Aloha Dear Ones,

How wonderful to be back with you. I’ve taken time off to learn more of what I need to understand about the heart of love. It’s hard to know where to begin, at what point to bring you into my process of discovery.

I’ve just returned from a Lutheran Church in South Maui, where I attended their Good Friday service. Good Friday is part of Christian Holy Week, retelling the story of Christ’s last days, his death, followed by the celebration of his resurrection on Easter Sunday.

I went back to the Lutheran religion of my childhood tonight, because my beloved Unity Church doesn’t have a Good Friday service.

My former minister, Rev. Mary Omwake, told me that a group of Unity leaders once asked Matthew Fox, revolutionary theologian and defrocked Catholic (now an Episcopalian priest), for his opinion on Unity’s teachings. Matthew Fox’s analysis was that Unity reflected his understanding of the light, really had the positive truth, but that, “new thought,” churches, in general, didn’t know what to do with the dark.

Thus, no Unity service on Jesus’s crucifixion. This is a broad and deep issue for another post. Unity will indeed have a beautiful Easter service. I will be on duty as a chaplain, available to pray with anyone at the program’s close. If you are here on Maui, please come and say aloha on Sunday morning.

What touched me most at the Lutheran Church tonight was how profoundly interconnected I felt with everyone. It felt like my heart was beating in time with each heart, with the heart of the congregation. Amongst the Lutheran regulars, there’s probably a range of beliefs, from fundamentalist to very progressive (this is tolerant Maui, after all). The more conservative members would take issue with my belief that all paths lead to God, perhaps even with my identifying as a Christian.

Yet, what I heard, what I participated in with my Lutheran brothers and sisters this Good Friday, along with being deeply moving, seemed to come from an evolving, more integral perspective. The service focused on the 14 Stations of the Cross, each moments in Christ’s walk, bearing a heavy wooden cross, towards the site of his execution.

The liturgy, the language of each Station, was written in a way that evoked a deep resonance with Jesus as a man, fully human, as well as fully divine–a man who was so surrendered to the Divine, who so fully embodied God’s love, that he was willing to give his life for, as, that love. We were asked how we would have responded, had we been on that walk with the crowd following Jesus to his death. When Jesus fell the second time, under the weight of the cross, would we help him carry it, as did Simon? When, for the third time, Jesus fell, would we have tenderly wiped his brow, as did the woman who pushed through the soldiers to reach him?

We were charged with considering how we show up for God’s love, now, in this life. Can we become so aligned with Divine right action, that, like Christ, we always say, “Not my will, but Thine?” Can our identity shift from an individual self, separate from each other, separate from God, to one inter-related whole, responsible for acting as God’s only hands, only voice, on earth? Can we, like Christ, choose to act as God’s love, no matter what the cost?

Yes, I’m paraphrasing, through the evolutionary, integral lens of consciousness. But tonight, as I sat with my spiritual family (I was going to say extended family, but it conveys something one step removed, which was not the reality), the love in our hearts was separated neither by language, nor dogma. I saw the tears shed by all, and all saw mine. I felt the love of all–and all felt mine. Together, we experienced a quickening (evolutionary impulse/Holy Spirit) of our commitment to show up as God’s love on earth.

Dear ones, we cannot wait for God’s love to be revealed to us. We need to act as God’s love for each other, now, with courage, with humility, through our sorrows and our joys.

Love and blessings,

Dr. Julianne

Aloha Dear Ones,

It’s very early in the morning on Maui.  The need for rest and reflection has been foremost since Christmas Eve.

I’ve been a Unity Church chaplain for almost 10 years.  About a week before Unity’s Christmas Eve service,  I was asked to give the opening prayer.  I immediately said yes, then the scope of the responsibility set in. I wondered if I could show up the way that was needed, if I could be available to that deep edge of my being that allows the Holy Spirit/evolutionary impulse to come forth.  I didn’t want my own personality conditioning, or my human mind, to write and deliver a prayer that would just sound good–I wanted a truer voice to speak.

Unity Church on Maui (unityonmaui.org) started having the chaplains give opening prayers for Sunday services about six months ago.  We tend to follow a format for affirmative prayer used by many, “new thought,” groups, such as Religious Science.  This form of affirmative prayer, sometimes called, “five-step prayer,” focuses on acknowledging divine presence, aligning with this holy presence, affirming one’s intention, giving thanks and releasing the prayer to divine outcome.

For the past few months, my prayers have increasingly included evolutionary language and concepts.  I find myself saying things like, “Beloved Presence, we know that there is not only this now moment–there is also this now moment, becoming–we lean forward, together, into the edge of that becoming, into the space between us, for in the space between us, there is an awareness emerging of our essential unity, of a deeper, higher love that is our true nature, a sacred reality that is so much more powerful than any challenge we might face on our own, that is becoming stronger each day.”

I pray with my eyes open, looking into the eyes of people around the room.  When my prayers at Unity became more evolutionary, some people whose heads were bowed began to look up at me, with an expression both surprised and curious.  As I continued to pray, I saw people’s faces soften, open, then seem to brighten, with a quality of hope.  I especially noticed that when words of, “leaning together into the space between us, where we are more available to consciousness emerging, where there is a love and wisdom awakening between us that is so much stronger than any trial we face alone,” that some people sat straighter, some began gently crying, all appearing to release isolation, to embrace connection.

Together, with my brothers and sisters, I felt the sweet comfort of being one heart , and with that experience of unity, a deeper motivation to do the right thing–for God, for myself, for these people who are part of me, and who, with me, are all part of God.

