A Fish Not Even Gold

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A Fish Not Even Gold by James Dillet Freeman - A closeup on a goldfish swimming

In my garden I built two shallow lily ponds and put goldfish into them. They multiplied. But dogs tore the liner and ruined the ponds, so in the fall I drained them and gave away the fish.

Later that fall, much rain fell, and in the winter, much snow. Two or three inches of water formed in the bottom of the pools. It must have been frozen solid for at least a month and must have frozen solid and thawed a number of times. There may have been times when the pools were dry.

When spring came, I went out one Sunday afternoon to measure the pools because I intended to rebuild them. I measured the larger pool, then went to the smaller one. It had no water in it. It had rained a week before, so how long it had been dry I do not know. There were a few spots of half-dry, oozy muck in the bottom.

We are all linked, one to another. We answer, though we have heard no voice. We respond, though we do not know we have been summoned.

On top of this muck, in the sun, on its side and not breathing, lay a goldfish about three inches long.

I still remember my surprise at seeing it, there in the middle of that empty pond, shining in the sun, a little red-gold fish. It has to be dead, I thought. But almost as I thought it, something in that fish said: “No, no, I am alive. Pick me up.”

I ran to the house and got a glass of water. I picked up the fish—and it gasped! I put it in the glass, and for a long time it did not move again. I could see that one fin was gone and part of its side was damaged.

I moved the fish from the glass into a larger bowl. For several days, it showed almost no sign of life, but little by little its vitality came back, and in a week, that little fish was lashing with life.

The Most Alive Creature

That fish was the most alive creature I ever saw. It spent every waking moment flashing, darting, hurtling around that bowl and trying to push through the glass.

When I put it back into the lily pond, it lived in the pond as if to know how dear life is and was not going to waste a moment of it.

How had it survived that winter of freezing and thawing and drying out? It is hard to surmise.

And what if I had not gone out to the pond on that March day? A few more minutes at most and it surely would have died. But it lived—lived to live furiously again!

Paws of Wisdom Puzzle

Celebrating the spiritual lessons we learn from animals. Fun for the whole family!

The Livingness of Life

You may not think so, but I will always believe I had to go out to that pond because it had to live. I suppose you had to see my fish to understand. You had to pick it up. You had to see it lashing about that bowl. You had to see it whirling through that pond.

Somehow that fish had the livingness of life in it.

What a fuss to make about a fish, you may be saying, and a ridiculous coincidence!

I am only such a fish, not even gold. And my pond is also a perilous, precarious place; it, too, has had many times of freezing, of thawing, and of drying out.

And like my fish, I, too, am here, I feel, because I have called, and the feet of the world have been no less swift when they ran to succor me. We are all linked, one to another. We answer, though we have heard no voice. We respond, though we do not know we have been summoned.

And the universe responds to us—with powers you could not think were there, by ways you had no forethought of, bringing help you could not know would come.


This article first appeared in the Unity booklet Kindred Spirits: Animals as Spiritual Teachers.

Author
Name
James Dillet Freeman
Biography

Rev. James Dillet Freeman (1912–2003) was an internationally acclaimed poet, author, and lecturer. Unity created a retrospective of his writings in a booklet titled I Am God’s Song. He wrote The Story of Unity, and many of his poems and writings were collected in the 2004 book Angels Sing in Me.

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The Prayer for Protection: Making God Personal

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The title "The Prayer for Protection: Making God Personal" by Rev. Saba Mchunguzi against a colorful background of purple, green, yellow, and pink mandala drawings

We’ve learned in Unity and New Thought that Jesus brought a new spiritual understanding to the world. He brought a new way to look at God/the creator and a new way to look at our relationship to God.

Jesus generally referred to God as “father,” which in his day was a very positive term. It meant someone who was the head of the family, a leader, a guide, a protector. People looked up to and had faith in their fathers. They willingly followed the wise counsel of a father, knowing he would never lead them astray. They knew that regardless of anything they did or anything that happened, their father would always love them and care for them.

I believe that Jesus wanted us to think of God in those same terms. Jesus took God out of the sky and made that presence and power personal to everyone, everywhere. When I think of the “Prayer for Protection,” I am reminded of this new perspective that Jesus brought to the world. This prayer is all-encompassing, and in just a few short lines, it typifies all that God has done, is doing, and will do for everyone. I know that God is spirit and isn’t a person with gender, but this prayer makes me feel close to that presence and that power.

