Daily Word for the Spirit

I have blogged before about the Daily Word, the bi-monthly magazine of affirmations produced by the Unity Church. It is one of the longest-lived New Thought periodicals, and is a charming remnant of really pure New Thought ideas.
The enormous amount of inspirational content produced by the magazine is being used, these days, in a series of spin-off books. Each book is developed around a theme (in this case the rather nebulous "For the Spirit" - I also own the much more solidly focused Daily Word for Weight Loss) and provides a "best-of" selection of stories and affirmations from the mag.





I have just finished Daily Word for the Spirit, which was also a Unity FM book club choice on the Hooked on Classics show, so I had the opportunity to read it closely and hear it explained by the editor and some of the people whose stories are featured, week by week. I really enjoy this process, and am a solid fan of Hooked on Classics - though I'm always running months behind.
This particular book was interesting because it contaned a chapter from Iyanla Vanzant, herself a bestselling self-help writer and once Oprah Winfrey's favoured spiritual teacher. Vanzant's chapter falls toward the end of the book, and in it she details some of the struggles she has faced in her life. She talks about the power of generosity and of supporting others, and here she says something really interesting:

"I talked to them about...the strength derived from loving yourself and other people - giving and serving not because of the rewards, but because you love it and it feels good."

The Daily Word

Probably the most influential work of the New Thought church The Unity School of Christianity is its monthly prayer guide and day-book The Daily Word. This little square journal has been in print since 1924, and its influence has been credited by people as diverse as Will Smith and Toni Morrison! Rosemary Fillmore Rhea tells a great story in her autobiography about meeting Robert Wagner's mother at a Beverly Hills hotel and discovering that not only was she a long-time subscriber, but had given gift subscriptions to all of the hotel staff.
The Daily Word is a pocket-sized monthly magazine (which has recently become bi-monthly, and is also available on-line) which provides a daily inspirational quote and a relevant section of scripture.



The page-a-day format makes it pretty much a modern-day version of the antique format of the almanac.
Its longevity has afforded it a special place in American popular religious culture, and by all accounts it has fans across the Christian spectrum, despite its central theology being decidedly unorthodox. Each issue starts out with a couple of stories by devoted readers who credit the miraculous effect of The Daily Word during specific periods of struggle or hardship in their lives. The little journal seems to hold for some a talismanic power, an I have read stories of people giving away its pages to those they perceive to be in need.
The magazine also serves a function within the structure of the Unity church itself. It is the focal point of prayer and meditation for all members, and it is freely available to newcomers and visitors to the church.
The vast amount of text that must have been produced in creating the magazine over the years has been put to good use in recent times with the compilation of book-length guides on specialist topics, a la Chicken Soup for the Soul. Daily Word for Weight Loss and The Daily Word for Women are two examples.

What If It All Goes Right?

Mindy Audlin was one of the founders of Unity FM, and she has invented a New Thought process called 'What If Up' that has been in use among church and corporate groups for some time now. Her book What If It All Goes Right? is a fleshing out of the thinking behind the process, and is a fascinating explication of a new spiritual technology, one that is particularly representative of New Thought thinking and expressive of the New Thought world-view.
Having recently been the featured book on Unity FM's Hooked on Classics book club, I spent quite some time reading this book, exploring the process for myself and following the exercises the book provides. This kind of involved reading, which transcends the simpler method of passive reading that is usually associated with the consumption of books, is in a way the very benchmark of the self-help process, and is the way that most self-help books are intended by their authors to be studied. Of course, whether or not the average reader does in fact extend their experience beyond the perusal of the written word is impossible to gauge. But certainly the presence of an on-line study group and the prolonged examination of the book on the Hooked on Classics radio show helped to ensure a more thorough and prolonged engagement with the text than might usually be the case.
And what is Audlin's method? Basically it's an extension of a very old idea, one set forth most strikingly in the Pollyanna story (and I must admit here that I've only ever seen the wonderful movie): instead of finding reasons to quelch an idea or tear it apart, we should instead engage in Audlin's 'What if Up' process, and think of reasons why situations, projects, goals and dreams might, in fact, work out positively. It is a brain-storming process, and one which the author keenly advises us to practice in groups. So that one person might stand in the centre of a group of supportive friends while everybody contributes a positive spin to the idea, problem or desire recently anunciated.
Audlin admits that the basic idea for this process came from her involvement with mastermind groups. Such groups evolved from the thought of Napoleon Hill, of Think and Grow Rich fame. He advised that each of us establish a core of supportive friends who meet regularly to encourage each other, share ideas, and offer each other positive emotional support. Hill thought that people with such a supportive group of peers must necessarily have greater moral and emotional strength than those who seek to do everything alone, fearing the input and derision of others.
Audlin's book works through some standard New Thought tropes, and is actually quite a concise and clear explicaton of New Thought ideals and their practical application to modern life. One of the things the author asserts is that:

"We're working with spiritual laws in a world that is goverened by cause and effect...Just don't say I didn't warn you...The universe can pack a wallop!"

Those who have been following this blog or who are keen students of New Thought & Self-Help literature will recognise two key ideas here: the notion that what is being taught is in fact an indisputable law (an assertion that goes all the way back to Mary Baker Eddy); and the recurring convention of discussing theistic ideas but replacing the word "God" with more palatable concepts like "The universe."
Along with law there is the usual attendant invocation of the notion of science, in the case of this book a surprisingly insistent one. The use of scientific language reassures the modern reader, and takes teh book's discourse out of the realms of assertion and religio-mythic ideas. But in fact much of what is discussed has its roots in nineteenth century American Protestantism.

"The subatomic substance of the universe...responding to the focus and intensity of your dominant feelings."

Now, before you write in I do not mean to poke fun at the author or the book. I am merely identifying a recurring motif that is as old as self-help books themselves - the justification of opinions by the invocation of scientific rhetoric. I would suggest that what is being described is not, in fact, a scientific truth involving subatomic substances, but a metaphysical assertion.
Interestingly, Audlin herself invokes the figure of Pollyanna:

"Let me warn you that at first glance, the techniques you will discover in this book might seem a bit Pollyannaish. You may wonder how we could possibly solve the major problems of our time with a tool that is so simple and easy to implement. Surely, our complex issues require a more complex remedy?"

But no, as you may have guessed, the book assures us that in fact what is most needed is the very simplicity and good faith characteristic of that great cultural archetype Pollyanna. The meme of Pollyanna is one regularly invoked by both critics and advocates of self-help ideas, and I really must explore this further. Perhaps in a journal article? I will have to grab a copy of the book.
This kind of reductive approach to life is, of course, characteristic of self-help, and is the source of much of its criticism. But as always, critics would be missing the point that what the book inetnds to do is not address the misfortunes and inequities of a suffering world (though later chapters invoke the notion of global healing). What it seeks to do is merely equip the individual with tools to help her achieve more and maintain a more positive and productive state of mind. And it seems to me that this is a goal that is hard to criticise. In the self-help world global change is wrought, not by collective action, but by individual transformation and its subsequent flow-on effect.
It's an interesting book and, with its heavy emphasis on practice it is ultimately a useful one. It is also, undeniably, inspirational, and in the last analysis is describing that quality that I am coming more and more to realise is at the heart of self-help thinking - the idea of grace. I think it would actually be of tremendous use to someone struggling with depression or overwhelmed by bad conditions in their life. It is unashamedly and relentlessly "Pollyannaish," and to my mind that's no bad thing.

