Fight for right

Book Club for September. Retrospection and Introspection by Mary Baker Eddy.

I had a thoughts: why not look up "retrospection" and "introspection" in the dictionary? Mrs. Eddy doesn't use words lightly.

Noah Webster has: 

Retrospection: the act of looking back on things past; the faculty of looking back on past things. 

(Ho Hum!)

Introspection: a view of the inside or interior. 

(Ho Ho Hum!)

Merriam-Webster has:

Introspection: A reflective looking inward; An examination of one's own thoughts and feelings.

Mrs. Eddy wasn't all that keen on writing about what some would call “normal life.” The inner life was what was important to her; the life revealed to her as spiritual, not material.

The Chapter Ancestral Shadows speaks of ancestors who came from England and Scotland. It seems to me that the point she was making about them was that they were fighters for right. There is a sort of war-like tone. They were important figures in the battles they fought. It wasn't pride in her ancestry but a recognition of values passed from generation to generation, of battles already won. Mrs. Eddy took up the banner of that fight for right – for freedom from all wrong, from sin, disease, and death. Her battle is against spiritual ignorance.

In the Chapter Voices Not Our Own we read about the much recorded story of Mary Baker being "called" in a similar fashion to Samuel in the Bible. One remarkable aspect to me is that another person also heard the call.

The Chapter Marriage and Parentage gives a rough account of her brief marriage to George Glover, his death, and her return to her family home for the birth of her baby. But with all her earthly trials there is no mention of her own health.

And The Great Discovery! Just a few pages to tell of her discovery of the great truth that is the Science of Christianity. Oh, what a learning curve! I think I am right in stating that she kept on learning more about God throughout her long life on earth.

Ret. 28:9-12 particularly takes my fancy: 

"I had learned that thought must be spiritualized, in order to apprehend Spirit. It must become honest, unselfish, and pure, in order to have the least understanding of God in divine Science.” 

There never was a woman, before or since, who lived those qualities as she did – the honesty, the unselfishness, the purity. She was so honest, so pure, so unselfish that she must find a way to present this great truth to the world. What a task God had set for her. She gives us a taste of what it meant, and other authors have expanded on her journey of discovery and foundation.

I keep going back to one sentence in Foundation Work, “Erudite systems of philosophy and religion melted, for Love unveiled the healing promise and potency of a present spiritual afflatus” (Ret. 31: 28).

Joyce Voysey

Ed. From my dictionary.com app: 

Afflatus - inspiration, an impelling mental force acting from within; divine communication of knowledge (from the Latin afflatus - a breathing on - flare = to blow; tus = action)