Day 90: Idols

172:23 - 174:21

Mary Baker Eddy starts off this section with a question:

What is man?

Her formal answer to this question is in Recapitulation here.But, as she is still introducing the topic of physiology, she lists what man is not.

I marked this one first:

Neither the substance nor the manifestation of Spirit is obtainable through matter.

I marked it because I forget it, constantly. I forget it when I think I know best, when I cut myself while chopping vegetables, when I blow my nose again. I'm not trying to get to some zen state of meditation where the crap in my life is manageable.I'm trying to get above and beyond that so that the illusion of crap falls away and I have a higher sense of everything.

The next thing I marked was something I was trying to explain to my five-year old daughter yesterday. She picked out the little board book about the ten commandments. She doesn't normal do that so I was surprised. I was trying to make each commandment relevant. We got to the commandment about idols and I couldn't say anything that made sense.

Is civilization only a higher form of idolatry, that man should bow down to a flesh-brush, to flannels, to baths, diet, exercise, and air? Nothing save divine power is capable of doing so much for man as he can do for himself.

 The weird thing isn't that MBE wrote this, it's that she wrote it so long ago.We, as a civilization, progress slowly.