METAPHYSICAL MEETING, December 8, 2014
Contents
| - Topic | |
| - Call to the meeting | |
| - Readings | |
| - Participant contribution A | |
| - Participant contribution B | |
| - Participant contribution C | |
| - Participant contribution D |
Topic
Moving forward together as a church of healers
Call to the meeting
This month’s meeting will support The Mother Church’s focus on healing by addressing the topic, “Moving Forward Together as a Church of Healers.” In preparation for this meeting, please watch this video discussion from the Branch Activities department at The Mother Church. Although the Christian Science Board of Directors has suggested that we view this video together during our meeting, we are asking that you watch it before the meeting so that there is more time to share our prayerful insights during the meeting. The video lasts about 20 minutes.
As you prayerfully consider how we can further strengthen the healing influence of our branch church within our membership and congregation, as well as within our community, you may wish to study the following for inspiration and information about this topic:
“Choose Ye” My. 3:-1-6:29
“A spiritual foundation of Christ-healing” S&H 136:1-2
Letter from the Christian Science Board of Directors click here
“Ideas for ‘Moving Forward Together as a Church of Healers’” click here
“Healing the Multitudes,” from the Christian Science Sentinel click here
Whether you prepare in advance (please do!) or not, your participation in this meeting will be valued. If you cannot participate in “real time,” you may send your thoughts on the topic with someone who will share them at the meeting.
Readings
Luke 10:1-3 (to :), 9
James 5:14-16
SH 136:1-2
SH 583:14
Man. 17:8
Man. 92:7
Mis. 98:9-21
Mis. 155:6
Ret. 16:1-15
Hymn 105:1-3
Participant contribution A
“At a meeting of the Christian Scientist Association, April 12, 1879, on motion of Mrs. Eddy, it was voted, - To organize a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.” Church Manual of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts.
So first of all our church commemorates the word and works of Jesus. Commemorate, t.v., to exist or be done in order to remind people of (an important event or person from the past). To do something special in order to remember and honor (an important event or person from the past). 1. To call to remembrance. 2. To mark by some ceremony or observation: observe – commemorate an anniversary. 3. To serve as a memorial of – a plaque that commemorates the battle. Origin: Latin commemorates, past participle of commemorare, from com- + memorare to remind of, from memor mindful – more at memory. Syn: memorialize, monumentalize.
Note that “word and works” come right together. It is not sufficient that we commemorate Jesus’ words, as important as they are, but we must commemorate his works. And we know what those works were. He healed. So from the beginning our mission has been to heal.
The result is that we are to “reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.” This is the whole purpose of our church. All our activities – services, Sunday School, reading rooms, lectures – must be focused on healing. Our Sunday School students should be taught how to give a treatment so they can heal. We all know of young children who have participated in their own healings and those of others. Of course the purpose of all our church services, reading rooms, and lectures is to bring healing to our members and attendees. But can we just rely on these activities alone? Must not we ourselves demonstrate the healing efficacy of Christian Science in our daily lives? We all know the answer to that question. Our “mission is to heal.”
Participant contribution B
As I consider this topic, my response stems from my own experience and a considerable amount of prayerful thought. I don’t pretend to know the issues that the rest of us may address, but having a meeting like this one may bring out some honest feelings and insights that we’ll all benefit from and forward our progress.
For me, the practice of Christian Science requires the purer affections of the heart more than any one thing, whether we are talking about our own individual practice or our effectiveness as a body of members. The affections of the heart or unselfed love is comprised of a true recognition of the human condition with respect to the coming of the Christ and its attendant compassionate response.
I was raised in a home where my mother and step father practiced Christian Science. I attended Sunday School regularly and went to Principia College. I eventually discovered that my background was by no means a “shoe in” for success as a Christian Scientist. I have faced many situations, both physically and morally as the years have progressed, but have really had to get more serious in the last several years as more pressing needs have arisen, testing my faith. Through it all, church has been a mainstay in my experience. The dominant question is, “Have I accepted that there is a ‘problem of being’ and do I understand that Christian Science is the only answer to this problem?” For me, this is a question that can’t be answered with a simple yes or no; it demands daily demonstration, the application of Truth and the concomitant evidence of healing and the presence of God’s angels. As time goes on, the impulsion to demonstrate Christian Science is driven less by fear and more by Love and Truth, and there is a gradual growth in confidence and an empowerment that all things are possible. With this confidence comes a deepening compassion and as sense of justice that is felt for humanity’s legitimate right to exercise dominion over mortality.
