Written and Presented by Jane Leonard
Given at Unity San Diego
Mother's Day, May 11, 2025
Hi Friends —
The "speaker" at Unity San Diego on Mother's Day, 2025, was Myrtle Fillmore, presented by Jane Leonard, President of the Board of Trustees at Unity of the Westside (Culver City, CA). I asked the churches and Jane if I could share her presentation. Jane replied,
"I would be honored to have you share Myrtle ... Her message is powerful; I’m sure Myrtle would be very pleased to know that people can access it personally no matter where they are on the winged globe and through the ethers of the anima mundi! ... Myrtle belongs to us all - I am just very happy to bring her to life in my own way for all to experience."
So Jane and both churches have graciously permitted sharing Jane's presentation here. You can also watch it on Youtube.
Give yourself 30 minutes today to hear this sacred message from Myrtle Fillmore, so beautifully expressed through a Unity church congregant and leader, Jane Leonard. Click here to receive a postcard with Myrtle's "anthem," the Prayer of Faith. And, when you are finished, consider clicking on one of the church links above and sending a note of thanks to Jane and a tithe to the churches for freely sharing Myrtle Fillmore, The Mother of Unity.
Thank you, Jane!
Sunday, May 25, 2025
Meditation
And now dear ones, let's take a few moments to just be still. Be still, be still, and know that we are in the presence of the mighty Spirit and the Divine Mother on this special, special day.
We take a deep breath in, bringing in all of the vibrations of this wonderful space and exhale into the presence of the one God. We feel our hearts beating one. We feel our minds aligned as one. We feel our hearts together connected to everyone in this space, to all those outside of this space, and all those throughout the world who are humanly searching for light. We surround ourselves with light right now in this precious space and time.
With each breath, let's just take a moment to just hear our breathing and our hearts beating as one. With each breath and each heartbeat, we are grateful, we are thankful for this opportunity to be together today, to be still. Be still, be still, and know that we are in the presence of the divine God. Amen.
Message
Oh, that was lovely. It's just lovely! This is a very convenient little contraption. We didn't have these back then.
We are so blessed to be here today in this lovely space with the high ceilings and the light and love of the people who are here. Reverend Karla, thank you so much for inviting me to attend today. You know her last name is Lightner. This is very important and significant because that is who she is. She brings so much light to everything she does, so we are very blessed. these marvelous musicians, just fantastic! Thank you so, so, so much.
We also have here the white carnation, which is the official flower of Mother's Day. Anna Jarvis, who was the founder of Mother's Day, chose the white carnation because the white carnation does not lose its leaves, its petals when it dies. Instead, it holds its petals close to its heart as a mother holds her children close to her heart. Thank you for having those here for us today as well.
We also are graced with Unity Wings. Many people ask me, "What is the origin of the Unity Wings?" Well, I'm going to tell you. Interestingly, it's similar to the comments that were made earlier about the Earth.
The winged globe originated in the Ancient Egyptian culture over 5,000 years ago. Charles, you know my husband Charles, has noted that it emblemizes the perfect soul in its flight back to the supreme. Its original source in the bosom of absolute love and wisdom. Charles and I chose the winged globe as a symbol for Unity, because it represents the mind conscious of its spiritual origin and power. As man develops spiritual consciousness, he attains the realization of the soul as the wings of the body.
Charles also noted that the winged globe is a symbol of the Earth and its soul, because the Earth has a soul as have its products of every description all exists in the ether, the anima mundi, the Divine Mother. When people of the Earth lift up their thoughts to God, then the planet itself takes wings into a higher radiation of universal life.
We first used the winged globe as symbol on the cover of our debut issue of Unity Magazine in June of 1891, just a few years ago. Just then, the symbol has gone through over 100 different changes but still represents the Unity across the world.
Now for the rest of my talk, I am going to be sharing words from my letters and writings and I am going to read them for precision. But if you'd like to, you may just close your eyes and listen to my voice as I speak the Truth to you dear ones here today. If you happen to doze off, I will not be offended. Perhaps your body might need a little rest.
