Yours is a life worth living
Harriet Schupp
Depressed? Feeling lost, lonely, without hope? Struggling to stay afloat? Finding life’s challenges too hard to bear?
Even though God may sometimes seem distant, the spiritual fact is that Love is ever-present. In this Q&A chat, Christian Science practitioner Harriet Schupp explains why suicide is not the answer to feelings of hopelessness and depression, and explores with site visitors how our connection to the unlimited power of God can bring completeness, gratitude and abundance to our lives.
The transcribed text has been edited for clarity.
spirituality.com host: Hello, everyone! Welcome to another spirituality.com live question and answer audio event. Our topic is “Yours is a life worth living,” and our guest is Harriet Schupp, a Christian Science practitioner from New Orleans, Louisiana, and an active church member. Before Harriet went into the full-time healing work, she owned a real estate business and with her husband ran a small cattle farm in Mississippi. She also raised two sons.
And I know from working with her on articles that she’s written for the Christian Science periodicals and this website, that she’s a strong but gentle person and a deep thinker. So we’ll have a very interesting time today.
Because of the nature of the subject, I want to say that if there’s someone in our audience who’s struggling with feelings of depression, or even tempted by suicide, please send in your question. Please take part in what we’re trusting will be a healing conversation with Harriet.
Harriet, do you have some comments you’d like to make to get us started?
Harriet Schupp: Yes. Life is worth living, because the very Principle of the universe, the motive and governing power, the way things really work, is Love, God. It’s because God is Love that there is life at all. Life is God’s gift to us coming out of His very nature as Love. In fact, “Love alone is Life” [See Mary Baker Eddy, “Love,” Poems, pp. 6–7].
But sometimes, the ills of the world can seem heavy on our shoulders, and we get caught up in disappointments or fear or sadness or illness. It can seem hard to feel the presence and power of Love in our lives.
What I’ve found at times such as this is that it’s a wider, higher view that’s needed, a more spiritual view. And because our perspective of things, the basis of our thought, determines our experience, it’s so important that we look for and turn to this spiritual view, to what God is seeing and knowing.
I was out in Colorado a few years ago, staying in a large hotel, and it was almost right up against a large mountain. When I went out in the yard between the hotel and the mountain, I felt all closed in—all I could see was the hotel and the mountain.
But I began to walk up the small road which led up the mountain, and after walking for about 15 minutes, I turned around and looked back at the hotel, and it no longer looked so imposing. And every 15 minutes or so, as I climbed, I looked back to see that the view was becoming much more expansive.
There were other buildings, a whole village, other mountains in the distance—a wider view. And, to me, this is like getting a more spiritual view. Things that seem so oppressive and overwhelming and limiting, well, they begin to give place in our thought to more spiritual views.
So maybe you’ve been thinking about life as what happens to you on a daily basis—as if life is just your job or your own hang-ups or where you live. Or maybe you’re just thinking of life as what the body is doing.
But you can go instead to the viewpoint that sees what the Bible calls “the things of the Spirit” and see yourself as the expression of God’s nature, as living in order, harmony, intelligence, and having a good purpose, living in joy and peace.
This was the way Christ Jesus lived: “I can of mine own self do nothing,” he said. And, “I and my Father are one.” Jesus assured us that we are also one with God. And that would be one with Love, and one with Life. One with intelligence, the primal quality of the Mind that is God; one with wholeness and health; with assurance and completeness. One with good answers and right ideas. Jesus saw everything from the perspective of this Mind that is God, and he said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”
God has made us capable of also knowing this; capable of knowing Him; of knowing that whatever we do, God is working with us; and of being aware of His presence and His Love. This is actually being aware of the reality of our spiritual nature, which is whole and unlimited. Jesus showed us the Christ, our true sonship, and this Christ is always with us here.
spirituality.com host: Harriet, that’s a wonderful idea. About Jesus saying, “I can of mine own self do nothing” —if you took it one way, you might say, Well, gosh, that feels kind of powerless. But that wasn’t how Jesus looked at it, was it?
