"oh, i wish I had a river..."

"oh, i wish
i had a river
i could skate
away on..."

I hope this Sierra Eagleton cover of Joni Mitchell's "River," gives you some hint of how I was feeling the other night. Not so much the lyrical meaning -- but the "feel" of it. A bit of melancholy. A bit of "why?"

It wasn't that I was unhappy or feeling a lack of purpose. It was something unreachable. I felt detached. Not only from those around me, but from the meaning of the feeling itself. It felt deep and full of message, but in a language I couldn't understand.

That was, until a friend I hadn't seen in quite a few years, caught my eye across the room. As I walked in her direction, something said, "listen."

We embraced. We talked about "how long it had been..." And then she said the "something" that I knew was the message I was being asked to listen for. I felt it stir the fallow space in my heart.

"Thank you for your blog."

Really, I thought. I didn't even know she read this blog. Then, I stopped. She was giving me something profoundly dear. I realized what a gift her words were to me that night. I had been feeling like a stream overflowing her banks. Flooding a field that was already saturated. I had been feeling as if all the words that spill from my heart, had nowhere to go.

In that moment, I realized that if there was only one reader who found companionship in what I was writing -- it was enough. This blog is a conversation about God's love and how I have experienced that love. And that each post was as vital and relevant as a call from a patient, or a meeting in a coffeehouse, or an appointment in my office.

I have been sharing those experiences in words that feel as real as the clay in my hands in the studio - palpable, honest, and beautifully taking shape in sentences, paragraphs, epigraphs, font colors, a photograph, a title. They were as real as each prayer and treatment God unfolded in my heart throughout the day.

So, thank you -- if you are reading this, I hope you realize how much you blessed me the other night. I hope you feel the gift that you gave to me -- relevance.

I don't know how this will inform the future of this blog. I've been writing for it since June of 2005. That's almost 15 years of unlacing my mental corset and letting my heart be laid bare. A young friend, Megan Neale, once wrote these lyrics for a song, "You're a Good Man," that she performed in her senior presentation:

“I'll write you a letter,
my heart is dripping ink..."
 

For that is how I feel everyday. I take calls, I see patients, I pray, I give treatment, I listen deeply for God's messages of Love, and Truth, and healing -- of divinity's coincidence with humanity, but all day long my heart is dripping words. I have often wondered, "how many little pomes can you post, how many experiences can you share in one day? When will you reach that point - each day - where you seem self-important and arcane? So I have retreated into a place of restraint.

I am realizing that this is not what God wants of His daughter -- to give her beautiful experiences and the words to describe them, but then asks her to hold them back like a river restrained by self, and saddened with unshared views of goodness and grace.

I don't know how this will inform the next chapter of my blogging journey. But if you are the only one reading these posts, I will be here for you -- and with you. I will be honest. I will be as "laid bare" in my sharing as I think I have always been. And I will be faithful to the God who puts words in my heart -- words that beg to be shared. Even if just with you.

I will be the river that I, too, can skate away on -- if just long enough to let myself feel the words fly from my fingertips like sparks from the blades of my skates. And, perhaps, by writing them down, they willfind another heart to be in conversation with.

Thank you dear friend -- you gave me a great gift the other night. Your words were the voice on the other side of the conversation - and I needed them more than you knew.

offered with Love,

Kate

"all that I have written, seems like straw..."

"All that I have written,
seems like straw to me..."

- Thomas Aquinas

So begins Parker Palmer's essay, "Does my life have meaning?" -- which the blogsite, dumbofeather.com, excerpted as a post. If you have a moment, it is a wonderful read.

I love Parker J. Palmer's writing. And his recent collaboration with Carrie Newcomer has enriched my spiritual life greatly. Their pairing of prose and music feeds the soul. I hear it in their song,  "Abide."  It points to the fertile space of shared silence.

Now back to this post. There is something about Aquinas' statement:

"All that I have written

seems like straw to me."

that makes me feel lighter and breathe more easily. To know that what I have written doesn't have to stand for decades. That I don't have to say it perfectly. I only have to say it. This is so wonderful.

For too many years I thought I had to find my voice, leave a legacy, share a message. I don't. I only have to speak the truth. To live my life honestly. To write only what divine Love has put in my heart, and in my pen -- and then let it be. I don't have to explain it. I don't have to even understand it. I just have to trust its Source.

