The other day while awaiting a bus in Harvard Square, I picked up the September issue of the British classical music review Gramophone.  I hadn’t purchased one in years, but what caught my attention was the cover story “Behind the image…the real Glenn Gould.”  It was the 30^th anniversary of his passing.

You might well ask, why would this have been so important?  Allow me to give you a little background that will answer that question.

I have always been attracted to polyphony (two or more simultaneous melodies that work in harmony with each other) as a musical language.  Polyphony—or contrapuntal music, as it is more commonly known—was the dominant language of western classical music from about 900 A.D. to the mid-1700’s. And it continues in various forms to the present time.

Over the years, the glories of polyphony have represented a metaphor of life for me—individual identities operating in concert with each other, all under the control of a governing and guiding principle of harmony.

I recall that when I was assigned my first Beethoven piano sonata at the age of eleven, a year after I had begun piano lessons, I couldn’t wait to get to the quasi-polyphonic sections.  The rest of the piece (scalar passages, themes, arpeggios, etc.) was just filler for me—the stuff that I had to get through to get to what I inherently felt were the “really good” parts!  And from that point on I gravitated to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach—brimming, as it often was, with polyphonic forms.

About 10 years later, I first heard the recordings of the iconic Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, playing Bach which—as we used to say—”blew my mind”!  I had never heard such musical clarity of thought, such originality, and such technical perfection and freedom.  All of the multiple melodies (or voices) in a Bach fugue were laid bare—each with their own life, their own identity, yet all in perfect balance to the whole. It was really a transcendent demonstration of the principle of polyphony.

That encounter with Gould’s recordings changed the way I played Bach and, indeed, all music.

His performances made me look at music from a new and fresh angle. It naturally caused me to break away from the traditions of piano performance—traditions that actually had very little to do with the way the music had been played by the original composer or performers in their respective time periods—but which had mistakenly taken on an unwarranted authority for decades.  Traditions which generally forced musicians into one basic school of thought—albeit with what amounted to relatively minor variants.  It was a type of mental artistic slavery, if you will, that I was only too happy to be liberated from.

And then 20 years later, I had my first exposure to Christian Science—an exposure infinitely more profound and that continues to resonate and unfold to this day.  Where Gould’s performances changed my way of thinking about music, Christian Science changed the entire way that I thought about life. In fact it changed the very course, as well as every facet, of my life.

As I grasped the Principle behind the ideas in Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health and experienced their healing effects on my life, including physical healings, I saw the utter utility and practicality of this truth. Of the Truth—of God.  But of greater import, it enabled me to devote my life to healing others.

Let’s speak plainly: Each of us has access to this Science and the commensurate ability and responsibility to use it by healing our neighbor if we are to fully follow the Two Great Commandments in loving God and our neighbor as ourselves.

Don’t let blind adherence to tradition bind you from finding the freedom that truly blesses all.

Eddy wrote in Science and Health (p. 114):

Christian Science explains all cause and effect as mental, not physical. It lifts the veil of mystery from Soul and body. It shows the scientific relation of man to God, disentangles the interlaced ambiguities of being, and sets free the imprisoned thought. In divine Science, the universe, including man, is spiritual, harmonious, and eternal.

Friends, too much is at stake to not be willing to change course!

We probably all would like do-overs in our lives.  Mistakes made, wrong choices, wrong and even harmful actions and behaviors taken by or done to us.  I know that I’ve made and had my fair share—perhaps more than my fair share!

But sometimes the issues that we’re dealing with seem so severe—so daunting—that it seems nearly impossible to gain freedom from the adverse effects that would try to continuously haunt us in both conscious and unconscious ways.  Ways that either subtly or blatantly color our perceptions and therefore can affect our current choices, and courses of actions.

Many folks enter therapy to try to find ways or techniques, and/or resort to the use of pharmaceuticals, to at least cope with those wrongful influences, if not to be free of them.  Others seek diversions or escapes to repress, deny, or attempt to forget them.  The down side is that that none of these approaches really work—really eliminate all of the negative echoes.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though.  There is another way and, as I’ve found, it’s the only way that really gets the job done.

