We suspended our usual format to make room for an outpouring of grief by a member whose dog had just died. Members listened quietly — there was no jumping at metaphysical platitudes to pave over the eruption of feelings and eventually our grieving member was able to ask whether others could describe how they had handled the death of a loved one.

Two interesting, apparently incomplete, healings of grief turned up. One was handled with metaphysical astuteness and minimal feelings; the other with much mourning but little scientific insight. We all needed healing work in this area and will be available to help each other as it unfolds. Furthermore we'll probably look at Grief and even Death as topics in the future.

By this point in the meeting we were ready to address History which we saw as encompassing everything in our personal and collective lives up to then, including the deaths we had been discussing and working to revision.

Mrs. Eddy seems to take what might be called a middle course with regard to history: neither dismissing it as valueless nor idealizing it as revelatory per se. It's a dualistic representation of divine reality. By collapsing its facts and interpretations into the underlying Perfection, we access and prove Heaven's now existence. See particularly the readings cited above from Retrospection and Introspection.

The tendency in human thought is to take up both personal and world history from a judgmental, victim-based stance and leave it right there. This leads to more problems and suffering. Our members wanted to look at it inspirationally, as chemicalization leading to better concepts of God's presence and power. Looking at the past, one is looking at how we and others were seeing God at the time. No matter how horrendous the depiction, the true God, good, was always what was really existing, and that's the basis for healing.

One member spoke of the need to "break the mesmeric grip of received wisdom about events and their meaning." This should be handled at the divine fact level, not from the standpoint of warring human beliefs. This work might prompt the Scientist to offer an opinion as to what new concept is being identified in the process — but prognostications are strictly secondary. Why? Because they're usually wholly or partially wrong and in any case based in human vanity which works against Science.

Another member added that inspirational reading of history is like spiritual interpretation of Scripture — the very bedrock of Christian Science thought. It's also very much akin to eschewing the reading of mortal mind in favor of reading divine Mind: "a revelation of divine purpose through spiritual understanding, by which man gains the divine Principle and explanation of all things" (Science and Health, p. 83: 25-29).

A member told of some reading he had done in Jungian studies during the week. One of these described depth psychology's work as helping the patient move beyond the impingement of parental imagoes on his ego, reorienting it towards the demands of the Self (a word for God). He felt this description of Jungian process aptly describes our true work in Science, except that our "parental imagoes" can be seen to include all historical influences, say genes, environment, culture, medical lore and so forth.

A member decided to take some of the ideas we were developing and apply them to a couple of personal historical items which came up in his week. One was a very frank description of some events in his childhood as presented by an aged family member. He was reeling for days. He had come to some grudging acknowledgement of the human logic of the events a few days later but at our meeting was able to get some glimpse of Mrs. Eddy's point in the quotes from Retrospection And Introspection — "It's a pretty deep statement, you know." The "revelation of divine purpose" in the events and how they had now come to his attention were clearly the emergence of his divine parentage or Self.

The other item was some painful memories about an ex lover sparked by a dream and some amplifications he undertook after awakening. He found himself singing bits from the final scene of Carmen; it was not the happiest of break ups. He came to our meeting grateful at least to have conscious contact with the bitter, sad feelings associated with this relationship. Now with our newly fashioned metaphysical tools he could reframe the episode as language for wholeness coming to light.

Another member did some work on a long standing friendship he'd had to bring to a close this week after he had the sharp insight into how desperately he was pursuing the other person without much response on the other end. It felt like a clean break and the seeming vacuum is filled by divine love, not some hallucinatory friendship. This healing feels to him historic in the sense that it repudiates a number of false relationships like it in the past.

Two members did some work on the phone concerning the upsurge in HIV infections in San Francisco. From their personal experience with people who have expired they discerned a search for Authority, eternal Life and purpose; all of which are now supplied fully by Being. Divine Being is a role, not a goal — as Mrs. Laird, a Christian Science teacher, might say.

For next week we'll look at Argument. Members noted the Presidential debate October 3rd. There are also important conflicts in Serbia and the Holy Land needing resolution. Students of Science sometimes refer to a problem as an argument and have been known to argue a case.