What’s the thoughts you listen to most?
Is it the endless chatter of our thought or can we learn to listen to a voice that is the underlying voice of all Life?
Prayer as listening Leave a comment
Inspiration in the Night Leave a comment
Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night with worrying thoughts?
Listen how Susan Brightman from Boulder, Colorado, USA found her peace in this Daily Lift
listen here
‘I don’t know how to pray’ Leave a comment
What prayer is: For me, prayer is drawing close to the creator of the universe. It means getting intimate with God. It is an ongoing exploration of infinite spiritual space and ideas.
The how-to: Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, devotes an entire chapter to the subject of prayer in her textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. There we read, “Desire is prayer; …” (p. 1)…. Prayer is a yearning thing. An openness to the divine source of all good. Once we’re in that place of genuine openness, there are many ways to continue with prayer. Here are a few.
The prayer of petition: The Lord’s Prayer is a great example. In this prayer, Jesus instructs us to ask—to ask for grace, for our daily bread, for forgiveness, and to not be led into temptation.
In addition to the Lord’s Prayer, my daily prayer also includes asking God to guide me, to open my eyes to more of His goodness, to show me what it is like to be Her daughter, to teach me how to love Him and His creation more, and so on.
The prayer of affirmation and denial: This can also be called the prayer of “argument.” It is affirming God’s presence and power and denying the reality of anything unlike God, good.
The prayer of listening: Listening means learning to be silent so we can have what Mrs. Eddy calls “audience with Spirit” (Science and Health, p. 15). We silence the world’s chatter and open our hearts and thoughts to hear the ideas God, Mind, is imparting to us.
The prayer of gratitude: Sometimes just being grateful puts us in rapport with the Divine, or at least begins to. Gratitude tends to shift our attention away from whatever problems we’re facing toward an awareness, and even a conviction, of the allness of God.
The prayer of yielding: This is a wordless surrender, a “God, You take over” prayer. Yielding involves complete trust in God and a letting go of any sense of ourselves as separate from Him.
To read the entire article on ‘How to pray” by Deborah Huebsch click here
Classes with a Difference Leave a comment
Children today are growing up in a vastly different world to the one their parents experienced. The fast pace of technological change, the lure of social media, the prevalence of alcohol, the easy availability of drugs and even the sensational reporting of world events all put pressures on our youth. Today more than ever our young people need to have a strong moral compass to help them make wise decisions, and an inner resilience that helps them meet life’s challenges and rise above adversity. Hara Estroff Marano, Editor-at-Large for Psychology Today, wrote in her article “The Art of Resilience”: “At the heart of resilience is a belief in oneself—yet also a belief in something larger than oneself. Resilient people do not let adversity define them. They find resilience by moving towards a goal beyond themselves, transcending pain and grief …” So how do we fortify our children and develop in them an understanding of their innate ability to rise above adversity?
At the Christian Science Sunday School we do just that. In small groups with a teacher, students discuss the qualities that make life work. Lessons are based around the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus including the Lord’s Prayer. Students discuss the issues that come up in their own lives in light of these invaluable moral guides.
Classes for students from pre-school up to age 20 are held every Sunday at 10.00 am. Babies are cared for in the creche. New students are always welcome. The Sunday School is located with the Christian Science Church at the corner of Macquarie and Bligh Streets in Barton.
Freed from the past Leave a comment
When I graduated from college, I felt like everything I had known was completely uprooted. The daily structure of school was over. I moved to a new city and started a new job, and many meaningful relationships in my life changed.
During this time, I often went running on the beach. I loved the opportunity to appreciate my beautiful coastal surroundings, clear my thoughts, and think about God. But one day while running, instead of feeling inspired, I was hopelessly missing the past. I pitied myself for having to go through such a big change, and wished intensely that everything could’ve just stayed the same.
When I reached the end of the beach, I turned to start running back and saw the prints of my sneakers in the soft sand. That’s cool, I thought. What if, as I run back, I put each step in my previous footprint? It seemed like a fun little game.
To my surprise, I found that doing this was incredibly hard. Running while trying to place each step exactly where it had been on my initial run—well, I could barely do it! I ran awkwardly, my movement uneven and my freedom limited.
That’s when I realized: This was exactly what was happening in my life. Instead of embracing a new path, I was trying to “run” each day in the “footsteps” of the past.
At this moment, a passage from the Gospel of Matthew popped into my thoughts. It’s the one where Jesus says, “Neither do men put new wine into old bottles: else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and the bottles perish: but they put new wine into new bottles, and both are preserved” (9:17).
No wonder everything felt challenging and uncomfortable! I was desperately trying to “put new wine into old bottles.” Instead, I had to be willing to make new footprints—create a fresh path and welcome unfamiliar experiences.
Yet, with each step forward, I’ve remembered how important it is to face newness unafraid and with joyful expectation—and that we can do this because of what we know about the continuity of God’s goodness.
Listen to this Daily Lift by Karina Olsen here
or read the entire article Beating the graduation blues
Value that’s not contingent on circumstance Leave a comment
A woman I know spent her early years wishing she’d never been born. She knew she wasn’t wanted from day one. In fact, even before she was born she was referred to as “Calamity Jane.” Her family situation included mental illness, physical abuse, and alcoholism. As an adult, she still felt trapped by the circumstances of her birth……
Imagine her enormous relief when she read these words in the Bible and glimpsed that they were true: “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). This shows that we are all actually children of God. As such, we inherit the characteristics of our divine Parent: we are spiritual, valued, and whole.
The woman came to realize that God, who is good, loves us unconditionally and that our worth isn’t determined by genes or early childhood experiences. And she saw how recognizing these spiritual facts of our existence enables us to live them. Her life turned around, and instead of falling into the same destructive patterns her parents had, she became productive and successful.
The first line of the Lord’s Prayer shows us that God is “our Father.” In Science and Health, there is a spiritual interpretation of this line: “Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious” (p. 16). A life that expresses harmony because our divine Parent is all-harmonious? Wow! Is such a thing possible? Absolutely!
This article by Deborah Huebsch can be listened to or read in The Christian Science Monitor
Use your ‘superpower’ Leave a comment
