Following Jesus

Last night, at the beginning of a parenting class that we are hosting at Unity Spiritual Center Denver, I was given a few minutes to speak to the class about Unity and what we offer at our center. With few exceptions, the vast majority of the thirty or so participants do not attend Unity services. It was a welcomed opportunity for me to introduce them, albeit briefly, to what we are about.

During my talk, one of the participants who does attend Unity, said “talk about the way shower.” I knew immediately that he wanted me to share about how Unity views Jesus as the example of what is possible for each of us, rather than as the one and only son of God sent to save us through his death on the cross. He and I have had a lengthy conversation about how Unity differs from traditional Christianity in our approach to understanding the life and legacy of Jesus. It was one of the things that first attracted him to Unity. 

My initial reaction to his request was resistance. Not knowing who was in the room, or where they might be coming from in their religious view, I hesitated. However, I moved through it quickly and shared a sentence or two about Jesus as our way shower.

This morning, during my quiet time, I reflected on my hesitancy. I realized that, more often than I care to admit, I resist speaking what I know as truth when I fear that someone will have a negative reaction to it. I have empathy and compassion for myself in this regard because I have experienced others being triggered by my views and arguing with me to convince me that I am wrong.

As I reflected further upon the topic I was hesitant to discuss, however, I realized that if I am to truly follow in Jesus’s footsteps as my way shower as I profess to do, it is imperative that I boldly and unabashedly speak what I know in my heart to be true. From what we know of the life of Jesus, he did not hesitate to speak truth to whomever was in his presence. 

Further, I reflected on other ways that Jesus was a great teacher and way shower. I also reviewed whether or not I am truly living his message.

I sat with this awareness as I entered into my meditation time during which I invoked the spirit of Jesus. I imagined him reaching out to me, grasping my hand as we began to walk together. Hymn lyrics began to sing in my head,

Where he leads me I will follow.
Where he leads me I will follow.
Where he leads me I will follow.
I’ll go with him, with him, all the way. 

In that moment, it occurred to me that today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent in the Christian liturgical calendar. Lent is traditionally a time of penitence, fasting, and repentance of sins in preparation for the celebration of Easter. The encounter with Jesus took on a deeper meaning within the association of Lent.

No, I am not returning to the religion of my childhood. However, I am making the conscious choice to use this Lenten season to more fully explore what it means for me to follow in the way of Jesus the Christ; to live into our Unity belief that Jesus is our way shower. I do not yet know what direction that will take, but I am open to the possibilities.

I invite you to join me in this exploration. Beginning Tuesday, March 3, at 6:00 MT, and continuing each Tuesday through April 7, I will host a video call on Zoom for anyone interested in joining me for this journey. If you would like to participate, please email me at David@UnityDenver.org, and I will send you the necessary information.

My hope is that I, that we, will more fully embrace, embody, and live the example of our way shower – Jesus.

Unsung Heroines

In observance of February as Black History Month, I have focused my Sunday lessons for the past two weeks around the profound contributions of Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks, respectively. In her own time and place, each of these women furthered the cause of freedom for African Americans in this country. You may listen to or watch recordings of these lessons.

There are many other well-known and lesser known heroes and heroines of the black community, those who spoke, stood, fought and died for freedom, equality and justice. I could choose any one of them to use as an example of Unity’s fifth basic principle which states that we are to live the Truth we know.

However, as I have considered my lesson for this coming Sunday, I have thought more about the many unsung heroes and heroines, the men and women who suffered indignities and hardships, and who day after day continued to get up and show up for life, no matter how unfair it may have been. I would like to share personal reflections of two such women.

I was born in Washington, Georgia; a town that has the distinction of being the place Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, held his last Cabinet meeting and voted to dissolve the Confederacy. While things have changed in the century and a half since 1865, in the 1960s and 1970s there was a distinct atmosphere of discrimination and prejudice, and while not to the same extent, sadly continues today. I did not live there growing up, but we spent a great deal of time there with both sides of my family.

