Article March 23, 1981 Issue

Christian Science and academic work

PAUL O'BRIEN

A vital prelude to academic work is daily communing with God. Prayer and study of the Bible and the writings of Mrs. Eddy prepare us for the day's work. Cleansing consciousness this way enables us to discern in all their freshness and purity those divine ideas continually dawning on human thought—ideas that can have vital bearing on our studies.

I have found the most effective quality to work with before beginning an academic project is purity. Related concepts—holiness, innocence, sinlessness, and inspiration—are also useful. By looking up such terms in Concordances to the Bible and to Mrs. Eddy's writings and claiming these conditions as our mental state, we are able to keep thought considerably freer from misdirection into material channels. It is also helpful to discover what Mrs. Eddy means by "angels" and "ideas." This kind of research prepares us to great pure thoughts of Love, our eternal birthright.

The realm of divine Mind is one of total purity, a realm in which God's ideas unfold in eternal calm, in pristine splendor. To maintain rapport with this realm while working on a particular subject, we may find it helpful to take a break every so often to spiritualize our outlook. We can, for instance, use the Concordances to look up key features of the subject in order to ascertain their spiritual implications. While studying a particularly materialistic philosophy, I have been greatly helped by keeping a Concordance to Science and Health by my elbow and using it to look up what Mrs. Eddy has to say about the concepts being discussed. In this way, work that might otherwise have been boring and unilluminating becomes a joyous process of spiritual discovery.

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