METAPHYSICAL MEETING, December 12, 2011
Topic
Realizing the timelessness of our church goals
Call to the meeting
All of you, both our members and our regular attendees, are joyfully invited to participate in our next metaphysical meeting on Monday, December 12 (one week earlier than usual, in order to avoid the busy week prior to Christmas). Our topic is: “Realizing the timelessness of our church goals.”
A year has passed since members held a special meeting to discuss future goals and options for our church. We identified a range of goals and qualities we would like to see expressed, such as: visible, active, healing, proactive, fun, innovative, up-to-date, serves the community, serves the members, attractive to all generations, accommodates future church trends, vital, long term presence in LCF, flexible, open, participatory, welcoming, etc.
Our meeting on the 12th will look at these goals from a metaphysical, prayerful perspective, to understand that the spiritual facts and qualities behind these goals exist now.
While contributions to the meeting are welcome on any related topic, some specific areas we might address (metaphysically) are:
- continuing vitality in our church activities
- expectation and realization in serving our community now
- being in our right place now
Your participation in the meeting might range from a brief ad hoc inspiration of the moment to a more detailed written paper, — there is no rule and no limitation. As usual, we appreciate any written ideas, however short, for posting on our web site. You may, of course, attend the meeting in person or participate via teleconference (for details, see: http://cslcf.org/Services.php)
“Faith in divine Love supplies the ever-present help and now, and gives the power to ‘act in the living present’.” (My 12:26)
Thank you all for your dedication to our church.
Readings
Isa 33:20
Joel 2:23-24
My 12: 17-28
'00 9:8-11 (to ;),14-16,20-22; 11:3-5 Hold; 15:22-26
S&H 35: 19-20 Our church
S&H 249:6,18-20 (to .)
S&H 599:6-7
S&H 45:16
Hymns:
391: “Why search the future and teh past? … Before your feet Life's pearl is cast”
314: “Sow in the morn thy seed, At eve hold not thy hand”
123: “How firm a foundatiaon”
Member contribution A
“This spiritual meeting with our Lord in the dawn of a new light is the morning meal which Christian Scientists commemorate. They bow before Christ, Truth, to receive more of his reappearing and silently to commune with the divine Principle, Love. They celebrate their Lord’s victory over death, his probation in the flesh after death, its exemplification of human probation, and his spiritual and final ascension above matter, or the flesh, when he rose out of material sight...Our church is built on the divine Principle, Love.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 35).
Mary Baker Eddy uses the post-resurrection meal of Jesus and his disciples, described in John 21, as a template for communion celebrated by Christian Scientists. What struck me about this passage is that Eddy doesn’t place a time limit on spiritual communion. She doesn’t say that it occurs on the second Sunday in January and July every year. In fact, it’s written in the present tense, indicating that communion is presently occurring. We bow before Christ, Truth, now; we receive more of his reappearing now; we silently commune with the divine Principle, Love, now. We celebrate victory over death, probation in the flesh, and ascension now. And, moments later, we continue to do it, now. There is no element of time in our communion with God, the divine Principle, Love; it is eternal.
In the next paragraph, Eddy writes that our church is founded on the divine Principle, Love. So, we are communing with the divine Principle, Love, on which our church is based now. We are communing with God and our church is built on God, who is ever active and knows no diminution. Our church is vital, vigorous, and active, reflecting eternally divine Life and its infinite faculties. Our church is demonstrating progressive unfoldment in its manifestation of the ideal church.
How is this made practical? I pray to know what to do to demonstrate church in my life. However, the continuity of our church is both an individual and a collective endeavor. There’s a hint in the chapter, “Marriage”: “Unselfish ambition, noble life-motives, and purity, — these constituents of thought, mingling, constitute individually and collectively true happiness, strength, and permanence.” (S&H, p. 58) We can help each other to obtain happiness, strength, and permanence in our church. As each of us makes the individual demonstration, we’re helping the others to make the collective demonstration.
Eddy gives us a roadmap for this endeavor: “To triumph in truth, to keep the faith individually and collectively, conflicting elements must be mastered. Defeat need not follow victory. Joy over good achievements and work well done should not be eclipsed by some lost opportunity, some imperative demand not yet met. Truth, Life, and Love will never lose their claim on us.” (My. 134:8-14) Master the conflict. Don’t lose opportunities. Meet the demands. We won’t be defeated, but will rejoice in our success as a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, meeting the demands of this age for divine Science.
Julia M. Johnston in Mary Baker Eddy: Her Mission and Triumph wrote, “The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, had been erected through the spiritual conviction of Mary Baker Eddy and the gratitude and labor of a host of those whom the revelation of Christian Science had liberated from disease, sin, and even death” (p. 113). Our church was built through the spiritual conviction of our earliest members and continues through our spiritual conviction. The vitality of our services and Sunday school is not dependent on the number of people in the congregation, but on our collective spiritual preparedness. To say that these services aren’t vital is to discount the spiritual truths being presented through our hymns, Bible Lesson, Sunday school instruction, and so on. These truths are vital and we can expect, even demand, that they be felt within the community, starting with ourselves. I ask myself whether I walk into our services expecting to be healed or just to see friends and have a momentary spiritual uplift. It takes discipline to be spiritually attuned and ready to heal and be healed through our services. Each of us is necessary for this work to be realized. Think of the effect if every one of our Wednesday meetings included testimonies about how we were healed in a service of this church. The word would get out. People would come. We don’t have to wait until we have closure with our property to demand healing services. And, it starts with each of us individually. I want to ask, “Are you ready to be healed on Wednesday night?” but I think a better question is, “Am I willing to make the requisite sacrifice of self, fear, and all mortal thinking to be healed on Wednesday and at every future service?”
