Our Ministry's Intention

We have an affirmation that we say every Sunday to open our church service: "Living Water Unity opens a healing space in which I am nurtured and empowered to realize the indwelling Christ." Perhaps some dissembling of this affirmation will explain a lot about our ministry.


"... to realize the indwelling Christ": That's it. That's what we're about! 


But this is not a "corporate experience", it's an individual experience.  We are told repeatedly and in many different ways that we are the harbor of the Christ. What does that mean? MY understanding is that the Spark of the Divine, the One Son of God, the Messiah (translated to the Greek the word becomes the "Christos" or in English, the "Christ") is resident in each of us to express as we choose. Unfortunately, we forget that we have the opportunity in every situation and relationship to be that expression.


That's why "empowered" is important. We not only need to be reminded that we have that opportunity, we need to learn what tools are available to us to remember and act upon our opportunity. In Unity we have four basic tools -- meditation, prayer, affirmations and denials -- that shift us from our habitual thoughts to our empowering thoughts. In our Sunday talks, our classes, our service opportunities and our private practice, we learn new ways to express that Christedness of which we are all equally bequeathed.


But often we need to be gently guided into the awareness of our inheritance -- thus, "nurturing" is an important step. Our counseling services, our social activities, even the new friends that we make in this community of like-minded seekers -- all of these 'facilities' are important to our learning of the inherent 'good' that we are. Opening to the goodness of each of us, including ourselves, this awareness of goodness feeds us, stimulates our growth and gives us permission to be that expression of the Christ that we can be.


Each of us brings to this community a unique past, often it is a past cluttered with the emotional pain that arises by our being told that we're not good enough, that we are somehow 'less than' what others have expected us to be. To be receptive to the nurturing and empowering that brings us to the realization of the indwelling Christ, we might first need to be healed. Thus, our opening the 'healing space' lets us enter into this community confident that, regardless of our past, we can be healed here and now. This healing allows the pain of the old wounds to be used as an example of what we can overcome. That overcoming is, in and of itself, empowering.


Perhaps this gives new meaning to what might have become a rote recital of the foundational intent of Living Water Unity.