This is what maturity has taught me. Truth can't be owned. Love can't be possessed. Soul is impersonal. Spirit cannot be contained. There is no such thing as "my idea."

You might think this realization would be deflating -- on the contrary, I have never felt so buoyed. I don't have to concern myself with making it perfect. I get to watch it -- whatever "it" is -- find its purpose, audience, resonance, and evolution with a sweet sense of spiritual trust and detachment.

Yes, all that I have written does seem like straw. But not in a bad way. 

Not long ago my friend Bobby Lewis was sharing some ideas with a group of students about Jesus' parable of the tares and the wheat. In this beautiful message story we are told that, at the time of the harvest, the servants will bind the tares [straw-like weeds] into bundles to burn them.

I'd always thought that this meant that the tares were something bad to be destroyed. But Bobby reminded the class that in a desert culture, finding kindling to start a fire was near impossible. Dried tares, that had been bound in bundles, would be quite valuable for starting fires.

These days, that is how I think of the words that I write. For a  moment, some will find a hungry heart. But for the most part, they will serve as kindling for some new poet with a heart full of fresh fire.

I am good with this. It makes me happy. That is enough meaning for me.

offered with Love,

Cate 

" exchanging the objects of sense, for the ideas of Soul..."

"It's only words,
and words are all I have..."

This post from 2013 still rings true for me -- in fact, more so with every Soul-inspired moment of surrender.

I've always loved the Bee Gee's song, "Words." As a girl, I felt that in the absence of physical stature, authority, or resources -- that words were all I had. Words represented limitless ideas, thoughts, inspiration. There was no false measurement of an idea -- they were simply, always infinite is scope.

No matter what was going on in my life, I could always retreat to the space of consciousness, a place where these infinite thoughts and ideas waited like eager friends. I'd listen, they'd answer all my big questions, and we'd create beautiful word sculptures from the raw materials of ideas, thoughts, metaphors and symbols.

This was always enough for me. So what happened?

If you've read my recent post, "the evidence," you might sense that I am in the space of deep paradigm-shifting. It often seems as if inspirational texts -- that I once thought I "got," -- are now, so new to me. It's almost like I've joined Alice, and stepped through the looking glass. Everything feels a bit upside down, and I'm a wonder-filled child again.

Take this much-loved, and familiar passage from Science and Health with Key to the Scripture by Mary Baker Eddy:

"Desire is prayer.
And no loss can occur
from trusting God with our desires,
that they may be moulded and exalted,
before they take form
in words and in deeds."

Okay, so here's how I always interpreted this: I had desires. And those desires were articulated as prayer.  Meaning, I could trust them to be "of God," since prayer is, as Eddy states earlier on the same page, "God's gracious means..."

So, I'd continue:  I have these God-inspired desires - prayers.  I can trust them to be moulded and exalted by Him, before they take form in words and in deeds...

Isn't there something missing here? Aren't the words and deeds just a stepping stone to their final form? Actual things?  Things like stronger muscles, bigger bank accounts, a better job.  Well, not according to this statement.  It says that words and deeds are the form.

But that wasn't what I had been thinking -- or expecting -- for a very long time.  Somehow I'd gotten the impression that these word-symbolized ideas, thoughts, and deeds, would eventually lead to more tangible forms.

For example,  take my desire for home. I would pray, and would be inspired with ideas that would take "form" in prayers.  These ideas, I understood to be the spiritual substance of home. Ideas like: "the spiritual foundation of home is kindness, respect, charity, a foundation that is deep, enduring, God-based, and reliable."  

It was my privilege, as a spiritual thinker, to consciously cherish those ideas and put them into practice.  Then, when understood sufficiently, they would take form -- or have manifestation -- in a house. Thus giving "form" to a spiritual sense of home. 

But that doesn't seem to be what Eddy is saying in the above-referenced statement. And for that matter, my interpretation of that statement, was not necessarily borne out in the lives of prophets and apostles.   I respected these Biblical thought-leaders for their deep spiritual sense of home and place.  Yet, when I thought about it, I realized I didn't know all that much about their houses.  I knew about their ability to find peaceful resting places in the wilderness, deserts, "the valley of the shadow of death," and on dusty roads -- but nope, not so much about their houses.

