Join us this for our weekly Sunday Worship Service at 10:30am.
Spiritual Sunday School for children from birth through high school meets during the service.
A Musician's Take on our Unity Service
By Rosamond Campbell
Come with me -- I'm taking you to a Sunday Service. It's a symphony. Music frames the service but the lesson always shapes the music. Let's go upstairs and into the atrium. Meet the "greeters" and enter the sanctuary. There's theater-style seating -- that may be your first surprise. You won't see symbols and there is no altar. You may hear a blazing fanfare or angelic singing. The church is composed of people and who can tell what the music may be? It could be muscular or meditative. Any Sunday could be every Sunday -- or not. We do have an order of service but the notes and dynamics can vary. Improvisation is always a possibility.
Reverend Kurt welcomes us. Our church is open and inclusive, he says. You may feel that you have "come home." Perhaps even a little weepy. You may hear something dissimilar -- perhaps radically different -- from your religious "history." Words that validate what you have always believed but never realized that others felt the same way. This can be unsettling as well as deeply comforting. We are a community of seekers who aren't embarrassed to admit it. That's our "confession" at Unity North Shore. Many of us have come from someplace where something was lost or outgrown or missing.
You are welcomed with applause -- yes, we do that here -- and then we sing and greet one another with a handshake or a hug. For starters, this can feel awkward. Nobody can legislate your feelings. And yet the sense of homecoming remains. The faces may become familiar, perhaps even beloved. But that's getting ahead...
More music. Now it's deeper and slower and segues into the Sunday lesson. Reverend Kurt presents his talk with warmth and wit. His discourse sets forth Unity principles as call-it-as-you-see it Truth employed in our daily lives. His message may include an occasional punt (remember, we don't fear improvisation!) and a willingness to reveal himself so that we, too, find we can lower our own barriers and hear and heal. The lesson is always inspiring, comforting and instructive. In this place spiritual teaching includes practical tools. The lesson is not just a Sunday fix. What we hear from the platform -- well, really from the steps or from the aisle -- Reverend Kurt cruises the room! -- is good for the week. And life -- no surprise here -- is composed of weeks.
We segue into a meditation where we take the Sunday message down deep. We may ponder it, puzzle over it or just sit with it. Quiet, waiting, attentive to whatever comes up within. And more often than not, something awesome happens. Takes root and grows us wiser and stronger.
Music again. The theme blends with the lesson and reinforces it. The symphony is coming to a close. But there's a coda: We form a circle and together we sing for peace -- within ourselves and in our world. We pray the Prayer of Protection. And then we part. Some for home and others to go downstairs for fellowship and food.
I write this as a musician. Nobody brilliant or famous, just an amateur who makes music. But as I write, it occurs to me that I don't make the music -- it makes me. And that's why I come to this church -- because we "make" one another. We uncover our true selves -- better and braver. I hope that Reverend Kurt would say at this point -- as he often does -- Yes!
God = Woman
4 Sundays in January
Too often, we forget that for every attribute of God, there is that of Goddess. In claiming the Divine Feminine —which, like Divine Masculine, is inherent in all of us — we more fully embrace the entirety of the Divine within. Join Rev. Kurt for this four-week exploration aimed at transcending the limitations of gender roles, and more fully expressing the limitless wholeness of Spirit.
