Cover letter from Skip

Dear People,

I'm so pleased and inspired by what you've written after learning of our dear Executive Administrator's passing. It certainly helps to explain why things have moved along smoothly and how our immediate needs for the Association have been met. The undergirding of unselfed love and the choosing of spiritual experience by members, guests and friends, rather than being drawn into the pit of sadness, has been tangibly felt and made a difference. It really does feel that we have taken a step forward rather than having lost ground. So I thought it would be useful to post some of your comments.

While we do not yet have a replacement for Bree's position, we have had such honest and unselfed willingness to serve temporarily, that things are moving along smoothly. A number of people have pitched in freely, and we are extremely grateful for the strength and growth of the Association that all this thought and effort makes evident.

One of you wrote that this seemed to be a new day or pivotal point for the association, and that Bree, too, had seen it that way. It's true! So let's work together in these weeks prior to Association, and then come together in the wondrous light of spiritual understanding for Association day on April 28. Let's expect to see Christ, Truth, anew!

With deepest affection,

Skip
Allison W. Phinney, C.S.B.

P.S. We will be sending more fruitage, and the topic letter and study references later this month and in early March.

I read the note from Skip this evening...

I read the note from Skip this evening and was most grateful to immediately know Bree’s oneness with God could never, and is never, for one moment, separated from Him. “God’s oneness is the supreme fact of all being.” (The quote from, “Not two but one”, by Skip, CS Journal, Feb. 1986.) It ties in with Mrs. Eddy’s absolute statement, “Any material evidence of death is false, for it contradicts the spiritual facts of being.” Hymns are a blessed comfort. Especially our Leader’s, of course, and #134. It is getting late and I need to close. I know all of us will be praying, watchful to protect our beloved Association, supporting Bree, and loving her family, and can know that they are in the everlasting arms of Love.

Wanted to share some of my thoughts in case they are helpful to you all as well...

This is sad news, and have been working through it. Wanted to share some of my thoughts in case they are helpful to you all as well. The 91st Psalm of the Bible Hymns 8,7,6 in that order, Hymn 278, first stanza, and one particular paragraph from 'Right When – Right Then', by Paul Stark Seeley, pasted below:

If the one liar insistently suggests that another mortal, dear to us, has died and that a burden of grief has settled on us, what is Truth's answer? This, that right when this event claimed to have a place in our, his, or her, experience, right then the only fact was and is God's uninvadable universe of indestructible Life and its forever continuing identities. In this universe mortal mind and its perishable sense of mortal selfhood, with its birth and death, are unknown. The alone verity was and is the unbroken continuity of divine manifestation, in which every individual expression of Life, God, must ever remain inseparable from every other in the eternal symphony of indivisible Love.

There is really no human sense to be made of this, but we can support everyone and Bree during this time and bring out each other's spiritual sense and provide the spiritual comfort that Life continues in that "eternal symphony of indivisible Love."

Today’s JSH Online Daily Thought reminds me that God has given us all we need...

Today’s JSH Online Daily Thought reminds me that God has given us all we need: “God is not moved by the breath of praise to do more than He has already done, nor can the infinite do less than bestow all good, since He is unchanging wisdom and love.” (SH 2: 8-11)

I will study those first couple of pages of the chapter on “Prayer” in Science and Health.

I’m not quite sure why, but today I was led to look up the article...

I’m not quite sure why, but today I was led to look up the article quoted from below. “To understand that man is spiritual is to continue in it whether or not the flesh has yet given evidence of responding to this spiritually scientific fact. The whole man, without handicap or finite definition of any kind, is surely divine Love's only concept of man. And it is this view that offers the deepest kind of healing to humanity. (“Everyone whole, everyone without handicap” by AWP, 3-14-1988 CS Sentinel)

The reality is that the need is already met by divine Love...

The reality is that the need is already met by divine Love, with infinite perfection, order, compassion, and joy. The qualities expressed in that job is Love personified (if we can say such a thing.). Last year, Bree’s call to me that another member of the Association would not be using her room was a healing message. And the room was offered to me for free!!! I don’t know why, but it said to me, I was loved, by you and Bree in the office, and by the Association member ( although no one knew that I had been doubting I could make it for weeks). Bree’s call broke that mesmerism. When I arrived at 6:00 am after an overnight flight, the little hotel was a gem and the people were friends, welcoming me. It was home. It seems to me this helps explain the dimensions of what the job really is.