Yet Eddy states that words and deeds are the form. And when I started thinking about the people I deeply admired -- Jesus, Gandhi, Mandela, Angelou, Lincoln -- I realized that I didn't know much about their houses, bodies, bank accounts, or neighborhoods either. It wasn't their "things" that recommended them, it was their legacy of thoughts and deeds which were timeless -- eternal.

Suddenly everything became alive with a limitless spiritual reality -- right then and there!  The very atmosphere of consciousness felt pulsing with tangible, reliable, infinitely substantive forms.  Forms that were already completely, fully realized. 

Now, everything I am reading about "thought" it has a new sense of promise. Take this stanza from Eddy's poem, "Satisfied:"

"And of these stone,
and tyrant's thrones,
God able is,
to raise up seed,
in thought and deed
to faithful His..."

Yes! Yes! Yes!  In thought and deed.  Not in the right job, houses, cars, more youthful bodies, improved stock portfolios, but in "thoughts and deeds." Thoughts and deeds that are the evidence -- the seed realized -- the fruition, the substance, the reality. 

For so many years I've expected good thoughts to resolve themselves -- when considered metaphysically -- into things.   For example:  an understanding of abundance, would resolve itself into the "demonstration of supply" -- money.  A deeper spiritual sense of motherhood unfolds as a tangible "demonstration of family" -- a loved one found, marriage, a child conceived or adopted, siblings reunited, improved relationships.

But I don't think this is what Eddy is saying.  She is encouraging us to "resolve things into thoughts," and to "exchange the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul" -- not the other way around.

So, perhaps our houses, our loved ones, financial responsibilities, our servant-bodies, the need for transportation, the demands of being part of a community -- locally or globally -- are simply the "things" that God lovingly provides as encouragement.  Encouragement to go deeper, higher --  to go back to the spiritual well, the Source of those symbols.  These divine gifts keep us invested in a deeper desire for the real substance of life -- those thoughts, words, and deeds that are indissoluble, infinite, eternal, and enduring.  Perhaps they are the things that lead us to their resolution --  into more inspired thoughts, and kinder deeds.

This is a shift for me. To stop thinking that my desires -- my prayers -- are not going to take eventual form in "things."  And to discover that these desires have already been evidenced -- so perfectly --  in words, thoughts, and deeds.  

Elsewhere in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy states: 

Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts,
and exchanges the objects of sense
for the ideas of Soul."

We are not resolving infinite thoughts, into things that are limited.  Into measurable, restricted forms. These boundless thoughts are expanding our sense of being -- not reducing them.

I am finding that to be truly "satisfied," with these expansive spiritual forms is the simplicity in Christ that I have been seeking.  In this space I feel happy, innocent, childlike, and free. Free to be completely grateful in every moment of trust, to appreciate each instance of faith, inspired thought, beautiful words, a kind deed, infinite hope.  No more waiting or wanting.

Last night I was lying in the dark and I realized that when I align myself fully with this deeper sense of being satisfied, there is nothing more to desire. I am completely present with every thought and word that comes to my heart.  There is no want.  My contentment is secure.  I know that no one can stop me from listening for God's thoughts, and watching them take form in words.  And immediately, I can bless others with those thoughts.

And really, can there be any greater deed that you, or I, or anyone else can ever do than to bless another with our God-moulded and exalted prayers of appreciation? Or a Love-inspired gift of right spiritual identification? The genuine desire for them to know God's presence and power in their lives?  Nothing can stop us from doing these good deeds all night and day. 

A friend once shared with me a concept that has been attributed to Mary Baker Eddy, but without documentation of that attribution.  Whether Mary Baker Eddy is responsible for it or not, it has been helpful to me -- so I will share it here in the way that I think about it: 

Let's say you have a quarter.  That quarter is a symbol.  We -- society, the federal treasury, the market -- have determined, and agreed, that this symbol represents twenty-five cents, or one quarter of one dollar.  We accept that measure of its symbolic worth -- based on current treasury numbers.  Supply and demand markets tell us how much, in goods and services, we can expect to get in exchange for this quarter.  

But if we step back a bit and look at things spiritually, that quarter is just a symbol.  And what it symbolizes is very different when we start -- as Eddy instructs -- with the All-in-allness of God.  If this symbol exists, it exists as a representative of good, of value, worth, appreciation for the creativity and services provided.  And since these qualities -- goodness, value, worth, appreciation are spiritual they only have one measure -- All.  You can't get just a little bit -- or even a moderate amount -- of anything spiritual.  The only measure of Spirit is infinite, all.  Therefore the only measure of its expression is infinite, all -- all the time.  

