Think I'm taking a week off...

Just a quick post to let anyone who's interested know that it looks like I'm taking this week off from blogging. (I just figured that out.) Hope you all are enjoying some time off as well!

Happy New Year,
Laura
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Happy happy joy joy

Wasn't sure I was going to blog today, but then got the idea from a friend's blog to post a picture of our family Nativity scene.


Can you sort of see the starlight shining from above?

I grew up with a creche like this, although it was ceramic. It was the most beautiful thing I ever saw, and I spent time with it every year. This year, my kids and I were playing a twenty-questions game about Christmas, and the question came up: What is your favorite Christmas decoration? My daughter immediately said, "The Nativity." So she set it up, as you see it, this year.

Here's another photo we took after the recent ice storm from the coziness of our living room:


It's a straight up and down vertical picture--the drips actually tilted that way.

I hope everyone has a beautiful, starlit, sparkly Christmas.

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The world without us

I've mentioned this book before, and hope everyone reads it: The World without Us by Alan Weisman. It was so thought-provoking to me on many levels, and has given me a new passion—this planet Earth.

The book posits how long it would take Earth to reclaim itself if humans no longer existed. I found much of the research troubling, because apparently we've been altering the planet since we could stand on two feet. However, there is much to hope for as well, for nature is strong, and many people of good will are working assiduously to rectify the damage we've done.

One thing that surprised me is the author's discussion of how various religions look on the Earth in their theologies. Basically, most teach that the Earth is here to serve humanity, so if humanity is gone, it doesn't matter what happens to Earth. This caught in my throat. Is this really the case? Do I believe that?

So I've been thinking about it deeply. We talk so much about making the world better for our children. What about irrespective of our species? Do we have an obligation to the rest of life and formation? Or is it just for our own benefit that we should make adjustments?

What I've come to believe in reading this book in combination with my study of Christian Science is that this Earth as we're experiencing it now is our collective demonstration of our sense of reality. While this is what we've got to work with, it's our task to uplift and preserve it, as well as use it wisely. It's the same as our caring for our bodies. If our individual body is our individual temple, as the Bible defines it, then our collective body, this Earth and the universe, are our collective temple, and we need to respect it accordingly.

This Earth is the medium in which we are expressing our divine natures. We owe it the expression of our highest selfhood. It is paramount, then, that we tend and care for it effectively, even as we tend and care for our own bodies. It is a duty we perform out of love for all life.

I can't shake this conviction and am letting it shape me. I'm in the chapter on Physiology now in Science and Health, and every time Mary Baker Eddy talks about the body (very frequent in this chapter), I'm letting that sentence apply to the planet. I'll write about some of that research with you next week.

I also just wanted to share the final intriguing few paragraphs of Weisman's book, which come after a discussion of humanity's possible flight from this damaged planet to the stars:

[R]adio waves don't die—like light, they travel on. The human brain also emanates electric impulses at very low frequencies: similar to, but far weaker than, the radio waves used to communicate with submarines. Paranormalists, however, insist that our minds are transmitters that, with special effort, can focus like lasers to communicate across great distances, and even make things happen.

That may seem far-fetched, but it's also a definition of prayer.

The emanations from our brains, like radio waves, must also keep going—where? Space is not described as an expanding bubble, but that architecture is still a theory. Along its great mysterious interstellar curvatures, perhaps it's not unreasonable to think that our thought waves might eventually find their way back here.

Or even that one day—long after we're gong, unbearably lonely for the beautiful world from which we so foolishly banished ourselves—we, or our memories, might surf back home aboard a cosmic electromagnetic wave to haunt our beloved Earth.

Our thought holds the key to all this. We can think of thoughts as cleansers or pollutants. What are we thinking about our planet and ourselves?

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Me? You mean me?

The journey lately has taken a surprising turn down a highway that is bringing me unexpected vistas. You know, the scenic route. I feel like I've been given permission to do something I've never dared before.

It crystallized for me when I was studying about Jesus in Atonement and Eucharist a few weeks ago, and it was a big enough idea that I couldn't write about it right away. So now here it is.

Jesus had this life of service, success, crucifixion, death, resurrection, and ascension. As I read about his trajectory in living God's will for him, for the first time I felt connected to every part of his career (in my own small way). In my life, I've served with an incredible team, experienced some success at getting the message out, then lost all that we'd achieved in a symbolic "crucifixion." I felt keenly the death of something I loved that we had worked hard to build, but then was gifted with an uplifting sense of resurrection (remarkably, the actual events happened a few years back on the days leading up to Easter). I learned that the true elements of all that we'd done remain intact and are continuing forward, and I've seen that abundantly since.

