Midweek Faith Lift
April 10, 2019
Everything is Better with Friends!
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Welcome to Unity of Ames! We have been waiting for you, preparing for your arrival today, praying to remove all obstacles to your being with us….weather, parking, time, hunger….resistance to the idea of church…fears of someone trying to “save” or convert you…..and worst of all, a guilt trip when the offering bag comes by and “oh my God, they just want my money!” Today is our gift to you! We are going to feed you and care for you and welcome you. We are holding you in our hearts and in our prayers so that you truly feel welcome and comfortable here at Unity of Ames. Today, on this “Everything is Better with Friends Sunday, we cherish you….we know that friendship doubles our joy and divides our grief. Life is much better with friends, and we are all friends here, even when we forget to be, we are all friends here.
We started our preparation the first Sunday in March, recognizing that as Unity, we are a bit like Nebraska….not for everybody. When we gather each week, we do so not just to praise God, sing about God, learn about God, but to actually experience the Presence of God, to create an energy field that is the Power and Presence of God. Our heart’s desire is that if Unity feels like a good fit for you, like you have come home in the best possible sense of what home means, then you will keep coming back.
We are all seeking to come home to our higher self, to our “best self” and the intention we hold here in this spiritual community is to help each other do just that: to hold the light for each other, to find our way home to our best self, our highest self, our Christ-Self. And then learn to live from that consciousness, that awareness of our true Christ nature every day, not just on Sunday. Sunday is recharge day, to power up spiritually for the rest of the week. That’s why we call Unity “Practical Christianity”….we practice it on a daily basis as a way to be in how we show up in our world, in the midst of all our “doing-ness”
We are all caught up in the doing of life, which can seem like all there is ….my to-do-list is my life! The question that catches us when we least expect it is “how do I want to be?” in the midst of all that I do. How do I want to show up? That is where Unity caught me….lo, those many years ago. How can I connect with Spirit and maintain that conscious contact with God, that which is greater than I am in the middle of the grocery store when someone has 20 items in the express lane? Or when I am stuck in traffic on I-35 or when that son-of-a-higher Being cuts me off! Or when I have a fight with my children or with my spouse. How can I bring more of my “Being” into my doing on an everyday basis?
And that question got me right into an awareness of Consciousness, my consciousness….all those beliefs, ideas, feelings, thoughts, reactions, that I claim as “me.” What am I claiming with each breath, each thought, each feeling, each reaction? What am I practicing? How skillful am I? And is there something better, something more, something that lifts me regularly to a higher place? A place of more peace and serenity?
Well, yes there is! I found it way back in 1989 when I found both Unity and a 12-Step program for Co-dependents Anonymous. Together, they seemed like an excellent recipe for a healthy, functioning adult if you just did it…..maybe I’ll try this! I don’t really have anything to lose because at that point, I had pretty much lost it all. Maybe I will give this a try.
The first Unity Church I walked into had the words “God is Love!” on the front and back walls of the church. Hmmmm….interesting. If that is the guiding principle, then I really am curious. Then it got even weirder because the next thing I heard was our first Unity Principle: There is only one Power and One Presence in my life and in the Universe, God, the Good, Omnipotence.
Whoa, wait a minute! I grew up believing in the power of Satan or the devil, so what’s up with this! This is really different! Toto, I don’t think we are in Kansas any more….we must be in Nebraska!!!
Evil in my life seemed to take up a LOT of space; it seemed to be all around me and even in my devious little mind and my spiteful little heart! What’s up with this! Well, a light went on for me when I took a class at Unity Village and learned that evil in Aramaic means “immature or unripe.” As I began to mature emotionally and spiritually, I could begin to see the harm that I had done in my lack of skill, in my immaturity. And that unripe business….well pushing things, controlling things so they happen in my time, not God’s time, well, that causes harm too! Hmmmm, perhaps there is something to this! But what about sin! Aren’t we sinful humans?
That brought me to the second Unity Principle….we are all created in the image and likeness of God, therefore our essence is of God, therefore we are inherently good. We have to wake up to that reality that we are born with, but completely not aware of; our essential goodness. It is a spiritual Truth that we have to recognize and embrace and grow into. When our parents, teachers and mentors reflect that love to us, it is easier to see. When in their unaware, profound humanness, they mirror hate, then it is harder to see. Ultimately, we are called to awaken to seeing and embracing our inherent goodness, our God-Ness. In Unity, we don’t talk about being saved; we talk about being awakened. Jesus is our Way Shower….his life and teachings show us how to embrace this Christ-Consciousness that he keeps telling us is within each one of us.
