As our readings and focus text show, the demonstration of Love depends crucially on getting beyond personal sense to the all powerful, impersonal, unselfed Love that is God and therefore man as well. Divine Love is rushing to meet us, even as we rush to meet it. The oneness of all being is the point.

We started right in with some experiences from the week.

1) One member turned away a customer who wanted to direct his efforts on her behalf in such a way as to disfigure her appearance. Love in action surely.

2) Another found herself in a cab ride from hell. She was ready to kvetch mightily but realized this would add to the problem. Our group topic came to mind — she prayed to see the driver's spiritual selfhood, and her own. Things calmed down and when they parted a few minutes later there were polite farewells.

3) Another discovered he was disturbed by the hoopla surrounding the article about our group in the New York Press. As he was praying about President Bush's disagreements with his counterparts in Genoa on defense and environmental issues, a headline from The Economist, "What's the Real Point?" (referring to the missiles) gave him the key to how the struggles over defense and pollution — as well as the group's fame/notoriety — should be seen in Science. The bottom line of missiles is safety — which in Science can be ratcheted up to the Safety that is inherent in all of God's ideas. The pollution debates are Purity emerging. The article, etc., are part of Church's mission to embrace all mankind in belief as it does in fact.

4) Two members attended sessions of a government commission established to look into affordable housing. Developers alone were allowed to testify, but housing advocates somehow managed to gain entry, provided they remained silent (some did hold up placards, giving vent to their feelings). Our members prayed in Science for God's will to be done; one visited the local Christian Science reading room during lunch and found a pamphlet, "Trustworthy Government — Is It Possible?" During the afternoon session she studied and prayed with ideas in the pamphlet. Suddenly the housing advocates were allowed to put forward one speaker for ten minutes — this had been strictly forbidden in other cities as this commission toured the country! There was much anger as the speech was compiled from the thoughts of various groups. Again our members worked in Science. Emotions cooled and they found they would have 25 minutes for the presentation. Thoughts coalesced effortlessly, an appropriate spokesperson came forward, and the position of the public found its way into the record. This is where the matter now stands. We may take up something in this area as our topic in the near future.

We then worked in the meeting on some issues.

1) A member talked of being accosted by a flasher earlier in the day. She was angry and hurt; she wept openly. Other members did what they could to give her comfort as she worked to reverse the picture and see only the divine idea masked in this form. One of Mary Baker Eddy's statements seemed to speed recovery. See the readings, The Message to The Mother Church for 1902, p. 17: 13-16. By the end of the meeting she was her usual bubbly and joyous self.

2) Several members are concerned about the Radical Right's attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution to eliminate any possibility that same sex marriages might someday gain legal favor. We worked with the scientific fact that each person is male-female, and were prepared to let the proper mix of traits emerge under divine guidance. "Let the 'male and female' of God's creating appear." (Science and Health, p. 249:5) To our mind, same sex marriages would be a natural working out of the oneness and allness of being. One member pointed out that "...good is more contagious than evil" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 229 9-10).

3) A member while talking to a friend said, "Well, I don't know whether I would be able to show up for a relationship." Afterwards he thought about it and realized he was projecting unto the subject a lot of pop-psychology standards. Who could say what his relationships should look like? Furthermore, as a student of Christian Science, his mind boggled at the prospect of the joys and harmonies he could bring — if faithful in the practice of what he knows — to any relationship, however distant or intimate. That could be a union sealed in Christ.

A member saw the movie Bully which shows the true story of some teenagers banding together to murder a friend who has been harassing them. It was dismissed by many critics as simple pornography but the Christian Science Monitor gave it three stars and didn't mention untold consumptions of drugs and booze, and plenty of four letter words and bizarre rap songs. Oh, and yes, much naked flesh copulating. So what was the redeeming point of all this? He felt it was a fair depiction of the fusion that happens among the insecure, leaving them easy prey for the schizoid-paranoid fantasies of a Lady Macbeth emerging from their ranks to lead them on to final disaster. Apparently the only parental direction came in the form of scowling faces in the ending court room scene, as the murderers were being sentenced. Our member, who has lately been fascinated by puer aeternus energies and fantasies — occurring in their rawest form among teens — felt the "cause" of the tragedy here or at Columbine is that no one ever thought or even knew that these valuable lives needed a loving but firm hand to help them find all the glories unfolding in their very own psyches. The kind of stuff that adults no longer have full, unlabored access to! And all of it numbed and dumbed away by addictions, group-think, crime and finally prison. What the Science of all this is he was not sure — but since error states the Truth (see Science and Health, p. 126: 2) he feels someone will be able to see something.

Here are a few crumbs that fell from the table:

1) "Forget all those 'daily duties' (pp. 40-42, The Manual of The Mother Church, by Mary Baker Eddy) and spend your day translating every belief into its divine idea."

2) "If desire is prayer, so is revulsion."

3) "Bare-backing (sex without a condom) is a desire for oneness. Desire is a dirty word in Science, because it's dualistic. Go for the oneness; live that and see what happens to the desire."

At the end of the meeting one member talked of being unable to undertake an action because of some bad memories. He requested we take Memories as our topic for next time and we agreed.