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Hello Unity Peeps,
I’m so happy to be on our board and have the privilege to talk to you every now and again. My heart and spirit sing as I embrace this opportunity to serve and to get to know you all better.
As Kitty’s message series and workshop, Inspired and Unstoppable: Wildly Succeeding in Your Life’s Work, closes and she departs for her service at Unity Village and her sabbatical, trusting us all to carry on her work of inspirational transformation, I find I am looking forward to this season. She has sufficiently pumped us up and we are thrilled that summer is upon us and we get to jump right into the hundred days of summer full of activity and community!
After Kitty’s workshop I pulled a book from my shelf (one I got awhile back from the Unity library), Broken Open, by Elizabeth Lesser. This passage from the chapter, “The Rapture of Being Alive,” resonated deeply.
“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t thinks that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive…” –Joseph Campbell.
“Campbell affirmed in an interview with Bill Moyers that we don’t really yearn for a special vocation or an Earth-saving mission or some scholarly understanding of enlightenment. Rather, we want vibrant, full-bodied experiences of being alive. If a desire to serve humanity or to find God comes from a rapturous engagement with life, then our service and our search will bear fruit. But if we try to love or lead, or work or pray, from a dry well, then we will serve a bitter cup to those around us and never really live the life we were given. Every great hero—past and present—took a difficult journey of self-awareness before finding his or her rapture. Buddha spent several years alone in the forest where he grappled with suffering. His enlightenment has illuminated the path for millions of others. Jesus broke from tradition, left his family and community, and went into the desert for forty days and nights…. What they (he and the prophets before him) sought to right in the world, they righted first within their own hearts and in doing so gained humility and authenticity.
How odd that if we reject what is painful, we find only more pain, but if we embrace what is within us—if we peer fearlessly into the shadows— we stumble upon the light. “
I can definitely relate to this. It seems to me that when seeking transformation, we need to first accept and even embrace our pain and our shadow side before we can truly welcome, hear and implement the inspiration that God freely gives us. I am a work in process. I used to question why Unity seems to believe that we need to work on ourselves first and foremost but it is making more and more sense. It used to seem selfish to me, but now I understand how important it is to heal oneself before reaching out to heal others.
I wish you love, light, laughter and the rapture of being alive this summer. And if and when you feel you don’t have those, I wish you the courage to accept and face what you feel, and the willingness and faith to know that transformation is yours to claim when you’re ready to!
Gina Donaldson
Board Member
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