Day 294: Power Definitions

591:5-593:8

This reading has the major definitions in Christian Science: Man, Matter, Mind, Miracle, and Mortal Mind on page 591.

In the definition of Mind, Mary Baker Eddy uses substance but with a lower-case s. Is this a typo? Substance is one of the synonyms for God and is usually upper-cased. My book is ISBN 0-87952-259-3 and is last released in 2000.

I’m thinking of creating another page for this site that would link up the words in the Glossary to their location over on Spirituality.com. The link to the page would show up in the right-hand upper side, along with the links for Home, About, etc. Thoughts?

Day 293: What is in a Name?

589:8-591:4

There are so many names in this reading. Places, people, God. It made me think how sometimes, after something bad has happened to a certain person or at a certain place, that the name is tainted in our thought. Any time we hear the name, even unrelated, we thing of that awful, sad event.

The thing I like about the dual definitions is that a person or place can be redeemed in our thought. That the negative connotation can be removed by looking toward the spiritual and away from the past.

I need a good online source for Bible Characters that is non-denominational. Do you use one you would recommend?

Day 292: Heaven & Hell

587:9-589:7

There seem to be a lot of definitions for God and error in the glossary – different shades, different meanings – but the same overall concept. I didn’t expect that. This reading includes Heaven and Hell below:

HEAVEN. Harmony; the reign of Spirit; government by divine Principle; spirituality; bliss; the atmosphere of Soul.

HELL. Mortal belief; error; lust; remorse; hatred; revenge; sin; sickness; death; suffering and self-destruction; self-imposed agony; effects of sin; that which "worketh abomination or maketh a lie."

But why did Mary Baker Eddy include the word in?

IN. A term obsolete in Science if used with reference to Spirit, or Deity.

Was she referring to God in Man, soul in body? Then the definition from a Christian Science perspective, makes sense. But, wow, the concept had to have been, maybe it still is, so fundamental to other religions that she felt the need to include “in” and then say it was obsolete.

Day 291: God and Error

585:9-587:8

Yesterday, I marked two definitions, Creator and Devil. Today, two more which seem the same words as yesterday’s words but are defined differently. First is:

GOD. The great I AM; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; Principle; Mind; Soul; Spirit; Life; Truth; Love; all substance; intelligence.

The second is error. This has, in Christian Science, always been my definition of the opposite of God:

See chapter on Recapitulation, page 472.

A side note, I wish I had this book as an editable and mark-able e-book. I would completely change the index, cross-reference the glossary, and note in-text definitions. Each complete read through, though, I would mark clean otherwise since I’m at a different place each time. If this is already available, please leave a comment below so I can link it up and buy it.

And the text from Recapitulation:

Question.--What is error?
Answer.--Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which seemeth to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity--namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.

Day 290: God & the Devil

583:10-585:8

These two terms, defined, are a great way to look at Christian Science and my own spiritual growth:

CREATOR. Spirit; Mind; intelligence; the animating divine Principle of all that is real and good; self-existent Life, Truth, and Love; that which is perfect and eternal; the opposite of matter and evil, which have no Principle; God, who made all that was made and could not create an atom or an element the opposite of Himself.

DEVIL. Evil; a lie; error; neither corporeality nor mind; the opposite of Truth; a belief in sin, sickness, and death; animal magnetism or hypnotism; the lust of the flesh, which saith: "I am life and intelligence in matter. There is more than one mind, for I am mind,-- a wicked mind, self-made or created by a tribal god and put into the opposite of mind, termed matter, thence to reproduce a mortal universe, including man, not after the image and likeness of Spirit, but after its own image."

Day 289: Two-fold definitions

581:8-583:9

I’ve read the Glossary before but, honestly, by this point in the book, on a marathon read, my attention and understanding just weren’t there. But that was before. This is a new, fresh, slower read.

I didn’t realize that some of the terms had two-fold meanings: one spiritual, one material. Of course, it makes sense but when I read the definition of Benjamin (Jacob’s son), I had to read it twice. Then I really slowed down. I didn’t want to miss any tiny nugget that was hiding in a two-part definition.

I thought the definition of believing was wonderful. I added “page 582” to the index for belief. I know Mary Baker Eddy spends some time working through belief, faith, and understanding in the book but the last two aren’t in the glossary so that just means belief, to me, is really the key.

I’ve been thinking about marriage a lot lately so I noted the Bride and Bridegroom spiritual nuggets: spiritual bliss and spiritual understanding.

And, mom-that-I-am, I marked the spiritual meaning of children:

The spiritual thoughts and representatives of Life, Truth, and Love.

Day 288: The Purpose of Love

579-581:7

I was a little worried about this chapter, The Glossary. It’s just a dictionary. What insight could it really have? But even on the first few pages, I marked a couple of things.

• Spiritual sense = original meaning
• The purpose of Love is to create trust in good.
• An adversary is one who opposes, denies, disputes, not one who constructs and sustains reality and truth.

Day 287: Place & Time

556:3-557:27

As I read this section, I thought about the classes I took yesterday (unrelated to C.S.). They were about being keenly aware of place and time -- how to put a reader into story place and time. One of the speaker’s advised the audience to be “ruthless in self-examination.” I thought how funny – that’s what I’m studying in Christian Science.

These pages are about getting beyond or without place and time. Holy habitation.

The discussion yesterday was about how the reader must perceive an opinion about place and time from the writer. This grounds the reader in the material story world. In order to drop the materiality in my own life, to reach higher, I need to drop the concept of place and time (and my opinion of it). Of course, the first place and time is home.

I need to work on home:

1. the Word of Life, Truth, and Love
2. Christ, the spiritual idea of God
3. Christianity
4. Christian Science

Day 286: Sackcloth

574:3-576:7

 

Think of this, dear reader, for it will lift the sackcloth from your eyes, and you will behold the soft-winged dove descending upon you. The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares.

Day 285: States and Stages

572:3-574:2

In this reading Mary Baker Eddy discusses the idea that your consciousness opens, loving and looking toward the spiritual. That this change in direction and movement away from material, reveals the new heaven and new earth.

These are not new ideas but are brought up over again and again in the book.

I thought how a state or stage has a duration. I may be here for a while. It’s funny how much I ask my children to listen to me repeatedly but I don’t ask myself to listen to God nearly enough.

Day 284 Sin chasing Mortal Man

569:29-572:2

The image of the dragon sending water to wash the woman away is an interesting image. Mary Baker Eddy spends this reading discussing reporting evil as well as good:

Many are willing to open the eyes of the people to the power of good resident in divine Mind, but they are not so willing to point out the evil in human thought, and expose evil’s hidden mental ways of accomplishing iniquity.

Then she advises:

Escape from evil, and designate those as unfaithful stewards who have seen the danger and yet have given no warning.

Day 283: Questions for the Audience

567:14-569:28

The book of Revelation is almost completely unfamiliar to me. In reading this chapter, The Apocalypse, I don’t know what is going to happen next in the biblical text. This is the first chapter where I have had to read and re-read to figure out what is going on biblically and from Mary Baker Eddy’s explanation.

The point she makes that I was most unaware of, so far, is that Genesis and Revelation both start with true stories and then proceed with false stories. So just for clarification, where does the true Revelation story start and end? If you know, please comment below.

She comes back to two points that are interesting but have been a while since she mentioned:

• Self-abnegation is a rule in Christian Science
• He that [1] touches the hem of Christ’s robe and [2] masters his mortal beliefs, animality, and hate, rejoices in the proof of healing

What does she mean by touches the hem of Christ’s robe? Is the figurative interpretation that someone reaches out for Christ?

Day 282: At War with an Idea

565:6-567:13

Mary Baker Eddy makes an interesting point at the end of this reading:

Against Love, the dragon warreth not long, for he is killed by the divine Principle. Truth and Love prevail against the dragon because the dragon cannot war with them.

The dragon is at war with Love but he is killed by divine Principle. Materiality cannot destroy an idea. There have certainly been, and still are plenty of dictators, tyrants, and politicians willing to disprove this.

The idea remains.

Day 281: The Subtle Serpent

562:22-565:5

The great red dragon in the Apocalypse and the talking snake in Genesis are compared in this reading. The great red dragon is scary and standing there waiting to be noticed in his massiveness while the talking snake is just a lowly, snake – almost avoidable.

Mary Bakery Eddy uses the word harmony twice in this reading. I can see how both the snake and the dragon are totally about disrupting harmony. If you get by the snake, there’s always the dragon. You won’t ever make it by him – so he wants you to think.

I marked the questions MBE poses at the top of 563 because when she writes out the issues like that, they seem silly, and I remember they’re silly. Which helps – when I see the dragon.

Day 280: Points to Remember

560:6-562:21

In this reading, Mary Baker Eddy noted a few points that I wanted to remember:

• the grand necessity of existence is to gain the true idea of what constitutes the kingdom of heaven in man
• without the correct sense of its highest visible idea, we can never understand the divine Principle
• Ignorance of the divine idea betrays at once a greater ignorance of the divine Principle of the idea – ignorance of Truth and Love.
• The understanding of Truth and Love…leads to the discernment of the divine idea.

Day 279: Sweet & Bitter

558-560:5

Today is the first day of the chapter, The Apocalypse. Not my favorite chapter. Mary Baker Eddy makes a point in this reading that when reading this book, at first it will taste sweet when it heals but the Truth, afterward, may be bitter.

