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6/30/2012 Summer signs “Look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near. Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that the kingdom of God is near." CHRIST JESUS (Luke 21:29-31 NIV) Here is a short video of Giuliano Carmignola, playing the third movement of Vivaldi's "Summer" concerto with Sonatori de la Gioiosa Marca. La musique est magnifique! Enjoy these early days, and early signs, of summer. Love it? Please share it for others to enjoy.
Let's work together to share the love. 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  Time4Thinkers.com has just launched an exciting summer project called "Radical Acts." The focus is 18 of Jesus' toughest teachings, including CHALLENGE Pharisees, DO GOOD to those who hate you -- and of course Seek the kingdom first - don't worry about food and clothes and drink. It is this last one that inspires today's guest post by Diane Marrapodi, CSB. How easy it can be to let prayer slip into a wishing/wanting session. But as Diane says, "There’s more than a hot dog for you" in the prayer that seeks to know God as the Love that is loving you in very practical ways. Radical Acts is ecumenical. All are invited, regardless of religious (or no religious) affiliation. Click any link in this post to take you into the Radical Acts pages of Time4Thinkers.com and learn more about the project.  For many years our sons were year-round swimmers, which meant we attended swim meets almost every weekend on some part of the east coast of the US. Through that activity we met many wonderful swimmers and their parents. To this day I am very fond of Linda, a mom who constantly displayed a marvelous sense of humor. Midway through a swim meet she’d say to her terrific husband, “Bob, I’d really like a hot dog”. And with a regal wave of her hand she'd add, “Make it so." Bob, with a chuckle, always got up from the bleachers, went to the concession stand, and brought back a hot dog. Every once in a while in the public practice of Christian Science I hear just such requests. Oh, not for hotdogs, of course, but for other things: entrance into a certain college; the desire for a specific spouse, house, move, job, - all for the purpose of getting something thought to be essential to happiness. But is the most efficient prayer really to tell God what we want and then to ask God, with a wave of our hand, to “make it so?" Don’t we all remember a time when we prayed for something specific and didn’t receive it? Perhaps some time later we saw the folly of our request and the wisdom of not receiving that for which we asked. The best motive for going to God in prayer may not be so much to get something that we think will complete us, as it is to awaken to our nature as His beloved child and to His perfect plans for us.  Just before the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew’s gospel, there appears this admonition with a promise: “When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly...when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking…your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” (6:6-8) Those verses remind me that while I can always pray “on the run” - in the car, at the grocery store - consecrated prayer also requires something more. We need to "go apart" sometimes, - maybe not physically, but certainly mentally, - to completely set aside the wishes and desires and cares clamoring for our attention - to be still and watch for fresh views of what God is doing for His creation. This devout prayer is not so much an asking as a listening and yielding to God who loves us and has our best interests at heart. God is Love. (I John 4:8) Divine Love made you, knows you, loves you, and maintains your every step. Can you even now imagine the effect of going deep in prayer on this fact and keeping it before thought throughout the day? Why, it would comfort you, eliminate fear, enable you to see yourselves and others as the child of God, and open the door to abundant good. Harmony, peace, well-being is spiritually natural and normal. The prophet Isaiah said, “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.” (26:3)  Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures begins with a brief 17-page chapter entitled, “Prayer”. It opens with this very powerful statement, “The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God, — a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love.” (1) Further on she writes, “Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts.” (261) A prayer of absolute faith in what is possible to God and that springs from an understanding of God as Love, doesn’t involve wishing and wondering what you’ll get. It involves becoming aware and acknowledging the ever-present Love that is loving you, and Love’s will of divine good for you and for each one of His children. Will there be results? Trust me on this. There’s more than a hot dog for you in this kind of prayer. DianeMarrapodi is a Christian Science practitioner, teacher, and blogger. You will find this and more wonderful posts on her blog at DianeMarrapodi.com. Thank you, Diane, for helping us practice the radical act of seeking the Kingdom before all else!
