A TIMELY TOPIC, JUNE 10, 2008:
SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY
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Is there a scientist inside you? One of life’s joys is making discoveries, like finding various and sundry seashells, or an alternative route on your commute to work, or perhaps the budding, musical talent of your son or daughter. Even laws of physics, such as universal gravitation and the three laws of motion or the theory of relativity have always been present. They were unveiled by a Newton and an Einstein. Discoveries await the penetrating eye.
Many discoveries are derivatives of observation, from within the constructs of the known universe. But are there things beyond the reach of our senses that await discovery? And does mankind have it all figured out? St. Paul said, “All things were made at God’s command: and that they were all made from things that cannot be seen.” (Hebrews 11:3) Can we really know things that cannot be seen?
As a college sophomore trudging over ice and snow to the music lab one night, an unusual thing happened. It was January in the Midwest and I had a pretty bad cold. The transparent, starry sky was a reminder to me of how good life was in spite of school pressures and nagging sickness. As I delighted in the invigorating chill, the enchanting scenery, and the imponderable heavens, my sense of who I was momentarily leapt out of me and I was immediately well.
I had made a discovery that the expression of pure, childlike joy heals. The experience had awakened me out of the despondency associated with an accumulation of encroaching demands, the lack of sleep, and the perception of deleterious weather. I was beginning to learn that apparent conditions did not have to affect my life, my disposition, my health. Why? Could it be that what constituted my being, our being, is beyond the reach of matter?
Now I didn’t imagine this any more than millions of other people throughout history have imagined a turn of events in their lives. The prayers of parishioners to whom a client of mine belonged drew her out from the shadow of death. Her physicians could not determine what was wrong with her, but those dear churchgoers knew what was right with her. Such events have been termed miracles, a meaning which implies a mysterious, almost accidental occurrence. But why aren’t they considered the exercise of law?
Jesus performed acts of spiritual law. Mary Baker Eddy said of him: “Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause.” We are all in an era of discovery, spiritual discovery, the ultimate of what we are substantively, and the promise of what we can become humanly. What discoveries await you?
Dean Boesen