In reviewing this trajectory lately, it seemed the only part left to experience was the ascension. What did that mean to me today?

I've always thought of ascension as something that happens in the afterlife—we can't expect glory and grace here. This life here, I thought, is always flawed and meant to be a struggle. Now I'm thinking that perhaps this is old theology.

When taking this to the Divine as one big question mark, what came to me is this startling idea that I've been working with ever since. I felt the message come somewhat in this form:

Laura, you've spent your entire spiritual career finding out about Me. You've done a good job, you've served Me and gotten to know Me. You've built a strong foundation of understanding. Now it's time to find out about My creation. Now it's time to find out about you.

Me? Find out about me? I can't quite describe how profound this sense of spiritual "permission" has been. This, to me, is feeling like ascension. Like the hard part of life is behind me, and I won't have to re-do it. I've been through the wars, the sacrifice, the tears. I learned what I needed to learn. It's now about going forth and expressing, here and now, not waiting for some afterlife to experience the glory, but *now.*

I feel both mature and tested, and new and reborn. And I have this adventure ahead of me, partnering with the Divine to have my own genuine nature revealed.

And I never knew that besides glory and grace, ascension is also filled with gratitude.

The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind's creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness — yea, the divine nature — appear in man and the universe never to disappear. Science and Health

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Political compass

A blog I read Transylvania Dutch had an interesting feature today: the Political Compass.

With this compass, you indicate whether you agree or disagree with a bunch of statements, and find out where you fall on a quadrant of left / right, authoritarian / libertarian. Here are a few samples of the statements:

• If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.
  
• It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.
• There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.
• Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.
• You cannot be moral without being religious.
• A same sex couple in a stable, loving relationship, should not be excluded from the possibility of child adoption.

Here's my result.

I apparently fall somewhere between Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, and The Dalai Lama. I'm nowhere near any of the current American political candidates, who, according to Transylvania Dutch, all fall in the upper right quadrant. Stalin is way in the upper left, Hitler right at the axis at the top.

What's interesting to me about this is how many of my choices were informed by my spiritual outlook. I have convictions about the worth of the individual and the nature of reality that make me believe certain ways. I'm also gaining some convictions about the role of government in thwarting unrestrained corporate power.

It's all in the name of discovering who I am. More on this tomorrow.

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Winter storm

Picture driving along at your usual fast clip after visiting your daughter in Brooklyn, New York, headed back to New England, when just ahead you start seeing grey clouds and precipitation right around Hartford, Connecticut. Picture everything grinding to a slow crawl as snow accumulates on the road surface, with no plows in sight, nor any salt, nor any sand. Picture frequent flashing lights and overturned vehicles of all shapes and sizes on the side of the road as your own tires struggle to gain traction. Picture eventually being only guided by the red lights of the vehicle ahead of you, and positioning yourself behind the largest truck you can find because its 18 wheels and huge tires are more likely to clear an adequate path for you. You figure if you can still read its 3 Sigma logo on the back, you're okay.

In Connecticut, the most traveled lane is the far right, so you stick to it with the truck. You pray for the signs leading to the Mass Pike, and they take an inordinate length of time to appear. Your windshield wipers are pumping at their highest speed, yet it's still like looking through bubble wrap. You have to keep going, because if you stop anywhere, you'll simply be buried in snow. You have just enough gas to get home, no food, and a little water. When you pull off at a rest area to grab some pretzels and Raisinettes, by the time you get back to the car it's covered in three inches of wet, sticky, uncooperative whiteness.

Your wheels spin helplessly as you get back on the road. The Pike signs finally appear, you go through the toll booth, and your windshield wipers, which have accumulated a few too many molecules of ice, give one last whimpering swipe and then shudder to a halt. You stop under an underpass with cars and trucks whizzing by you to attempt to fix them, no luck.

Fortunately, this is Massachusetts, so the most traveled lane is the far left, where you can go as fast as you can handle. You blast the defrost on as high and hot as it will go to melt the precipitation gathering on the windshield, and you quickly discover that if you accelerate to 50-plus miles per hour, the very wind pressure will move the moisture away so that you can see. However, you're driving this way when all the other cars and trucks around you are at a crawl, the unplowed, unsalted, unsanded snow is about a foot deep, and red lights appear before you at a moment's notice.