Harriet: No. It connected him with the only power there is, which is God; with the unlimited nature of abilities and intelligence and awareness. So what Jesus was really talking about was humility. Not going around thinking, I can’t do anything, but expressing the humility that yields to God, acknowledges that we are the children of God, and puts us in touch with so much bigger a picture than we can get within our own selves.
spirituality.com host: Yes. We have a nice number of questions, and again, I want to remind you all to feel totally free to send them in to us. This one is from Marie in Scottsdale, Arizona, and she says, “I have a friend who volunteers at a teen suicide prevention hotline, and she’s asked if I wanted to come along with her. But isn’t it enough that I pray every day for people experiencing depression? Shouldn’t that be enough?”
Harriet: Well, of course, prayer is effective, and prayer is the most effective thing. But you know, sometimes the loving touch is helpful. Sometimes it helps us to actually see what someone is thinking, and then we know more specifically about how to pray. Jesus touched the leper. Jesus was out and with the people. I’m sure that you’ll find just the right answer for you.
spirituality.com host: Joanna in Massachusetts says, “I’ve heard that the Bible is quite censorious on the subject of suicide. Should we not just take the Bible’s word for action on suicide?”
Harriet: Well, it is good to see what’s in the Bible. But it’s also good to understand the why behind things that are in the Bible. That’s what I love about Christian Science and the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: it encourages you to ask why. And it gives answers that are satisfying.
So, yes, it’s a good thing to know that suicide is not a helpful idea and doesn’t really bring us anywhere. But let’s also have opportunities to think about why that’s so.
spirituality.com host: This is a more difficult question. It’s from Mervin in Rochester, New York, and he writes, “My brother passed almost 30 years ago. I’ve always suspected and heard rumors from relatives that it was actually suicide, and this has long bothered me. Do you think I should talk to my parents about this, or should I just let it go, as it was so long ago?”
Harriet: Well, that’s something, speaking of prayer, that I think I would pray about. And you might ask yourself, What’s the most loving thing to do? Would that be loving to ask your parents? You might ask yourself, Why is it that I want to know this? I think the healing thing is to go for what is most true, spiritually speaking, in the situation. Would that change who your brother is, or your love for him? Just asking those questions of ourselves gives us more of an answer of what we should do.
spirituality.com host: I was also wondering about that. Sometimes it’s an interior desire to have resolution in your own mind, you might say, about what did actually happen. And one way to look at it that’s been helpful to me is to just be really confident that that person, whoever they are and why ever they might have passed away, is still in God’s care and still being looked after, and still has a future of their own, of their own experience with God. What do you think about that, Harriet?
Harriet: I think that’s true. And I think no one is ever separated from God. There’s nothing that can separate us from the love of God, as the Bible tells us, and as we find in our lives as we yield to that. So that’s why I was saying check the motives and really, again, to love your brother in a more spiritual sense. And see that he’s always been the beloved child of God, just as you are, and you are both one with God. Just go for the pure sense of who your brother really is and how that has never changed.
spirituality.com host: Now this one is from Joey, who hasn’t told us where he is, but he has a very good question. He says, “What if one feels that suicide is what God wants us to do? What if all one’s thoughts that come from God are directing one to suicide?” That’s a difficult question, Joey, but we’re glad you asked it.
Harriet: Yes, we are. My understanding of God is that God is Life. And life and death are in no way connected. God is not connected to death. And you know, in the Bible, it tells us that the last enemy that shall be overcome is death, but it is overcome. And Jesus overcame death—with Lazarus, with the woman whose son had died. So everything that Jesus is teaching us and that we read in the Bible is on the side of life.
Sometimes, we get these thoughts that are dark, and we think, This is my thought, or, in this case, he thinks it’s coming from God. But I would test the thought and say, “Does this sound like something that a loving God would be telling me? Does this sound like what divine Life itself would be saying?”
And we could also think about what would be the effect of such an action? Would that be loving to those that are left behind? Would God be asking me to do something that would be so hurtful to others?
I think that you’ll find in asking these questions, and in searching and listening that God loves you too much to ask you to kill yourself. God is asking you to live and be joyful and love.
spirituality.com host: And even if you feel that you are all alone and that there’s nobody around there who loves you, there is Love. Love is present. People don’t always express that love, perhaps, as well as they should, but divine Love is with you, and in the hearts of people around you, there is love, and you are needed. You do have a purpose, don’t you think, Harriet?
