This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
Healing The Broken Harmony – Rev. Aimee Daniels
DESCRIPTION
In a time when division is loud and certainty is prized, this message invites us into a deeper spiritual practice: loving beyond belief. Drawing on Howard Thurman and New Thought’s vision of oneness, we explore how broken harmony begins within the human heart — and how healing within us ripples outward into our families, communities, and world. At the edge of the known, we are called not just to hold spiritual truth, but to embody courageous love in how we show up with one another. When we heal our own fear, separation, and certainty, we become living agents of collective healing.
SUMMARY
Rev. Aimee Daniels explores the spiritual practice of healing broken harmony and cultivating courageous love in relationships and communities. Drawing on teachings from Desmond Tutu, Howard Thurman, and Charles Fillmore, she argues that true spiritual maturity involves recognizing shared humanity across differences. Broken harmony emerges when fear manifests as righteousness, when the need for certainty replaces curiosity, and when people are categorized rather than seen in their wholeness. Through the parable of the Good Samaritan, Daniels illustrates that courageous love means staying present, listening without defensiveness, seeing humanity beyond fear, and choosing dignity over certainty. She emphasizes that compassion—the highest expression of love—can be cultivated through daily practice and service. Healing broken harmony requires examining where love has been withheld and recognizing that inner transformation is inherently relational, affecting how individuals show up in relationships and communities. The invitation is for individuals and communities to become agents of healing by embodying love, practicing fierce compassion, and remembering the fundamental oneness that connects all people.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Aimee Daniels:
Thank you, Greg. Missing Paige this morning. That song is a beautiful song. There’s lots of nuggets there aren’t there? Giving up the desire to be right, that’s a big one. We can see ourselves as one and it all comes down to love. So this is our work as spiritual beings having a human experience, isn’t it? Sometimes it’s hard to be in that place. And I’d like to start with a story, which is from the book of Forgiving by Desmond Tutu and his daughter Ubuntu. And it’s a story about a young Palestinian man and he was very angry and he was part of whatever they would say, resistance or whatever. He was out there fighting. He gets arrested and put in prison and he becomes friends with the guard there. And the guard happens to be an Israeli and they begin to understand that they actually have a shared humanity, that they are not so different from each other.
And while he’s there, he decides that the fighting and the violence is not going to get them anywhere. And so he makes a commitment that he’s going to be a bridge builder and he’s going to go back and he’s going to do things differently. And so he does that. He gets out of prison, he gets married, he has some children. And sadly one of his children was shot on a playground and one of his friends said to him, well, do you see now we have to keep fighting. And he said, that was one soldier who shot my child. 100 other Israeli soldiers came and planted a garden in her memory. And he said, so I still believe the peace is the way. But he kept an openness in himself that I think would be pretty hard to do, don’t you think? I think I’d have a hard time doing that.
So our traditions that we grow up in, like our religions or our culture, we can be taught right and wrong or this is a way, and this is not the way, but mystics look at things differently. Mystics emphasize, transform being, or we might say transformed beingness. And so as we become more spiritually mature, we ask different questions. How do I treat people when I feel afraid, when I feel threatened, when I feel offended? And let’s be honest when I don’t agree with their point of view. I mean, I think this is up for a lot of us right now. How do I treat people? But when we want to step beyond what we know, our belief systems really don’t carry us anymore. And love and connection and cultivating bridges is the way forward. And so the greatest spiritual question may not be what do I believe or what do you believe it might be? How do we love when it’s hard? How do we express love when it’s hard?
So in this beautiful reading from For the Inward Journey by Howard Thurman, and if you don’t know who he was, he was, I would say he was an amazing black mystic theologian. He’s a beautiful writer. This book we’re using, really his daughter put this book together and it’s kind of a collection of the different things he wrote. It’s not a linear book. So you could literally pick it up and read one chapter. I happened to be talking about one chapter today, but he was brilliant and he, Martin Luther King would go to him for counsel, especially at difficult times. I think Reverend Darrell said that last Sunday. So part of the reading that Paul shared with us is actually up on the screen. And Howard Thurman introduces this idea that we never know somebody else’s journey. That’s how I think about it in simple terms.
And we need to hear their story. We need to understand what matters to them. He calls them landmarks and guideposts for their life. So what were the things that happened in their life that inspired them? What are the things that they believe? What matters to them for us to really be in communication with the other person? And that can feel like a high calling, can’t it? Abraham Lincoln said, I don’t like that person. I should get to know them better and think about that. Often. We don’t want to get to know someone better if we’ve judged them. We just don’t. Right? I know I’m guilty of that. And so we need to see and honor the other person to be in relationship with them. Charles Fillmore taught that harmony is the divine law of being and broken harmony. So I want to introduce this idea of broken harmony.
