Where do we come from? Where are we going? And whose fault is it when we have problems? These questions confront us all at one point or another.

Parents caring for a sick child might ask, "What did I do or not do to cause this?"  A child struggling with performing a simple task that his friends might easily do could be asking, "Will I ever be like the other kids?"

Tough questions like these naturally pull on the heartstrings.  But finding answers may involve more than focusing on the problems in front of us. 

Jesus disciples once asked him about a case of physical disability  - whose fault was it? Did the man do something wrong? Did his parents, that he was “born this way? Their prayers hadn’t been able to heal the man. We don’t know but maybe frustration and fear for the man’s future had set in.

Jesus replied that neither were at fault. He turned them away from even considering fault and cause for the disability – away from the disability itself. He declared that the works of God, that is of divine Good, was all that was manifest in him.

He shifted the focus from material disability to God’s divine ability to bring out perfection and goodness alone.

Now the difference between the disciples approach and Jesus’ was as different as night and day. But Jesus’ viewpoint led to healing, while the disciples approach would have left the man mired in the problem.

The Christ perspective – the divine message of man’s spiritual origin and native goodness – heals. It doesn't teach to cope with or explain away problems. It completely heals them.

I think that is what set Christ Jesus apart from the doctors and helpers of the sick before him. Through his method of turning to God, identifying God’s law of Good in each case, and overruling whatever the current material belief about disease was claiming, he never doubted his cases would be healed. He appealed to God’s law the way a mathematician appeals to math facts. He worked with solutions, not on problems.

If you would like to learn more about Christ Jesus' methodology, check out these links:

• What we can learn from that crazy pig story
• Bow down to disease or bow down to good
• A lesson of focus from Christ Jesus... Oh, and my cat
• The simple theology that heals
• One spit prayer. Really!
• "What's your name?" Wake up from disease
  

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Prayer for an unborn child feared to not be developing properly. Prayer for an autistic neighbor. How to best help a child who exhibits violent behavior in the classroom. Parents, grandparents, and teachers ask how to pray about children with developmental and other disorders.  Adults who have been diagnosed with these types of problems also ask questions. 

Go hear the conversation where I respond with ideas from the Bible and from Mary Baker Eddy's life and writings. I also provide examples of how people have been helped and healed.

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From 1995-2005 I lectured extensively and worked with the press to share with the public correct information on Christian Science. These activities brought me into close and frequent contact with author Gillian Gill. Many times I heard her tell of her experience of how she came to write her 1999 biography titled, Mary Baker Eddy.

When she was first approached by Radcliff University to consider taking on the subject for its Biography Series, Mrs. Gill said she really wasn’t interested.  She had just lost her husband.  She was in her fifties with grandchildren.  She figured it was time to wind down, take it easy and live out the rest of her days gardening.  But she didn’t say no immediately.  Rather she researched the proposed subject, Mary Baker Eddy.

She learned that Mrs. Eddy’s own life really seemed to take off when she hit her fifties. At an age when nearly all her contemporaries shut themselves in for retirement, Mary Baker Eddy began to find her stride. In fact during each of four more decades, she made an exponentially larger contribution to the world.

This piqued Gill's interest. She accepted the commission for the biography with the purpose of figuring out how Mrs. Eddy did what she did. The project changed Gill's life, giving her a fresh start. She's been writing and contributing actively ever since.

So what did Mary Baker Eddy know that expanded, rather than diminished her productivity?  First, she understood she had a divine calling – a spiritual purpose.  Second, she had a certain flexibility and freedom from personal mortal will. She would turn on a dime when God pointed her to do something new.

That’s not to say she didn’t have a strong human will. She did.  For those who have read the biographical book Painting a Poem: Mary Baker Eddy and James F. Gilman illustrate Christ and Christmas, it is apparent that artist James Gilman ran into her strong perspective often as they worked together.  When Mary Baker Eddy felt God was directing, her will was iron-clad. 

Now, for most of us a strong will can be a dangerous thing.  Perhaps we aren't as disciplined as was she in turning to divine Love for direction and molding personal will to God's. It was this continuous search for the divine will that protected Mary Baker Eddy from the dangers of misdirected human will. She was ever-ready to reverse herself in an instant under divine direction.

How many of us can say the same? If we aren't alert and disciplined, human willful opinions might swaddle us in limitation. Human will becomes mortal, that is -limited, deadly - when personal opinions and desires, personal ambition, repetitive patterns of negativity, or fixation on the past, take over and control our present acts. This mortal will can actually restrict and age us.  Have you ever equated age with personal mortal will?