What is it?

God and Christian Science.

Let me tell you about one such experience.  I’ve been married three times.  My second marriage was to a wonderful woman—a woman I had re-met after a 20-year separation.  We had been very close in college and then went our separate ways. For 17 of those 20 years, Margaret had been a Christian Scientist.  She was the one that introduced me to this way of life—this way of healing and freedom.

We were married 5 months later.  The minister at our wedding described our reunion as the stuff that movie love stories are made of.  We were very, very happy.

During our 3^rd year of marriage, my beloved Margaret became quite ill.   Eleven months earlier I had become a member of The Mother Church and about 6 months after that had taken Christian Science class instruction—both God-inspired moves that I will be eternally grateful for.

I had been taking care of Margaret at home for a month or so when our Christian Science teacher recommended that she spend some time at a local Christian Science care facility.  He also suggested that I take a room there for a couple of days so that I could have the time to pray and be quiet.  We both agreed.

There was no question that I was dealing with a lot of fear and had it not been for class instruction and for the prayers of this dear man, I don’t know how I would have coped with the situation.

While at the facility and praying for myself and my wife, I came across a passage in Mary Baker Eddy’s Prose Works.  I have no idea to this day what that passage was, but to my surprise it instantly triggered memories of my first wife and of that marriage—a marriage that had lasted for 14 years and was extremely tumultuous.  There were of course good times, as most marriages have, but on two separate occasions—one during the 1^st year and one at the end of it—she had attempted to take my life.  The marriage ended in a bitter divorce.  Emotional and psychological trauma would be a euphemism for the effects of those events.

Nevertheless, I had thought that I had already psychologically dealt with those issues.  But here I was, praying for Margaret, when all of this—including the residual fears—came back in a flash.  And with equal rapidity came a spiritual awareness that instantly wiped the slate clean.  I suddenly gained a profound understanding of my first wife and could feel nothing but compassion and a sense of divine love for her.  And that was that!  The entire experience, from start to finish, lasted only a few seconds, yet God’s love and grace—and my ongoing understanding of Christian Science—had immediately set me free.

And that freedom has remained to this day.  Whenever my first wife comes to thought, I have only the feelings of blessing her and knowing full-well that God is governing and guiding her life.

My friends, we don’t have to labor under false cycles.  Freedom is inherently ours.

Mrs. Eddy wrote (Science and Health, p. 227):

Discerning the rights of man, we cannot fail to foresee the doom of all oppression. Slavery is not the legitimate state of man. God made man free. Paul said, “I was free born.” All men should be free. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Love and Truth make free, but evil and error lead into captivity.

Christian Science raises the standard of liberty and cries: “Follow me! Escape from the bondage of sickness, sin, and death!”

And so it is!

Have you ever wondered why you are not getting the healing that is needed?

Well—maybe you’ve fallen into the “But I already know that!” trap!

What do I mean?

Let me explain.

When I was a professional composer and pianist, I had two categories of students—those who followed instructions and those who didn’t.  These categories had nothing to do with whether they were already professional musicians, were striving to attain that level, or were amateurs simply studying piano for their own enjoyment.

I taught all of them a particular methodology for making their practice sessions and their subsequent performances at lessons or in public fruitful.  These practice techniques were based on principles of mental clarity.  Many students obediently followed these and saw the strong results of doing so.  But others pursued the more common practice approach of what can only be described as hours of mindless repetition in which they hoped to achieve the same results by sheer dint of that repetitive effort.  The term for the latter is “muscle-memory training,” and it’s an approach that I refuse to give any credence to since muscles simply have no memory.