Broken harmony is really a relational condition. We may disagree on our ideology or our spiritual beliefs or something like that, but what happens then the relationship gets broken. So broken harmony is a relational idea and it shows up When our fear expresses as righteousness, we might be really defending our point of view. That’s one way it shows up. It can show up where our need for certainty replaces our curiosity. We need things to be a certain way or we’re not okay. And we cease to be curious. When we put people in a category, that’s another way it shows up. And when we stop being able to see that which is sacred in each other, that’s how broken harmony shows up. And you can see in the world today, we have wars, we have instability, we have cultural and political polarization that are happening right now.
I can’t not mention ice activity, social media, people going crazy on social media, but we don’t really have a shared reality as a country anymore. And maybe we never actually did. I want to throw that out here. Things are more known today than they were. So things that were happening in the past didn’t necessarily make it into the public knowledge. But Bono, I was listening to Pandora and Bono was introducing a song where he was going to sing with Bruce Stings Springsteen. And he said, America is not just a country, it’s an idea. And when I think about that, I think we don’t agree on what the idea means anymore. And maybe we never actually did. But I’m a spiritual optimist, so I believe all of this stuff is coming up. It’s going to be healed. I believe there is a higher power that is working here that is bringing up what needs to be healed in our country.
I believe that. And Howard Thurman in his book said, don’t sit at the wailing wall and talk about what’s wrong. He encourages us to what he would call the large view. I would say the higher consciousness, which he says it releases courage in us and that courage will sustain us. And that’s why having faith is important. That’s why. And cultivating our faith is important. If we’re going to work together, he called it a new heaven and a new Earth that within us, which is what I would call spirit, he says, it’s not easily vanquished. We can be fragile as humans, but we’re also perseverant. There’s that in us, which does not want to stop. Do you know what I’m talking about right now that’s like, no, I’m standing firm on this. And the spirit of God is in you as an individual and it’s expressing through you and whatever is put in your heart, that is spirit speaking to you.
Let’s talk about where broken harmony begins. And that’s my next slide there. He does a great job of keeping up with me. I went old school on my notes because I noticed I was getting so distracted by my computer all the time that said, this is better. So the broken harmony doesn’t actually start in the system. It starts in fear. If you think about it, fear creates distance. We might relate to this personally. I had it happen this week and a meeting I was in, I started, the person kind of took over and I was just sitting there going, why am I here? Why am I even here? My voice is not even in this room. And so my fear story took over. And what does that happen then? So then, because I’m distancing myself from them, it’s creating the story and the story creates separation. And thankfully this is someone I knew well enough that at the end of the meeting I’m like, I left my body.
And he didn’t look at me. I was totally nuts. But it was just a misunderstanding. It was just a misunderstanding. But that’s what we do in our minds. I have a good friend that I work with and her daughter, I was just at a way at a conference for work. I need to put that container around it. And so she was there and a lot of other people were there. And her daughter has been a teacher in the area of Minneapolis St. Paul that ice was the most active. She’s a grade school teacher. And besides going into the area every day and she’s been helping people, she’s been taking them food and stuff like that. And my friend has been terrified every day now that is shifting. So thank goodness for that. But another friend of ours came up to her and said, isn’t it terrible that people are fighting back against ice?
And my friend was just like, I mean I like her, but what is that? And she’s like, just like me, she left her body. And I said, we know that this is a good person by all these other things and I won’t go into that. I’m like, I think it’s just she was taught to not fight authority. And that’s her frame. So these are two people who are friends. And this is what happens in real life when we have different views of life and our work spiritually is just to notice where we’re at and not pull back. So I’m going to go to a story now that some of you may know, and it’s a story of the Good Samaritan. And I don’t know why this story came into my head about this talk maybe because I think everyone in this country is our neighbor.
I don’t care where they came from or how long they’ve been here. Everybody makes this country great. They bring something to it. So the way the story came about, if you know about Jesus, the only thing that they can really say that was his words. Bible scholars agree on this, is the parables. Because people weren’t literate then. So they taught in stories. And so a lawyer asked Jesus and he might’ve been trying to bait him to say something that was against the beliefs of the time. He said, who is my neighbor? And Jesus tells a story. He says, A man’s traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and he’s attacked by robbers and they beat him. They strip him, they throw him in the ditch, he’s half dead. And a priest passes by, he passes by. He doesn’t stop to help him. And then a Levite, who is also a spiritual person in the day passes by.
