Editorial October 6, 1980 Issue

Don't lever the petals open

GEOFFREY J. BARRATT

To hurry nature along by prematurely opening the petals of a flower may sometimes work. In relating the truth of being to human situations this approach never works. Nervous impatience that makes us want to lever open each aspect of some project or healing slows things down. It doesn't help. Lever the petals open? The main point is, there is no need to. Everything that takes place in the creation of infinite Life happens because it's impelled by Life. It is responding to the deific will.

Life is Love, Mind. All actions and ideas are intelligent and coordinated. They are beneficent. Mortal sense, though, looks out on a world of imperfection. Things not done. Or done badly. It sees important elements missing, is greedy and self indulgent. Mortal sense says, "I want it all, and I want it now." Yet its wants are insatiable. Impatience is its signature.

Good is natural. We don't have to manufacture good, according to Christian Science. Or manipulate it. We don't have to shift it from you to me, or vice versa. It is as universal as God, and God is immutable good. Accepting this satisfies us and gives a healing tone to our thought. "It was the consummate naturalness of Truth in the mind of Jesus," Mary Baker Eddy says, "that made his healing easy and instantaneous. Jesus regarded good as the normal state of man, and evil as the abnormal; holiness, life, and health as the better representatives of God than sin, disease, and death." ^{ Miscellaneous Writings, p. 200;} No levering open of petals suggested there.