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METAPHYSICAL MEETING, January 19, 2009
Contents
| - Topic | |
| - Call to the meeting | |
| - A list of biographies of Mary Baker Eddy | |
| - Opening readings | |
| - Member contribution A | |
| - Member contribution B | |
| - Member contribution C | |
| - Member contribution D |
Topic
To gain a deeper understanding of Mrs Eddy's discovery
Call to the meeting
At our recent metaphysical meeting, we decided to continue to meet once a month on the third Monday. Borrowing from a theme of “revitalization” at 9th Church, Los Angeles, we agreed that our focus for the next few months will be “to gain a deeper understanding of Mrs. Eddy's discovery and to improve our ability, individually and collectively, to practice spiritual healing, bless our communities and revitalize our congregations and Sunday Schools [and Reading Rooms].” We'll take each part of this theme at a separate meeting:
- To gain a deeper understanding of Mrs. Eddy's discovery
- To improve our ability, individually and collectively
- to practice spiritual healing
- to bless our communities
- to revitalize our congregation
- to revitalize our Sunday School
- to revitalize our Reading Room
These topics should keep us going for about six months! At each meeting, we spend the last few minutes praying for our members and then discussing the topic for the next meeting and deciding on a moderator. If you cannot attend a meeting, please feel free to to give a written contribution to the moderator who will share it with those present.
Next meeting: Monday, January 19, at 7:30 p.m., “A Deeper Understanding of Mrs. Eddy's Discovery”
As part of your preparation for the meeting, you may want to consider the January Journal, "Church: Change or Transformation?" The February and March Journals will also delve into the idea of church. In addition, the Reading Room has a list of articles published in the Journal and Sentinel in 2008, which may be helpful.
Opening readings
Romans 1:16 to , 17, 19, 20 (to .)
1 Peter 1:3-9
S&H 136:1
S&H 138:17-22, 25-2
S&H 107:1-6
S&H 108:1, 19-27 (next page)
R&I 24:7-16
R&I 30:1-24
Note: S&H is Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, R&I is Retrospection and Introspection, both by Mary Baker Eddy.
A list of biographies of Mary Baker Eddy
Mary Baker Eddy, The Years of Discovery, Robert Peel,1966
Mary Baker Eddy, The Years of Trial, Robert Peel, 1971
Mary Baker Eddy, The Years of Authority, Robert Peel. 1977
Persistent Pilgrim, The Life of Mary Baker Eddy, Richard A. Nenneman, 1997
Rolling Away the Stone, Mary Baker Eddy’s Challenge to Materialism, Stephen Gottschalk, 2006
Mary Baker Eddy, Gillian Gill, 1998
Mary Baker Eddy: Her Mission and Triumph, Julia Michael Johnston, 1946
Mary Baker Eddy, Norman Beasle, 1963
The Life of Mary Baker Eddy, Sibyl Wilbur, 1907
Mary Baker Eddy, A Life Size Portrait, Lyman P. Powell. October 1930
Christian Science and Its Discoverer, E. Mary Ramsay, Marcy 1935
Twelve Years With Mary Baker Eddy, Recollections and Experiences, Rev.Irving C. Tomlinson, C.S.B., Copyright 1945 (?)
Mary Baker Eddy, A Centennial Appreciation, a series of articles reprinted from The Christian Science Journal, January to December, 1966.
Mary Baker Eddy, The Golden Days, Jewel Spangler Smaus, 1966
Mary Baker Eddy, Christian Healer, Yvonne Cache von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, 1997
Mary Baker Eddy, Speaking for Herself, Autobiographical Reflections: Retrospection and Introspection and Footprints Fadeless, Mary Baker Eddy, 2002
We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Series reprinted 1979.
Mary Baker Eddy and Her Books, William Dana Orcutt, 1950
In My True Light and Life, Mary Baker Eddy Collections, 2002
A Child’s Life of Mary Baker Eddy, Ella H. Hay, 1942
Mary Baker Eddy, A Special Friend, Karin Sass, 1983
Member contribution A
In seeking a greater understanding of Mary Baker Eddy’s discovery of Christian Science, I felt it imperative to gain a greater understanding of her life and the trials and tribulations that she encountered in bringing this revelation to the world. The many biographies of her life are very helpful in learning of her very difficult, often unhappy, human experiences. A list of some of the biographies from my personal library are here (see above) and it was these that I used in my quest.
We have often heard of the criticism that Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) heaped upon Mrs. Eddy. Apparently, he just couldn’t accept that a woman, with no theological education, could discover some new theology, write a book about it, and establish a new religion. He seemed to admire her and dislike her at the same time. Clara Clemens quotes her father as saying, “Christian Science is humanity’s boon...She (Mrs. Eddy) has organized and made available a healing principle that for two thousand years has never been employed except as the merest kind of guess-work. She is the benefactor of the age.”
In Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy, Irving C. Tomlinson adds:, “As the years advance, the world is coming more and more to agree with Mark Twain’s estimate and to recognize that Mrs. Eddy’s discovery of Christian Science denotes a distinct turning point in human history.” Both Gottschalk in Rolling Away the Stone, and Richard Nenneman in Persistent Pilgrim confirm this evaluation of Mrs. Eddy’s life and influence. Both of these biographies also bring out in excruciating detail the difficulties and incredible challenges Mrs. Eddy endured during her lifetime.
Of course, Mrs. Eddy tells us that we find her in her writings and it was there that I began to glean even more about her discovery and to increase my appreciation of it even more.
In Science and Health, (p. 28:6) she wrote, “The determination to hold Spirit in the grasp of matter is the persecutor of Truth and Love.” We know from the many newspaper articles, books, and sermons from her day that she was persecuted and greatly maligned by the leading theologians and intellectuals. Yet, she turned it away from herself and impersonalized the criticism.
In that same chapter in Science and Health, (p.29:7) she wrote, “Christian experience teaches faith in the right and disbelief in the wrong. It bids us work the more earnestly in times of persecution, because then our labor is more needed. Great is the reward of self-sacrifice, though we may never receive it in this world.”
Tomlinson also wrote, “As Mrs. Eddy advanced under God’s guidance, in the founding of the Christian Science movement, every forward step cost her a struggle, for the carnal mind resisted every encroachment upon its age-old activities, every challenge to its tyranny. ”
Member contribution B
When we decided on this topic at the last meeting, I have to admit that I felt a little burdened. To gain a deeper understanding of Mrs. Eddy’s discovery, I felt like I would need to thoroughly study and put into practice all of her writings in four weeks. I’ve spent my life doing this and haven’t completed it. So, where to start? And, how to relate it to spiritual renewal of our church?
I started thinking about what “discovery” is and how it feels when I “discover” something. I asked, “What are the characteristics of a discovery?” Here are some ideas:
- Fresh every day
- Not a burden
- Wilderness, “spontaneity of thought and idea” (S&H 597:16)
- Permanent
- Uplifting
- Continually renewed, which means there’s more to discover about this Discovery
“It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning…” (Lam. 3:22, 23)
Then, asked myself some rhetorical questions. These are the thought-type questions that you ponder yourself and use as guidelines to see if you’re living the Discovery:
- Am I connected with this Discovery?
- Is it continuing to unfold for me?
- Am I doing the “greater works” that Jesus promised I would do?
- Do I feel excited about it every day?
How does all this connect with our church? As I gain a deeper understanding of the Discovery, it impels me to participate in church with joy. I learn to see church work as a blessing to mankind, rather than a burden or inconvenience to me. It also leads me to more efficient and more loving ways of carrying out my church duties. It reflects the spontaneity of spiritual renewal, which is ordered and balanced by divine Principle in the Kingdom of Heaven. The Discovery is lived and presented to humankind through the “structure of Truth and Love.”
Member contribution C
History has shown us that the worship of God evolves repeatedly into subservience to man’s wants. Eventually it is denigrated to paying token tribute to God through ritual and reinterpreting sacred writings to serve prevailing human thought. Even in Christian Science, we have, in general, somehow lapsed into the idea that the practice of healing can occur independent of following Christ and transforming our character. In other words, over the decades since Mrs. Eddy’s time, we have unconsciously backslided into the idea that Christian Science allows us to have the name without the nature of godliness, that we can live a comfortable, material, albeit temperate material life, or the appearance of a Christian life, and call upon God to help us when we get in over our heads. This is viewing Christian Science strictly as a health care system.
Walter Jones, member of the Board of Directors of TMC, in an interview published in the January 2008 Journal, speaks about learning to emulate the qualities Jesus speaks of in the Sermon on the Mount, qualities such as meekness, purity, childlikeness and forgiveness and forsaking the counterfeit identity of mortal selfhood. He emphasizes that “putting God first” and developing a close relationship to Him are prerequisites to healing.
I have found in my own practice that I work on two fronts: I have to, one, hold the correct spiritual model in my thought, and, two, listen to God for how to be more of what He has created me to be. While the metaphysical discourse is important, I find that “following the leadings of divine Mind” is the real impetus of healing. Aligning oneself with a truer sense of real being maintains and protects one from what one is not, namely a sinful mortal subject to sin, sickness, disease, and death. I believe this is what Paul meant when he referred to walking in the Spirit. We do not actually live in a material body. We never have. Mind, Spirit forever maintains our individual embodiment of spiritual attributes. The more we turn away from a bodily sense and joy in the unselfish expression of the rich array of these qualities, the more we find ageless, buoyant being. Paul said:
“We are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” (2 Cor. 5: 6-8)
Dick Davenport, founder and Director of Higher Ground, referred to a quote by William F. Hillman, a thoughtful Christian Scientist who lived in the 20th century. He wrote this summation (published in Rolling Away the Stone, p. 409) of how to arrive at a fuller appreciation of Mrs. Eddy’s discovery and what it is to be a Christian Scientist:
“The awakened Christian sees Christian Science as a means for coming into the full truth of being – the full awareness of God. Christian Science is revolutionary in this regard. It turns man away from system, dogmas, formal creeds, to God…. Christian Science describes Mrs. Eddy’s experience of God. It is not a theory about God or speculation about Him. In following Jesus, she became consciously aware of God. She can help us to have this experience, but it is this experience we are after and not some understanding of a system, metaphysical or otherwise. That is, we can’t get into a system called Christian Science and hope to succeed. We must experience God as did Mrs. Eddy and not get enclosed within a system. What she has to say about God and how to experience Him is of vital interest and importance, but only as it takes us to the same experience.”
