Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Asking Challenging Questions

I recently completed my second student chapel service at Unity  Village, Missouri and I continue on my journey to Unity ministry. In my message I explored the concept of the edge of faith.  Faith is a spiritual faculty and may also refer to a spiritual path.  In addition to being a student, I also serve as Archivist in the Unity Library and Archives.  That means that I live in this world of questions about the past and wonder what is to be.  Who am I to be?  Where am I to serve?  How do I explain a historical change?  How do I live on the edge of my faith?
Many people have contacted the Archives with reference questions.  Some people want to know “The answer!” People are not always pleased with me when they get a suggested reading list or a variety of Unity “answers!”  Maybe that is true of all of us.  What is the answer to my challenge?  As I have researched historical documents, my admiration for Myrtle and Charles Fillmore, Unity’s founders, has never dimmed, but all my reading and classes have led me to sometimes confront what I read and explore my own challenging questions.
Eric Butterworth made it his life’s work to ask challenging questions and encourage people to explore their own answers.  Sunday after Sunday, broadcast after broadcast, class after class, retreat after retreat; he called on his students to realize their own potential.  He wanted them to realize their own divinity. 
In the introduction to The Creative Life (2001) he describes the Internet as a great accomplishment and compares it to accessing the mind of God. Anyone may connect to the mind of God and “realize the answers to all of his or her needs.”  Butterworth, who was raised in a Unity household, seemed never to have understood the Divine in an anthropomorphic way.  Instead of a human-like God looking down on humanity in judgment, Butterworth understood Spirit to be activity itself, in and through all, life behind all life.  In his most famous book, Discover the Power Within You, he outlines how Jesus’ unique concept of God.  He gave a new and radical answer to questions about the Divine. The writer of the book of John suggests that Jesus said “The Father and I are one (10:30).”  Butterworth writes “The Father in me is me on a higher dimension of living (34).”  May we all choose a “higher dimension of living!”

1 comment:

  1. "A suggested reading list or a variety of answers!" Now THERE's a good Unity response to a question I agree, encouraging people to engage questions at ever deeper levels WAS the life work of Eric Butterworth. Yes, EB did grow up in a Unity household, he was one of the first "Unity babies. That fact had to have had a very major influence on his view of life and the universe.

    In a recorded lecture, part of the "Practical Metaphysics" series, EB recalls conversations he had at the age of nine with a Catholic friend. The two boys wondered what existed BEFORE God created the universe. Even at that age, EB was digging deeply into the questions. I suspect that many children of that age do dig deeply. Many, though, find no encouragement to share their explorations with their families.

    EB's father left the family when EB was still a young child. Richard Billings told me that Eric realized he would have to rely on his own resources to make his way in life, and became largely self-reliant at a young age. I have wondered about EB's father's relationship to Truth teachings, and what it was that motivated the man to leave his family. EB's mother was a Unity minister.

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