Limiting our point of view and actions to the unfoldment of a particular date and time, we may become fixed, inflexible and stuck in a narrow groove. We might lose the freshness, crispness, the bright white cleanliness of being on the cutting edge of God’s self-revealing activity.  But the prophet Isaiah offers insights into how to maintain freshness and resiliency in ourselves and break free of an oppressive mortal will. He wrote, "Shake thyself from the dust, arise and sit down.” 

The full passage reads, “Awake, awake; put on thy strength, O Zion… Shake thyself from the dust; arise, and sit down, O Jerusalem: loose thyself from the bands about thy neck, O captive daughter of Zion… My people shall know my name: therefore they shall know in that day that I am he that doth speak: behold it is I.”  Isaiah 52:1,2,6

“Arise” and “sit down” are two opposite instructions. To obey them demands mental flexibility - a willingness to take new direction from God and adjust position instantly.  This mental resiliency allows work to be accomplished like we’ve never seen before. We move from what a personal “I” is doing to what the divine “I am” is reflecting in us.

In her Miscellaneous Writings, Mrs. Eddy describes this as a mental condition that "settles into strength, freedom, deep-toned faith in God." She further explains, "It develops individual capacity, increases the intellectual activities, and so quickens moral sensibility that the great demands of spiritual sense are recognized, and they rebuke the material senses, holding sway over human consciousness.”

“By purifying human thought, this state of mind permeates with increased harmony all the minutiae of human affairs.  It brings with it wonderful foresight, wisdom, and power; it unselfs mortal purpose, gives steadiness to resolve, and success to endeavor.  Through the accession of spirituality, God, the divine Principle of Christian Science, literally governs the aims, ambition, and acts of the Scientist.”  (Miscellaneous Writings, 204:15-30)

This "accession of spirituality" is what Gillian Gill found in her research into Mrs. Eddy, who she learned ceded her human will to the divine purpose and turned to God for guidance at all points. This kept Mrs. Eddy fresh and resilient. And look at what happened:

She wrote her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, along with 17 others. She made over 400 major and minor revisions to Science and Health over a 44 year period, throwing out words, changing vocabulary, defining, redefining, erasing, adding, adjusting her statement as she went along.

Seeking the freshest clearest way of explaining the Science she discovered, her thought was not stuck on one way of seeing and explaining Christian Science. When prayer and experience led her to a better way, she moved to follow. Consequently, Science and Health is not an old book.  It is as fresh as the thought she continually brought to it. She was as much a student of the book as she was its author.

Science and Health will be as fresh to us as is the thought we continue to bring to it. As with the author, so with the reader, resilience and willingness to let God lead infuses Science and Health with a perennial freshness that allows it to stay up to date. 

If you find you are thinking the same thoughts, holding the same opinions, doing the same things the same way or repeating patterns from 10, 20, 30 years ago; if you find yourself thinking you have had enough, that it is time to wind down or give up on life: Shake off the dust. Stand up and sit down.  Thought must and can move. God who is divine Life is speaking to you of your resilience. Divine Life is calling you, leading you up and on. You have a particular mission. You are called to new thoughts and a bigger life by Life, God. Discover your resilience and freshness. It's a new day.

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Do parents and children actually have to endure the lifelong burden of a developmental disorder? Does God allow or produce such disorders in His creation? Is spirituality just a tool for coping or can an understanding of God as Spirit and His creation as spiritual conquer such problems?

In her textbook on Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy declares, “In Science, man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good, and pure constitute his ancestry” (p. 63). She also explains, “The foundation of mortal discord is a false sense of man’s origin” (p. 262).

On September 16, 2014 at 1:45 pm EDT (NOTE: TIME HAS BEEN UPDATED), I will be participating in a Christian Science Sentinel audio chat online. Anyone can participate by logging in online at the appointed time at the chat link.

You can expect to find out more about man's actual spiritual origin and the law of God that many have found can help and heal so-called incurable disorders in children and adults.

Hope you can join me for this interesting discussion online next Tuesday. For more information.

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For a long time I thought of myself as the girl with the good personality and the unfortunate looks. By the age of twelve I had picked up many self-criticisms from comparing my pre-teen, babyfat-retaining body to my loved Barbies and to the young adult models in magazines, but I had never felt I had an unattractive face.

Then I overheard someone say, "She would be beautiful except for her nose." Everything changed. And for the next 30-odd years I went to extraordinary lengths to hide my nose. 

Excessive concern about and preoccupation with my appearance resulted in a constant flow of negative thoughts about my face and body. Makeup was a mask. Hair cuts were to hide or distract.

