Note: Readings are interspersed within the meeting discussion.

"I didn't like it this year."

"By having it in the auditorium we didn't get the traffic we'd get in the lobby. And there was a lot of congestion."

"Most of those who dropped by were from the other religious groups."

"Did you all notice the number of non-Gay churches with LGBT outreaches? There was a mainline Catholic church and a conservative synagogue."

"Right. We have a Gay synagogue but the guy representing the conservative congregation said they support same-sex marriage. He and his partner feel completely welcome."

"I love what you did with our table. The gratitude board was a spectacular success. Read some of the messages people left."

"Okay. Look — the post-its read, 'I'm grateful for...' Here are some of the things people said: '...this evening of love and sharing,' '...my partner coming into my life — we are married under the care of Quakers eight years,' '...having found a wonderful flatmate via Craig's List,' '...discovering I am a Lesbian [at the age of 43!]' '...the wonderful love in my life as a result of Christian Science,' '...my mom's acceptance,' '...God, first of all. 2nd, all of my growing experiences in learning just what is TRUTH,' '...God's persistent, pestering, loving presence in my life,' '...my wonderful friends,' '...a new job and employment,' '...the gift of a sober life,' '...the continued goodness and blessings available every day.'"

"Beautiful! Now should we go to our new format? Five minutes each."

"I'll time."

"Okay — but you did it last week — don't get locked in that role."

"I'll do my best — who's first?"

"'Let there be light!' That's my scriptural contribution. Do you all remember the waiter we had last year at my birthday dinner? Well, I ran into him at the dance center and we got into a discussion of matter and Spirit. I was equating light to Spirit and darkness to matter. He objected and when I said darkness was only the absence of light, he said darkness has its own identity without reference to light. We were both getting frustrated at not connecting. I shifted to Adam and Eve and their two sons. Of the four only the good one was killed. How could the real God be involved with that? Which really ticked him off — was I saying evil is unreal? We were getting nowhere, so I decided to cease and desist and found a soothing balm in the form of praise for his graceful physiognomy, which was shedding light upon us all from the peak of perfection. That blotted up the bile and we were back to affability before parting."

"You still have a minute."

"It's okay."

"Who'd like to be next?"

"I went around and saw what other groups were offering. Most of them — you couldn't tell who they were. There were only a few posters or banners. If you looked at the literature there were sparks of light — a little truth here, but a big dose of error there. We have such a special vision in Christian Science, it's too bad many of us cover it up with an attempt to be just one of the gang. We're trying to fold into the mainstream but we're wildly radical. I liked the article in the Emergence newsletter about sharing Science. When the writer was approached by someone asking about our view of evil he didn't shilly-shally but stated it boldly! Oh — and he used the light-darkness metaphor."

"Okay?"

"Yeah."

"I'll talk. Will someone time me?"

"Sure."

"I'll start with some citations from the Lesson on Unreality: 'God is the Lord, which hath shewed us light:' (Ps 118: 27 (to :)); 'Let no man deceive you with vain words: Be not ye therefore partakers with them. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light:' (Eph 5: 6 (to :), 7, 8); 'Genesis i. 13. And the evening and the morning were the third day. The third stage in the order of Christian Science is an important one to the human thought, letting in the light of spiritual understanding. This period corresponds to the resurrection, when Spirit is discerned to be the Life of all, and the deathless Life, or Mind, dependent upon no material organization. Our Master reappeared to his students, — to their apprehension he rose from the grave, — on the third day of his ascending thought, and so presented to them the certain sense of eternal Life' (508: 26-8).

"For me it's about letting in the light. I got the job I really wanted. They called Friday and I'll start next week. My experience with being unemployed this time is totally different from the last time I was out of work. Back then I was constantly worried, I spent sleepless nights and lost weight. I was a wreck. This time when I was let go and I told you all, everyone of you said something to the effect, 'Hold it — you are fully employed as God's reflection.' That was the bottom line I operated from this time and so I had only a few down times — and if they came, I studied the Lesson or went to the Reading room — or just got on my bike, prayed and got centered as I rode along.

"The money was okay — in fact my unemployment ended last week. I got some business coaching daters and my aunt's estate sent me a bigger bequest than I'd expected. The main thing I want to emphasize in this whole demonstration is I stood porter at the door of thought, accepting only good as real. [See Science and Health 392: 24-27]."

"Your time's up — but thank you. I need to keep my porter duties clear when it comes to romantic attraction. I talked about the problem last week and how I'd taken the first three AA steps on it. The one I've been working through the last month or so has now morphed into something far wider and grander but needs continued careful, prayerful attention to keep the energies flowing towards lively engagement rather than dead obsession.

"Let me read something from Margaret Laird's Christian Science Re-Explored [page 240 in the chapter on Apocalypse]: 'Enlightenment is the law of Love, the self-conscious living that is doing to belief [conditioned thinking] exactly the same thing that light does to darkness.'

