[The curtain lifts in medias res.]
We've got to breathe some life into this thing or we're going to have one humongous corpse to explain away. Any ideas?
We've tried everything. The Gill bio didn't exactly ignite a firestorm of interest in the Church. Talk about pooping in you own nest. And we've oked about everything but human sacrifice, S-M, and group sex. Members don't even have to crack a book any more. We've done it all for them, practically pre-digested everything, and the one or two minutes it takes to get through the full-text lesson is still too much. Maybe we can come up with something they can put under their pillows at night and grow wise and spiritual as they snore away the hours.
We've got to do something to at least look like we're inspired. What do the stars and planets say?
Now, you know I won't talk about that. It's a delicate personal matter.
I'm not talking about your love life. I'm referring to today's horoscope, not your blasted eriscope. Oh, never mind.
Maybe a new Mrs Eddy would create some buzz.
Call "Rasputin" and we'll chew the rag some on that. She's been playing the role unofficially for years anyway. Let's dust off the old girl and let her go for it in prime time.
[Enter "Rasputin"]
"I've always depended upon the kindness of strangers." [simper] How's that?
We're looking for MBE not Tennessee Williams or whatever that was. How would you like to play the new Mrs. Eddy?
Play? I thought . . .
Confound it! We're talking serious strategy here, not delusion. If we don't get some spiritual Geritol into this church pretty soon, even the whippersnappers are going to lose their snap. Can you convince them you've got the latest word from cloud-cuckoo-land or somewhere?
Look, things are as lite now as we can make them. Any liter and we'll have to tie it all down and paint it black to find it.
Well, what do you suggest?
I'll do a revised S&H. Always wanted to anyway. That thing is drier than a five-year old fruitcake and needs updating for a contemporary audience. We could call it "Science and Health for Dummies". Kids with lots of loose change would probably think it's neato.
Neato? Good grief, you sound like a 70-year-old teenybopper.
Cool, hip, boss, then.
Oh brother. Maybe a lifelike, inflatable MBE with a good ventriloquist would do just as well. Could you . . .
No.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 30, 2009
The Unavailing Prayer
Our Father which art . . . I need to get a more comfortable chair, and I'm thirsty. While I'm at it I'll clip this hangnail. Rats! I forgot to get bottled water yesterday.
Hallowed be . . . I wonder if that's the hallow in Halloween. I hope we don't get any trick-or-treaters this year. I'll get something I can eat just in case. What do I want for lunch?
Thy kingdom . . . Is that Bob mowing his yard again? I thought he just finished running his garage-full of noise-makers. He must be short of things to do with his time. I wonder if there has ever been life on Mars. Hmm, what's that speck on the wall?
Thy will be . . . I'll bet Colorado Springs is nice this time of year. Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, Green Mountain Falls, if it's still there. That was a lousy danish I had this morning. Mary's eriscopes, can you believe it?
Give us this day . . . Speaking of bread, Fred Smith had better lay off the goodies. We're going to have to assign a couple of ushers as tugs to maneuver the Good Ship Twinkie into his pew if he doesn't watch out. Now where was I? Horoscopes too.
And forgive us our . . . That was a hideous tie the First Reader wore Sunday. Maybe it had breakfast on it, tie by Brooks Brothers and IHOP. Couldn't take my eyes off of it and that old water stain on the ceiling. Come to think of it I haven't seen the Harrises lately.
And lead us not . . . I'd better get the air pressure in my tires checked. It's been quite a while, and it's not a good idea to run them underinflated. Hurts mileage too. Could get gas at the same time. I wonder if I could get by with regular?
For Thine is . . . I'd go to Arby's for lunch, but the service is glacial and it's hard getting out. Hardee's? They never taste as good as they look, and their tv commercials are disgusting. Oh well. I don't know why I bother to pray since it never seems to do any good. Meow Mix, hubba-hubba!
Hallowed be . . . I wonder if that's the hallow in Halloween. I hope we don't get any trick-or-treaters this year. I'll get something I can eat just in case. What do I want for lunch?
Thy kingdom . . . Is that Bob mowing his yard again? I thought he just finished running his garage-full of noise-makers. He must be short of things to do with his time. I wonder if there has ever been life on Mars. Hmm, what's that speck on the wall?
Thy will be . . . I'll bet Colorado Springs is nice this time of year. Pikes Peak, Garden of the Gods, Green Mountain Falls, if it's still there. That was a lousy danish I had this morning. Mary's eriscopes, can you believe it?
Give us this day . . . Speaking of bread, Fred Smith had better lay off the goodies. We're going to have to assign a couple of ushers as tugs to maneuver the Good Ship Twinkie into his pew if he doesn't watch out. Now where was I? Horoscopes too.
