​Have you thought about what spiritual community means to you? I often write about its importance to me, as I have experienced and deeply appreciate the feeling of community I have, serving as a minister in Unity. For we teach what we need to learn, and that is certainly an ongoing experience! I also know it is in the giving that we receive, which for me is joyful.

Personally, I get a lot of joy and upliftment through sharing Unity principles and teachings, whether it is in a Sunday talk, an online workshop, teaching a class or leading a retreat.
When I was told about Unity and literally first showed up at Unity’s front door, I felt like I had come home. I soon realised it was a place I wanted to support because I felt supported, encouraged and invited to grow into my spiritual self. Unity has become my spiritual community.

What is spiritual community to you? Do you have a vision of how this looks and feels for you?

I invite you to take some quiet time this week or month, to reflect on your vision. Is Unity part of this? If so, do you have a picture of how this looks for you?

We would love to hear your ideas and vision. Please email to tell us, or comment  below

It will help us as we seek to serve and support in this 21st century.

Another thing I love about Unity is its practicality – how do we do this? How do we stay open to compassion and keep our focus on God, remembering God is love (1.John 4:8)? How do we remember that God is the One Presence expressing through and as all of life, in its myriad forms on this planet, when there seems to be a lot that contradicts this?

Perhaps this is the challenge of being alive – where do I put my focus? On the problem, or the solution? All successful people are solution-based. Yet the solution is not in the world – it is not of the world. The solution is staying God-centred: God is Spirit as us, our eternal Source and supply, in you and me, connecting us together as One.

Grand words – powerful maybe … what do they inspire in you? Do they speak to you and lift your soul? Perhaps you have another response. Everything is valid. The question is … does it lead you to greater compassion and peace? Because for me, if I do not have these qualities in my life, there is no joy, no fulfilment, no meaning.

Unity follows the teachings of Jesus, and a more compassionate person we will struggle to find. Despite knowing that it would probably backfire on him, Jesus healed on the Sabbath – he reached out to those whom the rest of society ignored – it takes a great soul to do this. Especially as at that time, the Romans ruled the Jews and their way of life was so restricted. What courage Jesus had.

Today, it still takes courage for us to face, and love, that in us which seems impure, unloving, hurting, wounded. Yet compassion calls us to respond to ourselves, and each other, this way. Further, we have to give compassion to ourselves before we can share it with others and respond with compassion to all we see around us.

This is something I continually find myself having to practice! Ildiko Kudlik, our newest Unity minister in training, will dive into this at our online workshop this month, inviting us to explore and experience compassion together. Paul Mapletoft will be exploring ‘the flow’, our inexhaustible supply, as described by Eric Butterworth, and Nancy Sandoval will invite us to celebrate ourselves and the goodness we are, as encouraged by Eric Butterworth, one of our best loved Unity authors. Beth O’Connell will invite us to use music and movement to support us, in honour of our lovely Unity teacher, Isabel Compton, who passed away last year. I will open the day and close with the invitation to honour our humanity, which frees us to experience our divinity – the wholeness of ourselves.

We all learn when we come together with compassion, understanding, and a desire to remember who we are – beloved of God. This is the power of Spiritual Community. Together we support each other, so we can go beyond our minds into the great Heart.

Join our online workshop and share in a day of compassion, upliftment, and practical ways we can know for ourselves, we are enough!

Rev. Kimerie Mapletoft 

Paul, Nancy, Ildiko, Beth and I are preparing for our online workshop next month – ‘We Are Enough’. So, what am I noticing? All the times I think I am not enough!
 
Have you noticed that sometimes, when we set ourselves a task, life seems to stop us achieving it? It can seem like we are blocked. This is because there is a part of us that does not believe in ourselves – in this instant, that I am enough, which goes back to my early childhood. This wounded part of me is buried deep inside, yet waiting to be acknowledge, accepted, loved and hereby released. It is not that the world is against me. Instead, in my experience, it is simply an aspect in me that is seeking to be loved and brought back to wholeness.
 
Currently, my practice is:

• Become aware of the times I do not feel enough, (I know because I get upset, defensive and angry)
• Be present with the energy I am feeling in my body and give myself space to just be with this energy without making me, the energy or another wrong
• At the same time, hold myself in compassionate self-care.

