Day 3

xi:1-xii:27


A Confession
I have a small confession to make. I didn't receive my copy of the Journal until yesterday night. I had one a while back but gave it away. When I opened the book last night, I looked at it from front to back. It has lots of goodies I didn't remember. The first is a place to write down my expectations before I started reading the book. The most interesting one is the last page which is a letter from Mary Baker Eddy to a student named Gale. She tells her student to "read slowly and pause as you read to apply certain portions of which meet your present need - to thought that will carry them out in action. The book is complete in itself; it is teacher and healer." The letter feels like it was written to me.

Expectations
I've been thinking about why I want to do this. There are far too many reasons to do this and the only reason I can think of against it is time. Time is a dear commodity in my life right now, especially time to myself. But I've hit a plateau in my spiritual development and I don't want to settle for status quo.

I'm a terrible listener. While I do pause for the still small voice, I don't often hear it. So the big picture for me is to be a better listener of the Divine. The thought came to me in Church today (it is Sunday), to listen and learn.

The Passages
The top two paragraphs on page xi begin Mary Baker Eddy's instruction in theology. She lays it out in clear words. There is so much to S&H that sometimes its easy to get lost in the details. This book is about spiritual healing. The rest of the Preface reads like a resume of sorts. She was a busy woman.

What Caught My Eye
The one phrase that grabbed me was the first line of the quote starting on line 19 of page xi: "To Preach deliverance to the captives [of sense]."  Mary Baker Eddy added the words in brackets. The idea of being captive by my senses is not new. I equate this with the idea of the snake in the Garden of Eden. The story contained in Genesis 2 is about the senses. What was there. Who was there. How Eve was created. What the snake said. What Eve did with the ominous apple. Adam and Eve in many ways seemed free but the story itself is about being a captive of the senses.