"Also during the week I got a CD from one of my Association mates of a talk by Laurence Doyle. He's a Christian Scientist astrophysicist who's written for the periodicals showing how quantum physics and Christian Science relate. His insights too have helped transmute the underground libidinal river into a fountain of Love spanning the universe. I'm beginning to see possibilities for properly employing my sexual and romantic energies. They're legitimate!"

"I'll talk. I've been struggling a long time with what my purpose is. I've got lots of talents, education and credentials out the wazoo but I don't feel like I've settled into my purpose yet. I have some appreciation of the metaphysical reality of one Mind that is light — and that we work out from that. But I've recently taken some hits in the personal relations area. My cousin who used to be a godsend is far less so now. He's really out of my life and it leaves a big void. I guess I should say God will provide the proper companionship. And my boyfriend and I are going through some kind of shift. It's hard to quantify what's up. I don't think we're ready for couple's counseling yet, but Christian Science is stabilizing things and giving me some insights."

"For my share I'll start off with some quotes from the Lesson. First the Bible: 'For with thee is the fountain of life: in thy light shall we see light' (Ps 36: 9); 'O send out thy light and thy truth: let them lead me;' (Ps 43: 3 (to ;)); and 'The people which sat in darkness saw great light; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death light is sprung up' (Matt 4: 16). And from Science and Health: '"Let there be light,"is the perpetual demand of Truth and Love, changing chaos into order and discord into the music of the spheres' (255: 3-6); 'Resisting evil, you overcome it and prove its nothingness. Not human platitudes, but divine beatitudes, reflect the spiritual light and might which heal the sick' (446: 24-27); and 'We are sometimes led to believe that darkness is as real as light; but Science affirms darkness to be only a mortal sense of the absence of light, at the coming of which darkness loses the appearance of reality. So sin and sorrow, disease and death, are the suppositional absence of Life, God, and flee as phantoms of error before truth and love' (215: 15-21).

"Well, the first couple of days on the new job have been fine. I even have an office of my own with a wooden desk and a window overlooking New York harbor. You know, the Statue of Liberty and all that. I'm bathed in sunlight all day long. In fact this afternoon I was thinking about our topic and noticed a broad sunbeam streaming in. I've got 75 secretaries to supervise and so far everything's moving harmoniously."

"Who's next?"

"I'll talk. Based on my study of Kabbalah, light is an aspect of God. He's always moving as light through us, as us. We need to let it move into expression or it gets blocked and we can explode. The blockages are all the jealousy, envy, pride, judgmentalism and putting people down. We must not harm others or give them the evil eye. Eyes are the windows of he soul. We could give people the angel eye and have compassion on them. We could offer kindness and guidance where appropriate. In other words, we could share the light."

"Thank you."

"I've got some more material on quantum physics. I was looking at a song with my Portuguese teacher the other day and the singer kept coming back to the point of being infinite — all. I said, 'That's quantum physics.' And we found ourselves in quite a deep discussion of the subject. He knows the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? and I lent him my copy of the workbook downloaded from the site. I also found a copy of the Sentinel of July 11, 2005, which includes an article by Laurence Doyle titled, 'More Understanding, Less Matter.' Dr. Doyle is again showing the common foundation of Christian Science and quantum physics — in other words Truth. He notes that Einstein referred to God as 'illimitable Spirit' and that 'light is the immediate action of illimitable Spirit.' Also, 'there is no distance between you, as an unlimited idea of infinite Mind, and all other ideas of creation.' Both Christian Science and quantum physics are saying as Mrs. Eddy put it: 'We must look deep into realism instead of accepting only the outward sense of things' (S&H 129 : 22-24)."

"Would you like to share? We haven't seen you in a while."

"I didn't bring anything; but I could read the first few verses of John. 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not' (John 1: 1-5)."

"That's kind of a Greek rewording of the first verses of Genesis."

"Would you like to say something?"

"I came basically to listen — but I could just say for me the Bible is basically mythology. Yes there's some history in there but mostly it's stories with nuggets of truth tucked away in them."

"I like that. It's not just a lot of gobbledygook. Its value can be unlocked if we deconstruct the myths to find the real message."

"We're back to Mrs. Laird's point we discussed a few weeks ago that we need to read ideas — not just words."

"And find the divine idea in the process."

"Much of what's in the Bible is derived from Egyptian mythology with their gods transformed into human characters to leave Jewish monotheism undisturbed."

"I once knew a woman who was writing a book linking Hebrew and Greek mythologies. Naomi and Ruth were Demeter and Persephone."

"When I was reading a book on Bible mythology on the subway it caused an uproar. Literalists came right up and warned me of the eternal risks I was taking while more liberal types apparently were turned on by the subject and defended open mindedness. It was getting heated when I fortunately had to get off at 14th Street."

"Each one of us is working out our own myth."

"We need to close. Do we have ideas for a topic?"

"Maybe Darkness."

"That's too negative".

"We could denounce it!"

"It's a developing area in physics — dark matter and dark energy."

"The group's 20th anniversary is October 16th."

"Is there a topic in that? Aging?"

"Maturity?"

"Oh dear — no, no."

"Let's have No Topic for now and let something come through. We can talk at Sunday brunch."