Outcome and income

Many poems have helped me over the years. One is called “Mind’s outcome: income” by Steven Alan Avey, published in the May 1979 issue of The Christian Science Journal.

The poem employs a lovely rhythm and repetition that invite me to press on to the next idea and are helpful in memorizing. It also employs all seven synonyms for God found in the Christian Science textbook (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy). This encourages the reader to continue on to see the role of each of those synonyms in working out that our income is Mind’s outcome – what Mr. Avey calls “usable ideas that develop themselves into action”. I love this!

I couldn’t quite remember the name of this poem and thought it used the word “outgo”. (It doesn’t; it uses “outcome” instead.) Anyway in my search on jsh-online.com I found a lovely idea that seems relevant to the topic of income. Writing in the Christian Science Sentinel, 29 Jan 1979, Geoffrey Barratt states that “there is no "fixed income," because the "outgo" from God is not limited, the infinite good that floods from eternal Love is not frozen” (More than ‘millionaires’).

We can’t print Avey’s entire poem here, so here’s a morsel:

Mind’s outcome: income

Steven Alan Avey

Yield to Spirit, and

in come usable ideas

that develop themselves

into action.

 

Look to Love, and

practice kinder ways

of caring for yourself

and your community…

I hope everyone can read the whole poem and perhaps pop a copy up on their fridge, where it sat in our family home for many years.

Do you have a favourite poem? Please share it with us.

Julie Swannell