"You haven't been to our group before?"

"No. I'm not a Christian Scientist but I've been involved in Science and other metaphysical approaches for years."

"How'd you find us?"

"I spend a lot of time on Christian Science Internet boards going back and forth on estoppel clauses and the latest in Kremlinology. I found your site and Emergence's."

"The Mother Church has gone through a transformation in the treatment of Gay people the last few years. It's much more positive than it was 15 or 20 years ago."

"Well, times change."

"Yes, and they may be changing again. We'd hoped to help them move towards full celebration of the Gay experience with articles in the Periodicals and removal of any restrictions in employment, teaching and the healing practice."

"And, ...there's a problem?"

"We don't know. Some recent executive moves in Boston have left us wondering whether the age of enlightenment has stalled."

"Oh yes. The financial situation and the changes on the Board are all over the Internet boards. I didn't realize these might affect Gay people. Anyway, I'm basically interested in spirituality and metaphysical thought. I'd heard some of the branch churches have discussion groups but when I asked a local reading room attendant, she was dismissive, 'Our church won't be having anything like that.'"

"Well, stick with us for an hour and see why."

"Okay, let's get into our topic. As someone mentioned last week we did look at Time once before in 1999 ([#topic=19991216#]). I found our discussion fascinating. We kept referring to time as a fantasy."

"Great. A fantasy is one of mortal mind's attempts to describe reality."

"But mortal mind itself is a fantasy. So a fantasy is having a fantasy."

"I'm getting seasick."

"Hold on a minute. Let me just make a point. I think we can see from this discussion how little headway we make with a dualistic concept from within the concept."

"If the Science of being is eternal and inborn — if it's our very essence — then we can pick it up at any moment."

"Our innate goodness is the basis of Jeffersonian democracy. Jefferson really believed people were intrinsically good and this fact would win out no matter what the difficulties. Hamilton on the other hand felt we were basically evil and needed systems in place to protect us from ourselves."

"They certainly represent both sides of the American character and you see both their hands in how we govern ourselves."

"During the week I tried to look at time and space as useful human conventions which have no causative aspects, unless of course we dream some up. They're a lab where I perform my experiments in living. Or a theatre where I present my play. Needless to say, extraneous activities are not allowed in these space-time venues. I was telling a friend about this vision and he added we could co-create with God within such space-time parameters."

"With this understanding I could budget time and space according to motives like how the activity represents God's presence and the oneness of man under God."

"This year is the 100th anniversary of Einstein's discovery of two distinct time systems — relativity and quantum theory. The first works well on a very large scale while the second works on a very small scale. He was boggled by the apparent conflict between the two ways of seeing things and spent the rest of his life trying to reconcile them. He couldn't and we still can't. There's a good article summarizing the situation in the current Economist."

"The quantum level of reality is the basis of the movie What the Bleep Do We Know. Have you all seen it?"

"Yes. I think most of us have and we've discussed it a lot. Many Christian Scientists are turned on by it."

"I think we can reconcile Dr. Einstein's dilemma with Christian Science.

"Drum roll, please."

"Well, I'd just mention two words: Christ Jesus. Christ is the infinite quantum being and Jesus is the finite time-space entity. This duality is not confined to Christianity. It's everywhere. For instance, Ra the infinite and Osiris the finite. Or to take modern mythology, stem cells the infinite and regular cells the finite."

"It's where the Christ and the Jesus are concurrent or coincident that healing occurs."

"This week a practitioner was recommending that I meditate, get into the now, listen to what God is saying and be at-one with Him."

"That's like what we read earlier from the Glossary of Science and Health: "One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity."(pg. 598:23)

"Concerning 'now', I read something interesting in an article by Maurice Nicoll in the Spring 1990 issue of Parabola saying, '...what we call the present moment is not now, for the present moment is on the horizontal line of time and now is vertical to this and incommensurable with it.'"

"So now is a divine idea, not a human event or measurement."

"I'd say so."

"A few weeks ago at this meeting I was describing a new venture I was just launching. Unfortunately I've recently been hit with a cluster of deaths among friends and acquaintances and it's left me so depressed I'm basically unable to continue. Some of the stuff explored here this evening has helped but I've got some real work to do to clear away the debris and get back on track."

"Mrs. Eddy says the world is holding up the false picture before us all the time. We just have to keep on keeping on. Not with human will but with prayer, humility and frankly childlike curiosity."

"Our time is about up. Do we have a topic for next week?"

"How about Creativity?"

"It was certainly peeking through a lot of our shares tonight."

"I'd like to explore that notion of a clear, pure time-space lab where divine-human creativity can burgeon forth."

"Have we done Creativity recently?"

"I don't think so, but I can certainly link to it ([#topic=19980611#]) if so."

"Does everyone agree on Creativity?"

"Yes."

"Fine."