Bullying a Wave

photo credit: Heather Peters

ACIM Workbook Lesson #64:

"Let me not forget my function"

“Have you ever tried to bully a wave in the ocean?” This is the question a 104-year-old Buddhist nun asks her great granddaughter in a beautiful novel I’m reading, A Tale For the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki. They had just gone into a store to get food for a picnic on the beach. A group of gangster girls were hanging around outside the store and had harassed them as they went in. When they came out the old woman bowed deeply to the group of young women before walking away. When they got onto the train the nun wondered aloud if it was a holiday of some sort, mentioning that the girls were all dressed so brightly and seemed so happy. The granddaughter tried to explain that they were gang colors and that they were being derisive in their words and laughter. The grandmother didn’t see this as the fact and asked her young charge if she had ever tried to bully a wave, explaining that no matter how much you hit at it or yell into it, it stays what it is. That is its function, and that is our function. Namastè ~~~ 

Mary Baker Eddy quote:

“Can we gather peaches from a pine-tree, or learn from discord the concord of being? Yet quite as rational are some of the leading illusions along the path which Science must tread in its reformatory mission among mortals. The very name, illusion, points to nothingness.”  Science & Health Page 129:24-29