And one thing to say about the Samaritans, they were not highly regarded in that culture. They were shunned. People didn’t talk to them. And so for a Samaritan to be the one who stopped to help, this man is pretty incredible. So he’s the one who stopped and he’s moved by compassion and he patches up the wounds. He takes ’em to the inn, he arranges for his care and he gives the innkeeper money. So Jesus asks, which of these was a neighbor? And the answer was the one who showed mercy. And Jesus said, go and do likewise. So I like to interpret things metaphysically because to me this is a story about the consciousness of love and action. It didn’t matter that he was a Samaritan and this was a Jew, it didn’t matter to him, the traveler. So the person who got hurt represents the part of us.
Well, it represents us on our soul’s journey, our life’s journey. But it represents the part of us that’s wounded and vulnerable or cut off from feeling a sense of wholeness and the robbers. I love what the robbers represent, fear, conditioning, trauma, false beliefs about separation and anything that robs us of our awareness of our divine identity. Anybody relate to that in your own life? We all have robbers in our life that make us think we’re not good enough. And the priest in the Levite represent really rules-based religion or spirituality. They represent fear-based, disconnected from compassion. Just this is how it is. And the Samaritan represents what we might call the Christ consciousness. It’s moving into action through love, through your higher awareness, your higher self offering, compassion without condition and seeing divine worth beyond someone’s identity, beyond their story. So really seeing someone in their wholeness and actually represents where we go to heal. So where we go to restore our own sense of knowing our divine worth.
And so the question for us is, are we living from a consciousness of love or are we living from a consciousness of putting people in categories, judging other people’s beliefs, whatever we might do? That’s really the question for us, because love actually expressing love. It’s not about agreement or approval or sameness or any of these things. It’s about recognizing the divine life that lives in someone else just like it lives in you. I mean, sometimes we have to do it for ourselves. We anyone ever have a day where you’re like, I’m not feeling the divine life expressing as me. I think I have those days a lot actually. But it’s also compassion and action, and it’s like restoring people’s dignity, which that seems really important to me right now. And so the Samaritan didn’t cross the road because he believed the same things as the person who was in the ditch. He crossed the road because love was who he was. That was a decision that he made. And Howard Thurman teaches us that love is most visible when it moves toward those we’ve been taught to avoid. We might say love crosses the lines that we draw.
Anybody draw lines in your life? Yeah, we do it. We just want to notice that we do it. So let’s talk about what courageous love means. It means staying present. And this is true collectively and individually. So maybe this is a little more easier to relate to if you think about it personally. So courageous love means staying present when you want to withdraw. Anyone ever want to withdraw? I know I do, right? Listening when you want to defend so you can be right or be in relationship, right? Seeing humanity when fear says other, that this person is another. Choosing dignity over certainty. What do I mean by that? I mean the dignity of others over things needing to be a certain way. It’s really embracing an openness about how you show up. It’s really holding yourself to a high standard. Actually. How am I really showing up?
And love doesn’t always feel safe to us. If you’re putting yourself out there, think about the first time you told someone you love them and they hadn’t said it yet. It’s scary, right? It’s scary sometimes to be the one to extend the love, but love is always sacred. And I like what if you haven’t read the book of Joy, I highly recommend that one. It’s Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama, and it’s just them having a conversation. It’s lovely book two of the stars spiritually, in my opinion, of our lifetime. And they’re talking about compassion. And to me, compassion is the highest expression of love. And they shared this quote that they attributed to the Buddha, which is what is the one thing which when you possess, you have all other virtues. It’s compassion. I love that you have all other virtues. And they agree that compassion can be cultivated and we can each do that daily if we bring it into our awareness in our practice, we can also do it through our service.
I’m disappointed. Reverend Judy’s not here. I think maybe she’s on the live stream, but our own ministry to me is a great example of compassion in action. They go and they serve different places, but right now they’re taking on something new, which is really exciting, is for us to help with the needs of immigrants that are not being met. So we’re going to be basic human necessities of life. Some of the resources that have been available to immigrants have gone away, and we’re going to get involved with something where we’re going to help with that. And that to me is compassion and action. So good work om team. So Howard Thurman says that we are bound together in a single garment of life. And what touches one touches all, and this to me is what we call oneness in our teaching. It’s really oneness. And we’re not spiritually separate. Even when we feel separate, like being human can make us feel pretty separate. Can it? We can feel pretty separate, but we aren’t. And we can see someone in their inherent worth, even when we don’t agree with them. We can raise ourself up in the spiritual truth and know this is a person that was created by spirit or whatever your word is, just like I am. They just been on a different path.