That's Just How My Spirit Travels

At first Rosemary Fillmore Rhea's book That's Just How My Spirit Travels seems a peculiar kind of memoir. Hers is not a big name in any area (except, perhaps, within the management of the Unity church), and her life has not been one of any dramatic peaks and troughs. But after a while the book begins to charm and eventually the reader is left utterly absorbed in the life and spiritual vision of someone with a truly unique insight into a modern American spiritual movement which, though small and relatively unknown, has had an immense influence on Western culture.
Rhea is the grandaughter of Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, co-founders of the Unity church, the largest organised religious movement based on the teachings of New Thought. She was, naturally, born into the movement, and so this memoir is a fascinating insight into the life and ideas of someone who from the cradle has been taught the precepts of New Thought: that the world is perfect, that our thoughts create our circumstances, and that God is within us.
That's Just How My Spirit Travels has some wonderful stories about the Fillmores and the early days of Unity (the church is based in its own mini-town on the outskirts of Kansas City called Unity Village). Rhea recalls entertaining in her living room (she was married to a Unity Minister, and became one herself, eventually) extraordinary people such as Alan Watts, Victor Frankl and Norman Vincent Peale. The celebrity spotting doesn' stop there. Rhea and her husband branched out into television in the seventies, and this saw them moving into a more elevated world of showbiz, and soon we meet people like Rosalind Russell, Natalie Wood and (my personal favourite) Jennifer Jones. The short segments that they filmed with fading movie stars and other celebrities were broadcast across America as 'The Word from Unity' (based on Unity Church's venerable inspirational monthly almanac The Daily Word), and these short spots have since moved into the realms of nostalgic reverence, their style lampooned most famously by "The Church Lady" on Saturday Night Live.
She is suprprisingly honest in her assessment, not only of the spiritual empire built up around her family, but of the difficulties and challenges an advocate of New Thought faces in dealing with life's less-than-pleasing complexities. Herself a divorcee who lost her mother as a child, occasionally she expresses the frustration with this essential conflict between the reality of loss and the rigid worldview of New Thought that doesn't allow for disappointment. Rhea attempts to explain it by saying (in this case in relation to the death of Natalie Wood) "Why people have to experience such tragedy is inexplicable, but there must be reasons that only our soul knows and perhaps at some point in time we will understand why every experience is a necessary part of our journey" (186). It is a brave and eloquent explanation, but I fear it wouldn't cut the mustard with the Dawkins-inspired neo-atheists who currently hold the hegemonic upper hand in present-day discourse.
Like most advocates of New Thought, Rhea's own politics veer toward the liberal and she is an enthusiast for international friendship groups and such like, as practical ways of establishing relationships between different cultures. She is also a staunch supporter of non-violence, tracing back the roots of discord to our own mental unrest, and crediting her grandfather with bringing this fact to the attention of the world.
Using the example of her own humble life, imperfectly lived, Rhea seeks in her memoir to establish some kind example of how New Thought philosophy might play out through the period of a lifetime. She sees a continuum between the radical religious ideas of Tolstoy, the practical spiritual philosophy of her grandparents and the more radical and political path of Gandhi and the later generations of 1960s America. For Rhea violence manifest in the world is, in the ultimate analysis, "Violence against our inner self" (228). She is at pains to acknowledge the real presence of anger and social injustice in our world, but her philosophy encourages her to see an end to this imperfection, and to dwell on practically solving their problems rather than dwelling on the fact of injustice.
That's Just How My Spirit Travels is a charming and old-fashioned read. You can download the two episodes of 'Hooked on Classics' from Unity FM to hear Rosemary Fillmore Rhea herself interviewed. In many ways she is the last of her kind - a living and very involved link to the great blossoming of New Thought that reaches back into the mid-nineteenth century. For the student of modern religion it is a fascinating book, and on a personal level I came away quite in love with this honest and unpretentious woman who has, despite appearances, led a truly extraordinary life.

Eric Butterworth - Discover the Power Within You

Eric Butterworth was one of the most influential New Thought preachers of the mid-twentieth century, as well as being a prolific author. His influence on the Unity movement was enormous, and continues to the present day. Unity FM has just started a whole radio show devoted entirely to the teachings of Butterworth, and recently the 'Hooked on Classics' book club on that same station studied his 1968 classic Discover the Power Within You.
It is actually quite an impressive work, a carefully laid-out view of New Thought spirituality, especially the central notion that "You ask for success by getting into the consciousness of success" (p.114). Butterworth was obviously a great scholar, and his writing is based on an easy grasp of literature and religion. Despite its corny title, this is actually quite an erudite work, and its argument quite compelling.
Butterworth excels at putting some pretty difficult New Thought notions into plain language, evincing a grasp of aphorism and folksy philosophy that is a very old part of American literary culture. The book is intended as a practical guide, and so encourages people to apply their spiritual views to their daily lives. Reading the book one is constantly discovering areas in which the author seems to be speaking directly to us. I am also conscious that he is enunciating New Thought philosophies that date back to Mary Baker Eddy, though with far more accessible language. For example:

