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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Spiritually Empowered Wholeness

Connecting the Dots                                                                                             

The battle lines drawn between cats and dogs are not set in stone nor demanded
by nature.  And though I have had dogs with cat buddies, my Petey isn't one of them.  When he sees a cat, he sees an enemy.  Is there any hope for true wholeness and freedom as long as I define the 'other' as an enemy?

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Creative Intentionality                                            
                                                                                                                        

Charles Fillmore often used the phrase "seed thoughts" and wrote in  Jesus Christ Heals that  All things are in God as potentialities. I believe creative intentionality can be defined by weighing the difference between creative passion and technical perfection in musical performances.  When Michael Turner, one of our musicians, plays his sax, his whole body sings with the music.  By contrast, a pianist I once knew could perform beautifully on the baby grand piano at Unity Village.  His performance was technically perfect, but there was no corresponding passion uniting him with the music and none of us would have dreamed of approaching him.

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