all things are new - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: fresh starts


Our backyard

Up here in the very northern hemisphere, the new year has been welcomed in with an abundance of snow. Conditions at my favorite cross-country ski park are listing it as "fluffy." This is another way to describe it as ideal. The beauty of the season, the crisp cold, the blanket of snow covering the upcoming spring, all this makes it an ideal backdrop to think ahead and prep for the year ahead. Here are four areas I feel are important for me:

Rest.
Although this seemed like a funny way to start off, I am intrigued with rest. It certainly is nourishing, and it is based on ( or rests on) a profound trust - that God is governing all: all systems and functions of the body, of organizations and of nations. "God rests in action" makes me think of my activity as productive, efficient. During yesterday's skiing, I constantly reminded myself to rest in each stride which helped me relax into the movement and release any tension. Resting in action brought more fluidity and grace.

Be alert.
Just so the "rest" part doesn't fall into sleep, I am adding alertness. Alertness is sharp, is keen insight and means we stay open to experience more of God's infinite goodness. We are engaged, a part of life - not mere by-standers.

Work.
Once we accept an idea of God (like goodness, abundance, companionship, and so on) as already present, we can then get to work at demonstrating it. You know, like once you have accepted that 4+6 is 10, then you can find all sorts of ways to work with that idea by managing finances, baking, figuring out the mileage to your cousin's, etc. Likewise once we accept that God is All-present and All-good, we can get to work at seeing this goodness everywhere. Working diligently, striving and patiently persisting just throws off the baggage of chatter and puts us in the honest, naked pursuit of demonstrating spiritual being.

Love.
Connection. Redemption. Celebration. I wholeheartedly agree with MBEddy's statement about Love: "What a word! I am in awe before it. Over what worlds on worlds it hath range and is sovereign! the underived, the incomparable, the infinite All of good, the alone God, is Love." Yep. Love is something I'll be exploring eternally. MBEddy goes on to say:

Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose-leaf. I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results. Unless these appear, I cast aside the word as a sham and counterfeit, having no ring of the true metal. Love cannot be a mere abstraction, or goodness without activity and power. (from Miscellaneous Writings, p. 249)

Please feel free to share your ideas for renewal!


To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

gloom and doom or making room

Spiritual resource to share: insistence and persistence



Gloom and doom rule the baby boom.....Baby boomers are bummed.....Are boomers gloom and doomers?

Just google "Pew Research and boomers" and you get all kinds of articles with these headlines.  Or go straight to Pew Research and read for yourself: "Baby Boomers Approach 65 - Glumly"

After reading this article, I found myself asking all kinds of other questions, like:

• Who or what is it that we allow to determine our future and our expectations for the future?
• Shakespeare has said that there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. So are we making our own gloom and doom by thinking it to be so?
• How can we make room in our hearts for zoom and bloom, instead of doom and gloom?
• Do we wait for good to happen or do we wake up to see and acknowledge it ourselves?

Even the darkest night cannot withstand the light. And the agreement to acknowledge good acts as the light chasing away any gloom.  This is the seed of progress. This is something we can do, day to day, even blink to blink. We can take responsibility for our own thinking and align it with God, good. We can bring light to our thinking.

Hopi Elders have said "Now is the time, and we are the ones we have been waiting for." Christ Jesus has said "Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

Both ideas leave me with the feeling of urgency, potency and potential. Now is the time!

Some of you may remember that old phrase: "Question authority." Let's question the authority of these predictions. Let’s challenge these assumptions with an understanding of God. How deep is our understanding of God, Love? How much room have we made in our hearts to accept that God is eternal, omnipotent?

In Science and Health, it says “The world must grow to the spiritual understanding of prayer.”


Prayer is what aligns our thought to what has divine authority. It is the highest authority there is. “'God is Love.' More than this we cannot ask, higher we cannot look, farther we cannot go.”


God is the foundation of being and there is no other power. “God being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence? How can there be more than all?”

If God is omnipotent, than evil (resentment, anger, fear, doubt, ad nauseum)  cannot have any power whatsoever. Nil. Nada. Zip. God, good, is the only power, is all the power that is.

Let’s question the authority that says we are sick, weak, vulnerable, unemployable, unlovable and incapable of determining our own course. Let’s answer it with the divine authority of God - in healing discords, healing the sick, affirming our strengths, partnering ourselves with Love, and affirming our ability to listen to our loving Father-Mother God to lead us in the paths that will glorify Him -- glorify Life, Truth and Love.

Let's make room for progress, innovative solutions, patient and persistent prayer. Day by day, blink by blink, we can see 2011 bloom into surprising possibilities for good.

To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Alone at Christmas

Spiritual resource to share:  giving Christmas

It was my first Christmas away from home and family. I was working at a Christmas Family Camp, but mine wasn’t going to be there. I wasn’t looking forward to Christmas day at all. There were other college students on staff, but I still felt lonely. How I would miss Christmas morning, the stockings, the presents, and the big family meal!

Then I thought about how everyone on staff had agreed to work over Christmas to make it a really special time for other families. The more I thought about my co-workers, the more I started thinking of ways we could all have a special Christmas together on Christmas morning.

I dove into the preparations. My Christmas tree was a green triangle made of yarn, put up on the wall of my shared tiny apartment. I tacked on pine cones, colorful ribbons and bows. I scoured the campus’ vending machines and wrapped up small single use boxes of laundry detergent, a box of toothpaste, a bar of soap. I found a brand-new pair of socks in my drawer. My mom had sent a fruitcake I hadn’t unwrapped. I wrapped all these gifts with newspaper and placed them under my Christmas tree with the names of those on staff who were also spending Christmas without their families.

That Christmas morning, everyone came over. We made a fire and sat around the tree. We all opened Christmas presents and laughed and sang our way through the morning. One friend even said it was the best Christmas he had ever had!

