Tag Archives: Christian Science

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A larger view…. Sharing an article from the CS Journal

There just has to be more!

By Mark Swinney from the August 2019 issue of The Christian Science Journal (all rights reserved).

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Imagine a windowless, bare room. Every corner and every square inch of the walls and floor are utterly without illumination. And there is a person living in this room—someone who, in fact, has never lived anywhere else.The only exception to the room’s blandness is right in the center, where sits a small table bordered by two chairs. Overlaying the tabletop is a chessboard. On the squares of the board rests a beautiful chess set, nicely bathed in a little pool of light. Those chess pieces and the board are the only things in the light, and the only things the room’s occupant ever looks upon.

Now imagine that, every week or so, another person slips in through a hidden door to sit at the table. Our room’s resident has been playing chess with this other individual since he was quite young. You can imagine, over the years, how important the game of chess has become for our resident! Since it is all he ever sees and knows, the entirety of his world balances on what occurs on that little board. What happens to a knight, a queen, a pawn, undoubtedly means absolutely everything to him.

Suppose one day, between moves, the man’s opponent whispers from across the table, “My friend, I must tell you something. There is much more to existence than this chess game. There is a bright, diverse, huge, intricate world outside of this room.”

“Hmmm … yes, sometimes I’ve had suspicions,” our resident muses, “that there might somehow, someway be more. But when I look around with my own two eyes, it’s obvious that only what is happening on this chessboard has meaning. In no way is there anything more important, more vital and pivotal for us both, than the strategy of what happens on this board of black and white squares.”

Of course, the moment our resident is led out of his gloomy abode into the light of day, everything becomes to him almost magically different and wonderful. And, after only a few hours out exploring the immensity of the world, whatever happened over the years on that chessboard has become less significant in comparison.

Have you ever had little intuitions about how there might be more to existence than simply what you see every day, where you go, what you do? Beyond what just your eyes are showing you, do you suspect that there might be much more?

I’ve often had those feelings and little intuitions. A wider and clearer view of existence includes for me deep and now-tangible spiritual facets of our being.

Somewhat like our chess-game-focused resident hearing the whisper of his friend telling of a bigger, brighter world, we hear the whisper of God, of divine Truth, in our hearts and thoughts, and this has a wonderfully enlightening effect. It introduces us to the real world—the one and only wonderful, infinite world of Spirit, Love, and goodness, of bright spirituality and incredible divine intelligence.

The kingdom of heaven is not something for later. It is here and now.

Sure, like that chess set in the small pool of light, the physical universe certainly may momentarily feel to us like everything and the only thing, making it hard even to fathom something beyond it. Yet, gratefully, there is more—so much more, and it is present! As Jesus put it, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 10:7). Jesus’ theology in that statement was a departure then, and is a departure now, from commonplace philosophical and religious views.

The kingdom of heaven is not something for later. Not far in the distance. Here and now, God’s kingdom is knowable, perceivable, provable, livable. Rather than death being the ticket to a world of heavenly bliss, Jesus stated plainly to all of his followers this good news: “Thy kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10)—or, as Mary Baker Eddy spiritually interprets this line: “Thy kingdom is come; Thou art ever-present” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 16). Not “coming.” “Come”! Instead of leaving heaven for mortality—and perpetually living with vulnerabilities and frustrations—we actually now reside spiritually, perfectly, in the infinitude of God, in the infinitude of divine Love.

When you stop to think about it, with God being everywhere, there truly is nowhere else to go. So, thought by thought, step by step, prayer by prayer, healing by healing, we can recognize and prove the limitless, present spiritual nature of real existence. We can see tangible results in our lives as we embrace spiritual facts in consciousness and express them in our prayers and lives. This is the loyal work of the followers of Jesus, the students of the Christ Science he taught.

In our prayers, we always have the opportunity to, with childlike willingness, look up from some entrancing “chess set world” defined only by constricting limits. And soon, to our surprise, we find that we have actually been given so much more—infinitely more, in fact! From the confines and context of simple mortality, words can barely describe it all.

