A Senseless Death

Sycamore Gap on Hadrian’s Wall Trail

Around 25 years ago, I met Cal and Stephanie Piston when he was coaching my son’s club soccer team in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Recently I have enjoyed photographs of a vacation they took to England. While they were there, they walked the 70-plus miles known as Hadrian’s Wall. It brings me great joy to see this beautiful retired couple traveling and enjoying life in this way. Sixteen days ago, they posted photos to social media of an iconic tree on the trail they were hiking. The Sycamore Gap tree at Hadrian’s Wall is more than 200 years old and has been featured in movies. It is a landmark and a national treasure. Yesterday, someone vandalized it in the most terrible way possible: they cut it down during the night. Why would anyone do such a thing? It’s inexplicable. I join with countless others who must be feeling sadness tonight. Perhaps we will all find ways to nurture the earth today, maybe we’ll even hug a tree in memory of this lost life. 

“Nature voices natural, spiritual law and divine Love, but human belief misinterprets nature. Arctic regions, sunny tropics, giant hills, winged winds, mighty billows, verdant vales, festive flowers, and glorious heavens, — all point to Mind, the spiritual intelligence they reflect. The floral apostles are hieroglyphs of Deity. Suns and planets teach grand lessons. The stars make night beautiful, and the leaflet turns naturally towards the light.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 240:1-9

“There is a light in you which cannot die; whose presence is so holy that the world is sanctified because of you. All things that live bring gifts to you, and offer them in gratitude and gladness at your feet. The scent of flowers is their gift to you. The waves bow down before you, and the trees extend their arms to shield you from the heat, and lay their leaves before you on the ground that you may walk in softness, while the wind sinks to a whisper round your holy head.” 

A Course in Miracles W-156.4:1-4

Uprooting Shallow Roots

It often seems humanity is on the verge of becoming the best that it can be, and then something happens and we slide down, beginning our Sisyphean push back up the hill, always hoping we can reach the peak and live there. In contemplating our human condition today, I ran across this which was written by Mary Baker Eddy in the late 1800s. I know it’s still true and we must continue to correct error with truth …

“To my sense, the most imminent dangers confronting the coming century are: the robbing of people of life and liberty under the warrant of the Scriptures; the claims of politics and of human power, industrial slavery, and insufficient freedom of honest competition; and ritual, creed, and trusts in place of the Golden Rule, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.’”

Mary Baker Eddy - The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany

“All shallow roots must be uprooted, because they are not deep enough to sustain you. The illusion that shallow roots can be deepened, and thus made to hold, is one of the distortions on which the reverse of the Golden Rule rests. As these false underpinnings are given up, the equilibrium is temporarily experienced as unstable. However, nothing is less stable than an upside-down orientation. Nor can anything that holds it upside down be conducive to increased stability.” A Course in Miracles T-1.V.6:3-7

To Believe Or Not

This quote comes to mind often: “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." Soren Kierkegaard. To me, social media is a way to keep up with loved ones far away, people close by, and cool happenings either close by or far away. Of course, it is also the avenue for conspiracy theories and purveyors of horrid happenings. Intermittently, stories travel around our little town about something unexpected and ugly. I truly believe most folks think they are helping others by warning them about trouble. The same holds true on the national level when people warn us that Tom Hanks is a pedophile or that Hillary Clinton drinks baby’s blood. Hence, I come back to the sentiment in the Kierkegaard quote often: Am I being fooled by believing or not believing?? It has always seemed to me that truth just feels true. But with so much misinformation going around in everyone's heads, I think it's easier to be pulled into swirling, chaotic thought now than it used to be. It's rather like an approaching storm with its electric, exciting expectancy: will it be beautiful and cleansing or are we going to Oz? And, is that necessarily a bad thing? Hum...

"Science only can explain the incredible good and evil elements now coming to the surface. Mortals must find refuge in Truth in order to escape the error of these latter days. Nothing is more antagonistic to Christian Science than a blind belief without understanding, for such a belief hides Truth and builds on error." 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 83:6

“Hear, then, the one answer of the Holy Spirit to all the questions the ego raises: You are a child of God, a priceless part of His Kingdom, which He created as part of Him. Nothing else exists and only this is real. You have chosen a sleep in which you have had bad dreams, but the sleep is not real and God calls you to awake. There will be nothing left of your dream when you hear Him, because you will awaken. Your dreams contain many of the ego’s symbols and they have confused you. Yet that was only because you were asleep and did not know. When you wake you will see the truth around you and in you, and you will no longer believe in dreams because they will have no reality for you. Yet the Kingdom and all that you have created there will have great reality for you, because they are beautiful and true.” A Course in Miracles T-6.IV.6:1-8

Things Are Not Always As They Seem

Adventures in Mongolia

Photo by Aaron Springston

Often, things appear to be what they are not. Take this photograph, for instance. It appears as though this young man is doing something dangerous; jumping over a great abyss and courting disaster. He is not. This was taken in Mongolia when my son, Aaron, was there on a college trip. They spent 6 weeks in that country, with two weeks spent in the city and four in the wilderness. What an experience for them! Three teachers and 18 students were involved in this adventure. Aaron shaved his head because they knew they would have a period of time when showering was not possible, with miles of hiking and climbing up hills. They learned to help each other. They witnessed the Mongolian people invite them into their huts and offer food, when it appeared they had very little. They faced their fears and nurtured their compassionate natures. We can't all go on a trip such as this one, but we can reap the benefits by realizing what is really happening and what is simply an illusion being perpetuated by people wanting to mislead us. We can demonstrate compassion and love everyone, even while recognizing they may not seem deserving of it. There is nothing to forgive if there is no blame in the first place. Today I'm going to look closely at situations, desiring truth above all else. Namaste...

