sources of knowledge and neither we nor our politicians are hearing the full story of climate emergency. If that topic interests you then the Guardian journalist George Monbiot wrote powerfully yesterday about how our media is being controlled by a few very rich and malign people.

Writers like George Monbiot are a beacon of light and fresh air to me. I need to read what such people write. And I’ve long been attracted to Joanna Macy’s work that we heard about in our reading earlier. She pioneered a method known as despair and empowerment, in which people were encouraged to express fully their feelings of despair and powerlessness in relation to environmental degradation. Only when those feelings had been fully aired, Macy explained, could people move on to the empowerment needed to take action. These actions might only be small, but they’re the actions many of us are taking in our daily lives to reduce the footprint we leave upon our earth. We’re trying to live more lightly. And we can support the many inspiring projects started by others to counterbalance the damage that is happening. Only this week I read of two people-based projects run by local communities – a community-run garden on the edge of London, which featured on Gardener’s World and has received a King’s Award for its encouragement of volunteers. The other project that impressed me is on the Orkney island of Sanday where sheep fleeces are being used to stabilise the sand dunes and stop them being washed and blown away in the winter storms. The farmers have been given a good price for their fleeces and the work has really engaged local people. They know that sand dunes matter.

Just as the indigenous leader Nemonte Nenquimo explained in her memoir celebrating her people’s fight against the oil companies trying to drill for oil on their land, it’s good to hear the empowering stories of ordinary people.

And stories of people who are working to save their own environments rather than being ‘rescued’ by others – by experts who they think they know best. The quote we have on today’s order of service from Abroriginal activist Lilla Wilson: ‘If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.’ That really speaks to me. We have to listen to people and hear their thoughts and ideas before we rush in with our own good ideas. We are in this together and we are far closer to each other than we can ever fully understand. Our lives are inextricably linked.

Here in church, on our order of service we have an image from Brazilian folklore of Curupira, the much revered guardian of forests and animals. Many tales are told of mischievous Curupira, who will fight to protect those he loves and can trick those who might harm the forests. His backward facing feet represent a being who can move suddenly and silently and reappear when they are least expected. This image has become the logo to represent the COP30 climate talks.

I wish I had some of Curupira’s agility. It’s three weeks since I tripped on the street and broke my arm, up here near the shoulder. In the greater scheme of things it’s a relatively minor injury, it should heal itself. And yet the pain has been quite debilitating and has left me with plenty of time to think about this subject of ‘harming and healing’. It’s in the nature of the material realm for damage to be done. Things fall apart. Bodies fall over. Bones break. But they also heal through a most remarkable bodily system of healing and repair. And our planet earth has a similar capacity, both to heal and be healed. But just as my arm needs rest and recuperation, so too do our planetary systems need time and space for healing and repair. This would be helped if we could avoid inflicting yet more harm. All the more reason then for us to find another story, beyond the capitalist obsession with growth in markets and sales. Won’t we humans be in a better place when we find an economic story that speaks of us living sustainably and equitably? Our current economic system has a nasty need for winners and losers. In a fairer system maybe we wouldn’t feel that need to come out top. We could be satisfied by equality.

And we know that some things can’t be mended or healed. We’re all in the terminal ward, including me and my arm. Our lives are relatively short but the potential life of the earth is measured in billions of years rather than our paltry decades. The earth will surely outlive our species, in one shape or another, hard though that may be to imagine. But my hope is that our planet can be kept in a beautiful state, a wondrous state, for future generations to marvel at its mountains and valleys, its waterfalls and oceans, and walk in its forests and pastures and breathe in sweet air and delight in its myriad creatures and plants. If all life is one, as I believe it is, then by healing ourselves we are healing every other aspect of life here on earth and we’ll be doing that for the good of all – now isn’t that a project we could be getting on with. Amen.

Hymn 318 (grey): ‘We Would Be One’

Our closing hymn 318 in the grey book ‘we would be one’ is sung to the tune Finlandia written by Sibelius when his homeland of Finland was seeking its independence. Its words are a message of hope for greater connection: ‘we would be one as now we join in singing, our hymn of love to pledge ourselves anew’.

We would be one as now we join in singing

Our hymn of love, to pledge ourselves anew

To that high cause of greater understanding

Of who we are, and what in us is true.

We would be one in living for each other,

To show the world a new community.

We would be one in building for tomorrow

A nobler world than we have known today;

We would be one in searching for that meaning

Which binds our hearts and points us on our way.

As one, we pledge ourselves to greater service,

With love and justice strive to make all free.

Announcements:

Thanks to Jane for hosting and Jeannene for co-hosting. Thanks to Holly and Andrew for lovely music, and Benjie for supporting our singing. Thanks to our readers today. Thanks to John for greeting and Pat and Anna for making coffee. If you are in-person do stay for cake and a chat (Jane’s made two cakes – lime cake – and plum, hazelnut and chocolate). And why not stay a bit longer for our crafternoon? Perhaps you’ve brought your own art or craft project to work on or you can play with the art materials we have in the cupboard.

Tonight and Friday at 7pm we’ve got our ‘Heart and Soul’ online contemplative spiritual gathering – this week our theme is ‘Support’ – email Jane if you want to join us. There’s also an in-person Heart and Soul this week on Wednesday at 7pm so please let Jane know if you’re coming along to that.

Sonya is back with Nia Dance on Friday at 12.30pm.

I’m sorry to inform you that the Festive Tea Dance has had to be called off but we’ve got plenty of other events coming up over the festive season – our big carol service and lunch on the 21^st Dec – our candlelit Christmas Eve gathering – and two midwinter mini-retreats for you to look forward to.

Next Sunday our service will be co-led by Jane and Lochlann on ‘Gender: A Matter of Conscience’.  And relatedly this month’s book club is exploring ‘The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice’ by Shon Faye. You’ve still got a couple of weeks to read that before the session on 30^th November.

Details of all our various activities are printed on the back of the order of service, for you to take away, and also in the Friday email.  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.

And time now for our closing blessing and music. We’ll be hearing a song Besame mucho which translates deliciously as ‘kiss me, a lot’. This song is regarded as one of the most important and most well known songs in Latin music, written in 1932 by Mexican song writer Consuelo Velazquez, who was just 16 at the time and had never been kissed, so the story goes. You can find many great versions of this song online, it’s such a jazz classic, I wonder if Holly and Andrew’s bassoon version is unique – in which case, you heard it first with Kensington Unitarians! And first a closing blessing based on words by Eric Williams:

Benediction: based on words by Eric Williams ‘The World is Too Beautiful’ (adapted)

The world is too beautiful to be praised by only one voice.

May we have the courage to sing our part.

The world is too broken to be healed by only one set of hands.

May we have the courage to use our gifts for the greater community of which we are a small part.

And may we love our planet with all its abundance and know it to be our one shared home,

source of all life, worthy of both worship and protection. Go well all of you and blessed be.

Amen, so may it be. Lots of kisses, besame mucho.

Closing Music: Besame Mucho by Consuelo Velazquez (performed by Holly Redshaw and Andrew Robinson) 

Rev. Sarah Tinker

16th November 2025