Have you ever considered a book your best friend?
For the ideas are ever with you holding your hand?
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the first publication (1875) of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy…
And for me the ideas within this book have been a bestie most of my days if I’m being honest with thee.
As a very little one, the text actually taught me how to read as I was first learning how because the leather bound pages I’d see in Sunday School made me think the work was very important and I needed to know it.
As a young girl, the ideas taught me that God was my true Father Mother…a parent from which I could never be separated and on whom I could lean 24/7 for love and guidance. And this became so comforting when my own folks divorced and gave me a reliable authority source.
(quote Father Mother)
The ideas taught me how to pray and how to access God’s Love right now and see that love expressed by everyone. This became a pivotal anchor on which to lean and helped me heal tummy aches over not wanting to go to school where I was being name called for being chubby in elementary years.
As a girl too I would learn how to define myself spiritually, not just as a girl with long hair who was kinda tall for her age, or a grade in school, or the daughter / granddaughter of so & so, but as qualities of God…unfolding my capacity to think and act rightly and to strive to maximize my potential for good.
This fact helped me begin to see not only myself spiritually but helped me see all my peers and fellow man as such.
I resolved that if I was a child of God, so too was everyone and at a very young age I resolved to see the good in everyone and when it seemed lacking, I became even more determined to find it!
This tendency let me empathize with those who wanted to befriend me after I lost weight, enabled me to forgive those who’ve judged me or been unkind, helped me befriend many who others wouldn’t give a second glance toward for their appearance or upbringing and so on along the way. It to this day remains an inner mission — to see and find the good in everyone, even those who have wronged me I seek as strive to expand an understanding of how to forgive.
As a teen and young adult throughout high school and college, and thereafter, the ideas of this book helped me seek a spiritual sense of identity as a woman, not just a height and body weight I had to maintain to perform with the dance team, a jean size to say I was in hopes of fitting in with the popular ones, whether or not I had a boyfriend…
This truth, that “Man is a compound idea of God including all right ideas” (S&H pg 475) helped me seek to weigh thoughts and begin to discern my right now completeness, dependent on nothing except what I was identifying with as my source.
This fact would continue to shape my individuality over the years and turn from material views of how a woman should appear and what a woman should accomplish with her life, and very much at times struggling to not doubt myself or abilities just because I didn’t do certain things “society” expected of a woman, or felt inadequate or lacking knowledge in any way to do what seemed really hard things….to instead establishing my sense of ability and capacity as based in infinite good and striving to identifying with what God would have me to do each second of my days.
In my 20s, I wanted more…I loved what I was learning about how to pray and how to understand God’s true nature, but I wanted more. And so I took a training — primary class instruction — based on the ideas of the book — which would change my life and grounde me in finding my true purpose: that of devoting myself as a practitioner of the ideas…someone who can and will pray for anyone seeking a sense of their spirituality and healing. And this devotion to this day anchors my every footstep along the way.
In later years, the truths of my oneness with God which I owe to the study and practice of the ideas would help me navigate heartache over further rejection and loss, whether relationships or housing, or financially or even in the passing of beloved ones and beings….(a keepsake truth I drafted and hug to my heart hourly: “We are never alone…we are always and forever at-one).
So many lessons from studying and practicing these ideas…I could go on and on…and I truly hope to…I realize the above is just a big gloss over without being too specific or detailed yet…
The ideas have healed me not just emotionally but physically too…so many accounts of healings I hope to keep sharing with you…
One cannot simply in one blogpost pen her heart out to capture all the ways a book has changed one’s life….but like I said….It’s been my bestie.
Yet…what steers this resolve is a deep yearning to try to answer:
How do you thank a book for all it’s given to you?
How do you thank the author who edited it over 400 times it’s true.
How do you thank a teacher who unpacked its meaning for you?
How do you thank God who unlocks even more meaning as I study its pages now still much of the day through?
These questions and more have flooded my heart for a few decades now…
A few years ago I thought I would’ve published a biography of the author Mary Baker Eddy by now…yet instead what’s unfolded is the ability to write spontaneous poetry in the now…
As I’ve prayed to know exactly what to say and how to thank her,
as I’ve kept on living as best as I’m able the truths I’ve learned in this book of our oneness with Spirit God right now,
I’ve come to see that perhaps the truest way I can thank a book and it’s author… my teacher… And so many others whose lives have impacted mine from their practicing of its truths… is to do just that…
Keep devoting and keep being my most authentic self…
and share why this book has meant so much to me…
And simply write my heart out…
Keep striving to heal with the ideas ….keep offering to be a resource for anyone seeking healing through prayer.
So over the next little while as much as I’m able to, I will be sharing how this book has transformed my life and sculpted my now womanhood…
And it would be a dream come true if it inspires others to do the same, and that may be over the next 150 years, we can have an expanding record of lives who’ve been impacted just by reading its pages…
If you read this and you wanna know more about the book?
If you’ve had a copy, but it’s been some time since you’ve taken it off your shelf?
If you want a copy or have one and just don’t know who to go to with your questions…?
Please consider me a forever resource to share what I know about this bestie my forever friend…
Surely this is simply a first step, a way to share with others how this books impacts.
But it’s a step and it for me is significant and I have found time and again that one step leads to another and another and another and we keep going onward forward stepping.
But wherever this finds. you…fathom this….in 1875, a woman had her text published!
It’s a fact that echoes in my heart all the day through: truly, what cannot we do?
And ever since for 150 years, millions of readers the world over have been comforted and healed by reading its ideas!
May you know how loved you are.
May you know you are a precious being whose life has immeasurable meaning.
May you always feel a sense of oneness with God.
And may you always feel hope for the now to prove all we are capable of.
——
So much love from me and my bestie… Tre ~
“To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, today is big with blessings.”
~ Mary Baker Eddy (from the preface, page vii of Science and Health)
