"Who'd like to chair? It doesn't look like the member who came up with our topic is going to make it."

"I'll do it but does anyone remember what was on his mind when he came up with Connection?"

"We were comparing notes on dates, hook-ups and therapists. He suggested Connections and someone pointed out there's only one Connection in Christian Science. In other words, God."

"Well isn't that still somewhat inexact? The readings I brought in refer to Mrs. Eddy's wildly unitive definitions of God as the one Mind, the one Ego, I or Us. It's all in the Glossary of Science and Health."

"We have to talk to be heard of men and most people wouldn't begin to understand those definitions."

"Maybe not but we'd better understand them and think out from them if we propose to do any healing."

"I've started reading Margaret Laird's book, Christian Science Re-Explored, and I've noticed she really emphasizes one Mind as encompassing God, man and the universe as a continuum."

"I love her work. She cleared up some problems I had with Mrs. Eddy's writings. I don't always agree with her but the effort that goes into getting my own standpoint clear forces me to grow."

"What's the main point of her version of Christian Science?"

"I wouldn't call it a version. It's more like a clarification, a getting closer to the ultimate Truth in somewhat more modern, scientific terms than Mrs. Eddy had available in her time."

"Laird's main point, as far as I can see, is that we should live infinitely and eternally. We're heading there anyway, so go about it consciously without pain rather than unconsciously through cataclysm and suffering."

"Doesn't she say, 'Love thy neighbor as thyself because thy neighbor is thyself?'"

"Yep. That's a Lairdy!"

"And the meaning is we're the universe we're moving through, so don't blame others or lash out at them. They're just performing their part in my own unfolding drama which is simply a demoralized version of reality or heaven just at hand."

"Her Teacher was Bicknell Young. She said he could immediately get what was going on with a patient as they came through the door of his office. I puzzled over that for quite a while until it finally dawned on me that he'd learned to translate appearances into facts — and that brought healing, often on the spot."

"My preparation for the meeting included studying the report of Jesus raising Lazarus. It's in the book of John. (See readings). There are all sorts of connections in it. There's the relationship of Jesus with Lazarus, Martha and Mary individually and collectively. He loved them all. Then there's the connection with his disciples, teaching them patience in this master class on healing."

"By the way, in the book, The Man Jesus Loved, Theodore Jennings unveils Lazarus as Jesus' lover, not John."

"Doesn't that theory conflict with the scene at the cross where Jesus turns responsibility for his mother over to John, who in Jewish law as the surviving spouse would take her in as his own mother?"

"Mr. Jennings is straight and cannot be expected to appreciate the refinements of a Gay relationship. Lazarus had been the lover but was replaced by John. He died of a broken heart."

"Okay, back to the Bible! Jesus had a relationship with the crowd — he was aware of their presence and need to hear an oral prayer. And of course there's his unfolding total at-one-ment with God."

"Look at verses 23 through 25. Martha holds the traditional view that Lazarus will rise in the general resurrection at the end of time. Jesus counters, 'I am the resurrection and the life.' Now that's living the whole experience."

"He could have said Martha and Lazarus are the resurrection and the life."

"Sure — we all are, in reality. But there may be a fine pont here. It's the understanding and living of eternal life that heals and raises the dead. We can't just sprinkle such statements around like holy water. We have to live them from the center of our being in and as God."

"We have to watch where we place the 'I'. It can't be a dualistic ego. In Science there's but one 'I' or Ego."

"You know the last time the Christian Science Lesson included this story was in April when the subject was 'Probation After Death'. All the references to Jesus' love for Lazarus and his sisters as well as his groaning and weeping were excluded. I'm getting tired of feelings and emotions being left out of the current life of our church."

"That's why healing is limited. All the intellectualism and cogitation are valueless without love and feeling."

"A few years back I was sitting in the park with a friend who's not a Christian Scientist. As I was rummaging through my backpack for something he caught sight of the picture facing the responsive readings in my weekly Christian Science Lesson. It was a beautiful mountain scene with a deer. My friend pointed out the back half of the deer had been cropped away. As the implications of this suppression of the lower, perhaps difficult, parts of the animal became clear to us we almost fell off our bench with laughter."

"What do you mean by the lower, perhaps difficult, parts of the deer?"

"I don't mean they were difficult for the deer. But what's in those lower regions? Why, digestion, bowels, excretory systems and, oh dear, sex!"

"I once recovered from a severe attraction to a pizza man by understanding it was those three lower chakras, represented by pizza colors — red, orange, and yellow — I was trying to get connected to."

"And you haven't had a slice of pizza or pizza man since!"

"Apparently all the emotions in the Lazarus story didn't block the healing."

"In living a normal human life, trying to keep healthy and bring in enough money to cover needs I sometimes get confused about how matter and Spirit connect."

"As Mrs. Eddy says, '...as in heaven, so on earth, — God is omnipotent, supreme' (Science and Health, pg. 17). But we've got to see that. Otherwise the so-called matter can flip from positive to negative."

"Really there is no matter. All is Spirit and we're the full reflection. If we allow ourselves to drift into dualistic thinking we subject ourselves to the vicissitudes of matter."

"Matter's a counterfeit of Spirit. So they're completely linked — they're one. If you drain the knowledge of good and evil out of matter, you've got Spirit."

"I was thinking during the week of all the ways we can connect today. The hand-held wireless internet is the emerging means. Rapid transit has taken a step backwards with the retirement of the Concorde."

"The new technologies help not only positive interactions but negative ones too. War, contagion and prejudices against minorities for instance."

"And porn. I partake of it but it's an unreal connection in a way. There's instinctual attraction, but of course no feeling or caring."

"Where's your imagination? If you can evoke feeling and caring in your daily rounds in the dream of living, why couldn't you fantasize it as part of a picture romance?"

"When I had my hallucinations on that drug they gave me in the hospital I felt it was all very real."

"Don't we need to reduce all dreams and hallucinations to their reality in God. Mrs. Eddy in her autobiography instructs us to expunge the material record. (See Retrospection And Introspection, pg. 21:25-2). I'd say that means getting the spiritual idea right at hand and living it."

"Last week we deconstructed the prostate and arthritis into their metaphysical underpinnings. Could we do the same with sexual attraction?"

"Just see it as Love!"

"You mean like God, Love?"

"Yes. Be the Love that encompasses the whole situation."

"I was wondering about someone this week: 'Is he the one?' And you know what came to me? 'Yes, he's the One — capital O — and so is everyone else."

"I've been getting a lot out of the Gay Pride programs on PBS. We've had history lessons first on the 1965 to 1969 demonstrations in Philadelphia, then Langston Hughes and his circle and finally an hour on Harry Hay. There's much more to come."

"Our meeting has to end soon and we need a two week topic — our note-taker will be away until June 30th."

"Something interesting came up on the CSLesBiGay chat circuit. Apparently a practitioner read Bruce Stores' book, Christian Science, Its Encounter With Lesbian/Gay America, and came away disappointed he hadn't offered a defense of homosexuality to counter the many articles attacking Gay people in the church periodicals."

"That's exactly why I've always said The Mother Church must retract those silly but potentially deadly articles. People reading them may feel they have some basis in fact."

"My initial reaction to the poor practitioner was the articles have no metaphysics in them. They're petrified stool samples indicating the church's health at the time."

"Or lack of it!"

"Anyway, as bizarre as it seems, many Christian Scientists are waiting for some metaphysical grounding for being Gay."

"I haven't given up hope they'll find some metaphysical grounding for white skin."

"They've got it. All the Directors are white!"

"Ah! At last, I can rest."

"What we could do is take the next two weeks and work on something like the Christian Science of Being Gay. Frankly I wouldn't waste time on justifications, pleading or suffering it to be so now. Let's just get the facts, Ma'am."

"I'm sorry, but it's a material belief — just like heterosexuality."

"Fine, but still it hints a spiritual idea. Try to find that and live it. See what comes up."

"I like the topic but let's please get both heart and mind into it."

"And the hindquarters. Don't forget that deer."

"Are we all agreed?"

"Say it again."

"The Christian Science of Being Gay."

"Okay."

"Fine"

"Well, since everyone else seems to like it — okay. But I can't promise anything."

"Watch — you'll come in here with a lover!"

"Please, please anything but that!"