UPFRONT September 6, 2010 Issue

A VAST AND HEALING CALM

KIM SHIPPEY, SENIOR WRITER

New York Times columnist Bob Herbert recently suggested that we need to reduce the speed limit in our lives. He wrote that there's a tendency to lose sight of "those very special, mostly nonmaterial things that would fulfill us, give meaning to our lives, enlarge us, and enable us to more easily embrace those around us" (July 16, 2010).

I think we could take that further. Amid the swirling currents of economic crises, environmental disasters, rampant cynicism, and generally unsettling human behavior, most of us feel the need sometimes to slow down and find a place where we can be quiet and regroup. Stillness promotes the clear, Christianly scientific thinking that heightens our receptivity to the calm control of the divine Mind, which is God.

The spirit and purpose of this week's Sentinel are captured in Barbara Vining's article, which begins on page 15. She recalls a visit to the Maroon Bells–Snowmass Wilderness in Colorado, where the atmosphere was so serene and beautiful that she felt she'd like to stay there forever. She writes: "But the scene left me with a sense of reverence that suggested something even greater—the vastness and wonder of the spiritual presence of God, in which, as St. Paul noted, 'we live, and move, and have our being' (Acts 17:28)."

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