Cooking With Love

Have you noticed that when you feel like cooking, the food seems to turn out tastier? When my boys were young, they joked that I should write a cookbook called “Just Barely Edible”. And they were correct! I was usually rushed, having other things I would rather be doing, and the meals were perfunctory at best. I heard one of my “gurus” talking about people’s emotions going into food, and one of the reasons so many people are angry is that their food is being prepared by fearful, angry people. There is only one place in town where I truly enjoy eating out, and when I pause to think about it, the owner/chef is a very calm and joyous person. Our food supply chain is questionable, too, and it seems the vegetables from happy farmers taste better than mass-produced factory farm output. Our thoughts are important and where we spend our dollars reflects those thoughts. Have a beautiful day, dear Friends …

“Did the careless doctor, the nurse, the cook, and the brusque business visitor sympathetically know the thorns they plant in the pillow of the sick and the heavenly homesick looking away from earth, — Oh, did they know! — this knowledge would do much more towards healing the sick and preparing their helpers for the ‘midnight call,’ than all cries of ‘Lord, Lord!’”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 364:32-6

“Put out your hand, and see how easily the door swings open with your one intent to go beyond it. Angels light the way, so that all darkness vanishes, and you are standing in a light so bright and clear that you can understand all things you see. A tiny moment of surprise, perhaps, will make you pause before you realize the world you see before you in the light reflects the truth you knew, and did not quite forget in wandering away in dreams.”
A Course in Miracles W-131.13:1-3

Obedience to Authority?

Van Gogh’s Chair - 1888

Obedience to Authority, a book written by a man named Stanley Milgram, contains ideas worth examination. This man performed a number of experiments during the 1970s. He was prompted by the horrors perpetrated during Hitler’s reign, wanting to know why people would hurt or kill others for no reason other than being told to do so. He made subjects believe they were administering shocks to someone when questions were answered incorrectly. Sometimes they even believed that someone had passed out from the pain, yet they continued to hit the shock button when the subject didn’t answer right away. They didn’t know it was a set up; they thought they were hurting someone else badly, but continued to do so. These obedience experiments are cited in university classes and are referred to time and again when atrocities occur around the world. I think now is an excellent time to think about the reasons for this blind obedience. Perhaps it’s time to revisit Thoreau’s Civil Disobedience?

“The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity. Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away. Ignorance of God is no longer the stepping-stone to faith. The only guarantee of obedience is a right apprehension of Him whom to know aright is Life eternal.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page Vii:14-20

“The ego’s laws are strict, and breaches are severely punished. Therefore give no obedience to its laws, for they are laws of punishment. And those who follow them believe that they are guilty, and so they must condemn. Between the future and the past the laws of God must intervene, if you would free yourself. Atonement stands between them, like a lamp shining so brightly that the chain of darkness in which you bound yourself will disappear.”
A Course in Miracles T-13.IX.1:4-8

Providing Knowledge and Understanding

Christa Case Bryant recently became editor of the Christian Science Monitor. Her first editorial reminded me of the original purpose of the daily newspaper, which was founded in 1908. The newspaper became a weekly news magazine a few years back, and maintains its daily presence by way of the internet. At the turn of the last century, our country was being gutted by robber barons, and yellow journalism was rampant. No one knew what to believe and propaganda ruled the day. Now, as then, there’s a great hunger for journalism to speak the truth. As the new editor states: “Our goal is not to tell you what to think, but to give you the essential knowledge and understanding you need to come to your own well-reasoned views.” It will carry on its mission, as Mary Baker Eddy stated in the first issue: “The object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.” For more information, please visit their website.

“Smart journalism is allowable, nay, it is commendable; but the public cannot swallow reports of American affairs from a surly censor ventilating his lofty scorn of the sects, or societies, of a nation that perhaps he has never visited.”
Mary Baker Eddy - Miscellaneous Writings 297:10-14

“As we give thanks, the world unites with us and happily accepts our holy thoughts, which Heaven has corrected and made pure. Now has our ministry begun at last, to carry round the world the joyous news that truth has no illusions, and the peace of God, through us, belongs to everyone.”
A Course in Miracles W-151.17:2-3

