In this new podcast episode Rev Ken Bradley explores the opportunity to begin again. Ken shares ways to begin again whether that is in a new day, new month or new year. 

"Here I am Lord show me"

"I now perceive the path ahead of me with a new clarity and purpose. I go forward with courage and acceptance to take each new step today.

This reflection is followed by a Daily Word reading from the archives,  
' Living from my divine nature I begin again.'

Welcome to 2022. For many it has been another challenging year. Yet, as we leave 2021 behind, we can know that together, we are stronger, wiser, happier and healthier.

Unity has proved this in many ways – not least with Daily Word and our prayer ministry, which supports so many in the UK and around the world.

As we reflect on the year gone by, perhaps we have learned more about ourselves: What works in our lives, what does not; how we can support ourselves with kindness and compassion, so that we are able to respond more positively to what is happening in the world and in us.


This may mean we have found ways to support our mental and physical care, as well as our spiritual care. If we did not know before the pandemic began, we know now, how important this is, for everyone.


One thing is for sure – there is always hope, often found through the beauty of nature around us, when we look for it. As this time of writing, we have a glorious sunset of oranges and pinks against the deep blue of the sky. My soul is lifted, through this simple gift.


Because there is hope, we can remember that we are never alone. Whatever we need, we can tune into God-Presence: To open to the deep experience that every need is met and we are loved more than we could ever know. Here is our faith and our joy.


At the turn of the year, and the beginning of longer days and more light, we naturally think about what we want to experience, learn, or know more deeply. For me, there is a definite pull to experience even more mental and emotional peace – to move beyond the thinking, critical mind. For here, I find true peace, joy, fulfilment, and ways to more deeply live and serve in our world. 


I also recognise that my greatest joy throughout the pandemic has been all the ways we have connected – on Zoom and finally in person at our summer retreat and Christmas Service.


My desire in Unity is to keep this energy and experience alive and grow it even more. In 2022 we have lots planned – study classes, home retreats, in-person retreats, online workshops. As well as continuing our daily online meetings, which you can also dial into with your landline or mobile phone if you do not have access to the internet.


We can connect in many ways. This is our call. It is my call. 


This New Year, I invite you to make this commitment to yourself:

• To connect with God-Presence within and around you, which will help you to
• Connect with your beautiful, divine Self , which will enable you to
• Connect more deeply with each other and the world around us

We use affirmative and loving thoughts and prayers, and we learn to still the mind and access Divine Heart/Mind in the silence.

From this deeper experience of connection, we move forward with right action, able to encourage others to know that they, too, are beautiful, worthy, and loved.

It is only together that we can really wake up to our beautiful, joyful, creative selves, and be the divine Self we came here to be.

Join us on the journey – we are here and we celebrate the Divine You.

Rev. Kimerie Mapletoft

The importance of self-care within spiritual community.
 
Our faith in God, the Presence that we reside within, is something that keeps us stronger, healthier and peaceful. However, even with faith, there are times when we feel pushed to the limit, completely outside of our comfort zone, afraid of what is going on around or within us.
 
This is when it is so important to turn to our spiritual community for affirmative prayer and support. Mental health has really come to the fore through lock-down; and prayer is such a powerful resource and tool, to develop and use.
 
Perhaps the most important step is learning not to make anything wrong, including ourselves!
 
When we can surrender our judgements of what we think should be happening, or how we should respond, we make space for Divine wisdom and love, comfort and care. We discover we can see the way forward and take the steps that are ours, with renewed clarity, authority and faith.
 
The first step in prayer is release: To let go of judgements, or ask for help in letting go, is to make way for the flow of Divine life, love and wisdom, eternally present.
 
None of us like feeling alone or isolated, so it is very important that we reach out to others who will not judge us, but listen, support, encourage and uplift us. This is where Silent Unity, our prayer ministry, can really help.
 
We pray affirmatively, listening with love and compassion, then inviting the caller to come together to connect with God’s love, guidance, life and peace, that is here in our midst.
 
Prayer is such a powerful tool – it connects us with each other and with God. Perhaps this is what is needed more than ever: To know that we are part of something greater than ourselves that is, for us, loving, compassionate, understanding, non-judgemental and actively present to bring forth the highest good for everyone.
 
To connect with Silent Unity in confidential prayer and pray in person with our fully trained volunteers:
Call:   01628 628916
Email: silent.unity@unityuk.org
Write: 10 Lake End Court, Taplow Road, Taplow, Bucks, SL6 0JQ
 
Silent Unity is here to pray with you – to see the Christ energy being born in all of us anew as we move into this New Year. Together let us honour each other, love each other and celebrate all the ways that God as good is being born in us, and in our world.
 