 Time4Thinkers.com has just launched an exciting summer project called "Radical Acts." The focus is 18 of Jesus' toughest teachings, including CHALLENGE Pharisees, DO GOOD to those who hate you -- and of course HEAL the sick. Participants are asked to make a commitment to follow one or more of Jesus’ teachings this summer, and share their stories as they unfold. A steady stream of amazing music, audio stories, and blogs will spice things up. But the main focus is the participants' effort to live these Radical Acts and share the results. Radical Acts is ecumenical. All are invited, regardless of religious (or no religious) affiliation. The more the merrier....and the more spiritual progress for us all! For those who were reading this blog way back in January, you will remember the WALK ON WATER (W.O.W.) four- part series that kicked off the New Year and an update that was written a couple of months later. Well, one of the focus subjects of "Radical Acts" is Walk on Water! You might like to check that one out! And if you haven't read the W.O.W. posts in awhile - here you go!
Love it? Please share it. Let's work together to share the love.
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 6/25/2012 Your majesty Christ Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21) To understand the implications of this requires a shift in our reality-view. Each one of God's children expresses the fullness, the majesty of the one divine Mind that is God. Whatever Mind includes, we all include by reflection. Think about it. Because God doesn’t have an outside, you as God’s likeness don’t have an outside. Everything exists within, within your reflected being. So, when you look at huge and majestic mountains or across the grand expanse of an ocean, don’t feel small. As grand as they may seem, they are mere infinitesimal hints of the mass and majesty of you! You include them. You are the greater and you express God’s dominion over them.  A man, looking out at a grand mountain range, once said, “What an amazing and beautiful body I have.” Again, think about it! What was he seeing? Did he understand that what he saw was not external or outside of his infinite being as reflection? He embraced the beauty of his wholeness and man's true body as majestic and fully spiritual. And yet even then, what he saw with his eyes reflected only faintly and minutely his infinite possibilities as God’s image and likeness. In an individual way, each of us reflects omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence. This was the message in David's 8th Psalm. He sang, "O LORD our Lord, how excellent is your name in all the earth! who have set your glory above the heavens. Out of the mouth of babes and infants have you ordained strength... "When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained; What is man, that you are mindful of him? and the son of man, that you visit him? For you have made him a little lower than the angels, and have crowned him with glory and honor. You made him to have dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet." Christian Science Discoverer Mary Baker Eddy summed it up this way: 'The kingdom of God is within you.' Know, then, that you possess sovereign power to think and act rightly, and that nothing can dispossess you of this heritage and trespass on Love... Each of Christ’s little ones reflects the infinite One and therefore is the seer’s declaration true that 'one on God’s side is a majority.' (Pulpit and Press 3,4) Love it? Please share it. Let's work together to spread the love.
Also, if you aren't yet a subscriber, and would lke to be, it's easy to sign up in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE FIND A LIST OF MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT  "Hello, I am Ginger and I insist on being loved." I admit, I am a multi-tasker. This does not go over well with my cat. Ginger spent time during our vacation at "Nancy Camp" - the home of a dear friend. During her time there she was treated royally. I had mentioned to Nancy that Ginger was a cat that demanded lots of attention. But I didn't expect that they would spend nearly an hour stretched out together on the floor while Ginger received her daily dose of 'love". When she returned home, Ginger made it clear that this was a new tradition that she expected would continue. Who has an hour to pet a cat? The first day, I thought, OK, let's see if I can do this while working on the computer. No go. She sat square on the keyboard. So I tried to get some calls in during her "love" session. Recognizing that I was less than fully committed to petting her, she began to meow insistantly, making it impossible to talk. Finally I stopped trying to do two things at once. As it turned out, she didn't require a full hour. Once I gave her what she asked for, - uninterrupted face time, - five minutes sufficed. Or maybe she kindly let me off the hook, realizing that five minutes of undivided attention from me is a LOT. I am still a multi-tasker and will likely continue to be. However, I think there is something to be said for giving one's full attention when it comes to love and care.  