Clocks, timeliness and structure

At our Wednesday testimony meeting this week, a testifier mentioned Longyear.org,  referencing her research on the topic of "promptness". This research had uncovered an article about a documentary film called "Who shall be called?". The film is about the workers who were called to serve in the household of Mary Baker Eddy in her later years. (The 90-minute documentary, produced in 2008, is available for purchase from Longyear as a DVD, and the full story behind it can be read here at this link.) 

For our blog readers, we include some points of interest.

HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE

The introduction to the article explains that:

  The film covers the years when Mary Baker Eddy was founding the Church of Christ, Scientist, a period of great historical importance for Christian Scientists and the world. 

KNOWING THE FACTS - INSPIRATIONAL AND ESSENTIAL

Describing the purpose of the film, the article continues: 

     Knowing the facts about how Mrs. Eddy and her household practiced Christian Science in their day-to-day work is historically instructive. It’s also inspirational. Knowing more about Mrs. Eddy will, hopefully, inspire viewers to reread and study her published writings on which she worked so tirelessly...

    Also, knowing the facts is essential to clearing away myths about Mrs. Eddy. And there are plenty of them! For just one small example, there’s the notion that Mrs. Eddy was not one to run her life by the clock. 

     In fact, Mrs. Eddy did keep her eye on the time. She had three or four clocks in her study. She had a clock on the table beside her bed. She even had an illuminated clock in the sitting room (also known as the “swing room”) where she relaxed at the end of the day... 

     Mrs. Eddy set aside for herself specific times for prayer. When she went to her desk in the morning, she opened her Bible seemingly at random (but actually with a prayer for guidance), read the first verses her eyes lit upon, and worked prayerfully with that passage for a period of time. Then she turned to her morning’s work. 

     At 11:00 A.M. on the dot, she set her work aside and went on the back veranda for an hour to “talk to God,” as she told her household. Systematically structuring her day hour by hour assured she would have the times for prayer that were essential to maintaining her mission.

Our testifier had also discovered a lovely article written in 2001 and titled "Timeless Timepieces". Here, author Stacy Teicher Khadaroo writes about Mrs. Eddy's gift of a monogrammed pocket-watch to one of her secretaries who was also superintendent of her grounds, Joseph Mann. (Readers will be interested to read Joseph's affidavit regarding his remarkable recovery from accidental gun shot - see Calvin Hill's reminiscences in We Knew Mary Baker Eddy volume 1, amplified edition, pp. 344-348.)

Stacy's article concludes with a quote from Mrs. Eddy's "Improve your time", originally published in The Christian Science Journal 1883 and now in Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 230:

   All successful individuals have become such by hard work; by improving moments before they pass into hours, and hours that other people may occupy in the pursuit of pleasure.

Thank you, Karen, for sharing your research with us!

Julie Swannell