To be in the presence that quarter -- which is a symbol of value and worth -- is to experience the presence of the All-in-all of what it represents.  All value is yours, all worth is yours, all goodness is yours -- abundantly.  No process, no growth, no maturity -- and no decay.   The symbol -- a quarter, points us to the true "form" -- the presence of value, worth, appreciation, goodness.  Thus we have resolved things -- the quarter, into infinite thoughts -- again, value, worth, appreciation, goodness.  

These "forms" are enough. They are not the means to another "end." They are not the way we get good things, or even better things. They are the end itself -- the all, the everything I have ever wanted, needed -- or desired.  To know the full value of love, to appreciate the good that is in the world, to discover the immortality, strength and beauty of a relationship with the divine. 

I will stop here -- this is a topic that is still becoming fully formed for me.  And as I've often said, this is my experience -- it is what is true for me, today.

shared with Love,

Kate

"a murmured prayer…"

"If it be your will,
that I speak no more,
and my voice be still,
as it was before,

I will speak no more
I shall abide until,
I am spoken for
If it be your will..."

Yesterday I was speaking with a friend. We were trying to find a time to meet for lunch this week. I suggested a date and a place. That was when she helped me remember that Wednesday was Yom Kippur.  Yom Kippur, directly translates from the Hebrew, into English as, "day of atonement."   My friend reminded me that she would be fasting with her family that day. I apologized for not being more aware, and we made other plans.

Yom Kippur is often referred to as the Sabbath of Sabbaths. It's primary themes are atonement and repentance, forgiveness and redemption. Leonard Cohen wrote, "If it Be Your Will," as his murmured prayer. For many, it has become a sacred offering on this day of atonement -- Yom Kippur.

I love its message of self-surrender and grace.  In these lyrics, Cohen offers up his voice - his song - to God. These are the most precious gifts that he - as a poet/singer/songwriter - has to give to the world.  But he is willing to be silent, if it be His will. 

I have been thinking about this very thing - a lot - lately. I love words. I mean, I really love them. The way they flutter in the heart, pour from the page, tenderly comfort in the dark, strengthen our resolve when facing demons, and encourage us when we feel most alone.

But they are only words -- symbols of something deeper than the language of lips, or paper and ink.  They are not the substance of my relationship with the Divine.  They are only my lisping attempt to describe this relationship.  And as much as I know how unwavering my devotion to God is,  there were times when I have wondered: if God asked me to be silent, would I really be able to hold my tongue and my pen? I pray that I would have the courage and the meekness to yield what delights me, to what delights Him.

A number of years ago, during Yom Kippur, I was preparing the text for a talk I had been invited to give. I was feeling confident about the message. I had humbly listened for direction in setting the tone, and honing the core elements, I'd been asked to address.  I'd typed up the final draft and it was sitting on my desk. I felt peaceful.

That was when a small volume caught my eye on the bookshelf. Its leather cover was worn and supple from use. The lay of its weight in my hand was familiar and comforting. I was drawn towards it. So many of the ideas between its covers had been helpful to me in times of confusion and uncertainty. I let it fall open in my palm and my eyes fell on a paragraph that changed the course of my ministry.

I surrendered my words, to the Word. What I had thought I would share went into the trash, and a new message was born. It was all about trusting.  Trusting that "the kingdom of God is within you…" It fell into place like the petals of a flower unfolding. My contribution to that day would be simple. I would step aside and let God speak to each individual.  I would allow space for sacred silence.

It was a life-shifting moment for me. All desire for a platform, and a voice, dissolved. I sensed a new dance being choreographed -- one of stepping aside and letting the Christ speak intimately, clearly, tenderly, and directly to the heart of each of God's beloved children.

Each year, as Yom Kippur softly lands on my calendar - and I am invited into this space of atonement - I am reminded that this holy oneness is between each of us and God. The cry for forgiveness, mercy, redemption, and reformation is whispered. It is imitate and silent. It is a murmured prayer of hope and surrender.

It reminds me of what I have come to think of as King David's most tender psalm:

"the Lord will hear

commune with your own heart
upon your bed,
and be still.
Selah" 

Sometimes we are asked to be silent. To give up the instrument we feel most confident about in ourselves. To step aside and let the divine Voice speak, sing, pray its message in the most intimate of places - the heart.

