Most of us have enjoyed witnessing toddlers dancing to music, too innocent to be concerned with what others think and moving to the rhythm with pure joy. But we might ask ourselves, “Is my own life filled with joyful dancing?”

Such unrestrained exuberance comes directly from Spirit, God—yet Spirit isn’t something coming to us. It is instead a power reflected through us and out to all. Mary Baker Eddy writes of our true, spiritual identity as the offspring of the one, infinite Mind, God, “Mind’s infinite ideas run and disport themselves” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 514). The word disport means “to play; . . . to move lightly and without restraint; to move in gayety; as lambs disporting on the mead” (Noah Webster, An American Dictionary of the English Language). The God-originated, God-impelled recognition of this true view of each of us manifests itself in a deeper, impartial love, taking pleasure in each daily event of our lives. I can just feel the joy in another of Mrs. Eddy’s statements about love as the “little feet tripping along the sidewalk” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 250).

Feeling weighed down by the pressures of the world, especially its judgments, can make us feel self-conscious and in need of approval—far from joyful. But Science and Health tells us about a kind of pressure that is positive rather than negative: “Christian Scientists must live under the constant pressure of the apostolic command to come out from the material world and be separate” (p. 451).