Midweek Faith Lift
August 9, 2023
Unity Principle 4, Quantum Leaps
& Christianity
Rev. Deb Hill-Davis
Spiritual Reflection
July 28, 2023
In 2008, first grade teacher Alvin Irby stopped by a Bronx barbershop for a haircut. Before long, one of his students came in. Alvin noticed the child looking bored, and he was thinking, “He should be practicing his reading, but there were no books in the shop.” So he started Barbershop Books, a nonprofit that has delivered more than 50,000 free children’s books to more than 200 barbershops in predominantly Black neighborhoods across the country.
“The secret to success is find a need and fill it; find a problem and solve it; find a hurt and heal it.” – Robert Schuller
Affirmative prayer: Today I am of high service to another. I invite the opportunity and inspiration to give something, to do something, to care for someone with Divine intention. Thank you, God, for the blessed moment of connection. Amen.
What a great story to begin our exploration of the energy of prayer which is the
essence of the 4th Unity Principle. Prayer is at the heart of what Unity is really all about, and Silent Unity is the core energy of what Unity Village is truly all about. What I have come to know in the core of my being is that prayer is also what we, here at Unity of Ames, are also all about. That became especially clear to me when the pandemic happened in April of 2020 and we couldn’t be together in person. The prayer circle at the end of the service moved to the telephone three times per week. Free Conference Pro became our prayer lifeline because we could hear each other and hold space in prayer together.
The energy of that telephone prayer circle sustained us and continues to do so, three days a week, every week, for 3+ years and still going strong. I am so grateful for the prayer consciousness of that group, along with the Chaplains who hold us all in prayer each Sunday and during the week as well. We have a lot of prayer energy in this small spiritual community for sure! And while many churches lost people as a result of the pandemic, we did not. Our prayer consciousness sustained us and continues to do so, thank you, God!
Prayer is a part of Christianity and most spiritual traditions and not unique to Unity. There are all kinds of styles of prayer and perhaps no “wrong” way to pray. There are many formulaic prayers, including formal prayers such as “the Lord’s Prayer.” In essence, prayer is a process, an energy unique to each individual and the true intention and purpose of prayer is to connect with the Divine God energy that is greater than we are. Each one’s journey with prayer is also unique to them. There is petitioning prayer, asking for a specific thing or outcome. There is also what I call “whining prayer” which says, “Oh, God, why me? I didn’t ask for this!!” There are prayers asking for guidance, for clarity and for sustenance and prosperity. And one of my favorites is called the Serenity Prayer from 12-step programs:
God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
Amen
This prayer brings us right to the essence of what prayer really does…it changes us! I have heard the last line of that prayer changed to, “And the wisdom to know it’ me,” and I couldn’t agree more!
There is a lot of energy around whether or not God answers our prayers and the ultimate “Truth” is that God always answers our prayers….it just may not be the answer that we wanted, it isn’t the timing we wanted, or the outcome we wanted. My favorite prayer of that kind is, “God, grant me patience and grant it NOW!!” When we don’t get the answer we want, we can decide to fire God and go it on our own….not the best path, but one we often take. So if we don’t get what we want or what we ask for, why pray? Good question!
As we noted last week, Myrtle Fillmore began her path of prayer and spiritual awakening with a simple affirmation/denial style prayer. “I am a child of God, sickness is not my inheritance.” She was not praying for a specific outcome. Unfortunately, some in Unity have glommed onto this kind of “formula” for prayers of affirmations and denials with specific outcomes in mind and then failed to demonstrate “Truth” with particular results.
This is not unlike the misapplied energy of the “Law of Mind Action” because it is using spiritual principles to get what you want, rather than letting Spirit use you to demonstrate truth, love, kindness and peace. As Rev. Paul Roach says on p. 12 of Unity and World Religions: “Prayer is not about things, prosperity, healing or guidance. It is about alignment with the all-knowing, all loving power of God. Prosperity, healing, guidance, and provision of all kinds flow from that consciousness connection.” What we receive is a side-affect of our prayer consciousness, not a result of our prayers.
So how does prayer really “work”….how does it change us? Well, one thing prayer does is help us be open and receptive to our highest good, or to what Price Pritchett calls our “quantum leap.” In his chapter, “Rely on the Unseen Forces,” he is really talking about connecting with the energy of the Universe, or God, although he doesn’t call it that. He describes most people as lying dormant, like an unplugged TV or a computer that isn’t turned on or a telephone with a dead battery! What he recommends is essentially a 12-minute daily meditation/prayer practice focused on what it is that your heart is asking you to do or become. Psychologists call this “creative visualization” to envision your heart’s desire unfolding.
We would liken this to Unity’s affirmative prayer practice, in alignment with that “Unseen Force” which is God. And that is a powerful part of the prayer practice. However, what is equally necessary is to realize that we have fully identified with our internalized pain and discomfort, judgments and so on, which is the prayer process that we call denial- letting go of the energy we have invested in our pain rather than continuing to identify with it. Fr. Richard Rohr describes this so well in his July 31, 2023 blog, “A Loving Inner Witness.” He writes:
We must nip this process in the bud by acknowledging and owning our own pain, rather than projecting it elsewhere. For myself, I can’t pretend to be loving when inside I’m not, when I know I’ve had cruel, judgmental, and harsh thoughts about others. At the moment the thought arises, I have to catch myself and hand over the annoyance or anger to God. Contemplative practice helps me develop this capacity to watch myself, to let go of the thought, and to connect with my loving Inner Witness…. If we can simply observe the negative pattern in ourselves, we have already begun to separate from it. The watcher is now over here, observing ourselves thinking that thought—over there. Unless we can become the watcher, we’ll almost always identify with our feelings and our judgments. They feel like real and objective truth.
Most people I know are overly identified with their own thoughts
and feelings. They don’t really have feelings; their feelings have them.
Prayer, meditation and contemplation are what helps us cultivate that observer self, that inner witness and changes us from within to be less “reactive” and more “proactive.”
As Rev. Paul Roach notes on p. 12 of Unity and World Religions, Jesus ended the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:7) with powerful call to action. Jesus embodied spiritual truth in how he lived his life. In Matthew 7:24, Jesus says to all, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on a rock.” Prayer empowers us to take action in a proactive way, the way that Jesus did. And that way is what the opening story of the Spiritual Reflection illustrates.
This teacher, Alvin Irby, noticed a kid hanging out in the barbershop, after school, really bored and when the “divine idea” landed in him that this kid should be practicing reading. It is critical here to note what this teacher did NOT do, as much as what he did. He did not petition the school or city for money to fund an afterschool reading program. He did not seek incentives for kids to stay after school and read all of which would have presented obstacles and hurdles for sure with “lack of funding” and on and on. Instead, he saw a need and stepped up to proactively fulfill it and started Barbershop Books, which is now in 200 shops! That is for sure a quantum leap, an answered prayer and a divine idea in full expression.
So why do we stay “prayed up” and why do we pray? To hold space for all these infinitely creative possibilities to continue to show up in consciousness and then manifest in and through us and others. Alvin Irby had no attachment to calling this the Irby Barbershop Books program, he just wants kids to read. Likewise, Jesus had no attachment to founding a religion or a church; he just wanted people to learn to love one another and let go of all their attachments that get in the way. Perhaps prayer is akin to a cloud just like Thich Nhat Hahn describes when he writes
A cloud has a good time traveling. When it falls down it does not die, it just becomes the rain. A cloud can never die.
Prayers, like clouds, can never die!
Blessings on the Path,
Rev. Deb