We are asked to fast from being anything to anyone -- including ourselves. To humbly empty our hearts of self. To know our emptiness and let it be filled by the real substance of what can only, ever, be a symbol to the human mind.

This evening, as the sun sets, my Yom Kippur prayer is a simple one:

"if it be Your will..." 

May your hearts hear the voice of God, and may you find peace.


offered with Love,

Kate

"Nothing new…"

"Old Mr. Webster
could never define
what's being said
between Your heart
and mine..."

Alison Krauss' "When You Say Nothing at All," has been one of my all-time favorite songs for almost thirty years. But it speaks to a different place in me today, than it did the first time I heard it.

In those days, it was all about "Him." Today, it is all about Him. This song reminds me that my relationship with God is not in words, but in the Word. It is not found in a particular scripture or a string of quotes -- however much I love them. It is in, as Mary Baker Eddy suggests in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, that:

"sweet and certain sense
that God is Love." 

It is a feeling -- not a sentence. It is an indwelling sense of trust in the unseen.  It is that which is insensible to the senses. It is a silent, abiding confidence in His promise:

"Lo, I am with you alway…"
 

There are days when my heart is too full to speak -- or write. Days, when the best I can do, for everyone in my life, is to simply deepen into that sweet and certain place of abiding trust that God is Love. This is the place where my heart finds its ground in free fall. This is where I land when I completely let go of self-determinism and human thought-taking. This is my home in yielding to the divine.

Recently I woke with a heavy heart. The voices of "human reason" were relentless -- and, they made sense. Everything they suggested -- when weighed in the scale of "should haves" - left me feeling negligent, stupid, "Kate, you've-got-your-head-in-the-clouds" naive. I couldn't seem to drown them out with words, sentences, or inspired "thinking."

I lay there with a weight on my chest and a tightness in my throat that was almost unbearable. Words, words, words, -- tumbled around in me like an aggregate of stone and sand in a churning cement mixer. That is, until I remembered to feel. To just feel the power of the Word. I slowed my breathing. I closed my eyes. I moved my focus from my head to my heart and became very quiet -- silent actually. Not just silent in a "no noise" way -- but silent in a "no words" way.

And there it was -- that sweet and certain sense that God is Love. That feeling of "God with us." A feeling that -- no matter what was swirling around me or in my "head" -- God was with me, just because I loved.  Because I felt love. Period.  I let myself feel the love I have for my daughters, my love for camp, my love for my work. I didn't think about my work, I felt my love for my work -- without reason.

It was enough.

I was free. And with this freedom, came the joy of just being -- well, me. The me of God's creating. The me that He inspires, sustains, and calls according to His purpose. Moment-by-moment.

There are many statements from Mary Baker Eddy's writings that have fed and sustained this quiet sense of spiritual self-assurance in my heart.  I'd love to share just a couple of them here, with gratitude and love for her ongoing spiritual guidance.

:

"The infinite Truth of the Christ-cure
has come to this age through a “still, small voice,”
through silent utterances and divine anointing
which quicken and increase the beneficial effects
of Christianity.

I long to see the consummation of my hope,
namely, the student’s higher attainments
in this line of light."

and

"In order to pray aright,
we must enter into the closet
and shut the door.
We must close the lips
and silence the material senses.
In the quiet sanctuary of earnest longings,
we must deny sin and plead God’s allness."
 

I am learning that there is a quiet that is deeper than "no sound." There is a quietness of the heart. A quietness that is the felt presence of God.  It is a stillness.  Rather than a straining and a striving for the right words in "thinking about" God -- it is the actually feeling of God's presence.  It is a spiritual sense of Love that fills the breast. And there are no words -- at least none that I know of -- that can describe its meaning or weight.

In a piece that Eddy chose to include in her last collected writings, The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany, she begins with this brief statement:

"I have nothing new to communicate,
all is in your textbooks." 

This sentence was a sobering discovery some years ago. Now it is a beautiful gift. If she had nothing new to communicate, why did I think I needed to find something new to say, or a new way to say it. It is all in my textbooks -- the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures -- and this realization has given me a more laser-like focus on the richness of those source materials.

It has given me permission to be quiet - to simply share my experiences -- when it seems right. And to be so quietly transfixed on those primary texts, that perhaps anyone who walks into the room wonders, "what is she gazing at -- so lovingly." 