It definitely was one of my most memorable Christmases! Loneliness disappeared right when I started praying about ways to give Christmas to my friends. I learned it’s not how much money you spend but the love and joy and spunk behind each gift that makes it special.  All the joy I put into this effort, multiplied and came back to me!

And the gifts are really just a symbol of the appearance of Christ in our hearts. And that’s always joyful, abundant, satisfying, and inclusive. That’s the kind of Christmas that stays with you all year long.



To read more Christmas blogs, go to http://tmcyouth.com/blogs/alone-at-christmas/

too blessed to be stressed - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: blessings

Did you ever notice how familiar the word 'bless' is to the word 'bliss'? Bless has many meanings: to endow, to preserve, to protect, to approve, to praise and to glorify and to invoke divine care.

When we bless others or feel blessed, we feel the protection, our endowment of good, the approval of God and stand on the understanding that God is all powerful and all good. This is blissful!

The preface to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy starts out "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, today is big with blessings."

Leaning, yielding, accepting, acknowledging God's sustaining control - these ring out peace and wring out stress.

Love is what it is all about. Love is what brings forth the coming of Christ. Love is what we are given, "filling up and spilling over" an endless waterfall.

And now for a cute kid story: A mother was badly stressed out. Details, responsibilities and the fear of lack must have all ganged up on her that day. She was quietly sobbing to herself "Oh, I am such a flop as a mother!" Her little girl heard her and came up to her and said "Mommy, don't be so sad. In the Bible it says, 'Fear not, little flop, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.'"
No matter who we feel we are, what struggles we have, God is right there pouring forth more than we can even fathom. We are being given the kingdom, if we only will accept it. Mary Baker Eddy helps to bring this point home:

God is Love. Can we ask Him to be more? God is intelligence. Can we inform the infinite Mind of anything He does not already comprehend? Do we expect to change perfection? Shall we plead for more at the open fount, which is pouring forth more than we accept? The unspoken desire does bring us nearer the source of all existence and blessedness.

What that quote says to me is that we are home. We cannot go any farther than God. We have arrived right at His door.

And I'll close with yet another cute kid remark made as a response to the question "What does love mean?" (love those cute kids!):

Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen.

Such blessedness, such bliss! Any blessings come your way lately?





To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Christmas in the trenches

Spiritual resource to share: acts of peace

My grandparents

We have a family story that strikes me deeply. And rightly so. My mom’s father, Walter (or Butchie as he was known to us), was with the Scottish troops on December 24, 1914, and was a part of that most wonderful Christmas Eve truce. My mom remembers him talking about it and sharing the news of playing football with others.  Butchie survived this war, married and had five children.  He also introduced three generations to Christian Science after having been healed through Christian Science of severe head injuries.  (But that's another story for another time!)

While browsing the internet about the famous truce, I found a letter that a soldier wrote during that time. It's become famous as you will read. (I've copied it as it appeared on interfaithforums.com.)


It is an amazing story, remarkable situation. It is a tribute to all soldiers everywhere and a reminder that "on each end of the rifle, we're the same."

The Christmas Truce Letter

On November 7, 2006, singer Chris de Burgh paid £14,400 at Bonhams auction house for an original 10 page letter from an unknown British soldier that records events and incidents with the Germans on that night (during World War I) describing "the most memorable Christmas I've ever spent".

The letter begins:

This will be the most memorable Christmas I've ever spent or likely to spend: since about tea time yesterday I don't think theres been a shot fired on either side up to now. Last night turned a very clear frost moonlight night, so soon after dusk we had some decent fires going and had a few carols and songs.

The Germans commenced by placing lights all along the edge of their trenches and coming over to us — wishing us a Happy Christmas etc. They also gave us a few songs etc. so we had quite a social party. Several of them can speak English very well so we had a few conversations. Some of our chaps went to over to their lines. I think theyve all come back bar one from 'E' Co. They no doubt kept him as a souvenir.

In spite of our fires etc. it was terribly cold and a job to sleep between look out duties, which are two hours in every six.

First thing this morning it was very foggy. So we stood to arms a little longer than usual. A few of us that were lucky could go to Holy Communion early this morning. It was celebrated in a ruined farm about 500 yds behind us. I unfortunately couldn't go. There must be something in the spirit of Christmas as to day we are all on top of our trenches running about. Whereas other days we have to keep our heads well down.

We had breakfast about 8.0 which went down alright especially some cocoa we made. We also had some of the post this morning. I had a parcel from B. G's Lace
Dept containing a sweater, smokes, under clothes etc. We also had a card from the Queen, which I am sending back to you to look after please. After breakfast we had a game of football at the back of our trenches!

We've had a few Germans over to see us this morning. They also sent a party over to bury a sniper we shot in the week. He was about a 100 yds from our trench. A few of our fellows went out and helped to bury him.About 10.30 we had a short church parade the morning service etc. held in the trench.

How we did sing. 'O come all ye faithful. And While shepherds watched their flocks by night' were the hymns we had. At present we are cooking our Christmas Dinner! so will finish this letter later.Dinner is over! and well we enjoyed it. Our dinner party started off with fried bacon and dip-bread: followed by hot Xmas Pudding. I had a mascot in my piece.

Next item on the menu was muscatels and almonds, oranges, bananas, chocolate etc followed by cocoa and smokes. You can guess we thought of the dinners at home. Just before dinner I had the pleasure of shaking hands with several Germans: a party of them came 1/2 way over to us so several of us went out to them. I exchanged one of my balaclavas for a hat. I've also got a button off one of their tunics. We also exchanged smokes etc. and had a decent chat. They say they won't fire tomorrow if we don't so I suppose we shall get a bit of a holiday — perhaps.

After exchanging autographs and them wishing us a Happy New Year we departed and came back and had our dinner.We can hardly believe that we've been firing at them for the last week or two — it all seems so strange. At present its freezing hard and everything is covered with ice…

The letter ends:

There are plenty of huge shell holes in front of our trenches, also pieces of shrapnel to be found. I never expected to shake hands with Germans between the firing lines on Christmas Day and I don't suppose you thought of us doing so. So after a fashion we've enjoyed? our Christmas. Hoping you spend a happy time also George Boy as well. How we thought of England during the day. Kind regards to all the neighbours.

With much love from Boy.

For more information and background, see and read more about a movie, Joyeux Noël, made about this event.

This song has helped bring this event to the forefront:



Note: The photo is a family photo and is not for circulation. (c)

the new/old face of gift-giving

Spiritual resource to share: worship fully. spend less. give more. love all.

One Christmas, our two sons (1st and 4th grade) were very particular with their gift requests.  One loved his science teacher and the special project on insects the class was doing.  So he wanted his own maggots.  The other son had taken apart most of our electrical appliances and, being in the first grade, was now old enough to know that he shouldn't do that.  So he wanted his own broken toaster.

 
This was great!  I could tell we were going to be redefining gift-giving for a long time to come. For me, gift-giving is all about what we love about one another.  We celebrate  the most fun, crazy, memorable, meaningful parts of our lives.
 

This Christmas, we are focussing on Christmas presence, instead of presents.  We are traveling and making the effort to see other family members.  We'll be giving out opportunities and experiences. The kids will be getting ski lift tickets, my brothers will be getting an evening with a classic movie we used to watch as kids, others will be contributing to travel funds.  We are re-gifting, making cookies, donating to non-profits in one another's names, writing poems, doing favors, going skiing, sledding, sharing meals, and just being together.

 

Our gift-giving has its roots in the gift-giving of the Magi.  They were present to celebrate Christ's birth, and we are here now, celebrating the Christ in one another.

 

There is a message flying around on facebook and other social media:  "worship fully. spend less. give more. love all"  thanks to a campaign called The Advent Conspiracy.  It seeks to replace consumerism with compassion. It is one of those genius messages that get to the heart of Christmas.

 

In the busy hum of the holidays, it is a welcome reminder of the gifts we truly give one another.  

blessings of the season

Spiritual resource to share: multi-culti holiday season

I’ve been a house parent for about four years when my two sons went to a high school where a third of the population hailed from sometimes as many as 15 other countries. So there were many ways to celebrate the upcoming season, whether it was Advent, St. Nicholas Day, Bodhi Day, Hanukkah, Las Posadas, Winter Solstice and Christmas as well as New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day and the first weeks of the solar and lunar year.


During Christmas break, many of them could not get back to their home countries, and we were able to host them at our house. And what great kids they were! At these times it was an understatement to say how universal the love and laughter was that filled our house!


I found that all celebrations have much in common. And so from our family here, tucked in the northwoods of Wisconsin, we were able to share heartfelt warmth and love to each of the boys’ classmates and their families from all over the world, along with loads of cookies and small gifts. We all celebrated these things:

•a time for love – for family and friends to come together and to extend our homes to strangers
•a time for quietness, reverence and awe –where those things we deem most sacred to us are honored
•a time for peace – a recognition of our interconnectedness to each other, to our past, to our ancestors and to our future
•and a time for celebration – for new beginnings, fresh starts, and hope – great hope for what life holds in store for all of us

I love that Mary Baker Eddy defined God in broad and sweeping terms that included being all-inclusive!


"God is universal; " writes Mary Baker Eddy, "confined to no spot, defined by no dogma, appropriated by no sect. Not more to one than to all, is God demonstrable as divine Life, Truth, and Love; and His people are they that reflect Him - that reflect Love." (Miscellaneous Writings p. 150)


May this upcoming season of light be filled with universal Love!

Confié mi hijo al cuidado de Dios

Una península en algún lugar de
la naturaleza  Sylvania

Un sábado por la tarde, nuestro hijo adolescente salió a correr por el bosque cercano al colegio donde estudia como interno. Llevaba puestos unos shorts y una camiseta. Una hora después se desvió del camino y al rato se dio cuenta de que se había perdido. Cuando empezó a anochecer, vio una península del otro lado de un lago. Se sacó la ropa y nadó hasta allí sosteniéndola por encima de la cabeza para que no se mojara. Al llegar se hizo un pequeño cobertizo apoyando ramas contra un árbol y esperó a que pasara la noche.

Cuando nos avisaron, ya muy tarde, que no lo podían encontrar, mi esposo estaba en casa y yo había salido en viaje de negocios a cuatro horas de allí. Pronto comencé a sentirme muy ansiosa pues sabía que por la noche la temperatura bajaba a unos 9º C (40º F) y, además, en esa zona se habían avistado lobos, osos negros, coyotes y gatos monteses. La propiedad de 1300 acres (unas 530 hectáreas) del colegio está rodeada por otros miles de acres de vida silvestre. Asimismo, yo tenía que manejar cuatro horas para llegar a casa y otra más para llegar al colegio. Era un hecho que todo ese tiempo lo iba a pasar orando....

(Para más información, por favor haga clic aquí para ir a El Heraldo de la Ciencia Cristiana.)

Severe facial burns healed

Spiritual resource to share: healing testimony

This is me, today.  Not a single scar!

During my college years, I visited Mexico and stayed with some friends while visiting a boyfriend. In order to heat the water for my showers or baths, I had to climb up on the roof and light a heater. One day as I did this, I mistakenly turned on the gas full blast, and then lit the match. Flames exploded in my face, burning off my eyelashes and brows, singeing my hair, and severely scorching my skin.


As I made my way back into the house, my friends immediately responded to my cries for help. They already knew I was a Christian Scientist and would want to rely on prayer for healing, so they helped me get comfortable and then left me alone to have some privacy and to pray....

To read the rest, please click here to christianscience.com.

And the least shall be greatest

Spiritual resource to share: confidence in taking small steps

Sometimes the infinite is a little hard to grasp. God is infinite and man reflects this infinity.

Heady stuff.

So when I read these two passages, I felt a gentle and encouraging nudging forward in my spiritual growth:

"Love giveth to the least spiritual idea, might, immortality and goodness..."

and

"God gives the lesser idea of Himself for a link to the greater, and in return, the higher always protects the lower."

God, as Love, is the Great Shepherd. If I can grasp even one idea about God and hold to it, this links up to its next higher idea, and next, and next. Love gives me the encouragement to keep going in this line of prayer, to keep growing. These small inklings of good grow into fuller understanding.

Have you ever felt you aren’t spiritual enough to experience healing? Perhaps you admire others for their spiritual prowess and feel you fall short. You can replace that thought with an acceptance of unlimited good.


Your present understanding has the same link to the greater understanding that others do. We are all linked to the infinite, eternal God.

This was so evident when I went through a horrible time in my life. Finances, relationships, housing, everything was taken away. Shocked and severely discouraged, I could hold to the thought that God loved me. As simple as that thought was, I held to it.

It grew. Linked to omnipotent Truth, this idea was a protection to me. It took away enough fear so that I could listen for ways to find housing. It grew into a confidence strong enough to find a job.

This little spiritual idea of God’s love for me was given an accelerating power, and soon I had the confidence that God was with me, providing for and protecting me.

The idea magnified and multiplied. God loved me. If this was true for me, it is true for others. I could bless others. Within a year, I had housing, a job, new friends and a new and confident outlook on life.

The most important lesson I learned from it is that we are good enough to be loved by God, now. Even what we might consider the smallest idea or understanding of God’s love has divine authority to blossom and develop into fruition. Man is constantly rising higher and higher from a boundless basis. Whatever our starting point in prayer can only lead us upward to greater expression of health, harmony and goodness.


 * The title is taken from the Bible, the book of Matthew: "Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field:
Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."

Christian Science Nursing: Foundation for our Community of Care

Spiritual resource to share: the elegance and effectiveness of Christian Science nursing in healing

photo from http://csncommission.org/christian-science-nursing/

In October, I gave the keynote address for the Annual Meeting of Beacon Haven, a courageous Christian Science nursing facility that just completed its ambitious building project last year. I was able to recognize this and the many years this community has faithfully and consistently provided care for those relying on Christian Science for healing.

To read the full text of the talk, please click here.  I've included some excerpts from the talk below:


This talk was part of a trilogy of talks on Christian Science Nursing I have given to Nursing Organizations in the Midwest. Each one carries the same message from a different angle with similar and different points, all in an effort to help raise the profile of Christian Science nursing in our movement and the world. So I was very grateful for the opportunity to speak on this topic: Christian Science Nursing: the Foundation for our Community of Care.

With health care reform issues taking over headlines and with the growing claim that western medicine is the only way to experience true healing, it is time that we all be able to fully answer the question that many are asking us: How do Christian Scientists care for one another?


In order to answer the question – how do we care for one another, we’ll answer within the framework of the Christian Science nurse and look at two topics:

1. What kind of community of care exists? and
2. What impact does the model of the Christian Science nurse have on healing – ourselves, our churches and our larger communities?

Christian Science nursing has a fixed role in the fulfillment of our Church mission "to reinstate Christianity and its lost element of healing."

This is a “roll up your sleeves” type of Christianity; it is boldness and meekness combined; it is “the tender word and Christian encouragement”; it is “pitiful patience with another’s fears and the removal of them”, it is “legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love”.

Each Church by-law, including Christian Science nursing, is all about quick and complete healing because it “invigorates our capacity to heal the sick.”


Nursing is not an isolated activity of church. Nor is nursing only for a certain age group, nor does it only happen in a facility. It is for anyone at any time at any place.


I could be a poster child for the benefits of Christian Science nursing! I believe that between my family and me, we have experienced Christian Science nursing under the widest variety of situations and covering every stage of life!

When starting off in college, I took a part-time job as a Christian Science nurse’s aide and learned the basics of how to create a healing atmosphere, how to spiritualize every single caring activity and how to support healing under every condition. This laid down a foundation for how I cared for myself, my home and others, and later, for my Christian Science practice.

When we were starting our family, I called a nurse to ask questions about care for myself during pregnancy and she helped with practical and inspired ideas over the phone.


We asked a Christian Science nurse to be present with us at the hospital during the birth of one of our sons. When things were getting overwhelming and frustrating for me, the nurse’s calm presence helped let harmony prevail and the birth went forward naturally.

When raising our two sons, we relied on the experience of a Christian Science nurse who wrote a book which shared practical ideas like schedules, food, and activities along with clear metaphysical ideas on the role of parents. This gave me the confidence that I would know what to do with my babies from the very first day they arrived – AND for all the days that followed.

After we moved our young family across the country, my husband injured his back, totally incapacitating him. We called a nursing facility for admission. The tangible presence of Love and the prompt unworried attention to his needs led to a complete recovery in three days.


A couple of times, when I needed a little break from routine and needed some focused study, I came and stayed at a nursing facility as a Rest and Study guest. It became a home away from home and when I left, I was rejuvenated.


Some time ago, I called on a Christian Science nurse for helpful ideas about preparing food for my mom when we were caring for her at home. Her take on food preparation was fresh, fun and inspiring. Preparing a meal became an act of love.


Another nurse was present when my mother passed on, affirming, just as did the Christian Science nurse who attended my son’s birth, the wonder of eternal life.

In each situation and at every stage of life the Christian Science nursing approach to care helped guide and discipline my thought toward healing in Christian Science and I gained a greater sense of God’s infinite readiness, tenderness and love.

Our firm foundation to caring for one another sets a standard that blesses all.

We can confidently answer the question of a family member, a legislator, a doctor, ethicist or college student “How do we care for one another?” by realizing that our community of care has a solid history and a firm and tested foundation.


The Christian Science practitioners, Christian Science nurses,  facilities and services, and caring members put a face on this community. In this community of caring, we are daily proving that there is a way to nurse and to heal wholly based on spiritual principles and this heals us, enlivens our churches and shows the world the highest form of care.

To read the full text of the talk, please click here. 














Thank you!

Having it all

Spiritual resource to share: abundance

In a season known for consumptuous giving, what does it mean -- having it all?

What is all? All the stuff we want? All the things we need? Being able to do all things, to be all things to all people?

What about applying this idea of allness to our most primitive relationship – to our relationship to God?  What does this do for us on a daily basis?

Once when I was putting myself through college, with very little money and a family to visit over Christmas break, I decided that I could bank on God as All and expect to have a fulfilling Christmas – including being a part of our tradition of giving gifts.

I started out by thinking about God as All, and that I am included in God’s love, in God’s allness. So, I thought, I have infinite ideas and resources and ways to show love and cheer this season. I have unlimited ideas.

I started thinking outside the box. I re-gifted, made up coupons, went to thrift stores and wrote poems and prose.

What started out as a picture of lack became an adventure in abundance. I had come home for Christmas with arms full of the most funky, fun and unique gifts for everyone in our extended family.

It really helped me to consider God in totally new terms – God as All: all-power; all-presence; all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving.

To know God, not as a glorified person, but as a creative force that is all-pervasive blew the top off of any  idea of God that was changeable and unpredictable. To see that God is the source of life’s ability to be self-sustaining was to see God as a self-enforced law of being.

In order for life to be self-sustaining, it needs to be pure and permanent -- much like you would see the law of gravity – operating on and governing us all in a way that is consistent, unconditional, unaltered and permanent.

God is like that. God is the origin or principle of life; God is intelligence or Mind, the soul and substance or meaning behind all things; God is the animating principle or spirit of our lives, the permanent fixture of life, the purity and stability of truth; God is the harmonizing and inclusive nature of love.

God is All. And so it follows that we draw from and reflect the infinite combinations of Love, intelligence and Truth. We can have it all, because we reflect All.

To learn more about the law of God and how it operates in your life, check out spirituality.com. Also, check out a startling new way of understanding God with these questions and answers from Mary Baker Eddy:

Question. — What is God?


Answer. — God is incorporeal, divine, supreme, infinite
Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love.



Question. — Are these terms synonymous?


Answer. — They are. They refer to one absolute God.
They are also intended to express the nature, essence, and
wholeness of Deity. The attributes of God are justice,
mercy, wisdom, goodness, and so on.


Question. — Is there more than one God or Principle?


Answer. — There is not. Principle and its idea is one,
and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-
present Being, and His reflection is man and the universe.
Omni is adopted from the Latin adjective signifying all.
Hence God combines all-power or potency, all-science
or true knowledge, all-presence. The varied manifesta-
tions of Christian Science indicate Mind, never matter,
and have one Principle.

healing prayer: a super power or divinely natural?

Spiritual resource to share: miracles


When I told my friend, a physical therapist, about the time I had been healed of abdominal pains through prayer, she was surprised. “That’s just like magic!” was her immediate response.


But it wasn’t magic. It seemed perfectly natural to me that when we turn to God, expectant and listening, that we find healing. This is the way we dealt with all illnesses and injuries in our family, through Christian Science healing prayer.

Physical healing in Christian Science comes from realizing a law of being – a divine law of being. When applied (that is when it is understood), the body responds.


This is similar to when you have a happy thought, the face smiles. What is in our thought is made manifest in the body. So it is very important that we determine what is in our thought. Prayer aligns our thought to God – an all-powerful force of Love and harmony. Aligning one’s thought with harmony, brings harmonious results.


Mary Baker Eddy, founder of Christian Science, a system of healing based on Christ Jesus’ works and teachings, explains “Miracle” as that which is divinely natural, but must be learned humanly. She goes on to say that “ these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural.”

For more stories of physical healings brought on through prayer as taught in Christian Science, check out spirituality.com.

To read more about healing prayer, read Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.

Making Easy and Rapid Strides toward Youth

Spiritual resource to share: talks given

Church and youth are hot topics - especially when you put them together!  In my ministerial group up here in the north, ministers and youth directors alike understand the importance of nurturing youth in our churches.  It is synonymous with nurturing growth.  And it is commonly known that young people are leaving organized church in record numbers.*

So when the Student Center Foundation asked me to give their keynote address for their Annual Meeting and asked it to be focussed on cherishing youth, I jumped on it.  It went beyond finding ways to attract youth to church and directly to appreciating the youth in church today and to see the youthfulness in us all.

If the spiritual qualities behind youth are innovation, energy, progress, and flexibility, then Mary Baker Eddy's definition of church is one of the most youthful definitions of all!**

Madison's Student Foundation Center's Board members did a great job of putting excerpts of the talk on their site.  Click here to check it out on their site.

Notes:
*Comments on Barna research; Other studies: ( simply google "why are youth leaving the church" to get over 7,000,000 results)
**CHURCH. The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle. he Church is that institution, which affords proof of its utility and is found elevating the race, rousing the dormant understanding from material beliefs to the apprehension of spiritual ideas and the demonstration of divine Science, thereby casting out devils, or error, and healing the sick. (from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy)

remembering Mary Baker Eddy

Spiritual resource to share:  the ongoing influence of a life of Christian healing

Today, my Google Alerts were full of references to Mary Baker Eddy, as it was 100 years ago today that she passed away,  In addition, friends have posted about her ( see Tony's wonderful collection of

100 reflections on why Mary Baker Eddy's life and ideas still resonate 100 years on! ) , tmcyouth.com has their own list of 100 things to know about Mary Baker Eddy and others have used social media to share their comments on her life, just as I am doing here! 

Above all things, Mary Baker Eddy had an incredible record of Christian healing.  Of the many biographies about her, the book Christian Healer ( Amplified edition) written by Yvonne Cache von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, is one of my favorites.  This book brings out,  more succinctly than others, how Mary Baker Eddy healed.  Or, I could say, how Mary Baker Eddy loved, because healing and loving are so closely related. More than 300 documented cases of healing by Mary Baker Eddy are included in this one book.

The Mary Baker Eddy Library hosted an author talk with Robert Warneck which you can hear by clicking here and scrolling down halfway to the page where you will see this explanation:

One of the original authors of Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, Robert Warneck, discussed the recently issued amplified edition of this bestselling book. This new edition includes many more documented records of Eddy’s healing work, and presents her life story as a narrative of healing. There was also an opportunity for questions and answers with the author.

I have been deeply influenced by Mary Baker Eddy's life.  She not only has modeled courage and compassion, but also given me an example of how to love, how to heal and how to be the blessing to one another that we were all meant to be.

 

to the fairy cheerleader pilgrim in us all

Spiritual resource to share:  play

My twin nieces and their daddy

I opened the door to squeals of delight and hugs and questions.   Can I have some pie?  Where's Mocha?  Can we play now? What's in those boxes? Can we have a fashion show?  What do you think of my new boots? 

The nieces have arrived. 

The eight-year-old twins and the equally boisterous four-year-old had barely gotten off their winter jackets before the fun was to start. It was Thanksgiving.  But I am not too sure that that mattered that much.  What DID matter was that here was a time to be together and to see and experience everything in a new way.  We, of course, had to see the new boots, the new haircuts, and the new book and the newly developed talents of reading and drawing and cookie making.  Later, all the adults were treated to a fashion show, which is where we stood breathless, as we saw the incredible fairy cheerleader pilgrim outfit.

I blame it on the girls.  Kids tend to bring out the childlikeness in us all - and our innocence, laughter, joy, and goofiness just tumble out.  All inhibitions go out the door when the nieces come in.  So the challenge is -- can we have that same level of joy with one another?

Here's a wish to you all to give it a try -- pump up the volume of joy.  And do this in whatever occassion you find yourself in where there are others, just like you, with a latent reservoir of mischief and awe.  Remember that we are all made to play.  God is good.  All is well.  And may you surround yourself with extraordinary measures of  laughter and unselfishness and fairy cheerleader pilgrims this holiday season.

No longer on the outside looking in

Spiritual resource to share: tmcyouth blogs!

This was posted earlier this month on tmcyouth.com as part of their "Growing Up Strange" blog series.  Each blog post tells a little bit of what it is like to grow up as a Christian Scientist.  These are fun and insightful!:

Growing up, I never felt that my friends rejected me because of Christian Science, but they did think of it as an out of the box religion—and weird in an interesting, loving kind of way.

One time I went with a friend to her regular medical check up. “My friend doesn’t go to doctors,” she boasted to her elderly physician, “She’s a Christian Scientist.” The doctor glared at me and said, “You’re going to die before the rest of us.” ......

(To read more, click here.)

an insistent peace

Spiritual resource to share:  paz = peace

photo by Domingos Peixoto for Brazilian newspaper O Globo/Rio

Recently, my friend Amy posted on facebook the story of the drug wars going on in Rio and this picture. It brought me back to my short stay in Rio, where I was working with a team of others to distribute Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures more broadly in that area. One special late afternoon, a colleague and I walked Rio’s beaches, with the twinkliing lights of the favelas on one end and the luxury hotels on the other.  We were wrapped up talking about healing and peace in the Middle East. Now I find all those ideas for peace and healing equally relevant for Rio now.

Newspapers were all over this story. It was humbling and frightening to read of it. I felt small.  What can I possibly say to such a massive display of aggression, violence, danger and conflict?  How can I pray?

Then, quite simply, I was reminded and humbled that God is greater than all these things. 

People have responded to this chaotic mayhem with a simple word: Peace. The photo above reminded me of the childlike purity and permance of peace.

Peace is what will prevail. It always has and always will.
Life is insistent and will prevail.
Love is the cornerstone of all spiritual building and will prevail.
And in the midst of the deepest disorder, order will stand its ground and spread.

I am so grateful to Amy for bringing this to my attention, for those journalists letting the world know, for those whose vision for justice and peace emboldened and trumped parasitic greed and fear.  And I am grateful for all of us prayer warriors, who get to work affirming what is permanent, good and true in the glaring face of chaos. Effective prayer has as its foundation the law of God --the law of the Creator as defined in Science and Health:

CREATOR. Spirit; Mind; intelligence; the animating divine Principle of all that is real and good; self-existent Life, Truth, and Love; that which is perfect and eternal; the opposite of matter and evil, which have no Principle; God, who made all that was made and could not create an atom or an element the opposite of Himself.

Although there is great relief that this recent – and some say the worst  - battle has been won ( click here for today's news) the mission to break the grip of the drug gangs continues. So does our prayer.

"everything is rhythm"

Spiritual resource to share: beauty all around us

      "We are, all of us, unique, each a unique pattern of creativity,and if it is not fulfilled it is lost for all ... "   Martha Graham, American choreographer

On the heels of receiving the Random Acts of Culture clip from a friend (see my last posting), another friend posted this clip on her facebook.   All of which goes to show that I have such brilliant friends - and that the attraction of beautiful rhythmic ideas is truly universal, with infinite expression, and full and overflowing with joy!

It is just another proof of the original spiritual nature of each of us.  "To discern the rhythm of Spirit apprehended and to be holy, thought must be purely spiritual."  writes Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, written just pages after she states "Man is not material, he is spiritual."

random acts of culture

Spiritual resource to share:  connections through all time

This came to my email today and I knew I had to share it!   It brings the beauty and brilliance of Handel right between the makeup and accessories aisles of Macy's, connecting all ages to what is timeless.  Enjoy!



For another inspiration involving the Hallelujah Chorus and parenting, click here.

the surprise of God - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: spontaneity and a capacity for surprise

"Don't outline good, because you can't outline good enough!" This advice came to me from a dear and wise healer many years ago. And certainly, if we accept God as infinite and as the one Principle or law that governs all things, our own limited views and opinions might not open us up to the horizon-opening things that can and do happen when we trust God.

For instance, when my job ended years ago, the whole family felt very good about moving back to the Midwest. Although I loved my job that entailed travel and working with teams all over the world, I thought that that aspect of my work would never show up in the place where we moved - a rural area of Wisconsin known for its natural beauty and tourism.

But we trusted God "with all our hearts" and didn't limit any possibilities. This was a vigorous trusting, mind you. It involved

• a larger understanding of God governing every detail of our lives
• an experienced trust that God always takes us to a place that will expand and deepen our understanding of Him
• dismissing doubt, recognizing and eliminating impatience, and yielding my solutions
• rooting out and dropping old stereotyped expectations
• listening, listening, listening and being open, open, open to new ideas
• loving God like I love family, adventure, beauty, and gentleness

And things did open up in ways I couldn't have planned. I've been tallying up our blessings and realized that we now, as a family, have more international involvement than we ever had when we were living in one of the largest cities in the country. We are involved in international youth exchanges and a high school with lots of international students and I continue to grow my practice that includes patients and colleagues from all over the world.

This is amazing to me. And God continues to amaze me. Life is full of horizon-opening things when we trust God with all our hearts.













To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.

Let a double portion of her spirit be on me*

Spiritual resource to share:  fixed influence

In the last six months, I have been to three memorial services -- each of women who were my mentors in different aspects of my life.  One was my mother, my life mentor, another a designer, and another a Christian Science nurse.

Each time I attended one of the memorial services, I was hit by a concentrated dose of what was best about these three women:  the unconditional love of my mother, the spiritual approach to design resulting in enduring expressions of home and comfort of my designer friend and the universal and open welcome of my Christian Science nurse friend.

Their enduring spiritual qualities I realized were forever.  I could take these qualities with me and more than appreciate them and see them all around me, I could be these qualities of love, comfort and welcome.
I have heard and will share that once you know someone spiritually, you will never lose them.  This is true.  This has healed me of grief and inspired me to carry on what I have learned from these women and to build on the foundation that they have given me.

I have written a few blogs about my mother (click here) and a couple about my designer friend ( click here), but my Christian Science nurse friend, I have yet to write about.

Her service was memorable in that it was given in Arabic and English, and readings were from the Christian Science textbooks and the Koran.  The theme that continued to play out as we talked among ourselves was her humble mothering and, over a lifetime, she and her American husband took in many international students who found a home away from home in their house. She and her husband took in many many people who were needing a place to stay.  I was one of them who, when I was hurting and feeling lost, she and her husband gave me a place to stay and compassionate companionship.

Her first marriage did not last.  It was to a Muslim and they had two beautiful sons.  In a story of forgiveness and redemption that has yet to be fully told, she became stepmother to her ex-husband's three sons when their mother died, giving her a total of five sons. 

The people coming to the service showed the breadth and depth of my friend's love.  Muslim and Christian, Christian Scientist and Catholic, all generations were sharing memories of her, her cooking, her help, her love.  She must have nursed hundreds of patients and friends and mentored dozens of nurses in her lifetime.

What was so amazing to me - and still is - was her humility and generosity and her capacity for unselfishness and forgiveness.  She was so easy to be around, so welcoming.  Could I ever be like that?  I hope so.  Like the story of Elisha, who asked that a double portion of Elijah's spirit be given to him when Elijah passed on, (see II Kings 2: 9), I was imagining if I could have even a tenth of her spirit, I would be doing well!

Grief has turned into commitment to carry on the love and comfort and welcome of these remarkable women.  And in carrying that commitment out, I can never lose them.


* See the story of Elijah and Elisha from II Kings chapter 2

a band of rowdy angels

Spiritual resource to share: victory

We are never alone when overcoming challenges.


I’ve written a number of times about my experiences with whitewater kayaking and stories with my kayaking buddies. One time, in particular, stands out. There was a big rapid under the bridge and we were all trying to surf the wave. The river was such that you could stand on the shores as well as be up by the bridge and watch all of the action. So when my friend's turn came to surf the wave, we were all cheering and encouraging her as loudly as we could. And once she caught the wave and surfed it, we all whooped and hollered!

When my turn came, it was the same thing. It was like we had our own crowd of rowdy angels cheering us on. Any trepidation I felt, any doubt as to my ability to actually have enough skill and balance to do this – and in front of all my friends - just vanished in the raucous joy of it all. The blatant denial of fear and anxiety, the blending with the awesome power of the river, the shared experience and triumphant satisfaction of accomplishment was just heady stuff.

It made me realize that anytime we are facing a challenge, we go through some sort of maze of doubt and fear that we learn to overcome by blending our thought with the power of God, Truth and Love. We are emboldened by the cheers, prayers (and testimonies of healing!) of others until finally, the limitation is broken and some supposed law of impossibility is shattered.  Then we stand as God’s own image and likeness – free, whole, and satisfied.

Whether it is a wave, or a rescue or a healing….. every challenge we undertake puts us on stage to demonstrate that all good is possible. Every challenge we overcome is met with joy and adds to the great momentum that good is possible, that imprisoning sorrow’s days are numbered and that a restoration to home and health is inevitable. We hasten on that day when we are no longer afraid that we can ever be separated from God, Love.

