Retreat: Monastery of the Holy Spirit

Wisdom of the Christian Mystics

This past weekend I attended a retreat at the Monastery of the Holy Spirit in Conyers,  GA.   A friend of mine attended a retreat there  this past spring and absolutely loved it. The grounds are lovely, the rooms and food are simple and the monks' choir is out of   this world.  Because of the heat,  I only explored the grounds during the first hour after sunrise.  I would love to return again for the Contemplative Prayer Retreat. 

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Leave Your Nets

A New Dimension

We have now come full circle in our series on spiritual wholeness, reviewing and re- newing our sense of connectedness to our own indwelling Lord and all of creation.  We are not alone in the universe.  We are the universe.  And by grace we fulfill our destiny as the sons and daughters of God. 

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Leave Your Nets

Thy Grace is Sufficient Unto Me

This week a local pundit connected the dots between  BP's Gulf Disaster and Pogo, who once observed:  We have met the enemy and he is us. BP's management is driven by its stockholders' focus on the bottom line and the need to be number one in the industry, with disastrous results, and this isn't the first time, either.  But we, as stakeholders in the health and viability of our land and our planet, are also responsible.  It is common wisdom that the drug wars along the border with Mexico would dry up if there were no market for drugs in this country.  The same logic applies to the drilling in the Gulf of Mexico or fighting wars to secure a pipeline--supply and demand. 

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Unity and the Son of God

Who am I and Why am I Here?                                                                                                                                                    

We began  Sunday's forum with these two questions and moved on to Unity's take on Jesus Christ, among other topics.  If we keep in mind the statement that "I am a spiritual being having a human experience", then we know that the answer to the question "Who am I?" is not our earthly name at all nor is the correct answer to "Why am I here?" a description of the 9 to 5 job which pays the bills.

"For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God.

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ."  Ro.8:15-17

We, as the children of God, were created in the image of God with the potential to be like God.  That is the promise of the creation story in Genesis.  Yet, over the ages, it became clear that the Chosen, the Children of Israel, didn't get it.  And as time passed, the Law and the Prophets  became a barrier to the direct experience of God.  Early on in Matthew, Jesus said:

Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill.

Jesus was the first born of God in that He was the first to fulfill the promise:  He was Man and Christ in one being.  And this is what we are called to do--to know God and to express more of God in all that we do.  Jesus is our teacher by Word and by example.  He came to teach our true relationship to God as Father, in our midst, wholly present in His creation.  He did not come to create another church to set up barriers between God and man.

If we would be more like Jesus, then we must follow His example, as Charles Fillmore wrote in Talks on Truth:

The way to do this is the way Jesus did it. He acknowledged Himself to be the Son of God.  The attainment of the Christ consciousness calls for nothing less on our part than a definite recognition of ourselves as sons of God right here and now, regardless of appearances to the contrary.

Rev. Claudia Naylor

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Spiritually Empowered Wholeness

Help Wanted: Apply Within                                                                                                                                                             

I love having online access to so many beautiful images!  One of my favorite is the radiant lotus blossom to the right.  This image has become my visual mantra, symbolizing for me not just the Christ in me,  but the awareness and experience of that presence in me.   I focus upon it as I begin to pray or meditate and I feel an actual warmth spreading out from my heart center.  And in moments of stress or too much busyness, just a moment's focus allows me to re-center on that image.

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