The Light of God Surrounds Me

When I affirm: The light of God surrounds me, I feel uplifted because I recognize the seeming darkness around me—the fear, negativity, and doubts—have no power over me. In truth, I am surrounded by the divine light of the Christ. I recognize the dark and negative energy is only a temporary appearance because in truth I am walking in the light. I am reminded of the scripture, “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

When I think of the “Prayer for Protection,” I am reminded of this new perspective that Jesus brought to the world. This prayer is all encompassing and in just a few short lines, it typifies all that God has done, is doing, and will do for everyone.

The Love of God Enfolds Me

When I affirm: The love of God enfolds me, I am comforted in knowing the loving presence and power of God is with me, regardless of what I may be experiencing in the world. People I encounter may disagree with me or may not want me to succeed. However, when I declare this statement from the “Prayer for Protection,” I feel the love, which is the essence of God, in my life, and I realize that “If God is for us, who is against us?” (Romans 8:31).

The Power of God Protects Me

When I affirm: The power of God protects me, I am reminded that in my human self, as a physical being, I have limited power. If I am tempted to rely on my intellect or ego to fight my day-to-day battles, this statement reminds me that I don’t need to fight my own battles. I am reminded that “The one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world” (1 John 4:4).

Wherever I am, God is

The last two lines of this prayer are powerful. “The presence of God watches over me. Wherever I am, God is.” The presence of God represents the totality of God, the Allness of God, the Allness of Spirit. It gives me a sense of awe to think that the Allness that created the universe is watching over me and everyone else in the world at all times! It is guiding, protecting, and sustaining all of humankind. It is omnipresent in that it is everywhere equally and evenly present. “He will be with you: he will not fail you or forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:8).


This article first appeared in the Unity booklet The Prayer for Protection: A Beloved Prayer Brought to Life.

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Rev. Saba Mchunguzi
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Rev. Saba Mchunguzi is minister at Unity of Huntington in Huntington Station, New York.
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The title "The Prayer for Protection: Making God Personal" by Rev. Saba Mchunguzi against a colorful background of purple, green, yellow, and pink mandala drawings

The Prayer for Protection: A Beloved Prayer Brought to Life

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The Prayer for Protection A Beloved Prayer Brought to Life
Connect with the Light, Love, Power, and Presence Within
A blue colored pencil on top of an intricate and colorful design half colored with the title “The Prayer for Protection: A Beloved Prayer Brought to Life”

During World War II, people of all faiths turned to prayer. To offer comfort, Unity minister James Dillet Freeman wrote the “Prayer for Protection,” which still resonates with millions today.

In just five lines, it reminds us that whatever we face, the presence of God never wavers. 

The light of God surrounds me,
The love of God enfolds me,
The power of God protects me,
The presence of God watches over me.
Wherever I am, God is.

In this booklet, Freeman recounts the story of writing the prayer. The rest of the pages explore the prayer line by line as Unity and New Thought writers reflect on their experiences with divine light, love, power, and presence.

By learning through Freeman’s own words how this special prayer came to be and how others have used it, discover the many ways it can serve you too.

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Be!

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How high should you aim? You are mightier than a redwood

We live in a world of light. We are ourselves light.

I have only to look … to taste … to feel, I have only to live—to know that the world is a work more wonderful than anything I can imagine it to be, anything I do imagine it to be!

The wildest wonderment of all poets, dreamers, inventors, speculators that have ever lived is as nothing compared to the wonderment that is the world. The world is God’s wonderment, infinite intelligence compounding its infinity, the joy of eternity delighting in itself …

For when I consider humanity, I catch a glimpse of God in whose image we are made. Listen to life, and you shall hear the voice of life crying, Be!

What shall you be? Be what you were made to be! …

You were made to be joy. You were made to be a child of God … The impress of Spirit is on your every living cell.

For this alone, all things were made: to be! Life is not to be explained in terms of aims and ends and goals, but only in terms of living. Life has goals and a goal, but its meaning and worth do not depend on this fact. How shall we explain life in terms of ends?

There is no end that is not a starting point …

Today needs no reason for being. It is its own reason for being. Sufficient that it is today. Life needs no reason for being. It is its own reason for being. Sufficient that it is life. You need no reason for being. You are your own reason for being. Sufficient that you are you.

