"So the trip was good?"

"Yeah. Sun, beach, crystal blue water..."

"I have that in my toilet."

"We got out before the flu hit."

"We need to work on that. Marianne Williamson got something up online right away."

"It all came up so fast — I mean after we took up this topic, that Saturday, I first heard about it."

"We've been waiting for years for a pandemic. Will this satisfy us?"

"Maybe if it's huge! It's a counterfeit of reality, which is perfect immensity. So its appearance would need to be large."

"Like the grandeur of pefection gets a really scary counterfeit?"

"Sure — as we've seen with the economy. The pefect divine economy equals a boom, then bust — an all-consuming sink-hole at the mortal belief level."

"There's no belief level!"

"Right. Tell that to an unemployed swine flu victim. For him the problems are solid conviction. It's up to us who know better to break the grip of mortal existence."

"Fine. So where's the relief?"

"I had something. A friend called the other morning to chat and when I let loose a stream of aches and pains he told me to wait a second and came back with something he'd been studying. It's Eastern but sounds like Christian Science. The gist was, we're infinite perfection, so what's all this problem business we're getting ourselves into? The solution is to use our human will appropriately — and mightily! — to turn from the problem as presented, trace its so-called cause which of course we debunk, and re-establish our conscious unity with perfection. Well, it really helped."

"That's a very good treatment for the flu belief too."

"Listen, even if it now moderates, they're saying it'll be back in the Fall as a full-blown pandemic. Meanwhile it'll hang out in the Southern Hemisphere."

"Let's take antagonistic grounds against all that right now! No—just no, based on the conviction that God good fills all space and constitutes man and the universe."

"Do you all know about Twitter?"

"I've heard of it — it sounds inane, all those twits spouting trivia."

"Well, but you know business and government are mining all kinds of marketing and political data from the tweets."

"The reason I brought it up is it's another example of infinite Mind's counterfeits — like phones, radio, TV, the internet. Eventually each one of us will know all there is to know. There'll be no need to travel—or do anything. We'll be the knowing."

"Or even the full experiencing! If the band is broad enough, we could transfer whole five sense, four function experience. The mountain would come to Mohammed.""Look at what Margaret Laird says in Christian Science Re-Explored, page 141: ' I confront the belief that I am traveling with the Science or spiritual fact: Mind does not travel and since I, as self-conscious identity, am Mind, my traveling is the demonstration of the divine Presence without the intervention of time or space. This understanding...moves me off the ' mortal basis of belief.' Working mentally to prevent an accident, while believing I'm in a position to have an accident, is of no value. My demonstration of safety and security lies in the understanding, the intellectual as well as the intuitive awareness, that Mind is my conscious experience of being, whether seen as here or there. Mind does not come and go; Mind 'omnipresences'."

"I always use ideas like that when I'm traveling."

"I'm infinite — so I'm already there. I think that's good quantum physics. Our restricted mind-sets — alias mortal mind — will need evolving mechanical devices to leap into infinity."

"You know those strange stories about Mrs. Eddy disappearing for a while and no one in the household could find her? There's a term for it, I can't remember. Anyway she was probably on the wing visiting other parts of the universe."

"Here's a quote from Science and Health along those lines: 'Divest yourself of the thought that there can be substance in matter, and the movements and transitions now possible for mortal mind will be found to be equally possible for the body' (S&H 90: 8-12)."

"Look at the next sentence: 'Then being will be recognized as spiritual, and death will be obsolete, though now some insist that death is the necessary prelude to immortality' (S&H 90: 12-15). If life is a kind of journey, she's saying we're already at the supposed destination — we just need to realize it."

"Some people talk about practicing the Presence — in other words, God. It's about being the Science, not just a Christian Scientist, which is a dualistic concept."

"I agree. We can't get to Heaven on a concept, but as Science we can bring the energies of Heaven to bear on all concepts."

"That letter our webmaster sent us — it's getting at the same point."

"She says in the Textbook Desire is prayer...' but she then tells us we have to transcend the desire to reach true fruition. That letter gives us some pointers on how to move from desire to demonstration."

"Look, we need a three week topic. Let's work with the letter."

"Okay. Give us a topic."

"Well, ' Work in Science'. "

"I guess that's exactly what it's about."

"Okay. Remember our meeting next week will not be here at the Center. We'll go to the debut of Ivy Goulart's documentary 'Beyond the Light'. It's at 7PM at the Brazilian Endowment for the Arts at 240 East 52nd Street."