The Sermon No One Needed

Lately I have been replaying a moment from one of our livestreams, and I find myself wincing a little when I do. 

We had started, as we usually do, by talking about silk — the colours in a piece, the way a sleeve falls, whether something would feel comfortable on a warm day. 

Somewhere along the way the conversation wandered further than clothing tends to go. 

We started talking about the world outside the screen, about how tense things can feel lately, how quickly people seem to move from disagreement to anger.

And at some point in that conversation I heard myself begin offering what sounded very much like advice. I talked about choosing kindness, about staying curious instead of defensive, about the small ways women can influence the atmosphere of the spaces they enter. I even suggested that sariKNOTsari might help with that — that confidence in one’s own skin can ripple outward into the way we move through the world. 

At the time it felt like a natural extension of the conversation. Looking back now, I am a little embarrassed by it.

The more I thought about it afterward, the stranger that moment began to feel. The women who spend time in this community are not exactly waiting to be instructed on how to behave in the world. 

If anything, the opposite seems to be true. They show up curious. They listen to one another. They ask thoughtful questions. They share stories that are often generous and occasionally vulnerable. It is difficult to imagine a group less in need of being reminded to be decent human beings.

Which leaves me with a slightly uncomfortable possibility.

Perhaps I was not really speaking to them at all.

Perhaps the advice was directed somewhere closer to home.

Because if I am honest, in the last little while, the world has felt particularly unsettled. 

Not in just the dramatic ways, but also in the quiet accumulation of small things. 

A sharper tone in public spaces. 

Conversations that seem to move quickly from disagreement to suspicion. 

A general sense that the social fabric we once took for granted may be fraying in places.

And I suspect that somewhere in the middle of that livestream, while talking about silk and sleeves and comfort, my personal unease slipped into the conversation.

Without quite realizing it, I fear I may have been trying to reassure myself that the things I still believe in — curiosity, kindness, the willingness to assume good intentions — are not disappearing entirely.

And yet the longer I sit with that thought, the more it begins to unravel. Hear me out….

The women who gather around sariKNOTsari do not behave like people who have forgotten how to live alongside one another. 

They ask questions before drawing conclusions. Their stories don’t always align, but the conversations remain generous.

They are thoughtful about the way their choices ripple outward — whether that is the clothing they wear, the businesses they support, or the tone they bring into a room. None of that suggests a group of people in need of moral instruction, which makes my “moments of guidance” feel fully embarrassing.

I am preaching to the converted — projecting my own unease about the wider world onto a group of women who were simply showing up for a conversation about silk on a Sunday afternoon.

And perhaps that realization is the more reassuring part of the story. Again, hear me out….

The existence of this community quietly contradicts the fear that prompted my little lecture in the first place. 

It suggests that even in a moment that can sometimes feel fractured or brittle, people still know how to gather. They still know how to listen. They still know how to meet one another with curiosity instead of suspicion.

That realization leaves me a little embarrassed, because the reassurance I was offering that day may have been unnecessary.

At least for them.

For me, though, it might have been exactly what I needed.