Zowie!

Ding Bat Enterprises is proud to announce it has been licensed to offer a line of exciting new products and services for those Christian Scientists adrift on a stormy sea of fear, doubt, problems galore, and lethargy.

o Three health care plans (probably not covered by the Pelosi/Reid/Obama monstrosity).
1) The Frugal Single. Covers either Christian Science treatment OR medical care.
2) The Big Double. Covers both medical care AND Christian Science treatment.
3) The Triple Threat. (Especially recommended for super-cautious types who wear galluses, a belt, and an elasticized waistband.) Includes The Big Double plus another service of your choice, such as acupuncture, yoga, shamanism, voodoo, etc.

o The new volte-face, cleaner-than-a-hound's-tooth C.S. Journal which essays to reclaim at least some of its lost virginity. [A tough job when the offspring of past indiscretions prowl the hallways.]

o The smashing new C.S. Sentinel with juiced-up flummery so smooth and creamy you won't know (or care) it isn't the real thing.

o All the writings of Mary Baker Eddy offered in editions with copious medical information in appendices and which also include dozens of coupons for your favorite OTC drugs. Science and Health will also contain a spectacular, full-color foldout of the human anatomy with all the relevant parts labled so you can clearly [and more indelibly] tell someone what it is that hurts. No boo-boo is too insignificant to create a fuss over. Truly, the complete one-volume guide to health care.

o A new book: "An Astrological Guide to Health Care". Tells the reader how to use his daily horoscope to get the biggest bang for his C.S. treatment and medical care sawbucks. "When the planets are aligned, the best solution will you find."

Don't be a mooncalf. Sign up today, and while you're at it show your love for a laggard by giving him or her a freebie of our services.

Note: To Anonymous, no I haven't written a book. At best I'm probably a sprinter. Jane Welsh (Did I misspell her last name in that entry?) was a Scottish lady who married Thomas Carlyle. She may have gotten a bum rap when she was said to be something of a termagent. She is also said to be one of the best letter writers in the English language, to give her her due. "Hatlo's Inferno" was a favorite Sunday cartoon I remember from my youth when there was a separate color (no less) comic section in the Sunday paper. "Hatlo's Inferno" was a largish one-frame cartoon which meted out appropriate, but humorous, weekly torments to the types mentioned in the blog entry. Like "Major Hoople" and many others, I miss it.

Scratch, Scratch, Scratch

It is hard to feel anything but pity for the writer of a recent vitriolic, malicious, grossly biased, and almost entirely inaccurate and misleading article on Christian Science in the New York Times. One feels disgust that a once passable newspaper would lower itself to the level of a garbage-sniffing rag by publishing such effluvia. Unless the article satisfied a need to satisfy some pathologic hatred of Christian Science, the motive of the writer is puzzling.

The wishy-washy unguent Ms. Trammell applied to the inflammation did more, in my opinion, to support rather than assuage detractors. Yes, she was trying, feebly, to justify the need to cover Christian Science treatment under the new beatific health care bill--apparently it isn't--but what benefit accrues to Christian Science when she makes the muzzy statement that Christian Science is most effective when used alone? That's a statement that could really give one the fantods. So it's now two aspirins and a C.S. treatment and a call us both in the morning? Such mealy-mouthed backing and filling has become necessary because of semi-official compromises with the medical comunity which began formally with the revised "Standard of Christian Science Healing" in the December 1999 Journal. It came in two almost simultaneous and equally feckless versions. What part of S&H 167: 30-31 is so hard to understand? Perhaps the Church sahibs are indulging in a bedraggled Clintonian sophistry about what the meaning of "only" is. Maybe all those horoscopes, eriscopes, and coffee klatches with MD's have muddled their thinking.

Another issue raised by the article was that Christian Scientists are unloving, little more than inhumanly cruel Torquemadas who permit the torture and murder of their children with the same unconcern they would use in applying crab-grass killer to their lawns. The translation of this canard is that if you have any meaningful standards you exclude or offend somebody and are, ergo, unloving. Did not Christ Jesus speak of separating sheep and goats? Moral compromises have weakened the Church and individual Scientists and, until corrected, will continue to do so. Christian Science does not require human goodness and love, but an understanding and expression of spiritual goodness and love. Immorality and disobedience to God wish to be loved and coddled on their own human terms, but as the adage goes, when you lie down with dogs you had better be prepared to get up with fleas.

Furtive "earth-weights"

As the sincere traveller continues to ascend the mountain of "heaven-crowned Christianity" he can hope to be encouraged and admonished by spiritual monitors stationed along the way. They will point out the numerous encumbering "earth-weights" he may be painfully toting up the "hillside steep".

