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Never ‘earthbound’
Each year I have the delight of spending several weeks across the country with my newest grandchildren. Last summer Maia, who was four, and I were enjoying the warm sunshine and talking about day and night. I told her the sun doesn’t really rise and fall in the sky; it just seems that way from our perspective. I demonstrated with my hands how the earth actually turns around so the earth is blocking the sun at night.
She understood. But then she asked me, “But, Grandma, why does the earth do that?” I responded that I was sure one of the reasons was so little girls and boys on the other side of the earth could have the sun, too. They can have green trees and pick beautiful flowers in India and China while the United States sleeps.
Last week as I was praying and studying, I read this statement from Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy: “Whatever is governed by God, is never for an instant deprived of the light and might of intelligence and Life” (p. 215 ). I remembered my conversation with Maia, and the thought came that in spite of what we know about the sun and earth, the belief of being “earthbound” often gets in the way on a different level—when we think and act on the belief that we are created materially, rather than spiritually.
Just as people thought for centuries that the sun revolved around the earth, doesn’t the allegory of Adam and Eve try to convince us that we come from dust and live subject to mortality? Yet that belief, too, is obviated by clear reasoning and a higher understanding about what man really is. For example, the author of Genesis, chapter 1, understood that God created man perfect, in God’s own image. And in her writings, Mary Baker Eddy never placed mankind as subject to limiting material laws. In fact, she described man as “not of the earth earthly but coexistent with God” (Science and Health, p. 69 ).
I remember the awareness and love that flooded Maia’s face when she thought about sharing the sun with children around the world. How wonderful it is to know that mankind can never be limited by the false belief that we are doomed to sin, disease, and death. Every day we can overcome the Adam and Eve illusion with a higher understanding of God’s spiritual nature and man’s ability to reflect “the light of ever-present Love [which] illumines the universe” (Science and Health, p. 503 ).
—Vicki Turpen, Albuquerque, New Mexico