When it came time for this latter group of students to perform—a situation that can very easily be stressful—their belief in muscle-memory quickly fled them and they would make mistakes on the very passages that they had spent so much time practicing.  Aghast at their errors, they would afterward assure me that they really did know the material and couldn’t understand why they had failed. They would then immediately attempt to convince me of their assertion by diving right into repetitively playing the passage in question and proceed to hit the same proverbial “stone wall” over and over again.

What did I do?

I stopped them in their tracks and made them mentally examine every detail of the music—pitches, rhythms, fingerings, etc.  I then required them to voice aloud these elements in a steady tempo.  Invariably, the error in their thinking—the specific stumbling block—would be exposed.  Once corrected mentally—once they really understood what the music was requiring of them, and without any intervening practice—they would immediately play the passage flawlessly.

So what happened here?

Mental clarity is what took place and once achieved, their fingers could do nothing else but reproduce the correct ideas that the music demanded.

Are you beginning to see a connection to Christian Science healing?

I’ve had dear, dedicated Christian Scientists tell me immediately after my sharing with them an important metaphysical healing truth from the Bible or from Mary Baker Eddy’s writings, that they already knew it.  And some of them actually completed the quotation before I’d finished saying it!  Yet these same folks were not achieving a healing.  Why would this have happened?

It seems to me that just like those errant piano students, they’d fallen into a trap of error—a gaping hole which had deluded them into thinking that understanding the truth is static.  Such a delusion would try to convince them that because they were once healed by grasping a particular spiritual idea, they no longer needed to delve even more deeply into it to gain an understanding of greater profundity.  An understanding that would in fact free them of whatever lie was attempting to engulf their experience.

Isn’t this type of thinking—of clinging to the surface and unthinkingly repeating an idea—similar to reciting a mantra over and over again and expecting that doing so will bring healing and spiritual progress?  How can this be anything short of self-hypnosis—of mesmerism—which is inherently detrimental, and indeed, opposed to spiritual progress, health, and well-being?

Just like those piano students who gained a deeper understanding of the music and demonstrated it by their successful performances, doesn’t our ongoing demonstration of healing prove the evolving depth of our understanding of the Allness of God and of the present perfection of His image and likeness, man?

Mrs. Eddy wrote (Science and Health, p. 313):

Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause.

As followers of Jesus and as Christian Scientists, can we really expect that anything less is required of us?

So, whether it’s a tune or the truth, less repetition and more understanding always brings blessings!  Remember, the first page of Science and Health states:

The time for thinkers has come.

OK—here’s a tough question and one that we may not want to look at.  But it needs to be asked.

Are some of our fellow Christian Scientists buying into the media’s assertion that people—the public-at-large—are no longer interested in hearing about religion, spirituality, or even God?

Unfortunately, I think the answer is “yes.”  These same well-meaning folks propose solutions that range from attempting to gain an audience with the public via various other doors to throwing up their hands in hopelessness.

Now while it may be true that our country is moving towards secularism, it certainly isn’t true that Americans aren’t interested in God—not when a 2011 Gallup survey indicates that more than 9 out of 10 of our fellow countrymen profess a belief in the Supreme Being.

I’m not naïve enough to think that such a figure indicates that all is well and that we can rest on our proverbial laurels.  Obviously not—given the diminishing church attendance in our and many other denominations.  But it does raise some serious questions for me—and I hope for you, also.

Regardless of Gallup’s and any other survey, if we accept the position that people are not interested in God, aren’t we inherently accepting a falsehood—a faulty premise—that attacks the very basis of Christian Science theology?

What am I talking about?

Isn’t acquiescing to such a position actually denying the very nature of man as the image and likeness of God and of man’s indestructible relationship to his/her all-loving Father-Mother God?

And by doing so, aren’t we subtly working against our fellow men and women by reinforcing a lie about them—a lie that claims they are not interested in Spirit, in God?

I wonder if this approach isn’t exactly how error—at such a crucial time in humanity’s development—would try to lead us astray.  How?  By following a path that would seek to confuse mankind about, as well as deprive them of, the supreme import of the Science of the Christ in every aspect of their lives—to the very real and tangible blessings that await them?

Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “There is but one real attraction, that of Spirit.” (Science and Health, p.102).

Can we afford to deny or forget this foundational fact by our acts and methods, and then wonder why we and our churches are feeling marginalized?

Let’s take a deep inward look and be honest here: if we are not out with our fellow men and women offering them a “cup of cold water” as Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy expected and required of us, who do we have to blame for any marginalization but ourselves?

And from what I’ve seen, that cup necessarily includes healing our neighbor—thereby proving the practical blessing that Christian Science offers to all.  Take a moment and think about your own lives and the impact that being healed has had on you.  Nothing substitutes for it.  Nothing speaks as strongly.

Eddy wrote in her Miscellaneous Writings (p. 252):

Christian Science is not only the acme of Science but the crown of Christianity. It is universal. It appeals to man as man; to the whole and not to a portion; to man physically, as well as spiritually, and to all mankind.

There it is my friends—the universal appeal of Christian Science is to all mankind!

We live in a time of unprecedented “connectedness” throughout most of the world.  Never before in history has humanity had access to the plethora of ideas, philosophies, opinions, medical hypotheses, religious and non-religious views that a simple “click” on the Internet or a cable TV remote will nearly instantly provide.

There’s no doubt that this wealth of information can provide a richness to our understanding of the world we live in.

But, as Christian Scientists, what’s our responsibility toward this constant input of views?  Obviously, we need to be praying about the challenges that our world faces.

However, what about ourselves?  Is this influx in any way adversely affecting us?

Mary Baker Eddy wisely counseled Christian Scientists about the importance of watching and praying—about the need to be alert and awake:

The members of this Church should daily watch and pray to be delivered from all evil, from prophesying, judging, condemning, counseling, influencing or being influenced erroneously. (Church Manual, p. 40)

Given her statement, can we risk thinking that it is not of paramount importance to pay attention to the flood-tides of information being presented to our thought?

Remember, Jesus told his followers:

16  Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. (Matthew 10:16)

The Master was clearly aware of the need to be alert and not fall into the traps that evil—error, the carnal mind, mortal mind—would lay for us.  And it is the alertness and awareness of spiritual discernment—sourced entirely in God—that lifts us above those pitfalls.  That keeps us from being erroneously influenced.

If Christian Science is the Science of Being—and it is—then we need to be very clear as to what that means, and who we are as Christian Scientists.  How can we heal effectively—based solely on the principles of Christian Science—if we are letting other forms of religious and secular philosophies enter unchallenged into our thinking?  And since healing is at the core of this religion, we can’t afford to be naïve in any way to the strong attempts of error to try to encroach on our thought with suggestions such as: “This sounds very similar.” Or “Meditating is just like prayer.”  Or “Look, they believe in God, too!”

I understand that, to a certain degree, all of these may appear to be true—but sounding or looking similar, does not make them the same as Christian Science.

We need to ask ourselves:  Are we inadvertently seeking validation—as if healing the sick and reforming the sinner weren’t enough—by trying to find alignment with a variety of very different philosophies?  Philosophies which may even be diametrically opposed to the foundations of Christian Science—philosophies such as New Age thought, psychology, mindfulness, and Buddhism, to name a few.

Let’s not kid ourselves here!  There is no connection or similarity to Christian Science with any of these.

Eddy wrote in The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany (p. 119):

Think not that Christian Science tends towards Buddhism or any other “ism.” Per contra, Christian Science destroys such tendency.

Strong words, indeed!  Nevertheless, essential.

Because our Bible Lessons frequently cite one or both of the following sentences from Science and HeaIth (p. 249), I think that we’re all familiar with them:

Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into newness of life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy. Let us rejoice that we are subject to the divine “powers that be.”

But are we equally familiar with the one that immediately follows these healing truths?

Any other theory of Life, or God, is delusive and mythological.