As a child, I would often visit my maternal grandmother in Washington for weeks at a time during the summer. Every day, I walked from her house to the city pool where I would stay until closing time. I loved to swim and play in the water. It never occurred to me at that time that there was anything wrong with the fact that there were no black children playing in the pool. They had their own pool on the other side of town.

Sally was a black woman who worked for my grandmother when I was young. I loved Sally. She was kind and caring. She always had a smile and a warm hug for me. I didn’t understand why Sally couldn’t stay and eat with us. Instead someone had to drive her home to the other side of town where she lived in a small weathered frame “house” that most of us would consider a shack. Every morning, she would be waiting on her porch when we came to pick her up, ready for another day’s work. She never had the advantages of an education or a job that paid a decent wage simply because she was a black woman living in the legacy of slavery in the South. Still, she persevered.

My paternal grandmother lived outside of Washington in a little community called Ficklin on the land where my father was born and raised. My uncle, aunt and their two daughters lived with her in a two-story white house with colonial columns. It was not a fine house, but a large family farm house. I spent many summer days and nights there as a child, as well.

A young black woman that everyone called “Fuzz” lived with and worked for my grandmother. I now feel embarrassed to think where the name “Fuzz” came from, but that is what she was called. Her real name was Ida Ree. She came to live with my grandmother as a teenager and stayed with her until my grandmother’s death. It wasn’t until I was older that I learned that she came to live there because her mother couldn’t afford to care for her, and knowing that she would have room and board at my grandmother’s, sent her to live with her.

As children, my cousins and I often played board games. When we were finished playing and ready to go do something else, we left the board and the playing pieces all over the floor. When we returned, we always found the game neatly put away. After a bath at night, I would leave my dirty clothes on the floor. The next morning, they would be washed and folded. It was as if “Fuzz” was a fairy who followed us around, cleaning up our messes.

I now recognize that even though she was ostensibly embraced as part of the family, that in many ways she was treated little better than an indentured servant. Her room was upstairs in the coldest, draftiest part of the house. It was furnished with a single iron frame bed and a mattress not much better than a cot. The walls and ceiling were clapboard and the floor bare wood.

She cleaned the house, worked in the garden, walked around the farm and picked wild blackberries in the summer heat for my grandmother’s famous blackberry jelly. She showed up. Day after day, she lived her life with grace and humility in the shadows of the white people who could not and would never understand the privilege they enjoyed.

Sally and Ida Ree are just two of the many unknown and unsung black heroines who day by day, year after year, endured the hardships and injustice of a society who judged and treated them as less than. I will never know what their lives were truly like. I will never know what pain they endured. I do know that through their adversity, they persisted. They survived. They triumphed.

I salute them. I honor them. I thank them. Their legacy lives on in the lives of all of us who were touched by their strength, kindness, love and fortitude.

Shine On!

On Monday of this week, I was working my part-time job when I had a sudden realization.

No, I don’t have an official part-time job. I often joke at our Tuesday morning staff meetings that I worked my part-time job on Monday and over the weekend. I am referring to helping my spouse, J, with his mid-century furniture business.

In addition to occasionally staffing the store when he needs to be away, my “job” usually consists of moving, as well as frequently cleaning and refreshing furniture. That is what I was doing on Monday when it occurred to me that in addition to cleaning the metal frames of the Barcelona chairs we have for sale; I was being reminded of a very important life lesson.

I am not sure if someone intentionally coated part of one of the frames with something akin to shellac to protect it from scratching or if something was accidentally spilled on it and was not cleaned off. My guess is the latter. Whichever the case, it was not a good idea, and it was not easy to remove.

My first reaction upon seeing what had happened was disbelief and judgmental frustration. Firstly, I thought that surely no one in their right mind would do this on purpose. Secondly, I could hardly believe that if it was an accident that no one had taken time and effort to clean it off. After all, how could they not realize the beauty and value of these iconic chairs!

