“I learned that human planning…can obscure the simplicity of the Christ”

In the past weeks, while we all have been sheltering in place, numerous friends and family members have told me they feel “disoriented.” Days slip into weeks, weeks slip into months, and all time seems the same. Familiar routines, workdays, commutes, and forms of communication that once served as markers in time and space have disappeared. There is plenty of free-floating fear and uncertainty to handle.

This is a telltale sign of animal magnetism, a belief in a directionless and destructive power apart from God, a power with modes and methods that try to pull focus away from the reality of substantial good and towards illusive chaos and inharmony. I know I’ve prayed with many others along the lines of the hymn: “Your lovingkindness is a wondrous thing; / We will shelter safely underneath Your wing.” (Hymn 528:2)

The privilege of attending regular Wednesday and Sunday Christian Science services online has been a wonderful way to stabilize thought and focus our prayers for the world. I worked to understand my true “orientation” to help counter the persistent belief of disorientation, and I have been grateful for the opportunity to learn more about our direction and orientation as taught in Christian Science, and how that rock-solid foundation can help us and the world when everything around us seems chaotic and disorienting.

Over the last two years I have been working very hard to find a new direction in my career and business life. During this time, I learned that my true orientation was not a path, outline, or direction that could ever be determined, limited, understood, or charted by mortal mind. Aligning with omnipresent Spirit to find true orientation demands humility and more listening.

My career had been fulfilling, but I felt it was time for something else. I worked with a practitioner, and I took the necessary practical steps to transition away from my very stable employment, which I had pursued for the last 40 years. I thought it was time to start a new chapter. My wife and I moved from the East Coast to the West Coast to explore a different setting and new opportunities.

At the same time, I was very careful to fulfil every conceivable human obligation to my old firm, and I continued to support it, developing business, transitioning clients, and doing actual client work for 18 months, even though I was no longer receiving a salary. The firm was very grateful and respectful of my plans. In the beginning, it felt like I was constructing a detailed path and direction by trying to be a good partner and contributing to the firm and the younger employees, while at the same time outlining the precise terms of my escape from the corporate world.

However, during this transition period I wasn’t satisfied, and I kept thinking that my new direction should be something else, something different, more exciting or fulfilling. After pursuing some short-term ideas and opportunities, I felt worn down physically and mentally, a bit like Mrs. Eddy’s traveler:

“… going westward for a pleasure-trip. The company is alluring and the pleasures exciting. After following the sun for six days, he turns east on the seventh, satisfied if he can only imagine himself drifting in the right direction. By-and-by, ashamed of his zigzag course, he would borrow the passport of some wiser pilgrim, thinking with the aid of this to find and follow the right road.” (SH 21:25)

So, I was very surprised several months ago to receive a call from my old firm asking for help. It was the last thing I expected, and it wasn’t something I would have thought would have been a progressive step. I gladly accepted and returned East. I have been able to serve and provide exactly the help needed at exactly the right time, and I have grown and learned lessons in patience and humility at the same time. My health has improved, and I’ve had healings of sickness and severe physical discomfort along the way. I learned that human planning, coming and going and “rushing around smartly” (Mis. 230:12) can obscure the simplicity of the Christ and postpone the quiet listening time we all need to stay on the pathway of progressive good, which provides dominion over disorientation. This quiet time counteracts the loss of focus animal magnetism depends upon for its illusive existence.

I saw that it is not about where we are, what we are doing, or even what’s happening in the world around us, no matter how fearful or uncertain the times appear to be. It is very much about knowing our oneness with God and then taking the next step by knowing our neighbor must be one with God as well. In that true view, no disorientation, fear, or chaos is possible. Our thinking becomes more closely aligned to God. It moves away from mortal mind’s outlines, predictions, plans, and false views of others. As Mrs. Eddy writes:

“The Christian Scientist keeps straight to the course. His whole inquiry and demonstration lie in the line of Truth; hence he suffers no shipwreck in a starless night on the shoals of vainglory.... Fidelity to his precepts and practice is the only passport to his power; and the pathway of goodness and greatness runs through the modes and methods of God.” (Mis: 268:14–17; 270:23)

I am very grateful for the Association and for the abundance of healing reports from the members, from our Association readings and from A Century of Christian Science Healing. Mortal mind would have us quickly forget and pass over healings large and small. That suppression and oppression cannot stand in the face of the constant inflow of healings Association Day is based upon. Those healing reports make me appreciate and focus on the essential evidence of active healing in my life and my community.