According to an ancient Egyptian myth, the phoenix was a beautiful, eagle-like bird with gold and red plumage, which lived in the Arabian Desert. Its life span was 500 years or more, at the end of which it consumed itself in fire, rising renewed from its ashes young and beautiful, to start another long life cycle. Traditionally, the phoenix has come to symbolize renewal and resurrection.
Mrs. Eddy alludes to this symbol in a message written in 1904 to several branch Churches of Christ, Scientist. She writes: "A great sanity, a mighty something buried in the depths of the unseen, has wrought a resurrection among you, and has leaped into living love. What is this something, this phoenix fire, this pillar by day, kindling, guiding, and guarding your way?" She answers, "It is unity, the bond of perfectness, the thousandfold expansion that will engirdle the world,—unity, which unfolds the thought most within us into the greater and better, the sum of all reality and good." The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 164.
Mrs. Eddy's description of unity as "a great sanity" reminds me of the Scripture "For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind." II Tim. 1: 7. God gives us this sanity, this soundness of mind that is the essence of unity. It is a gift we individually and collectively possess. In reality it can't be weakened, diminished, lost, or destroyed, nor can any circumstance or condition separate us from this soundness.