God loves you for what you are, not for what you have done or have not done. What are you? You are God’s child. That is your reason for being …

Aim at the highest, though you may not hit it. If you never aim beyond your reach, you will not grow. To be is to grow, and to grow is to aim beyond your reach. Growth is aspiration, and aspiration is the impulse to be what you were born to be.

Life is made for the high aimers … It is they who make all growth possible.

O human, you are the spiritual seed of God! Grow as a tree grows, rising out of yourself as a tree rises out of itself.

A redwood seed is very small to grow into such a gigantic tree. You are more than a redwood tree. For it has height and breadth and depth, but you have other dimensions. You are Mind. You are Spirit.

O human, you were made to be the perfect expression of God!

God said, Be!

Author
Name
James Dillet Freeman
Biography

Rev. James Dillet Freeman (1912–2003) was an internationally acclaimed poet, author, and lecturer. Unity created a retrospective of his writings in a booklet titled I Am God’s Song. He wrote The Story of Unity, and many of his poems and writings were collected in the 2004 book Angels Sing in Me.

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In the Silence

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There are Many Kinds of Silence

There is the drowsy silence of the noonday fields. There is the restless silence of the sleeping city. There is the silence of grief too deep for tears, the silence of joy too full for laughter. The movement of the heavens and the growth of living things are silent.

There is the Silence of Human Thought

But deeper is the silence of the place of peace within you.

Deeper is the silence where you commune with God. In the silence is strength for the tired body. In the silence is light for the joyless mind. In the silence is love for the lonely spirit. In the silence is peace for the troubled heart. There, workaday worries fade away. There, the whole being becomes a place of prayer, a holy temple set on a hill. There, you know God as a living presence and yourself as God's child.

The silence is a holy place, a place of stillness and peace.

It is not far away. It is right where you are now. It is right where you are whenever you shut the doors of your senses, still the importuning of your thoughts, and turn to God. When you enter, the world outside and its troubles melt away; when you leave, your body and mind are stilled, refreshed and restored.

Some people link the silence with occultism and look for fantastic psychic experiences from it.

The purpose of the silence, however, is not for you to have visions or to see colored lights. Such experiences will only distract you from the true purpose of the silence, which is awareness of God.

Experience the Silence

In preparing to experience the silence, try to relax your body and open your mind. Remember, you cannot fight your way through to God; you can only let go and let God.

As you quiet yourself, feel the presence of God freeing you from tension.

Let your whole body—every nerve, every muscle, every cell—relax and let go.

Wherever you feel any tension, relax and let go. If you feel tense across your forehead, say “Relax and let go.” If your eyes feel strained, say “Relax and let go.” If you are tense in any part of your body, say “Relax and let go,” until, from the top of your head to the soles of your feet, you are perfectly relaxed. This is the first step in experiencing the silence.

Be Still

“Be still, and know that I am God!” (Ps. 46:10) Say this silently until the words take on new meaning, a living meaning, and you feel the stillness with your whole mind, your whole being.

Feel Your Unity with God

This is the second step in experiencing the silence, and perhaps the most important. In the stillness, when your thoughts and feelings are quieted and the doors of your senses are shut, feel your unity with God. It is not through your human powers or understanding that you find the blessings of God, but by letting go of your doubts, by limiting your personal claims, and by turning your whole attention to God.

“Be still, and know that I am God!” Let this thought fill your mind completely. Be comfortable, relaxed and still. You are in the presence of God.

A Better Way

In experiencing the silence, you may find using affirmations helpful. They may help you direct your thoughts to God. But, as you do, do not lose sight of the fact there is a surer speech than that of syllables, a higher communion than that of words.

God hears your innermost thoughts. Your faith and love speak for you, helping you experience your oneness with God. Your faith and love make your mind God's mind, your body God's body, your spirit God's spirit, your life God's life, and your will God's will.

Remember, friend, you do not have to cajole or coerce God; God's love has already encompassed the fulfillment of your needs.

Let Affirmations Help Change You

When you enter the silence, let your affirmations help change you. Use them to direct your thoughts, to make them clear and sharp; then be still and listen. It is God's voice that you wish to hear. In the silence now, use the following affirmative thoughts to help you experience the presence of God as fully as you can.

