4:50 AM

What Matters Most……..Commentary by Jim High

We called my Mother’s mother “Grandmother Sis Sue.”  She died just twelve days short of her 100^th birthday.  But she lives on with me at 4:50 AM on most mornings.  Let me explain.  As a young boy I went to the orthodontist in Memphis every month for eight years so he could work on straighten my teeth.   Way back then there were few orthodontists and since Sis Sue lived in Memphis, it was easy for our family to make the 100 mile monthly trip for my teeth, and for a weekend visit at Grandmother Sis Sue’s house.

I guess over the years we were there on a lot of Sundays, but I never remember going to church, or anyone else going to church while we were in Memphis visiting.  I think we went enough at home to make up for not going while at Sis Sue’s house.  So it was interesting to me that sometime after I graduated from college she started sending me a subscription to Daily Word from Unity.  I thought it was a little daily devotional booklet like the one our Methodist church gave out that I never read, so although it came every month, I never read it.

But Grandmother Sis Sue dutifully renewed that annual subscription every year for me until she died.  I couldn’t tell her I never read them, and thankfully she never asked.  They just kept coming month after month.  I wasn’t thinking about the Daily Word subscription when she died, but several months later the invoice for the renewal subscription came directly to me, so now I had to make a choice.  Pay it and continue not to read it, let it lapse, or send in my check and then actually read it every day.  That invoice was like my dear sweet Grandmother sitting there looking at me to see what I would do.

Well you know the rest of this story, or at least you think you do.  Yes, I sent in the check, and yes, I started to read the daily messages of inspiration.  And that’s what they are.  Unity, I discovered, is very different from the traditional church where I still belong, but never attend.  Unity’s message is that there is only one power and one presence in the Universe.  This one power and one presence lives in and through all of creation, and is in us and all around us.  Actually it is us and everything else in the created Universe.   And that message has literally changed my life.

I’ve always loved books and can spend hours in a good bookstore.  I began to check out the Spiritual and New Thought sections.  That is where I ran across the Conversations With God books by Neale Donald Walsh, Science Of Mind by Ernest Holmes and all the current books by biblical scholars like Marcus Borg, Bart Ehrman, Bishop John Shelby Spong, John Dominic Crossan and a host of others.  Until I discovered Unity, thanks to my Grandmother’s careful persistence and quiet but steady resolve, I never knew about the spiritual path or the oneness and connection of everything in the Universe.

What matters most.....is that every morning when my alarm goes off at 4:50 AM, and I get up to start my day with Unity’s Daily Word, Science Of Mind, the Tao and whatever book I am currently reading to expand my knowledge and understanding of this Universe we live in, I think about and thank my Grandmother Sis Sue.  Some mornings I actually talk out loud to her, and I always sense her presence in the room with me.  If I could see her, I know she would be smiling.