Christ Jesus healed multitudes at a time; but this "Master multi-tasker" didn't overlook the needs of the individual who cried for help. A blind man named Bartimaeus was among a crowd waiting for Jesus as he left the city of Jericho en route to Jerusalem. Jesus had just finished an extended teaching session. Betrayal and crucifixion were near on the horizon. Yet for all that he had on his mind, Jesus stopped to give his full attention to Bartimaeus. The Message paraphrase of the Gospel of Mark, Chapter 10 recounts, "When he heard that Jesus the Nazarene was passing by, he began to cry out, 'Son of David, Jesus! Mercy, have mercy on me!' "Many tried to hush him up, but he yelled all the louder, 'Son of David! Mercy, have mercy on me!' "Jesus stopped in his tracks. 'Call him over.' "They called him. Jesus said, 'What can I do for you?' "The blind man said, 'Rabbi, I want to see.' "'On your way,' said Jesus. 'Your faith has saved and healed you.' In that very instant he recovered his sight and followed Jesus down the road." "Jesus stopped in his tracks." I think the following words of Mary Baker Eddy signal something of the stillness and single-minded focus that Jesus generously gave to Bartimaeus. She wrote,"The best spiritual type of Christly method for uplifting human thought and imparting divine Truth, is stationary power, stillness, and strength; and when this spiritual ideal is made our own, it becomes the model for human action." (Retrospection and Introspection, 93) Here is a photo souvenir that Ginger brought back with her from Camp Nancy. Never before has a cat on vacation received such devoted attendance as she has. I hope you enjoy it! (You can place your curser over the slideshow to advance the pictures more quickly or to stop and restart.) Love it? Please share it. Let's work together to share the love.
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  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?
Love it? Please share it. Let's work together to share the love.
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 Permission to post this stunning photo comes with the requirement to link back to the source, Bryant McGill on WhoSay. I am deeply grateful to Mr. McGill for making this thought-provoking photo available for sharing! - Michelle Nanouche, CSB
6/18/2012 I will love, if another hates "I will love, if another hates. I will gain a balance on the side of good, my true being. This alone gives me the forces of God wherewith to overcome all error." (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, 104) These immortal words of Mary Baker Eddy rang through to my thought yesterday as I heard a powerful story recounted by Ulrike Prinz, CS, of Hamburg, Germany, in her lecture entitled "A Christian Science Response to Hate and Violence." I was very moved by what I heard, and I am grateful to have found the source of the story on the internet. At the bottom of this post, you will find hyperlinks to the original book and biographical info on the co-authors.  George Ritchie, PhD "When the war in Europe ended in May 1945, the 123rd Evac entered Germany with the occupying troops. I was part of a group assigned to a concentration camp near Wuppertal, charged with getting medical help to the newly liberated prisoners, many of them Jews from Holland, France, and eastern Europe. This was the most shattering experience I had yet had; I had been exposed many times by then to sudden death and injury, but to see the effects of slow starvation, to walk through those barracks where thousands of men had died a little bit at a time over a period of years, was a new kind of horror. For many it was an irreversible process: we lost scores each day in spite of all the medicine and food we could rush to them. "Now I needed my new insight indeed. When the ugliness became too great to handle I did what I had learned to do. I went from one end to the other of that barbed wire enclosure looking into men's faces until I saw looking back at me the face of Christ. "And that's how I came to know Wild Bill Cody. That wasn't his real name. His real name was seven unpronounceable syllables in Polish, but he had long drooping handlebar mustaches like pictures of the old western hero, so the American soldiers called him Wild Bill. He was one of the inmates of the concentration camp, but obviously he hadn't been there long: his posture was erect, his eyes bright, his energy indefatigable. Since he was fluent in English, French, German and Russian, as well as Polish, he became a kind of unofficial camp translator.  "We came to him with all sorts of problems; the paper work alone was staggering in attempting to relocate people whose families, even whole hometowns, might have disappeared. But though Wild Bill worked fifteen and sixteen hours a day, he showed no signs of weariness. While the rest of us were drooping with fatigue, he seemed to gain strength. "We have time for this old fellow," he'd say."He's been waiting to see us all day." His compassion for his fellow-prisoners glowed on his face, and it was to this glow that I came when my own spirits were low. "So I was astonished to learn when Wild Bill's own papers came before us one day, that he had been in Wuppertal since 1939! For six years he had lived on the same starvation diet, slept in the same airless and disease-ridden barracks as everyone else, but without the least physical or mental deterioration. "Perhaps even more amazing, every group in the camp looked to him as a friend. He was the one to whom quarrels between inmates were brought for arbitration. Only after I'd been at Wuppertal a number of weeks did I realize what a rarity this was in a compound where the different nationalities of prisoners hated each other almost as much as they did the Germans.  