Message from the Executive Director – April 2023

Message from the Executive Director

Those of us living in the northern hemisphere are welcoming Spring as a time of growth and renewal. No matter where you are in the world, you can experience Spring in your heart. This month we focus on the power of Wisdom and celebrate our own personal resurrection above thoughts, beliefs, and feelings that no longer serve our highest good. On Easter and every day, we view the resurrection as a metaphor for personal transformation. During Lent, as our days are growing longer, we are reminded that our only function is to be the light in the world that we are called to be.  I hope you will enjoy the articles, stories, poems, quotes, and recipes in this issue. And, please don’t forget the West Side Unity capital campaign. If every UUMS graduate makes a contribution, we can make a significant impact on the much-needed renovations of the first “house that Rev. Ruth built” nearly seven decades ago.

The Power of Wisdom:  Every Day is Judgment Day!

When Jesus had attained a certain soul development, He called upon his twelve apostles. This means that when we are developing from personal consciousness into spiritual consciousness, we begin to train deeper and larger powers…” Charles and Cora Fillmore

You can send thoughts into the inner center of your being and through your word bring them to life.

The power of Wisdom (also referred to as Judgment) is represented by the apostle, James, and located in the pit of the stomach. The color vibration is yellow.

Our wisdom or judgment ability is our power to choose. God is not our judge. There is no last judgment of God. Our sins and mistakes punish us or limit us. We are not punished for them. Learn to “judge with right judgment.”

Call it what you will – “Choose this day whom you will serve…as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). Our choices determine our lives. We are the umpires in the game of life. The way we “call them” is the way they are for us. What do we call ourselves, others, the day, our work, and our surroundings? It is extremely important to use good judgment. Here are important guidelines for “calling” the experiences we have.

1. It is a mistake common among truth students that we are supposed to call everything that happens to us “good.” Think how this goes against safety, justice, and plain common sense! Everything that happens is not “good” but we are basically good. There is good in us as a divine potential no matter what happens to us or what we have done.

1. We base our thinking and judgment on the premise that “There is only One Presence and One Power active in my life and in the Universe: God, the good, Omnipotent.” This is Unity’s basic teaching and model of the Universe. We use this Power-Energy according to our understanding. We interpret everything that happens according to our understanding. This basic, primal Power we consider “Good,” but not all of the expressions or manifestations are desirable, just, healthy, or the best that can be.

You are the judge in the courtroom of your mind. God is not our judge. God has endowed us with the spiritual faculty of judgment. Our judgment faculty is our ability to choose or make choices. The choices are ours, and we always have a choice as to what we are going to think and do. God says, “Choose what you will and pay for it.” (Spanish proverb)

The Kingdom of Heaven is in a state of mind. There is no place called “hell” where some go after death. There is no heaven “up there” in the skies. There is no “last judgment.” We are not going to be punished for our sins. God does not judge and punish us. There are no pearly gates. These states of heaven and hell do exist, but they are here-and-now conditions, and we have the ability to enter them according to the choices (judgments) we make.

According to reports on July 28, 1999, in newspapers and on TV, Pope John Paul, a week after telling Roman Catholics that heaven is not a place up in the clouds, declared that hell was not a physical place either. It exists, he said, but it is more a state of mind. “Hell is not a punishment imposed externally by God, but the conditions resulting from attitudes and actions which people adopt in this life,” he said. The Pope explained that artists pictured heaven and hell as literal places, but he said it is not Catholic teaching.

Today is always the “Day of Judgment.” “The doctrine of hellfire is inconsistent with Jesus’ life and teachings” (S. Radhakrishman). We are the judges in the courtroom of our minds. According to the choices we as individuals and as humanity make, we live a “heaven” or a “hell” of a life.

The “king” in Jesus’ story, found in Matthew 25:32, is not God but each of us. The “king,” “queen,” “prince,” or “princess,” who makes the choice is each of us. We are appointed as rulers in the state of our minds, emotions, actions, and reactions. We are not punished for our sins or mistakes, but by them. Note the strong imperative to feed, clothe, visit, be concerned, help, shelter, and serve.

The “Day of Judgment” is every day because we must choose the quality and nature of our thoughts every single day and minute therein. The point is for us to use “kingship/queenship” or divine authority given to us by God in wise, loving, and constructive ways. We choose what is worthwhile, helpful, healing, wise, for the highest good of all concerned, and peace-making.

During these wisdom lessons, we will not look on God “as my judge,” but on God as being the Intelligence in which we derive the wisdom to discern, evaluate, make decisions, and judge rightly and compassionately what is best for each of us, all humanity, and Mother Earth.

RESOURCES:

How to Use Your Twelve Gifts from God by William Warch, “Judgment” (Amazon)

Discover the Power Within You by Eric Butterworth, Chapter 11, “The Law of Compensation” and Chapter 12, “How God Forgives” (TruthUnity.net & Amazon)

Dynamics for Living by Charles Fillmore, “Judgment and Justice” (Unity Books & Amazon)

The Hilltop Heart by James Dillet Freeman, Chapter VII, “Your Own Heaven, Your Own Hell,” (Unity Books & Amazon)

SCRIPTURES:

John 5:25-27; 7:24; 8:15-16
Matthew 7:1-2; 25:32-46
Proverbs 3:13-16
Joshua 24:15

Source:

Twelve Powers in You: 52 Weekly Lessons by David & Gay Williamson & Robert Knapp, MD

NOTE: David Williamson, D.Min, presented the bulk of this year-long program at Detroit Unity Temple in 1991 in celebration of the church’s 75^th anniversary. He later presented it at Unity of Hollywood, Florida in 1998, assisted by his wife, Gay Lynn Williamson, and Dr. Robert Knapp, MD. The program is the result of a lifetime of studying the Twelve Powers as a truly holistic and dynamic model of the whole person: spirit, soul, body, and relationships. The Twelve Powers is seen as a spiritual, psychosomatic, process-oriented philosophy that conceives of us as a living system with related aspects meant to function together integratively and harmoniously. The manual that was created includes a lesson for each Sunday in the year and an additional one for leap year. It is no longer in print; however, anyone wishing to obtain a digital copy should contact Rev. Sandra Campbell at

re*******@uu**.org











. NOTE: Rev. Dr. David Williamson was a major supporter of Rev. Ruth M. Mosley’s vision to establish a ministerial school in an urban area with an urban focus.