Article February 2, 1918 Issue

Above the Clouds

CARRO A. BIRD

Some time ago the writer was staying at a home high up on the side of one of a group of mountains completely surrounding a broad valley. One beautiful afternoon there was heard the sound of distant thunder, which gradually drew nearer, accompanied by fast moving, heavy clouds that seemed to come from all sides and soon settled down into the valley, leaving the mountain tops clear. We could see vivid flashes of lightning cut the clouds below us, and the thunder increased in volume until the air seemed filled with its reverberations, as the mountains caught up the sound. The lowlands of the valley were entirely hidden from our view by dense clouds, but during practically the entire storm the sun was visible on the heights and the upper sky was clear.

This experience stands out to the writer as a symbol of the imperative need to abide "in the secret place of the most High," far above the clouds of mortal strife, in order to be always ready to recognize error for the nothingness that it is and be freed from its claims. Though we know, as the Scriptures teach, that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all," and that "in him we live, and move, and have our being," yet error by its very nature—deception—seeks to terrify us at times by its appeal through the physical senses, and would have us think it real. It would cloud our consciousness, and have us believe that it has power, at least for the moment, to stop the activity of light and hinder its destruction of the darkness of mortal belief.

The activity of divine intelligence, Love, is constant; but if we allow any belief of sentient matter to intrude itself between God and our consciousness, we shall then be in the position of those in the valley during the storm. If, however, we possess that spiritual understanding which divides the light from the darkness, the true from the seeming, we have only to rise above the storm of human sense in order to see it for what it is,—nothing; and this can always be accomplished by changing our viewpoint from the material to the spiritual,—the real.

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