Truly Touched by an Angel

On October 3, 1979, renowned singer and actress, Della Reese, was booked to perform on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. She had just finished rehearsal at the NBC Studios in Burbank, California, when she collapsed. In the seconds between standing upright and hitting the floor, Della recalled saying, “Father, into your hands I cast my spirit.” Later she awoke in a hospital to learn she had suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm. The Unity principles she had spent the last two years learning would play a key role in her healing journey.

While Rev. Dr. Della Reese Lett is perhaps best known for playing the role of Tess on the television show Touched by an Angel (1994-2003), where she was nominated for two Emmy Awards and received six NAACP Image Awards, she was passionate about helping people learn about the powerful partnership with God that is available to all.

The first Sunday I walked into the Beverly Hills hotel ballroom that was serving as her church, I had come to see one of my favorite TV stars. The big gospel choir and seven-piece band met my joyful expectation. Then Rev. Della started teaching the principles that were given to us by Unity founders Charles and Myrtle Fillmore. Her community instantly became my spiritual home and led to me becoming an ordained Unity minister.

An Introduction to Metaphysics

Della was raised in the church with a mother she described as having a personal relationship with God. At the age of 6, Reese was directing the children’s choir because of her natural singing ability. At 14, she was invited to join legendary gospel singer Mahalia Jackson on tour as a backup singer. This is to say that Della Reese knew church and the Bible very well. But the legendary Rev. Dr. Johnnie Colemon gave Della her first experience of hearing the Bible taught through the lens of metaphysics. It was a deeper level of understanding that allowed Della to put what she knew into action.

“I am responsible to God for the thoughts I allow to fill
my mind.”

Della had built a career as a singer in the 1950s and ’60s. In 1969, she debuted a variety show named Della, making her the first African-American woman to host a talk show on national television. Johnny Carson then asked her in 1970 to guest host The Tonight Show, where she was also the first African-American woman in the role.

It was only then that she started to pursue an acting career along with her singing, which led to starring roles in Chico and the Man, Harlem Nights, The Royal Family, and Touched by an Angel. While building her successful career as a actor, she founded the Understanding Principles for Better Living Church (UP Church) in Los Angeles in 1987.

Della had been teaching spiritual principles in her church for about seven years before she became a television angel. While Touched by an Angel was not a New Thought show, she inserted many of the Unity teachings into nine seasons of the show that reached millions of viewers.

“Who Is in Charge?”

While on hiatus from Chico and the Man, Della joined a play in Philadelphia. Her make-up and hair artist became the one to steer her into New Thought. Every night he would share problems that were coming up in his life. When Della offered him advice, his response was, “You sound just like Johnnie Colemon.” Della had not yet heard of Rev. Dr. Johnnie Colemon, a powerhouse Unity minister who had founded a large church in Chicago. The makeup artist insisted that the next time Della was in Chicago, she must visit Christ Universal Temple. Divine order was in action when the play wrapped in Philadelphia and moved to Chicago.

On her first visit to Christ Universal Temple in 1977, Della said that Johnnie Colemon began to heal her Spirit. Della formed a new understanding that she carried through the rest of her life. When someone came to her for counsel about a problem, she would say, “Who is in charge? God? Or the problem?”

It was that simple for her. How are we using our thoughts? We can spend our energy thinking about a problem or we can give it to God. In her book, Metaphysically Speaking, she wrote, “I am responsible to God for the thoughts I allow to fill my mind, for He had one of His servants write me this message. ‘As a man/woman thinketh in his/her heart so is he/she.’ So, I am responsible to God for my thoughts.” She added a few pages later, “I cannot allow myself to be anxious, for the beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, as the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.”

Della was living in Los Angeles for her television work, so for two years, she flew every weekend to Chicago to study with Johnnie Colemon and Rev. Helen Carry, then an associate minister who started as Johnnie’s assistant and later headed the church’s teaching institute. This qualified Della as a teacher in the Universal Foundation for Better Living (UFBL), the branch of New Thought that Johnnie Colemon had founded in 1974.

Among the life-changing teachings she was learning, Della was introduced to the healing tools she would need when she experienced the brain aneurysm. She learned that the first step to her physical healing was her mind and more specifically her attitude. She used the Unity method of affirmative prayer. When she started feeling nervous as she was wheeled into the operating room, she started singing, “God Is So Wonderful,” a spiritual rewrite of “You Are So Beautiful.” She had two brain surgeries within 10 days, and 10 days after that, she was back at work filming a commercial for Campbell’s Soup.

Fired Up with Praise and Gratitude

Della started her own church because no one was teaching in Los Angeles what she had learned in Chicago. She first asked Johnnie Colemon to send a UFBL minister to Los Angeles to establish a church, but in prayer and meditation, Della received the message that it was her own work to do. She returned to classes in Chicago and became ordained as Rev. Della Reese Lett. (She married producer and executive Franklin Lett in 1983.)

Della chose a hot air balloon to symbolize UP Church; it was a perfect example of how we are to use Spirit in our consciousness. In the same way that fire fills the inside of a hot air balloon with heat that helps it rise, we fire up ourselves with praise and gratitude to reach higher consciousness. Metaphysically, fire represents cleansing and purification, which is what we must do to release our human thinking and rise into our spiritual thoughts, Della taught. 

“Through metaphysics, we reach a clear understanding of the realm of ideas and their legitimate expression,” she wrote. “We need to be skilled in the science of being. We are all metaphysicians. We are made in the image-likeness of God, therefore we are more than just physical beings. We are spiritual.”

At UP Church, Della created a family that continues to support each other today, both in and out of the church. Her need to share these spiritual principles was infectious. As a Unity minister myself now, I tell people that I never aspired to become a minister and don’t really care about the title now. What inspires me—something I picked up from Rev. Della—is to share the teachings with more people to help them live as Jesus said: more abundantly.

One of the last times I visited Della before her death in 2017, I told her, “I want you to know that I don’t always call you when I need advice. But that’s because you’ve taught me so much that your spirit speaks to me with what I need to know—faster than I could ever dial your number.”

Her wisdom still guides me and many others on a daily basis.