The simple black letters on this page spelling out the word thunderstorm cannot even come near to the smell of rain, beautiful crashes of thunder, and dime-size drops of water splashing down on the dusty earth, any more than the printed words “All is God, and God is Love” can match the absolute immensity and wonder of the infinite Love that is Deity. Yet, through consistent prayer, you actually can discover and tangibly experience the very nature and presence of divine Love.

“This kingdom of God ‘is within you,’—is within reach of man’s consciousness here, and the spiritual idea reveals it,” Science and Health explains (p. 576).

What happens when human consciousness catches Love’s whisper, revealing the spiritual idea, the kingdom of God, as present and intact? Resolution, reformation, transformations of thought, and enduring healing.

What happens when human consciousness catches Love’s whisper?

For instance, when Jesus’ disciples questioned him about a man who had never been able to see, it became clear that those disciples were still perceiving existence only from a limited perspective of material living. From such a narrow-sighted viewpoint, they naturally believed that someone had made a wrong move, a move that caused the man to suffer, leading them to ask, “Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” But Jesus answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” (John 9:2, 3).

From Jesus’ answer, we can see that he was unimpressed by evidence of material vulnerabilities and limitations. His consciousness was filled with the wonder of the brighter, bigger picture—the enormousness of the present, delightful works of God. Jesus clearly beheld this infinite kingdom of God, and through the spiritual truth, the man was healed and began seeing for the first time. As Mrs. Eddy put it: “The visible universe and material man are the poor counterfeits of the invisible universe and spiritual man. Eternal things (verities) are God’s thoughts as they exist in the spiritual realm of the real” (Science and Health, p. 337).

As a result of thinking through my existence this way, I have found my perspective—my whole outlook on my world—expanding. Yes, right here, in the vast, spiritual realm of the real, there is an infinitude of eternal realities, reflections of God’s beautiful and wonderful thoughts.

It’s so encouraging to know that we can each stand up and walk away from the narrow perspective of a limited material existence and walk into the expansive, beautiful, blessed light of spiritual truth and divine reality.

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Can Love blanket the world?

We finally got our snow here in Northern Michigan…first, a few stray hard flakes, the kind that hit hard…then overnight, more. Now just the tallest grasses are visible. As we approach our Christmas holiday here in the United States, it occurs to me, that perhaps love can act like snow… blanketing the world.

I had just had a chat with someone at the little restaurant I frequent here in Charlevoix. She is estranged from one of her sons. Hard feelings exist on both sides. Some of the reasons for separation seemed justified. But I encouraged her to keep the idea of reconciliation and love active in her thoughts and to act from that same standpoint. One never knows at what point the way will open, …but always be open to it.

Then, looking outside at our first snowfall, I could see the perfect analogy for the way love works sometimes. If love can come in a steady, constant flow (which is exactly how God’s love works), we can see our world, our life, blanketed with that same love (like fresh snow on the lawn). Both humanly and spiritually –there need be no separation, we can see the love and protection of God’s love active in our own lives.

I like that.

So any situation we face, individually and collectively, we can apply this idea. Even hard-hearted conflicts and violent terrorist acts can be covered by God’s love. THAT should be our first thought when we are hit by bad news, not fear, but that God’s love covers all like a fresh new-fallen snow.

Years ago, my husband and I were estranged, separated. It was a very difficult time…but one of great growth too. There was a lot of prayer, and the support of Christian Science practitioners too.

It was when, one day, I realized that I loved my husband, as a fact, as a truth about me (like 2+2=4), …that healing and reconciliation began. No matter what behavior or reaction I was seeing, I KNEW, it didn’t alter that fact. My love for him was a fact. That freed me to respond according to that fact and be my best self as well. This led to great healing in our marriage.

If we knew that the love we have for the world were similarly, a fact: A truth about us, we could see that same love blanketing the world. This same blanketing love covers our ‘enemies’ –whom we are charged with loving by Christ Jesus. The same love inspires the Christly direction to “forgive 70 times 7”, –forgiving so thoroughly that there is nothing left to forgive because the love is so complete.

Complete love! Now that’s a Christmas concept worth thinking about. A love so complete, it must be God.

GOD is LOVE. MERRY Christmas to you, and the wide-world too.

