"One December night in 1910..."

"I can't stand to fly.
I'm not that naive.
I'm just out to find
the better part of me.

I'm more than a bird.
I'm more than a plane.
More than some pretty face,
beside a train.
It's not easy to be, me..."

I weep each time I hear Five for Fighting's song, "Superman."  It makes me think of spiritual luminaries like Jesus, Mother Teresa, Mandela, Moses, and yes, Mary Baker Eddy.  These were men and women who were never trying to "fly."  I believe that they were only trying to find the better part of themselves, and that once they'd discovered some significant spiritual milestones along the way, felt compelled...by compassion...to share those insights with humanity. 

One hundred years ago, tonight, Mary Baker Eddy quietly passed away at her home in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, with her dearest friends close by.  Her last written words -- in her own hand --were, "God is my life."  I think she discovered, not only the better part of herself, but the best.  A sense of "self" that understands exactly why God identified Himself to Moses as "I AM."

This is my story about how that night -- 100 years ago -- had an impact on my life, 87 years later. 

It was early December, 1997.  My husband, daughters, and I were living in the carriage house at Mary Baker Eddy's Chestnut Hill home.  At the time I was immersed in projects related to the life and contributions of this extraordinary thought-leader.  Living in the contextual setting of her life was a remarkable gift.

In exchange for our housing, we made daily security checks on what our daughter called, "the big house," Mary Baker Eddy's former home.  It is a large stone mansion set on a hill in a suburb of Boston. At regular intervals during the day we would walk through the house to make sure that pipes had not burst, doors were secure, and that lights were on/off. 

That December night I was feeling overwhelmed by our circumstances.  I was facing some pretty aggressive demons and was feeling quite alone.  At midnight I offered to make the long walk up to the "big house" and do the security check myself. 

It was a bone chilling night.  The kind of cold that didn't slowly creep through layers of clothing, but penetrated immediately like a steely claw that wouldn't let go.  The night sky was a star-peppered navy velvet, and a wazing crescent moon rose over the slate roof of the mansion like the profile of a benevolent luminary.   It was beautiful, but all I felt was the weight of our plight.  Health concerns, financial uncertainty, looming homelessness -- they all seemed to have actual mass that night as they sat heavily on my heart.

I walked into the house by way of the back door, large flaslight in hand. I made my way through the arches and hallways of the first floor before ascending the flight of stairs leading to the landing just outside of Eddy's former bedroom.  

[It's important to note here, for readers who are not familiar with this property, that her home had been kept intact for 87 years -- each room appointed and furnished exactly as it had been the night she passed.  It served as a museum of sorts.  Tours were offered during which visitors could see the setting in which Eddy and her household had lived at the turn of the century.] 

As I stood on the landing, it was not lost on me (steeped as I had been in the history of her life) that it was close to the anniversary of her passing.  I thought about that night.  How her household workers had supported her, and how this must have been a very private part of her spiritual journey -- a threshold that she alone could cross.

I felt that way myself that night.  I was facing my darkest fears.  Being without housing as a wife and mother -- with no seeming resources at hand to secure a home for my family -- was my worst nightmare.  And yet it was that dark corridor which loomed for us just beyond the dawning of the New Year.  With one child in grade school, and infant twins, I couldn't imagine how we would find our way out of the situation without divine intervention. 

My husband was doing everything he could, but options seemed non-existent, and our prospects for housing were bleak.  Besides that, we were in the middle of the early stages of adopting our twins and we needed to be in a secure home-setting for the adoption agency to sign off on our compliance with state requirements so that the judge could finalize our adoption and declare that we were -- forever -- our daughters' permanent family.

Standing on the landing, just outside of Eddy's bedroom door, I longed to have her tell me what to do -- or at least how to pray about such a hopeless situation.  Then it occurred to me that she too had faced many dark nights in that room.  I wanted to know what it felt like to be her.  What had she surround herself with? 

I stepped over the satin rope that kept visitors just outside the threshold of the room during tours, and sat on the floor right next to the head of her bed.  I turned off the flashlight,  closed my eyes for a few moments, and prayed to really see what she saw. 

When I opened my eyes, there were three things that immediately caught my attention. 

When Eddy first moved into that house she was disappointed with it size and opulence. So she'd had her quarters reconfigured so that she had a small bedroom and an adjoining office. She'd also had a skylight put in the the ceiling over the landing just outside her bedroom door. This opening let in natural light.  That dark winter night, moonlight that poured through the skylight, and filtered into her bedroom through the open door. It was as "soft as a moonbeam mantling the earth" and it fell on the other two images that had immediately caught my attention.

One was a portrait of Jesus.  Simply framed and just a bit to the right, it would have been about eye-level on the wall directly in front of her as she sat up in bed.  This made me cry.  To be reminded of the savior who, as she herself had said was, "waiting and watching in voiceless agony" during his night of "gloom and glory" in the garden of Gethsemane,  humbled me greatly.  I could see how his portrait served to galvanize her courage.

The other image was an already familiar etching of Daniel in the lions den.  In this depiction, Daniel has his back to the lions, his hand are gently folded behind him, and he has his face upturned towards the light that is pouring through a small barred window.  He is facing the light -- not the lions.  He is peaceful, not defensive.  He is focused and calm, not distracted and distressed.  Its message was clear to me.

This piece was also simply framed and hung almost at eye-level on the same wall as Jesus' portrait -- just opposite her headboard.  The moonlight fell on these two images with such gentleness that I felt as if they had been kept exactly as they had been -- for all those years -- just so I could sit with them that night and be comforted, encouraged, and healed.

I will never forget that night sitting on the floor next to her bed.  It was almost as if I'd been given a holyland tour of the garden of Gethsemane and nothing had changed.  As if Jesus' tears had never dried that night, and still lay in salty pools on the rocks.  I could almost hear the song of the those first century nightingales, the cooing pair of doves that had nestled beside him as he prayed, and the scent of jasmine that perfumed the velvety air while his disciples slept. 

But my holyland was a worn carpet, a narrow bed, a moonbeam, the face of the Savior, the posture of a peacemaker...and the prayers of a woman.

It seems like such a small part of this story to say that during those next months of ceaseless prayer, we were shown -- step-by-step -- exactly what we needed to do to continue the work we loved and find just the right home for our family. 

The larger story for me is about a woman, who was just that, a woman.  A woman who never sought to be great -- only good.  Who never sought fame or fortune, but to understand, for herself, the better part of "me" the "I AM" of spiritual being. 

I believe, that when she wrote, "God is my life," on December 1st -- two days before her passing -- she did just that.

I don't remember the cold as I walked back from "the big house" to our cottage that night.  I only remember the moon, the stars, and the simple room where a woman had prayed one December night in 1910.

Thank you for your courage, and your example...
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS