The Time of Year For Church Hopping!

This is a followup to the post on 12-15-10 about Unity Church's inexplicable Christmas service which can seem like a combination of a Rosicrucian secret ceremony and Camp Fire Girls meeting. Wes and I have decided that on such big religious holidays we still want the FEELING TONE of the original traditional  holiday to remain. Therefore, while we may make an appearance at Unity to smell lots of candle wax burning, we will also seek out more traditional venues. For example, out in Anthem there is a little modern church that has a living tableau with all the popular characters (e.g., Mary, Joseph, Jesus, angels, sheep, coyotes....) in an open field. That should be fun, since winter temperatures in the Phoenix area stay quite mild.

There is an architecturally lovely new Catholic church in Anthem with covered colonades and all the absurd pomp and circumstance (priests decked out in embroidered robes and waving incense pots around). I'd like to check out this almost pagan celebration of Christmas - see a big choir, actual Christmas music instead of pop spiritual songs, maybe even a child's reinactment of my role as Gabriel, which has never been surpassed.

Unity Church is a great place for New Thought, for metaphysical thought, for putting everything that irked you about traditional religions into metaphorical psychological terms of spirituality. Unity is especially useful for atheists, for those who are too intelligent to accept literally the religious myths, but have a yearning for a spiritual connection.

However, on traditional "high" religious holidays, Unity can be disappointing.


My best friend Jerry died from complications of AIDS. He was a Franciscan Brother who was forced out for (gasp!) admitting to being gay (God never makes mistakes EXCEPT in terms of sexual orientation, I guess). Jerry, when very ill with limited time left, made a practice of visiting a different Catholic church each day for Mass to breath in what seemed like accumulated spiritual energy in the air. Ultimately he found that spirituality within himself.

But I didn't find that out until after his death in dreams. For example, in one dream I got a letter from Jerry. I realized within the dream that Jerry was dead, so I was curious what the return address could possibly be! In his handwriting I read "Jerry, In Care of the Christ within Me & You".  I opened the envelop and I was enfolded in blinding white light. Yes, it was just a dream, but only the first of several such coherent dreams that acted as messages from Jerry. There was even a final goodbye dream where Jerry said he was moving on, hugged me (forgiving me for my unacknowledged guilt at not being more helpful during his illness due to MY FEAR of AIDS) became a golden spark of light, and vanished.

We all yearn for such spiritual experiences. Sometimes a traditional setting works better at this time of year than hearing about Elimination. Peace to you.