"The earth's diurnal rotation is invisible to the physical eye, and the sun seems to move from east to west, instead of the earth from west to east. Until rebuked by clearer views of the everlasting facts, this false testimony of the eye deluded the judgment and induced false conclusions." 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 121:17

“Reality can dawn only on an unclouded mind. It is always there to be accepted, but its acceptance depends on your willingness to have it. To know reality must involve the willingness to judge unreality for what it is. To overlook nothingness is merely to judge it correctly, and because of your ability to evaluate it truly, to let it go. Knowledge cannot dawn on a mind full of illusions, because truth and illusions are irreconcilable. Truth is whole, and cannot be known by part of a mind.” A Course in Miracles T-10.IV.2:1-6

Discerning Truth From Fiction

While watching a documentary on nutrition, they broached a topic which gave me pause to ponder. A woman said that if she decided to start a campaign to say that smoking is beneficial to our health, she could cherry-pick medical reports which supported her theory. This means she would take a sentence from here and there — for instance, “study on women who smoke shows they weigh less than women who don’t”, or something like that — and draw the conclusion that smoking is good for you. Then she said it’s pretty easy to get the media behind you, and she cited an instance of someone who wanted to promote chocolate as a weight-loss substance. They were able to get various tabloids to promote this idea. This all turns my thoughts to the silliness we see every day with political parties demonizing each other. As with nutrition, it is possible to find the truth behind statements. And there’s always intuition, that inner BS detector, which leads us to “greener pastures”. 

“The way to correct distortions is to withdraw your faith in them and invest it only in what is true. You cannot make untruth true. If you are willing to accept what is true in everything you perceive, you let it be true for you. Truth overcomes all error, and those who live in error and emptiness can never find lasting solace. If you perceive truly you are cancelling out misperceptions in yourself and in others simultaneously. Because you see them as they are, you offer them your acceptance of their truth so they can accept it for themselves. This is the healing that the miracle induces.” 

A Course in Miracles T-3.II.6:1-7

“We cannot fill vessels already full. They must first be emptied. Let us disrobe error. Then, when the winds of God blow, we shall not hug our tatters close about us.” 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 201:13-16

An Optical Delusion

Art by Andrea Kowch

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. The striving to free oneself from this delusion is the one issue of true religion. Not to nourish it but to try to overcome it is the way to reach the attainable measure of peace of mind.”
Albert Einstein to a friend in a letter circa 1950.

“As mortals give up the delusion that there is more than one Mind, more than one God, man in God’s likeness will appear, and this eternal man will include in that likeness no material element.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 191:4-7

“God’s Oneness and ours are not separate, because His Oneness encompasses ours. To join with me is to restore His power to you because we are sharing it. I offer you only the recognition of His power in you, but in that lies all truth. As we unite, we unite with Him. Glory be to the union of God and His holy Sons! All glory lies in Them because They are united. The miracles we do bear witness to the Will of the Father for His Son, and to our joy in uniting with His Will for us.”
A Course in Miracles T-8.V.3:1-7

A Moment of Lift

Eureka Women

Photo credit: Richard Quick 

Few things bring me more sorrow than to hear of a fine woman running for public office being called a baby killer. I read a book by Melinda Gates titled "The Moment of Lift". In this informative and frank writing, she tells of visiting African countries and realizing what was holding people in their poverty-stricken lives. She saw women carrying water on their heads and babies in their arms, while the men sat and smoked and told stories. She talked to women about their lives, and time and again it came back to the fact that they had no control over how many babies they had. Maybe they were too young, or too old, or too sick to be having a baby, but they had no choice. Oddly enough, many were expected to have as many children as possible because most of them would die. What is the solution? Better health care, more abundant birth control, and education are the keys to uplifting these and other societies. Her foundation has been working toward these goals for more than a decade. For those who believe abortion should be illegal, I urge them to watch the PBS series, "Call the Midwife". This is a show about Catholic nuns and nurses dealing with the same issues -- lack of birth control, education, and health care -- but in 1960s England. What a difference it has made to get these issues out into the open, discuss them, and find solutions! No one wants to abort a pregnancy, and it hurts me when I hear people say that Democrats love abortions. This type of disconnect must stop. How? Education, empathy, facts, truth, love: those are the antidotes as I see them. We must talk about these things and understand that organizations such as Planned Parenthood contribute to lower abortion rates, not higher. Let's choose love over fear!

"Think of this, dear reader, for it will lift the sackcloth from your eyes, and you will behold the soft-winged dove descending upon you. The very circumstance, which your suffering sense deems wrathful and afflictive, Love can make an angel entertained unawares." 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 574:25

“He will remove all faith that you have placed in pain, disaster, suffering and loss. He gives you vision which can look beyond these grim appearances, and can behold the gentle face of Christ in all of them. You will no longer doubt that only good can come to you who are beloved of God, for He will judge all happenings, and teach the single lesson that they all contain.” 

A Course in Miracles W-151.10:1-3