Harriet: Yes. Everyone was created for a purpose. And I think going back to the fact that we are created by God. Sometimes when we’re kind of hung up in thinking we were created by a set of parents and that’s how we came to be, then that puts us in such a limited “matter paradigm,” I call it, that the thoughts about life and death become very narrow and materially-minded; and we only are looking at what we can see with the eyes and what the senses are telling us, the material senses.
But the fact is, you are alive because God created you. You have life because God knows you. You have worth because God has a reason for creating you, and you’re a part of the whole symphony of life, an indispensable part of it.
So listen to God, Love. Just take a moment and think about that and be still, as the Bible says, and know that God is there; that Love, divine wisdom is caring for you. You can’t get outside of it, really.
spirituality.com host: Karen in Morristown, New Jersey, says, “How does someone more fully demonstrate a love of Life,” and that’s Life with a capital L, “and trust in God’s goodness, when yielding to commitment seems impossible because of disappointments and fear?”
Harriet: Well, the disappointments and fear always try to tell us that God isn’t there. That’s the adversary, if you will. It’s always trying to convince us that God isn’t Love and isn’t present.
But some of the ways that you can break through that—you might try being grateful for the good that is in your life, and you can just be grateful that you’re alive, and grateful that the sky is blue. And go on to other things that you can be grateful for in your life.
You can also try to be more unselfish, because being unselfish and thinking of others and praying for others is expressing love. That connects us with the Love that is God. Then we feel love more in our own situation.
And the humility that puts aside human will and human opinions and says, “Okay, God, what are You knowing here? What are You seeing?”
Then I think study—studying the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, gives you ideas to work with and helps lift your thought and think on a different level than just what the world is telling you. So that’s my advice right off the top.
spirituality.com host: Gratitude is always good, I think. Then from Fred in New Hampshire we have a question. It is, “If man is the image and likeness of God, as told in Genesis, and therefore life is eternal, and this mortal existence is temporal and not more than just a dream, why not facilitate the transition on to the next experience by ending this one ahead of schedule?”
Harriet: Well, I think, Fred, that first, we don’t get to eternal life through death. That would kind of be silly to think that death would bring us to eternal life. Jesus said eternal life is to know him and know his Father, God. And so we get to eternal life by knowing God more, by loving more, by living more in line with the way God made us with our spiritual nature. And death doesn’t hasten or give us some new knowledge that makes us more able to do that. There’s no more of God after the experience called death than there is right here.
There’s just one God, and we have all of God right now. And we can begin to understand more and more of God. Really, you know, we begin to live eternal life right here, right now, rather than thinking that we’re living in time and in matter. In fact, something in Science and Health I think about a lot is, “The belief of life in matter sins at every step.”
So it’s this belief of life in matter that we want to get over, and to understand that right now, right where you are, you are totally spiritual. It’s your only selfhood, your only nature. And it’s true for everyone listening to this and for all of us.
spirituality.com host: That’s great. From RB in Indiana: “Do you think that what Christian Science teaches about suicide, that it doesn’t solve your problem because you survive the suicide in another state of existence, still having the same anguish as before, would actually keep someone from committing suicide if they feel they can’t stand it any longer?”
Harriet: I think it would certainly be something to consider, because I think that is true. What we all want to feel is more of love, more of being comforted. And Jesus said he would send us the Comforter. And this Comforter is this truth of divine Science that we have in Science and Health. And that comforts us, and makes us realize that we don’t need to try to go to death and to the dark side in order to find light and life.
And if we know somebody who’s thinking about that and looking at it intellectually, for instance, in that way, what they’re really wanting and calling out for is love, is understanding, is a sense of why there is something instead of nothing. It’s because the divine Principle of the universe is Love, is holy, is goodness.
spirituality.com host: And even if they can’t really perceive human love any more, because they just feel so depressed and everything, there still is the power of the Christ. That’s the spiritual concept that Jesus lived, the loving divine Life that expressed itself through Jesus. And that will really cut through, that will come to you, if you open your heart to it.