As for the Germans, feelings against them ran so high that in some of the camps liberated earlier, former prisoners had seized guns, run into the nearest village and simply shot the first Germans they saw. Part of our instructions were to prevent this kind of thing and again Wild Bill was our greatest asset, reasoning with the different groups, counseling forgiveness. "It's not easy for some of them to forgive," I commented to him one day as we sat over mugs of tea in the proceeding center. "So many of them have lost members of their families." "Wild Bill leaned back on the upright chair and sipped at his drink. "We lived in the Jewish section of Warsaw," he began slowly, the first words I had heard him speak about himself. 'My wife, our two daughters, and our three little boys. When the Germans reached our street they lined everyone against a wall and opened up with machine guns. I begged to be allowed to die with my family, but because I spoke German they put me in a work group." "He paused, perhaps seeing again his wife and children. 'I had to decide right then,' he continued, 'whether to let myself hate the soldiers who had done this. It was an easy decision, really. I was a lawyer. In my practice I had seen too often what hate could do to people's minds and bodies. Hate had just killed the six people who mattered most to me in the world. I decided then that I would spend the rest of my life, whether it was a few days or many years, loving every person I came in contact with.'" (An excerpt from the book "Return from Tomorrow" by George G. Ritchie with Elizabeth Sherrill, published by Fleming H. Revell, A division of Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, MI., pgs. 113-116) Thank you, Ulrike Prinz, for bringing this story out for your audience in Paris. Love it? Please share it. Let's work together to share the love.
Your shares reach and bless many, many others. 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 6/17/2012 Parable of the prodigal Father Jesus gave the parable of the prodigal son, as a lesson on the correcting and redeeming power of the divine Father's persistent love for all his children. Who's to say that the younger son in the tale was the only prodigal? Prodigal has two definitions that could apply to the storyline. "Prodigal [ˈprɒdɪgəl] (adj.)1. Rashly or wastefully extravagant; recklessly wasteful, as in disposing of goods or money 2. Giving or given in abundance; lavish or profuse; lavish in giving or yielding." A few weeks ago, I was studying a Bible Lesson that included the parable of the prodigal in the gospel of Luke. We are told that the father welcomed his repentant younger son back into the house and prepared a party to celebrate his return. Seeing the festivities, his eldest son became angry. The father left the party to seek out his elder son in the field where he was hiding. He entreated him (that is, he earnestly dealt with him, treating his concerns). The son poured out the resentments that had built up over many years: of watching the younger brother fall short and yet seem to be favored. The father discerned his heart and lavished on him the one thing he needed most: To know that he, too, was greatly loved. He said "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine." There would be no divided inheritance. All the father's love was available for each son.  Corresponding passages in the Bible Lesson included this statement from Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "Evil which obtains in the bodily senses, but which the heart condemns, has no foundation..." (448) This caught my attention because I couldn't see how the elder son had had a change of heart before he received his father's blessing. Had his own heart condemned the evil of anger and envy? Was that a prerequisite to his progress? Apparently, no. It was the father's heart, not the son's, that condemned the envy as having no place. The father showed the son that his suffering was without foundation. The father condemned the lie so his son would not suffer. The younger son may be generally viewed as the prodigal because of the way he squandered his resources. But I think the other sense of prodigal better points to the father, whose lavish, unstinting, unsparing, bounteous love towards each son spoke to their hearts and met their needs. Father's Day lets us pause to honor the prodigious fathers who give unsparingly of their hearts to their kids. But every moment of every day, our heavenly Father is reminding each one of us, "Dear, dear child of mine, you are ever with me. All that I have is thine. I will always love you. Open your heart and you will find that all that I have and all that I am is already there." Happy Father's Day! Find two blog posts that honor good fathers and good fathering: You wouldn't believe how far your appreciation goes when shared.
