answering the call to compassion

Spiritual resource to share: our healing response

My two nieces recently posted on their facebook status, heartfelt calls for compassion to those struggling with an invisible illness and to those who have been targets of prejudice due to circumstances beyond their control.  Both of my nieces know what they are talking about and can share from first hand experience how deep is the demand for compassion.  I woke up this morning thinking over what Christ Jesus taught about compassion and how this compassion can lead to healing.

In the Bible's book of John, it says simply "God is Love."  Jesus' own healing works demonstrated how far-reaching and life-transforming that Love is.  What Jesus proved and taught his disciples to do can be done today.

The websites spirituality.com and christianscience.com are stocked with accounts of healing after healing of the power of Love. I'm listing just a few here.  Compassion starts and ends with love, and I love that my nieces have put the call out there. You can go to these sites and write in the search box for any of these compassionate and healing responses:

Healing of depression
Healing of obesity
Healing of chronic pain
Erasing prejudice
Prayer for rape victims
Healing of injury
Healing of cancer
Healing of arthritis

Of course, healing compassion is always the right response in every situation, whether it is opening a door for someone, listening attentively or sending a gracious note of thanks.  So I am sending a note of thanks to two very compassionate nieces.  Their love is touching and uplifting others' lives, I know.

Healing happens at the point of letting go

Amazing.  It has been six years to the day that I started this blog.  It was a small group of Christian Science practitioners who got together over several conference calls and learned as much as they could to see how to further the word about Christian Science and its healing prayer through the internet.  Today, I have lost track of how many sites there are about Christian Science!  Each of us has a singular voice sharing with the world that most singular and universal love that can be demonstrated and practiced in Christian Science.  This post is six years old, but the ideas are ever new!  Enjoy!

Explore with me a minute what this means: healing happens at the point of letting go.

Healing through prayer can at times sound so simple as to seem simplistic, or as one of my friends said after hearing an explanation for the first time, it seems like magic. It is neither simplistic nor magic. The basis of healing through prayer, as taught by Christ Jesus, is sound. Its basis is comprised of three basic facts:

• God (good) is All.
• We are His reflection.
• Anything unlike God (good) is unreal and powerless.

When I work with a patient, I listen and mainly work with these three ideas, whatever the situation is. For example:

• What Truth calms an anxious thought about the future? Understanding that God is All.
• What Truth dissolves low self-esteem? Knowing that we are God's reflection.
• What Truth heals disease? Reasoning that anything unlike God (good) is unreal -- that is, powerless to impact who you are, as God's reflection, because God is All.

When the faith in God grows to be more than the faith in evil/disease/death/bad things happening to good people, we are more ready to trust God and let go of our concerns, arguments, and fears.(Click here to see Science and Health citation.)

When we understand that we can never be separated from God ( because we are His reflection) and that God is All ( good is always present) and we are safe ( bad things have no power to impact us/ anything unGodlike is unreal), we can let go and experience healing.

As a child, I grew up with some simple and profound ideas:

• Let go and let God.
• Don't outline good, because you can't outline good enough!
• There is no spot where God is not.
• Just Trust.

God is incredibly, powerfully, thoroughly good. His power dissolves and dissipates anything unlike Him, and we are safe in His care. (Click here to see Bible citation.) Understanding this - even in a degree - helps us to let go and experience healing.





photo from http://binged.it/rbMRrX

Decline or resurrection?

Spiritual resource to share: published articles
I am so happy to be able to share what I have learned and experienced about church in the last six years, all compiled and published into one neat little article! 

 

Reprinted from the September 2011 issue of The Christian Science Journal.

 

 

Here's how it starts:

 

I could sense the grief a friend felt as she recalled the days of church services filled with members, lots of children in the Sunday School, and a packed church parking lot. But afterward, I felt a need to answer what has been a question for me as well—What happened? Why aren’t churches as full now as they used to be?

There are plenty of reasonable explanations for the decline in the numbers attending church. It’s a trend in most “mainstream” churches and faith organizations. People maintain that churches simply are not responding to today’s need for more relevancy and practicality. (You can do a Google search on “decline in churches” and get millions of responses.)

And there are the not-so-reasonable explanations, where the drop in popularity turns into a blame game, pointing at the actions of others—church leaders, changes to the status quo, and so on—as the culprit for fewer people occupying the pews.

But answers like these don’t get to the heart of the matter. This brought me back to thinking how Jesus’ mission is something we can learn from.

.....

To read the rest, please go to: http://bit.ly/pU9ikg

Beyond 9/11: rebuilding with forgiveness and love

Spiritual resource to share: special readings from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

On Wednesday, I'll be reading selected citations from the Bible and Science and Health, after which people attending can share inspiration and healing that they have gotten from their study and practice of Christian Science.

If you have a phone and can make the time, please feel free to join us!

Phone: 1-201-793-9022 Access Code: 7040344#

For more information, please go to the website: http://www.prayerfulgathering.com/

There has been a flood of healing ideas flying over the internet, and I am happy to be adding these inspiring readings!  (See below for some links.)

Beyond 9/11: rebuilding with forgiveness and love

From the Bible (book, chapter: verse(s)

1. Psalms 130: 2-5
2. Micah 4: 1-4
3. Mark 12: 29-31
4. I John 4: 16, 18, 20, 21
5. Leviticus 19: 17, 18
6. I Peter 5: 6-10
7. Joshua 1: 9
8. Ps 139: 9, 10, 11
9. Acts 17: 28
10. Isaiah 42: 6
11. John 16:33
12. Galatians 5: 19-23
13. Romans 12:21
14. I John 3: 13, 18, 19, 22, 23
15. Luke 10:19
16. Phil 4: 8
17. I Corinthians 13: 13
18. II Thessalonians 3: 5

From Science and Health (page: line)

1. 225: 14
2. 102:18-23, 30-2
3. 96:31
4. 572: 6
5. 496: 5-9
6. 43: 32
7. 241: 9
8. 327: 8-13
9. 22: 30-32
10. 542: 19-21
11. 391: 17-18
12. 36: 19-21
13. 405: 5-11
14. 9: 11-24
15. 445: 19
16. 374: 5-6
17. 568: 1 (only)
18. 201: 1-9
19. 560: 13-19
20. 454: 9
21. 407: 6-16
22. 264: 24
23. 158: 24-25
24. 96:12-20
25. 233: 5-7
26. 569: 6-14
27. 55: 16
28. vii: 25

with Hymns from the Christian Science Hymn book

Hymns 179, 163, 65
_________________________________________________________________________

Other articles and chats about 9/11:

Question of the week:  How have you been thinking and praying about the ten year anniversary of 9/11?
http://www.spirituality.com/question/index.jhtml

Ten years after the 9/11 attacks: a new day
http://www.spirituality.com/article.jhtml?ElementId=/repositories/shcomarticle/Sep2011/1315946408.xml&ElementName=Ten%20years%20after%20the%20September%2011%20attacks%3A%20A%20new%20day

9/11 - still a call for comfort
http://www.spirituality.com/article.jhtml?ElementId=/repositories/shcomarticle/Sep2009/1252683501.xml&ElementName=9/11%20%13%20still%20a%20call%20for%20comfort

and more.....
http://christianscience.com/healing/praying-about-911/

We are all connected

Spiritual resource to share: continuing knowledge

I came across this delightful inspiring set of videos about how science proves our unity with all things.  As a Christian Scientist, I am constantly studying, discovering, practicing and proving from a scientific ( thus provable) basis of being.  I practice the laws of Life and of Love.  These are laws of God.

What thrills me is to come across other practicing scientists - whether they are physicists, astronomers, Christians - whose ideas jive with what I am learning and seeing.

I am not a student of the physical sciences, but Christian Science has led me to understand the basic premise of all sciences - the discovery and the proof of repeatable laws that lead to publicly verifiable evidence that lifts thought to a higher and more practical basis.

Some of the ideas in this video shares insights into our connectivity with all things biologically and chemically thus proving that we are made of the same stuff of stars, that the cosmos is actually within us and that there is still so much to be learned.

After seeing this clip, consider Mary Baker Eddy (a woman who discovered Christian Science in the mid 1800's), and her definition of man and of earth and of the universe.  What is exciting here is that we are hearing something now, although based on materiality, opens the way to a higher view that MBEddy was onto decades ago:

S&H 585:5
EARTH.A sphere; a type of eternity and immortality, which are likewise without beginning or end. To material sense, earth is matter; to spiritual sense, it is a compound idea. 

S&H 591:5

MAN.The compound idea of infinite Spirit; the spiritual image and likeness of God;

the full representation of Mind.  

S&H 475:6 
  Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas.

S&H 507:15
The universe of Spirit reflects the creative power of the divine Principle, or Life, which reproduces the multitudinous forms of Mind and governs the multiplication of the compound idea man. The tree and herb do not yield fruit because of any propagating power of their own, but because they reflect the Mind which includes all. A material world implies a mortal mind and man a creator. The scientific divine creation declares immortal Mind and the universe created by God.