Editorial October 2, 1976 Issue

Fostering Proper Development

Geoffrey J. Barratt

It often looks as though our careers and bodies, and life in general, develop in response to random factors. Grasping that all development is initiated and directed by Spirit makes all the difference. It lets us challenge negative development.

Are we developing rightly? How is our consciousness flowering? And what course is our growth taking? We should frequently ask ourselves these questions—and answer them spiritually. A satisfying spiritual answer is in Mary Baker Eddy's commentary on the passage, "And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so."^{Gen. 1:11;} Of this passage she says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: "The only intelligence or substance of a thought, a seed, or a flower is God, the creator of it. Mind is the Soul of all."^{Science and Health, p. 508;}

Suffering and frustration hitch themselves to the belief that mortal mind—the suggester that material consciousness gives momentum to being—is the determinant of development. It is not. Comprehending why this is so, we carve out more effective lives. A mushroom grows from a microscopic spore. But mortal mind hasn't even a molecule of reality from which to grow. Its claims can't be expressed in niggling, embryonic arguments of finiteness and cannot expand to the full-grown cosmic lie of matter's allness. Nor can it erupt and flourish outside the realm of reality, the kingdom of Spirit—in a badly developed business or suburb, or in hate and anger developing into brutality and terrorism.

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