A Warm Embrace of Open Spirituality

As any human bean who can read-or-write knows only too well, our electronic world does not need more information. “Inundation” is not strong-enough a descriptor…. !

     So what, pray tell (*), is the rationale for a Unity Center of Peace =Blog ?  In Gaino’s not-so-humble opinion, this here is a time and place to kinda go-deeper and listen to some subconscious material that our wonderous Sunday talks & music invigorate.  Y’all know full-well what  is meant….

    At the risk of making a mild generalization, it’s safe to claim that most of us unity-pickers have done battle with organized religion and lost.  The stories seem to re-appear without end and often carry an edge of anger or latent frustration.  If one were to begin an open-ended question: “How did you come to Unity ?, the responses would, no doubt, support this generalization.  We have some religious history in-common, it seems….  We have landed in a warm embrace of open spirituality.

      During the past two years, while attending the “down the hall in the Chapel” Deeper Dive, this scribe has noted something-of-interest to the “right brain.” (Wanta guess ?).  Every single one of us New Thought types (even Ault) have a deep-seated need and desire to tell our back-story.  The truth. 

    Without as much as a whispered inquiry,  many UCP members love to share their story regarding how, when and where they “got here…”.  A decent psychologist, or shrink, would immediately identify this phenomenon as “latent spiritual identification arising from over-stimulation of the subliminal heart chakra.”                                                                                     Please continue…..

(*) This is not an invitation for the legendary UCP Prayer Team to kick-in. {Well, maybe.…?}.

    Noting that there is yet room on this page to introduce another salient topic of interest, let us address the fertile topic suggested by the word: “unity.” Ah so, the word elicits a vision of togetherness and oneness.  Agreed.  And yet under the covers of daylight, it becomes obvious that our UCP congregants cover the waterfront of spirited theology and new thought.  If fifty-six (56+) nice people come to hear and share a Sunday talk (or workshop) by sum astutely agile ministers, et al., every one of us both  hear and take-away a different message.  Given that the delivered messages are as intentionally diverse as the Ecumenical Movement, we are “unified” only in that we share certain named values and practices.  We mostly accept this opportunity and challenge.

    Underlying this engagement is the Unity-discovered idea that “As A Man {Woman} Thinketh” by 1903 New Thought pioneer, James Allen.  The very idea the “thoughts are things” may divide or unify the thinker.  Truth is, we have some control over our thoughts (thank all manner of Godness !). We have a divine potential to think intuitively and even override aspects of our culture that no longer serve.  This concluding paragraph suggests that there is a deeper meaning of “unity.”  Sleep on it !

    By the way, ‘i’ saved some space, ‘cause Gaino was about to get long-winded.  That’s because he’s both a storyteller and a creative writer.  You have no-doubt noticed that yours truly takes certain liberties with the rules of grammar and decency (my poor mother and live-in aunty were both school teachers and disapprove, to this very day of these forbotton inoculations and poorly-coined wordings.).  For example:  names of books are underlined; the first person I is spelled  ‘i’ (to undermine the ole ego); hyphenated words are frequently employed; “quotations” are friends-of-mine.  Fyi: when ye get to be my age, you can do ‘most anything that you dam well please. Ha !