We might feel a little uncomfortable with the clarity and directness of this statement—especially in light of today’s cultural atmosphere in which every philosophy, regardless of its intent, is promoted, admired, and respected.

Yet it comes down to this: if we are truly striving to be followers of Jesus and Mary Baker Eddy, we don’t get to pick and choose which aspects of Truth we’re going to accept.  It needs to be the whole, seamless cloth.

The success of our healing work—and our Church’s forward movement, as well as the salvation of mankind—depend on it.

In his Epistle to the Philippians (2:12,13), Paul wrote:

12  Wherefore, my beloved…work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

13  For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

This imperative statement for each of us to work out our salvation—while fully understanding that it is God who is at once impelling us to do so and actually doing the action—is deeply profound in and of itself.

But a question arises: “What is our responsibility to our neighbor?”

Jesus’ answer is a direct command to all of his followers—for all time:

Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils. (Matthew 10:8)

Each of these is loving our neighbor—the Master’s Second Great Commandment.  Let’s face it—there is no wiggle room here.  If we’re to call ourselves Christians—let alone Christian Scientists—this is our responsibility.

And, as I’ve come to see, healing others is a requirement, necessity, and privilege that is part and parcel of working out our salvation.  It’s as essential to being a Christian as is loving God—the First Great Commandment.  In fact, we can’t obey one without obeying the other!

I’ve often asked myself, how did a concept that caused some members of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, to be healers while others were not, or thought that they didn’t need to be, come about?  Isn’t being a Christian Scientist synonymous with being a public healer?  To be clear here, I’m not talking about being a professional healer, necessarily, but about being willing to heal others and doing so.

In Mary Baker Eddy’s Message to The Mother Church, 1901 (p. 15), she stated:

The Christian Scientist has enlisted to lessen sin, disease, and death…

That’s what we’re called upon to do. And make no mistake; this lessening is not just about ourselves, our family members, or our fellow Christian Scientists!  And it’s not simply praying about the issues that humanity faces—as important and as necessary as that is.  No, it’s about offering to pray for our neighbor—to “Give them a cup of cold water in Christ’s name…” (Science and Health, p. 570).  And the opportunities for doing so are abundant.  Just listen to nearly any conversation that you encounter—it eventually, if not immediately, turns to someone’s health or personal problems.

In referring to those sacred and absolute commands of Jesus, Mrs. Eddy wrote (Science and Health, p. 37):

When will Jesus’ professed followers learn to emulate him in all his ways and to imitate his mighty works? Those who procured the martyrdom of that righteous man would gladly have turned his sacred career into a mutilated doctrinal platform. May the Christians of to-day take up the more practical import of that career! It is possible, — yea, it is the duty and privilege of every child, man, and woman, — to follow in some degree the example of the Master by the demonstration of Truth and Life, of health and holiness. Christians claim to be his followers, but do they follow him in the way that he commanded? Hear these imperative commands: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect!” “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature!” “Heal the sick!”

Can we honestly think that there’s a way to work out our salvation that wouldn’t include healing others?

My latest JSH-Online blog post “After casting the net, then what?” was just posted yesterday on the Christian Science Journal’s “Practice, Practice, Practice” Blog.

You can see it at: http://journal.christianscience.com/blogs/practice-practice-practice/after-casting-the-net-then-what

Mary Baker Eddy’s ordination of two books—the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures—to be the impersonal pastor for the Church of Christ, Scientist was clearly inspired.  It removed the “middle-man” of a clergy interpreting those two sacred texts and allowed for each individual to hear the specific divine inspiration that would meet their needs.  I’ve always loved that idea and have been blessed by it over and over again.

But I think that sometimes the idea of “impersonal” has been taken too literally in terms of the manner—the method—for the actual reading of the inspired words of those books by the lay readers in Christian Science churches.

I vividly remember my first experiences in attending branch church services.  My previous wife, Margaret, who introduced me to Christian Science, took me to a local church during our courtship.  I had just started reading Science and Health and was aflame with the revolutionary spiritual ideas that the book contained.