Reflections of Truth

Photo From Friends’ Visit to New Zealand

Many, perhaps most, self-help books concentrate on how to change behaviors. The two disciplines I study focus on how to rid ourselves of barriers in our thoughts which keep us from being our true selves. What if everything we deem to be wrong about ourselves would simply melt away if we actually knew that we are the image and likeness of our Source? Mary Baker Eddy defines God as Mind, Spirit, Soul, Principle, Life, Truth, Love. We are the reflection of these words. And they are capitalized because the same words with a small letter at the beginning would simply be the ego’s creations, mortal mind’s confusing interpretations  — of which there are many! When I notice myself falling into the little letter mode of thought, I try not to berate myself, but simply turn thought to a higher level than where the world continually encourages it to be. Let’s be gentle with our corrections, just as Love is. 

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it. It is not necessary to seek for what is true, but it IS necessary to seek for what is false."

A Course in Miracles, Text, page 338

“Correct material belief by spiritual understanding and Spirit will form you anew." 

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health 425:24

Happiness is Love. Full Stop

Arthur C Brooks has spent decades studying happiness. Things which bring us pleasure in our early years are not necessarily what nurtures us in our later ones. In his recent book, “From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life”, this columnist for The Atlantic reports, “Those who are unhappiest later in life are often the strivers on a continual quest for money, power, pleasure, and prestige.” Mr. Brooks also teaches a class on happiness at Harvard Business School. He tells us what most of us already know: “The world gives you a bogus formula for happiness. No 1: Use people. No. 2: Love things. No 3: Worship yourself. And it actually seems right because it’s so close to the truth. It just mixes up the nouns and the verbs. The right formula, based on all of the best neuroscience, clinical, and social scientific research, is simply: Use things, love people, and worship the divine. You can boil down all of the studies of happiness to five words. Those words are: Happiness is love. Full stop.”

"Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love. It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it."
Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 57:18-21

“Happy dreams come true, not because they are dreams, but only because they are happy. And so they must be loving. Their message is, ‘Thy Will be done,’ and not, ‘I want it otherwise.’”
A Course in Miracles T-18.V.4:1-3

What’s So Difficult About Equality?

Throughout the last seven decades, I’ve watched women and so-called people of color take their rightful place as functioning members of society. It hasn’t been much longer than that when women were not allowed to vote in elections, and only since 1962, if you happened to be a black woman in the United States. Nowadays, most women can hold any job and live any way they choose. It amazes me that men feel threatened by this, but now I’m seeing that many are — and it’s become quite a problem for our society. I’ve never believed that men are put-upon, but observance and thoughtful articles are opening my eyes to what has happened. The most startling statistic is that 70% of the suicides in 2019 were white men. Add to that the fact that only 40% of college students are male. Between 2019 and 2020, men who died from drug- and alcohol-related causes spiked 35%! There are numerous reasons for this, of course. Some have simplistic explanations, such as they think women have stolen their jobs and they now have no purpose. I think it’s true that men feel lost in the current climate of changing gender roles, but I also believe it’s mental conditioning which has caused them to feel this way. This topic will be revisited soon, but for now, I’ll end with a quote from Andrew Yang: “We need to be needed. We imagine ourselves as builders, soldiers, workers, brothers — part of something bigger than ourselves.”

“…man is a generic term. Masculine, feminine, and neuter genders are human concepts.”

Mary Baker Eddy - Science & Health Page 516:29

“As a man and also one of God’s creations, my right thinking, which came from the Holy Spirit or the Universal Inspiration, taught me first and foremost that this Inspiration is for all.”
A Course in Miracles T-5.I.4:5-6

The Abolishment of War

“The man of imagination, maintaining the absolutely neutral position of Principle, with no pro-this or anti-that, is the one who will discover steps and techniques for communication leading to the abolishment of war.” 
We Are the World We Walk Through (or Christian Science, Re-explored) by Margaret Laird

“The memory of God comes to the quiet mind. It cannot come where there is conflict, for a mind at war against itself remembers not eternal gentleness. The means of war are not the means of peace, and what the warlike would remember is not love. War is impossible unless belief in victory is cherished. Conflict within you must imply that you believe the ego has the power to be victorious. Why else would you identify with it? Surely you realize the ego is at war with God. Certain it is it has no enemy. Yet just as certain is its fixed belief it has an enemy that it must overcome and will succeed.” A Course in Miracles - T-23.I.1:1-