Spiritual Monitor. That back pack is much too heavy to carry to the top.
Traveller. It's just some mental comfort food. Nothing to get alarmed about.
M. Let's have a look inside just the same. Hmm. Lots and lots of pet peeves I see, like the twits, as you put it, who throw trash out their car windows as they drive or leave their shopping carts loose to roam like vagrants in parking lots scratching and denting other's cars.
T. Well, they are a nuisance, just like the inconsiderate blots on the landscape who drive and talk on their cell phones, or the pestilential types who drop their used chewing gum on the sidewalk or fail to pick up after their dogs in the park. As the G&S song says, they are the kind "who never would be missed". There should be a nice spot in Hatlo's Inferno for them.
M. Tsk-tsk. You apparently have no idea how much all those claims of a material reality weigh. You will never get to the mountain top with them.
T. It provides a catharsis to give those reprobates their comeuppance--mentally at least. Why should I ignore a bunch of inconsiderate Neanderthals who look fit enough to enter a decathlon and yet park in handicapped spaces?
M. Our whole duty in life is to love God with all our hearts and keep His commandments and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Right?
T. I know, I know, but what's the harm of a little innocent and just criticism?
M. Because it's never innocent or harmless. Aha! What snarky little musings do we have here in the politicians and celebrities file? A gay and giddy young Nancy Pelosi coquettishly batting her eyes--when they were, presumably, battable--at a lascivious Tiger Woods.
T. I couldn't resist. The thought of those two inflicted on each other in unholy matrimony warmed the cockles of my heart. It's like someone said of the marriage of Thomas Carlyle and Jane Welch: It's great blessing was that only two people were made miserable by the union. Then, later, to see her roaring like an enraged Hummer through the thick undergrowth of his infidelities with those huge and implacable headlights on high beam bearing down on him . . . it gives me goose bumps to contemplate it.
M. But it gives more than goose bumps to your spiritual well-being. It doesn't matter if irritations like those cling to you like limpets. Get rid of them!
T. How about just a select few in a fanny pack? How much could they possibly weigh?
M. The answers to your questions are no and more than you obviously realize. You do not have time for such foolish thoughts.
T. How about . . . ?
M. No! Leave those folks to stew in their own juices. As Christ Jesus said: "What is that to thee?" and "follow me".

Persistently Walking Straight Down The Line

I have recently been reading, with pleasure, Sentinels from the mid-50's. The sedate C.S. publications of those years up until the last decade or two of the century contain thousands of still-uplifting and inspiring articles and testimonies. They were, in a memorable line from the movie "Double Indemnity", "straight down the line". It has also been gratifying to read of physicians who had the honesty and humility to give full credit to Christian Science for accomplishing what they could not or did not. It sometimes seems that Christian Scientists today are cowed by the power and glory which modern medical practice has arrogated unto itself and deferentially fold their tents and break camp before the self-righteous bullying of the medical community.

Those who bow down to the god of medical practice and materia medica, as did Caspar and Max before Samiel in Weber's opera "Der Freischutz", are, often unwittingly, making a Faustian bargain with the Dark Side. The first six of false belief's magic bullets may indeed seem to make the suffering party well. The seventh, though, belongs to mortal mind and permits it to collect on the agreement, but its price is terribly high. A timid resignation to the wide and easy medical byway will eventually be subject to all the fine print in such compromises. In answer to Christ Jesus' question "Will ye also go away?" one should rather, like Simon Peter, answer "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life."

Note: I didn't recall that Gregor Samsa became a cockroach, but didn't research the matter thoroughly. I also concur in the observation that Henry Drummond's "The Greatest Thing in the World" is tres cher. It should be in any Scientist's library, particularly since Mrs. Eddy gave it her warmest recommendation.

A Nascent Dies Irae?

Cruelty, much of it extreme and sadistic, has battened upon itself and become pandemic. It is the world's mad aunt in the attic, which many Christians and doubtless other decent people would prefer not to think about because of its repellent and highly unsettling nature--and of the feeling of helplessness to do something about it that usually accompanies it. Some cruelty is national/tribal, religious, or sectarian, some the disqueting depravity of individuals directed toward the defenseless--women, children, and animals. Mankind could enter an age of horrific and stygian darkness if this evil is not vigorously addressed and ultimately stamped out. Could this not be what the now common extremes of weather and severe geologic upheavals are foreshadowing?



More closely related to cruelty and sadism than its cowardly perpetrators, who often hide behind the skirts of religion, would ever admit is the Cerberus of bigotry, intolerance, and smug self-righteousness. The fomenters of cruelty, persecution, and massacre cannot be excused because they did not lend their dirty hands directly to the evil deeds.



"In my view, it is one's neighbors that one can't possibly love, but only perhaps these [sic, those?] who live far away. . . . To love a man, it's necessary that he should be hidden, for as soon as he shows his face, love is gone." (Ivan Karamazov speaking in Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov", David Magarshack trans.) One Christian Scientist whose loving and compassionate thought sees clearly through the lie of cruelty and sadistic behavior and beholds only God's perfect man right where the Great Red Dragon of these evils seems to be, can begin healing this troubled world. Try to imagine what the result would be if thousands of sincere, humble, and thoroughly dedicated Christian Scientists did so. Well over a century ago Mrs. Eddy sounded an unambiguous and urgent tocsin that "the battle of Armageddon is upon us". (See Mis. 176-77) What does it say about Christian Scientists that her dire warning seems not to have been heeded or taken seriously? Humanity may already have begun bringing in the sheaves of this apocalyptic harvest of the whirlwind.

