Our topic, Supplication, came from the Golden Text of the Thanksgiving lesson read last week and represented a distillation of "making our requests known," (see Philippians 4:6). It's a word Mary Baker Eddy does not use in her authorized writings, although there is a perfunctory reference to it in the so-called Blue Book.

Many of us were unfamiliar with supplication's religious significance — it means humble, fervent prayer and comes from an Indo-European root meaning "to make flat". It certainly harks back to prostration or proskynesis before a king or god, but also represents certain everyday activities like submitting to laws, regulations and conventions as well as the facts of being in Science. One member pointed to the position active partners assume vis-a-vis their passive partners in sex: on their knees.

As with other orthodox religious practices — e. g., baptism, marriage — supplication can be amplified in Christian Science into a most useful concept. It can be seen as the need to let go of the mortal mind standpoint in favor of what divine Mind is seeing and doing. One member described someone caught in the snare of feeling she is personally appointed by God to enlighten others — and we all shuddered, even as we saw tendencies within ourselves to think that way, (see Science and Health, p. xi: 1-8). Another member pointed to the Scientific Statement of Being (Science and Health, p. 468: 8-15) and the prescription for healing an accident (Science and Health, p. 424: 5-9) as showing the need to move from the mortal view to the divine. The prayer that heals in Science, he said, is not a supplication to God but an intimacy or at-one-ment with God.

We then turned to the necessity in Science for being frank about our needs and wants. To pray for strength to bear up under a bad situation or to argue we have no needs are both a mockery of Christian Science, which is the present incarnation of the Christ, bringing freedom and healing. Furthermore, becoming bogged down in recriminations and blame is nothing less than supplication to a person or circumstance. We need to break clear, radically, from such entanglements and live the Fact masquerading as the dualism.

Next we discussed what it means to humbly pray or make our requests known in light of Science. Of course, conscious scientific prayer is a frequent vehicle for this practice. Here we withdraw consent from what the senses are saying and get behind what God is saying. Sometimes this is quickly apparent — other times we must own up and listen to find the counter fact. "The counter fact relative to any disease is required to cure it" (Science and Health, p. 233:28-29).

We were also intrigued by the many disguises our needs or problems can take; perhaps this is a way mortal mind keeps us from being healed. Supplication or humble prayer, can show up as illness, fear, hate, obsessive love (perhaps better called romantic madness) — indeed, in a myriad of ways. But all are merely the way mortal mind experiences God's presence or Heaven just at hand. A member stated, "Let's cut through the masks and the underlying needs to the Supply they represent."

Some healings were detailed:

1) A member was called one morning for a singing gig that evening. Moments before, he had discovered his voice was virtually non existent from a cold, but he accepted the engagement, feeling that it was right activity and that God would be with him throughout the show. This proved to be the case; he had never felt such a fusion or integration of the human and the divine as he sang and rejoiced prayerfully at the same time.

2) Another member carefully assessed his childhood asthma in light of our topic. Yes, the asthma was long gone because of "passage of time" but this was belief, not Christian Science healing. Furthermore, there were surprising residues in his present life. Briefly, asthma is psychologically caused by the baby clinging to the mother frantically, giving him no space to breathe. There were a number of reasons for this, which we cannot take the time to describe here. The modern reenactments were a most uncomfortable tendency to cling to intimates, eventually exhausting himself before he retreats into solitude and, of course, driving his friend away. Now the Science: as infinite, eternal divine idea, he includes all right ideas. This fact will guide human action and remove whatever is discordant. For one thing, as idea there is no need nor opportunity to cling. He's already all.

3) Another member described the healing of a broken nose. When he broke it, he was deep in the woods, far from help, but with Christian Science prayer he lost fear and had the courage to push the nose back into place and quietly go home. In three days he was back to normal.

We worked on some world problems which we characterized as supplications from Gaia or mankind for relief:

1) The origin of AIDS has come to light. Apparently, it arose from a bad batch of polio vaccine distributed in Central Africa. This information can be seen perhaps as "academics of the right sort" (see Science and Health, p. 195: 19-22). Taking this information to the non-dualistic reality in Science, acknowledging God, good, as the only cause and effect, we accept no less than complete healing.

2) Similar thinking can be applied to the ecological disaster developing offshore North Carolina, where standard academics will have the entire fish population poisoned in the near future. "Let us accept Science, relinquish all theories based on sense-testimony, give up imperfect models and illusive ideals; and so let us have one God, one Mind, and that one perfect, producing His own models of excellence" (Science and Health, p. 249:1).

3) The World Trade Organization meetings and demonstrations invited us to see man as both global and local, without conflict. There is no friction between infinity and individuality (i. e., undividedness). Each of us as idea includes all others as right ideas.

4) The new Northern Ireland government helped us acknowledge and live one Mind, one religion, one government.

A new member of our group requested we work on Abundance for next week.