An instANTaneous experience

In my recent thoughts about my neighbors in the insect world, I've been reminded of a pretty definitive experience I had a few years ago. Since this is so long overdue, I'll save the recent thoughts for later posts.

So, picture it! I've just bought a lovely townhome and am approaching the end of my quest to furnish it. I'm on the search for the ever-elusive "kitchen table." I have an eat-in kitchen, and although it's not where I intend to eat, it's this big empty space and I would like a practical way to fill it. A table and chairs seem the thing. But I don't want to spend a lot of money, and I want something with character. I am happy to find a wooden "porch table" and four chairs at a nearby antique dealer. The price is right, and I take them home. I set them all out on my back deck to initiate my plan to give them even more character: a good sanding and a coat of spray paint. 

And this is where the real adventure begins. 

As I'm sanding one of the chairs, I pause and look at the other pieces of furniture. Much to my dismay, I see a steady stream of ants filing in and out of the table top. This is when a barrage of not-so-helpful mental suggestions begin, uncannily, to file in and out of my thought. Fortunately, I am already in the habit of refuting these aggressive types of thoughts with what I know to be true about God and His kingdom.

The first to attack is self-condemnation. Posing as my own thought, it chides me for being so hasty to buy a table and chairs that had been setting outside on a lawn for an amount of time I naïvely didn't even think to ask about. It berates me for failing to check for evidence of insect activity or rot. And it questions, Did I even really need this table and chairs? Self-condemnation essentially asserts that I have created this problem and am stuck with the consequences. But this suggestion is stopped in its tracks once I recognize it as an impostor. When we're working with God, there's no such thing as "stuck."  "The things which are impossible with men are possible with God" (Luke 18:27).

So now that I'm no longer blaming myself, the suggestion is that the problem is real and thus in need of fixing. And in moves a virtual can-can line of potential material solutions: Smoke. Extreme cold. Upending the table. Shaking it. Poisons. Sprays. Lures. So many products on the market for pest removal! So many tantalizing promises of zapping the little boogers and ridding my pretty project of them . . .

And right as the can-can line finishes its number, in steals the doubt that any "solution" will actually work: those little ants are in that table. How could I ever be sure they were all out? Would I really want to bring the table into my house knowing they could be lurking?

And that's when the light really breaks through. These are all just distractions. They need to be, and can be silenced with the truth. So I head up to my office to work with this week's Christian Science Bible Lesson. I know that's where I'll find the ideas to neutralize this situation. I open up the Bible and the first thing I come to is this:

Am I a God at hand, saith the Lord,

and not a God afar off?

Can any hide himself in secret places

that I shall not see him? saith the Lord.

Do not I fill heaven and earth? 

saith the Lord.

 (Jeremiah 23:23-24)

Then two "thoughts of peace," as it were, come gently to me.

1) Hey! God can see everywhere! Even into a teeny tunnel in a table! Of course, He can only see the good that He made (see Genesis 1:31). So something bad can't be hiding out of His sight. In fact, He (and His goodness) are actually filling all space. And I don't have to do anything to make this true. 

2) That means I don't need to "get rid of ants." Just like every other case in Christian Science, I'm simply correcting thought. And me correcting thought is really me listening for the true ideas from God that replace the wrong thought--and this replacement is what restores harmony, brings healing. God is "at hand." Right here. Right now.  . . . So, I think I'm done here . . . ?

I tentatively head back down to the deck to resume the project. I figure I should not look at the place where the ants have been--because I know that I need to focus on thought, not matter, for my evidence of a resolution, what I would call a healing. I wouldn't want to discourage myself if I were to look and not yet see the evidence of the correction I felt in my thought. It might throw me off . . . But I can't seem to resist!--I LOOK--and what do I see?

No change from before. 

However, in a moment of self-surprise, I realize I am not discouraged. I have prayed. I have known the truth. The healing is imminent. I am going to stop looking at the table and just get on with my work . . . 

But I just know it's been healed!! So I look at the table again before no more than five minutes has passed--and what do I see?

One table.
ZERO ants.

Where there had been a steady stream up and down one of the table legs (down and UP, mind you), there are none. I look closer and see evidence on the wood that insects have invaded, but I see no insects.

I'm almost in disbelief, but I know better. This really just happened. Because that's how Christian Science works.

Looking back on this, I can see it was (yet another) Psalm 23 kind of experience.  I'm sure you'd agree . . .

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death [limitation], I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

All finished on the deck, ready to bring them in

In their new home

Tick Offed (literally)

The other night when I got home, my cat Turbo happened to walk around me in such a way that I noticed something stuck on her little behind. It was a tick. While a flood of material methods came to thought, suggesting ways to be rid of it, a quiet, more calm thought told me that I could handle the situation through prayer in Christian Science.

What came to thought first was a reminder of something I'd already demonstrated. Several years ago, my cat and my sister's both had a case of fleas. As I prayed about it, I saw that the concept of a parasite--something that has to steal its sustenance from something else--just didn't make sense in God's perfect, good creation (see Genesis 1:31). Since then, my cat hasn't had fleas, despite spending much of her time outside, and becoming friends with a stray cat whom I've named Percy Jackson. I even reasoned that it was much more likely that Percy Jackson would catch flealessness from Turbo, than that she would catch fleas from him, since now my thought was resting on him, too. But back to the tick...

So, I knew it wasn't the false concept of parasitism that needed handling. That was done. Then it occurred to me--I truly was, as a Christian Science practitioner, working with thought. So, just as with any case, I realized that I couldn't and shouldn't be praying to fix matter. Instead of praying to get rid of a tick, I was praying to understand something more about God's creation, about its perfection--just whatever it was that was truly going on in God's universe.

I remembered that a day or so before I had been listening to some Christian Science audio recordings. In one of them, I heard the familiar idea that we find the truth by reversing error; in other words, a mistake always indicates its opposite--what's correct, what's true. Applying that to the concept of a parasite-tick, something just clicked in thought: if what most people would see was a nasty parasite [the error], then if a tick were really real, it would have to be something really neat [the truth]! It wouldn't have any of the negative qualities we tend to associate with a tick. It would be something "very good," as God declared in Genesis. I didn't take time to contemplate it any further. Thought seemed satisfied at knowing that it was good.

So, I let my cat out for the night and went to bed. When I let her in the next morning, I had almost forgotten about what I'd seen the night before, but when I remembered, I checked where the tick had been, and found that it was gone.

Thinking back on it, I realized that this incident wasn't really about helping my cat. She hadn't seemed bothered at all by the tick. It was really about me having the opportunity to demonstrate God's law. Kind of like when Jesus healed a blind man, as recorded in John's gospel. He said that the opportunity to heal presented itself so that "the works of God should be made manifest" (see John 9:1-7).

And just like when Jesus healed, this process didn't really take time. From the moment I stopped considering material means of tick removal, and mentally committed to prayer, all the helpful ideas just flooded in. Seriously, the process took under five minutes. Why so quick? Because it was natural! God's law is always operating. And experiencing it in even the tiniest details of our lives is about the most natural thing there is. Amen!