Listening Only To What Needs To Be Heard

Perhaps nowhere in the "Church Manual" does Mrs. Eddy throw down the gauntlet to Christian Scientists more emphatically than the section "Healing Better than Teaching" (92: 3-11). If Christian Science fades wimply into the sunset it will be largely because this litmus test for genuine Science and Scientists was not passed. That paragraph should be a vitalizing challenge for any Christian Scientist who hungers and thirsts to be worthy of the name.

Seasoned Scientists know that any attempt to grow spiritually and burgeon in demonstration will be countered by a plethora of the Adversary's discouraging arguments. One aim should be to dwell "home, home on the [spiritual] range . . . where never is heard a discouraging word." An article in the most recent issue of "The War Cry", The Salvation Army's biweekly magazine, had in it a phrase that caught my attention: "to make yourself unavailable". That reminded me of part of the generic message that is sometimes prerecorded on answering machines: "We are unavailable to take your call." If all Scientists could learn to be always unavailable to meet with and listen to animal magnetism "in some one of the villages in the plain of Ono" it would be a boon.

It is self-evident that if one consents to listen to, observe, react to, shrink in fear from, or argue with matter or any phase of materiality he cannot be free from the claims presented. The angels came and ministered unto Christ Jesus after he had completely rejected each of the devil's temptations. All true Scientists should learn to listen only to those unheard sweeter melodies (Keats) which will "wake a white-winged angel throng/ Of thoughts" and thereby divorce from the spiritual selfhood which they are proving day by day their "Earth-bound hearts" (Hymn #265).

Note: There was a request in a recent comment to weigh in (again) on the subject of Bible prophecy of Mrs. Eddy. As Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener repeatedly stated: "I would prefer not to." I've had my little say on the topic in (much) earlier entries, though it would take a forced march to locate them, I admit. Fortunately, there is what I would consider a definitive treatment of the subject in Stephen Gottschalk's "The Emergence of Christian Science in American Religious Life" (pp.166-67).
There was also yet another feeler sent out to elicit my name, etc.. That question, too, has been responded to. Does it really matter, anyway?

Silent Sirens Hidden In Dark Places

Error sometimes makes its felonious overtures and suggestions with the blatant obviousness of the Three Stooges. The sinister insinuation of evil into consciousness, however, can be devilishly difficult to detect, especially if such suggestions are administered discretely in carefully measured doses by a skilled and depraved mental malpractitioner--and they do exist. Not all tiptoeing thru the tulips is the childish Tiny Tim variety. There are now and have always been institutions and individuals who hate Christian Science and Christian Scientists and work to destroy both, quietly and inobtrusively over the humdrum landscape of years and decades if necessary. To induce in the unaware and unwary even modest mental perturbation or spiritual precession will almost certainly accomplish far more harm than a sharp conk after an acrobatic tumble down the basement stairs.

It is wise to remember that the serpent is subtle, subliminal. A bold rush at the mental gates would, or should, produce a quick and, one hopes, effective defense and repulsion. The hugger-mugger corruption of a human mind over years can be far more effectual. The unwitting victim awakes one fine morning, like Gregor Samsa, utterly surprised to find himself a giant, disgusting beetle. A new planet was discovered fairly recently. Named Eris, it is about twice the size of and well over twice as far from the sun, about 9 billion miles, as Pluto. The effect of the sun's gravity at that enormous distance must be almost incalculably small, but it must be there to keep Eris in its vast orbit. Should we then doubt or dismiss foolishly the possible influence of invisible and silent malicious animal magnetism or aggressive mental suggestion?

For over a century almost imperceptible etiolation, deflection, and ennui has arguably settled like a miasma over the Church and thousands of its members, to the extent that often the good that should be done isn't, but the wrong that should not be done is--or the Scientist simply goes "a fishing". He should rather take comfort in an assurance that he is never a helpless victim of animal magnetism, error, or any mortal belief, but there is no simple step he can take to get on a "do not call" list for the devil's incessant callings. As Christ Jesus and Mrs. Eddy have taught us, the Christian Scientist must uncover and tread each temptation, whether bold or subtle, down. And down and down yet again until he is forever victorious over all malign influences.

Note: I do not wish to take credit for generosity which isn't. There is no charge for setting up a blog on the Blogger site. Anyone can do so for nothing. Hard to believe, but true.
Also, I very seldom visit the blog between postings, which means I do not read comments on the previous entry until I have posted the current one. This should at least partially explain my delay in responding, assuming I have something meaningful to say.