I also love that Mary Kimball Morgan quote Nancy gave you. It’s a keeper.

What’s most helpful to me is the two-letter word “as.” Meaning this: God expresses Herself AS me, AS you, AS every individual idea She creates. That takes away, for me, the feeling of separation, as if there’s God over here and me (or you) over there. We’re one. There can be no creator without the created. And vice versa. Every phenomenon has to produce a noumenon.

This morning I was reading an account of spiritual growth and resultant physical healing in the July 6th Christian Science Sentinel (p. 25) and what struck me were these two sentences: “I also loved how, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke of keeping our eye ‘single’ and then our whole body would be ‘full of light’ (Matt. 6:22). To me, ‘eye’ represents focus, and ‘body’ is consciousness, or the substance of thought,….”

The body of the Redwoods is the consciousness that created them — that is, the divine Mind. They simply manifest that infinite Mind. How cool is that!!!!

Hey, Pete (to quote you using your own nickname), I bet at some point real soon you’re gonna shout: “I know now! I know now!” Not intellectual knowing. But feeling-it-in-your-heart-kind-of-knowing. The only kind of knowing worth knowing, ya know?

I would add one more thought to what I wrote yesterday. The Redwood tree can do nothing of itself (nor can we). However, the Redwood tree reflects its author in its individual way. God speaks to each of us individually. We express and reflect God individually. I think that might answer the question of creativity. God didn’t use a cookie cutter. Every snowflake is unique and every expression of man is unique. All reflecting the one Ego. In essence I think what your teacher was saying in this regard is that we have at our disposal all that God gives. And we can delight in each other’s expression of good and beauty and talent without any tinge of envy or any sense of deprivation. God does not short-change us. ” Son, thou are ever with me and all that I have is thine”.

Finally, Peter, I want to thank you for the wonderful production for the annual meeting. I read your whole account of it to our church group after a Wed.nite meeting. Hearing that hymn and watching those faces never fails to bring tears of gratitude. Julia’s rendition in Zulu (the language is so soft) was the perfect closing.

That’s about enough from me for awhile. Such a joy to talk with you.

Thanks for writing. I’m going to have to spend some time studying your thoughts here. Having read this just once, I feel the need to really take some time with these ideas and let them soak. This certainly is full of answers to my questions and terrific points of view on your part. I deeply appreciate and honor your thinking here. Am I trying too hard to work this all out through the “matter-based realm”? Probably. It’s just that here I sit — seemingly in the ‘matter-based realm’. I present the same type of conundrum in last night’s posting entitled, “Information Technology” where I would imagine your answers and advice would be pretty much the same. I guess I’m just another guy trying to figure it all out.

Anyway, thanks for all your prescient ideas. Full of good stuff to ponder and test.

St. Paul said, “Now we see through a glass darkly—”. Mary Baker Eddy once commented about a lovely flower, “I love your promise”. These spiritual seers knew that reality was entirely spiritual. No matter how beautiful, a material conception is an obscured image of the perfect idea.
The tree exists, but not as matter. Matter is the material conception that mortal mind projects, or perhaps ,more aptly said, interprets. The tree is a real spiritual idea–a compound idea with form, function, outline and color. It is part of God’s spiritual universe reflecting grand ideas–all good. In our present stage of experience, in order to improve our understanding of spiritual reality, we need to translate what we see into spiritual qualities–into the mental realm of ideas.

I live near the Redwoods and whenever I have an opportunity to walk or drive through a Redwood grove, I feel as though I am in the hush of a giant cathedral. It is always awe-inspiring. But that which inspires such awe is the sense of majesty, nobility, quietness, giant gentleness, the evidence of patience, persistence, the thought of timelessness, the consciousness of now being forever. I had the same experience when I sat for a few hours almost alone in the depths of Carlsbad Caverns–that sense of the eternal now. In my experience of “now” was the evidence of eons of water solidifing into stone. And it was occuring as I sat there, drip by drip. So to my sense, it wasn’t the height and girth of the tree, it wasn’t the coarseness of the bark, the bed of branches underneath, it wasn’t the stone or dripping water in the caves– it is what they were saying to me beyond what I could see and hear, coaxing my thought to higher spiritual views of God and the universe and, yes, my place in all of that.

You answered your own question “where does God’s work stop and ours start?” when you spoke of reflection. There is no start or stop–there is only the continuity of reflection, God and His/Her idea–man and the universe. The Redwood tree of its own self can do nothing.

You quoted your favorite Einstein saying that (in essence) things exist because we see them rather than the more common assumption that we see them because they exist. I love that, too. However, this really still remains in the matter-based realm, even though the mental nature of what the senses perceive is admitted. It doesn’t do away with matter entirely. If we take to heart the first chapter of Genesis that God made all, all was good, and God’s work was done, then we have to conclude that everything does exist before we see it. Then if creation is of God, Spirit, then the substance of creation is spiritual–idea. Now we are on totally spiritual ground without matter in the equation. Creation appears or unfolds to the receptive thought. I have a photo of an abstract painting, basically splotches of color without apparent design, under which is a quote by Mary Kimball Morgan which states: ” God reveals Himself as rapidly as human experience is ready for the revelation.” Thus all of creation already exists and is ever appearing–as we become ready to see it. The ideas are already there to become the outward and actual in our human experience. Receptivity opens the door to revelation. For now this is what I feel I can see. Certainly not bullet-proof, but miles from where I once was.

Thank you, Peter, for encouraging me to think deeper today.