I am going to be devoting my piece in the email blast for the next few weeks to the topic of the work we are doing collectively as a congregation; Cultural Shift Leadership Wisdom. Last week I wrote of the next process we are collectively going to engage in, Mining our Past Discovering our Future, and why it is vitally important for as many of the congregation as is able to attend. Today I will expand on those ideas. 

          To prepare for the work we are undertaking I have been studying, re-reading, and discovering new information to help awaken me to the possibilities and road blocks that may occur. This week I was studying a book I had in the seminary call Learning While Leading. A radical idea that I may not know everything or and that part of the process of leading is a discovering of what one is aware of and what the author called designed blindness.

          The author wrote "designed blindness is our choice, conscious or otherwise, to be unaware of that which is available to be known to us." The part that seemed to give me the Divine slap against my head was "it is we/me who prevent us from knowing. Often it is our culture that colludes in protecting us/me from seeing what we do not want to know (Faber-Robertson)." This got me thinking about the upcoming process of Mining our Past. This is a perfect opportunity for us as a community to discover what the past is trying to reveal to us. To help us remove the blinders so that we may more clearly see.

In keeping with the Unity principles there is no out there doing something to me but rather the external world is trying to reveal to me, help me become more aware, of what needs to be known so I can move ever more boldly into the future. We do this work in a spirit of collegiality, openness and play. The process is not about what we have done wrong; shame and blame based thinking, but rather to collectively discover how it was that we have arrived at this moment of time together. To look with open eyes to see if there are places and activities where we can shift and change to get more of the results we want to experience in our lives.

Everyone is invited to attend February 21st from 9 am-3 pm. Lunch will be provided. Please sign up at the hospitality desk so we can adequately be prepared. George Harrison in a song once sang "if you don't know where you're going any road will take you there." I would add if you don't know how you got where you are how will you ever discover where it is you want to go.

This Sunday we begin a new series on prayer. Prayer is fundamental to Unity. Prayer is the foundation from which all creation begins. Rev Ray will be providing the message; Debbie Reinhardt-Brocious will be providing the special music; and Robin Nelson will be leading the meditation.