Harriet: A friend of mine went through a lot of deep depression. I was asking him, “What is it that helped you out of it?” I mean, many things helped him out of it—prayer, Christian Science. He said that he can remember looking in the mirror and not liking, in fact, hating, what he saw.
And one day he realized that, That’s not me there. He began to wake up to his spiritual nature. And he was convinced that you only pick up on the other side, so to speak, right where you are, because consciousness governs experience.
So he says, You might as well go full blast here in learning about your spiritual selfhood and knowing who you are. And that keeps you from thinking that there’s some better answer somewhere else, or that you can’t make it here. You can make it here, because right here is the presence of God, and you can feel that. But it’s just like my going up that mountain and then turning around that I talked about at the beginning.
Or it’s also like, have you ever looked through binoculars? If they’re not focused when you put them up, well, all you see is a blur. But if you focus them, you begin to see things clearly.
Well, prayer, turning to God, lifting our thought to Spirit to see the true nature of ourselves, is like focusing the binoculars. You’re focusing your thought on what is. And then you see clearly—not something new—you see what’s already been there, always been there: your wonderful self that you are, your true self, your only self. So I’d say let’s do a little prayer focusing and accepting the reality of our wonderful self that we are.
spirituality.com host: That’s very helpful. Now Susie in Chicago is asking, “How can we help an individual who seems to be turning to a slow suicide through tobacco, alcohol, or drugs?”
Harriet: Help them see that sometimes when we turn to those things—tobacco, drugs, alcohol—we’re looking for satisfaction. And there is no satisfaction in matter. Matter never satisfies. It’s always the false hope, always the will-o’-the-wisp. It’s not something that is substance.
I think the first thing that I would do if I were with someone like that is to make very sure that I was doing what Jesus did as Mrs. Eddy says in Science and Health: “Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man, the Saviour saw God’s own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick.”
So I would be so sure that that’s what I was seeing every time I saw this precious person, that I wasn’t seeing someone who was doing all these things and trying to hurt themselves for whatever reason. To see the presence of God and man’s pure, perfect selfhood. Because, you see, this is the truth of being. This is what we really are.
We aren’t caught here in some matter paradigm. Sometimes I talk about it as a soap opera or a movie, and it’s a bad movie. It’s not the truth of being. So get very clear yourself, and then, you know what, it will help the other person. As you see more clearly who they really are, they will feel that and they will see that, and they will know of your love. It’s a very powerful prayer.
spirituality.com host: Yes, it is, and it also can lead to inspired responses, so that you may have opportunities to do good things for that person that just develop naturally.
Harriet: Yes. I did mean to say that: after the prayer, things will come to you to say, if you need to say something. We always want to know, What can we do, what can we say? Prayer is the most effective step. Then prayer leads us to say things that are helpful and do things that are helpful.
spirituality.com host: Getting rid of any feeling of condemnation toward the person, or even fear, does help it along, doesn’t it?
Harriet: Absolutely. Remember our consciousness governs our experience, including our experience with others.
spirituality.com host: Amy in California is asking, “How do we keep things fresh and new and exciting in our lives when things are stagnant? I feel like I am in a lull at work and in my personal life. What can I do when I feel like my prayers aren’t being heard, or that I am not praying correctly?”
Harriet: I always like to start with God. I like to start with what is. What is, is God’s beautiful universe, always new, always fresh. So often, I think, when we get in the way she’s describing, we’re seeing a view of finiteness instead of the infinite. We get so used to looking at everything as finite. We think our joy is finite, our income is finite, our selves are finite, our abilities are finite.
But, you know, the infinite, as I understand it, is not composed of unlimited numbers of finite things. The infinite is infinite. And we are the expression of the infinite—we express “the infinite idea” as it says in Science and Health, which forever is “developing itself, broadening and rising higher and higher from a boundless basis.”
So I would say, Get outside of this limited, finite matter sense. Don’t look around you and say, okay, well, I could do this, that, or the other—here are the choices. The choices are infinite. When we’re thinking about decisions and choices, we may come up with a few things: like we could say, Oh, well, I could do a, b, c, or something.