 

Copyright held by Alexis Wittman

 

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Smoke on the Water Cafe, Charlevoix, Michigan  

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And,.. If I be Lifted up–

I’ve been dwelling on this phrase from Christ Jesus a lot lately. It came to me, oddly, after watching an Adam Sandler movie a week ago while on a business trip in San Jose, California.

In one scene, Adam is challenged to battle a competitor. Unusually, it was set in a fantasy future with antigravity effects. But first, he steps onto a small flying disk— which lifts him upwards. Then, it hit me…

“If, I be lifted up…I will (in a spiritual state), see all others, that way too.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote once, ‘Jesus beheld, in Science (sic: or, in Truth), the perfect man– where sinning, mortal man appeared to others. In this correct view of man, the Master healed the sick, gave sight to the blind, restored the dead to life, thus proving the Kingdom of Heaven intact, and man, pure and holy.’

It explains how Christ Jesus could put his arm around the leper, because leprosy does not exist in the divine consciousness. It also explains why he could call Lazarus forth, because, he was very much alive to Jesus’ thought.  He could never have called him forth if he thought otherwise.

It also explains the necessary time Jesus spent alone, in prayer, in quiet meditation with God. Lifting himself up…up from the struggles of daily first century life. In realizing his own divinity, he brought others to theirs. The illusion of anything less?– Shattered, dissolved.

This is ours to do as well; Our work in the world, our way of being-undivorced from good, God. It can be as simple as dropping judgmental labels, or reconciling with someone…as dramatic as speaking truth to error, or giving your life to helping others,….and always lifting ourselves up. Get on that ‘high flying disk’, as Abraham Hicks has said, and stay there, as often as you can.

Then, you too will be lifted up, and those around you, or in your thoughts and prayers, too. And THAT is the practice, isn’t it? That’s all it is.

See John 12:32: “And if I be lifted up, I will draw all unto me.”

Love to you, this Easter morning, 2015.
Alexis

 

Copyright held by Alexis Wittman

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A ‘Treatment’, or Better Still… ‘A Treat’-

A Treatment, or a Treat?

Sometimes it helps to write down your prayers. I have to admit I am not in practice… a bit rusty. Today, I start with a heavy sigh like one preparing to sit in meditation.  In my thought there is a catalogue …ills that need addressing. I could go there, make a list. Check it twice. But today, my question is:  Treat or treatment? This is the question I go to God with.  It occurs to me today  for the first time, that a real treatment is truly a treat…one in which, Christ enters in. Now, that’s THE  treat, agree?

We are told to ‘Enter his courts with thanksgiving and praise’.  That’s a clue.

One could view metaphysical treatment as a love letter to the ‘one and only true God’ as I think Moses may have said.  Here goes….

 

Dear One, God–

I know that you God, are the only One in my life. I ‘have no God’s before you’. Your creation appears in the world around me. But, you, the creator, are reflected in every aspect.  You continue to create. Mary Baker Eddy: ‘Creation is ever appearing and must ever continue to appear from the nature of its inexhaustible source,’.  First, let me say, I love you, your world too. I am happy in it…   Everything is good, very good. That includes man, who you proclaim in Genesis 1, ‘Very Good’. That includes me, too!  As though that is what all our names  are:  Alexis ‘Very-Good’ Wittman, Child of God.

I’m thinking this love letter needs to be a daily thing, right?  So, to recap, I have acknowledged God and secondly, man as God-created. Perfection.

God is the power, the intelligence, the love… like a diamond with many facets, God’s facets are infinite, powerful and good; All part of the diamond. Mary Baker Eddy, author of ‘Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures’ back in 1875, liked to think of God in terms of qualities, specifically seven synonyms: Life, Truth, Love, Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Mind. Taking one of these into thought, Life, for today…. brings Divine Life more clearly into focus, let’s me explore God. Think of that as a definition of treatment.

Humanly, I am suffering. I am having what I euphemistically call ‘mobility issues’. That could mean, car troubles? But, no, today there’s some pain I am facing as I move through my day. It’s truly uncomfortable and limits me, too much. This is hard to share, with you, with God even. I feel like a failure.