What if we were so spiritually prepared now that everybody who comes to our next lecture is healed? It isn’t the lecturer’s responsibility to set the metaphysical tone for the lecture. We do. It doesn’t matter if the person healed is a newcomer or long-time Christian Scientist. What matters is that people walk out of the lecture healed.
I think what I’m talking about is to raise our services and activities from the mechanical — reading the Lesson, teaching Sunday school, sitting in the reading room, hosting a lecture — to the inspirational, an activity that is always in the now. As Eddy wrote in the May 30, 1903 Sentinel, “This was an emphatic rule of St. Paul: ‘Behold, now is the accepted time.’ A lost opportunity is the greatest of losses. Whittier mourned it as what ‘might have been.’ We own no past, no future, we possess only now. If the reliable now is carelessly lost in speaking or in acting, it comes not back again. Whatever needs to be done which cannot be done now, God prepares the way for doing; while that which can be done now, but is not, increases our indebtedness to God. Faith in divine Love supplies the ever-present help and now, and gives the power to ‘act in the living present.’” (My. 12:17)
Member contribution B
A. Continuing vitality in our church activities
“Vitality” is one of the terms on our list of goals for our church. My dictionary definition of the word includes the following: “the peculiarity distinguishing the living from the nonliving; capacity to live and develop; power of enduring or continuing; lively and animated character.”
And so it gets down to qualities such as life, continuity, liveliness, vibrancy, and even expectation.
From a metaphysical perspective, we should be careful about thinking that we are working towards a better manifestation of these qualities, or of any other positive, desirable qualities on the human plane. Christian Science deals not with what could be or should be, or with how to transition from evil to good, mediocre to better, dormant to active, sickness to health, etc. No, it deals with what already is. That’s the basis of Christian Science practice. The divine manifestation of infinite, ever-present Principle, Soul, Truth, which is God, is never absent, never inactive. We read in Unity of Good, by Mary Baker eddy, “If God is ever present, He is neither absent from Himself nor from the universe.”
This has profound meaning for Christianity through the ages. The facts of Spirit and its idea man, and the spiritual universe, are permanent, they have ever been at the point of perfection and development, while at the same time manifesting God’s ongoing development of character, quality, and purpose within Soul itself.
A manifestation of this is the size of our congregation? How do we look at this metaphysically? Do we pray for the seats to be filled? How do we do this? The fact is that those seats are already filled. They always have been, even before our church was built, even before Mary Baker Eddy discovered Christian Science, even before Jesus arrived on the earth. In the life that is the divine reality, all of God’s creatures are divine ideas reflecting intelligent Mind, perfect Principle, undiminishable Life, ever-active Soul. That includes the spiritual activity and presence that is the spiritual counterpart of filling the seats in our church. They’ve always been filled and always will be.
Does this mean we don’t need to do anything to manifest this? To the contrary. To the degree that mankind have been conscious of God’s presence and man’s manifesting of divine Life, Love, and Soul, the already existing spiritual ideas that constitute filled seats in our churches have become more, or less, manifest humanly. That’s where our work fits it, to realize that man is God’s expression, including the spiritual equivalent of seats filled in our church, and that realization is present, operative, and developing now, at every instant, permanent in the timeless now of Spirit.
B. Expectation and realization in serving our community now
Is there any need to wait? What will be better next year to facilitate outreach to our community? What does the community expect of us? When is the best moment? Is it dependent on something else happening, such as a new church location or more members or greater individual inspiration?
These are all bogus questions, because they involve “time”, which is defined in the Glossary of Science and Health as “mortal measurements; limits, in which are summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, knowledge.” Thus we can look away from that limited concept of dimensionality to the freedom of unbounded realization that already belongs to us.
This means that what we see as our community is a compound idea of Soul that reflects the vitality, interest, intelligence, activity, and receptivity of its Creator, God. It means our church’s role in serving that community already exists in Mind, in the outreach of divine Love to its own clientele of ideas within Mind.
As we realize this, we can expect increased opportunity to serve our community, greater interest by others in interacting with us and facilitating the expression of divine Love everywhere. And we can expect new ideas in how to go about this.
C. Being in our right place now
Our branch church has embarked upon a transition towards an improved position, literally and figuratively, for providing Christian Science in our local community. That’s what a branch church is intended to do. How it does this is a topic that evolves as society develops in its mannerisms, practices, and expectations.
The world is making advances in many areas. In general, it defines these as advances in physical designs and material practices, but the reality is the spiritual idea behind these advances. The spiritual development, the spiritual counterpart of what appears to be happening in the material world, is the reality. It already exists, is already in action, is already in its right place.
We are at this instant in our right place to do what is best for our community. Does that mean we are already in the right physical place, with the most appropriate facilities? It may, or it may not. The fact is that our place is not a physical place at all. It is a spiritual consciousness emanating through the Christ in our human experience, a spiritual idea for ever rightly located and positioned, as it always has been and always will be.
Perhaps a conclusion from this is that we shouldn’t think that something needs to change regarding our church buildings, location, organization, structure, or anything else, in order for our branch church to do what it is designed to accomplish. We can expect all of the material arrangements to evolve and progress in the most appropriate manner, as we realize the existing establishment of Principle, always present and always in action. And we don’t need to wait for anything in going forward.
Mrs. eddy writes in Science and Health: “We must look where we would walk, and we must act as possessing all power from Him in whom we have our being.” (S&H 264:10) We are all equipped spiritually to go forward at this moment, to realize that our branch church already reflects the divine presence. This excludes absorption in physical expectations and circumstances. Those will follow and unfold as we see the reality of good now.