And the funny thing is, that these texts only send me back -- even more deeply -- in search of that feeling of "Immanuel, God with us" -- the sovereign ever-presence [that] delivers the children of men from every ill…"  

For me, this is the healing place, the transforming and redeeming place.  The place where God and men do meet.

offered with Love,

Kate

"resolving things into thoughts..."

"It's only words,
and words are all I have..."

I've always loved the Bee Gee's song, "Words." As a girl, I felt that in the absence of physical stature, authority, or resources, words were all I had. Words represented limitless ideas, thoughts, inspiration. There was no false measurement of an idea -- they were simply, always infinite is scope.

No matter what was going on in my life, I could always retreat to the space of consciousness, a place where these infinite thoughts and ideas waited like eager friends. I'd listen, they'd answer all my big questions, and we'd create beautiful word sculptures from the raw materials of ideas, thoughts, metaphors and symbols.

This was always enough for me. So what happened?

If you've read my recent post, "the evidence," you might sense that I am in the space of deep paradigm-shifting. It often seems as if inspirational texts -- that I once thought I "got," -- are now, so new to me. It's almost like I've joined Alice, and stepped through the looking glass. Everything feels a bit upside down, and I'm a wonder-filled child again.

Take this much-loved, and familiar passage from Science and Health with Key to the Scripture by Mary Baker Eddy:

"Desire is prayer.
And no loss can occur
from trusting God with our desires,
that they may be moulded and exalted,
before they take form
in words and in deeds."

Okay, so here's how I always interpreted this: I had desires. And those desires were articulated as prayer.  Meaning, I could trust them to be "of God," since prayer is, as Eddy states earlier on the same page, "God's gracious means..."

So, I'd continue:  I have these God-inspired desires - prayers.  I can trust them to be moulded and exalted by Him, before they take form in words and in deeds...

Isn't there something missing here? Aren't the words and deeds just a stepping stone to their final form? Actual things?  Things like stronger muscles, bigger bank accounts, a better job.  Well, not according to this statement.  It says that words and deeds are the form.

But that wasn't what I had been thinking -- or expecting -- for a very long time.  Somehow I'd gotten the impression that these word-symbolized ideas, thoughts, and deeds, would eventually lead to more tangible forms.

For example,  take my desire for home. I would pray, and would be inspired with ideas that would take "form" in prayers.  These ideas, I understood to be the spiritual substance of home. Ideas like: "the spiritual foundation of home is kindness, respect, charity, a foundation that is deep, enduring, God-based, and reliable."  

It was my privilege, as a spiritual thinker, to consciously cherish those ideas and put them into practice.  Then, when understood sufficiently, they would take form -- or have manifestation -- in a house. Thus giving "form" to a spiritual sense of home. 

But that doesn't seem to be what Eddy is saying in the above-referenced statement. And for that matter, my interpretation of that statement, was not necessarily borne out in the lives of prophets and apostles.   I respected these Biblical thought-leaders for their deep spiritual sense of home and place.  Yet, when I thought about it, I realized I didn't know all that much about their houses.  I knew about their ability to find peaceful resting places in the wilderness, deserts, "the valley of the shadow of death," and on dusty roads -- but nope, not so much about their houses.

Yet Eddy states that words and deeds are the form. And when I started thinking about the people I deeply admired -- Jesus, Gandhi, Mandela, Angelou, Lincoln -- I realized that I didn't know much about their houses, bodies, bank accounts, or neighborhoods either. It wasn't their "things" that recommended them, it was their legacy of thoughts and deeds which were timeless -- eternal.

Suddenly everything became alive with a limitless spiritual reality -- right then and there!  The very atmosphere of consciousness felt pulsing with tangible, reliable, infinitely substantive forms.  Forms that were already completely, fully realized. 

Now, everything I am reading about "thought" it has a new sense of promise. Take this stanza from Eddy's poem, "Satisfied:"

"And of these stone,
and tyrant's thrones,
God able is,
to raise up seed,
in thought and deed
to faithful His..."

Yes! Yes! Yes!  In thought and deed.  Not in the right job, houses, cars, more youthful bodies, improved stock portfolios, but in "thoughts and deeds." Thoughts and deeds that are the evidence -- the seed realized -- the fruition, the substance, the reality. 