But God has infinite possibilities with which to bless us. And I’ve seen that so often in my life. When I’ve been willing to give up my own sense of what my life is like, where it might be going, what the opportunities are—and just consecrate my thought to God, to the source of all good. And knowing that good only comes from God—not anywhere else. Then you can let go of all this human planning and machinations, and despair, and just consecrate to God.
And then you know what happens? Things you’ve never dreamed of. That’s what’s so wonderful. Because if we only are thinking of our life as what we can imagine, well, we can’t imagine all the good that God has. The Bible tells us that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
So you look for that abundance of good right in your own thought where it yields to God, and then you’ll see it in your experience.
spirituality.com host: Wow. That was really helpful to me. Marisleysis in Miami, Florida, has a hard question. She says, “My friend took her own life a year ago, and I’m still so sad. I keep thinking that I could have saved her if I’d only paid more attention to her. I’m so full of guilt that I wasn’t there. Can you help me?”
Harriet: You know, guilt is one of the most awful suggestions that can come to us. And I use that word suggestion. It’s one of those things that we should say, as Jesus said to the tempter, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” It keeps us from seeing the good that we did do. It keeps us from going forward. It keeps pulling our thought backward.
And actually, it’s not helpful to your friend. What would be helpful to your friend would be to right now see her in a more spiritual light. Love her enough to let go of that limited sense of her. She’s not holding on to that. She’s gone on to other ideas and other things that God is telling her.
And God is telling you other things, but we can’t hear them when we keep looking back. Someone told me that the two thieves on either side of Jesus at the crucifixion were “regret of the past” and “fear of the future.” Those are the thieves that stop us from the present good we have right now.
What can you do right now for someone you love, or even someone you don’t even know? What kind thing can you do in your daily life, in your office, to someone that maybe nobody likes?
Anyway, don’t give in to the grief. It’s a trap and you don’t need to, because divine Love fills all space, including all time.
spirituality.com host: This question is from Mary in Boston, Massachusetts, and she’s saying, “I’m going to be spending some time in a country that has the world’s highest suicide rate. Do you have thoughts on how I can be mentally prepared to help and share?”
Harriet: Well, first of all, I wouldn’t accept that as true about that country. That’s a lie. I’m not saying that the statistics are wrong or that whoever wrote that up was telling something that didn’t seem to be true. What I’m saying is, we need to see things spiritually.
I wouldn’t go there thinking, Oh, this poor country. How can you help the country, or anyone, if you’re seeing them in such a terrible way? I would go with a lot of joy and expect to see that joy. Look for that joy. Cherish that joy. Joy is a quality of God.
Another statement I love in Science and Health, part of it says, “… joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy ….” I would go there with that sense of things, not believing you’re going to a place of sorrow. And just love them.
spirituality.com host: There’s no God-forsaken country.
Harriet: No, there isn’t. Every place is a holy place, because God is no more in one place than another, and no less in one place than another.
spirituality.com host: Right. William in Arizona says, “Many look forward to retirement, but when it comes, find it to be empty and unfulfilling. How can we pray better to continue leading a satisfying and useful life?”
Harriet: We need to look at what is satisfying. For me what is satisfying is learning more about God and helping others. And I think that because this activity is God-directed, God-inspired, that it’s satisfying to anyone who loves God.
Sometimes people think of retirement, Well, now I can sleep late, go do this when I want to, that when I want to, and having no cares, no responsibilities, no order. But, you know, order, purpose, caring—these things are what make life worth living. To just “veg” until it’s your time to check out is not satisfying to anyone.
That’s what’s so great about Christian Science. You never learn it all. You never come to the point where, okay, I’ve got this whole thing down—because God is infinite and continually unfolding to you “new views of divine goodness and love.”
So, you know what? The world needs you. The world needs you to be serious about your commitment to God, about helping others, about learning more about what God is. And that opens the door.
I love something Mrs. Eddy says in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany. She says, “The way is narrow at first, but it expands as we walk in it” (p. 202). So as you walk in this wonderful world of learning more about God, your horizons will broaden, and love and right activity will pour into your life. Have fun doing it, too.
spirituality.com host: Hulet in Rochester, Minnesota is asking a difficult question. She says, “My mother and I have always been very close. Now she’s in a healthcare center. I have moments of wanting to end it all, because I can’t stand the thought of living without her.”