Those words, I’ve italicized, ‘pain’, ‘uncomfortable’, ‘limits’, ‘failure’… express the erroneous ideas I seem to be experiencing. I have taken them into thought. I want to be free of pain, comfortable, unlimited, a success!…. that’s the course I am charting here. Life (God) is too good to behold evil, pain, uncomfortable limbs, limitation, failure. They are unreal and unnatural in God’s creation. The only power they have over me? None, really.

Eddy again: ‘Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusion as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously.‘

Eddy says that, ‘man is not brains, blood, and bones’.  We are not our bodies. We are something else entirely…. spiritually made beings. ‘in the image of God’. Christ Jesus states that ‘in Him (God) we live, move, and have our being’.  Mrs. Eddy’s words to the world were, ‘God is my life.’ This for us…

Christ Jesus states in John 10: ‘ I am come that they might have life; and that they might have it more abundantly ‘. This is really the message of Christmas, isn’t it, by the way? Abundant life, for us.

God is my life too. I am the ‘man’ of God’s creation. Any other claim, symptom, distress, is obviously a false clam, a lie against this established truth, fact. I can correct any, let me repeat, any lie… by knowing the Truth.  Once I understand, through lesson and demonstration, that two times two is four, I don’t have to conjecture about five, six, or three.  It’s true sometimes it helps our thought make the necessary course correction by ever so briefly, acknowledging, what is not.  The science of Christian healing can work like a mathematical proof, demonstrating so clearly Truth overcoming error, that only health remains standing IN OUR EXPERIENCE. Creation is perfect, and it our divine right to experience God’s creation here, now. We are not changing anything but thought. Eddy says, ‘Thought must MOVE”.

Eddy put this ‘proof’  into what she termed a Scientific Statement of Being….(in part):

There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. (The lie)

All is infinite Mind (God) and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. (The Truth)

So, this includes ‘my life’.  I have now taken a particular aspect of God, Life, into my thought, or love letter. And, wrapped my own life up in it.

What’s missing from this treatment? There is an element of healing so crucial, that it alone heals. Even without the affirmation and argument that a treatment may represent. It’s the ‘treat’ I hinted at earlier.

Thinking about God, as principles or qualities, can leave us ‘in our head’ as you might say. But what brings these healing thoughts into our lives in a way that secures them, that anchors them in our very being?

What is it that God acts through? What is the activity of God in our human experience? Simply put, the Christ.

The Webster -Merriam Dictionary includes this idea in defining Christ: ‘the ideal truth that comes as a divine manifestation of God to destroy incarnate error’. It’s origin is from the Greek Christos, literally, anointed.

So more than only being immersed in Truth, I ask for the anointing. The presence of God, God’s blessing in my life. THE Christ.

This healing treatment IS a treat. It operates through the Christ, in accordance with God’s law. I can rest knowing that it is active in my life, and true for the world as well. It is sealed by God’s great infinite love. Amen.

Blessings–

 

Copyright held by Alexis Wittman

 

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Being a life coach…or, a Life coach? [with a capital ‘L’]…

Sometimes friends say I should be a life coach.

A life coach is helpful to those trying to figure out a next step, a career path, relationships, money strategies, and much, much more.  I know some who practice helping others as a life coach.  In fact, in Portland, Oregon, USA where I sometimes hang my hat, there’s one on every corner — or every bulletin board at least.

Friend to friendIt’s a real complement to me, and I hear what they are saying.  I could add that to my shingle.  BUT, I really am more of a Life coach; with a capital L. Capitalizing like that is often a reference to divine Life, or God…  That’s the kind of coach I am as a Christian Science practitioner.

You see, I have been trying to live with God in my life for so long, that God is my life coach — or, really, my Life coach.  The divine life.  I am trying to live a divine life.  That takes guts to say, but there, I said it!  When I work with others, THAT is what I’m trying to do – guide them to God, to Life.

In Him, [God, Divine Life] we live and move and have our being.

God is All-in-all.

God is Love.

Think about that for a minute.  If you took nothing but those simple, dear, phrases from the Bible into your prayer and mediation, you would have the wealth and health of the world in your lap!

