A privately owned space – a gift for the community.
For those who have not been to Boston, here is a little peek into the architectural brilliance and the beauty of The Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston.
Click here for a 3 minute view of the plaza and church.
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Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p261:4)
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Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p124)
A Christian Science Perspective article from the Christian Science Monitor by Yetel Macías Reyes
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I became acquainted with Christian Science a little over a decade ago. Like many people, I was searching for the truth. I had taken courses and read books about different religions and philosophies, and I was practicing a philosophy that basically said I was God: If my thoughts were good, things would go well. If not, they would go badly. This was a heavy burden on my shoulders.
I was facing tremendous challenges at the time: a job loss, great loneliness, and the care of a young daughter with a chronic respiratory disease. As a single mother, I felt overwhelmed.
Click here to read the full article or listen above.
Whosoever believeth that wrath is righteous or that divinity is appeased by human suffering, does not understand God. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p22:27)
God is Love. (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p2:23)
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Spiritual living and blessedness are the only evidences, by which we can recognize true existence and feel the unspeakable peace which comes from an all-absorbing spiritual love.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy p264)
A member of the Canberra Christian Science community writes …
Sometimes friends ask me why I am a Christian Scientist. I tell them it’s because it brings me both joy and comfort. With it I feel more able to cope with the challenges life inevitably presents me with. I feel as though it helps me to make better informed decisions, to recognise the qualities that make life ‘work right’, and it teaches me that there are spiritual laws that if followed bring harmony, healing and a sense of security to my life.
The Bible tells me that God is Love (I John 4:8). It also tells me that man (meaning all of us) is the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1: 26, 27). It is reassuring to know that my true nature is Love which is expressed in a myriad of shades – in gentleness, kindness, forgiveness, selflessness, unselfishness, affection, empathy, generosity, loyalty, courtesy and many more. I know from the Bible also that God’s love is unconditional. It is not influenced by race, or religion, or gender. The rule of Love then is that we also must love without bias. This is in fact the Golden Rule: to love another as oneself. Is this not the kind of thinking that would make the world a better place? Is this not what the world needs more of? Love is not just a feeling, it is in fact a law. When we follow this law of Love then we bring harmony into our lives.
Through Christian Science I have also come to know God as Truth and infinite Mind. I have learned to take each of these descriptors and to live them – to be honest because I am the reflection of Truth; to be thoughtful and act intelligently because I am the reflection of Mind. When these spiritual qualities become my core values then this spiritual discernment enables me to make better decisions when choosing friends and a life partner, or employment, and even the politicians I vote for. These are just some of the reasons I love being a student of Christian Science.
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A member of the Christian Science community in Canberra shared his thoughts on how Christian Science helps him:
Recently I have found myself being very busy trying to achieve the many goals I have set myself. These tasks seemed important and usually came with deadlines. In doing this I have realised that I have let go of my usual focus on spiritual development. As a Christian Scientist there is a commitment to the daily prayer (Church Manual p41):
Thy kingdom come
Let the reign of divine Truth, Life and Love be established in me, and rule out of me all sin
And may Thy Word enrich the affections of all mankind
And govern them
I found that I had almost just been saying the words to the daily prayer, for example, without really having a full commitment to it. I had been studying the Daily Bible Lesson but not with the same degree of commitment or focus as a result of this busy work. I had foregone the focus and commitment to developing spiritually and instead had been focusing on getting this busy work done. The busy work itself had taken over my attention.
Even the busy work – those little goals – weren’t being achieved with the same degree of freedom, the same degree of perfection, I had previously been able to achieve. When I had taken a more spiritual or a more focused attention to the spiritual side of my life there didn’t appear to be such a focus on busy work or human activity, and the busy work didn’t seem so difficult.
In my commitment to Christian Science there is the understanding it is more than just the Daily Prayer or doing the Daily Bible Lesson. It is a commitment to a way of living and that way of living has an impact on what happens. In her textbook Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes (p423):
The Christian Scientist, understanding scientifically that all is Mind, commences with mental causation, the truth of being, to destroy the error. This corrective is an alterative, reaching to every part of the human system. According to Scripture, it searches “the joints and marrow,” and it restores the harmony of man.
The inharmony on display because of the busy work had been brought about by my neglect of the spiritual recognition that all is brought about by mental causation. I had to remember to trust God to give me the order of work – He knew what was important and what needed to be done in what order. It was necessary to find that quiet mental place to pray; to silence the material senses and intrusive noises. Once again I turned to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, where Mary Baker Eddy writes (p15):
In order to pray aright, we must enter into the closet and shut the door. We must close the lips and silence the material senses. In the quiet sanctuary of earnest longings, we must deny sin and plead God’s allness. We must resolve to take up the cross, and go forth with honest hearts to work and watch for wisdom, Truth, and Love. We must “pray without ceasing.” Such prayer is answered, in so far as we put our desires into practice. The Master’s injunction is, that we pray in secret and let our lives attest our sincerity.
I shall be forever grateful for Christian Science. The study of Christian Science and application to my life has allowed me to make significant long lasting and beneficial changes to my way of thinking and living. Christian Science is to me, an applied, practical science that can be used everyday in one’s life. The application of Christian Science in this instance has allowed me to be free from the constraints of ‘busyness’ and to be much more productive both materially and spiritually.
Throughout her life, Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, lived in an area of the United States prone to climatic extremes. Having grown up on a farm, she was certainly aware of the impact that weather conditions could have on people’s economic and physical well-being. And in teaching Christian Science, she identified weather forces as subordinate to God.
Irving Tomlinson was a student of Eddy and worked on her staff for a number of years. He described her approach to the weather this way:
Mrs. Eddy taught us that weather conditions are not beyond God’s control, and that they can be corrected through right prayer. She made it clear that Christian Scientists are not to attempt to control or govern the weather. We should know that God governs the weather and no other influence can be brought to bear on it. She said we are to be particularly watchful to guard against any disastrous effects of storms.
Eddy’s correspondence and other writings indicate that she specified violent weather elements in particular as requiring ongoing prayerful attention. …
Clara Knox McKee was Eddy’s personal maid in 1906 and 1907. She recounted an experience that helps to illustrate further the distinction Eddy made between attempting to control the weather and holding it as a subjective state of human consciousness:
One day Mrs. Eddy called her students into her study and pointed to a very black cloud, shaped like a cornucopia, coming toward the house in direct line with her front study window. She asked each one to go to a window and face it, and to realize that there were no destructive elements in God’s creation. While the cyclone came whirling straight toward Pleasant View, before it reached within a mile or so, it parted and went around Concord and into the mountains, doing very little damage in our neighborhood. …
Mary Baker Eddy’s convictions regarding God, prayer, weather, and climate grew out of her Christianity. As a student of the Bible, she read in the Hebrew Scriptures accounts of prophetic appeals to God in times of drought. She knew well the Gospel stories of Jesus Christ stilling a storm on the Sea of Galilee. Unlike some others, however, Eddy came to believe that these incidents were neither miracles nor interruptions of the natural order. Instead, she classified them as demonstrations of divine law, which overruled what she identified as the limitations associated with laws of nature.
These statements are from an answer compiled by the researchers at the Mary Baker Eddy Library (menu option: Questions). The complete answer to the question: What did Mary Baker Eddy say about the weather? can be read here:
Christian Science Canberra 