Harriet: You know, it’s a wonderful time to learn a great fact that will bring you much joy: God is your Mother. God is the only Mother you can ever have, because God has made you. God has given you an expression of motherhood in your human mother, and you’re grateful for that. But she also has God as her Mother. And God is your Mother.
I think one of the greatest lessons that we can learn—and whether it’s in a situation like this or an unhappy marriage or no marriage or a job that’s lost, or whatever—is this: good comes from God, period. That’s the only place we find good. The more we accept that, the more we take off the limits of seeing good.
After my husband passed on, a dear friend told me this little phrase: “Look for Love’s provisions.” And that’s what I did. I was living at that time on our farm, way in the middle of a lot of acreage, and I was there alone. And some days I wouldn’t see anybody, unless I left. Of course, I’d talk to people on the phone. But I found after he passed on that every day, someone came up to the house, and every day I saw it as Love’s provisions.
One night I ended up in a restaurant by myself, and when I walked into it—it was in Mississippi, a new restaurant—everyone there turned and looked at me. Everyone was at a table with other people. And I just felt so odd and alone there. I went and sat down at a table, and all of a sudden, I heard this voice say, “Harriet! Harriet!” And it was the cook, who lived not far from our farm. She came out and sat with me and talked to me, and I said, “Love’s provisions” right there.
So now you start looking for that right now, and stop counting on your mother for that. Know that God is her Mother, too. Think what a comfort that would be for her. You can comfort her and love her and not be all weepy over her, because Love is providing for her and for you. It’s a great adventure, and I know you’ll find the answer.
spirituality.com host: This is from Linda in Sacramento, California: “My husband and I have been suffering greatly since our only daughter took her life a year ago. Daily we have been blaming ourselves for not knowing what to have done. She was bipolar. She had been in several different facilities for three days at a time. I’ve had Christian Science practitioners help when I can. The horror still reappears. I’m worried about my husband. And the only time when I have a sense of peace is when I am connecting more closely with God.”
Harriet: My heart goes out to you. But you know, you have the answer right there, because God is peace. And when we’re connecting to God, we are connecting to peace.
After my mother passed on, I had a little card that she had that had a prayer on it. One day several years later I was thinking about her, and I turned that card over, and she had written on the back of it. I didn’t know that. It said, “If there’s only one God, if there’s only one Mind, and there is, then we’re all one.”
That was such a wonderful message to me—to know that she and I are still one in God. And you are one with your daughter in God. You can’t lose her. She belongs to God. God hasn’t lost her. God gave her to you. God gave you the qualities and the wonderfulness that you had from her. God doesn’t take those away. Those qualities, things you love about her, are still there.
There was a poem in The Christian Science Journal by Thomas Poyser (“God’s lovely likeness,” July 1992) some time ago, and I’ve thought about that often. I can’t quote the whole poem, but part of it was “I give up what I cannot keep / To cherish and rejoice over what I cannot lose.” I love thinking about that. You give up the material, mortal sense of her, which you no longer have, in order to keep that of her, her real spiritual self, her love, her beauty, her joy, which you cannot lose. And you are one with God and one with His whole creation.
spirituality.com host: Jonathan in Atlanta has written to thank us for the chat, but then he asks, “Could you share with us any of your own experiences with helping people with depression or suicide?” And I was thinking about the one that you told me about last week.
Harriet: I’m giving lectures these days, and afterward I always have questions. This dear man said, “I’m 88 years old. Could you tell me any reason why I shouldn’t just let go and go on?” And the thought that came to me was, It’s not really your choice. You’re not holding on to Life, God; Life is holding on to you. God has purpose for you. God wants you, loves you. God is giving us life.
You know, we’re not in charge of our own lives. Isn’t that how we get into so much trouble? We think we’re in control of things, and then, guess what, we’re not doing such a great job. God is in control of everything. And after I said whatever I said to this man, he gave me a big grin, which was just so touching and dear.