It is interesting to note that Jesus never said, worship me; Jesus said “Follow me, and I will give you life!” Jesus, the Christ, is our window into the nature of the Divine, which is our true Christ nature. Our task is to look through the window; to look within to our true nature, to continuously discover, uncover and bring it to light, to make it real. That is what realize means…to make our true Divine, Christ nature real in all that we think, say and do. And here is the kicker….every one of us has this Christ nature, no matter how heavily disguised!
No matter how irritating, wrong-headed, stupid, ugly, hurtful they or we might behave….that is our human nature having its way. The Christ of them/us is still present.
And the lived experience is that when we act only out of our human nature, we do sin, we do hurt others as well as ourselves. We miss the mark big time and it causes a great deal of suffering and pain, right here and now, on this earth. In Unity, we don’t believe in Hell as a place that we go after this life. We create hell right here on earth and we are not punished for our sins, we are punished BY our sins. When we come back into alignment with our God-self, our True Divine nature, when we practice forgiveness, we find that place of love and the peace that passes all understanding. It is a continuous, ongoing process, this business of maturing spiritually. And it is not for the faint-hearted!
The next big question for me then, as I kept coming back to Unity was how in the “heaven” do I do this? If I don’t want to keep creating “hell on earth” then what do I do? And that is when I discovered the next two Unity principles: what we call the Law of Mind Action and then the Power of Prayer. Both of these Principles speak to how I want to “Be” in the world when I show up in all the “Doing” of my life.
One of the most significant challenges and powerful freedoms for Unity folks is coming to grips with the reality that we are each 100% responsible for how we experience our life. Whatever shows up in our life that is a burden also carries with it a blessing. Realizing that opens up a lot of new thinking! I love what Myrtle Fillmore says in her book, How to Let God Help You, “Life is a school and we are here to learn lessons.” When I keep having the same conflict over and over again, with a variety of different folks, then it may finally dawn on me that how I think about it, how I show up, how I react may have something to do with it. There might be a lesson for me to learn here!
When I look honestly into my own thoughts, feelings, reactions, I can begin to see how they are shaping my experience of my life. And then I can begin to question myself….is this how I want to be? Is this how I want to show up? What beliefs, thoughts, ideas do I hold? Because when I hold to them faithfully, then that is what keeps showing up! How can this burden, this awful challenge become a blessing…a source of Goodness, a source of God-ness in my life, in my Beingness in the world? I am often called to do some serious consciousness cleansing in this spiritual growth process we call Unity. Deep cleaning may be required! We call that the Law of Mind Action….deep cleaning of Consciousness which then out-pictures our good.
And that brings us to Prayer- and the Power of Prayer, a key to understanding Unity as a practice. The Power and purpose of prayer is to align our minds and hearts with the Divine, with the higher perspective, with the God-Point-of-View. We practice prayer as a process of affirmation and denial. That can sound kind of confusing because it is. We are not denying what is there, whether it be cancer, financial challenges, divorce, abuse, social injustice. We are denying the belief that this is the ONLY reality, and in prayer we are affirming that there is a GREATER Reality of God-ness, of Goodness, that we will claim as the ultimate TRUTH and we will endeavor to realize or make real that TRUTH that is the power of love, the Power of God! We also practice meditation to listen for that still, small voice of Spirit, whispering to our very soul.
These are the first 4 of our 5 Unity Principles- 1.One Power & One Presence, God. 2. The Divine Christ, present in all beings, no exception; 3. The law of mind action- what I think, say and do is what shapes my experience of my life; 4. Prayer is Powerful….so do it! Pray and then meditate to listen to that inner voice of Spirit whispering and then 5—let all of this completely permeate your doing….this isn’t just something to believe, it permeates all that you, we think, say and do!
So! That is Unity in a fairly big nutshell! The big mantra right now is that people describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” so they avoid religion or church. So do I! Unity is a place, a practice to learn to be spiritually mature….it’s designed for your growth and maturity, so like Nebraska, it’s not for everybody. We sure hope it is for you! Welcome friends, welcome home! Everything is better with friends!
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb