Four degrees

It’s Four degrees Fahrenheit outside. Thick ice covers the ground. Wind.

I’m inside a house with a temperature of sixty-four degrees. In awe. And telling myself not to take the warmth for granted. I feel fortunate. The warmth should humble me. Am I desiring humility?

Golden text: Proverbs 22:4*

The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life.

21st Century Science and Health

Praying fervently for humility doesn’t always mean humility is desired.

The effective prayer is a fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, humility, love, and good deeds.

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Making spiritual power my own

My friend showed me her new car. I was happy for her. She needed a reliable car. It was her car and my happiness.

As for my car, I loaned it to another friend. He was happy I loaned my car to him. To express his gratitude, he cleaned my car. I was happy to loan my car to him.  I was also happy to make the clean car my own. He eventually got his own car and happiness was our own again.

When can we make something our own? What happens when we make a thing or a mental power our own?

We can make something else our own when we work for and earn it. As for a mental power, we can make it our own anytime. And yes, we can tell the difference between what to make our own and what not to. We don’t try to make someone else’s car our own.

But we can discover and make God-given mental power our own. If we don’t, we’re only being happy for or admiring other people for having the power.

Whereas God gave us all the ability to discover spiritual power and make it our own. Spiritual principles are ours. For example, in the 19th century, Mary Baker Eddy explained a spiritual principle, Christian Science, in her book, Science and Health. Christian Science is a thought process that starts and ends with God and healing. Part of making Christian Science my  own was to discover the principle and practice it in everyday life. If I didn’t make it my own, but just admired Eddy, everything got weird. Christian Science got misunderstood and lost. So, to beat the weirdness, I kept discovering and making spirit my own.

When I revised Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health, I didn’t make her book my own, I discovered and made Christian Science (a spiritual power) my own.

“Mentally and silently plead the case scientifically for Truth. You may adapt the reasoning to meet the peculiar or general symptoms of the case you treat, but be thoroughly persuaded in your own mind concerning the truth which you think or speak, and you will be the winner.”—21st Century Science and Health

Unraveling mysteries

The mystery of life unravels when I keep admitting it’s a mystery. Otherwise, I’m tempted to assume I have it all figured out.

“Mortal existence is a fantastic mystery. Science and religion make great efforts to explain the mystery, but it is soon learned that for every answer found there are at least two more questions.”—from science & religion to God

The trick is entertaining imaginative answers. Instead of assuming cellphones benefit society by providing access to immediate calls for help or contact with others, entertain the answer that cellphones divide the physical senses of sight, hearing, and tactile feeling.

In the past, we needed to be physically present with others to communicate. The invention of phones separated sight from hearing. We could hear others but not see them.

Cellphones, with the ability to convey images, separate sight and feeling. We can see others but not feel them physically.

It’s interesting. The physical senses are a mystery yet show us their limitations and divisibility.

“Mysteries disappear through discovery and revelation. Scientists, meteorologists, physicians, and computer programmers remove mystery from weather, the body, or electronics. Old-time restraints become extinct when science modifies theories such as when absolutes were replaced with the theory of relativity. Time and space have wrinkled as we fly around the earth in jets. Matter particles are dodged or switched out, no longer seen as solid mass. We can likewise remove mystery from the study of nature and life through spiritual knowledge and divine consciousness.”—from science & religion to God

So, why trust the physical senses when it comes to our spirituality? Why not keep building our relationship with spiritual sense?

“Even if we believe the physical senses are necessary for our existence, hope shows us that we still can change the human concept of life. Our ideals have changed for the better in the past and it can continue. If not, we can start now with a better ideal. We can know Spirit. We can know our self spiritually and practically and act on the higher ideal. We can detect the evidence of the reality of Spirit through our spiritual senses.

“No matter where we are, we can use our spiritual senses to commune with God and be governed by Love.

“To be controlled by divine Mind is not to be controlled by hypnotism, human cultures, theories, crime, drugs, or fantasies. We learn to utilize spiritual sense—the constant conscious capacity to understand the all-acting infinite Spirit.” —from science & religion to God

 

 

What about my own personality?

I’m still learning how to worship God.

It helps for me to observe and think about how other people worship God, especially people who lived or live spiritual lives. But I remind myself not to get absorbed in their personalities because that would blur my own worshipfulness of God.

For example, the personality of Christ Jesus, which is only hear-say, appears to be calm. And so I try to be calm, and then worship God. But, I’m sort of a hyper-person, so it really doesn’t work. And that’s okay. Because I can’t really worship God through a specific human personality, calm or hyper.

I caught this idea when reading this from 21st Century Science and Health:

“We worship spiritually only as we cease to worship materially. The devotion to Spirit is the soul of spirituality. Worshipping through the medium of human personalities is not productive. Human-made rituals are but types and shadows of true worship. “The true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth.” (John)

Now, I watch my efforts to worship God, a bit closer. Am I doing it through my human personality? Or, am I worshipping God through spirit and truth?

 

 

What did God create?