If you like what you see in this blog, please pass it along to your friends, fans and followers. Every "like", tweet and share touches many, many people. A full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. Please subscribe 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 6/16/2012 New Daily Blessings blog on the block There is a new blogger in the online neighborhood that I think you will love to meet. From Hollywood child actor to spiritual healer and teacher - from Syrian heritage and religious/cultural traditions to universal outlook, from teenage marriage and single parenthood to discovering individual completeness and security, from owning a floral design business to working as an insurance solicitor - LaMeice Harding, CSB, of Westlake, California, USA, has traveled many paths on her spiritual journey. Coming through the upheaval of a divorce, family tragedy and financial difficulties, she found Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures to be a lifeline of hope and healing. Science and Health gave her a key to holy Scripture that opened her to the Bible's answers to life's diverse challenges. She learned that God loved and blessed her and that her spirituality could not be hidden. From the moment she opened Science and Health, she began to practice what it teaches about the healing of hearts and minds and bodies through turning to God. LaMeice left the insurance field to become a full-time Christian Science practitioner in 1981. She has loads of published content that beautifully brings out her understanding of healing prayer. In 1991, LaMeice began teaching annual classes on Christian Science healing. And just recently, she entered the internet world of blogging on her new website. Check out her new blog, titled Daily Blessings for You! I am pretty sure you will love what you find. You wouldn't believe how far your appreciation goes when shared.
If you like what you see in this blog, please pass it along to your friends, fans and followers. Every "like", tweet and share touches many, many people. A full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. Please subscribe 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  A blog reader sent me the link to this 10 minute sermon given last Sunday by Nadia Bolz-Weber at her church, House for All Sinners and Saints, in Denver, Colorado, where she is the founding pastor. She makes some really helpful points, so I am passing it along to you as the Prayer MOJO post for this week. I recommend that you listen to, rather than read, her message, because preaching is a spoken art form. To hear her sermon, be sure your speakers are on, and click the button: If you prefer to read the sermon, the following is the intro. A link at the end will take you to her full text.  "A couple hours ago on Facebook, Catherine posted that she had just seen a snake on her hike. As her pastor I thought it best to reply, “If it starts talking, don’t listen.” "This likely came to mind since I was editing this very sermon about Adam and Eve. The story of the Garden of Eden is what is called an origin story and every culture has theirs. Origin stories tell us how the world came about and where we came from and other important things like why snakes don’t have legs. We think we might know our origin story really well, but in the Genesis account of the Garden of Eden, there actually is no mention of sin, or a fall, or Satan, or temptation, and I hate to break it to you but there wasn’t even an apple involved. Which means the cultural understanding of the story of the Garden of Eden is slightly corrupted. This is due in part to the countless paintings throughout the history of Western art which for some reason portray a tree and a snake and an extremely white Adam and Eve holding a Red Delicious. "See, for generations folks have called the tale of Adam and Eve and the serpent and the forbidden fruit “The Fall from grace” or “The story of Original Sin." "That's a little weird to me. Like, God created the heavens and the Earth and animals and it was like, this awesome all-inclusive primeval club-med for Adam and Eve – they ran naked through the warm sunlight of an idyllic paradise and everything was theirs for the taking – except for that one tree that they were told to steer clear of. And this absolute paradise in the garden between God and Humanity lasted approximately 20 minutes. Until Eve had a chat with a talking snake and then disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit. And because Eve, ate some fruit she was told not to, now all of humanity is cursed and this so-called original sin of Eve’s became sort of like a sexually transmitted disease.  "Because now, according to this version of what the story is about, every person born after that inherited original sin from Eve. That’s right. Eve messed it up for everyone by eating some piece of fruit God told her not to. Which feels kinda unfair to her and kinda unfair to us. But this is what we are told the story is about. "See, religion has taught many of us that the story of Adam and Eve is a story primarily about their disobedience. And that the fracture in the relationship between God and humanity is caused by us breaking God’s arbitrary little rules. So it feels like maybe religion was established just so we could be certain about what rules we need to follow in order for our relationship with God to be a loving, peaceful one. "But this week, after reflecting on several conversations I’ve had with many of you about your lives and identities and the struggles we all have to hear the truth of who we are, well, I started to wonder if the real damage to the relationship between Adam and Eve and God wasn’t the rule breaking nearly as much as it was in allowing themselves to believe lies about themselves and God. See, the serpent lied to them about who they were and who God was and like all the most dangerous lies, these lies the serpent told were just close enough to the truth to be really destructive...." Find full sermon. You wouldn't believe how far your appreciation goes when shared.
