"who did hinder you . . . ?"

A lump of coal in the sock of supplication instead of a spiritual blessing? A rivulet of sincere and hope-filled prayers which peters out ineffectually on mortal mind's dry alluvial plain? If so, it is easy to become discouraged, or at least begin puttering about dispiritedly, while letting aggressive mental suggestions, instead of God, sit in the catbird seat.

I have wondered more than once, regrettably not to my bitter enough chagrin, why I have even once thought I could scale the heights of heaven with less time spent in prayer than Christ Jesus or Mary Baker Eddy. When error's skirmish line of adversity is advancing on one's lethargically defended position is not the time to chase one's tail in a tizzy, wondering how to get the pin out of his Scientific grenade. If we are always as obedient to God as we know how, we are increasingly semper fidelis and semper paratus--and thus under His loving protection.

Prayer, watching, and working are always, Mrs. Eddy tells us, required for growth in grace, and the onset of error's flood tide is not the time to dust off the life-boat kit and begin reading the instructions for assembly. Christ Jesus and Mrs. Eddy are both very clear on the necessity for and how of spiritual progress. The Bible and writings of Mrs. Eddy will not keep the false claims of mortal mind at bay if they are only used as impromptu scotches at the bottom of our mental doors.

Notes: Phoenix AZ wondered if I meant "grisly", not "gristly", in a recent entry. I meant gristly, implying that most of us beware of evil's worst excesses and gristly temptations, but may still find some pleasant, and tempting, vistas in the devil's south forty.
Thank you to LowlyWise for comments on the Pierian springs and for offering some other relevant lines from Pope's Essay on Criticism.
A reader commented on the shortness of some entries. I do the best I can with the time available. Even two paragraphs can take three or so hours to wrestle into some kind of presentability. Most of us are not born writers, and the scope of this little enterprise is also necessarily limited. Yes, Samuel Johnson filled up his "Rambler" [the italics has gone on holiday again] every week, but I am certainly no Dr. Johnson, and he at least gave himself unlimited elbow room to discuss any topic which struck his fancy. I would rather have 25 readers spend one engaging minute here than one reader spend 25 soporific minutes on a dull screed. I try in my way to make this as, some wag suggested, like a woman's skirt: short enough to be interesting, but long enough to cover the subject (however scantily).

"purest, heartiest tenderness"

"I never see that man [Lincoln] without feeling that he is one to become personally attached to, for his combination of purest, heartiest tenderness, and native western form of manliness." (Walt Whitman, from Specimen Days)

Most of us have probably known, observed, or heard of a seemingly dedicated Church member or practitioner who grimly--and anomalously--adhered to a stern and dour "expression" of Christ Jesus' and Mary Baker Eddy's radiant examples and teachings. Practitioners thus inclined carelessly endow their patients with mental hair shirts along with their treatments. They are like a doctor who applies balm with a rasp. To which I would add, what loyal Christian Scientist is not a practitioner? One would search as vainly for the healing and sustaining Christ in a life or practice devoid of or penurious in compassion and tenderness as for Sasquatch in the forests of the Pacific Northwest.

Those reaching out for healing and help in Christian Science certainly do not expect to be gobsmacked with coldly or even dryly administered Scientific statements. Finding tenderness in a Christian Scientist should not be as vexing as finding Waldo. It should be under foot on every Christian Scientist's doorstep. Remember Mrs. Eddy's encouraging and uplifting words in "Christ My Refuge": "And o'er earth's troubled, angry sea/I see Christ walk,/And come to me, and tenderly,/Divinely talk." And: "Tenderness accompanies all the might imparted by Spirit." (S&H 514: 18-19)

It should also be self-evident that tenderness and compassion are not qualities which can be engrafted artificially, slapdash, or cynically on the stunted and malignant stock of a Christless disposition.

Deep Draughts From God's Pierian Spring

In one's pleasant and optimistic moments he may see himself on wings of pure "Thought [that] soars enraptured, fetterless and free" (Hymn #64), but as Shakespeare wrote in "King Henry IV, Part II" it may only be but a wish that was father to such a thought. Mrs. Eddy tells us that there is only "the infinite, perfect, and eternal All." (S&H 280: 3) That would seem to be an impossible fact and truth to get around or muck up, but Paul knew animal magnetism has its devious ways: "I mean this: if you are guided by the Spirit you will not fulfil the desires of your lower nature. That nature sets its desires against the Spirit, while the Spirit fights against it. They are in conflict with one another so that what you will to do you cannot do." (Galatians 5: 16-17 NEB) Though many of his gristly entrees may get firm "non"s, Satan's tempting desert tray may still get enthusiastic "ooh la la, mais oui"s.

Mrs. Eddy's oft-quoted statement in Science and Health that "The time for thinkers has come." may be one of those many statements which are more honored in the breach than in the observance, yet a failure to think deeply, prayerfully, and patiently about the thousands of inspired truths with which the Bible and writings of Mary Baker Eddy are liberally garlanded could well be the cause of many students' piffling progress in Christian Science. Woolgathering is not the same thing as bringing in the sheaves. It may well be necessary for more of us to be like the hedgehog and know one big thing [at a time] rather than to be like the fox and know many things [imperfectly]. (Archilochus)

"O Fudge!" Just Won't Do It

"Do not go gentle into that good night" wrote the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. Nor must loyal Christian Scientists permit their beloved Church to go gentle into that good night of vapidity. Genuine Christian Scientists are not nappied wusses or epicene carpet knights for Christ. "Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose leaf. I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results." (Mis 250: 16-18)

I was browsing recently in the bound volume of the '34/'35 Journals and noticed with amazement that there were then, for example, about 600 practitioners listed there for the City of Chicago and 132 for Portland, Oregon. Compare those robust numbers with the lilliputian representation today. What a joy 'twould be if more of us could demonstrate that it isn't so that the old gray mare ain't what she used to be.