I see the title chosen for my talk today is "Meet Myrtle Fillmore, the Mother of Unity." Well, I feel you are crowning me with an honor that belongs to the Holy Spirit, which is omnipresent and which expresses in the loving desires of the hearts of all those who are endeavoring to manifest the mother nature of God.
You can call me the Mother of Unity. Well, I know of nothing that would give me greater joy than to feel that God could work so perfectly through me as to bring forth a great ministry and a place of peace and goodwill and health such as this. But in reality, I feel that I am only the soul who caught the first vision of this ministry and who nurtured that vision until others came along to help in the establishment of it in the minds and hearts of our dear ones.
Charles and I just received from the Father some ideas that proved helpful in our own family and then we shared them with others and they too were helped. You may never have suspected it, but Unity work is a dream that has been nurtured and built from the invisible to the concrete through love, devotion, and lots of good hard work.
We have never cared to interest folks in our own lives. It makes no difference to others who we are or what we have done. What is important is that we are doing what the Father has given us to do according to our best light. We are glad to share it. We are not trying to interest folks in the Unity School but in the ideas of the Christ Mind, which is the foundation of the work and of our life.
Since I'm meeting you for the first time today, I think it is wise to share with you a little bit about my own history so that you may be given an example of the transformative power of the Divine Mind in its perfect alignment with God. I was born in Missouri on August 6th, 1845 to my parents Marcus and Lucy Page, and I was christened Mary Carolyn, but my father always called me Myrtle. They were successful Ohio farmers and strict puritanical Methodists, but there was something in me that protested against the declaration that I was, by nature, evil or sinful.
I was a very sickly child and grew up to be an emaciated little woman upon whom relatives and doctors had placed the stamp "TB" as tuberculosis ran in my father's family. Despite my illnesses, I was eager to read and learn, but little girls were not encouraged to do so at that time, so I secretly took my brother's books to study. Myths, fairy tales, histories and scientific works, and I eventually became a writer for a newspaper in Columbus, Ohio.
When I was 21 years of age, I enrolled in the literary course for ladies at Oberlin College. For those who are not familiar with Oberlin College, Oberlin was the very first university in the United States to allow a Women's Studies program, but they only lasted one year because women were not eligible for the full four-year term.
Upon graduating in 1867, I began teaching public school in Missouri and what a joy it was to me to come in touch with those young folks and help them to hitch their wagons to stars and to keep their eyes toward the heights.
When I met Charles, I was nine years his senior, but our connection was strong and we were married. We had two children, Lowell and Rickert, and settled permanently in Kansas City in 1885. It was there that we had our third son, Royal. I was fearfully sick. I had all the ills of mind and body that I could bear. Medicine and doctors ceased to give me relief and I was in despair.
It was at the age of 40, while in attendance at a lecture by Christian science practitioner Eugene B. Weeks, that my soul and heart were filled with hungry longings for truth. This was in the midst of a diagnosis that I would live no more than six more months. What joy to realize that I had been laboring under the belief that ill health was inherited and the truth of my divine parentage freed and healed me. It flashed upon me that I might talk to the life in every part of my body and have it do just what I wanted.
I went to all the life centers and organs in my body and spoke words of truth to them, words of strength and power. I told the life in my liver that it was not torbid or inert, but full of vigor and energy. I told the life in my stomach that it was not weak or inefficient, but energetic, strong, and intelligent. I told the life in my abdomen that it was no longer infested with ignorant ideas of disease put there by myself and by doctors, but that it was alive with the sweet, pure, wholesome energy of God. I told my limbs that they were active and strong. I told my eyes that they did not see of themselves, but that they expressed the sight of Spirit and that they were drawing on an unlimited source. I told them that they were young eyes, clear, bright eyes because the light of God shone through them. I told my heart that the pure love of Jesus Christ flowed in and through its beatings and that all the world felt its joyous pulsation.
I asked their forgiveness for the foolish ignorant course that I had pursued in the past when I condemned them and called them weak, inefficient, and diseased. I kept right on both silently and aloud, declaring the words of truth until the organs responded. I read the works of Mary Baker Eddy and of Emma Curtis Hopkins, both gifted Christian Science educators and writers. I pursued courses of study and was ordained as a Christian Science practitioner in December of 1890. I immediately sought to help others.