After getting over my initial dismay, I began working on removing whatever it was. My assumption was that it has been there for years. At first, I wondered if it would come off. I questioned if this was going to be an exercise in futility. I persisted, however. I soon discovered that the right solvent would help to dissolve the solution. It did not come off all at once. Thankfully, with patience and some elbow grease, layer-by-layer it gradually disintegrated, and the original beauty and shine of the chrome was revealed. 

It occurred to me that something similar happens to us humans. The original luster and shine of our True nature – our Christ Self – gets covered over by the false beliefs of our families, cultures and religions. By the hurt and pain we endure. By fear. By the lies we take on and believe about ourselves.

All these things can become solidified in our consciousness as what Unity cofounder Charles Fillmore termed the “adverse ego.” Instead of knowing who and what we are as the Light of God, we take on these limiting ideas of self that stymie the full expression of who we are and all that we have come here to be.

Our opportunity is to recognize it for what it is, do what we can to dissolve it, and to reveal the unique beauty of our Divinity.

Awareness is key. As author and teacher, Louise Hay, said, “If you want to clean your house, you have to be willing to see the dirt.” In addition, we must be willing not to judge the dirt or place blame on someone else for creating the dirt.

In order to clean the chair, I had to first see the substance. While I did judge the one or ones who were responsible for it, my judgement was not helpful to the process. It only caused me to enjoy it even less.

Further, we need the right solvent. It is Love. Love is the only power that can lift off the effects of the adverse ego. Loving ourselves right where we are in every moment is essential. Even when knowing that there are aspects of our lives that are not yet in alignment with who we have come here to be, Love is the only way to begin to remove the effects of the adverse ego-dominated mind.

As it was in my effort to clean the chair, patience is also key. The effects of years of conditioning will not, in most cases, go away in one fell swoop. Most often, it requires a steady, consistent spiritual practice of prayer, which includes meditation, denials and affirmations, and conscious alignment with Truth. I am confident that daily practice does work to lift off, layer-by-layer, the burden of the thoughts, beliefs and behaviors of adverse ego. Trust the process. As they say in AA, “It works, if you work it.”

Cleaning the chairs on Monday was a present reminder that life can, and often does, reveal to us in the most unlikely of places the lesson that we need to remember in the moment. Each of us is a unique, beautiful, invaluable work of art created by the Master Artist to shine brilliantly. Even though our natural sheen may get covered over by some inadvertent or intentional act of another or others, we have the power to free ourselves and let our Christ Light shine.

Remember, it’s a process. Awareness is key. Love is the only power. Patience is essential. Progress, not perfection. Practice daily. You are meant to shine. Shine On!

You Are Love Made Flesh

Earlier today, I arrived at the conclusion that I was not to write a post this week.

I sat in front of my computer screen wondering what to write. I wrote, but it was not from the heart. I realized that I was writing because I was telling myself that I “should” write. In case you’re wondering, “shoulding” on ourselves never promotes inspiration.

So, I stopped. I knew that I was forcing it. I knew it was all coming from my head and not my heart.

This evening (I’m writing on Wednesday), during our monthly contemplative service, I was inspired.

John 3:16 & 17 was one of the Scriptures I heard over and over again in the Baptist church. Along with hymns like, “The Old Rugged Cross” and “Just as I Am,” this Bible passage was a staple for nearly every service, or so it seems in my memory.

Here is the New Revised Standard Version,

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

During meditation tonight, the following interpretation came through.

For God, as Love, so loved that God poured Itself into being as you, so that the world, through the power of the love that you are, might be uplifted, healed and reclaimed in the conscious awareness of Love’s presence. As you know this as Truth, you realize that Love is eternal; therefore you are eternal. You are the Beloved of God. You are Love made flesh. You are the one sent to redeem the world for Love.

This Scripture took on a whole new meaning. I was uplifted and inspired.

My prayer is that each of you reading this will take it to heart. You are Love made flesh. You are here to be Love in the world. Be the Love that you are. Love is the only salvation of a world consumed by fear.

Say aloud or to yourself every morning and as often as it comes to mind –

I am Love made flesh.
I am the Beloved of God.
I am here to reclaim the world in Love.

Namaste!