Article June 19, 1995 Issue

Remove the tarnish

Fay Kallos Fahs

My front door was being painted, and the door knocker had been removed. It occurred to me to clean it with some brass polish I had purchased recently. As I rubbed, remembering times I had tried unsuccessfully to shine it with other cleansers, I was amazed to see the original finish start to emerge. I had thought it was hopelessly weathered.

How often have we thought a situation was beyond hope, beyond repair? Have we simply given up when a problem has seemed difficult, allowing an accumulation of fear and discouragement to impede healing? Just as the shiny knocker was actually there beneath the layers of grime, so our perfect selfhood, created in God's likeness, is here all the time, in spite of what appearances might suggest.

How do we go about ridding ourselves of an accumulation of unhelpful thoughts in order to heal? A phrase from Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy offers a good place to start: "the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life" (p. 272). [The full sentence states, "It is the spiritualization of thought and Christianization of daily life, in contrast with the results of the ghastly farce of material existence; it is chastity and purity, in contrast with the downward tendencies and earthward gravitation of sensualism and impurity, which really attest the divine origin and operation of Christian Science."] "Christianization of daily life" is not difficult to understand. To me it means putting into practice the love for God and all mankind that Christ Jesus taught was so important. The term "spiritualization of thought," though, may seem unusual.

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