White knuckled on the steering wheel, you press forward, aware that this is possibly the most dangerous driving you've ever done—more so than the narrow winding mountain roads on the California coast or the surface streets of Los Angeles during the riots. But you have to get home. You breathe deeply and stay focused. You pray for the other cars as you pass them, for your momentary encounter to be uneventful and safe. You pray that the driving you have to do doesn’t endanger anyone else. You pray that the nice officer will understand if he pulls you over to ask what the hell you're doing. But it turns out they actually have more important things to do.

Soon, you have only ten miles to go. Then six, then four. Then at last you see your exit to Framingham. You settle in behind some red tail lights and let them guide you down streets and through intersections all the way to your steep, slick driveway, where, mercifully, you can still slide right into the garage. And you're home.

That was my Thursday, how was yours? I really miss California right about now…

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The "be yourself" hymn

I'm traveling today and tomorrow, so won't be posting again until Monday. Thought I'd leave you with this poem, kind of an interesting counterbalance to the mortals/immortals conversation and the last poem I featured (they share facing pages in the words only hymnal I have).

Hymn 20, Christian Science Hymnal
by Kate Colby

Be true and list the voice within,
Be true unto thy high ideal,
Thy perfect self, that knows no sin,
That self that is the only real.

God is the only perfect One:
My perfect self is one with Him;
So man is seen as God's own son,
When Truth dispels the shadows dim.

True to our God whose name is Love,
We shall fulfill our Father's plan;
For true means true to God above,
To self, and to our fellow man.

Love to all,
Laura

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Greed's hypnotism

I'm reading a deeply sobering, on the verge of depressing book, The World without Us by Alan Weisman. You'll hear more about it later. For now, its challenging outlook has been something I've been taking to my Science and Health reading.

Basically, Weisman's book demonstrates that man has been altering his environment since before he could stand on two feet. It's just what we do. I'd always thought humanity's strength lay in its ability to adapt to the environment. Now, I'm seeing that our survival rather has stemmed from our ability to adapt our environment to suit ourselves. It's starting to bug me.

There's one particularly horrifying section about the oil industry in Houston and how its sprawling network of enormous pipes and refineries spreads for miles and miles and miles. I had no idea, of course, of the scope of this industry. Up here in New England, all I ever see is the end result—my being able to put gas in my car at a tiny neighborhood station. My need for gas contributes to that southern behemoth blight on nature.

So here are some passages from Science and Health that I’m reading with a new light, all from the chapter Animal Magnetism Unmasked:

The planets have no more power over man than over his Maker, since God governs the universe; but man, reflecting God's power, has dominion over all the earth and its hosts.

The mild forms of animal magnetism are disappearing, and its aggressive features are coming to the front. The looms of crime, hidden in the dark recesses of mortal thought, are every hour weaving webs more complicated and subtle. So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires. p. 102

I'm starting to see the primary crime as greed. Once we've gone beyond necessities, human nature compels us to capitalize on market forces to make as much as we can, as fast as we can. This "crime," hidden or not so hidden in the "dark recesses of mortal thought," becomes admirable as we all look up to those who manage to make a lot of money. It "ensnares the age into indolence," meaning, we let it grow and grow until it takes us over, stripping us of the dominion over the planet and making us its victims. Greed wants us to be apathetic first, then to feel helpless. Well, we're not helpless.

The malicious form of hypnotism ultimates in moral idiocy. The truths of immortal Mind sustain man, and they annihilate the fables of mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust. p. 103

Greed is destroying itself. As we awaken to the results of excessive greed, we will unify and put a stop to it. This is getting my prayers. Moral idiocy, i.e., aggressive manipulation of our shared environment for personal or corporate gain, will be recognized and resisted. Strength of character will emerge as the primary human characteristic, rather than greed or ineffectiveness. It's really the only way we will survive. And actually, that's rather marvelous—that the finer qualities will become necessary for survival.

The hypnotizer employs one error to destroy another. If he heals sickness through a belief, and a belief originally caused the sickness, it is a case of the greater error overcoming the lesser. This greater error thereafter occupies the ground, leaving the case worse than before it was grasped by the stronger error. p. 104

Again, I think of greed as the hypnotizer. You can always have more, better, bigger. There's no limit to what you can have. It's right and good for you to own and consume as much as you could ever want, never sated, always desiring, always grasping and demanding. This image has enthralled us in the West, and we've exported it to other regions that are now beginning to imitate our consumption along with getting our diseases and adopting our lifestyle. "The greater error" is occupying the ground, "leaving the case worse than before it was grasped by the stronger error." This came upon us unawares, like a thief in the night, but now it's time to fight it.

God has endowed man with inalienable rights, among which are self-government, reason, and conscience. Man is properly self-governed only when he is guided rightly and governed by his Maker, divine Truth and Love. p. 106

What to do? I think part of the answer lies in this last passage. Self-government, reason and conscience. Asking ourselves, each of us, do we need everything that we think we need? Are we willing to sacrifice the convenience that has sprung from greed's hypnosis? Are we "properly self-governed" through divine Mind, or acting at the whim of the mortal seeming around us?

This is what I'm wrestling with today.

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Q: Mortals vs. immortals

This query came in from Jayne:

We are taught that everyone is a child of God.. yet… we frequently read that mortals are not the children of God..... sounds a little confusing... are good people immortals... and bad people mortals.... who are these mortals who are NOT the children of God????? I am looking for some answers and hope you can explain... Thanks Jayne

Thanks for the question, Jayne! I'll give you what I believe, and I hope others will weigh in as well.

This question reminds me of Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats:

31 ¶ When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory:
32 And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats:
33 And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left.
34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:
35 For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:
36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.
37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?
38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?
39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?
40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.
41 Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:
42 For I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink:
43 I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not.
44 Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungered, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee?
45 Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me.
46 And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.

Matt 25:31-46

At first glance this does seem to imply that individual people will go one direction or another. But for me, what this story means is that each person's good *qualities* will be rewarded, and their evil tendencies purged. We're both the sheep and the goats. In other words, in this mortal seeming, we appear to be both mortal and immortal.

No human being is unadulterated good or evil. We all express goodness and perfection, and we all experience fear and sin. When we enact our better natures through good deeds, love, intelligence, inspiration, we are aligned with the immortal reality of our being. When our fears or desires get the better of us and we slip into regrettable behaviors or thought patterns, we are too close to the mortal and need to be awakened to the truth.

Because immortality is real and mortality is not, every mortal tendency is eventually purged in the alchemy of spiritual growth. What remains for all eternity is only the gold of our character, the immortal qualities that were always inherent in us as God's creation.

How should we then regard our fellow beings? With compassion, seeing the gold and helping it to shine through, rather than accepting only the mortal as the real. There are no "good" people who are immortal and "bad" people who are not. Each one's good qualities are immortal, and the bad (the self-destructive, the harmful, the useless) are burned away.

Thoughts?

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"Mawwage"

Does anyone else get that reference to The Princess Bride? It's a funny scene where the main character, the Princess, is being forced to marry the evil Prince, and the Impressive Clergyman who stands up to perform the ceremony has a speech impediment. So he starts off his comments with, "Mawwage. Mawwage is what bwings us togethew today. Mawwage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam within a dweam…" (If you really want to waste some time, you can read the entire script here.)

I just finished the chapter on Marriage in Science and Health. Of course, I've read it untold millions of times before, yet it still had something new to tell me. This time, I was attracted to all the instances, especially in the beginning of the chapter, where Mary Baker Eddy talks about blending and harmony. Maybe it's because I had just participated in a Sing-Along Messiah over the weekend, but choral music was on my mind, so those concepts leapt off the page at me.

She uses words like: union and unity, conjoining naturally, spiritual oneness, harmony, unity of spirit, blending, mingling, being the center, compromise, welding indissolubly, etc. She uses opposite concepts for things to avoid like: severance of fleshly ties, discord, narrowness, jealousy, incompatibility, etc.

I was especially struck by this passage:

Tones of the human mind may be different, but they should be concordant in order to blend properly. p. 58

This so reminded me of the choral singing. Each tone, each voice, is different, but they can blend in ways that are miraculous and uplifting. It gave me something more to look for in a relationship. Do the tones blend? The tone of my human mind and of the other. Can I hear that tone, and does it resonate to something higher?

I'd love to hear from those of you who found that concordant tone in your partner. How does it resonate for you in your daily life?

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Q: Comma power and evaluating the media

Dennis sent in this intriguing question:

"Novels, remarkable only for their exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens of depravity, fill our young readers with wrong tastes and sentiments" (Science and Health, p. 195).

Was Mrs. Eddy against all literature, or was she speaking of just trashy novels? I noticed that you have Wuthering Heights in your library so I assume Christian Scientists are not against all fiction.

Jesus spoke in parables so I assume He would not be against fiction with a lesson. What is your take on this?