I’m either not there yet or past that point. It seems like as I read the book now, I understand it differently every time and I’m having different challenges in my life to apply it to. The whole experience has mellowed into wanting to understand, then understanding.

Although, the farther into the book I get, I’m getting excited  -- only because new ideas are jumping out of the text.

Are you in a sweet or bitter moment?

Day 278: Line of Creation

556:3-557:27

I’ve been working on harmony this year. Several personal situations seem to keep cropping up that show me I have much more work to do. Mary Baker Eddy says harmony is increasing as we rise spiritually:

Christian Science reveals harmony as proportionately increasing as the line of creation rises towards spiritual man, – towards enlarged understanding and intelligence; but in the line of the corporeal senses, the less a mortal knows of sin, disease, and mortality, the better for him, – the less pain and sorrow are his.

She makes in interesting point her. I’ve always thought of ignoring materiality but Mary Baker Eddy pointedly says to know less, instead of ignore. That implies, to me, an active state of refusing to be educated in such areas.

That’s in interesting idea. I’m going to pray on that today.

Day 277: What you say about error

554:8-556:2

I’ve been working on two ideas lately: 1) Harmony is all, & 2) Health is all. Harmony and health are, spiritually speaking, the same thing and can easily be synonyms for God. It is easy to confuse material health with spiritual health so an idea from the reading helped to clarify this difference for me [rearranged for meaning]:

Mortal: who made me?

Error: God made you.

The first effort of error has been and is to impute to God the creation of whatever is sinful and mortal; but infinite Mind sets at naught such a mistaken belief.

I need to keep my prayers focused on spiritual health because that is the only kind there is.

Another statement in the reading:

An inquirer once said to the discoverer of Christian Science: “I like your explanations of truth, but I do not comprehend what you say about error.”

Day 276: Material Source

552:13-554:7

This chapter is about the two stories in Genesis. It seems to me if someone picks up this book for spiritual growth, they will understand the significant difference between the two stories. If they are reading this book for a quick and thoughtless healing, they might as well go to a doctor because they aren’t getting the point. But since Mary Baker Eddy does spend so much time on the science of the story, I assume she thinks there might be a third kind of audience reading the book – someone who cares very much about the science of materiality. You can get loads of inspiration or insight if material science if taken figuratively but the true meeting of material science and spirituality is usually a disaster.

From a material source flows no remedy for sorrow, sin, and death, for the redeeming power, from the ills they occasion, is not in egg or in dust.

Day 275: A Test

550:15-552:12

In the book, Mary Baker Eddy provides several tests with two choices where only one can be correct. These tests are summarized in the two stories: either there is a God and he is all (Gen. 1), or there is only materiality (Gen. 2).

These tests work for me because I know there is a God and I know materiality isn’t all.

She provides another test of this kind in this reading:

Either Mind produces, or it is produced. If Mind is first, it cannot produce its opposite in quality and quantity, called matter. If matter is first, it cannot produce Mind. Like produces like.

Day 274: The Great Observer

548:18-550:14

In this reading Mary Baker Eddy goes through the idea of generation for an egg or from self-division. She is discussing material creation as well as material, scientific discovery. There are two tones that eek out of the reading. The first is that if you start with birth, you end in death, which is the second story of Genesis. The second is that focusing on material discovery means you miss the spiritual discovery.

At this point, however, even this great observer [Agissiz] mistakes nature, forsakes Spirit as the divine origin of creative Truth, and allows matter and material law to usurp the prerogatives of omnipotence.

I’m going to work with observation and prerogatives today.

Day 273: Harmony

546:23-548:17

I’ve been praying about harmony this year, mostly about my son but there have been other issues. So anytime Mary Bakery Eddy uses that word, I take notice.

We see that man has never lost his spiritual estate and his eternal harmony.

Funny that she uses estate. The thought of both home and substance have been on my mind. I’ll come up with other ideas for estate as I work with this today.

And my sentence with blanks, just to extend the thought:

We see that man has never lost his spiritual _______ and his eternal _______.

 

What would you put in the spaces?

Day 272: The Deep Divinity

544:28-546:22

In this reading Mary Baker Eddy makes a few points about the two stories that I would like to note them:

• If Mind, God, creates error, that error must exist in the divine Mind, and this assumption of error would dethrone the perfection of Deity.
• …mortals should so improve material belief by thought tending spiritually upward as to destroy materiality.
• Material, erroneous belief reverses understanding and truth.

She makes a point at the end of the reading that Genesis and Revelation

seem more obscure than other portions of the Scripture, because they cannot possibly be interpreted from a material standpoint. To the author, they are transparent, for they contain the deep divinity of the Bible.