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.
