In Remembrance

This Sunday will offer an opportunity to come together in community for a time of remembrance and to hold all of grief that has fallen upon us, most recently in the past two weeks, with the tragic events in Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX.

It is also an invitation for us all to remember those who we have loved and lost. As a result of the restrictions of the pandemic, many have had to endure the loss of loved ones without the shared community support that we are accustomed to. I hope to offer this time together, in sacred community as a way to support, love and steady each other and ourselves.

What we love, we grieve. We all love and we all experience the depth of grief as a response to losing those that we love. It is so important to have community for all that we celebrate and all that we mourn in this human experience.

We will also observe Memorial Day, (originally called Decoration Day), which was established as a National Holiday in 1868 in order to remember those men and women who had lost their lives while serving our country. This is indeed worth remembering. We will take time to  join together in heart and mind with those families who have lost a loved one in service to our country. 

Looking into the history of this holiday, I came upon something that was new to me, indicating an even earlier beginning to what went on to become Memorial Day. It reminded me of the importance of knowing our shared history.  

“The American Civil War is the deadliest military conflict in American history, as the Union and the Confederacy each suffered more than 800,000 casualties by the time the war ended in 1865. According to History.com, as the war drew to a close, hundreds of Union soldiers who were being held as prisoners of war died and were buried in a mass grave in a Confederate prison camp in South Carolina. After the Confederate surrender, more than 1,000 now-freed slaves honored those recently deceased Union soldiers during a ceremony in which they sang hymns and distributed flowers. The ceremony was dedicated to the fallen soldiers and served as a precursor to what is now celebrated as Memorial Day.” ¹

As we honor those who have lost their lives for the sake of freedom in our country, and around the globe, may we also contemplate how we can move beyond the seeming need to ‘fight for freedom."

As we honor the lives lost in defense of our shared freedom, may we also consider how we can move forward together, to realize the fullness of freedom which is meant to be shared.
May we grow into the depth of a shared sense of humanity that supports us in honoring, and even celebrating our human differences by knowing our Spiritual Oneness.

May we lean into each other to be able to hold it all in love, which is always working to ground us in a greater sense of purpose, wholeness, and freedom.

To do this also requires that we have a spiritual understanding of freedom, which offers us guidance and support in this, and all human endeavors.

In the Revealing Word, Unity Co-Founder Charles Fillmore offered the following metaphysical meaning of freedom:

“The quality or state of being without thought or restraint, bondage, limitation, or repression; having a sense of complete well-being. It is a result of regulating one's life according to Principle {our True Spiritual Essence}, not according to what anyone else may think or say.

We can never know the full meaning of freedom until we abide in the Christ consciousness. Without prayer and spiritual meditation there can be no concept of spiritual freedom and, therefore, no demonstration of it. It is gained only through spiritual development …in long hours of communion with God in the silence. Liberation from bondage comes as we seek first the perfect Mind of Christ.” 2

 "If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (John 8:36).

Once again, we are reminded of the importance of prayer and meditation practices in order to grow into the fullest understanding, and expression of freedom!

 

Join us for a prayerful time of remembrance this Sunday at 10am.

   Photo by Matthew Huang on Unsplash

Sources

1.       26 May 2022. <https://berthoudsurveyor.com/interesting-facts-about-memorial-day/>.

2. Fillmore, Charles. Truth Unity. n.d. <https://www.truthunity.net/rw/freedom>.