Each time this happened, I was left with a feeling of amazement.  I would come with a frame for the occasion on any given Sunday, but never write a prayer, always allowing it to unfold in the moment.  I grew to trust that a greater presence would show up, in this new, exciting way, and felt a precious alignment with our small congregation.

On Christmas Eve, attendance is always much larger.  Unity moves its service to the Iao Theater in Wailuku town, which seats about 500.  A wide range of people come, mainland visitors from traditional churches, new age Mauians on a variety of paths, and locals.  I felt some trepidation about giving the opening prayer with this bigger group, with such different beliefs and expectations.  The concern was about my egoic conditioning. Could my personality self get out of the way enough to express as the evolutionary impulse?  Or would the false self feel compelled to put on a show on this bigger stage?

My ego wasn’t my only concern.  There was a call on my heart to truly honor Jesus as the birth of God’s love in form, as God’s love made manifest for humanity.

Unity was founded by a passionately Christian couple, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore.  Their intention was to explore Christ consciousness under a big umbrella, accepting that all paths lead to God, welcoming people of all faiths to come together to study and celebrate a greater truth of being and living. My experience in Unity was that while every effort was made to acknowledge the beauty of all paths, there was at times a reluctance to speak of its Christian roots.  There was a sensitivity to the number of, “recovering fundamentalists,” in the Unity movement, those who had been wounded in conservative Christian churches where they experienced condemnation, and who could be offended by the mere mention of Jesus’ name.

I get this–and, there is an expanding awareness that allows us to heal, to hear with the ear of the heart.  My former Unity minister, Rev. Mary Omwake, told me about a conversation she had with Rev. Michael Beckwith, of Apage, in Los Angeles.  He said, “Maybe we are healed enough now to start talking about Jesus again.”  Amen.

So, how do I honor Jesus on the night we celebrate his birthday, on a Unity platform, being available as the evolutionary impulse, without my ego staging the gig?  What would you do?

This post is becoming so very long–I need a little food and a walk along Ma’alaea Bay.  Can I tell you tomorrow what happened?  Thank you, Beloved.

Love and blessings,

Dr. Julianne

 

 

Aloha Dear Ones,

It’s Christmas Eve, the most sacred night of the year for the Christian community.

If you’ve read my last couple posts introducing evolutionary spirituality and evolutionary relationship, you might be wondering, “What does Jesus have to do with it?”  For me, coming from a conservative Lutheran home, Jesus Christ is an essential part of the divine mystery.

Exactly what part of the mystery Jesus plays has been a central question of my spiritual journey.  As a child, there wasn’t a question about the role of Christ on Sunday mornings. Nor was there any question of Jesus’ role in our home on a daily basis, as my devout mother reminded the family to show the love and forgiveness demonstrated by our savior.

I remember my first questionings of the fundamentalist interpretation of Bible scripture.  It was one of the Sundays our small mid-western church had a visiting missionary.   As he earnestly shared stories of victoriously converting the poor heathens, thereby saving them from eternal damnation in the fires of hell, I experienced an unfamiliar sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.  I had heard these stories before, but somehow, on that morning, there was a malaise that gripped me, an awareness that was encroaching upon six years of the best-intentioned conditioning (yes, I was only six).

I accepted that God so loved the world that He sent Jesus to show us how to love each other. My parents tried to follow Christ’s example, and they were very loving towards my brother and me, and to our neighbors.  God must be happy with them, and me, I assured myself. Maybe God would be happier with people from other countries if they followed Jesus, too–but would God, who loved us so much, really send them to hell forever if they didn’t?

I just couldn’t buy it anymore.  The veil of separation from those who had appeared to be different from me was in place for six years, and then simply had to lift.  I remember sitting in the pew, watching the missionary’s face increasingly flush as he admonished us about the torments of hell waiting for the unconfessed, and thinking to myself, “he’s trying to be good, he just doesn’t understand that God and Jesus love everybody, no matter where people live or what kind of church their parents go to.”

So, there you have it.  I cannot pretend differently, my dear friends who subscribe to the orthodox doctrine of the exclusivity of Christ Jesus.  The condemnation of those from other religious traditions that I could not stomach as an innocent child, I cannot accept now.

Yet, my relationship with Jesus continues, grows in depth and breadth.  My capacity to understand and appreciate the miracle of his birth, his living example of  divine love in human form, his sacrifice, his promise, increases as I experience my own heartbreaks and joys along life’s path.  I identify as a Christian.  I often find myself in between cultural/ spiritual groups, not enough Jesus for some, too much for others.

During the first year of my immersion in the Evolutionary Life Transformation Program (ELTP), an online, global, evolutionary spirituality community created by Craig Hamilton (IntegralEnlightenment.com), I helped create a small, “Interest/Learning Group,” for Christians within the larger group of students. Together, we explored our relationship with Christ, and the impact of the evolutionary perspective on our personal experience of Jesus.  All of us were passionate about embracing the evolutionary impulse urging us to expanded our identity as, “We,” aligned with sacred deep care, God, and becoming responsible for living as that.  All of us discovered an even deeper, realer connection with Christ throughout this process of inquiry.

What does Jesus have to do with evolutionary/integral spirituality?  He is the best evidence of it I have found.  How, exactly, it all works, I don’t pretend to know.  I only know that on the eve of his birth, my heart rejoices.  I believe that Christ is God’s love made manifest.  My life is more aligned with his teachings now, than ever.  Even though I tremble with the enormity of that not yet known, I can tenderly, fiercely, look into the eyes of my little six-year-old self and say, “You were onto something, sweetie–keep asking, keep finding.”

Happy Christmas Eve.

Love and blessings,

Dr. Julianne