By Tereece Panique
It's easy to feel overwhelmed or powerless in a world brimming with challenges. Spiritual teachers throughout the ages remind us that real change begins within. Unity teaches that prayer connects us to the Christ within, empowering us to create a world in service to love — the creative essence of the universe. Imagination is the intelligence through which we form and call forth new possibilities. When paired together, prayer and imagination become catalysts for transforming our individual lives, rippling outward into our communities.
Armed with the power of prayer and imagination, we take external action supported by internal alignment and vision. Unity believes in the power of affirmative prayer — prayer that claims the good as already present. With focused imagination, we plant the seeds for new realities. Guided by Universal Law, we visualize the conditions we need to thrive, claim them, and align our thoughts, feelings, and actions accordingly.
Imagine a Unity of Missoula where all the resources needed to enhance the spiritual education of adults and children are readily available. Visualize an ability to serve our community in ways that are deeply meaningful to our members. Imagine the seats filled every Sunday with a diverse and enthusiastic group of Unitics. Envision spiritual workshops and study groups flourishing in the afternoons, weekends, and evenings to accommodate everyone’s schedules. Through prayer, we connect to the Power, strengthening our focus, organization, and ability to align with our desires and act. Prayer brings our vision alive.
Unity teaches that whatever we can imagine and affirm, we can create. Do you dream of a world where basic human rights are not debated, but revered? Do you dream of a culture that supports autonomy and dignity, trusting individuals to navigate their choices with the guidance of their inner light? Imagine policies and practices that lift those who have given so much, ensuring that no one who has served or labored for this country is left without dignity later in life. In our prayers, we affirm health and wholeness for ourselves and others. We hold the truth that every soul is endowed with the wisdom to create a world free of bondage and oppression. Standing in the power of prayer, what we conceive in our minds can be achieved.
Charles Fillmore, co-founder of Unity, would encourage us to take our inner imaginings seriously. A single cell holds the blueprint for a human being, the images we consistently hold
in mind — blessed by prayer — have the power to shape our outer circumstances. Our work, then, is twofold: to pray affirmatively for the world we desire and to live as if that world is already unfolding — because spiritually, it is.
This path calls for courage. It asks us to avoid cynicism and despair, even in the face of real injustice. It asks us to use our imagination, not to fear the worst, but to create the best — and to act as agents of that creation. Prayer strengthens us for the journey, reminding us to use the powers of prayer and imagination. We create with the Divine, not as isolated beings at the mercy of chaos, but as children of the Most High with all the power of our inheritance.
When we pray for a world of justice, health, and equality — and imagine it so vividly that it becomes real in our hearts — we become the change-makers the world desperately needs. We move differently. We speak differently. We advocate, organize, and build from a foundation of hope rather than fear.
In this way, becoming the change is not a lofty ideal; it is a daily practice. Each morning, we affirm: “The Divine justice, love, and abundance on Earth.” We close our eyes and picture a world where every human right is honored — not someday, but now. And we act, however we are called, in service of that vision.
Through the sacred union of prayer and imagination, we step into our true power: the ability to see beyond appearances and call forth a new reality. In doing so, we don’t merely wish for a better world — we build it, heart to heart, mind to mind, prayer by prayer.