You can imagine my sense of disconnect when I heard the two Readers read these words—these words that were beginning to mean so much to me and were beginning to alter my life—in a monotone, lifeless manner!  I just couldn’t understand it.  How could they not feel the impact of those statements?  How could they not express the spiritual power that the citations from each book conveyed?

I kept attending services, but felt no inspiration from doing so.  I finally asked Margaret how this style of reading could be.  She very innocently replied that the Readers—particularly the First Reader—were chosen because they were the two most spiritually-minded individuals in that church and read this way because it was spiritually impersonal.

As a newcomer to Christian Science, this simply made no sense to me and I told her so.  After a while, I could no longer endure going there—so morose was the feeling that I felt my growing understanding was being impeded.  I told her that I would simply continue to study Christian Science on my own.  My dear one suggested we attend The Mother Church, which we did, and the Readers there, to my great delight and relief, read with understanding, vitality, conviction—and authority.  An authority that imparts healing!

I never looked back and became a member a little over a year later.

Now, why am I telling you all this?  Though there has been some improvement in branch churches in my state—which I am grateful to see—there are enough of our Readers who, 22 years down the line, simply don’t get it.  They continue to read in the most uninspired fashion.

How could this be?  It seems to be a cultural tradition to do so.  And a tradition that, frankly, doesn’t have any spiritual foundation to stand on.

Isn’t it about time that we get something straight here? Impersonal doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be inspired.  Quite to the contrary: it indicates that we’re listening to how God is imparting the meaning of those words—His words—to us and recognizing that it is God who is causing us to express them fully.  Jesus said “I can of mine own self do nothing.” (John 5:30)  How can it be any different for us?

Can we actually imagine Jesus, or Mary Baker Eddy, reading the Scriptures in any way other than profoundly meaningfully and with the full authority of Christianly scientific healing as its intent?  Can we imagine them engaging with others in any way other than with a deep, potent spirituality—a spirituality that heals, uplifts, regenerates, and transforms all who are hearing?

Mrs. Eddy wrote (Science and Health, p. 366: marginal note “Genuine healing”):

If we would open their prison doors for the sick, we must first learn to bind up the broken-hearted. If we would heal by the Spirit, we must not hide the talent of spiritual healing under the napkin of its form, nor bury the morale of Christian Science in the grave-clothes of its letter. The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.

It is the spiritual import of those texts,“aflame with divine Love”—not just the letter—that brings genuine healing!

Shouldn’t that be the manner of reading in our services?

Recently, I’ve had several patients—long-time Christian Scientists—as well as several other practitioners voice a view that I’ve got to say puzzled me.  They each felt that identifying the specific error or false belief in an individual’s thought would somehow make a reality of that error.

Why is that puzzling?  Because it’s the antithesis of everything that I’ve ever read in Mary Baker Eddy’s writings about how to restore health and well-being to ourselves and others.

I also found it interesting that each of these individuals justified their position by citing the following statement from Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p. 476):

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.

Now, let me be absolutely clear here: I fully believe in, regularly utilize, and have repeatedly seen the efficacy of seeing the perfect man of God’s creation. However, these dear folks were claiming that Jesus never saw any disease, deformity, or infirmity.

But there’s a problem with their position—the actual accounts of Jesus’ healings that are recorded in the New Testament, as well as Mrs. Eddy’s statements in her writings.

For example, Jesus’ healing of the man who was possessed by multiple evil spirits (evil beliefs) in the country of the Gadarenes (Mark 5:1-15), and the healing of the woman who was afflicted with an infirmity for eighteen years (Luke 13:11-16). Referring to the latter biblical account, Mary Baker Eddy wrote (Science and Health, page 6):

Jesus uncovered and rebuked sin before he cast it out. Of a sick woman he said that Satan had bound her, and to Peter he said, “Thou art an offence unto me.” He came teaching and showing men how to destroy sin, sickness, and death. He said of the fruitless tree, “[It] is hewn down.”

