Sunday, February 26, 2017

On Being Well

Too many people


need chemical substances


to get them through the day,


to feel well enough at all.


      It need not be you                        


    (God be thanked)


not with the health,


the energy and freedom


He gives us through


Christian Science,


                 


Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Handling Mesmerism

                                                    By John Wellsman


(John is a friend who lives in Arizona.  He just shared the following thoughts with a friend who was feeling very oppressed with the mesmeric thought in politics, and I'm sharing it with you.)


        Actually mesmerism itself isn't the real problem.  The problem is our belief in the existence and power of mesmerism.  Handle, negate, make nothing of that belief and we're home free!  Not any reality of mesmerism but the suggestion that we can believe in mesmerism or other people mesmerizing anyone.  That we can be made to believe in the reality of mesmerism.


        If we're tempted to say, "But, but, but..." The question then becomes, do we really believe that God is All?  If he is All-in-all as the Bible declares who, what, where is mesmerism or anyone (including ourselves) to believe in mesmerism.  Many people get tied up in denying it as a reality but if we deny that we can be made to believe in mesmerism ourselves we shut it out of our own thought and it indeed becomes nothing to us.  This won't be the whole of mesmerism for the world, but it will cease to trouble us individually.


        Yes, it does require some repetition of thought and may seem to take some time and a leap of faith, but it can be done.  The key I've found is to shut out those "But, but, but..." thoughts as soon as they present themselves (people told me that years ago and I didn't listen or understand what they were saying at first.)  They're only suggestions after all.  We need to stick with the refusal to believe we can believe a falsehood.  That gets to the root of the problem.


        You might want to consider Science and Health p. 102, lines 1-8:


        "Animal magnetism has no scientific foundation, for God governs all that is real, harmonious and eternal, and His power is neither animal nor human.  Its basis being a belief and this belief animal, in Science animal magnetism, mesmerism, or hypnotism is a mere negation, possessing neither intelligence, power, nor reality, and in sense it is an unreal concept of the so-called mortal mind." 




(Mary Baker Eddy wrote this, for my viewers who are not familiar with the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.)











Sunday, February 12, 2017

His

What I prize above all else
in this word of ours?
That my love for Christ,
my obedience, so flowers
that I may hear Him say,
"You are much less your own.
I can now, through you,
do more of what
 I want to do."
Tell me this will not
be a joy most divine,
to hear the one we love say,
       You are Mine."
(For those of us who have
 named the name of Christ
 in Science divine,
     already true.)
But that I may know
and feel more and more
I belong wholly to Him!


====================




"Thine they were, and Thou
      gavest them Me."
     (John 17:6)

Monday, February 6, 2017

No Third Party

        When Christ Jesus said, "Call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven" (Matthew 23:9), he was not calling for an attack on filial devotion.  Rather, it was for the rejection of a third party in the divine Parent/child relationship.


        Of course, one cares for his human father.  And those of us who were blessed with a wonderful parent will always be grateful for the love and devotion we experienced.  For Jesus' followers, Christly loving is a necessity--since Jesus illustrated the fact that wholehearted love for God naturally encompasses love for man. Expressing love for one and all is the supreme proof of discipleship.  For this reason we can never outgrow the need to express warmth, compassion, and unselfishness toward those nearest us.


        While Jesus' words might seem to indicate hat he didn't consider the circumstances of human birth to have ultimate claims on us, couldn't he really be saying that true relationship lies in our oneness with God--in this spiritual unity of thought and purpose.  His teaching seems to me to be calling on all to realize that our origin, identity, selfhood, qualities, and so on, are in God, divine Spirit, not in a mortal ancestry.  And the sooner we begin this spiritual discovery, the greater the freedom for ourselves and those we interact with.




        Christian Science brings to light man's wonderful relationship to God.  And through its teachings one can learn to know himself spiritually, scientifically--not as a conglomeration of material beliefs and limitations, but as the spiritual expression of divine Mind, manifesting freedom, grace, beauty, and dominion.  When we learn to rely more consistently on divine Mind, God, for happiness and well-being, we begin to find release from the incorrect view of ourselves and this blessed all involved.


