In 1977 I was a Sophomore in College at David Lipscomb University.  During that year the movie Star Wars became a conversation within everyone’s home.  I don’t know any of my friends or acquaintances that did not see the movie at least once.  I know I actually saw the movie 5 times that year and every time the words, “May the force be with you,” seemed to etch a place in my mind. 

I’m not sure at the time if I really realized what the force was or how it could possibly “be with me,” but I do know that the phrase continued to make an imprint on my life.  I was in a class at Unity Village at some point when the professor used the phrase to explain that the force was the essence of spirit.  That very thought was consoling to me as I was shifting my thoughts and beliefs about who or what God is. 

During the month of February our spiritual community will be focusing on love.  We will begin realizing that love is the underlying force of evolution, the very essence of who we are.  As each of us begins to integrate this force into our own lives, we begin to feel the force of love as it shifts our personal and collective potential in the world.   I hope you will join us on Sunday as we discuss this force of love.  Laurie O’Shea will be sharing songs about the force and the Youth will be with us again sharing their own perspective on how to use the force in our everyday lives. 

Never have the effects of love’s force been more important.  May the force of love be with you,

Rev. Denise

Our inherent urge as a human species is to understand the reality we are standing in.  Elizabeth Gilbert in, Eat Pray Love, calls this desire “the itch”, the mad and relentless urge to want to understand the workings of existence.  The real question is, “Am I aware that this search or deep desire to understand is the vehicle that allows my consciousness to expand?”  In actuality is it the vehicle that assists with the expansion of consciousness on our planet?  And, does this expansion of consciousness give us clues along the way on how to create the world we are desperately wanting to create? 

Ervin Laszlo, a Hungarian philosopher of science systems theory has written many books about the intelligence of the cosmos and why we are here on this planet at this particular time.  Ervin states, “There is a constant and intimate contact among the things that coexist and co-evolve in the universe – a sharing of bonds and messages that makes reality into a stupendous network of interaction and communication.”  Could it be we are really all connected and have the same goal in mind, we are just calling it different things and going about it in different ways? That ‘Quantum consciousness’ shows us that we are one with others and with nature?  That everything we do to others we are doing to ourselves?   

I hope that you will join us on Sunday morning as we complete Principle #1 in the lesson The Search for Truth: The Expansion of  Consciousness.  We have to but set out on the open road before us, with eyes wide open and hearts ready to love, and we must be willing to ask, seek, and knock even when it appears that the answers elude us.  Dr. Laszlo calls the process a “reorienting of our vision, which has the power to motivate our actions and influence our decisions.” 

The amazing Becky Shert Duff will be sharing special music, and you don’t want to miss it.  Her music will speak to the journey and the deepest desires that many of us have to create the dreams that live in our hearts.  We have held on to this desire in the midst of the chaos and in the midst of all this personal transformation we are experiencing.  Just remember:

“I think of what the world could be – A vision of the one I see.  A million dreams is all it’s gonna take – A million dreams for the world we’re gonna make.”

Namaste,Rev. Denise