From the moment I perceived the healing law, I could not let my neighbors alone. They had to know there was a better way, but I was not meddlesome. Charles joined me as a practitioner of spiritual healing and soon clients would just come to our home and we would in turn teach them this Truth of Being for healing. But offensive little troubles would continue to give me difficulty. Every time I was ready to shout, "Victory," up would bop the reminder that I was not yet free.
Inspired by scripture in Romans chapter 12 verse 2 that we all know, "Be transformed by the renewal of your mind." I at last began to search my daily thought more carefully and recognized the threefold nature of our being in soul and body and mind. The best way to discipline the mind, develop intuition, and manifest the Christ consciousness is through prayer and meditation. It is through prayer that we become spiritually quickened, illumined, and guided. Prayer has the power to stir, to action within us the vital energies that renew, strengthen, and sustain mind, soul, and body. Prayer is to change our minds and hearts so that God's omnipresent good may fill our minds and hearts and manifest in our lives.
Prayers are not sent out at all. We are to concentrate all our attention upon the Truth of God and the Truth of our own Being. Prayers, communion with God, an attitude of mind and heart, and positive declaration of this Truth sets up a new current of thought, power, belief that what we need already is manifest through divine mind. Spirit intends you to be a radiating center that will draw to you whatever you need to be well and strong, successful and prosperous. God is the very intelligence that is within us in every nerve and brain cell and structure of the body, as the very love that draws together and holds in perfect harmony all the elements of our being if we will only allow it.
It was through publications that Charles and I were able to share these ideas. Starting as a monthly magazine called Modern Thought, articles were written to impart the truth of being. Truth principles, as I like to call them Christ principles, could be applied to daily living for awakening and healing. We also issued a monthly magazine for children called Wee Wisdom. We began the Society of Silent Help in 1890 and met every night at 10 o'clock in silent soul communication. To reach those who could not have the benefit of personal healing or teaching, it was always deemed sacred to pray for the absent.
We encouraged readers of our magazine to join the Society and participate in the silence. It was open to every soul in the universe. You may know of this today as Silent Unity. Throughout the 1890s, we continued our association with great spiritual thinkers of the time and we explored the gospels of Jesus and the religious literature of both East and West. Our articles and news items came from a variety of spiritual teachings, Transcendentalism, and Metaphysics, Ralph Waldo Emerson's ideas that we have "a spark of divinity within us," and that we share our divine and loving nature with God.
We also studied Theosophy, Christian Science, Hinduism, Buddhism, and even Spiritualism. From our studies of eastern and western thought, we extracted the truth from all religions and developed a teaching called Practical Christianity. It is the teaching of Jesus correctly interpreted the application of all the affairs of life, of the doctrine of Jesus the Christ. Our society was soon called Unity, as we were inspired to recognize that these truths from ancient cultures, religions, and spiritual practice could become one in unity.
My work is a work of love and encouragement and blessing, a work with you, the individual, with a view to lift you into a greater light and consciousness of freedom and power and plenty that you may the better do your part in unity with others.
There is a very special prayer, a "prayer of faith," that I hope all of you have in your little white bags. I believe it was provided. If you have a bag, you can pull it out. This Prayer of Faith was written by Hannah More Kohaus and published in Wee Wisdom in 1898. It has lasted the test of time. It has become my mantra and my anthem and we can listen to it now.
God is my help in every need.
God does my every hunger feed.
God walks beside me, guides my way
through every moment of the day.I now am wise, I now am true,
patient, kind, and loving too.
All things I am, can do, and be
through Christ the Truth that is in me.God is my health. I can't be sick.
God is my strength, unfailing, quick.
God is my all. I know no fear
since God and love and Truth are here. Amen.
Thank you so much for allowing me to come and share with you today. This has been such a wonderful opportunity for me to come back and be in a lovely space such as this. Happy Mother's Day to you all, because we all share the divine mother within us. Thank you so much.
–Myrtle Fillmore presented by Jane Leonard
© 2025, Jane Leonard
Shared with permission and blessing.
