The dawn of ideas

The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace. Thus the dawn of ideas goes on, forming each successive stage of progress.

© Stephen Lue

Sherborn, Massachusetts

The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace. Thus the dawn of ideas goes on, forming each successive stage of progress.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 506:11-14

Audio only

Acoustic Double-Neck Guitarist Ian Ethan began a journey into truly uncharted territory when he picked up this seldom-seen 18-string instrument in 2005, two years after leaving the Berklee College of Music.  While most who venture to play the instrument are either baffled by or unaware of the possibilities that it offers (its history seems to peg it as more of a grandiose stage prop than a valid musical tool), for him it is simply “the most effective and intuitive means I’ve found to translate into sound the things I’m hearing in my head.”

Drawing on a diverse musical background that saw him learning piano, drums, saxophone, electric guitar and bass beginning at the age of five, Ian Ethan’s strikingly-unconventional, self-invented approach to the double-neck guitar is both baffling and mesmerizing to behold. And while his performances are visually intriguing to say the least, it is not showmanship but rather the sincere desire to accurately communicate the harmonically rich, multi-layered music of his composing (or “discovery”, as he prefers to refer to the process) that has impelled him every step of the way.

At times intensely percussive and complex rhythmically, Ian’s music is just as often spacious, delicate, and melodic, pulling listeners along with him Into Open Land (the title of his 2008 debut.) Today his performances take this already multi-faceted, three-dimensional sound and multiply it exponentially with his very careful, intentional, and musical employment of an electronic looping device which allows him to record, layer, and re-orchestrate the phrases that he plays live. Multiple simultaneous melodies, rhythms, and harmonies weave in and out of eachother, often re-emerging slightly transformed in a subsequent piece until all of the ideas seem to merge into one grand realization of connectivity.

Appalachia by Air

Ian Ethan

http://ianethan.com/

Roll away your stone

Over the summer, I discovered the band Mumford & Sons. I listen to their Sigh No More album constantly on my bike ride into work. Their songs are filled with thoughtful lyrics, energy, and some killer banjo. There’s one song in particular that really stuck with me. It starts off with “Roll away your stone and I’ll roll away mine.” The biblical imagery is hard to miss. As I listened to more of their music, I was impressed by how often their lyrics discussed God and faith, especially for such a mainstream group.

I’m not sure of the band’s religious roots, but on my ride in each morning, it got me pondering the concept of rolling away stones. The reference comes from the story of Jesus’ resurrection, when he overcame death and escaped from a tomb permanently sealed by a huge chunk of rock–both perceived to be insurmountable.

You could say that “rolling away the stone” represents overcoming challenges that seem impossible. So how does this relate to us today? What are some things that could be immovable stones in our lives? What are we accepting as impossible? For each person, its different. It could be something that’s small or perhaps easy to ignore.  Maybe a subtle idea like, I’m not good at math, public speaking, sports, whatever. It’s not my thing. Or it could be something more significant. A relationship that seems irrevocably damaged. A feeling of hopelessness or powerlessness. A diagnosis.

Jesus’ demonstration showed us what’s possible. He took something that everyone acknowledged as fact–death is inescapable–and proved it surmountable. He wasn’t simply showing what he could do, but through his actions, demonstrating what’s possible to each one of us every day. As he said, “all who have faith in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these…. ” ¹

We need to all identify those stones in our life and weed out entrenched ideas of our own limitation. ”Roll away your stone and I’ll roll away mine.” I love this line’s implied connection between people in moving past challenges. In the process, we are helping each other. We’re each learning our own lessons, making our own breakthroughs. And each step forward blesses everyone. Each discovery about our own ability and identity fuels someone else’s demonstration. And together, we’re able to remove the stones from our lives.

Ariana Herlinger

Sustained by Love

Teach them that their being is sustained by Spirit, not by matter, and that they find health, peace, and harmony in God, divine Love.

© Stephen Lue

Peru

Teach them that their being is sustained by Spirit, not by matter, and that they find health, peace, and harmony in God, divine Love.

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 416:32-417:2

The power of goodness

Can we judge how we’re breaking free from the hold of materiality by how good we are?  Mary Baker Eddy said so.  What steps towards goodness are you taking in your daily walk?

Text by Amy Richmond
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Christian Coker

Every step towards goodness is a departure from materiality, and is a tendency towards God, Spirit.

Science and Health with key to The Scriptures p. 213:11-12

Write it down

This past year, I went on a “writing spree” and decided to record a bunch of my healings as articles. Here are two I’d like to share with you.

Not even a mark.

Once I became a teenager, I started to get blemishes on my hand that looked like warts. I was mortified and did anything I could to cover them up or hide my hands because I was afraid of what other people would say. I loved to play golf because I could wear my golfing glove, and when it came off I could say I had blisters from golfing so much. Although the warts would occasionally go away when I used “home remedies,” they would return.

Because of this issue, I was often tentative about holding other peoples’ hands either in a caring way or even just in playing a game. Once I got into college and moved into a house at Principia College, a school for Christian Scientists, it became effortless to let go of what I thought were burdens and live life as God’s perfect reflection.

Living in a house full of girls, inspirational quotes about womanhood and beauty were constantly being posted on bathroom mirrors or doors. Some of my favorites I would take with me and write on my own mirror, or write them down in my notebooks, to be stumbled upon at random moments. My favorites included, “The human thought must free itself from self-imposed materiality and bondage” ¹ and, “Man, governed by immortal Mind, is always beautiful and grand” ² I love that word grand as it’s defined in the dictionary as “incontrovertible,” and “marked by . . . dignity.”