Treatment for Following Christ:
There is nothing to obscure or prevent us from demonstrating what we are: God’s spiritual children. We cannot fail to have the Mind of Christ which brings transformation and healing, since there is one infinite Truth, Mind, and there is no room for another intelligence. “God is Mind, and God is infinite: hence all is Mind” (Science and Health, p. 492) By virtue of Mind’s allness, the Christ, the one true idea, is revealing the man of God’s creating to human thought, impressing upon consciousness with clearer and resonant pronunciations, the joyous and unifying experience of divine being, coexistent with God. This Christ causes us to hear angelic directions, to recognize, despise, and reject falsity, and to solidify true concepts through grateful living.
Through the Christ we can recognize that there is no legitimacy in murky vision, halting between two opinions, or dreamy tendencies towards orbits of self. Goodness cannot be conceived and replicated by mortal mind, so it must have its source in divine Love. Therefore goodness is not a phantasmic verity and must be real. Evil is an ignorant and supposed opposite to good and will be seen increasingly as nothing. We are privileged servants to the voice of God, doing His harmonious bidding in countless, centrifugal ways of conscious, vibrant expression. More and more, Soul breathes in us the Life of spiritual creation and we walk in the Spirit, deny mortal constraints, and we are healed.
So Principle, Love is now manifest here and now in houses of praise, as our true nature, and we are awakened to wait on God each moment in order to bless those whom we are called upon to uphold. “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.” (Galatians 5: 23)
Member contribution D
What are salient features of Christian Science that make Mrs Eddy’s discovery unique?
Firstly, it is the relation to healing, the discovery of the Christ-science of mental demonstration, applicable to the entire gamut of existence, and demonstratable by anyone. This is the central point of Christian Science.
Secondly, Mrs Eddy originally assumed that Christian Science would be welcomed by the Christian churches, but this did not occur, and subsequently she founded the First Church of Christ, Scientist, as the organization with responsibility to promote and protect.
That second aspect is one that concerns us because it is even more relevant today. To human sense, we are in an environment where others have a different concept of God and of Christ Jesus, one that has been in dispute with the more spiritual view of man since the early centuries of the Christian church. And yet this spiritual view of man, judged by the organized churches for so many centuries as incorrect, is the great discovery of the New Testament, and the one that is made practical for us today through Mrs Eddy’s discovery of the Science of Christian healing, and most significantly, through her documentation of it.
Furthermore, the modern telecommunications and transport that became available during Mrs Eddy’s lifetime, may be one of the factors that made the promotion of her discovery viable. It would have been far more difficult just a century earlier. And today we have even more powerful aids to facilitate dissemination of the discover. Thus we have both the knowledge and the tools to go forward. We ourselves are now the vanguard of deep Christianity. What a privilege! What a responsibility! And what a joy to be part of it! What opportunity to be constantly alert to divine Love’s presence, governing each step that we take.
Let’s nurture that spiritual sense of man, starting with a constant consciousness of divine Love in our hearts. Love fulfils the needs of everyone in La Cañada Flintridge. Every individual, whether or not they are aware of it, is a distinct spiritual idea in divine Mind. When we see that, we can go forward with assurance that the great discovery is in good hands.
Our church “rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle.” This is a spiritual fact, it is Love expressing itself in the way of God’s creation, and is an established fact of being. Our church is a spiritual entity, the result of the unfoldment of Mind, the evolution of Soul, the increase of Spirit. Infinite Mind is for ever expressed, never dormant, never lacking expression, always in development. Whatever is needed to promote this spiritual enterprise will be made known to its leaders, indeed is already known to divine Love. We are all citizens of the realm of Spirit, guided consistently by Love and Principle.
No human or worldly beliefs or contrary development can destroy or impact the spiritual church that “proceeds from divine Principle.” No human digressions can impede the progress of Spirit.
Our local branch church represents the “structure of Truth and Love” in our community. It provides a path to pure spirituality and divine Science that does not compete with other churches.
We can rest in the knowledge that the great discovery is here and recognized, and that we will be directed as necessary and appropriate fo the unfoldment of God’s plan.