If you like what you see in this blog, please pass it along to your friends, fans and followers. Every "like", tweet and share touches many, many people. A full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. Please subscribe 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 6/13/2012 Get cooking with the Bible Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, wrote, “The Bible contains the recipe for all healing.” Ask any chef, and they will be able to tell you the moment they discovered their passion for cooking and realized that they would devote their life to it. Ask me, and I can tell you exactly when I fell in love with the Bible and made the shift from being a Christian with an interest in the possibilities of healing through prayer, to an actual scientist – a Christian Scientist – committed to the research and application of biblical principles in every aspect of my life. I was seventeen when I attended a conference on the Bible given by noted Near East scholar and lecturer B. Cobbey Crisler. I think it lasted for two days. He traced the symbolism of Light in the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. And I tell you, I felt the fire of holy inspiration kindle within me. It was like someone had not only given me a cookbook, but also the tools and skills to implement any recipe in that book. The spark of that conference set me on fire with the Bible’s message of healing.  I came home from the first day of the conference and sat on the kitchen floor, Bible open, explaining and teaching to my mom what I had just learned. And so the fire spread. The next day she attended the rest of the conference with me. I tell you, I felt what it must have been like for Jesus’ disciples on the road to Emmaus. They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?" I was inspired, yes. But it was more than that. I left that conference feeling empowered to take my Bible, study it, and apply the truth it contained to any life situation that could crop up. Up to that point, the Bible hadn’t held much interest for me. I knew many stories and had memorized loads of passages. But I hadn’t seen the relevance of it all in my own life yet. Now the Bible was no longer an ancient compilation of myth and mystery. Its message came alive with contemporary meaning. I could see the roadmap, the route and movement of the divine light of Christ leading humanity step by step from darkness and fear to spiritual illumination and healing.  By tracing the unfoldment of divine light from one book to the next, God was taken from the shadow of the belief in a severe and changeable “man-figure on a throne” separate from his creation, to the revelation of God as divine Love, as ever-present Spirit, “the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows." I was seventeen when I got it. It is this invariable divine Principle, this unfailing Love, this true God of Holy Scripture that heals. And all the ingredients and instructions are right there in the Bible. Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, puts the Bible’s tools squarely in your hands and shows you how to follow the recipe without fail. An old Gas Company ad once said, “Now, you are cooking with gas!” I say, get into your Bible and you’ll be cooking with a cleansing, healing fire that never burns out. You wouldn't believe how far your appreciation goes when shared.