"When we realize that evil is simply the concealment of good, then any person who is unloving, vicious, or unjust is actually a person who is good but doesn't know it. In a very real way, we can change him - at least as far as we are concerned. We can see him with the "single eye" that relates only to the good and the true" (p. 124).

This is basic Christian Science thinking - that there is only goodness in God's creation, and that all of us, being a part of this creation, must at heart be good. The error is in the seeing; we choose to see bad. It is a challenging philosophy, and one difficult to apply, but I think Butterworth describes quite a noble effort in this passage.

One of the constant criticisms I hear about self-help books is that they pander to the selfish side of humanity, that they encourage materialism and tacky consumerist desires. This frustrates me because any careful reading of almost any self-help book exposes a constant injunction to develop the spiritual above all other attributes, and to see growth in metaphysical rather than materialist terms. It is a point that Butterworth himself drives home over and over again: "Success cannot be measured by what you have amassed" (p.131). This is, above all, a devotional work, a book that is about the development of a complete spiritual worldview, the growth of a soul. As such it illustrates perfectly one of the central points of my thesis, that self-help books are in fact quasi-religious texts that offer practical moral teachings and metaphysical worldviews.

The author has sought with this book to describe a practical, progressive and positively-focused Christianity. There is a surprising amount of theology in the book, much of it of a decidedly Girardian flavour. I know that would shock my academic friends, but I stand by my assessment. Butterworth's book is a lyrical, complex and deeply thoughtful text which challenges the authority of mainstream Christianity, as well as the easy laziness of reflexive individualism and the unexamined life.

Ask Yourself This - Wendy Craig-Purcell

Ond of the podcasts I listen to religiously is Unity FM's Hooked on Classics. It is a weekly book club that examines books by and about the Unity Church and New Thought. From the point of view of my thesis writing it is a valuable process, because it really examines New Thought ideas in depth, and from a number of different perspectives. On a personal level, I enjoy the whole process of reading a book very closely over a couple of months and hearing it analysed week-by-week. I've always wanted to be in a book group, but my insane schedule doesn't allow for it. This is the perfect compromise.

One of the books recently studied was Wendy Craig-Purcell's Ask Yourself This. Craig-Purcell is a Unity Minister, and spoke about her own book on several of the shows. Needless to say I found this a prticularly fascinating exercise, a kind of anti-Barthesian commentary that actually says a lot about self-help writing and it's excessive intertextuality and self-referencing.

The premise of the book is that it represents a series of personal questions that the reader should ask herself. These questions are challenging and are meant, naturally, to facilitate personal and spiritual growth. As well as exploring the questions at length in print, the reader is also asked to meditate on each question and to journal on the reflections, thereby deepening the impact of the reading process.

The questions are not particuarly innovative or unusual, but they are broad enough to be quite challenging to answer, and spending time in wondering about them causes any number of additional questions to be formed in the mind of the engaged reader. Questions include such things as:

"What am I looking for?
Who am I trying to change?
If I knew I would be successful, what would I be saying "yes" to?"

The final chapter of the book is a peculiar diversion into the area of home schooling, something about which the author is passionate. Home schooling is a hot topic in America, and Craig-Purcell is keen to explore it as a religious person who is neither conservative nor fundamentalist. I must say that this section seems to sit awkwardly with the rest of the book, however, and for this reader at least added nothing to the process being explored. And certainly in Australia, where home schooling is a non-issue, this whole bit can profitably be ignored, and the book be wound up at the end of chapter 7.