Rev. Kimerie Mapletoft
Director of Silent Unity and Daily Word UK

I am blessed to know a wise man that, after a difficult first half of his life, has now been living and breathing a quietly spiritual path for many decades. He is a friend and mentor. This week we were discussing the pitfalls of being overly self-focussed, and he shared with me one way that he guards against this tendency. He recalls a famous speech that President Kennedy made, where he said,
 
“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
 
My friend then adapts this phrase to any situation in which he is becoming overly obsessed with his own needs, or when reviewing his day ahead. I like this practical idea. It is the antidote to my all-too human self-centredness.
 
‘Ask not what my day can give to me, but what I can give to my day.’
 
This approach may be useful as we head into the festive period with all the demands on our time, and family events that might not be all that we would wish!
 
More than this, at the heart of such an ‘other-focused’ attitude is surely one of the deepest expressions of Love. As St Francis said, ‘it is in self-forgetting that I find’.
 
And yet, paradoxically, I cannot truly give love if I have no sense of self-care, if I am living from a place of low self-esteem and fear, which lurk deep beneath all self-centredness.
 
Authentic Love arises from a deep, quiet inner knowing of our own worth as spiritual beings. In our purest essence, we are beings of Light who are gently, powerfully, and unconditionally loved by God.
 
Nothing we can do or say, neither our failures nor our successes will change this beautiful truth.
When we know, in the deep-most part of ourselves, that we are completely loved and accepted just as we are, then we will begin to radiate this outwards, naturally, to others.
 
Deeper still, we know again, in this present moment, that we are One with God.
 
God is Love
I am One with Love
I am Love
I AM
 
Sarah Whitaker
Long term Unity member
New to Daily Word? Order your free copy here.
 
Join us for our Advent programme.
Being with each other on Zoom has become a joyful part of my practice of being peace.

Today's Unity Advent reading by Rev Evin Wilkins (A Christmas to Remember) includes the peaceful image of resting in a hammock in the summer breeze. We are given the affirmation " I remember the peace of God is available in any season".

As I read these words today I thought about how when we rest in a hammock we are held and supported. There is nothing we need to do in that moment.

You might like to use this image and take a moment out of your day to connect with this feeling of peace and being held and supported.

We are meeting every day to read our Advent Booklet together on zoom. Please do join us at 9am Monday- Saturday (10am on Sundays) and 8.30pm Monday-Sundays all on zoom.
Click here for more details

                                                                                      -Ruth Humphreys, Daily Word UK Editor 

Picture credit: Angelina Kichukova on Unsplash

Here we are in December and the season of Advent, our time of preparation for Christmas.
This means different things to all of us. For some it is super busy with chores and shopping, juggling work and home life. For others it can feel lonely and isolating, especially with the impact of Corona Virus still affecting so many people.

However, whether we are busy or alone, we can take sacred, quiet time, to reflect on the story of the birth of Jesus and what this means to us. There is the act of faith that Mary and Joseph represent, the peace of the stable, the love of the shepherds and the joy of the angels. For all of these qualities reside in us to develop and use.

Why do this? In part of course because we feel so much better in ourselves when we do. However, it can be much more, for in Unity we describe this season of Advent as a time of spiritual preparation for the birth or rebirth of the Christ consciousness in us.

Jesus told his disciples, those that followed his teachings, whatever I do, you too can do, and more (John 14: 12). This is a powerful message, which can feel quite daunting. However, as we develop our qualities of faith, peace, love and joy, and follow the way of Jesus, who taught love and service to others through our connection with God, we connect with the Christ energy in us and we are reborn.

To do this, we come as human beings, with all our foibles, imperfections and regrets, to meet our divinity that is pure, loving, wise and true.

It is a sacred path that until now only a few have walked. The invitation to you today, is that this is the path for all of us. The need is high, the call is powerful, the result is pure, loving wisdom working through us all.

Let us take time each day through this season of Advent, to reconnect with the divine Christ energy that is within you, me and everyone. For as we do, we find new ways to live that bless us and our world. This is the call. Are you listening? Will you respond?
​
Join us through Advent and Christmas to awaken the Christ energy within and live from this Truth.

Rev. Kimerie Mapletoft 

​It was so refreshing to learn about being able to express my divinity through my humanity.
I am divinely human when I make a choice that helps to create the kingdom of heaven on earth: to assist a fellow human in a daily activity such as holding a door open, picking up something someone has dropped, giving a smile, a kind word, a hug.
 
I am being humanly divine when I sit in moments of deep quiet Silence, contemplating the Presence, the wonder of nature, the feelings of love, and the awareness of connection.
I AM one with God, choosing to express as divinely human – and humanly divine.
 
“Therefore my heart is glad and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure.”  Psalm 16:9
 
Nancy Sandoval
Licensed Unity Teacher

New to Daily Word? Order your free copy here.
 