I find that turning to the divine Life solves my problems far better, quicker and gracefully than any human advice could.  That’s why I love to say: “God is living me!”   The instruction book that we have?  The Bible.  My references all tie back to the Bible in one way or another. I discover new ideas and fresh concepts to work with just in opening it.  Very often, right on that very page, is the very answer I need.  I REALLY encourage YOU to try it.

Mary Baker Eddy said in reference to her life-long healing practice, and the discovery of a Christian Science: “The Bible was my only textbook.”  Science and Health, p. 110.

Her desire was to understand God, Christ Jesus, and healing.  Simple, grand desires.  She stayed so close to the bible, was immersed in it as a child in the early 1800’s, that healing came naturally to her.  And, then, when faced with a life-threatening moment, asking for her Bible…. she opened to a section in Matthew, that so illuminated Christ’s healing presence, that she herself was healed.  Not only of the effects of an accidental fall in her 50’s, but also of a life long sensitivity to a painful spine and nerve related condition.

English: Public Domain Image of Mary Baker Eddy

Mary Baker Eddy
Look at that sweet expression–

She lives a second half of her life so full of accomplishment, freedom and success that the first half’s struggle was fully compensated.  At an age when many would sit in a rocker lamenting their declining years, she founded in 1908, an international daily newspaper of great renown and Pulitzer Prize achievement [7 of them!]: The Christian Science Monitor.  The Monitor’s mission?

 ‘To injure no man, but to bless all mankind.’  Boy, say that three times.

Christian Scientists study a Daily Bible Lesson, and this same lesson forms the central message of the Sunday sermon in Christian Science Churches around the world today.  The Wednesday Testimony Meeting also contains readings composed of the Bible, as well as testimonies of healing shared by congregants.  Her textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scripture is shared as well.  Together, The Bible and Science and Health,  constitute the pastor of the church today.  Much like a pastor exposing on a biblical point through sermon.  However, these lessons actually have more of the Bible read than ANY sermon I’ve ever heard preached from a pulpit or podcast.

So, to get back to my premise – that of being a Life coach with a capitol ‘L’.  Be a Life coach to those around you today.  See if there might be guidance from the Bible that enriches your experience?  Try to crack the book open and really see what’s there.  Truth is a living, real power in the Bible.  Start with the book of John in the New Testament of the Bible, if the whole concept is foreign to you.  But really, anywhere you seek inspiration and fresh ideas, it’s in there!

“As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life.”  Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p. 497

See also this page with more of her references to the value of this great book:  http://www.glenmontcsn.com/christian-science-and-the-bible/ and some great info.

 

Copyright held by Alexis Wittman

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Christian Science is not just another ‘complementary health care practice’.

Many friends ‘pile on’ their regime of health care practices.  Try this, try that…supplements, nutrition, acupressure,  acupuncture, reike.  Thinking that maybe I have something up my sleeve as a Christian Scientist, they want to give it a try at times.  And, THAT’S great.  I understand that step by step we find it.  But I want to explain something, why there is such a turn-around in a new and different direction when you start studying Christian Science.

(One studies Christian Science by reading Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Rev. Mary Baker Eddy which was originally published in 1875 alongside the Bible.)

last of office march 2012 024

It’s hard not to grasp at straws when one is suffering, isn’t it?  But I DO know that having a Christly consciousness will bring relief and healing to any situation.  It’s the same spirit that prayers are offered to those in the hospital, or someone who just crosses your path. It’s really your duty to meet any need with that same Christly consciousness.

While I study, pray, and work, as consistently as I can, to maintain a clear, direct understanding of my own spirituality, it is not always the same when you just ‘dabble’, or pile on.  One foot in this or that school of thought, another in trying Christian Science.  (And, I am someone who is always open to seeing  Christian Science ideas finding their way out into the world, in other denominations and practices.)

I am talking about something more – the nitty gritty of getting in and doing the work.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote that it is the ‘radical reliance on Truth‘ that heals.  What does that mean?  More than just turning from other systems of healing, she is talking about Truth, another synonym for God.  Eddy gave us seven synonyms for God, and I find them helpful when talking with people who are even hesitant to say the word ‘God’ outloud:  Life, Truth, Love, Spirit, Soul, Principle and Mind.  All facets of the same diamond, you might say.