Ask Yourself This is interesting because it is not a practical self-help book. Published by Unity House, the Unity School of Christianity's own publishing arm, the book is decidedly spiritual in bent, and the questions are intended to inspire prayer and reflection rather than specific action. This leaves the whole process of reading the book and folllowing its suggestions a much more open-ended process, and one I think would be quite attractive to many readers, particularly if they are of a more mystical bent.

I enjoyed the book, and interestingly I read most of it while I was on retreat at a Benedictine monastery, and it was the perfect companion on such an occasion. Slim and easy-to-read, Ask Yourself This is an excellent primer in New Thought and a nifty text for helping the reader to explore some of the more challenging (and more grandly focused) spiritual niches of the mind.

The Quest for Meaning

I am quite a devotee of Unity FM, the on-line radio station run by the Unity School of Christianity, an American church that propagates the teachings of New Thought. The church has been around for over 100 years, and as churches go it is on the extreme-liberal end of things, with openly gay clergy and a reasonably open-ended theology that encourages people to seek their own spiritual truths. The church exists more to encourage positive thinking and the cultivation of spiritual technologies such as prayer and reflection. Unity is the largest and most widespread of the New Thought denominations.
Their radio station is reasonably new - I think it's been running for about two years now - and for me it offers a fascinating insight into American self-help culture. I especially enjoy it when they discuss books, and one of the shows, Hooked on Classics, is devoted solely to the study of New Thought books, normally reading one particular title over a number of weeks in a kind of on-line bookclub.
The output of Unity FM is quite impressive, and I am invariably weeks behind in my listening. So it is that I've just finished Jim Rosemergy's book The Quest for Meaning, which was the book being discussed a couple of months ago!
Until then I'd never heard of Jim Rosemergy, a Unity Church minister who turns out to have been an extremely prolific author. This book is about the notion of vocation and mission, and how we might view our lives and our work as some kind of spiritual mission. Interestingly, at exactly the same time I have also been reading Micki McGee's academic study of self-help writing, Self-Help Inc., and in it she discusses this very trope.
As one would expect from the pen of a mnister, this book is overtly religious, and targeted I would imagine primarily at church members. He discusses the classic New Thought notion that we are all children of God, and that all of us are blessed with a special mission that we should do our best to fulfill. This idea is much older than Unity, of course - I can trace it back at least as far as Swedenborg, and almost certainly way before. At the end of each chapter he provides a series of questions for reflection and topics for prayer, a set of work he refers to as an "Adventure." This kind of structure is quite typical of self-help writing, though in this case a number of the questions were quite esoteric - sometimes almost koan-like.
Rosemergy quotes the special notion of mission that Unity Church's founders, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, lived with. He includes their extraordinary "covenant" - a document they wrote together which set forth their life's plan and all that they were prepared to do to achieve it. This was written in 1892, and serves as an early example of the "mission statement" that all corporate entities are encoraged to committ to paper these days.
The Quest for Meaning is an interesting little book, and would fascinate a conventional theologian with its very specific - and very specifically New Thought - Christology.

Myrtle & Charles Fillmore

The Fillmores, founders of the Unity School of Christianity, were the great popularisers of New Thought, and their cultural importance and influence reach far beyond actual members of the Church.
Meeting reasonably late in life, Charles and Myrtle Fillmore were always an odd couple. At some point soon after their marriage, the sometime Christian Scientist Myrtle Fillmore attended a lecture in which the idea that God created only perfection sank into her consciousness at a really deep level. She meditated on this idea, and soon after she was cured of the tuberculosis which up until that point had been a death sentence for her. She never again suffered from its effects, and lived to a ripe old age.
Her husband Charles, a younger man, was an atheist and exceedingly sceptical about this new method of spiritual healing. However, upon witnessing his wife's complete recovery, he decided to investigate the metaphysical ideas of Christian healing in depth.
He and Myrtle became converts to this new religious idea, and after many years of study they established their own group, which eventually came to be called the Unity School of Christianity.
Charles Fillmore survived his wife by many years, and until his dying day he kept applying the principles of spiritual healing to his own legs, one of which was much shorter than another and required special shoes. He never managed to cure himself completely, but he maintained that his bad leg had grown many inches over the years, and the type of orthotics he required changed drastically as a result.
The religion they founded, The Unity School of Christianity, is still going strong. It is a positive thinking religion par excellence, with branches all over the world (including Australia). The Church is famous for publishing The Daily Word, a monthly magazine providing day-by-day affirmations and positive reflections. The world headquarters of Unity is also famous for maintaining Silent Unity, a 24 hour global prayer ministry.
The Unity Churches have distinguished themselves by being at the forefront of both New Age and progressive social thinking. They have sustained the careers of many notable self-help authors by inviting them to speak and lead worship, and Unity has an outstanding record when it comes to respect for gay people and other minorities. The majority of Unity ministers are women.
Charles Fillmore was a reasonably prolific writer, and he is most famous for his Metaphysical Bible Dictionary, his magnum opus that attempts to analyse the entire Bible according to New Thought metaphysical ideas.

