Words of Wisdom

“Unity says that true religious growth is a ‘do-it-yourself’ project … One might describe Unity as a religious philosophy with an ‘open end,’ seeking to find God’s truth in all of life”

Charles R. Fillmore, Chairman of the Board of Trusteesand grandson of the founders

Welcome! Unity School of Christianity is the world headquarters of the Unity movement, founded in 1889 in Kansas City, Missouri, by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. After Mrs. Fillmore’s remarkable healing using prayer and affirmations, many friends became interested in how she accomplished this healing. From small prayer circles in living rooms, Unity grew.

What is a religion but not a religion?
What is Christian but not only Christian?
What is a denomination and not denominational?
What honors individual difference while seeking universal similarity?

In a word, UNITY!

I am often called upon to define and explain Unity. Although I grew up in Unity and have been tackling this task for many years, I still find it challenging. I must admit, though, that I have a lot of fun with it, too. It is fun to try to explain something that falls outside the usual definitions that people find comfortable. It is fun to try to explain something that draws its existence from God, because humankind has been trying to explain God for centuries, and look how far we gotten with that!

Some people find religious rituals to be comforting and moving experiences; other people do not. I personally do not feel a need for religious rituals, and those in which I have participated did not particularly inspire, comfort, or move me. Different responses to rituals and different feelings about them are part of the diversity inherent in human experience. It is not unlike the diversity of tastes in food, art, music, and so forth. While most people are reasonably accepting of differences in tastes, some people believe that a person who doesn’t participate in particular rituals cannot be a true Christian (or Jew or Muslim or Hindu, depending on the believer making the judgment). That bias against orientations that exclude rituals is a mystery to me, but I don’t lose any sleep over it.

In my spiritual journey of thirty years, I have had to work with the following affirmation a number of times: I am not the victim here. This idea has been applied to frightening medical diagnoses, to personal relationships filled with drama and chaos, to a horrendous IRS situation, to overpowering personalities.

You can apply this idea to any challenging situation to which your old response would have been to collapse and crumble. To truly know you are not the victim—no matter what the circumstances—begins to establish your own freedom in your mind. Liberating yourself from the bondage of victimhood is the greatest gift you can ever give yourself. In doing so, you begin to rise into living as a noble being.

January/February 2004
By Donna Miesbach

No doubt we all have defining moments in our lives, moments that force us to take a better look at things, to dig a little deeper, to trust a little more, or perhaps even to question what we had always taken for granted. Often as not, it is pain that thrusts us into such defining times. Of course, joyous moments change our lives, too, but not with the same piercing intensity that comes with that which causes us pain.

Defining moments occur for us individually and collectively. I think I can safely say that September 11, 2001, was one of those collective moments. It was a wake-up call, if ever there was one, and it showed with glaring clarity that what one person does affect us all. More than that, it illustrated the age-old truth that whatever I do to you, I do to myself. Truly, we are our brother’s keeper, and our own as well. Certainly that message cannot now be denied nor will it soon be forgotten.