Metaphysics shared from the heart

Tony Lobl

Dear Reader,

The high school textbooks I studied were useful. At the time, though, I felt a desire for something more balanced between the intellect and the emotions, and textbooks weren’t where I found it. I found it in music. A short phrase I later came across captures why, and perhaps surprisingly it is a citation from a textbook: Mary Baker Eddy’s primary work on Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. It says, “Music is the rhythm of head and heart” (p. 213).

This was a textbook I could read, in fact devour, and still continually return to, because the Christian Science textbook exudes intelligence and heart. Take this sentence, for instance: “The wintry blasts of earth may uproot the flowers of affection, and scatter them to the winds; but this severance of fleshly ties serves to unite thought more closely to God, for Love supports the struggling heart until it ceases to sigh over the world and begins to unfold its wings for heaven” (p. 57).

Such words build a bridge to a reader’s heart, even while challenging them to turn 180 degrees from merely human hope to the higher desire to seek, find, and demonstrate the love Christ Jesus exemplified. They are words of Science—the Science of divine Mind and Love.

Throughout Science and Health, the author digs deep into spiritual ideas and metaphysical truths. Her heartfelt, life-proven insights comfort readers, whoever they are, wherever they are. She was a white New Englander born on a farm in the early 19th century, yet I saw her words bring physical healing, character transformation, and a renewed sense of joy to an apartheid-scarred, black South African living in a Cape Town township almost two hundred years later. As Mary Baker Eddy puts it in another of her books, “When the heart speaks, however simple the words, its language is always acceptable to those who have hearts” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 262).

Our words don’t always need to be simple to touch, move, and empower readers, but they need to be heartfelt. And as writers and readers of the Christian Science periodicals, we can articulate, ponder, and share the precious, pure metaphysics that heals heart to heart, as our Leader’s comforting, practical, life-tested writings do.

Tony Lobl, Associate Editor

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