METAPHYSICAL MEETING, December 15, 2008
Contents
| - Topic | |
| - Call to the meeting | |
| - Member contribution A | |
| - Member contribution B |
Topic
How does church appreciate in value — to us and the community?
Call to the meeting
Of what value is our church to La Cañada Flintridge? How would you compare it to, say, the ARCO station, Citizens Business Bank or Vons Market? On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate it? Would we have to use a different scale altogether, perhaps one that pits churches against each other? Do we have a niche to fill in this community? Is church on the fringe or is it central to the well-being of our town?
Yes, this is largely rhetorical, but let’s press on to see in what way church does have an impact in the community. We can start by asking a related question: Is the Christ significant to our individual consciousness. If we do decide it’s indispensable, why wouldn’t it have the same value to collective consciousness? Do the laws of God apply any less to the world beyond our own thinking? The Christ is “the light shining in darkness, which the darkness comprehends not.” (S & H p. 347) But is the light any less valuable because of the darkness?
Notice that these perspectives change as our view of reality changes. If we think that we and 6.7 billion other people inhabit a decaying planet and that we all are vying for material resources, then church has a marginal value. Yet, if we understand the universe to be spiritual, then the Christ, the Church Triumphant and our little church have a much more crucial role to play on the human scene.
Now, as it happens, the Lecture Committee is also working metaphysically with the idea of cherishing church, being grateful for it and for its members. This will undoubtedly have some application to our building project as well. With this in mind, let’s pray to answer this question: How does church appreciate in value — to us and to the community?
Be free to follow your own intuition as to the content of study. We can certainly share inspiration and recommend references to each other as time goes on, but let’s plan to meet on Monday, November 17 at 7:30 pm to culminate what we all have discovered. Let’s expect an increase in hope, joy, and healing!
Member contribution A
Divine Mind comprehends all and this Mind is the only Mind of man through continuous emanation. This precludes the need for the accumulation of understanding. Mind alone illumines, conceives, imparts, reveals, and is conscious, and man is but the humble servant of this restful Mind. Right now in the human sense of things, we are impelled and animated by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.
There is no material understanding. The belief that we can acquire knowledge sufficiently to perceive spiritual being amounts to blind faith. “It is neither Science nor Truth which acts through blind belief, nor is it the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth, -- of man’s likeness to God and of man’s unity with Truth and Love.” (S&H p. 12) Understanding cannot be absorbed, but it is continuously radiated to man and the universe. Demonstrating this capacity expands our manifestation of intelligence in human consciousness.
There can be no counterfeit to the mind of Christ. Willfulness, manipulation, and hypocrisy cannot suggest intelligence in the least. The carnal mind can only mimic and boast. It has no jurisdiction within the infinite, self-contained universe of divine Mind, and its silly pretentions are self-exposed and self-destroyed in the face of genuine originality, wisdom, judgment, and spiritual understanding.
So man is now and forever the display of unfoldment, the uninterrupted stream of Mind’s understanding. Mind joys in the activity of informing and bestowing upon man the consciousness of his inheritance, his wholeness, soundness and perfection, and nothing can ever obscure or eclipse this eternal relationship.
Member contribution B
What in particular is there for us to do concerning our church, especially our branch church in the local community? The presence of spiritual organization in the realm of divine activity is a product of Mind's awareness of itself, and therefore cannot and will not be ignored. What is our individual role? Is that role different from the past? And different from our preconceptions? How do we know what is the right thing to do? For example, what is the correct step to take regarding our building? In the Manual of The Mother Church, Mrs Eddy makes provisions for various church activities such as church services, reading room, Sunday school, lectures. She also lists the "present" order of services. But do we interpret these in an unduly pedantic manner? There is evidence that the community at large no longer responds to activities of the kind considered appropriate one hundred years ago.
What does all this mean for our church? We know that many people are not listening to traditional avenues of thought. Most of them do not even want to attend church. Many of them feel that attending any one church is unduly limiting. Others feel church is no longer relevant. Indeed there is evidence of a secularization of society, and perhaps many of the people who are going that way are the same kind of people who in decades past would have intuitively aligned themselves with an established church and participated in its activities.
Lectures are an area where change has been significant. Many of Mrs Eddy's early lectures, and those of others in the early movement, were given in “parlors”, i.e. in private homes. This kind of meeting rarely occurs today. Some of us have neighborhood parties, but generally these are infrequent and not part of regular family activities. Clearly the parlor lectures relied upon a kind of personal outreach common in those day, but not today.
Thus there are many questions. How should we respond? How can we remain appropriately relevant in our community? How can we recognize what the next step should be?
But what are the spiritual facts? Are not these the truth? The reality is that church is the organization demonstrating the usefulness of spirituality in our community. That is a spiritual activity, and that means it is our activity of divine Mind. Mind is Life, and is ever active. The activity and utility of our church are a reflection, an active expression, of God, of the Christ in action on behalf of our community. Even our community, spiritually interpreted, is a localized compound expression of Soul. Every individual is an image of Sprit, and therefore expresses only what is spiritually real. This means each individual has a natural ability to work in response to Spirit. This is the activity of Mind knowing and nurturing its ideas, and realizing that Mind itself is All, and ever-present. Each individual is naturally receptive to the Christ. Therefore, we can expect the flow-on of spiritual interest and activity in our church. That is natural progress in divine unfoldment.
Mind's expression — that includes all of our members — is never reluctant to express itself in its true light, spiritually. The Christ thought will naturally direct each of us to reach the best spiritual solution, and will provide the relevant initiatives.
My immediate tasks are:
1) Realize and declare that our church is the ongoing spiritual activity that is reflected by each and every individual, is a natural part of divine being that is inevitably part of God's reflection.
2) Stay tuned to God, realizing that our church is a reflection of God's activity, and we as members reflect that divine activity. We will be led to do what is best to promote the ongoing life of our church, to make it increasingly relevant and vibrant, to attract the participation by and membership by appropriate individuals.
This requires and constitutes divine listening, which essentially entails being in tune with the divine. With a radio program, we hear the broadcast only if we tune to the right frequency. Then the music comes through, we sing the music that we hear, we reflect the composer's concept. So is it with spiritual listening. God is the only life, and that Life is reflected in us. What is going on in reality is God's activity, not ours. We live by reflection, we act by reflection. And so it is also with our community and our church, part of God's natural, on going, expanding, natural, spiritual expression. The beliefs of mortal thinking are not the real.