The new venue in Dedham is a new day. Bree’s intent was always apparent – how to make the annual gathering easy, workable, affordable, comfortable for everyone, – those in the area and those coming in. That’s divine Love at work and divine Love is still at work right now. The belief that something is not getting done, or is neglected, is a lie. Confusion, disorder, sadness is no part of our association, the office or anyone in it, nor can any member believe that it is. It is no part of divine Love at work. Love is constantly working throughout the Association!! We are going to see evidence of it everywhere! Hymn 51. God could not make imperfect man His model infinite; Unhallowed thought He could not plan, Love’s work and Love must fit. Life, Truth and Love the pattern make, Christ is the perfect heir; The clouds of sense roll back, and show The form divinely fair. That’s a pretty good job description!! And it fills our thought right now!!! There is no vacuum. No space or position unfilled by divine Love and the perfect Christ idea.

This is what I opened to in the Bible...

This is what I opened to in the Bible shortly after getting the news about Bree's passing: "As one whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem [Home, heaven.]" (See Isaiah 66:13 & SH 589:15)

As I realize from what we were told of the situation, there was resistance to CS from Bree's family, I was looking up “resistance” and the like. I see now, that I still wasn't being active enough in my work. Since then I have prayed and written out a treatment for myself that I hope you don't mind me sharing with all of you. See below: I am not susceptible to mortal mind. Mind is one, the infinite God, Love, Spirit, Truth, All-in-all, the very "center and circumference of being." (SH 203:32) If "the brotherhood of man consist[s] of Love and Truth," then our brotherhood is substance. We can see God in His qualities expressed. We can see and feel the presence of God, the great protector, in all good. We can see and feel the presence of Life itself. Though we may seem to "see through a glass, darkly," (I Cor 13:12) we do see! There is no resistance to or friction in the One. The Ocean does not resist the drops of water and the water does not resist the ocean — they are together in oneness. The rays of the sun cannot leave and resist the sun. Their very self is oneness with the sun and its warmth and heat. (See John 17:20,21 & SH 361:16 & My. 344:3)

There is no cause outside of Love. There is no substance outside of Love. There is naught but the all good — God, Principle, the supreme and almighty. This Association, and the whole movement, trust and puts its hope in the Lord. This Cause, and the children of God, are "as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither cease in yielding fruit." (Jer. 17:7, 8)

Our Cause is not in matter. Christ improves beliefs and raises dull senses out of soil and gently into Spirit. It lifts each and every individual into the light and reveals them for what they truly are: God's image and likeness! There are no enemies of God or Her children. In the bright light of Truth and Love no shadows can cling. There are no children of God who can resist the light, resist God, attack the Cause — or the movement, or our Association, or individual practitioners and members. There are no children that can overturn the throne, the very foundation of all that is, Principle — Life, Truth, Love and Spirit. There are none that can even try to overturn the throne, for all that is, is "infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation." (SH 468:8-15) & “Principle and its idea is one, and this one is God, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent Being, and His reflection is man and the universe”. (SH 465:17-1 Principle) The only enemy we are resisting is a lie that there are men and women who hate the Mother-Father God. (Mis. 8:9-19) "There is but one real attraction, that of Spirit." (SH 102:9)

Our Association family, and even our universal family of all, is safe and secure for Mind is intelligence, the supreme authority and power, and intelligence is not reflected in cunning, or hate, or illegal practices. Mind and its ideas cannot be probed by error, for error has no intelligence and does not — and cannot ever — know and see, smell or taste, touch or feel God and ideas. God supplies infinite resources — its own substance, intelligence and all — through reflection. Neither our Association — nor our practitioners, nor our friends and family, nor any other Association — nor the Cause, can lack anything it needs in the days or in any moment. No mortal sense can still, stay, hinder, undermine, threaten or defeat Love and its idea. (Hymn 194) This Association and the Cause are one — and are an infinite family in and of Love. Love is the infinite power, the active presence, the heart of all, and the Principle of all that is! Each member of our Association, each student and child of the Cause, Christ Science, is Love expressed, Love's expression! (See SH 520:3-5 (to !) & SH 503:15)

We neither have, nor can be seen by, material sense (personal sense). There is no weakness in good, God, therefore no weakness in the Cause, the Association, nor in its individual children and representatives. Our practitioners and teachers are not known by error, unintelligence, and cannot be targets. But they are known by Spirit, and in and of the presence of God-with-us, therefore in and under the protection of Love. God is All-in-all and this is enough. Thank you Mother-Father for being the allness and all-good. Thank you for seeing us as you see us. Thank you for letting us see as you see, through reflection. Thank you for your perfect harmony, for heaven available now and here, heaven that not a single one of us has ever departed. Thou art the one altogether lovely. The center and circumference of being. (SH 203:32 & 262:14 & Un. 10:16) We are free and whole because thou are free and whole (Un. 48:5-11) This truly is enough — Amen!