Charles Fillmore, as I said earlier, said, harmony is the divine law of being. So if harmony is divine law, then broken harmony is forgetting that that’s the truth. And healing harmony is remembering our oneness. Ernest Holmes taught us there’s one life and that life is perfect. He also, people sometimes add that life is my life now, but if there’s one life, then love is not actually something we’re giving away. Something love is something we’re revealing when we remember who we are. I was talking with my husband about this last night. He was talking about serving, and he said, you know what? I feel good when I do it. And I’m like, yeah, because you feel connected to other people, right? When you offer love and care to them, and being connected is super important. So if love is the great harmonizer, also according to Charles Fillmore, if love harmonizes withholding love fragments. And so I want to invite you to honestly ask yourself, and I think this is better to do this in your personal life than to try to do it collectively right now. Where have you withdrawn love? Where have you withdrawn love from somebody? Where have you needed things to be a certain way in the relationship and the relationship suffered because of it?
And where is it not? Where is it? Who is it hardest to see as sacred? I got to say I have an answer on that. No, but, and this is the challenge of our teaching. It forces us to stretch. Maybe people I don’t agree with are the catalyst for the change that needs to happen in the world. And so I got to open my mind to that. I do believe things are shifting. I believe things are shifting spiritually. I believe we’re starting to see that. I think being pressured to withdraw ice from Minneapolis, a lot of people came together on that, right? And they were a stand for what they believe. So I believe things are shifting. I’m not saying all the challenges are behind us, but I believe that love is the great harmonizer, and that’s what we’ve been seeing and how people are showing up saying, you matter to me.
I care about you. This is not okay with me. And so we do our work collectively, but we also do it individually to work, to become spiritually mature people, to take the high road to see what’s possible, to really practice seeing the oneness at the center of it all. And to realize that we are interconnected and interdependent. I mean, that’s true in our country. We believe in fierce independence that I should get to do whatever I want even though it affects you, right? That’s part of our mojo or something as a country, but it’s not actually true. We’re interdependent. None of us gets anywhere without each other. I’m not saying that very well, but let’s talk about our own spiritual maturity in this and our own work and what that is. So Emma Curtis Hopkins said, spiritual maturity is revealed in our ability to see the divine presence in every person regardless of their appearance, behavior, or belief. And that’s a practice we have to notice when we’re not. We need to notice when we’re judging and collectively, when we think about community. What if our community, this community was known for being a place where we practice fierce compassion, where everyone was welcome, where we not only had spiritual depth, but we had courageous listening.
What would be possible? I think people need support in the world today. I think community is more important than ever. Some people think Sundays are a thing of the past. I completely disagree with them. I think people need more and more to be in community, and we’re about to go through more changes because of ai, and that’s going to cause change and disruptive disruption. So being in community is really important for thriving in the future. And what if our community could be a place that really supported people and love people? I think it already is. So don’t hear me as saying, I don’t think it is, but people who aren’t here today, what if we could support and love more people? I don’t know about you, but I appreciate having a place in people who see me in my wholeness when I’m a hot mess, because we all are.
Sometimes Ernest Holmes taught, taught that when we close ourselves to love, we move out of alignment with the creative flow of life itself. And our work personally is to examine and bring to the light any place where we’re not seeing other people in their wholeness. And I’m going to say any place where we’re not seeing ourself in our wholeness, right? That’s our spiritual work. We want to stay open to love. And Howard Thurman said, when we withhold love, we do not protect ourselves. We diminish the possibility of true community. We don’t become safer, we become more separate. And that’s what we’re experiencing culturally right now. There’s just a lot of separation. And separation is where fear grows, right? It’s whether I personally feel separate from Donna in this moment, right? Or collectively, we feel separate. And when we feel separate, misunderstanding grows. So how do we start to restore this broken harmony and heal the separation within ourself?
