“How God is bigger than the whole human situation.”

1. Creation is progress, "the finite ... yield[ing] to the infinite," "advancing," rising, which is kind of exciting, to think of God's creation going on all around us. Every time we see God's power, that's the first chapter of Genesis, happening right here. Making God's kingdom clearer and clearer. Moreover, it means that when there's a healing or a revelation, it has Happened. That idea can't unhappen or go away, because God has created it.

2., 3. For a time I have been feeling like the world is impossible to live in, that it is evil and disheartening. And also by correlation that I must be that way too. This chapter finally shows a way forward - abandon the world of matter and go into the world of Spirit, God, instead. And the way I just said it here may sound like a basic thought but the way it's expressed in this chapter, the idea is finally starting to penetrate and be comprehensible. In part because Mrs. Eddy describes, in very recognizable language, the way mortal life feels so useless and unsatisfying, and the way it leads to dissatisfaction and involuntary hypocrisy.  I was able to say, Ohhhh, that's pretty close to how I've been feeling sometimes. And the solution isn't just to think different but to act different. To BE the spiritual idea of God that I am. To radically deny the evidence of the messed-up-ness of the world. The chapter is interesting because there's this constant binary. You're either relying on Spirit, or matter. And it kept on going back and forth, showing how matter is useless, and Spirit is full of infinite possibilities. And you either live in one world, or the other - rely on one, or the other. (In a sense, the chapter is a long version of the “scientific statement of being”.) And what I so much need is the transfiguration of relying on Spirit, and being spiritual. I want to take off any shackles, I want to "rise spontaneously, even as light emits light without effort." (p. 262)  And I want to see and acknowledge that "Eternal Truth is changing the universe." (p. 255)

Some experiences of prayer and healing this year:

A woman whose blog I read has a gorgeous Maine Coon cat, and was posting in increasing fear as the cat had an emergency medical situation. And I don't know the person, but she clearly loves the cat so much, and he's clearly a really wonderful creature, and while it would have been inappropriate to pray FOR the cat or the woman (who is not religious), it seemed right to hold clearly in my own thought the truth of the situation. Especially because I could tell she was afraid, and I know what that kind of fear is like, and I wasn't really afraid because of what I had been learning, so I felt like I ought to use that separation to affirm the truth that I knew was true.  I prayed about the cat being "harmless, useful and indestructible" (SH, p. 514), and I prayed to know that God, Love was with the cat right there in the veterinary hospital. And I prayed a lot with the “scientific statement of being”, especially when ideas of death being "natural" tried to logic their way in.  I thought about the idea of life being inexhaustible and inextinguishable. And it feels weird to talk about the fact that the cat got better, because it's not as if I'm taking "credit," but just FYI, the cat did get better.

Last summer I was in a museum, and was quite suddenly hit with the belief of period cramps, bad enough that I couldn't continue enjoying the exhibits. So I found a place to sit down, and the belief seemed to be that it was hard to even pray because I was having a hard time thinking clearly. But I reached out wordlessly to God and the pain and fog lifted really fast. It was an interesting lesson in how it's God that does the healing not me. How God is bigger than the whole human situation.