SPIRITUAL SUPPORT—AT EVERY TURN
By:
Ginny Luedeman
July 10, 2006
CS Sentinel
Just recently, my husband and I were helping my
cherished 93-year-old friend Margaret move into an assisted living
facility. She was unable to sort her personal belongings, so I was
given the charge of going through her things and picking out what she
should keep and what we’d deliver to her family.
Photos of
Margaret as a little girl filled old boxes, nestled in with a
porcelain doll, a baby spoon, or other priceless relics. I could
barely recognize Margaret in those young pictures. Sometimes a look
in her eye was familiar—or might it just have been my imagination
confirmed by the penciled name on the back of the photo? At any rate,
I was struck by all of the changes Margaret has seen over the course
of her long life. And this started me thinking about my own
experiences.
At times, womanly changes have been especially
challenging for me. Monthly periods, pregnancy, menopause, and aging
have all required deep prayer in order for me to maintain buoyancy
and go about my normal day, meeting the demands of a busy life.
For
example, my closets have been full of a range of clothes sizes
because my weight has often fluctuated. I’ve been slowly learning
to trust that the ideas I get through my spiritual study and in
prayer to God are more satisfying than indulging in eating “comfort
food.” But this lesson hasn’t come in a flash of light. It’s
been a day-by-day process of working to see myself in a more
spiritual way, as an eternal expression of God instead of as a
changing mortal woman on a path leading toward death.
Christian
Science has been like a golden thread of ideas that guide along the
way. It has literally held me together when it felt as if things were
falling apart. I’ve found Mary Baker Eddy’s primary work, Science
and Health, to be full of support for women (as well as men!). It
proclaims our right to find freedom from physical demands and
changing lives. Mrs. Eddy’s writings explain that each of us is an
individual expression of God, who is divine Love.
We each have an
unchanging goodness, a spiritual identity that we’re free to
discover and enjoy. The Christ, coming to us as a conviction of God’s
powerful love, is here to guide and support us in this discovery. As
our spiritual identity unfolds in our lives, we let go of limitations
and fears. God’s love lifts us from the limits of changing
mortality to permanent harmony and freedom.
I especially love this
passage and pray with it often: “The recipe for beauty is to have
less illusion and more Soul, to retreat from the belief of pain or
pleasure in the body into the unchanging calm and glorious freedom of
spiritual harmony” (Science and Health, pp. 247-248). Soul is used
here as another name for God. Soul’s qualities include joy,
patience, creativity. They individualize us without imposing any
physical limitations. These spiritual qualities are everywhere, and
they find expression in us through what we think and how we act.
Like tuning in to a radio station, we can tune in to Soul’s
qualities. Take joy, for example. Everyone has access to all of the
joy he or she could ever want because it’s from God—there’s as
much joy to tune in to as there are radio waves. And each individual
expresses joy in his or her own special way.
Or patience. I once
heard a story about a famous artist who was asked where he got all of
his patience. He replied that he didn’t have any more than anyone
else, but that he just used all of it.
But, you might ask, how do
you tune in to Soul when you’re faced with trying changes in life?
One way, I find, is to claim for myself that whatever might be
lacking is at hand—knowing that Soul is already providing it to me,
in that very moment. Our spiritual nature doesn’t fluctuate. And as
we grow in our understanding of Soul, we will discover more of its
unchanging goodness.
When I first began to experience menopause, I
found myself becoming quite distracted by all of the accompanying
bodily changes. The frequency and intensity of the hot flashes I was
experiencing increased until, finally, I realized that I needed to
pray instead of just waiting them out.
Whenever I began to feel
thrown off balance, I resolved to hang on to the thought of gratitude
that Soul’s goodness was expressed through me. I claimed the right
to feel this gratitude right when the body was telling me I wasn’t
in control of what I was feeling. I just refused to go along with the
idea that I was a helpless victim. I said “no” to the feelings
that were oppressive, and accepted my right to calm control as a
loved child of God. I affirmed that what God was giving me was only
good and that I couldn’t be robbed of my joy and peace. I
approached each hot flash as an opportunity to lean on God’s love
and to grow in my spiritual trust and gratitude. The incidences
lessened in intensity and frequency. But more significant, they
ceased to bother me.
Drugs designed to treat mood swings, hot
flashes, and so forth, can’t get to the core of the trouble,
because they approach the situation from the standpoint that we are
material beings. Only as we cherish and embrace the truth of our
spiritual identity, can we count on permanent relief from suffering
and find lasting strength.
Instead of looking at the body to see
how I feel, I now find that it brings peace to ask God how I am, and
then listening for and holding to the higher, spiritual ideas that
the divine Mind gives me. In this way, change of any kind becomes
more and more a wonderful time of finding a deeper strength and joy
through a greater reliance on divine Love’s care.
I also find
that it helps to know that, through spiritual understanding, the body
is my servant and not my master. I would never let a “servant”
push me around. Science and Health encourages us to use the
“God-given authority” we’ve been given: “Take possession of
your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of
Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of
this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed
on man” (p. 393).
“Knowing that God gives us the right and the
ability to control our thoughts and our bodies and lives puts us in
the driver’s seat. No matter what changes we seem to go through,
our spiritual nature as God’s child never changes. We are always
safe in our Father-Mother God’s constant love.
“Copyright©2004 The Christian Science
Publishing Society, All rights reserved, reproduced with permission”.
Ginny Luedeman
Copyright � 2004 ginnyl.com. All rights reserved.