 
It means that, instead of blasting into space with the anger and grief, I am able to move through whatever I am experiencing, knowing a little of the wounded past is being healed. After a while, I can even laugh at myself a little with relief. Some of the inner pain and doubt has gone.
 
This is how I am working with the theme for our workshop – We Are Enough. Paul, Beth, Nancy and Ildiko will also be sharing their techniques and understanding that help them know they are enough.
 
Do you want to know you are enough? Join us and practice the techniques that support you and help you know the divinity and loving being you are.
 
Rev Kimerie Mapletoft
Director of Silent Unity and Daily Word UK

“… He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before he is born.” Luke 1:15

-         Before birth, we are of Spirit – limitless, formless, but present with consciousness of our self within the one Life. Being conscious, we choose to come into form to experience life and its many colours and variations. 

-         At some point before our birth, our soul, our consciousness, joins with the baby in the womb. Now we are aware of sensations, sounds, vibrations, mostly feeling safe and secure, connected to our mother. 

-         The baby is born – often traumatically, shockingly. Now separate from its mother, it begins to be aware of itself as a separate identity. 

-         Without words, we experience feelings – smiling, laughing, crying or angry – all to help us relate to our physical world that seems to be separate, out there, yet where we need to fit in to feel safe and loved. 

-         As a child and young adult, we pick up our family and cultures belief systems. We find ways to cope with life, be accepted; thinking and communicating to make sense of life and our experiences. We develop coping mechanisms, which become our core beliefs and identity, so deeply embedded they become unconscious in us. They become the way in which we relate to the world. Over time, we learn to identify only with our physical world, often losing our consciousness connection to our Spirit and God-awareness. 

-         In Luke 2: 41-52, Jesus is described at the age of 12, as being in his Father’s house, asking questions of the Rabbi’s, aware of his divine connection. For many of us, by age 12, this is less so. Yet I believe, we are still of the Spirit – we are never separate from our True Self, we only think we are. 

-         We life our lives, get closer or not to God and our Christ consciousness, eventually leaving our bodies and returning back to Spirit, limitless, formless, and perhaps wiser and more loving through the life just lived. 

In Christianity, Jesus’ resurrection is understood to mean that if we take Jesus as our saviour, we return to the Father when we die. We go to heaven. Yet Jesus also said, the kingdom of heaven is in our midst, now. Therefore, my long-held beliefs are – yes, we return to the Father, to Spirit, but all of us do, for truthfully, we never left. Spirit is always here – we are of the Spirit. It is simply that the physical world took all our attention for a while.

This is my belief and my vision, inspired by my experience and by Spirit within.
What is Spirit calling you to know and be?

Rev Kimerie Mapletoft
Director of Silent Unity and Daily Word UK

Stress is a different entity than anger, grief or sadness. Perhaps closer to anxiety, fear even. As our bodies perceive a stressful situation it produces cortisol, the stress hormone. Which is helpful when you are trying to out run a sabre tooth tiger or defending your village from marauders, but when it comes to modern life, mortgages, and work deadlines, stress is something that may do us more harm than good. As we acknowledge that stress in a natural bodily function, we can also accept that some aspects can be treated and soothed. Lavender is my own personal stress “go to” and there are also practises that help up move through our stress and re-align with calm. Breathing exercises, of which there are many different types, can help us relax our nervous system and reset our stress responses.

Within Unity we have a great saying which may also help. Let go and Let God.

This enables us to release the need to control outcomes. As we experience life and things don’t go our way, we may become fearful, worried that our power has been removed – especially in situations we cannot control. This is where faith can assist our journey. Faith that our good is unfolding even when we do not fully understand how. Knowing that divine love and guidance resides within and around us, gives us strength that we do not carry our loads alone. Understanding that our power is to choose. Choosing to be a source of love, to be patient and empathetic with ourselves and with others. Releasing the need to be right and to control each and every situation. This does not mean that we walk away from action, positive action can equally help us in relieving stress.

This Islamic proverb is one of my favourites, from the Hadith,“Trust in Allah but tie up your camel.”

