Midweek Faith Lift
July 29, 2026
“Health in the Home”
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Passages
July 20, 2026
A society is like a quilt made from many different pieces of cloth. Each piece has its own color, pattern, history, and texture. The quilt is not beautiful because all the pieces are alike; it is beautiful because they are joined. When the fabric tears, pretending there is no damage does not mend it. Someone must examine the tear, choose a strong thread, and patiently stitch the separated pieces together. The seam may remain visible, but it can become stronger than the fabric around it. Social healing works in much the same way. Truth identifies the tear. Accountability supplies the needle. Compassion is the thread. Relationship is the patient work of stitching. The purpose is not to erase the past but to create a future that can hold together.
"I have never yet known a person who completely came to forgive himself, and to establish a right relationship with God, who did not at the same time forgive everybody else. Most of our criticism of others comes from an unconscious rejection of the self." - Ernest Holmes, Science of Mind Magazine," February 1971
And for some humor:
A man told his wife, “Whenever I’m wrong, I admit it.” She asked, “When was the last time you were wrong?” He thought for a moment and said, “I believe it was the time I thought I was mistaken, but it turned out I was right.”
And from the gospel of Matthew, we read:
“If you are offering your gift at the altar and remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there and first be reconciled.” - Matthew 5:23–24
Today we explore Chapter 23, “Health in the Home”, of Myrtle Fillmore’s How to Let God Help You. Last Tuesday, I sat on my racoon free front porch in the gloriously cool relief of the post storm calm with my coffee and read the entire chapter. When I finished, I paused, and just sat with it for a moment. In the pause, I saw the bigger picture of what Myrtle was sharing of her life. She was describing in page after page how when she changed and showed up in a different way, with a different consciousness, everyone in her home responded in kind.
She was demonstrating what psychologists and family therapists would later begin to identify as creating healthy family systems. It is what I used to coach parents all the time about the behavior of their children. If you want your child to change, you first look at yourself and how you are showing up. And then make some changes! And it only takes one parent to change to impact the whole system, something Myrtle also noted in this chapter. She was well ahead of her time!
Now, the hard part is to really see how you are showing up, because our first inclination is to defend our behaviors, how we see ourselves and that works until it doesn’t. It is kind of like the quilt in the opening story; “when the fabric tears, pretending there is no damage does not mend it.” And as Myrtle notes repeatedly in this chapter, the first place she had to look for tears was in herself and her relationship with her own body and with God. The first focus of her energy was on her physical health, which had been problematic and very challenging and limiting.
She describes hearing a metaphysical message in Kansas City; she called it her first “Truth” class and tells how she “must have been fully ready for the initial lesson” because it filled all the empty spaces in her heart and soul. Her observation was that afterwards, her life went on pretty much the same on the outside, but within her, big changes were happening; big changes that she describes as “the dawning of a new consciousness.” We always hear that she heard the affirmation, “I am a child of God, sickness is not my inheritance.” She reports that her profound change was to realize that “life is simply a form of energy that has to be guided and directed” in the human body by human intelligence.
In that awareness she began to speak words of Truth, spiritual Truth, to all the organs of her body systematically, each one in turn. She told her eyes that they did not see of themselves but they expressed the “sight of Spirit” and that they were drawing on an unlimited Source. She told her heart that, “the pure love of Jesus Christ flowed in and out through its beatings and that all the world felt its joyous pulsation.” (p.125.) And she meant it!
The next part of the story which frequently does not get shared about Myrtle’s healing is that she also walked a focused path of forgiveness. She asked each part of her body to forgive her for the thoughts of condemnation and for calling them weak, diseased and inefficient. This friends, is what the mending of the quilt looks like in practice, the mending of consciousness. Myrtle began to practice compassion toward her body, telling all parts that they were “centers of life and energy omnipresent.” What so powerful and telling is that Myrtle holds herself accountable for her behaviors, thoughts and the consciousness that she held that kept her in bondage to her illness. And she takes focused action to change her behavior, her words and thoughts about her body.
It is also very important to note that she says her body did not respond immediately. Her prayers also included asking forgiveness from God for her patterns of condemning God’s creation and handiwork in her body. She began to pay attention to her thoughts and feelings, what she said and did, her habits. Her practice was to say “a little prayer every hour that Jesus Christ would be with me and help me to think and speak only kind, loving, true words.” (p.126)
Over time, with this focused and disciplined practice, her body, mind and spirit began to respond to this pattern of prayer, kindness and a powerful relationship with the energy of Spirit. She experienced healing. She engaged in the “patient work of stitching” as we noted with the quilt story, and that created a much stronger, healthier relationship with Spirit and within herself. She did not attempt to erase the past or blame anyone else for her condition. Myrtle sought to transform it within her own life, body, mind and soul, not knowing what the outcome would eventually be.
She then describes the outcomes for herself, her family, her children, her husband, Charles, which are all positive. They all had improved health and greater harmony in the home. This is all happening before Charles has any idea of what Myrtle is experiencing within her own consciousness. He is not on board with this yet because he has no idea of what “on board” even means or what it would be like for him. However, true to family systems theory, he begins to respond to the changes in her, as do their children which results in a happier, more physically healthy home.
Now, was this easy? No. Did it happen without any additional stresses, illnesses or setbacks? No. It was a gradual process, a giving way of the old, established ideas as “we have steadfastly made room for the higher order of living.” She says this, on p. 129 of How to Let God Help You:”
We had many trying tests, reverses of fortune, apparent loss of friends, humiliations of many kinds, and what seemed to be serious illness in the family. But through it all we held unwaveringly to the principles that we caught sight of in that first lesson, and we have proved beyond a doubt that God is a help in every time of need.
What an honest admission and description of what the experience of spiritual and emotional healing was really like for Myrtle and for her family. When we face the same kind of trying tests, loss of friends, humiliations of many kinds, we just hold fast to the power of faith as we patiently stitch the strong threads of spiritual growth and healing together.
I have some final thoughts about Myrtle’s transformation and the instructions of Jesus in that passage from Matthew we heard at the beginning of the talk today, about leaving your gifts at the altar and reconciling with your brother, sister, neighbor or whomever is holding you in the bondage of a grudge. Jesus doesn’t say that you have to come back as friends or bosom buddies, just that you need to be reconciled. What does that mean? It means that you have experienced a change in your consciousness that comes up higher, to a “higher order of living.” It means that you stop litigating the past, replaying the offense and pronouncing judgment. It means that you allow the power of Spirit within you to change you; how you think and feel and how you show up in your relationships. And then bring your gift and celebrate what love has done in your life!
We always have the choice as noted by Ernest Holmes and James Baldwin:
“We cannot live a choiceless life. Every day, every moment, every second, there is choice.” — Ernest Holmes, This Thing Called You, p. 34
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” - James Baldwin, As Much Truth as One Can Bear
And as our own Greg Tamblyn sang during the concert: “I believe in free will because I have no choice!”
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb