"I saw the topic on your site. It's from the Bible?"

"Yes — Ephesians. It was the theme for the last Emergence conference in Seattle."

"We've been using some of the ideas that came up there in our meetings."

"Can you remember some and how you used them?"

"Well, one that I recall is how we needed to pray when super storm Sandy struck in October. My lights were off for 4 days. I needed lots of spiritual light just to figure out how to get food, how to use telephones — the ATT towers went down. Doing the Lesson was a challenge — you needed sunlight and the days were cloudy. There was no hot water, of course, or functioning gym nearby. I had to walk 20 blocks north to get food or a telephone connection or a gym."

"We lived on the sun's schedule. Like cavemen. Battery operated radios worked, so at night you could get local people talking about their situations. Many were worse off than I was, so I could do some work in Science about the issues raised. I'd listen after dinner by candlelight — it was like gathering around the camp fire and hearing stories."

"I like the way you framed the situation — it was almost mythologizing it."

"Yeah — that helped me break the mesmerism and get some Science working. A flashlight our keynote speaker at Seattle gave each of us during one of her experiential processes helped me tremendously when the bulb in my old flashlight blew out."

"Do you remember any of the specific ideas from Seattle?"

"We reviewed the references to light in the Bible. There are fewer in the Old Testament than in the New. Job has none at all. John has the most by a long shot. When you take into consideration Mrs. Eddy's use of the word, you see it as being about spiritual understanding. It's really divine grace because it does not depend on human cogitation. As she says, spiritual understanding ' is not intellectual, is not the result of scholarly attainments; it is the reality of all things brought to light.' "

"That's excellent! We need to live the Light — not just think about it. When Moses came down from Sinai, his face shone. Jesus was full of light when he was transfigured."

"A very dramatic healing was described at the conference. A woman who was not a Christian Scientist loved a statement about the light that a Christian Scientist friend had once quoted to her. It happened that later, as her grandson lay dying in a hospital, she went to his bed and whispered it into his ear. He revived and walked out of the hospital the next day."

"The Light is always on. We just need to connect with it and let it be the I that's Us."

"I guess I did that when I was summoned to jury duty. I worked a couple of weeks before to get perfectly clear that man is completely innocent. There are no crimes, no accidents, no disagreements and so on."

"You were being called to evaluate evidence, not to engage in a Christian Science treatment. How did you square your civic duty with your scientific understanding?"

"As a student of Christian Science, my evidence is always the divine idea. If I needed to do something like evaluate material beliefs, I'd do it of course. But first things first — get the spiritual evidence clear before you have to deal with dualistic beliefs."

"So, did you get on a case?"

"I was selected right away as one of 24 prospective jurors on a civil case where a city driver had hit a pedestrian with his truck."

"How'd it go?"

"There was a day and a half of lawyers questioning us. I was not selected for the trial and they let me go from jury duty the second day. At first I was a bit disappointed — but the message came through ' your work is done — go home!'"

"When I was looking at your site I checked out the Archives and found summaries of three meetings on Light."

"Did you note the dates?''

"Yes, actually I did. They were December 21, 2000, August 16, 2001, and October 5, 2006. They had some excellent information, inspiration and healings in them."

"While we're on the Archives I studied our notes from July 16, 1998 on the Science of Sex. It's a topic I'm interested in right now because I'm just getting into a new relationship which includes sex."

"Do you want to say more about it?"

"Not yet. I want to get more settled in it first.""The keynote speaker at Seattle gave us a useful process for getting into the light. She pointed out that although the Light is always on — because we're talking about God — still, when we seem to be in a dark place we may not even know it. In other words we're mesmerized. So we need to keep alert at all times and practice humility and honesty. Ask yourself continually where you are humanly — am I actually in some phase of darkness?"

"We could see desire to leave the darkness as our prayer — the human dualistic version of the Truth that in reality we are the Light in manifestation."

"Wow — that would be turning on the switch!"

"I wish I'd worked with some of those ideas when I got the flu a few weeks back. I did some light metaphysics, things got better, I went back to my regular schedule and it got bad again. It went on like that for a couple of weeks. Looking back, I'd say the mistake I made was so-called 'handling the belief' — in other words drilling it into consciousness — instead of evaluating it as desire to be well or the divine fact of perfection right now!"

"By the way, have they decided where the Emergence conference will be this year?"

"It's in Denver from October 3 through 6.""I don't get what you all are doing here. You have a problem and suddenly jump to a metaphysical solution. How can you get upstairs without steps?"

"Mrs. Eddy warns us not to just read mortal mind. She says to read divine Mind instead. Here: 'There is mortal mind-reading and immortal Mind-reading. The latter is a revelation of divine purpose through spiritual understanding, by which man gains the divine Principle and explanation of all things.'"(Science and Health page 83)

"Let me give an example. A couple of months ago I got a series of messages on my voice mail. It was a woman, using my name and saying hers and who she represented so quickly you couldn't understand what she'd said. She wanted me to call her urgently. I figured it was some kind of unwanted product she was selling so I just ignored the calls. After a few more I decided I'd better call her back. When I got her she immediately accused me of not paying some bill. I was aghast and reverted to reptilian brain function — like 'What's your social security number?' — at which point she became enraged and asked if I was the person with my name from Ohio. I said no, I was from New York. Suddenly I realized this was an attempt to get information from me — I was supposed to give her all kinds of data to prove I wasn't the person she was supposedly interested in. I clammed up and she ended by saying she was going to destroy my credit rating as she slammed down the phone. I think I was then supposed to call back and produce a lot of info, but instead I prayed — in the usual way about man being honest and so on."

"So, that's the way to go, no?"

"Well, the incident gnawed at me until I finally saw her attempt to snooker me was actually desire or prayer. Taking it out of the realm of dualism, I saw she was actually divine idea, and already had infinite perfection now. And that's true of everyone. I held to that unfoldment for a few days and the mental distress faded."

"OK, that's fine. But couldn't you use that technique on every negative situation or thought? I mean sin, sickness and even death — Mrs. Eddy's so-called 'popular gods'?"

"Ha — you're on to something! Why not? The popular gods are material or dualistic counterfeits of the one real God. They're all desire or prayer."

"And don't forget all the positive desires in our lives we let drift into belief when we neglect to understand the divine ideas they represent."

"Let's try it out and keep the group up to date on how it's going. Meanwhile we need a topic to work on for the next next few weeks."

"I vote for Supply. I've been unemployed for three years and need some help."

"Supply would be a good topic. The whole world seems mesmerized right now by the belief in economic underperformance."

"One idea that occurs to me right away is that lack of employment or supply is mortal mind's prayer or cry for relief from the mesmerism of dualistic beliefs."

"God is experiencing Himself as the one I that's us all. Each of us is coexistent and coextensive with God and all others. There's no lack of substance or action or uniqueness in reality."