Join us for our November workshop: The Kingdom of Heaven, The Kingdom of God

Guest post by Rev. Maggy Whitehouse

I’m a minister so it may seem strange that I took it as a huge compliment, last week, when a professor of philosophy described me as ‘more Jewish than all my Jewish friends put together.’
 
Why? Because it was Judaism which taught me how to heal my broken relationship with Jesus. You know Jesus was Jewish, of course … but did you know that most of the problems we have with the Christian Gospels come from not having the religious and cultural backgrounds of the people who wrote them?
 
The Kingdom of Heaven for example. When we read the Hebrew Testament in English, we completely miss that the writers used two different words which have both been translated as ‘kingdom’ but have profound differences in meaning. People in Jesus’ day, who didn’t read nor write and whose knowledge of the oral tradition was far deeper than the written scrolls of the Law, would have known instantly from the pronunciation of the word that one was a physical land and the other an inner experience – and one which is available to us all.
 
Queen Esther, for example ‘came into the Kingdom’ when she prepared to go and risk her life at the hand of the King, in order to save her people (Est 4:14). She was already Queen of Persia so this was not a physical invasion but a spiritual one.
 
This Kingdom is somewhere we can access quite easily through meditation or contemplation but most of us are only kicked into it at a time of crisis when our everyday comfort is shattered and our resistance is down. We resist the Kingdom of Heaven because once we are there, it’s quite clear that the next step in our development is to reach higher – for the Kingdom of God.
 
It’s 30 years now since a hospital chaplain told me that my dying husband could not go to heaven because he was an atheist. That crisis ensured that I threw out my inhibiting ‘armchair Christianity’ (the sort where you take your religion for granted and never really think about it). In the chasm that was left after Henry died and my security blanket was removed, I found myself exploring New Age spirituality and using all those alternative words like ‘Source’ and ‘the Light’ because I needed to reject the conventional God.
 
Eventually, I realised that my anger with Christianity was still suppurating, despite being, figuratively, covered in a pretty pink throw, crystals and tealights. I had to look this Jesus guy right in the face and challenge him, so I went to my local church and lay down on the floor with my arms out in the shape of a cross and prayed, with all my heart, ‘help me to understand.’
 
Within three months, I had met and fallen in love with a Jewish man and was learning how to live within a faith that taught me the deep mysteries within the Hebrew Testament. I learnt the subtleties of the journey from the Torah (the Law) through the Prophets to the Wisdom literature. It was like shining a light onto the Gospels which had seemed incomprehensible darkness to me.
 
Twelve years later, I lay on a Church floor in that same cross-like position at my ordination and, as my bishop anointed my hands, I had the first, sublime, experience of the Kingdom of God.
 
Let me take you there too…
 
Workshop: Kingdom of Heaven; Kingdom of God
 

In every moment, we automatically seek balance.

This is true for the baby as it learns to crawl and walk – the child learning to ride a bike – in our latter years perhaps using a stick. Indeed all structures, including ships on the water, need balance to stay upright and secure. Life seeks and requires balance.

At another level, the natural cycle of birth and death is an expression of balance – life makes way for the new. We see this when the leaves fall off the tree each autumn, providing food for the soil to support the tree as it grows in the spring – life progresses and evolves through this natural process.

The tree drops its leaves to rest, so it can more fully take up the nutrients from the ground in the warmer weather. Further, they do this in co-operation with each other, supporting each other through their roots and leaves.

Taking our cue from nature, we can witness that we are evolving too, as we seek balance in the expression of our humanity and divinity.
For most of us, it is unhealthy to sit in meditation all day every day, or continuously strive and stress. We need and seek balance between work and rest and play. We take time to pray and meditate, then follow this with guided action, to do what is ours to do in support of all life, not just ourselves.
Nature surrenders to the seasons and lets the natural order flow. We do so much better, when we surrender our purely human ‘me-first’ needs, to connect with the universal flow of greater good that is always here for us all. 

Therefore, although I often speak and write about surrender, encouraging us to let go into Presence, this is purely to allow the divine flow easy expression through us and as us, so that right action can follow. For whenever we surrender whatever is in the way of us knowing our divine and beautiful natures, we are free to live authentic and creative lives, which bless us and those around us.

Further, as we seek balance in ourselves, old wounds can be healed, whether emotional, mental or physical. As we let God be God in us, our pain is dissolved and we are able to help others heal.
​
So this autumn, as we watch nature ‘do its thing’ without any resistance whatsoever, let us also seek our own balance. Let us take time to rest and play, to be quiet and still, knowing that as we then step forward to act, Spirit is working through us to heal and restore us, each other and our world.

Rev. Kimerie Mapletoft