We were surprised to find from the Archives that the Group had not previously looked at Patience, since a correct understanding of it is essential to the practice of Christian Science.

While healings in Science are always instantaneous, the moment of release may be preceded by an extensive time lapse and a considerable struggle with human will. Patience is an auxiliary to healing, keeping disappointment and human will at bay while the work goes on. It is an active, searching, surrendering movement from sense to Soul.

Our readings included the story of the man waiting 38 years for a healing at the pool of Bethesda. Christ Jesus exposed his reasons for delay with the question, "Wilt thou be made whole?" and cut through them all with, "Rise, take up thy bed, and walk" (see John 5).

This story provided a springboard to discuss true patience as against mere resignation and collapse under a material concept. We asked how we ourselves might be clinging to problems and calling the process patience. Truthfully, we all had situations where we were justifying the continuation of problems based perhaps on some dogma of how a healing or satisfaction of a need should look or why we could not go forward.

For example, a member talked of his search for a lover and what seemed to be holding him back. There was a difficult childhood which left him unable to bond with anyone, much less a lover. As a flabby, overweight teenager he was the butt of jokes. His lovers had all been abusive and no shrink or practitioner was able to help him with any of this. The member seemed to sense as he talked that he'd have much longer to wait with attitudes like these. "Would patience help?" he asked half jokingly.

He himself reached for Science and Health and read the passage on page 462 about the anatomy of Science (see lines 20 to 4 on the next page). It includes this statement: "The anatomy of Christian Science teaches when and how to probe the self-inflicted wounds of selfishness, malice, envy, and hate." He was startled to find Mrs. Eddy giving us the entire responsibility for perpetuating a problem and God the full responsibility for the healing. Another member pointed out that before he embarked on an in depth investigation and refutation of error he should be sure he's coming from a place of absolute knowing: letting the one Ego do it, not just a human ego.

Another member told us of his work during the week to address a long-standing problem of impatience. He said his parents and other adults "spoiled" him as a kid, satisfying his every whim. Now as an adult he just naturally assumes that things will go along the same way — and they seldom do. His study of Christian Science has helped him transfer allegiance from the parental imagoes to God as the only cause and effect. He finds increasingly that his real needs and desires are fully met and beyond that he is filled with joy.

Another member described his work on patience during the trauma of his excommunication from a Christian Science branch church. It was a trying time for all concerned, but his grasp on true patience — waiting for God, the source and condition of everyone, to reveal the true concept — has been invaluable in his subsequent practice of Science. He now sees the unexpected benefits of branch membership in this very incident.

A member mentioned he has recently written the Christian Science Board of Directors for a statement of the Church's current policy on greeting into membership and employing Gay people. He realized he was impatiently awaiting some probably negative response but quickly moved forward to see that he needs to live church from an absolute standpoint, as the structure of Truth and Love, as his very being. What a board may or may not say is secondary. He felt a load of resentment fall from his shoulders.

This led to a discussion of the Pope's latest outburst against Gay people from his balcony in the Vatican. He said he was bitter, apparently that Gay people had dared to exercise their civil right to march in Rome, where his own principality is located. The added feature of jack booted fascist mobs reacting to the Gay presence presented a public relations coup for our community and showed how patience will have her perfect work even as human egos try desperately to fiddle with the unfoldment of the one Ego's plan for humanity.

We didn't stop with the Pope and his fascist friends. We looked at how we individually employed similar strategies: rushing to judgment, not having any patience to suffer a problem to its solution but slapping on some mortal opinion and then praying to defend that, clinging to some outmoded concept, and hating those with a fresher thought. After a bit of this we had a touch of compassion for that poor Pope and his sidekicks.

A member brought up the phrase "Waiting on the Lord". Surely it does not have to do with time lapse. What could it mean from our perspective? Another thought it could be put into modern language as, "Seek the divine fact within the human concept." To take an example: the fact behind the belief in Pope is our own divine Selfhood. We must live the latter and let the former fade as anything more than theatre, sometimes illuminating, sometimes not.

Another member took up the idea of having "pitiful patience" with our own and another's problems. Again time does not heal, nor does human niceness. But if we are full of the Spirit — based in absolute reality — we can truly be most loving and gentle to those around us and to ourselves. To heal, however, we must see the counter-fact of whatever the senses behold.

Finally, we spent some time on current events: the Middle East peace conference at Camp David, the AIDS conference in Durban, and the Episcopal conference in Denver. All include seemingly intractable issues. This is a strong plus in scientific treatment, since, "The greatest wrong is but a supposititious opposite if the highest right" (Science and Health, p. 368: 1-2). Visitors to our site are invited to work with us on these and other intractable problems.

We wanted to continue with some aspects of this week's inquiry and chose as our next topic Growth in Grace.