For so many years I've expected good thoughts to resolve themselves -- when considered metaphysically -- into things.   For example:  an understanding of abundance, would resolve itself into the "demonstration of supply" -- money.  A deeper spiritual sense of motherhood unfolds as a tangible "demonstration of family" -- a loved one found, marriage, a child conceived or adopted, siblings reunited, improved relationships.

But I don't think this is what Eddy is saying.  She is encouraging us to "resolve things into thoughts," and to "exchange the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul" -- not the other way around.

So, perhaps our houses, our loved ones, financial responsibilities, our servant-bodies, the need for transportation, the demands of being part of a community -- locally or globally -- are simply the "things" that God lovingly provides as encouragement.  Encouragement to go deeper, higher --  to go back to the spiritual well, the Source of those symbols.  These divine gifts keep us invested in a deeper desire for the real substance of life -- those thoughts, words, and deeds that are indissoluble, infinite, eternal, and enduring.  Perhaps they are the things that lead us to their resolution --  into more inspired thoughts, and kinder deeds.

This is a shift for me. To stop thinking that my desires -- my prayers -- are not going to take eventual form in "things."  And to discover that these desires have already been evidenced -- so perfectly --  in words, thoughts, and deeds.  

Elsewhere in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy states: 

Metaphysics resolves things into thoughts,
and exchanges the objects of sense
for the ideas of Soul."

We are not resolving infinite thoughts, into things that are limited.  Into measurable, restricted forms. These boundless thoughts are expanding our sense of being -- not reducing them.

I am finding that to be truly "satisfied," with these expansive spiritual forms is the simplicity in Christ that I have been seeking.  In this space I feel happy, innocent, childlike, and free. Free to be completely grateful in every moment of trust, to appreciate each instance of faith, inspired thought, beautiful words, a kind deed, infinite hope.  No more waiting or wanting.

Last night I was lying in the dark and I realized that when I align myself fully with this deeper sense of being satisfied, there is nothing more to desire. I am completely present with every thought and word that comes to my heart.  There is no want.  My contentment is secure.  I know that no one can stop me from listening for God's thoughts, and watching them take form in words.  And immediately, I can bless others with those thoughts.

And really, can there be any greater deed that you, or I, or anyone else can ever do than to bless another with our God-moulded and exalted prayers of appreciation? Or a Love-inspired gift of right spiritual identification? The genuine desire for them to know God's presence and power in their lives?  Nothing can stop us from doing these good deeds all night and day. 

A friend once shared with me a concept that has been attributed to Mary Baker Eddy, but without documentation of that attribution.  Whether Mary Baker Eddy is responsible for it or not, it has been helpful to me -- so I will share it here in the way that I think about it: 

Let's say you have a quarter.  That quarter is a symbol.  We -- society, the federal treasury, the market -- have determined, and agreed, that this symbol represents twenty-five cents, or one quarter of one dollar.  We accept that measure of its symbolic worth -- based on current treasury numbers.  Supply and demand markets tell us how much, in goods and services, we can expect to get in exchange for this quarter.  

But if we step back a bit and look at things spiritually, that quarter is just a symbol.  And what it symbolizes is very different when we start -- as Eddy instructs -- with the All-in-allness of God.  If this symbol exists, it exists as a representative of good, of value, worth, appreciation for the creativity and services provided.  And since these qualities -- goodness, value, worth, appreciation are spiritual they only have one measure -- All.  You can't get just a little bit -- or even a moderate amount -- of anything spiritual.  The only measure of Spirit is infinite, all.  Therefore the only measure of its expression is infinite, all -- all the time.  

To be in the presence that quarter -- which is a symbol of value and worth -- is to experience the presence of the All-in-all of what it represents.  All value is yours, all worth is yours, all goodness is yours -- abundantly.  No process, no growth, no maturity -- and no decay.   The symbol -- a quarter, points us to the true "form" -- the presence of value, worth, appreciation, goodness.  Thus we have resolved things -- the quarter, into infinite thoughts -- again, value, worth, appreciation, goodness.  

These "forms" are enough. They are not the means to another "end." They are not the way we get good things, or even better things. They are the end itself -- the all, the everything I have ever wanted, needed -- or desired.  To know the full value of love, to appreciate the good that is in the world, to discover the immortality, strength and beauty of a relationship with the divine. 

I will stop here -- this is a topic that is still becoming fully formed for me.  And as I've often said, this is my experience -- it is what is true for me, today.

shared with Love,

Kate