And this band of rowdy angels keeps cheering us on to greater demonstrations of God’s goodness and peace and provision.


 

"....de repente soy libre."

¡Celebración!

El mundo celebra con alegría el rescate de los mineros chilenos. Uno de los artículos del periódico “Christian Science Monitor” empieza así: ¡el rescate de mineros une un mundo fracturado!”, y me doy cuenta de que estoy lista para participar en la alegría.

¿Qué es aquello que resuena en lo profundo de cada uno de nosotros?

Ser liberado de cualquier esclavitud – estar en una prisión apretada de roca o de miedo; de duda o de vergüenza; de carencia, de manipulación política o de dolor. ¡Podemos ser todos liberados!

¡Qué esperanza existe!, ¡Qué poder esto revela! ¡Tenemos la posibilidad de aspirar inspiración fresca y tener acceso a un cielo infinito de posibilidades!

¡El poema de Virginia Thesiger “la Curación” * describe perfecto esa libertad!

Después de mucho tiempo, mucho tiempo
en mi apretada prisión,
con mis grilletes familiares
pesado en cabeza y corazón;
después de mucho tiempo, mucho, mucho tiempo,
de repente veo las barras
con los ojos Dios me dio,
toco las cadenas
con la mano que Dios me hizo,
y de repente, de repente,
(¡Ah! pero mi corazón vuela del sueño
¡como una ave que canta!)
de repente soy libre.




Poema del libro "Ideas on Wings" (c) The Christian Science Publishing Society
Gracias a Yamile para ayuda en la traducción.

".....suddenly, I am free."

Spiritual resource to share:  freedom from imprisonment

             

Celebration!


The world is celebrating with relief the rescue of the Chilean mine workers.  One of The Christian Science Monitor's headlines on this story reads: Chile mine rescue unites a fractured world, and I find I am all to ready to join in on the joy!

What is it about this story that so profoundly resonates with each of us?

Being freed from any bondage – be it in a tight prison of rock or of fear; of doubt or of shame; of lack, of political manipulation or of pain. We can all be freed!

What hope this unleashes, what power it reveals! We all have the possibility of breathing in fresh new insights and having accessible to us once again – an infinite sky of possibilities!

Virginia Thesiger’s poem “The Healing”* sings this freedom perfectly!

After so long, so long
in my tight prison,
with my familiar shackles
heavy on head and heart;
after so long, so long, suddenly I see the bars
with the eyes God gave me,
touch the chains
with the hand God made me,
and suddenly, suddenly
(Oh but my heart flies out of the dream
like a singing bird!)
suddenly I am free.

*Ideas on Wings © The Christian Science Publishing Society

There is a God - revisited

Spiritual resource to share: a response to atheism

Omnipresent by Sonja Maneri

This post was first written about a year and a half ago. The ideas and the articles included  still offer fresh thought today.  Enjoy!

I've read that there is a group who is now sponsoring bus ads in certain parts of the country that say “There is no God.” I obviously disagree. And this bit of news gave me pause to consider why I disagree.

I understand God to be, not a changeable benevolent uber person, but a force, a power. I understand that we are made in the image and likeness of God, not that God is made in the image and likeness of man. God is Love. God is Truth. God is intelligence. So to say that there is no God is like saying there is no Love. There is no Truth. There is no intelligence. Sorry. Can't go there.

I see mankind's yearning for Truth and Love every day. And I see individuals' responses to Truth and Love result in bodily systems improving, relationships mending and anxiety melting. A natural sense of balance, of harmony – expressed physically, mentally, socially and even financially! – is restored.

And the irony of it is that people who make these claims probably are intelligent loving individuals who feel a need to share some sense of their Truth, which in this case is that they feel that there is no God.

There is a fascinating article from The Times Online in which an atheist describes why he believes Africa needs God. (Read As an atheist, I truly believe Africa needs God by Matthew Parris.) As I was reading, I found myself agreeing with a number of points.

The article did a brilliant job of defining one’s own consciousness as a belief system, a philosophical/spiritual framework and a structure of thought. He explained the structure of the rural African thought and how the Christian thought powers through “the crushing passivity of the people’s mindset” a mind-numbing type of group–think. He recognized what I also recognize to be the effects of Christianity:

It brings spiritual transformation, it unifies us and makes us less selfish. Christianity feeds hope and enlivens and energizes our work. It gives us that holy curiosity that Albert Einstein cautioned us never to lose. It liberates the individual from hierarchy and group think by giving direct access to a source of unconditional Love, of Truth and intelligence.

Others may argue that the Christian thought is made up of fairy tales and satisfies those who are childish and simple. To me, I see that Christianity, as explained in Christian Science, brings out what is inherently natural to all of mankind. It explains the science of being. The very practice of Christianity operates out of a belief system that uncovers the most primitive and root forms of who we all are – the very image and likeness of Love. It is what keeps life going.

So is God only needed in Africa? I think that wherever there is a belief system that includes limitation, elitism, oppression, or fear - that God is needed there. And sometimes these systems exist in our very own churches, sometimes whole cultures are awash in these systems. These exist in the US as much as in Malawi.

The author writes: “When the philosophical tourist moves from one world view to another he finds - at the very moment of passing into the new - that he loses the language to describe the landscape to the old.” Sometimes I feel the same way when explaining my Christian Science perspective to one who feels that God doesn’t exist. We may not have a common language. But I believe we have a common spirit and a common need to make sense of the world we live in and a common need for Truth and Love and intelligence. This need goes deeper than language or affiliation with a group.

And the answer to this need is a felt presence of peace and joy. And no doubt the atheist, the African, the Christian, and all of mankind have felt this and recognize this presence at some time. To me, this presence is God.  It is the very life-force that nourishes and sustains us all.