Notes: Naturally I am sorry Anonymous felt the title of the previous entry (a quote) unjustifiably coarse, but I am certainly not Mrs. Eddy, and this is 2010 not 1910. When it comes to understanding and demonstration my puny demitasse spoon shrinks abashed before her capacious shovel. It would be more peaceful if we all could shut ourselves away from the world in pollyannish Whovilles, but didn't Christ Jesus say he came not to send peace but a sword? "When error confronts you, withhold not the rebuke or the explanation which destroys error." (S&H 452: 12-14) Mortal mind certainly isn't going to vamoose at the application of a few gentle swipes with a dainty metaphysical feather duster.

Thank you to LowlyWise for the arcane (to me) procedure required to get an acute accent, and, I assume, grave accent, tilde, umlaut, cedilla, caret, etc. I fear that with my limited computer skills I would make a hash of it and I would end up with a verbal Frankenstein's monster.

"I say it's spinach, and I say to hell with it!"

For some there may be nothing like a really vexing crisis to provide the get-up-and-go necessary to pump up their demonstration of Christian Science. Wasn't one of the last lines in "Casablanca" Claude Rains issuing the order to "Round up the usual suspects"? It may be that one reason some of us are more than a tad delinquent in our spiritual progress is that with every attack of adversity we return like swallows to our secure, personal San Juan Capistranos--to the same few pages in "Christian Science Practice" or our well-thumbed chrestomathy of familiar and comforting statements. If such a method works, who am I to gainsay it, but I suspect some afflictive fires re-ignite again and again because they are only dampened for the nonce with habitual squirts of metaphysics. There is always, probably, a need in our famished affections for more freshness, decisiveness, and spontaneity in prayer and metaphysical work. "Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,--/As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas." (Dryden)

Too often we may only parry sportively with the error at hand rather than give it an inspired, decisive, and spontaneous "Touche!", as in the famous New Yorker cartoon. Habit can stultify and undermine progress. To return to Captain MacWhirr in Conrad's short novel "Typhoon": "This man, disturbed by a storm, hung on to a matchbox absurdly, as though it hand been a symbol of all those habits that make manifest the reality of life." Our practice of Christian Science should never become stale, routine, and uninspired. "Mortal mind presents phases of character which need close attention and examination. The human heart, like a feather bed, needs often to be stirred, sometimes roughly, and given a variety of turns, else it grows hard and uncomfortable whereon to repose." (Mis 127-128) To do this is, so to speak, to clean up our spiritual act anew and become more vibrant, inspired, and spontaneous in our daily practice of Christian Science.

Where aggressive mental suggestion is concerned we should daily strive to break out of any habits which hobble progress and be more like the young lady in another famous New Yorker cartoon who, looking disgustedly at her dinner plate, made the statement which is the title of this entry.

Note: The other New Yorker cartoon referred to above shows two fencers with foils, one of whom has just decapitated his opponent as he shouts "Touche!" [I know I need an acute accent over the "e", but do not have one.]

Doffing Our Swaddling Clothes

In the Friday, June 4, Wall Street Journal one of their regular Friday contributers, Eric Felten, wrote a droll piece on the tasteless landscape of lite beers in his "De Gustibus" column. Perhaps I should hasten to add that I nearly always read his well-written and usually humorous essays. I had no desire to bone up on the relative merits of lite beers, or any other potables for that matter. If I am not mistaken he also wrote a diverting weekly WSJ column on how to live more frugally and save money on every-day purchases, but that series seems to have, regrettably, ended.

In order not to appear snobbish, he decided to taste-test as many of these lite beers as he could lay his hands on. "Taking notes in my blind tasting I quickly found myself running out of ways to describe vapid nothingness." He concludes that all that keeps these brews moving is massive amounts of advertising money. "No wonder these beers are so heavily advertised. No one would think to drink them otherwise." "Is this going somewhere, except maybe to the fridge?" restless readers may be nervously thinking. I hope so.

Mrs. Eddy tells us that the nothingness of nothing, mortal mind, is plain, but that this nothingness needs to be understood, not just stated. Yet how many of us keep coming back--maybe even eagerly--for another quaff of its not-so-lite suds? Mortal mind doesn't run ads extolling the wonders of its "vapid nothingness"--or does it? Anything that promotes the pleasures and satisfactions of any phase of material existence is at bottom a promo for the supremacy of mortal mind. The tyranny of medical practice and medicine is a not very subtle come-on for mortal mind. Then there is the great negative barker for error: fear, all the way from annoying fearlets to paralyzing terror. If it were not for these deceptive or dragooning incentives to indulge in and cherish materiality, who in his right mind would dabble for a moment in the nothingness of nothing?

It is time for more Christian Scientists--and I confess to making an assumption that might not be correct--to put off their mental swaddling clothes and suit up for a decisive battle with the Great Red Dragon. Time will not make it any easier to deal with. So, To Whom It May Concern: Quit listening to error's "bunkum" (one of Mr. Felton's words) and claim your eternal, harmonious unity with God, divine Mind, Life, Truth, and Love--no matter what that commitment requires of you.