Dennis R.

This is certainly grist for the conversation mill, isn't it? One person's literature is another's trash. What I'd like to focus on first are two commas in MBE's statement—the one after the word "novels" and the one before the word "fill."

MBE wrote her book in a time when authors were much looser in their use of the comma. In contemporary writing, commas appear for very specific purposes. We're so used to this that we read older texts with what would be today's meaning. I believe this doesn't result in an accurate reading of the older texts.

For example, in the passage in question. Today, I believe she'd write that sentence without those two commas. My opinion is that the phrase from "remarkable" to "depravity" is meant to be a qualifier for the novels she's discussing. Meaning, she's only talking about novels like that. She's not casting aspersions on *all* novels, nor is she saying that all novels carry those characteristics. Those commas, however, make us, readers of today who are used to commas meaning exactly that, think that she's against all fictional literature.

Try reading the sentence without those two commas and with a slight edit: Novels [that are] remarkable only for their exaggerated pictures, impossible ideals, and specimens of depravity fill our young readers with wrong tastes and sentiments. I think this is closer to what she meant and how it applies to today. It also makes a lot more sense as a recommendation, since it would be hard to believe that a well-read and cultured woman such as MBE would tell her readers to eschew all literature. She *wrote* fiction herself as a young woman.

I am in no way suggesting any alteration is needed to Science and Health—we each need to approach it with our own individual inspiration. I think, however, in our reading of it, we need to gain a knowledge of the context of the times in which it was written, and then expand the meaning to find its relevance for today. For example, today I would add television, film, radio, magazines, the Internet—really any media—to the arenas regarding which I should be discriminating and which I should shield my children when appropriate. (Hence the "discussions" I've had with my son about Grand Theft Auto.)

As far as evaluating the media, the core criteria for me is: does it uplift or degrade my self-definition or my definition of others? Some of most violent films ever made (Saving Private Ryan, Children of Men) uplifted my outlook, while some of the most well-made and award-winning (Silence of the Lambs, Jaws) left me only horrified. So now I look for the uplift.

Thanks for your question, Dennis! What does everyone else think?

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Take your time and think for yourself

My daughter recently sent me this passage from Mary Baker Eddy's Unity of Good, so I thought I'd pass it along:

…[A]t the present crude hour, no wise men or women will rudely or prematurely agitate a theme involving the All of infinity.

Rather will they rejoice in the small understanding they have already gained of the wholeness of Deity, and work gradually and gently up toward the perfect thought divine. This meekness will increase their apprehension of God, because their mental struggles and pride of opinion will proportionately diminish.

Every one should be encouraged not to accept any personal opinion on so great a matter, but to seek the divine Science of this question of Truth by following upward individual convictions, undisturbed by the frightened sense of any need of attempting to solve every Life-problem in a day.

"Great is the mystery of godliness," says Paul; and mystery involves the unknown. No stubborn purpose to force conclusions on this subject will unfold in us a higher sense of Deity; neither will it promote the Cause of Truth or enlighten the individual thought.

Let us respect the rights of conscience and the liberty of the sons of God, so letting our "moderation be known to all men."

Unity of Good, p. 4–5

In short, take your time and think for yourself. Thanks, honey!

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Bonding with the team

Spent most of the weekend at a retreat for a new position as assistant director of my networking organization. I'm now over four chapters, and at the retreat had to develop goals for the year.

There was also a lot of bonding and inspiration with the AD team of about 25. The first night, we had to break up into teams of six and perform an intense wellness relay. The team as a whole had to 1) run a mile, 2) do 200 each of sit-ups, pushups and jumping jacks, 3) run 8 flights of stairs (5 levels each), 4) answer some wellness related questions, and 5) build a bridge out of newspaper. In 20 minutes. It was crazy! Everyone had to do at least a little of each thing. I'm proud to say that I knocked myself out. I was exhausted but feeling very energized by the end.

The start of the retreat included an introduction by the executive director, an amazing woman. She said two things that really struck me:

• If you're confused, you're about to learn something.
• If you're frustrated, you're about to have a breakthrough.

Aren't those cool? Confusion and frustration are usually so uncomfortable we get caught on the sensations. But what if we saw them both as opportunities that would inevitably lead to a positive outcome? I loved that.

Later, I shared something I'd heard lately (but can't remember where, if you recognize it, please tell me):

If you want to get something you've never had,
you've got to do something you've never done.

The weekend left me with the feeling that anything is possible.

How was your weekend?

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