And forgive us our . . . That was a hideous tie the First Reader wore Sunday. Maybe it had breakfast on it, tie by Brooks Brothers and IHOP. Couldn't take my eyes off of it and that old water stain on the ceiling. Come to think of it I haven't seen the Harrises lately.
And lead us not . . . I'd better get the air pressure in my tires checked. It's been quite a while, and it's not a good idea to run them underinflated. Hurts mileage too. Could get gas at the same time. I wonder if I could get by with regular?
For Thine is . . . I'd go to Arby's for lunch, but the service is glacial and it's hard getting out. Hardee's? They never taste as good as they look, and their tv commercials are disgusting. Oh well. I don't know why I bother to pray since it never seems to do any good. Meow Mix, hubba-hubba!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Dismissing The Personal Adam Dream
If we neglect or relax for a moment our spiritual defenses we can be quickly swept over by the seemingly overwhelming array of tribulations presented by mortal mind via so-called material existence. In desperation or resignation we may retreat into the comforting confines of our home sanctuary and assume that at least the "out there" isn't "in here" and can't get in.
Yet not only would this be disobeying the commands of Christ Jesus and Mrs. Eddy to resist the devil, but an important lesson would be delayed: that the only "out there" is always "in here", within our own thinking. We only experience what we admit into, and what therefore exists in, our consciousness, and once there, false belief has no difficulty coming home with us as an unwelcome houseguest. The work of silencing or resisting error's claims is a full-time task, and the mental ground may have to be carefully gone over hundreds of times to assure the adversary's full and final eradication . We must destroy, not merely ignore or parley with, what Mrs. Eddy calls "personal sight or sense".
To see, hear, or experience anything but God's omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-action is to entertain and rehearse something that never did, or even could, exist. This may be easy to grasp intellectually, but it must be sedulously demonstrated spiritually, metaphysically, if we are ever to free ourselves forever from the nothingness "out there". That is why ceaseless study, prayer, and practice are essential, and if it is sickness that herds us eftsoons into the schoolroom which directs us to Christ, we should be grateful for the experience.
Yet not only would this be disobeying the commands of Christ Jesus and Mrs. Eddy to resist the devil, but an important lesson would be delayed: that the only "out there" is always "in here", within our own thinking. We only experience what we admit into, and what therefore exists in, our consciousness, and once there, false belief has no difficulty coming home with us as an unwelcome houseguest. The work of silencing or resisting error's claims is a full-time task, and the mental ground may have to be carefully gone over hundreds of times to assure the adversary's full and final eradication . We must destroy, not merely ignore or parley with, what Mrs. Eddy calls "personal sight or sense".
To see, hear, or experience anything but God's omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-action is to entertain and rehearse something that never did, or even could, exist. This may be easy to grasp intellectually, but it must be sedulously demonstrated spiritually, metaphysically, if we are ever to free ourselves forever from the nothingness "out there". That is why ceaseless study, prayer, and practice are essential, and if it is sickness that herds us eftsoons into the schoolroom which directs us to Christ, we should be grateful for the experience.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The Pitter-Patter of Personal Sense
The patter songs in Gilbert and Sullivan operas are one of their many delights. Matter's patter is the incessant, fiendish palaver of mortal mind. He who would turn his attention for even a moment to its innumerable threats, intimations, subtle suggestions, fearful reports, and outrageous lies is going to get more than a flea in his ear. Matter, mortal mind, is an inveterate talker and would have man's physical senses heed its messages.
Mrs. Eddy informs us in the chapter "Prayer" in Science and Health that we need to enter the sanctuary of Spirit and close the door of the physical senses. We will never "have audience with Spirit, the divine Principle, Love, which destroys all error" (S&H 15: 12-13) until the door of the "erring senses" is closed, and it should not be cracked open out of curiosity even if what we faintly hear is the mellifluous whisper of sweet talk or soothing cooing. Not heeding should not mean blindy ignoring, however. We need to be alert to matter's claims in order to correct them and not be taken in unaware.
Growing spiritually means the inspired Word is something new and wonderful and God is nearer, dearer, and more real to us. Music is not the printed score, and to the non-musician it may seem just an orderly array of notes (symbols) and performing instructions. It does not become music until it is performed and experienced aurally or "heard" in the mind by a musician reading the score. So it is with the inspired Word of the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. To the materially-minded these works are little more than a jumble of meaningless words. To the sincere seeker they point the Way to understanding and demonstrating our spiritual being and pefection.
Mrs. Eddy informs us in the chapter "Prayer" in Science and Health that we need to enter the sanctuary of Spirit and close the door of the physical senses. We will never "have audience with Spirit, the divine Principle, Love, which destroys all error" (S&H 15: 12-13) until the door of the "erring senses" is closed, and it should not be cracked open out of curiosity even if what we faintly hear is the mellifluous whisper of sweet talk or soothing cooing. Not heeding should not mean blindy ignoring, however. We need to be alert to matter's claims in order to correct them and not be taken in unaware.
