The Miracle of Oneness
photo by D. Avey
By Donna Avey
What does it mean to live in a world where we are truly one?
The miracle of oneness is the grace-filled realization that we are not separate—from God, from ourselves, or from one another—but held together in a single, living body of love. When we awaken to this truth, personal peace expands into something larger: a shared life of heart that connects us across traditions, generations, and cultures.
I first tasted this oneness in a quiet place called Elizabet Nay Park. During a difficult season of my life as a divorced single mother, I found myself crying out to God. In the stillness, my heart seemed to sing with the birds, and my veins felt as though they flowed with the water of the brook. In that moment, I knew I was one with myself and with my Heavenly Parent. Though I did not yet have language for it, my soul recognized it as home.
A Lifelong Question
The seeds of this experience were planted long before that day. My grandmother, Perle, moved from Baptist faith to the Presbyterian faith to the Unity faith, always seeking a deeper experience of the body of Christ as one. I was raised Methodist and received my first Bible at age ten, with my parents’ prayer that I would grow “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.”
Even as a child, I carried a question in my heart: What did Jesus really mean when he taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”? That question has quietly guided my entire faith journey.
Discovering a Vision of Oneness
Years later, that search led me to the Unification Movement and to True Parents. When I first encountered the revelation of Reverend Sun Myung Moon, I felt that the questions I had carried since my teenage years were finally being answered.
Through the Divine Principle and later the teachings of True Mother, I discovered a vision of oneness that embraces heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, and the restoration of God’s original dream for humanity. I came to believe that through True Parents, the heart of Jesus was being revealed anew—calling us toward deeper unity within the body of Christ and the wider human family.
Oneness in Action
This conviction naturally drew me into ministry with clergy from many denominations. Through the American Clergy Leadership Conference and through life in prayer houses and churches in Washington, DC, New York, Texas, and Alaska, I met ministers from diverse faith traditions.
While we did not always agree on doctrine, we could stand together as brothers and sisters before God—praying for our nation and seeking God’s will. In those moments, I often felt the same quiet miracle I had known in the park: underlying our different languages and customs, one Spirit was moving us toward a shared destiny.
God’s Dream for Our Time
Today, as a woman in ministry and a member of the Unification Movement, I believe more deeply than ever that the Kingdom of Heaven on earth will be born through the miracle of oneness in the world of heart.
This oneness grows when we choose love across denominations, generations, and even our differences within the Unification family itself. It deepens as we seek unity with our Heavenly Parent, with True Parents, and with one another.
My prayer is that our children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren will inherit not our divisions, but this spirit of unity and love—and that together we may reveal, in our time, a living foretaste of the Kingdom Jesus promised.