Turning and "the detaining hands of the past"

I love mazes, I think. They are challenging and fun...except when one is completely lost! I think I'd like to find a new one to see if I still like them. There's a small one in Kings Park in Perth which the little ones enjoy and where adults never lose sight of their charges; and I remember have a family get-together at a maze in the Gnangara area of Perth when our children were little. We discovered that some backtracking may be necessary in order to find the way out! 

Sibyl Wilbur writes of "backward turning" in the opening of Chapter VI of The Life of Mary Baker Eddy. She conjectures that the path forward is sometimes circuitous and zigzag, and may be beset by obstacles that stop progress. She writes (p. 64):

Every life has its moments of revelation when it would seem proper to start away upon the higher adventures of the soul; but seldom does a human being go forward without hesitation, leaving the past with its thousand detaining hands by an irrevocable decision. 

We might conjecture that life is full of turns, and underlying each turn is a decision: Shall I go here or there? Shall I go now, later, or not? Turning might indicate change; deviation from a straight course, or from the norm; or getting back on course. Taking a "wrong" turn can reveal a surprise, while keeping to our usual pathway possibly hides new information. Sometimes we need to be still. At other times we need to get a wriggle on! We read in Exodus 3: 4 that Moses "turned aside to see" (KJV) ["went over to investigate" The Living Bible] when faced with a burning bush. And Hezekiah (2 Kings 20:5) turned his face to the wall in great humility when faced with a fierce illness. 

Mary Patterson (as she was then) was on a quest to understand Jesus' healing works and to be healed herself. Along the way, she was led in various directions but by the 1860s she was ready for change. In chapters VI to IX, Wilbur outlines events leading up to and beyond Mary's pivotal meeting with the magnetic doctor Phineas Quimby and carefully discusses their professional relationship and its relevance in forwarding Mrs. Patterson's search. It is a fascinating story.

Julie Swannell  

Sibyl Wilbur's truth-telling and Mary Baker Eddy

Book Club March, 2018 – Sibyl Wilbur's The Life of Mary Baker Eddy

Now here is a book with a history! Robert Peel has given us quite a lot of that history in his Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority, the third of his fine trilogy on Mrs Eddy's life and work. It seems important to me to have this information under one's belt, so to speak, either before or after reading the Sibyl Wilbur's book.

As with all of Peel's books, it is not enough to read the body of the work, one must also take in the end notes. (I have noted before in this blog that my copy of The Years of Authority is falling to pieces, much marked and notated. It has taught me a lot over the years – it was published in 1977, the first of the trilogy to reach Australia. Mine was an early purchase; I had been a student of Christian Science for six years by 1977.)

Anyway, back to Wilbur. O'Brien was the author's married name and her series about Mrs. Eddy would possibly have been written under that name. This series was printed in Human Life in 1905.

Mrs. O'Brien succeeded in getting an interview with Mrs. Eddy, but she felt she was intruding on her and retired to send a series of questions for Mrs. Eddy to answer in her own time.

O'Brien would eventually become known as Sibyl Wilbur. She seemed to have been indefatigable in her efforts to get the facts of Mrs. Eddy's life from living witnesses.

To quote from her letter to Mrs. Eddy of May 22, 1907, in turn quoted by Peel (p. 274):

It is a remarkable experience which I am passing through, following in your footsteps, observing the impressions which your acts made upon others and their acts upon your life...I don't know how it is done. I don't know what force or power accomplishes it, but every one of your so-called enemies receives me, answers my questions, and in some way confuses himself in his own falsehoods, or, with amazing frankness, tells the truth. Of these witnesses there are those who have sworn to other statements, and when I have addressed them on certain matters they have allowed the truth to escape, as it were, inadvertently....

It seems Mrs. Eddy did not fully approve of the book. She felt the time was not right and the right author had not yet appeared. She found the book too adulatory of her, and took steps to have the author withdraw it from sale. 

Wilbur's work is the first Eddy biography published. It has come to be regarded as a valuable record and it still available for purchase or loan at Christian Science Reading Rooms. The most recent edition has a beautiful photo of Mrs. Eddy in a stunning gown.

Yes. I have begun to read the book, but there was a need to get the foregoing in place first. And, the author has me ready to find out more about Renan and his Life of Christ which Wilbur refers to so strongly in her Introduction. She depreciates his methods and plumps for that of St. Mark and his gospel of Christ. 

Joyce Voysey