In each case, the Master spiritually discerned the problem—the unreality of the claim of error that was debilitating these people—and mentally/spiritually saw through that lie by beholding the perfect individual of God’s creating resulting in the healings which thereby destroyed the error.

We need to pray for that same spiritual discernment, as well as for the alertness and awareness which prevents us from inadvertently—or otherwise—being seduced by erroneous concepts that are not found in the writings of the Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy.  Those pleas of the carnal mind—and they are nothing less than that—can take on many guises, including parading about in the garments of “inspiration” and “spirituality.”  Make no mistake: their sole intent is to attempt to nullify the healing potency of Christian Science.

A very wise teacher of Christian Science once told me, “If an idea comes to you that appears to be inspiring, but which you can’t find the basis for in Science and Health, then it would be best to not follow it.”

Wise words, indeed!

Eddy wrote (The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany, p. 210):

All that error asks is to be let alone; even as in Jesus’ time the unclean spirits cried out, “Let us alone; what have we to do with thee?”

As Christian Scientists, dare we leave it alone?

Why, yes, thank you!  I mean, who wouldn’t want milk and honey?

You might be wondering: “What’s this guy talking about—what’s the big deal with milk and honey?  If I don’t have any in the house, I’ll just head down to the local supermarket and get some!”

But the kind of milk and honey I’m speaking of can’t be purchased at a grocery store or even on the Internet.  In fact, no amount of money can buy it.  This milk and honey is the fruit of the Promised Land of the Bible (Exodus 3:8) which God promised to the ancient Israelites. And symbolically, that land represents something far greater than any geographic location.  It’s the Kingdom of Heaven, the ever-present spiritual reality whose unlimited abundance—its milk and honey—is health, harmony, and holiness!

I’ve been thinking recently about that promise—both to those ancient people and what it means to us in the 21^st century.

The Bible tells us that to possess that land was anything but a walk in the park for the Israelites.  They had to fight many battles against the inhabitants of those regions and in the process learn to be obedient to God’s directions—directions that they often misinterpreted or rebelled against.

But their most significant battles—the battles of greatest and lasting importance—were the spiritual ones within themselves to gain a deeper faith and understanding of the omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience, and omni-activity of the one true God, divine Love.

And what about us?

Aren’t those challenges about faith and understanding faced by the Israelites so many millennia ago ultimately the same ones that we face today—indeed that humanity has faced throughout the ages?

They are.  And our battlefield is thought—the sole topography of faith and understanding.  Our fight is to clear that mental landscape of the matter-based thinking that would try to keep us enslaved to it instead of experiencing the limitless freedom of our God.  That would try to keep us from awakening to the fact that each one of us is, always has been, and always will be, the beloved child of our Father-Mother God.

Now, we can’t afford for a moment to be naïve to the methods and intent of the foe—the carnal or mortal mind—to mesmerize us into submission.  To cause us to wander through life ignorant, asleep, and apparently helpless.  To cause us to break the Two Great Commandments—loving God and loving our neighbor.

Well—how do we fight this battle?  Paul answered that question in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Chapter 10):

3  For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh:

4  (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;)

5  Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

Did I hear someone out there thinking: “Whoa!  All this battle-talk is pretty intimidating!”?  OK, I get it!  Keep in mind, though, that this struggle is one that we don’t have the luxury to shy away from or put on the back burner.  As I’ve learned, it’s best to courageously take up the spiritual sword of Truth and realize that it’s none other than Almighty God who is both impelling us to do so and wielding that omnipotent blade.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health (page 233):

Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power. These proofs consist solely in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death by the power of Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them.

Those demands, though sometimes difficult, lead us to see, step-by-step, that the Promised Land—the land of milk and honey—is right here, right now in our lives.  And each battle fought and each victory won reveals more of that blessed panorama’s unlimited bounty—a bounty whose fruit enables us to become more effective in our God-ordained roles as Christian healers!