If I played a card game and believed a 7 was a king, the game wouldn’t go well.

If I played piano and believed a key-flat was a sharp, the music wouldn’t sound right.

If I ran a race in the opposite direction, I wouldn’t come in first or last.

If I drove my car and believe north was east, I’d get lost.

If I believed God created the world as it’s known today, with physical creations and human beings, I’d lose understanding.

As amazing and complicated as this world is, it’s incomplete knowledge. We don’t understand this world hardly at all. And most of the time our knowledge changes.

God didn’t and couldn’t create incomplete knowledge.

If our spiritual journey thinks to start with God but automatically jumps to what is described by physical senses, it’s no wonder the journey gets difficult.

Thankfully, we have soul-sense. We can sense the beauty of the sky, the honesty of the game, the harmony of the music, the strength of the race, the purpose of spirit guidance. God created joy, confidence in goodness, courage, and health. God created us to image forth all that is good.

“And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.”—Gen 1:31

 

“Genesis 1:1. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

“The infinite has no beginning. This word beginning is employed to signify the only—that is, the eternal truth and unity of God and spiritual being, including the universe. The creative Principle—Life, Truth, and Love—is God. The universe reflects God. There is but one creator and one creation. The one creation consists of the unfolding of spiritual ideas and their identities, which are embraced in the infinite Mind and forever reflected. These ideas range from the infinitesimal to infinity and the highest ideas are the sons and daughters of God.”—21^st Century Science and Health

 

 

Don’t remember stress during the holidays

Holiday hoopla keeps many people over-the-top-busy. Others feel idle, maybe lonely. As a young mother, I experienced both extremes within a few years and struggled to find a sense of balance. Oddly, I came down with holiday amnesia. It started with birthday blank-outs.

Our daughters reconciled my forgetfulness by writing on the “shopping list” the items so desired for their birthdays, allowing time to wrap the present themselves. They’d unwarp the gifts and act surprised and delighted, asking, how did I know exactly what to get.

Sometimes my husband shopped for the girls’ birthdays, but I think my amnesia was contagious to him. Or maybe I caught it from him. Either way, it seeped into the holidays.

My forgetting to run around and find perfect gifts during the holidays, however, hasn’t made me forget the meaning of the holidays. It’s the same as every day. It’s the meaning of building trust, family, and community. I talk in my memoir, I Am My Father-Mother’s Daughter, about a power higher than myself and some of the people who gave me the gift of building a trust in a goodness that knows no bounds.

Stress isn’t a gift from God. Neither is forgetfulness. But forgetting to be stressed isn’t forgetfulness, it’s remembering God’s goodness.

The Forgotten Prayer

Wake up, pray, wash laundry, get children to school, cook, pay a bill, wipe down the bathroom, interview an official and write an article, call to make a dentist appointment, care for the cats and dog, change a lightbulb, errands, get children from school, help with homework, chat with husband, more laundry, pray, fall into bed at 10:45 p.m. Rats, I forgot to pull the garbage can out to the curb.

The can will stink all week and overflow with more garbage.

Before sleeping, I wonder: is there a prayer I’m forgetting? Or not even thinking of?

The question of a forgotten prayer stays with me. For days. Weeks. Months.

As for the unforgotten prayers to love God and my neighbor, and for healing of sickness and sin, they bear fruit. Faith grows into understanding and I see God as reality. I see anything unlike God as unreality, illusion. God didn’t make hate or sickness and I pray that my human mind yields to reality.

It’s easier to yield to reality when confirming the unreality of decline, loss, aging, chaos, and forgetfulness. I practice expanding love, expressing gratitude for all I have, and maturing wisdom, order, and knowledge-with-no-end.

Then I read a prayer championed by Mary Baker Eddy about health-illusion. What is a health-illusion?

The illusion of healthy physical bodies. The illusion of a strong mind. The illusion of a healthy bank account. The illusion of successful human beings.

We read in 21^st Century Science and Health, “Bear in mind, it is as necessary for a health-illusion, as for an illusion of sickness, to be instructed out of itself into the spiritual understanding of what constitutes health.”

Remember to pray the prayer that transcends healthy measurable units. For example, notice the uncomplaining organs and admit the illusion of uncomplaining physical organs. But don’t stop there. Confirm and understand Soul-sense, a sense of uncomplaining forgiveness and spiritual courage.

Remember to pray the prayer that transcends a healthy bank account. For instance, deny the comfort that comes from money. Confirm and share the riches of open-mindedness, spiritual comfort, and unbiased actions.

Remember to pray the prayer that transcends successful human beings. Avoid the tendency to adore a human. Stop living in past successes. Worship God, Truth. Practice truthfulness.

Too often, prayers are only directed at sickness, loss and fear, which is fine, but those prayers are more effective when also directed at health-illusions.

Health is spiritual. Universal. A force. Sustained by God, Spirit. Health is made of honesty, mercifulness, integrity, and joy.

From Romans 12:  ^“Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.  Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord.  Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.”

¹⁴ Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. ¹⁷ Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. ¹⁸ If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.