  • I am the light of the world. Be still until you actually sense the light of Spirit flowing through you and over you. Be still until you feel yourself immersed in a sea of light, until you feel your whole being illumined and uplifted.
  • I have divine intelligence. The mind of God is a reservoir of good ideas that are yours to draw upon, yours to use. Open your mind to the inspiration of God. You are alive, awake, alert, joyous and enthusiastic. You have divine intelligence.
  • I see with the eyes of Spirit. Let your eyes be the watchful servants of your mind, which sees only the perfection of Spirit. Let all sense of tension or fatigue be washed away from your eyes by the flow of divine energy. They are strong, clear-seeing eyes. Your spiritual vision, too, is renewed. You see the truth more clearly. You see with the eyes of Spirit.
  • All power is given to me in mind and body. Feel the power of God working through you to free you from any negative influence. You are a child of God. You have the power to control your thoughts, to revitalize your body, to be successful, and to bless others. Unleash the power within your mind and body.
  • I am free and unlimited. You are free with the freedom of Spirit. Negative conditions have no power over you. You are one with the Christ, for you are a child of the living God. You are poised, free and unlimited.
  • I am strong in God and in the power of God's might. Feel the strength of God pouring through you, strengthening every part of your body temple. You are no longer bowed by burdens—your own, your family's, or the world's. You are free, poised, lighthearted, and you face life confidently, strong in God and in the power of God's might.
  • I am the perfect expression of God's love. Love transforms. Let love fill your heart with harmony. Let love fill your mind with kind, helpful thoughts. Let love fill your lips with words of praise and cheer. Let love fill your life to overflowing with happiness and peace. Love transforms. Whatever the need or problem, divine love is the answer—and you are the perfect expression of divine love.
  • Divine order is established in my mind and body. Now you are in harmony with the law of God as it governs and guides you. It is active in your mind, harmonizing your thoughts. It is active in your body, adjusting its functions. It is active in your life, establishing peace, success and joy. Divine order is established in your mind and body.
  • I am alive forever in the Christ. You have entered the secret place of life. Life fills your mind, flows through your veins, and permeates your tissues. Your eyes shine, your skin glows, your faculties are sharpened, your whole body radiates health. You are one with life, the Christ life, ever-renewing life. You are alive forever in the Christ.
  • I walk in paths of righteousness and peace. The strength and swiftness of God make your way easy. The light of God's intelligence shines around you so that your way is made plain. God's spirit goes before you so that your way is made successful. God's way for you is joyous, safe and secure. You walk in paths of righteousness and peace.

Your Oneness With God

Now out of the stillness comes the “still small voice” (1 Kings 19:12 RSV), not a human voice speaking, but the voice of God, which speaks as an inner knowing, a strong conviction, and carries to your listening heart the assurance that all is well.

“Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you” (Mt. 7:7). You have asked, and blessings are freely coming to you. You have searched, and the way to perfection is being revealed. You have knocked, and the doors of the kingdom are open. Fulfillment is yours. The power to bless others is yours.

God bless you, friend, as you enter the silence and experience the joy of being in the presence of God.

Author
Name
James Dillet Freeman
Biography

Rev. James Dillet Freeman (1912–2003) was an internationally acclaimed poet, author, and lecturer. Unity created a retrospective of his writings in a booklet titled I Am God’s Song. He wrote The Story of Unity, and many of his poems and writings were collected in the 2004 book Angels Sing in Me.

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Embracing Christmas

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Christmas, like spring, comes on gradually.

Its first signs appear in store windows and newspaper ads as soon as Halloween is over. Sometime in November street decorations start to go up. The lights come on in shopping centers by Thanksgiving, and the wise shopper is buying presents by then. By the first of December people are out buying Christmas trees, and a sprinkling of carols begin to sound on the radio. Then like a tidal wave Christmas engulfs our senses and our souls, and we are inundated by temptations, expectations, excesses—by the many things to look at, listen to, and take part in that are Christmas. The wave crests with Christmas Day, but it rolls back slowly through the long school vacation and the succession of celebrations that are capped by New Year's and Twelfth Night.

Christmas celebrates the birth of the Christ, and those who complain about its lack of religious content have a right to do so, for to most people it is not a time of churchly observances. Hardly anyone goes to the trouble to separate what is religious from what is not. Carols, Christmas trees, candlelight, decorated houses, Santa Claus, the virgin birth—they are all mixed together in one delightful froth of wonder and exhilaration. It all seems somehow religious, no matter how unreligious it may be—“Jingle Bells" lifts our spirits as much as any hymn, and Rudolph is as beloved as, say, the donkey that bore Mary to that holy night.