Catherine Ponder

Catherine Ponder is one of the most stellar, and certainly one of the most loveable, figures in the history of self-help publishing.
Ms. Ponder rose to fame through a series of books which managed, somewhat perplexingly, to fuse Biblical stories with a self-help theory of prosperity and personal development. Currently I'm reading her great classic The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity. Some of her other titles include The Millionaires of Genesis and The Millionaire Moses.
Ponder's own biography is an essential part of her appeal. Born poor, she was widowed at an early age and left destitute. Through a careful study of the Bible and the writings of Charles & Myrtle Fillmore, Ponder managed to create for herself a prosperous lifestyle. She became a Unity minister, and went on to Pastor several successful congregations, teaching her own high-octane version of the prosperity gospel and running workshops on spirituality and the creation of money.
These workshops and lectures make up the bulk of the material in her books, and have also been the source of many of the examples and case studies she cites.
The books are wonderfully eccentric, veering from old-fashioned biblical exegesis to frenzied affirmations of impending wealth and well-being. She peppers the books with all kinds of eccentric advice and exercises, from throwing away all of one's old clothes in order to allow the universe to send you nice new ones, to writing letters to one's angels and secreting them in the family bible till your wishes come true.
As one would expect from a Unity minister, Ms. Ponder's philososphy is pretty standard New Thought, but her wildly successful books prove that her readership extends well beyond that particular religion.
I just adore her - I imagine she was/is a completely outrageous and very colourful person, and the assuredness of her assertions and randomness of her advice make the books constantly entertaining, and frequently inspiring.

Unity Centre of Positive Living

I went to the only Unity church left in Sydney now, the Unity Centre of Positive Living in Crows Nest. There were only 4 of us in attendance, but it was a lovely morning spent in prayer and uplifting quotes, affirmations, readings and music. Like all small churches in Australia, this one struggles just to keep its doors open these days, but they remain steadfastly positive (as their theology demands they do). I agreed with the Centre's wonderful minister, the Rev. Mary-Elizabeth Jacobs, when she said that it is important for such institutions to remain open and available. They provide a living link to the past and a place of refuge if people ever decide to go back to old-fashioned communal worship.
In terms of the history of self-help, Unity is very important. The church was started by Charles and Myrtle Fillmore, who based their eccentric metaphysical readings of the bible and their belief in the transformative power of the spoken word on the writings of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. Quimby had also inspired Ernest Holmes (founder of the Church of Religious Science, which was where Louise Hay did her training) and Mary Baker Eddy, his most controversial pupil. Quimby himself was more of a mental healer, and most people seem to say that he was an atheist. Bizarre how his ideas spawned so many churches!

Unity is one of the most influential of the New Thought schools of philosophy, and Unity churches in the US have become something of a locus for the latest trends in self-help and motivation, regularly hosting speaker such as Wayne Dyer and Cheryl Richardson.
Unity Churches posit themselves as Liberal Christian, but their exceedingly metaphysical interpretations of the Bible as a symbolic text puts them well outside any orthodox reformed church tradition. Their liberalism extends to an embrace of other religions and schools of thought, as well as an emphasis on personal growth, a new-agey concept of peace and harmony and a belief in the power of affirmations and positive thought.