We started with a reading from Science and Health about a woman waiting at her window for a lover's arrival. She waits for many years, slipping into insanity, but does not age. It seems a dire method of retaining youth, but Mrs. Eddy urges those, like Benjamin Franklin of scientific bent, to coax the sanity from the insanity. The woman in her delirium took no note of the passage of time and this looks like the prime factor involved. Might we, while keeping hold of sanity, undercut the belief in time with consciously aimed truths in Science?

Other quotations studied during the week and brought in by members were not read at the meeting but are appended hereto. Mrs. Eddy devoted a great deal of thought to aging — its amelioration, cure and transcendence. Her thinking is summarized in pages 244-248 of Science and Health, and in an article "The New Birth"in Miscellaneous Writings. Our readings include selections from both.

We had visitors from SAGE (Senior Action In A Gay Environment, sageusa.org) with whom our group and other LGBT religious groups are collaborating in an outreach to elders in our community. SAGE's Director of Volunteering explained the new Faith In Action program which is backed by a grant from the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation to promote friendly visits to homebound and neighborhood bound seniors. From this basis a number of life enriching programs and services will become available.

Some members of our group may become volunteers in the program while others may seek its services. Certainly, since Christian Science has a unique view of aging, it's important we be involved and available.

In addition to our SAGE friends we had an out-of-town visitor who has recently taken up the study of Christian Science. His early student glow of enthusiasm was a boost to old timers in Science and helped keep the conversation aimed at uncovering fundamentals.

We explored our thoughts and feelings about God. Everyone, including our SAGE visitors, participated freely in this discussion. (One of our members leads weekly ad hoc groups of young people from disparate backgrounds on just this subject — so he briefly took over running our meeting, to give us a taste of what happens there). Amazingly, the bottom line for everyone present was virtually the same. We'd all grown up with more or less "comic book versions"of God, but were now much more likely to see Him/Her as infinite transcendent power, always available to us through prayer. God's presence in our lives is felt as oneness, wholeness and well being. One visitor said we're divine beings having a human experience.

Those of us who are students of Christian Science injected the idea of God being entirely good, with the real man or woman reflecting God and thus too being entirely good. Prayer in Science is an orderly method of bringing the full weight of God, good, to bear on any illness or problem. The material or dualistic basis of the problem is seen through, and healing follows.

This gave us a platform from which to launch probes into the belief in aging. Today many religions and social organizations take a robust, positive attitude to aging. Elders are encouraged to be active, involved, up and doing. One member lamented, however, that elders tend not to see it as a duty to transmit values to those who'll follow them. This may be difficult in a culture that worships youth and does not take kindly to advice from older people. "So move to Japan!"

With Christian Science we can perhaps take things a bit further. Age is seen as unreal: since God is ageless, His reflection man is ageless. This can be seen on the human belief level only as we incorporate this truth in our lives. We must see age not as an irreversible slide into oblivion, but as something we're free to reject in whole or part.

"Well fine, but be careful there. We may not want the debilities or pain — but they might just be the other side of things we do want like honor, deference, and general coddling. And would we be willing to let wisdom and experience be divine, thus sourced anywhere — not just in the old?"

We saw how difficult it is to resist the conveyor belt of psychological and governmental outlines for how we're supposed to grow and age. There are clearly defined "stages of life" — e.g., youth, schooling, marriage and family, workplace dominance, retirement, senility and death.

LGBT people, having received hard knocks on many societal fronts, are in a position not to go along with delivered wisdom and to question such canned approaches to life. Furthermore, as our focus statement points out, Christian Science promotes the idea of constant unfoldment — not becoming frozen or fixated in some concept of ourselves. Here's a quote from Mrs. Eddy: "Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear, — this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony."(Science and Health, pg. 323:32)

Everyone present talked of significant unfoldment in their lives as they let God lead. Several have embraced whole new careers, three of whom did so after they ended nine-to-five employment. One has had to deal with blindness in adulthood but has not let this get in the way of his spiritual quest and deeply felt insights. Another has worked through the death of a lover and established a new relationship. Another has been drawn to Christian Science again after many years away.

There was an interesting side issue that came up several times during the meeting: whether it is appropriate to pray specifically about a lack or problem.

Various healings were recalled, along with the associated Christian Science work. The problems — tumor, drugged incarceration in a nursing home, possible troubling diagnosis, noisy neighbors — were certainly specific. But the healing work in Science seems to have been effected from a non-dual absolute standpoint outside the problem. People, places and things could then be seen as divine ideas and not merely human beliefs. Once the divine idea was experienced just where the belief claimed to be, then healing followed.

For next week we'll continue along these lines and look at Body from a Christian Science standpoint.