But is this wrong? Would we not all be better for it if our religion were so intermeshed with our day-to-day living and our day-to-day living so laced with religion that we did not think of them as separate and hardly knew when we were about which?

I do not think we would be the holier for giving up Christmas trees and Santa Claus and gift giving or even Christmas cards.

Christmas is a flowering.

Ancient truths, too important, warm, and deep for words—truths about ourselves, about our world, about our lives—have found expression in these lovely forms that are our ways of celebrating Christmas. They were planted in our minds long, long ago, some beyond all known events or recorded memories, and they have grown through many centuries. They have grown because they satisfy in natural and joyous ways our happy fancies and our deep-down needs. We have a wish and a necessity to express our wonder and love and joy and delight in beauty and in one another—yes, and our faith that if the spinning globe we inhabit wobbles toward winter, it will wobble back again to spring.

Are we worse for it?

Take Santa. "Illusion!" you may say, and I suppose he is. But if we are going to give our children an illusion—and oh, how many we do give them!—could we give them a lovelier one? What would we have them grow up believing—that the world is a bare and grim affair, a thing of atomic and economic laws, or that there is also in the world a selfless and happy spirit?

And is this belief that there is such a spirit an illusion? I know there are many who would teach us that reality is dark and painful. But is it? I believe that most of us find there are more sunny than rainy days in our lives. Reality turns out to be, on the whole, pleasant, if not always as exciting as we think we might wish; it is our dank anxieties which make up most of our illusions, our worries rather than our hopes which hardly ever come true.

And take Christmas trees. If they come down to us from pagan times when natural objects were considered holy, are we the worse for that? In a world where we usually reduce everything wonderful and worshipful to natural terms, is it not a happy event when we elevate a natural object like a tree to a thing of wonder?

And as to the commercialism, if once a year we are induced to stretch our giving muscles beyond their daily lack of use, are we the worse for that?

Christmas even turns our thoughts around about the weather. At any other time, let clouds threaten or the merest powder of a snow sprinkle the streets, and we shiver and complain; but at Christmas we peer out, not in fear, but in anticipation of snow, and we ask one another eagerly, "Do you think it will be white?"

Christmas is a way we human beings have of saying that we need not submit to the tyranny of the seasons and the inevitability of circumstances.

Christmas is a season, but it is a season not so much accounted for by the inclination of the earth's axis toward the sun as by the inclination of the human spirit toward joy and light and warmth.

Christmas is affirmation that though the cold winds may chill our bodies and the short days darken our world, they will not chill our spirits nor darken our lives.

If our world grows winter gray, we will paint it Christmas bright.

We will create—if only for a little while and only out of tinsel and papier-mâché, fir boughs and candlelight and bits of colored glass—our own imagined world, if not the way the world is, then more the way we feel it ought to be.

If there were no Christmas, it would be as if a light went out along a dark street we have to walk along by night.

There will always be a Christmas.

Why? Because as long as the Earth shall wander around the Sun and as long as human beings shall inhabit it, there will be the love of light when the lights dim and the love of color when the colors fade and the urge to rekindle the fire when the warmth begins to slip away.

There will be wonderful tales and delight in telling them.

There will be the generous desire to share our good with others.

There will be the urge to set a candle—in our window and in our mind—and watch it cast its little light across the fleeing darkness.

There will be children—some young, some not so young—falling asleep at night with visions of waking in the morning to a world of dreams come true.

There will be singing of old familiar songs.

There will be worship at which we gather to bow down before the august and gentle Mystery we sense at the secret core of being.

So there will always be a Christmas, even if in some far off time all our present names and symbols fade from memory, for it celebrates the deepest and dearest impulses of the human spirit—all that is warm and bright and generous—the delight in wonder, the need to worship, and above all the power to rise above the tyranny of time and things.

This year let us celebrate it joyously, even with a little abandon—the right kind of abandon, that is, the abandonment of selfishness—by giving ourselves, by giving ourselves generously, to those we love and to those less fortunate than ourselves.


This article appeared in Unity Magazine®.

Author
Name
James Dillet Freeman
Biography

Rev. James Dillet Freeman (1912–2003) was an internationally acclaimed poet, author, and lecturer. Unity created a retrospective of his writings in a booklet titled I Am God’s Song. He wrote The Story of Unity, and many of his poems and writings were collected in the 2004 book Angels Sing in Me.