There is such a fundamental difference in Christian Science to other approaches, that it isn’t really fair to mix them.  The medical model relies on your whole fledged buy-in to the materiality approach, even if we are talking nutrition or homeopathy, or energy work.  While seemingly a step away from the medical model, these approaches are still working from a different basis.  One is like applying a patch vs. ‘the whole cloth’ if you know what I mean?  You Christians may get that reference to the whole cloth – like the robe Christ Jesus wore.

Christian Science is based on spiritual-truth-telling, by transformative thought.  Not by studying disease, but by studying health.  And not in a material sense either.  They contradict one another, don’t they?

In fact, they can sometimes seem to work against each other.  And it’s important to understand why –

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Students in a cafe in Boston

Eddy discovered years ago that the ‘atmosphere of thought’ surrounding the patient/client was crucial.  Even medical researchers today study the placebo effect to understand expectations, the power of thought.

Just as Christ Jesus did in healing the young dead girl;  Jairus’ daughter [Mark 5]  He had to ‘put out’ those who were not present to faith, to healing; those who laughed when He said, ‘She but sleepeth”.  He wanted to keep the atmosphere around her pure, and focused.  Focused on healing.  Focused on life, not death.  And suddenly in that healing atmosphere, with Christ Jesus, she was alive, not dead.

There is such a fundamental difference in the frame of thought associated with spiritual healing than with medical, nutritional, oriental, energy models.  They don’t mix.  Not really.

I attended a Christian Science lecture last night in Glen Arbor, MI by Robert Gilbert, CSB [Christian Science Practitioner and Teacher].  He explained in a way I’ve never quite heard it, Eddy’s understanding of matter and thought.  Matter and thought = the same stuff!  Just as ice is a form of water as is steam, matter is thought taking form.  Wow.  That’s pretty clear isn’t it?  (It even has some parallels in the way quantum physics looks at particle and wave.)

And, why is SO important to guard your thoughts!  To keep them pure and centered on good.  “As a man thinketh, so is he.” Proverbs 23:7.  Eddy wrote:  “Stand porter at the door of thought. Admitting only such conclusions as you wish realized in bodily results, you will control yourself harmoniously.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 391)

But,what I want you to get, … even more important than what our individual (or collective for that matter) thoughts are, consider God’s thoughts.  Consider how God regards you.  From the beginning we are taught:  ‘Man was made in the image and likeness of God.  Very good.  Perfect. Jeremiah 29:11 says…

For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.

– King James Bible “Authorized Version”, Cambridge Edition

God is ever active.  S/He didn’t create the world one day and leave it — No way.  God is active, thinking, loving us all the time; always.  That activity of God is another way to think of the Christ:  The action of God in the world.

That Christ, is what heals.  The Christ is what reveals.   That thinking, that knowing, that activity, that God, that perfection, is the Life of the world.  When we realize, become conscious, of God’s thoughts — they become our own.  Our world experience becomes one of joy, peace and health.  Wholeness.  “…There is no room for imperfection in perfection.” (S&H, page 205).  Like when you turn on the light in a dark room, there is no room for darkness anymore.  There is no room for disease, in the consciousness of God.  So it’s not human thought that heals – it is God thought.

Then you can say with me, ‘God is living me’.

That’s how Christ Jesus could say, ‘The Kingdom of God is at hand“.  It really is.  God’s thought is accessible and practical.  And in II Timothy 2: 15, “Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman who needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

So “Dig in”….

The First Church of Christ, Scientist Boston, Massachusetts

The First Church of Christ, Scientist
Boston, Massachusetts

 

Copyright held by Alexis Wittman

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Space and Time

Image

This is a painting a group of friends worked on with me to commemorate a birthday of mine.  I sketched out the idea, and everyone filled in the loops. It’s called: “Infinity Loops”.  Each loop is a moment in time and space, infinitely connected.

Lately I have been aware that  space and time are two filters that we view God through.  God exists, we exist, everyone, everything ever created exists…. but we see them through these lenses of space and time.

