Unity Connections

  Hi Friends! I am currently in the airport preparing to fly home from Kansas City after spending the week at my first Unity World Wide Ministries conference! "Back to the Future" is this year's theme, offering a nod to the confusion we feel in knowing which way to go in our rapidly changing world. The future is always before us and yet; we often find ourselves looking backward.  Our human nature seeks to find comfort in the seeming stability of what has been. Of course, there is always good to be found in what has been- in all that we have learned and experienced and celebrated along the way- in our personal lives, our Unity Ministries, and in our shared, collective human experience. Accompanying that good are also the limitations, misunderstandings and seeming failures along the way. We often label these as 'bad' but they are only really ''bad' if we don't learn and grow from them. We don't know what we don't know, until we do!  In my und

“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged…” Our lesson this week will consider the practical implications of that infamous saying offered in Matthew 7:1-2. Like most of us, I came to understand this to mean that as I judged others harshly, GOD would judge me harshly in return. This stems from the teaching of a literal ‘judgement day’ whereby our eternal future will be decided, for better or worse.. What many of us love about Unity is that it offers us access to be able to apply spiritual understanding in the here and now. Consider the metaphysical interpretation of the 'Last Judgement" as described in The Metaphysical Bible Dictionary by Unity Co-Founder, Charles Fillmore: “The description of the Last Judgment, as given in the Gospels, has been used to terrify men and women and thus compel them to unite with the church; but in this day of enlightenment people are not so easily led or driven by fear. They ask for understanding. Wh

  Hi Friends,   I am getting back in the swing of things here after a wonderful time of vacation.  There is often a swift re-entry period upon returning to the build- up of work while you were away, but our wonderful staff really kept everything moving so I am really thankful to all of them. Nonetheless, I find myself behind here this week, so in lieu of a lesson overview, I am sharing a bit of my vacation experience.   It was a unique vacation that afforded me time for connection and reflection. The biggest takeaway for me was the reminder to slow down and be present in order to be able to savor life and the people I experience along the way. I had not quite realized how busy my mind had become—always on to the next thing to do – and not all that present to what was happening in the moment.   When I break out of my familiar routines, there is a natural slowing down in order to attune to the new surroundings.   It doesn’t always happen right away though. Navigating travel can be qui