If you like what you see in this blog, please pass it along to your friends, fans and followers. Every "like", tweet and share touches many, many people. A full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. Please subscribe 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 6/11/2012 Life without age or decay A year or so after my first husband passed on, I caught a glimpse of a white head and wrinkly face on the living room mantle. I took a closer look at the last photo taken of him. I had no recollection of him like that. He had been 34 years older than me; and yet, even after fifteen years of marriage, I had never noticed the age difference. In my eyes, he never acted or looked older. I showed my daughter the photo and asked if she remembered her dad as aging. She didn't, either. A “Portrait of Dorian Gray” moment? I don’t think so. My husband just didn’t see himself as an aging mortal. He didn’t live his life that way. So, we didn’t see him that way either. I can only remember him as strong and handsome, vibrant and active. The photo may have captured the world’s belief about age, but he never looked like that. Some months after the photo incident, I read an account of a woman whose child had drowned at about eighteen months. Seven or so years later, the mother still deeply grieved. Praying to have the heaviness lifted off her heart one afternoon, the mom fell asleep and dreamed. She saw a young woman, beautiful, who looked to be in her late twenties. The woman said to her, "I am happy, don't be sad." When she awakened, the grief was gone.  Had she seen her daughter in the dream? According to a mortal timeline, the child would have only been 8 or 9. But it occurred to the mom that she had seen her daughter – but not as a mortal or a ghost. She glimpsed the eternal idea of God, reflected by her daughter – beautiful, healthy and alive. She realized that while she, the mom, had believed her daughter had passed through mortal stages of infancy and toddlerhood, and that then her life had been brutally interrupted; that, in fact, she had only and always existed at her highest and best, as the mature and magnificent reflection of the divine, unending Life who is God. The Psalmist said of God, “You will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life.” (16:10,11) Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, "The radiant sun of virtue and truth coexists with being. Manhood is its eternal noon, undimmed by a declining sun." (246) If manhood (including womanhood) is the eternal noon of virtue and truth, and if this is the “path of divine Life” that God makes known to us, could it be that babyhood, adolescence and old age are simply mortal, limited views of a spiritual being that only ever exists at its highest and most beautiful?  A year or so after my husband passed on, I also dreamed of him one night. In the dream, he was preparing to work on the roof. In a brief conversation we said how much we loved each other. Then he climbed the ladder and disappeared. In this dream he looked exactly as I always saw him – active, healthy, brimming with purpose. I didn’t see an age or stage. In fact, he seemed ageless. Pulling these pieces together in thinking about true being, I have a whole new sense of existence at “eternal noon”. God’s man is not, and never has been, an immature mental, emotional or physical being. We are neither underdeveloped (babies), overdeveloped (aged), nor under a state of development (uncomfortable, agitated adolescents). God’s creation exists right now at its highest and best. That is how God, as Mind, creates and reveals each one of us, His perfect ideas. We are neither dimmed by decline nor needing to grow brighter to reach our noon. We are always the brightest and best. Each one of us! And this day is about recognizing some yet undiscovered (but very present) aspect of our brilliance – true spiritual being at its eternal noon - and simply letting it shine.  Lord, you have assigned me my portion and my cup; you have made my lot secure. The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will rest secure, because you will not abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand. (Psalm 16:5-11, NIV) If you like what you see in this blog, please share the link with your friends, fans and followers!
A full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. Please subscribe 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  I am just back from a short trip to Boston. I love long flights. They give me time to think. And to pray. And to sleep.
This time, high above the Atlantic, things rocked and rolled with heavy turbulence of the head banging sort. I was shaken from a nap, not only by the movement but, by the murmurs of fear from my fellow passengers. For a few moments, a growing terror seemed to be drawing all oxygen from the plane and was threatening to take my breath with it. But, instead of just succumbing to the fear, I fought back with the only tool I had to defeat it. I prayed. And as I prayed, I thought, "We are safe because we are not alone. We are safely hid with Christ in God where no evil or terror can reach." Within seconds the crazy shaking stopped and calm returned. I can't tell you how many times I have observed this on airplanes and in other situations where big shake ups have threatened to take me out. Once fear is faced and handled in prayer, turbulence in any form stops cold. Here are a few posts that take on the question of fear and how to handle it when things get tough. Also, find a link to a 17 minute podcast, entitled, "Hid with Christ in God" that was put together at the time of the 10th Anniversary of the World Trade Center bombing by the Christian Science Board of Directors. It is a real treat, offering their personal insights into handling intense fear. |
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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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© 2011-2025 Michelle Boccanfuso Nanouche, CSB. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy. Site updated Feb 4, 2025.
© 2011-2025 Michelle Boccanfuso Nanouche, CSB. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy. Site updated Feb 4, 2025.