"...sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

To loaf blithely in matter is to become a character in a tale which will have a most unhappy ending. How often do we remind ourselves of Mrs. Eddy's statement "The belief of life in matter sins at every step" (S&H 542: 1)? If we are not growing in grace through Science alone, we had better be growing in grace through the suffering sin brings since "...God has sentenced sin to suffer." (S&H 322: 14-15)

We have a new President who has for many long months promised change, and we have as well a new year which can act as an added incentive for radical change and improvement in our own lives. Some commentators have pointed out that President Obama has promised much, perhaps much too much, but now that the sound of his orotund speeches has faded away, the time for action and results has come. There are challenging details aplenty and an obstinate host of devils in those details. Let us hope and pray that he does not come to rue how easy and cheap volubility is.

The Mother Church has apparently sent to all Journal-listed practitioners with an e-mail address the text of a high-toned and somewhat oleaginous Board statement which originally appeared in the Monitor, an article they obviously suspected went largely unread there. It contains a number of commendable and lofty statements which give the lie, to a faint extent at least, that the captain and officers of the ship are not wholly incapacitated in a muffling stupor. Unfortunately, for many life-long Scientists the loving sentiments expressed in the statement take the form of the bum's rush or the cold shoulder. Some grand initiatives may be in the offing, but it seems a cynical and insincere sort of ploy to offer nothing but verbiage. How much more meaningful the words would be if they had been accompanied by the announcement of even one or two concrete and inspiring actions.

One wonders if the reason there are no beefy activities being undertaken is that the Board simply doesn't want to invest their time and precious money in a dead Cause. But is their kit really that bereft of ideas which would benefit all Christian Scientists and the Church? It was suggested in an entry months ago that a new hymnal, with concordance, would be of real benefit to all. It would be a major undertaking, but some of the work was apparently done decades ago. We got a multimillion dollar library that benefits almost no one, didn't we?

Fortunately, none of this prevents any of us from living and demonstrating better today, this hour, the Science we have been given, thus fulfilling "his duty to God, to his Leader, and to mankind" and benefitting the Church as well.