Growing spiritually means the inspired Word is something new and wonderful and God is nearer, dearer, and more real to us. Music is not the printed score, and to the non-musician it may seem just an orderly array of notes (symbols) and performing instructions. It does not become music until it is performed and experienced aurally or "heard" in the mind by a musician reading the score. So it is with the inspired Word of the Bible and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy. To the materially-minded these works are little more than a jumble of meaningless words. To the sincere seeker they point the Way to understanding and demonstrating our spiritual being and pefection.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
"Press on, press on, ye sons of light"
An understanding of basic mathematics (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) will satisfy the daily needs of most of mankind. But one would have to be daffy to expect these basic skills alone would somehow carry him through to a degree in quantum physics. So it is with the understanding of a few basic truths in Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy tells us that Truth is so powerful that even a small understanding of it will produce salutary results, but what many of us need to oppose and overcome is the all-too-human desire to loiter in the placid vale of a few familiar comforting truths because we have a chicken in the pot, a comfortable sofa, and our bills paid.
Those aspiring to achieve "awakening" in Zen Buddhism take it for granted that long hours of meditation are essential. Christian Scientists must see the parallel need of unrelenting prayer for themselves, their neighbor, and the world. Because the sincere and honest Scientist is less caught up in the web of materiality than most people and because he knows something of Truth, his life is doubtless less stressed by the aggressive mental suggestions of mortal mind, but if he is not vigilant he can vegetate in the delusion that a dime's worth of prayer will always result in a dollar's worth of blessing.
The ante needs to be upped, and greatly so. Our understanding of the metaphors, parables, and truths that provided growth and support at an earlier stage of our experience needs to be deepened and transformed, else our thoughts become little more than ossified comforts, like insects imprisoned in amber. Psalms, Christ Jesus' sayings and parables, and the writings of Mrs. Eddy are a most welcome refuge and comfort, but we can't graze peacefully beside the still waters forever. We must grow spiritually and Scientifically and increase our spiritual sense of Truth--if necessary, by geometric strides, not just arithmetic baby-steps.
Some might employ that tired old cliche, "we need to think outside the box". The brilliant idea of adding stages to a rocket, which solved the problem of getting heavy objects in earth orbit and even out of earth's gravitational pull, was thinking outside the box for sure, but the genius required to do it was still an extension, however complex, of existing rocket technology. It was "simply" two or three rockets stacked one on another. What is needed is that a completely new mental state be experienced, a putting off of the old man and a putting on of the new and learning more and more what that means metaphysically.
It is not a process of somehow doing a better job of mentalizing familiar metaphors, parables, and truths, piling them up into a multi-stage rocket, which may really be nothing more than raising the extension on one's mental ladder a few rungs. What is needed is ever new and fresh levels of thought, ongoing revelations of Truth. But this isn't going to happen as we rush along madly with the full-text Bible lessons in one hand and a latte in the other. It takes--and how loath some of us are to give it--hours of quiet prayer, the kind of prayer Mrs. Eddy teaches us in "Prayer" in S&H. But if we are humble, trustful, patient, and diligent we can achieve glorious experiences such as the woman in that wonderful testimony in "Fruitage" in S&H ("Born Again", pp. 667-69). Christ Jesus, Paul, and Mary Baker Eddy aren't bad exemplars either.
Those aspiring to achieve "awakening" in Zen Buddhism take it for granted that long hours of meditation are essential. Christian Scientists must see the parallel need of unrelenting prayer for themselves, their neighbor, and the world. Because the sincere and honest Scientist is less caught up in the web of materiality than most people and because he knows something of Truth, his life is doubtless less stressed by the aggressive mental suggestions of mortal mind, but if he is not vigilant he can vegetate in the delusion that a dime's worth of prayer will always result in a dollar's worth of blessing.
The ante needs to be upped, and greatly so. Our understanding of the metaphors, parables, and truths that provided growth and support at an earlier stage of our experience needs to be deepened and transformed, else our thoughts become little more than ossified comforts, like insects imprisoned in amber. Psalms, Christ Jesus' sayings and parables, and the writings of Mrs. Eddy are a most welcome refuge and comfort, but we can't graze peacefully beside the still waters forever. We must grow spiritually and Scientifically and increase our spiritual sense of Truth--if necessary, by geometric strides, not just arithmetic baby-steps.
Some might employ that tired old cliche, "we need to think outside the box". The brilliant idea of adding stages to a rocket, which solved the problem of getting heavy objects in earth orbit and even out of earth's gravitational pull, was thinking outside the box for sure, but the genius required to do it was still an extension, however complex, of existing rocket technology. It was "simply" two or three rockets stacked one on another. What is needed is that a completely new mental state be experienced, a putting off of the old man and a putting on of the new and learning more and more what that means metaphysically.