I had a dream not that long ago, where my husband, Brice, and I were both preparing the same house for habitation.  It was a cute Norwegian cabin with a bright yellow part and another part, bright clear red.  The thing of this dream was that we were there [together] but in different dimensions.  We saw each other, we moved in unison with purpose, but then he slipped his dimension one way, and I the other way…  If you were watching from a third view point, it would be like two films slipping in different directions, yet still, working on the same house.

Space and time, the framework within we live…Is there a way to view them as spiritual?  THAT’S a new question.

If the spiritual source from which we spring, is springing out dimensionally and in a particular time, is there any reason to exclude that from the spiritual totality of the world as spirit?

Are these two, space and time, more fluid and malleable than we know? Certainly they are in some of our experiences. For example, I remember in childbirth, at home, how the corners of the room receded far from me and space stretched to give me the space I needed to focus on the arrival of my son.  Time shifts all the time, depending on how much fun we’re having, how much concentration we give something, what we focus on.  One time a day long trip to Washington DC with my mother happened so quickly that there was no way physically we could have traveled that far, that fast.  Believe me, I stay pretty close to the posted speed limit.  But that trip, we didn’t care about time — and it wasn’t a limiting factor on our day together.

I have been taught the spiritual interpretation of the bible from a child, but I also genuinely believe each and every ‘miracle’ experience recorded there.  Why?  Because I have EXPERIENCED similar miracles, in some small degree.  If mine are true, and note worthy, surely those of the great mystics and the savior, are certainly experiences worth note in their reality.  The seas did part.  The lessons they teach are even more note worthy.

The bible shows many experience where space and time shift to meet the immediate need.  Not only that, but all the forces of nature shift.  Gravity?  A sure thing? Sure.  Until you’ve dropped an axhead which belongs to another in a pond.  Along comes a ‘man-oh-god’ with the right consciousness of God’s ever present help, and UP pops the axhead.

An Axhead Floats [Kings II 6: 1-7]  New International Version

6 The company of the prophets said to Elisha, “Look, the place where we meet with you is too small for us. 2 Let us go to the Jordan, where each of us can get a pole; and let us build a place there for us to meet.”

And he said, “Go.”

3 Then one of them said, “Won’t you please come with your servants?”

“I will,” Elisha replied. 4 And he went with them.

They went to the Jordan and began to cut down trees. 5 As one of them was cutting down a tree, the iron axhead fell into the water. “Oh no, my lord!” he cried out. “It was borrowed!”

6 The man of God asked, “Where did it fall?” When he showed him the place, Elisha cut a stick and threw it there, and made the iron float. 7 “Lift it out,” he said. Then the man reached out his hand and took it.

And time?  Is it really fixed?  Read these words in 2 Kings [20:9-11]

Hezekiah, on his death-bed, was visited by the prophet Isaiah who told him that he was not going to die. Hezekiah asked for a sign as proof. Isaiah said, “Do you want the sun to go ahead 10 degrees?” Hezekiah said “It is nothing for the sun to go ahead 10 degrees, but let the shadow return backward 10 degrees.”

Isaiah spoke to the Lord and the Lord brought the shadow ten degrees BACKWARD! Ten degrees is 40 minutes.

Modern quantum theory starts to understand the communication between particles vastly separated from each other by distance moving through time..http://http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2007/06/weird_science_c.html

Or, http://http://planetpailly.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/

Then distance dissolved many times, for example when Christ Jesus was INSTANTLY at the shore on one of his trip across the shore.   He also overcame mass and gravity by walking on water.  Christ overcame disease too.  He embraced the lepers by knowing something above and beyond the belief in leprosy.

Mass, matter, time, space, all the usual suspects in defining our experience are more open to interpretation than we allow.

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of a different kind of science, Christian Science, shared that idea.  She wrote:

Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy. Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures [pg. 477]

I think as we unloose ourselves from the boundaries of time and space, and matter and mass, we will see new horizons.  They have a role to play, but not a limitation ultimately.  Explore God and these will be less limitation, more framework.

 

Copyright held by Alexis Wittman

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