 I love reading the chapter “Prayer” in Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. True to its title, prayer is described in its many forms, including, but not limited to:
This adds up to 12 forms of prayer, and that is only looking at the first four pages. There are loads more. You might try reading the chapter to find how many more you can find. Read “Prayer” online.  Gertrude Stein wrote in her book Everybody's Autobiography (1937), "It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing." I must say I do agree. At least it can look that way to an observer. And it often feels that way to the one going through the process of sitting, thinking, squirming, waiting, wondering, gazing out the window, staring at the wall, clipping fingernails, thinking... all the while waiting for some outward sign of forward movement. Oh, how many times have I experienced just that. Each time I think I will discover some new way to circumvent the process. And then, here we go again. A couple of years ago, I was in the middle of what looked and felt like a "doing nothing" patch. I had been staring at the walls for a decent chunk of time as January dragged into February. When it looked like February might pass into March without much to say for it, I reached out to a Christian Science practitioner for help.  Christian Science practitioners (like me) pray for people to help them out of stuck places in their lives. I wasn't sure what I was looking for from this prayer, other than the ability to trust that all this quiet, and thinking, and sitting, and doing nothing but scrutinize my white walls, was OK... And to know that I wasn't nuts. Because, frankly, I wondered what was wrong with me that nothing seemed to be going on in my life. So she prayed for me until I saw the reinforcing power that develops in deep periods of quiet. I would describe what I saw this way: Think of the formation of a wave. A wave develops well under the surface on the ocean floor. The current (think undertow, when it happens near the shore) pulls back, and finally pushes up, propelling the water forward with amazing force. We glory in the beauty of the activity on the surface, not always recognizing the invisible, silent, essential build-up of strength that precedes it. I turn to Mary Baker Eddy for a clear description of the metaphysics of this wave development. She wrote, "Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause, — wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory." (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 323)  No matter what it looks like on the surface, something powerful is happening. I have been a pusher all my life. But I love to think now of these strength-yielding pauses. I believe it is absolutely essential to allow oneself the mental space - white wall space - to pause, to be - to think and wonder and even squirm (!), - as one waits on the onward push of God, omniactive good. Its not really a time thing. I have had pauses that last but a second before the next breakers of inspiration jettison me forward onto the shore of some new adventure or activity. Others have been long. Really long. What looked, up close, to be a two month pause a couple of years ago, was really the last momentum-gathering undertow at the end of a six year deep-think pause. But the force of that build-up has carried me through some of my most productive and interesting years yet. Looking for a little Prayer MOJO today?
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Also, if you aren't yet a subscriber, a full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. It's easy to sign up in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE READ MORE BLOG POSTS FIND A LIST OF MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT  Have you ever suffered from buried anger? Anger is often simply accepted – as if we have no choice in the matter. But that isn’t true. Anger is sin. No one is required to sin. By eliminating anger as an influence, we can expect our prayers for others to be stronger and more effective. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus introduces several different subjects with variations on the words, “You have heard…” He could well have been indicating, without judgment, that we all have heard and experienced the same things and, consequently, have similar lessons to learn. The Sermon on the Mount teaches how to address and eliminate different forms of evil - the stuff that everyone has dealt with at one time or another. One subject was anger. Jesus said, “Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment: But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." (Matthew 5:21-22)  Jesus points out anger's range - from the subtle expression of annoyance, to the strongest of insults, to the full-out murder already condemned in the Ten Commandments. "Raca" was a light criticism, like a modern-day "Oh, dear", while "Thou fool" could easily result in punches being thrown and the cops being called. Notice how anger is linked with hell. We’ve all been angry, or have been the recipient of someone's anger, at one time or another. What does it feel like? Exactly. Hellfire. Once he had his listeners' attention, Jesus gave direction on when and how to cut off anger before it begins to complicate one's life. He said, “Therefore if thou bring thy gift to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. Agree with thine adversary quickly, whiles thou art in the way with him; lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer..." (See ibid. 5:23-26) Trust me, it all goes downhill from there. To me, to “leave your offering at the altar” is to drop everything - every activity, interest, desire – until we have found love for our brother or sister or neighbor or enemy – until we have reconciled our brother with our understanding of divine Love. It’s totally in prayer that this can be accomplished. If not, unhealed anger would contaminate all our offerings, all our prayers, and it would strangle the joy out of life.  Once, while praying for a healing of chronic pain, I realized that I was suffering from buried anger. Whether the offense was great or small doesn’t matter. Because of the anger, I believed that I was not worthy of being healed. The part of me holding onto anger (a mortal sense) was the same part suggesting that I was a victim of someone's cruelty. This double-barreled shotgun of anger and victimization was pointed at my heart, with fear pressing down on the trigger. The suggestion was that I could just as easily succumb to disease. I knew that when anger is released, healings often come quicker. But how could I start? Jesus’ Sermon-message on healing anger, and Mary Baker Eddy’s inspired take on his meaning, pointed the way for me. Jesus continued in the Sermon, by saying, “Agree with thine adversary quickly, while thou are in the way with him.” Mrs. Eddy explained, “Suffer no claim of sin or of sickness to grow upon the thought. Dismiss it with an abiding conviction that it is illegitimate, because you know that God is no more the author of sickness than He is of sin. You have no law of His to support the necessity either of sin or sickness, but you have divine authority for denying that necessity and healing the sick.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 390) Try reading that passage by substituting the word anger for sin. Sin is anger. And vice versa.  The simple thought that God is no more the author of sickness than he is of anger, or even of the so-called sin that produced it, helped me see that neither anger, sin, nor sickness were personal faults. If God didn’t create them in me, I couldn’t generate or perpetuate them in myself. I followed Jesus' and Eddy’s instructions to a T. I dismissed the aggressive mental suggestion that anger was a power over which I had no control. I claimed, in prayer, my spiritual authority to stop it. And I could, you know. Letting go of anger never did depend on the behavior of anyone else. Anger and the accompanying sense of helplessness over it, was a sin that I had the right and ability to kick out of my experience at any point. I was healed of the chronic pain that very day. That was more than ten years ago. It never came back. Anger is not a built-in. It is not a part of anyone’s nature. I am not the angry type. Neither are you or anyone else. As God’s children we are the type of God, of universal, divine Love. Praying from that angle, anger cannot tie us down.  Want some prayer MOJO today? (MOJO is the confidence, clarity and feeling of momentum that indicates your prayers are moving you forward.)
(HEAD'S UP! Be sure to check back on Saturday to find Kay Olson's guest post on healing anger through love.) If you like what you see, please share the links with your friends, fans and followers!
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I have practiced Christian Science professionally in some form since 1979. But my journey with Christian Science started in a Sunday school where as a young child I was taught the Scriptures and some simple basics of Jesus' method of scientific Christian healing. A significant experience at the age of twelve opened my eyes to the great potential of this practice. After impaling my foot on a nail, I prayed the way I had learned in Sunday school. Within moments the pain stopped and healing began. By the next morning the wound had disappeared completely. Having experienced the great potential of Christian Science, there would be no turning back. |
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