It is not a process of somehow doing a better job of mentalizing familiar metaphors, parables, and truths, piling them up into a multi-stage rocket, which may really be nothing more than raising the extension on one's mental ladder a few rungs. What is needed is ever new and fresh levels of thought, ongoing revelations of Truth. But this isn't going to happen as we rush along madly with the full-text Bible lessons in one hand and a latte in the other. It takes--and how loath some of us are to give it--hours of quiet prayer, the kind of prayer Mrs. Eddy teaches us in "Prayer" in S&H. But if we are humble, trustful, patient, and diligent we can achieve glorious experiences such as the woman in that wonderful testimony in "Fruitage" in S&H ("Born Again", pp. 667-69). Christ Jesus, Paul, and Mary Baker Eddy aren't bad exemplars either.
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
New Leaders at Eddyworld
Mirabile dictu, white smoke has issued from the chimney, and the Journal has made it official: We have new leaders! No, none of them is Mrs. Eddy, but tant pis. We have also learned that everything, including responsibility, is being outsourced. And hosanna, our new leaders have already proven their worth by bravely and skillfully leading the Church out of the Promised Land and back into the wilderness.
The Discoverer of Christian Science, the Founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, and its Leader in perpetuity has been nonchalantly and perfidiously tossed overboard, apparently for being a constant aggravation, annoyance, and wet blanket. Mrs. Eddy is now a jetsam, free-agent commodity available for exploitation by any feminist, immoralist, or carney who can turn her into a little ready cash. Legal work is also, it would seem, being put into the capable hands of at least one attorney who is a woeful tabula rasa where Christian Science is concerned.
Russ Gerber's cotton-puff interview in the April Journal with attorney Steve Lyons is certainly hair-raising, if not hackle-raising. For some tastes Mr. Lyons may come off as sickeningly obsequious to the church leaders, especially [genuflect] leader Nate Talbot. One can visualize during the "interview" the carefully orchestrated play of strings and cue cards. Mr. Lyons dutifully hammers home his laughable concerns about possible marginalization of the musty Christian Science belief system. Yoo-hoo, Rip, this is 2009, not 1989! You're at least a couple of decades late with that worry. Check your Guccis, sir; that's a fetid backwater you're standing in now, and it didn't show up unexpectedly last night. You come across like an archaeologist who has just unearthed a weird, pre-historic artifact, but who doesn't want his serious misgivings about it to show and spoil a profitable gig.
There's a method in our leaders' madness, though. The new MC motto seems to be the familiar saying: "Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." If someone like a Gill or Lyons commits a boo-boo, let him be the naughty girl or boy and expendable fall guy and not a denizen of our pantheon of leaders.
Those interested in the interview, and any loyal Christian Scientist should be, can peruse it with spot-on running commentary from "a sheep". The document should be fairly easy to obtain. Do so and be prepared to weep.
The Discoverer of Christian Science, the Founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist, and its Leader in perpetuity has been nonchalantly and perfidiously tossed overboard, apparently for being a constant aggravation, annoyance, and wet blanket. Mrs. Eddy is now a jetsam, free-agent commodity available for exploitation by any feminist, immoralist, or carney who can turn her into a little ready cash. Legal work is also, it would seem, being put into the capable hands of at least one attorney who is a woeful tabula rasa where Christian Science is concerned.
Russ Gerber's cotton-puff interview in the April Journal with attorney Steve Lyons is certainly hair-raising, if not hackle-raising. For some tastes Mr. Lyons may come off as sickeningly obsequious to the church leaders, especially [genuflect] leader Nate Talbot. One can visualize during the "interview" the carefully orchestrated play of strings and cue cards. Mr. Lyons dutifully hammers home his laughable concerns about possible marginalization of the musty Christian Science belief system. Yoo-hoo, Rip, this is 2009, not 1989! You're at least a couple of decades late with that worry. Check your Guccis, sir; that's a fetid backwater you're standing in now, and it didn't show up unexpectedly last night. You come across like an archaeologist who has just unearthed a weird, pre-historic artifact, but who doesn't want his serious misgivings about it to show and spoil a profitable gig.
There's a method in our leaders' madness, though. The new MC motto seems to be the familiar saying: "Better to remain silent and thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt." If someone like a Gill or Lyons commits a boo-boo, let him be the naughty girl or boy and expendable fall guy and not a denizen of our pantheon of leaders.
Those interested in the interview, and any loyal Christian Scientist should be, can peruse it with spot-on running commentary from "a sheep". The document should be fairly easy to obtain. Do so and be prepared to weep.
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