Sunday August 15th, 2021 Roundtable
Unwinding One’s Snarls
This week’s Lesson Sermon Subject: Soul
Click here to play the audio as you read:
Morning Prayers
My beloved students: Enter into the closet of divine Love and there in humility ask this ever-present power to shield and to defend you from the enemies of your souls and bodies, to defend you and guard you and guide you in the paths of righteousness, pleasantness and Truth. … Examine your motives; ask if selfish desire governs them; or if in obedience to the divine command you are taking up your cross and following Him. Self-seeking will never result in Soul-finding – in finding divine wisdom and Love apart from self, and self swallowed up in a victory of Soul. There is but one way of salvation from sin, disease and death, and this way is to take up the cross in order to follow Christ; then God, who knows your motive, will reward your act according to that motive and not according to your words.
— from Divinity Course and General Collectanea, (the “Blue Book”), by Mary Baker Eddy, page 160
Discussion points
299 — WATCH that you “keep on keeping on,” or continue in well-doing. If you were given a beautiful country estate, and told that you were to have it as a permanent residence, you would not complain as you travelled to reach it, no matter what sort of terrain you had to travel over. If you had to struggle through a swamp, you would say, “This is hard going, but what difference does it make? I’ll soon be there.” If you passed through green pastures and beside still waters, you would say, “This is very lovely and I am grateful for all this beauty; but I have no time to linger to enjoy it. I must be on my way.”
Students who find that they have good days, and then relapse into bad ones, may wonder why this is. If they search deeply into motive, they may discover that good days are their goal, rather than progress toward their spiritual habitation in Soul. When one is seeking the true goal, which includes a daily effort to bless and help others, he does not complain much, nor notice much what kind of days he has. He keeps patiently on, knowing that, if he is persistent, he will arrive. There is a wealth of wisdom in the old adage, “The dog that is idle barks at his fleas, but the dog that is hunting does not feel them.”
— from 500 Watching Points by Gilbert Carpenter
GOLDEN TEXT: Psalm 23 : 3
“He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”
A testimony — “Grateful For What Man Is” by Florence Roberts
Article — from Notes on True Vision by John Morgan
Chapter 7: Pond and Purpose, from Miscellaneous Writings by Mary Baker Eddy, page 203
— Quote shared about unwinding ones snarls from “Editorial” in Christian Science Sentinel, May 19th, 1928 by Ella W. Hoag
God is Mind. God is my mind. God is the only pure Mind.
God is Life. God is my life. God is the only Life.
— Plainfield Roundtable
Article — “The Siren Call of Ease” by Peter V. Ross
In the Blue Book, Martha Wilcox is quoted saying that one of the first lessons she learned in Mrs. Eddy’s house was that “the ‘objects of sense’ when correctly understood, are really ‘ideas of Soul’.” “There are not two groups of creation — but just one.” So, in reality, there is no material world apart from the spiritual. Whenever we go out we can declare that we only meet Spirit today, whatever and whoever we come across, whatever we touch, whatever we hear, whatever we see, whatever we receive is Spirit, good, is already approved and blessed by God and can only bless us. Be prepared!
—Forum post, “No Two Worlds – Material and Spiritual” by Melinda for March 29th, 2020
From sense to Soul my pathway lies before me,
From mist and shadow into Truth’s clear day;
The dawn of all things real is breaking o’er me,
My heart is singing: I have found the way.
Click here to play the Hymn: — Hymn 64 From The Christian Science Hymnal, 1932 edition
From our Exchanges.
Jesus’ kingdom is to come as an inner process. It is a leaven, a germ, a feeling, a thought, hid deep in the individual soul. There is no outward formula for tracing the fruition of this germ. It lies there hid in the lump of things until its day comes. Its increase is unmarked of men. It spreads like a contagion. It is a spark which ignites from mind to mind and spirit to spirit. Its power is an inherent enthusiasm. Its dynamic is love.
— from Christian Science Sentinel, October 7th, 1905, The Universalist Leader
Forum post — Anchored by Parthens
Final Readings
… Christian Scientists are a potent force in the world because of the good example which they offer. If a group of people should be overcome by darkness while still wandering at a distance from their destination, and someone should appear with a light, and this light should illumine, even if faintly, the road upon which they all should walk, the one carrying the light would in a true sense be the leader of the multitude, but this leadership would be on an entirely different basis than that of a conqueror dragging his captives at his chariot wheels. It would be the leadership of light, the leadership which comes from knowing the right way, the leadership of brotherly kindness. What better guidance can be accepted by each worker in this movement than that which was given by Mrs. Eddy to the Christian Science board of lectureship (Miscellany, p. 248): “You go forth to face the foe with loving look and with the religion and philosophy of labor, duty, liberty, and love, to challenge universal indifference, chance, and creeds. Your highest inspirations are found nearest the divine Principle and nearest the scientific expression of Truth. You may condemn evil in the abstract without harming any one or your own moral sense, but condemn persons seldom, if ever. Improve every opportunity to correct sin through your own perfectness.”
— from “Spiritual Movement” Christian Science Sentinel, March 9, 1918 by William P. Mckenzie