"What would Love do..."

"It's nice to meet you.
No, I'm not from outer space
but I'd like to take you,
to a higher place,
where we won't ever have to leave the ground...
Just ask,
'What love would do now?'"

Heather shared this clip of Jason Mraz performing, "What Would Love Do Now?" the song he wrote for the film May I Be Frank.  In his introduction he shares,

"I try to be conscious of the food I put in me,
I need to be just as conscious of the thoughts I am putting in me."

Wow...if we ever thought we were the lone homesteaders on a new frontier...the uncharted territory of making the connection between what we think, our bodies, and how we live.   As well as the deeper spiritual impact this consideration has on our relationships, communities, the environment we share with all living things, and the global peace movement...are we ever wrong. 

I sense a collective nodding-of-the-head, so unanimous today, that it's beginning to feel like a single piece of divine choreography, perhaps the largest in history.  Men, women, and children from almost every culture, race, religion, and socio-economic segment of society saying: "yes, there is a connection." 

I feel it in the applause that Jason receives from the audience when he shares these thoughts, and the song that those thoughts gave birth to.

Young Christians have been asking the question, "What would Jesus do?" since I was a regular participant at Youth for Christ events in high school. Events that, on a number of occasions,  were co-sponsored by our local Adventure Unlimited chapter (regional activities for young Christian Scientists and their friends...these local chapters are now called Discovery Bound). 

Our high school's Youth for Christ group would get together for bowling, host dances, attend concerts, or go ice-skating on a frigid pond in the Poconos, and take turns warming up in an ice-fishing shed in front of a small wood stove. But no matter what the activity was, they all had one thing in common...conversations about living spiritually, and usually included that very question:  "What would Jesus do?"  There were those of us who attended the local Christian Science Sunday School together...mostly just my sister and I from our high school...and others who attended nearby Catholic, Congregational, Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian churches.  We did not have a Jewish temple or a mosque in our town, but I know...without a shadow of a doubt...that any teen interested in joining us, would have been welcome. 

We were a close-knit group of hippies, artists, and athletes, cheerleaders, bookworms, and yearbook editors.  We actually liked talking about living a God-centered life.  And at a time when Time magazine's cover question: "Is God Dead?" was still echoing through the chambers of human memory a decade later, we were asking ourselves, "what would a God-centered life look like?" 

I remember one particularly cold, icy Saturday in February.   We arrived at that icy pond in the Poconos, after a long drive up a dirt road in freezing rain.  We slid down a steep hill on our bottoms, only to brush ourselves off,  tie on skates and unpack thermoses of hot chocolate and a bag of donuts before getting completely soaked. There was an inch, or more, of water on top of the ice, but we were die-hards.  It didn't take long before the whole bunch of us was huddled in the ice shack like sardines, talking, laughing, eating, and finally deciding we should call it a day and head home. 

But in the few short hours we'd been there, the temperatures had dropped drastically and getting back up the hill was treacherous...at best. 

We encouraged...pushed and pulled...one another up the slippery incline, but by the time we got to the cars, there were a few injuries to contend with. 

I remember thinking, that although our friends all loved Jesus, my sister and I were the only ones...as Christian Scientists...who turned to pray for healing.  Boy, was I wrong.

Once we'd gotten everyone packed into the two station wagons Jim and Tom had borrowed from their parents, it wasn't long before the injured were being comforted with audible prayers, Bible verses, and I remember one friend...who attended the small Baptist church in town..singing the old gospel song, "His Eye is on the Sparrow."

It was a long, but love-filled, drive back down the mountain.  And by the time we reached Mary's house...where we continued our day in front of the television watching a movie, and eating popcorn...we were all happy, comfortable, and closer than ever.

That was day was just the first in a series of wake-up calls for me.  But it taught me how myopic I had been about the broader spiritual healing movement.  My friends were all expecting their prayers, Bible verses, and the singing of hymns to comfort, and heal, those who had been injured that day. 

I think of it whenever I read Mary Baker Eddy's statement in "Choose Ye" from The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany:

"A genuine Christian Scientist loves Protestant and Catholic, D.D. and M.D., - loves all who love God, good; and he loves his enemies. It will be found that, instead of opposing, such an individual subserves the interests of both medical faculty and Christianity, and they thrive together, learning that Mind-power is goodwill towards men. Thus unfolding the true metal in character, the iron in human nature rusts away; honesty and justice characterize the seeker and finder of Christian Science.

The pride of place or power is the prince of this world that hath nothing in Christ."

and elsewhere in the same volume:

"What we love determines what we are. I love the prosperity of Zion, be it promoted by Catholic, by Protestant, or by Christian Science, which anoints with Truth, opening the eyes of the blind and healing the sick...

It is of comparatively little importance what a man thinks or believes he knows; the good that a man does is the one thing needful and the sole proof of rightness."

My friends loved Jesus, they loved God, they loved the Scripture...from whatever translation they read it, they loved to pray, to question, to sing praise, to kneel in holy benediction.  They loved me...and we were brothers and sisters in Christ, in Spirit. 

I am so grateful to discover...more each day...that, as Eddy celebrates, in her Miscellaneous Writings 1883 - 1896:

"We live in an age of Love's divine adventure to be All-in-all..."

to be living in fellowship, in holy congregation, in spiritual community with a heavenly host of spiritual thinkers who are cherishing God's Allness, in all of humanity, and asking some wonderful questions...like:

"What would Love do?"

aren't you?

thanks Heather for sharing this song, and for walking this question boldy...with Love,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS