In his book Prosperity Charles Fillmore, Unity co-founder, wrote, “It is a sin to be poor.” That’s a shocking statement—isn’t he being callous—a victim-blamer? Not at all. He was quite clear that being in poverty was a very unhappy and miserable way to live. He had great compassion for those who lived in poverty. He had experienced it first hand as a young child in mid-nineteenth century rural Minnesota. His mother, abandoned by her husband, was left on her own to provide for two young sons. I’m sure that was one thing that motivated Charles Fillmore to find the way to a more empowered life. Metaphysically sin means error thinking—a misperception of reality. To say, “It is a sin to be poor,” means that we do not yet perceive that we are the rich children of a loving Mother-Father God. That we are not yet aware of the spiritual nature of our lives. That we don’t yet understand what it means to live with God as our Source. That we’ve not yet grasped how to activate prosperity in our own lives and in our communities. That we don’t yet know how much we are loved.
The great 12th century mystic Julian of Norwich caught sight of spiritual reality in a series of visions. Her experiences of the Divine have come down through the centuries to us in her book of meditations, Revelations of Divine Love. James Kiefer writes, “She describes seeing God holding a tiny thing in his hand, like a small brown nut, which seemed so fragile and insignificant that she wondered why it did not crumble before her eyes. She understood that the thing was the entire created universe, which is as nothing compared to its Creator, and she was told, ‘God made it, God loves it, God keeps it.’ When questioning God about all the world’s troubles and inequities she was told that whatever God does is done in Love, and therefore “that all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.’ “
We are a part of this created universe. God made us, God loves us, God keeps us. All is well.
In the Love and Light of the Christ,
Rev. Anna