I kept these spiritual ideas in mind as I continued in my daily life surrounded by new people and loving thoughts. It wasn’t until one day when I was holding the hand of a close friend that I looked down and realized that there were no blemishes. Not even a mark. Years of reservedness and concern were gone, as if it was all a dream. The idea that something that seemed so long-standing and never-ending could be gone without a goodbye or fade-out just shows how healing does not need to be slow.

Now with every hand I hold, whether it’s helping my grandma out of the car, helping someone to their chair, keeping someone safe while crossing the street, or sharing a moment with someone I love, I can acknowledge God and all that He has done for me.

Gratitude + simplicity

One of the greatest revelations I’ve ever had involved gratitude and simplicity. After a rough junior year in high school I headed off to a summer camp for Christian Scientists. It would be my CIT (Counselor-in-Training) summer. About a week or two in, before the campers got there, I was finding it hard to enjoy myself and focus on my work. With a constant feeling of
anxiety and worry, even my down time was spent in a dreary mood. Through this murkiness of thought I ended up walking to dinner a half hour early one night and found my energy level too low to walk back to my cabin once I arrived and realized my mistake. So I sat down with a Science and Health and began to flip through the pages searching for nothing in particular.
What I did find was monumental.

On every single page I flipped to, the word gratitude jumped out at me. By the time I stopped flipping and decided to look deeper into this “coincidence,” I was on page three. It read: “Are we really grateful for the good already received? Then we shall avail ourselves of the blessings we have, and thus be fitted to receive more. Gratitude is much more than a verbal expression of thanks. Action expresses more gratitude than speech.”

From that moment on, I was freed from a cloudy state of mind. I walked away from that reading knowing my reason for being at camp—to learn, to love, to glorify God, and to be grateful for everything that God blesses me with. With every challenge I ran into from that moment on, big or small, all I had to do was look around and be grateful for the “good already received.” That next instant I would be back to myself, glorifying God through action-expressed gratitude.

Soon campers began to arrive, and I realized that my newfound gratitude could easily be used as I worked with them. This is also where I found my love for simplicity. I was working with new horseback riders in the third and fourth grade. What I love about this age is that, to them, Christian Science isn’t made up of long treatments and hours of studying. Christian Science is made up of “God is Love,” the seven synonyms, the Ten Commandments, and other simple things that I often overlook when something that feels serious comes up in my life. Healing does not need to be more complicated than acknowledging our connection to God and how we reflect all of His perfection. The combination of this simple acknowledgement and our gratitude, expressed in all hours of the day, makes for a happy life.

To this day, I still use what I learned that summer in my daily life. I try to never overcomplicate a healing, and often this kind of simplicity in prayer is preventative too. By keeping my thinking straight, knowing what is true and what I can be grateful for, I feel free.

Emily

From the December 2011 edition of the Christian Science Sentinel
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Expectant, joyful

Come we daily then, dear Father,
Open hearts and willing hands,
Eager ears, expectant, joyful,
Ready for Thy right commands.

Amy Richmond

Birmingham, England

Come we daily then, dear Father,
Open hearts and willing hands,
Eager ears, expectant, joyful,
Ready for Thy right commands.

Christian Science Hymnal, No. 58

Tracing footsteps of thought

In 1998 at the Harvard Medical School’s “Spirituality and Healing in Medicine” conference, nearly a thousand people gathered to explore spirituality and its implications for healing. There was a palpable energy in the air—an excitement, as if the entire room was on the verge of making life-changing discoveries. People came from a wide range of backgrounds—doctors, nurses, chaplains, ministers, alternative healers, Christian Science practitioners. For many, being able to speak publicly about spirituality was the equivalent of a coming-out experience.

Speaker George Gallup, Jr. spoke about the twentieth century and the exploration of outer space. He then predicted that the twenty-first century would be marked by an exploration of inner space.

There can be a certain reluctance in people to embrace both the uncertainties and demands of spiritual exploration; to learn to trace the impulses of truth, the deeper knowings; to find our bearings in the broad reaches of thought; to rise to a much greater sense of responsibility in the world. It’s an arena that can’t be quantified, manipulated, measured in material terms. It requires a different gauge, or engagement, rigorous honesty, purity of heart.

Mary Baker Eddy knew this.“The footsteps of thought,” she wrote,

“rising above material standpoints, are slow, and portend a long night to the traveller; but the angels of His presence—the spiritual intuitions that tell us when ‘the night is far spent, the day is at hand’—are our guardians in the gloom. Whoever opens the way in Christian Science is a pilgrim and stranger, marking out the path for generations yet unborn” ¹

Eddy has taught me not to be afraid of spiritual intuitions—that they are in their own right a map that leads us to the place we were meant to be, to an awareness of spiritual goodness and liberty inherent to who we are; that they are God’s ways of speaking to us; the presence of His Christ lighting our way from the inside out.

I think of the spiritual conviction that fuelled Eddy’s solitary search for and discovery of Christian Science. While it may not be widely known or understood right now, such a conviction is inseparable from the divine impulse at work in the hearts of people everywhere. It is the Comforter Jesus promised; the actuality of spiritual being here, destined to be discovered, experienced by all of us; “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”. ²

The twenty-first century is well on its way. Advances in technology, the interconnectedness of the world, the ongoing quest for justice, health, and peace hint at Gallup’s predictions, and point to the spiritual potential that Jesus exemplified and that Mary Baker Eddy knew held the key to the progress and emancipation of humanity. Her words still ring true:

“The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity. Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away” ³

Joni Overton-Jung