DREAMING AWAY THE HOURS

 

A startling thought occurred to me one recent morning: are we “dreaming away the hours”?

 

I opened up Concord* on my computer and typed in “dreaming”.  Up came a passage from Mrs Eddy’s article called “The Fruit of Spirit - An Allegory”.  You can find it in Chapter IX in last month’s book, Miscellaneous Writings, p. 323. 

 

Here we read about some labourers, “watchers and workers” at the foot of a mountain, and the “Stranger” they are waiting for.  At last the Stranger reaches the labourers and he asks them what they are doing there and if they would like to be at the top of the mountain, with its “cool grottos”.  The summit sounds grand, but there are challenging difficulties along the way – “rough cliffs”, “hissing serpents”, and “beasts of prey”.  Besides, the way is “straight and narrow and few there be that find it.”

 

HOUSE 1/HOUSE 2/HOUSE 3

We continue on with the Stranger as he encounters first “a palatial dwelling” wherein dwell “adulterers, fornicators, idolaters, drunkenness, witchcraft, variance, envy, emulation, hatred, wrath, murder”.  Hardly anyone even notices him. 

 

He then goes to “a massive carved stone mansion” wherein dwell “believers of difference sects, and of no sect”, “so-called Christian Scientists in sheep’s clothing and all ‘drunken without wine’”, and who “have small conceptions of spiritual riches”. 

 

At the third dwelling, everyone is “asleep at noontide!”

 

·        Nodding on cushioned chairs

·        Flat on their backs – stretched on the floor – dreaming away the hours!

 

Even the porter is “amazed beyond measure that anybody is animated with a purpose, and seen working for it!”

 

I love what Eddy says on p. 328 – that “the valley is humility”, “the mountain is heaven-crowned Christianity, and the Stranger the ever-present Christ”.

 

For more insight into this allegory, readers will enjoy the interview with Judith Hardy Olson in this month’s Christian Science Journal (beginning p. 10), especially p. 14.