With honest self-dialog we can uncover what is the cause of our stress, we can discern what care we need to give ourselves and what positive action list we need to make and work through.

At Unity Uk we offer our Morning Prayer service which is free to join on Zoom as part of your self-care and positive action.

To join us in meditation and silent reflection, to start the day from a place of peace and calm, join us every morning,
please follow the link below to our webpage for all the joining instructions. 

By Stef Bridges
Unity Adminstrator and Student 

When intense emotions emerge we often retreat, feeling helpless, we avoid or dismiss our feelings. We may find coping mechanisms or try to keep ourselves busy but at the end of the day the darkness returns. 

It is almost normal to us to feel overwhelmed by the constant barrage of negative news and conditions of the world. Many of us are triggered easily into a place of despair and sadness. So how can we honour our emotions? How can we know and grow from them without stagnating and getting lost in the dark? We remember our light. 

We must trust that the past has led us rightly to where we need to be, embracing faith and forgiveness. We can breathe and relax into non-resistance of the present moment. Accepting that our greatest power is the ability to control our actions and energy in the world. We can choose to be love, now - in this moment. This process does not mean that our anger, shame or judgements will just disappear, but when we release those things to God, we release the need to fix, and to be fixed. We do not have to carry them alone. With the knowledge that holding on tight to them blocks our way forward, we can find room to breathe, and freedom to find the next step on the new path. Gently we can thank negative feedback and emotions for showing us what or where we would like to see change. 

Gracefully we can engage in release practices, meditations and grateful prayer. With time and with patience, as we act with love towards ourselves, the light creeps in. There may always be depths to our darkness, but by allowing the light to flow, by allowing love to come forth, maybe we can create a grey area. A place where we honour our darkness, we thank it for its service, and it helps us understand why the light is so important in our lives. 

It has resonated with me how in sync the two readings are each day, the letting go and releasing message of the Lent reading, followed by the affirmative message of Daily Word.
Todays two readings for Tuesday 4th April “I let go of stress” from the Lenten booklet, followed by “I accept my life and lean into the triumphant power of God” from Daily Word, really had quite an effect on me in that I felt that I had moved into a new level of understanding, and I felt so much peace and calmness infuse my whole body inside and out…………. I wanted to stay there.  The whole group seemed to be in deep meditation the energy coming from everyone was quite lovingly tangible, and I think Nancy felt this too.  She brought us back very gently, bless her. (I hope she won’t mind my saying that).

So I am going to look forward now and remember the two affirmations……”I am stress-free in the Silence, and I accept my life and lean into the triumphant power of God”.

The quotation “It takes a sledge-hammer to crack a nut” comes to mind, I wouldn’t go that far, but to-day I feel my inner Spirit certainly gave me a strong nudge!!
​
Thank you, Carran

You are warmly invited to join our Daily Word Online
​Prayer Meeting every morning, 9am Monday to Saturday, 10am on Sundays and Bank Holidays. 

The crucifixion invites us to let go of our material, ego selves, into the Christ consciousness,
gaining a higher spiritual understanding of who we are and why we are here. We evolve
into a place where our human nature and our divine nature are aligned and in sync.

​The Easter story and Jesus’ vision for the world teaches us only love. By releasing all anger, fear, shame, guilt and judgement over to the divine, to God, we are free to move forward into love.

There are many beliefs around sin and the sacrifice that Jesus made for humanity. Good Friday can be seen as a day of mourning, a time to reflect and feel sadness. It can also be a day to release and let go: A day of Letting go, and letting God.

In our own Lenten practices we may have spent time giving something up. In Unity we have been releasing behaviours and negative thoughts that do not serve us.

So perhaps, Good Friday can be seen as a day of potential. What can I release? What am I ready to say goodbye to? When we focus on releasing, we create space for new possibilities. Now the resurrection and rebirth moves us to a more whole, and more wonderful, way of being.

"Teach only love for that is who you are". This is from A Course in Miracles. This quote gives us insight into the message the Easter story has tell. We reach the heavenly plains of love by removing the barriers to it.

By Stefanie Bridges

Every month Daily Word and Silent Unity create affirmations for use in your own prayer time. Meditate on the words in this video: