Article September 22, 1934 Issue

Nowness

FLORENCE IRENE GUBBINS

Mrs. Eddy writes on page 129 of "The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany": "The oracular skies, the verdant earth—bird, brook, blossom, breeze, and balm—are richly fraught with divine reflection. They come at Love's call."

The significance of these words was brought home to the writer one radiant May day. The air was filled with fragrance and the song of birds. A dappled sky was spread over a world of green and gold. Long shadows rested on the waving grass pricked with daisies, and a cluster of purple irises lambent in the sunlight were shining at the edge of a pond covered with the cool green leaves of water lilies. The trees were decked with leaves still fresh in their young spring ardor. The freshness and fragrance of grass and leaves were as a song of silent praise. It seemed as though everything was echoing the voice from the throne, spoken of in Revelation as saying, "Behold, I make all things new." This newness is surely nowness—everything in spiritual reality continually coming fresh from the hand of God.

On such a day of spring freshness and beauty we may glimpse the primal rapture when "God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good." It must always be "spring" with God, if we see spring as spiritual nowness. At the source of being is eternal newness, eternal "spring," eternal childlikeness, the freshness and the innocence of being. In the laughter of blossoms, the gayety of flowers, is there not more than a hint of the forever unfolding of radiant thoughts, with their outline, form, and color, the pageantry of beauty, the music of Love?

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