We want to examine where we’re at because inner healing for each of us leads to collective healing. So when the fear within us heals, then we listen differently. We lead differently, we show up differently, we parent differently. We engage in conflict differently, and we build community differently. And I just want to say it can feel hard to shift. Sometimes you can feel like the people around you are trying to hold you where you are. Has anyone ever had that? But when we shift, other people shift, right? And maybe it’s just that we’ve freed ourselves up, we freed up our own energy, and we’re no longer holding ourselves in that place. And I want you to think for a second. We’re going to take this into some practice in a minute. What do you fear in your life? What’s the thing or the things that you notice that you fear or what ignites fear in you? I know for me, feeling separate, ignites a sense of fear in me or feeling like I don’t belong ignites a sense of fear in me. But I just want you to think about that. Where in your life do you notice that you have fear that you want to shift?
And just remembering too, that inner transformation isn’t private. It’s always relational. So we get to practice this with other people. I shared this story about my colleague who I left my body, that whole thing, the me of 10 years ago. I never would’ve said anything to him. I would’ve left the room. I would’ve been resentful. I would’ve been in my, I can’t believe this story, but I know I have a different choice now. I’ve learned that on these years on the path. And so that’s a relational thing. And most of the things in our life are relational. So I think in our teaching, it is individual. But we bring whatever we’re learning, we’re bringing it into our relationships, and that’s super important. So before I take us into a process, let’s just summarize what we’ve talked about. We’ve talked about healing the broken harmony. This idea that harmony is not something that we create.
It’s something that we remember. And I also think we embody, we bring it into our being through our practice. And when we heal fear, when we release our need for certainty, then we can choose courageous love and we become agents of healing in the world. And I don’t know anyone about anyone else, but I would like to be an agent for healing in the world, not in an arrogant whatever. I think I’m important way, but just in a way that makes a difference. And maybe that’s one person at a time. We don’t know how we’re meant to serve, right? Maybe it’s just someone shows up in front of you and you’re able to help ’em. But we can all be agents of healing in the world. And that’s my invitation to you. So we’re going to go into a slight practice here, and then we’re going to go into prayer. So I just want to invite you to breathe in, close your eyes and breathe in. Just breathing in and breathing out and breathing in and breathing out.
And if it feels supportive, put your hands on your heart. Just breathe into your spirit and just check in with yourself for a minute. How are you feeling right now? Now just ask your spirit about any fear that you’re experiencing in your life right now. What is spirit inviting you to heal right now? Maybe it’s the fear. Maybe it’s a relationship. Maybe it’s a belief. And just let the fear be what it is. Eckhart Toll tells us if we just stay with a feeling, it will begin to dissolve in our practice. So just notice the fear, but let it dissolve. See it being filled with light.
See your heart. Be filled with light. And as you connect more with your spirit and that light, just feel whatever that fear is releasing, and notice that it’s being replaced by the natural harmony and peace, which is the truth of your being. Just breathe in that harmony and that peace, and let the light of that harmony fill you up, inviting in divine compassion for yourself and for others. Just sending healing to any place in your life where you’re not experiencing peace right now. Any place where it feels like there is broken harmony, just know that as you send the light of love and compassion to that situation, that healing is happening. Even now, the healing is already done.
And knowing that that spirit which is greater than all of it, is big enough to heal any discord, scored any broken relationship, any disharmony. And so in this moment, I am knowing the presence of God’s spirit, light love, whatever your word is for this higher presence and power, just knowing that this presence is connected. Ever present, ever expressing through love and grace and connection, harmony, right? Relationship, love itself. And I know my oneness with this love, with this harmony, with this grace, with this perfect divine expression. And as I know this for myself, I know this for each person, healing, hearing my words, healing my words, ha hearing my words. And I just know that we are all one with this presence and power, this love, this grace, this goodness, this inner peace and harmony, this divine connection, this love. So from this place of oneness, I speak a word of transformation for each and every one of us.
I know that whatever fear came up for you, I know it has been wiped away by spirit. I know that there is a clean slate. And I know for each of us that we are trusting God, that we are always well, that all is cared for. Everything we need is provided that we are safe, that we are a whole. And I know for each of us, that we are seeing others in their wholeness, that we are embracing divine compassion, that we are expressing it in as in through our lives. We are letting it be our very being. We are allowing it to vibrate out from us to those around us, with grace, with love, with goodness, with care, with kindness, with service. This is what I say yes to, and I just no. And claim for our country and the world that there is an upleveling in compassion and care that is happening, that all the people who are stepping up to say, I care for you. I love you. I want to help you. That that energy is generative and it spreads across this planet, bringing forth greater love on our planet and between everyone that is living here, I say yes to this. I know that God’s got this. I’m grateful for this transformation, for this love, for this harmony, for the expression in each and every person, and the expression in our country and the world, and with so much gratitude together, we say, and so it is. Amen.
Amen. Thank you, Amy.