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I Am There

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I Am There

On August 7, 1971, the poem “I Am There” was famously carried to the moon by Apollo 15 astronauts James B. Irwin, David R. Scott, and Alfred M. Worden. Stored in a microfilm file, the poem was intended to be left there for future space explorations.


Listen to a recording of James Dillet Freeman reading his poem I Am There.


Do you need Me?
I am there.


You cannot see Me, yet I am the light you see by.
You cannot hear Me, yet I speak through your voice.
You cannot feel Me, yet I am the power at work in your hands.

I am at work, though you do not understand My ways.
I am at work, though you do not recognize My works.
I am not strange visions. I am not mysteries.


Only in absolute stillness, beyond self, can you know Me as I am, and then but as a feeling and a faith.
Yet I am there. Yet I hear. Yet I answer.

When you need Me, I am there.


Even if you deny Me, I am there.
Even when you feel most alone, I am there.
Even in your fears, I am there.
Even in your pain, I am there.


I am there when you pray and when you do not pray.
I am in you, and you are in Me.


Only in your mind can you feel separate from Me, for only in your mind are the mists of “yours” and “mine.”
Yet only with your mind can you know Me and experience Me.


Empty your heart of empty fears.
When you get yourself out of the way, I am there.

You can of yourself do nothing, but I can do all.
And I am in all.


Though you may not see the good, good is there, for I am there.
I am there because I have to be, because I am.


Only in Me does the world have meaning; only out of Me does the world take form; only because of Me does the world go forward.


I am the law on which the movement of the stars and the growth of living cells are founded.
I am the love that is the law's fulfilling.

I am assurance. I am peace. I am oneness. I am the law that you can live by. I am the love that you can cling to. I am your assurance. I am your peace. I am one with you. I am.


Though you fail to find Me, I do not fail you.

Though your faith in Me is unsure, My faith in you never wavers, because I know you, because I love you.
Beloved, I am there.


Read more from Unity poet laureate James Dillet Freeman:

Author
Name
James Dillet Freeman
Biography

Rev. James Dillet Freeman (1912–2003) was an internationally acclaimed poet, author, and lecturer. Unity created a retrospective of his writings in a booklet titled I Am God’s Song. He wrote The Story of Unity, and many of his poems and writings were collected in the 2004 book Angels Sing in Me.

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I Am There

Unity: A World Religion

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Unity: A World Religion

Unity held a meeting and the whole world came. You may think that is an exaggeration, but that is how I felt about it. We called the meeting the first Unity World Conference, and that is what it was. It was held at the Metropole Hotel on the grounds of The National Exhibition Center in Birmingham, England, from August 8 through August 13, 1995.


Unity has had many conferences through its hundred years of history.

Perhaps a few have been larger as far as the number of people who came, but I don't believe that any event that has happened at Unity for a long time has been more important than this one. It was important because it made an important statement: Unity truly is a world religion.

We invited the world to come and meet with us, and more than 700 people came from 38 different countries.

Let me describe the session that made such a powerful impression on me. A huge room in the hotel was crowded with people from front to back and side to side. Soft music filled the room, so soft I was almost unaware of it. I just felt it. Across the front of the room, there was an exceptionally long stage. In the center of this stage was one lighted candle, symbolizing the Christ. David Davenport, the minister who conducts the Unity work in England, stood at one side of the stage. David said, "Argentina," and a beautiful woman dressed in an Argentinian costume rose from the front aisle, walked forward holding a small candle, lit her candle at the Christ candle, took her place on the stage, turned, and said to us, "We bring you greetings from the people of Argentina."

David said, "Australia," and a man dressed in authentic Australian hat and boots, carrying a boomerang came forward, lit his candle, and said to us, "We bring you greetings from the people of Australia." Then, one by one, people from all over the world—countries as far away as South Africa and Japan and Guyana and Nigeria and Romania—lit candles and brought us greetings from their countries until there were 33 men and women, dressed in 33 different costumes, standing in front of us. I became aware that they were all softly singing, and slowly I recognized the song they were singing: Let There Be Peace on Earth. As I sat there watching this long line of people from so many different countries lighting their candles and bringing us greetings from so many parts of the world, I realized that I was starting to cry. I glanced around and saw that all the people sitting around me were crying, and I had a feeling that all the people in that room were crying. When the last of the 33 representatives took his place on the stage, we all rose as one and joined hands and voices and sang Let There Be Peace on Earth with our friends from so many places around the world.

