Prayer time 4 March 2026

Praying for the world we love

Download a PDF of the prayer script

Orientation

Haere mai. Welcome. Thank you for being here. Tonight we pray for the world.

One teaching point before we begin. In Unity, we do not stand apart from the world and send good wishes toward it. We are the world. The same one Presence that breathes in you breathes in every person on tonight’s news. Every leader. Every refugee. Every child. That is a precise metaphysical claim. Tonight, we pray from inside it. Let’s begin.

Relaxation

Let the body find its weight. Feel the chair, the floor, whatever is beneath you. Unclench the jaw. Drop the shoulders. Let the hands open. You have come from the day. The news has been in your ears. The world has been in your chest. Let it be here. We are not leaving the world to pray. We are bringing it with us. One slow breath in. And out. The same breath that moves in you moves in every human being alive tonight. In Tehran. In Gaza. In Kyiv. In Khartoum. In your own street. One breath. One life. One Presence.

Concentration

We set our minds now on what is true, before appearances. The foundational statement of Unity:

There is only one Presence and one Power in the universe and in my life. God, the Good, omnipotent.

Omnipotent. All powerful. There is no power operating outside this one Power - including in the halls of government, including in the arsenals of nations, including in the decisions made this week in Washington, in Moscow, in Tehran, in Jerusalem, in Riyadh, in Pyongyang. One Power. Present everywhere. In everything. The sphere whose centre is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere. Appearances tell their own story. We know that. We are metaphysical. And the central claim of metaphysical Christianity, carried forward in Unity teaching, is this:

The Christ is a Presence that indwells every person living.

Charles Fillmore called it the I AM. Emmet Fox called it the Divine Spark. The mystics called it the Ground of the Soul. Paul called it Christ in you, the hope of glory. It is in you. It is in the person you find most difficult to love. It is in every leader whose decisions fill you with despair tonight.

We do not pray for the world from a safe distance. We pray as the world, from within the one consciousness we all share. When we hold Iran in the light, we hold the Iran in ourselves - the places of fear, of rigidity, of grasping for control. When we hold Gaza in the light, we hold our own grief, our own helplessness, our own longing for it to stop. This is why Jesus said love your enemies. He was a metaphysician. He knew there is no enemy outside yourself.

We concentrate now on what Unity calls the Statement of Being. Say it quietly within:

I am a spiritual being, living a human experience, in a world that is also God’s. The Christ in me recognises the Christ in every person I will name tonight. This recognition is my prayer.

‘Let your mind and heart release all that disturbs you. Let your body be still, and all the frettings of your body, and all that surrounds it; let the earth and sea and air be still and heaven itself; and then think of Spirit as streaming, pouring, rushing, and shining into you, through you, and out from you in all directions while you sit quiet.’

-Plotinus, cited in Eric Butterworth, In the Flow of Life, p. 27.

Meditation

We enter the silence now, and we carry the world in. Close your eyes or lower your gaze. Let your breathing settle. We are going to name peoples and places. As each name is spoken, simply see the light - the Christ light, indwelling. You do not need to fix anything. You do not need to understand the politics. You are a pray-er. Your work is to see truly.

Silence - 15 seconds

The people of Ukraine and Russia. Ordinary people. Mothers and soldiers and bread-makers and teachers. The Christ in them, known and loved.

Silence - 20 seconds

The people of Palestine and Israel. Grief on every side. Ancient land, ancient God, ancient longing for peace. The Christ in them, unextinguished.

Silence - 20 seconds

The people of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen. Nations where ordinary life has become extraordinary suffering. The Christ in them, steady beneath the rubble.

Silence - 20 seconds

The people of Iran. The people. Young people, women, men who want to live freely, who pray their own prayers in their own language. The Christ in them, alive.

Silence - 20 seconds

The people of South Sudan and Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Africa’s grief, the world’s blind spot. The Christ in them, seen tonight, by us.

Silence - 20 seconds

The people of the Pacific. Our neighbours. Islands losing ground to rising water. Nations whose existence is a climate argument the wealthy world keeps deferring. The Christ in them, our own.

Silence - 20 seconds

The leaders of nations. We do not name them. You know their faces. Hold the face that is hardest for you to hold in love right now. Hold it. The Christ in their being.

Silence - 30 seconds

And now, the whole world. Every continent. Every language. Every person awake and afraid tonight, and every person asleep and dreaming. The one Presence. Everywhere. In everything. In all of them.

Silence - 45 seconds

Teilhard de Chardin wrote that one day humanity will harness the energies of love, and on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we will have discovered fire. Tonight we are discovering fire.

Silence - 30 seconds

Realisation

We speak what we know to be true.

God is the only Presence operating in this world.

There is no place where God is not.

The Christ is indwelling every human being without exception. The central claim of metaphysical Christianity.

I am the world, praying itself awake.

The love I extend in this room tonight is real. It moves in the one consciousness we all share.

And we affirm, together, for every person named in tonight’s silence:

The Christ in me sees the Christ in you.

The peace of God is present in this situation, beneath every appearance.

Divine order is at work, even here. Even now.

I release the need to understand this with my human mind. I trust what I know with my spiritual knowing.

And one more. Say this for yourself, as a person who has just held the weight of the world in prayer:

I am held. The same love I extended tonight holds me completely.

Appreciation

We give thanks.

For the courage to pray boldly.

For the willingness to hold what is hard. For the teaching that makes it possible to love without naive sentiment, because we understand what we are loving.

Thank you for the Christ, indwelling all. Thank you for the one Presence, moving in every breath on earth tonight. Thank you for this room, this gathering, this practice.

Teilhard said we will discover fire. We have touched it tonight - in the silence, in the seeing, in the love extended to the face we found most difficult. That is the fire. And it does not go out.

As one body now, the Lord’s Prayer. Our Father, who art in heaven…

Go well. The world you prayed for tonight is the world you return to. You are not the same. Neither, in ways we cannot measure, is it.

Prepared by Jacinda Faloon-Cavander for Unity of NZ