I especially like your concept that the human experience of unity gives meaning, and perspective to the experience of separation. I submit that the dimly perceived unity with God is re-experienced in silence (Ps 46:10).

I think the ancient story tellers (in so far as we can gather their thoughts) sensed separation as an inbuilt part of human nature, but separation would have little meaning were it not preceded by some prior union or unity. This is the divine unity of the created order and the breath that breathes us is the spirit that unites us.

There is a depth to the human experience that can only be plumbed in silence. It is only there that we breathe the breath and encounter the inner movement of the divine.

Yes, Doug, I would like to have had Jesus write something. But we have what we have. Even so, we have much that the mere academic critic lacks. As T.S. Eliot said of the thinking of such a shadowy small-souled man, that his life finally becomes “the burnt out end of smoky days.” Instead Jesus does not leave us as wasted postmodernists. Jesus affirms that “many will come from the East (people of those lands) and the West (people of those lands) and banquet together in the kingdom of God.” How wonderful!

Thank you, John. It is unfortunate that the words of Jesus have been transmitted to us only through the perceptions of others. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful gift to us all if someone stumbled across an authentic Gospel According to Jesus? Only then could we truly know who he was and what he taught. Until then, our current Gospels, the letters of Paul, and the interpretations of people like Charles Fillmore will continue to stimulate our thinking.

Christ is also our father, and faith is our mother. Those of us in the Christian tradition cherish this idea.

The Adam and Eve story is often deconstructed by Westerners, but seldom re-constructed. The Jewish editors told it for a good reason. Separation, the perception of it, is the default position of human nature which it constantly returns to.

Emma Curtis Hopkins admitted as much. She wrote of omnipresence — the very word itself as acknowledging separation. “Ni’ comes from nihil the Latin word for nothing, absence, emptiness, hence separateness.

Mr. Fillmore, as a Christian man, admitted man had fallen from his experience of oneness, pointing to Jesus Christ and his restoring work for humanity, his mission in life, as the defining moment.

My final thought is that modern Unity, in becoming a school of non-Christianity, has no sacred text, no authoritative voice to speak to this culture.

Jesus Christ’s words are our text. The study and practice of them is our way out of the experience of separation, Doug. I remember Gandhi saying, “Jesus does not just belong to you Christians. He belongs to all of us”. And so it is.