        Mary Baker Eddy, after pointing out our need to gravitate toward God, says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "This scientific sense of  being, forsaking matter for Spirit, by  no means suggests man's absorption into Deity and the loss of his identity, but confers upon man enlarged individuality, a wider sphere of thought and action, a more expansive love, a higher and more permanent peace."  (p. 265)  And don't we all want this?


        The mortal dream of life as a material existence separated from God cant furnish the correct estimate of our identity or anyone else's.  Our true spiritual selfhood, ours and mine, has never been shaped or marred by material events and circumstances.  However ideal one's relationship with his human father, all that material history tells us of a family background, conditioning, and so forth is without a particle of reality in the universe of God, good.  As Science and Health states:  "The eternal Truth destroys what mortals seem to have learned from error, and man's real existence as a child of God comes to light."(pp. 288-289)


        We all have access to an endless amount of support and inspiration from God.  He loves His children unceasingly and has provided through the clear spiritual teachings of Christ Jesus the way for one to free himself from any lingering unhappiness. In a letter to one of the branch churches in the Christian Science movement, Mrs. Eddy wrote:  "God is our Father and our Mother, ,our Minister and the great Physician.  He is man's only real relative on earth and in heaven.  David sang, "Whom have I in heaven but thee?  and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee." 
        "Brother, sister, beloved in the Lord, knowest thou thyself, and art acquainted with God?  If not, I pray thee as a Christian Scientist, delay not to make Him thy first acquaintance."  Miscellaneous Writings , p. 151


        And as the Bible says of our relationship to our heavenly Father, "Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine."  (Ezekiel 18:4)
 

Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Jesus' Plain-Speaking

        I don't know about you but our Master's telling it like it is in this world, making clear what His followers would encounter, always thrills me. Had we who have enlisted in the Christian warfare expected pleasant strolls on sunny days, would we not be overwhelmed at what can and does happen?


        No, walking the path Jesus trod is  not, cannot be, a walk in the park.  But we can all take heart.  One cannot name the name of Christ and not always have the victory over evil.  Always.


        I've come to the realization of two things about this:  if I go down into the valley of defeatism, I'll just have to lift myself up again.  And, it's helpful to understand that it isn't you and me the devil is primarily after but that our service to God may be interfered with, if not outright stopped for good


        Have you not sometimes marveled at those early Christians who chose to undergo unspeakable tortures rather than renounce Christ?  Perhaps we've asked ourselves, could I stand up under what they went through?  But as one matures in his spiritual journey, and survives onslaughts of the devil himself, it has become clear that there is nothing else one could do.  Turning our backs on Him is not an option, actually unthinkable.  So we resolve to go on, no matter what is dealt out to us.  And there is this:  we can take comfort in knowing how many thousands before us, and individuals now, are standing up for their beliefs under incredible hardships.


        The woman who founded Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, once wrote something that has always inspired me:  "Admiral Coligny, in the time of the French Huguenots, was converted to Protestantism through a stray copy of the Scriptures that fell into his hands.  He replied to his wife, who urged him to come out and confess his faith, 'It is wise to count the cost of becoming a true Christian.'  She answered him, 'It is wiser to count the cost of not becoming a true Christian.'  So, whatever we meet that is hard in the Christian warfare we must count as nothing, and must think instead, of our poverty and helplessness without this understanding, and count ourselves always as debtors to Christ, Truth."  (Miscellaneous Writings)


        I've learned through my study and practice of Christian Science that rising from the material to the spiritual sense of being is not easy.  It must be consciously attained through the overcoming of all that lies between the mortal,unreal sense of being and the divine, or real.  Would we expect the putting off of thoughts and beliefs that are not of God to be always pleasant work? 


        The Bible points out (Peter 5:10): "The God of all grace, who hath called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you."  This may not be of much comfort to us at times, but we learn that every test of our faith in God, if we stay in the fight, does make us stronger.


        And in the words of our blessed Master:  "In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world."