This song of peace is in itself a symbol of the worldwide nature of the Unity movement.

The song originally came to Silent Unity during World War II in the form of a prayer. We never knew who wrote it. We printed it in Daily Word, and Jill Jackson, a songwriter who was a Unity student, turned it into a song.

I am probably not getting my spiritual experience across to you the way I experienced it. I doubt if one can ever fully communicate a spiritual experience. But somehow, for a few minutes, I just knew I was present at a great spiritual event. I had a vision of what Unity is and what it is to be.

Friends once drove me up a high mountain. The road ran round and round. Usually I felt the car ascending, though at times I felt we were going down instead of up. I could not see the mountain. All I could see were the cliffs and slopes and trees that hung immediately around us, but I felt sure the mountain was there. Then, suddenly we went around a turn in the road and for a moment the great mountain shone complete. This is what the moment in the meeting mom in England was like. Suddenly, I saw Unity and I saw it complete, carrying its message of God's instant, constant availability and power.

An inner light in me was lighted, and I was seeing not with my eyes, though they were quickened too, but with a suddenly illumined mind and heart. I saw Unity as the worldwide spiritual force that it is—active in every area of this globe, influencing, inspiring, enlightening people, helping them to find God's presence and power in themselves and bringing it into expression in their lives. I saw the whole world in Unity.

I thought of other conferences that have been important in the history of Unity. In 1893 Charles and Myrtle Fillmore went to the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and there they met with people who were forming and formulating new ideas in religion. Two years later they returned to Chicago for a meeting of the International Divine Science Association, and the Fillmores were selected to conduct the next meeting of this association in Kansas City. This conference opened on May 12, 1896, and you can imagine what a great moment that must have been for Charles and Myrtle Fillmore and Unity. It was so important to them that they did not take time to publish a May issue of Unity, but omitted it and put out an extra-large issue of the magazine on June 1 to give their readers an account of all the meetings.

We have had followers in foreign lands almost from the beginning of Unity.

When I came to work in Silent Unity more than 60 years ago, hundreds of people were already writing to us and praying with us from such faraway places as Nigeria, Australia, Jamaica, and India. We wondered how they had found our message.

We never send out missionaries. We are not evangelists. The only proselytizing we do is when we give friends subscriptions to our magazines or suggest that they call Silent Unity for prayer or invite them to come with us to a Unity meeting. Yet we have freely and spontaneously spread throughout the world. We have even had astronauts carry our message to the moon; interestingly, those astronauts were not Unity students.

More than a third of those who attended the World Conference did not attend Unity churches. There were Catholics and Methodists and Presbyterians and Episcopalians and New Thoughters and, a few of them, Buddhists and agnostics.

Unity crosses church lines, and it does this not as a separating force but as a strengthening spirit.

Unity is happy for people to find spiritual help wherever they can find it.

Do you know why we have spread? We have spread because there is so great a need for a religion like Unity. People need help. They need it here and now, in this world, for it is here and now in this world that we are alive. Unity is a here-and-now; seven-day-a-week, this-world religion.

God is with you here and now. God is within you. God is good. God is love and intelligence, and God's will is for you to use God's love and intelligence—they are yours—to build a good life here and now.

All over the earth, there are thousands of people seeking spiritual guidance and communion and not finding it. People who have nowhere to turn. People with no communication with anyone else. People who feel no one is interested in them. People sick and hungry and troubled and lonely. People angry and afraid. People looking for God and not knowing where to find God. To all these people—people of all classes, people of all races, educated people, uneducated people, people of all religions, people of no religion—to all people comes Unity.

Unity asks for nothing in return, leaving them free, just offering to join them one with another and with God in silent soul communion, and instructing them on how to find God and God's power and intelligence within themselves and, with God's help, how to create a good life for themselves and for other human beings.

Charles and Myrtle Fillmore did not set out to found a new religion. They set out to find healing and help for themselves. Then they had the inspiration called Silent Unity.

This is how it began in April 1890:

"A little band in this city have agreed to meet in silent soul communion every night at 10 o' clock—all those who are in trouble, sickness, poverty, and who sincerely desire the help of the good Father.”

"Whoever will may join this society, the only requirement being that members shall sit in a quiet, retired place, if possible, at the hour of 10 o'clock every night, and hold in silent thought, for not less than 15 minutes, the words that shall be given each month by the editor of this department."

