Dear Church Family,
Happy New Year! As we bring in this New Year many of us are eager to leave behind the limiting experiences of 2020. Many times throughout the year I have referred to the challenges of 2020, yet as a Truth Student we understand challenge as an opportunity to grow, shift, and evolve from. When a challenge remains a challenge and never shifts from a challenge, it becomes a limiting belief or limiting experience. We all have had limiting beliefs, thoughts, behaviors, and ruts. When they come into our awareness we begin to change them through prayer, forgiveness, affirmations, and giving. We actively choose to think differently which changes a limiting belief into an empowering Truth.
Three events occurred this week that were touchstone moments for me. Touchstone meaning quintessential part of this year. One was the unexpected transition of a childhood friend. She was a force of nature has a child and honed it into a communication master as she directed student life for a smaller Midwest college and later became their Fund Developer. She mastered one-on-one relationships – as she was always present, respectful and kind to those she encountered. She always learned a person’s name and their story when appropriate. She was a master of moving out of challenge and limiting beliefs and into empowering Truth. This moment of transition caught us all by surprise and served as a wake up call for many to be a motivation for empowerment.
The second event was a delightful Zoom call with several congregants where we shared the gifts of 2020 and our anticipation for Good in 2021. This was taped and presented yesterday and today. What struck me was the depth and awareness that challenges become opportunities, challenges become change, challenges become gifts. There is a great transformational process that comes when we embrace empowering Truth. I hope you watch the videos and are blessed by them.
The third event was a reunion with a dear childhood friend that I shared a lot of early history with. We hadn’t talked in 32 years and hadn’t seen each other in 35 years. We had an afternoon of “catching up” that served as both a reunion and an opportunity to affirm our spiritual and human evolutions. We both grew up in the same fundamentalist church. It held limited beliefs and “rules” that created boundaries by which one could “experience” God. One of those limitations was the support of women in ministry. My friend was a female minister and missionary, attempting to serve her denomination run by men. Her stories being unsupported deepened my gratitude to be part of the Unity movement which has embraces women in ministry and leadership since its inception – as it was cofounded by Myrtle Fillmore.
This last week of 2020 has been full of emotions and reflection for me. I am grateful for the shifts in perspective that 2020 has offered, 2020 planted seeds of self-reflection and outer action that has changed me, and from I witness – has changed you, too. Challenge has shifted into opportunity. Opportunity into gifts. We move into 2021 with changed perspective. Thank you, God.
Many blessings,
Pastor Robert