We live in an age where the general population believes that technology can solve any problem and this cool assurance, albeit based solely upon sense testimony, weighs against our confidence that spirituality is the only state of existence. The constant presence of materialism as a welcome, temporary diversion to the business of hard metaphysics, plays the role of dividing faith and delaying demonstration. My responsibility as a church member to “come out from the material world” and be a scientific Christian, bearing witness to the true man, and at times espousing the prevalence of a spiritual universe and its supreme laws. This can seem irrational at times and requires elevated thought, meekness, and Christly love.
Church can provide a kind of haven for the minority, where members take refuge from the masses of unbelievers, stoking the embers of faith through sharing experiences and healings, encouraging each other in knowing that we are a “peculiar people zealous of good works.” Here, we can pray for our membership that we are upheld by the Comforter to feel and experience God’s “peace and joy and power” increasingly, that we come to recognize that the world is waking up to a higher standard of life based upon divine Love, that we are not outnumbered by the proponents of materialism, but that it is error itself that is “struggling against the advancing spiritual era” and we represent a higher humanity leading the world out of darkness into light.
Participant contribution C
Each individual church member has an individual reason for having joined the church. It’s not always based on healing. And yet a major strength and specific purpose of our church is the shared goal of healing. We don’t generally have a way to review how well we meet that purpose and goal. Perhaps we should.
One thing that does strike me is that in all the branch churches where I’ve been a member (and I’ve been a member of six branches, plus having gone to Sunday School in one where I was not ever a member), there is so much consideration of the individual characteristics of members. It’s as if we can’t progress unless person A stops doing whatever they are doing, or that person B just isn’t contributing, therefore why should I participate more than I do.
The article by Florence Boyd in the July 1, 1916, issues of the Sentient, titled Healing the Multitudes, contains the following highly direct statement in its closing paragraph: “Only through unselfed love can our Leader’s hope be realized. When divine Love fills our churches to the exclusion of self, the multitudes will throng them as they thronged Jesus, and they will be healed of their sorrows and their sufferings.”
That statement emphasizes unselfed love. It’s not clear to me that we always fully appreciate what that means.
I was recently going through the individual reports in the two volumes of We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, about Mrs. Eddy’s final class, the one she taught in 1898. More than one of those reports mentions how one of the major questions discussed in the class was how to heal the sick instantaneously, and they all indicate how Mrs. Eddy said that the answer was not just to “realize the presence of Love,” but “love! Love enough, and you’ll raise the dead! I’ve done it!.” And, “Just live love — be it — love, love, love. Do not know anything but Love, Be all Love. There is nothing else. That will do the work. It will heal everything; it will raise the dead. Be nothing but love.” Also: “To live love, to manifest the very presence of Love, would heal everything.”
This reaches directly to sentiments expressed in Florence Boyd’s article, in particular the statement that Mrs. Eddy looked towards the day when every sick or sorrowful person entering the church would leave it healed, and that this accomplishments depends upon the “unselfed love” of the members.
It’s an interesting and specific command to duty, to do more than we so often thing we can. There is no reason that individual church members cannot rise to this challenge. It’s not personal, of course. The church is that organization exemplifying Jesus’ teachings in the community, bringing to light the divine laws of goodness, order, joy, and progress. It is God’s inviolate presence in the spiritual community that is the reflection of Soul, of infinite spiritual individuality, a mission devised by divine Principle and implemented by immortal Mind to express its own infinite, eternal self, the immeasurable presence of Spirit.
Participant contribution D
This section consists of excerpts from general discussion during the meeting.
Mary Baker Eddy says the prosperity of Christian Science depends on the weekly Bible lesson. Note the order of the lessons is almost the same as the questions in Recapitulation (Chapter 14 of Science and Health). Thus each year we are taken through class instruction twice! The actual titles aren’t quite the same, but the substance is. Mrs. Eddy specifically chose subjects to support the order of the questions in Recapitulation.
Today I reread “Choose Ye,” in Miscellany. I asked myself, will we, as we progress, be able to write the last paragraph substituting our own church for The Mother Church? It would go like this: “You have dexterously and wisely provided for First Church of Christ, Scientist, La Cañada Flintridge, a magnificent temple wherein to enter and pray. Greatly impressed and encouraged thereby, deeply do I thank you for this proof of your progress, unity, and love.”
One person spoke about continuous healing, another talked about putting everything aside in an expression of unselfed love. It’s a common thread, that of getting self out of the way, and I was thinking of what is the premise of that. I suppose if you consider church as an interruption in your life, you’re not working from the premise of your spiritual identity. If you are more in touch constantly with who you are as a child of God, then continuous healing and unselfed love is a natural response. That can be taken as a goal.
In the end your life is better even though it was a mighty struggle to get there. If we didn’t have the trial, we would not have made the spiritual leap. In the end Joseph ended up blessing a whole nation, not just his family.