Almost immediately thousands of people around the world answered their call.

The Fillmores had a great insight: People don't have to be in the same room in order to pray together.

They don't have to be members of the same religious group. They don't have to subscribe to the same sacred creed. Heart speaks to heart, and when your heart reaches out in prayer, you come through the door of prayer into the room of God's heart where we are all together as one in the heart of God and in the heart of Jesus Christ in whose name Unity carries on its ministry.

Unity is a spiritual bond that leaves everyone free but leaves no one out. It is an affirmation of your unity with yourself, your unity with other human beings like yourself, and your unity with God. You become a link in the lifeline of prayer and faith.

There is in the world today a vast vacuum of unbelief and discontent with the established churches and their narrow and divisive teachings. Too many churches are not human-need oriented.

They are theologically oriented, and their theology is out of tune with the new scientific knowledge. So they leave it to the physical scientists to be the miracle workers of this age, and the physical scientists are happy to play this role, but the physical scientists are not enough. Too often we are left spiritually starving.

We human beings are by nature religious.

We know that the physical world is not all there is; we have a spiritual nature. We feel it seeking expression in us. So the whole world is hungering for a new faith that will express the hopes and potentialities of this new age into which we are moving.

Unity is a new religion that does not deny the findings of the new sciences that are freeing us from old scourges and limitations; Unity confirms their truths and urges us to seek yet newer truths within ourselves.

Unity is a new church that sets our minds free to seek and find the living Truth within ourselves so that we will unleash not only the physical forces of the outer world but also the spiritual energies of our inner world. Unity is a church universal and a world religion that bind us not with vows and creeds but in a silent soul communion in a community of hearts. Perhaps it is in its name that the true meaning and purpose of Unity in the world is best revealed: Unity.


This article originally appeared in Unity Magazine®.

Author
Name
James Dillet Freeman
Biography

Rev. James Dillet Freeman (1912–2003) was an internationally acclaimed poet, author, and lecturer. Unity created a retrospective of his writings in a booklet titled I Am God’s Song. He wrote The Story of Unity, and many of his poems and writings were collected in the 2004 book Angels Sing in Me.

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Unity: A World Religion

Change

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Change

I have resisted change with all my will,
Cried out to life, “Pass by and leave me still.”

But I have found as I have trudged time's track
That all my wishing will not hold life back.

All finite things must go their finite way;
I cannot bid the merest moment, “Stay.”

So finding that I have no power to change
Change, I have changed myself. And this is strange,

But I have found out when I let change come,
The very change that I was fleeing from

Has often held the good I had prayed for,
And I was not the less for change, but more.

Once I accepted life and was not loath
To change, I found change was the seed of growth.


This poem is included in the Unity book Angels Sing in Me.

Author
Name
James Dillet Freeman
Biography

Rev. James Dillet Freeman (1912–2003) was an internationally acclaimed poet, author, and lecturer. Unity created a retrospective of his writings in a booklet titled I Am God’s Song. He wrote The Story of Unity, and many of his poems and writings were collected in the 2004 book Angels Sing in Me.

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Change
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To Thine Own Self

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To Thine Own Self

The lake looked at the mountain, and thought:
O fortunate mountain, rising so high,
while I must lie so low.
You look far out across the world
and take part in many interesting happenings,
while I can only lie still.
How I wish I were a mountain!

The mountain looked at the lake, and thought:
O fortunate lake, lying so close
to the warm-breasted Earth
while I loom here
craggy, cold, and uncomfortable.
You are always so peaceful,
while I am constantly having to battle
howling storm and blazing sun.
How I wish I were a lake!

All the time, quietly,
the mountain was coming down
in silver streams to run into the lake,
and the lake was rising as silver mists
to fall as snow upon the mountain.


This poem is excerpted from Angels Sing in Me: The James Dillet Freeman Memorial Book (Unity Books, 2004), now out of print. To read more of Freeman’s writing, you may download the booklet I Am God’s Song.

Author
Name
James Dillet Freeman
Biography

Rev. James Dillet Freeman (1912–2003) was an internationally acclaimed poet, author, and lecturer. Unity created a retrospective of his writings in a booklet titled I Am God’s Song. He wrote The Story of Unity, and many of his poems and writings were collected in the 2004 book Angels Sing in Me.

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English
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To Thine Own Self