Then I moved to France. You know what? No one here has a generic, standard-issue, "ideal" nose. Each one, extraordinary in its originality, is either small, large, perky, turned, drooped, lifted, bumped, hooked or bulbous - and all of them are GREAT! My hairdresser has what she calls a "strong" nose and she is proud of it, playing it up with her hair and makeup and clothing accessories. No hiding or disguising. Why would she? She is lovely and no one else is like her.

I now love my nose. (It reminds me of my mom and dad, whom I adore). And a fun part of my regular commute is to look around the train and admire my fellow travelers with the silent affirmation of "You are spectacular. One of a kind. Beautiful."

This new outlook didn't only come from more global nose exposure.  I attribute it mostly to insights I have gained into God as divine Soul, and of the nature of real beauty as spiritual.

What we call material beauty is illusion, and illusions melt away, showing that their so-called bestowals are flawed, imperfect. Material illusions generally end in pain until we release them and they disappear. Seriously, why wait for the suffering, or prolong it, by holding onto a beauty illusion?

The size, shape, and weight of matter; the color, volume, consistency of matter; the position, quantity, presence or absence of matter; these things don't define beauty. Beauty is spiritual.

Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures explains, "Beauty, as well as truth, is eternal; but the beauty of material things passes away, fading and fleeting as mortal belief. Custom, education, and fashion form the transient standards of mortals." (247)

We don't have to be pushed or pulled by these influences to settle for transient standards.  The beauty that God as divine Love establishes in us is real, original, perfect, and meets Love's own high and permanent standard of divine good.

I have learned that it is pointless for health and beauty to pray for a better configuration of matter. It won't get you what you want.  Matter is off-topic when considering health and beauty. Matter is mortal; and mortal, simply put, means dead or subject to death. Beautiful, healthy matter? NOT.

Remember the "use arsenic for clear skin" craze that killed off many young women in Victorian England? The "beautiful matter" belief is deadlier than the arsenic belief because it poisons the human system with self-hate, regret, envy, wasted thoughts, wasted energy, and selfishness.

So seriously, don't pray for better matter.  It won't get you what you want. Spirituality is the ticket. And the thing about spirituality is that it lasts.  It endures.

When was the last time you woke up and said to yourself, I am blessed to be immortal today? OK, maybe never. But it is a really good idea to add a dose of immortality-awareness to your daily routine. Mrs. Eddy hinted at the beauty treatment in such thoughts when she wrote, "Immortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its own, — the radiance of Soul. Immortal men and women are models of spiritual sense, drawn by perfect Mind and reflecting those higher conceptions of loveliness which transcend all material sense." ibid.

In case no one has told you this in awhile, let me say that you are beautiful. And your beauty has nothing to do with the shape of a nose, the color or texture of skin, or the shape of a material body.

You are gorgeous - a beautiful, immortal expression of God as Soul, as Love, as Mind and Principle.  Think about it. This has nothing to do with hair or the lack thereof, crooked or straight teeth, noses, eyebrows, long legs or tapered fingers.

You are beautiful because you are spiritual.

Now, I am no dummy. I recognize that for the moment what I am saying may be falling on deaf ears. When caught up in the illusion of beauty (like someone caught up in the illusion of grief), a mortally-focused mind wants what it wants, where it wants it. It calls matter, not only real, but the only reality. It can even seem like the actual immortal and permanent truth of beauty and life is irrelevant and not comforting at all. But Christian Science teaches and then shows how matter is not real, - not beautiful, not ugly, simply NOT.

Spirit is real and is reflected in all that is real, including you and me. Your inherent spirituality makes you beautiful, and trust me, this idea of spiritual beauty won't leave you alone. Why? Because everpresent Soul can't leave you alone. You are never alone. God as Soul is perpetually sending you Christ messages telling you who and what you are. You may ignore them for awhile, but they will never quit.

Because of the persistent nature of the Christ, the true idea of God and His creation, the truth of your real beauty will keep knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking and knocking persistently at the door of your thought until you let these Christ messages in and really think about them. Then they will take their rightful place in your thought and your life.  You won't be able to escape the proof. It will glow inwardly in the way you feel about yourself, and show outwardly in the way you are perceived.

Let your spirituality lead you to care for the body respectfully. No self-critical abusive thoughts.  Care for the body lovingly, without unnecessary attention or obsession, and not as a punishment for being a man or woman.  Care for the human body in its proper perspective - a useful laboratory in human experience for spiritual growth and evidences of God's care, but not material or limited, and never in control of your life and happiness.

A body as a limited, material, destructible - or even improvable - object is never the truth about your body. Matter never gives correct evidence of your identity, is not a symbol of your beauty or a marker of your worth. (Neither is your car, by the way. But that is another post.)

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