But to go on with this thought about not thinking we’re in control of things, and yielding to God. I can’t say enough about the importance of yielding and humility. Mrs. Eddy says, “Humility is the stepping-stone to a higher recognition of Deity” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 1). And it’s that stepping-stone that we need to give meaning to our lives.
spirituality.com host: Noelle says, “I also am in New Orleans, and I’ve seen so much aching and frustration and pain. I know people are suffering greatly. How can I help them?”
Harriet: It does seem to be a daily picture here in New Orleans of dysfunction and suffering and loss. We have to make a choice of what we’re going to see. I don’t think we always realize—I know I don’t—that we are daily, moment by moment, making a choice of how we’re going to view things.
What I’m trying to do is to make the choice that’s what I quoted earlier about Jesus seeing the perfect man. We can see the perfect city. We can look at the areas around us and say, No, I’m not going to accept the disorder and the sadness.
I’m going to say, Does this mean that God would be absent here? Has God forsaken us, as the Psalmist said? No. God has not forsaken us, and God is not absent. We need to take a positive mental stance, and a proactive prayer that as we ride around, or as we see people, as we talk to people, that we are affirming the presence of God. And that’s the only presence there is. And the pictures that present to us the other are not what God is seeing. That’s the main thing—is this what God knows?
As we begin to see the presence of Love, the presence and power, the reality of the substance of Spirit, we find ways to help other people. We find things that we can say to them, not just commiserating, but uplifting. It’s really come home to me what a responsibility we have, not only in this city, but if we were living in Baghdad, or if we’re in any city or any country, to see that right there is holy ground, because there is the presence of God. Prayer is effective, and we have to take our stand and do it.
spirituality.com host: Thank you, that was very helpful. Bob in Ayer, Massachusetts, is asking, “According to Christian Science, what happens after death? What does Mrs. Eddy mean that you will wake up from the dream with a physical body?”
Harriet: We have to go back to what she says about material life. Material life is the dream, and death is just another phase of the dream that life is material. And where is that material life taking place? In thought, in misinformed thought. What is there to material life? It’s a misconception about who God is, who we are, and what the world is like. So it starts long before thinking about death. It’s right now.
How are we thinking about ourselves, and what is our concept of ourselves? Is our concept of material personality, born into matter, subject to the laws of matter? Or are we thinking in terms of never born, never dying, never having been born into matter, but always dwelling in the consciousness of God?
Because death doesn’t make a big change unless our thought changes. Everything is in thought. And the world is beginning to come to see that. Even some physicists say the world looks more like a great thought than a great machine.
And I think that’s where we start with these questions about death: we want to understand, what about life? What about earth? Who am I? And take up that study of seeing ourselves right now as the way we’re going to always be. We’re not going to be any different than our spiritual nature. We’re just going to see it more and more clearly.
spirituality.com host: This is from “Discouraged” in Colorado. They write, “As students of Christian Science, we have lived a life of giving and support, and it has been met by deception and animosity in the workplace, leaving us without employment yet once again. We need to connect to God as uninterruptible good, undisturbed by matter, and not subject to yet another end. How can we best do this?”
Harriet: I remember when I owned a real estate business, one of the things that I was aware of and deeply held to was that my good didn’t come from a job or a contract or a customer or a commission—that radical stance that good is spiritual, and as such, is unlimited. It doesn’t depend on others.
No one can take away what God gives. And God gives us all. I love the parable of the prodigal son that Jesus gave—what the father said to the son who stayed behind: “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” All that God has is yours. No one can take it away from you.
There’s also this thought in business, or in life, that good is like a big pie—it’s finite. And if you get a piece, somebody else doesn’t get a piece. If you get this job, well, then, you’re depriving someone else. Or if they get it, then you don’t get it.
I never like to think of it that way—of good being limited or that we’re competing with others for good or that we can lose good. Good is infinite, present, because it’s in consciousness. As someone has said, you can use all the fours and threes you want to without taking my fours and threes, because we both agree that’s a mental concept.
Well, so is good. And no one takes your good, no one deprives you. Just keep loving and looking to the infinite nature of good. And be grateful for what’s already in your life.
spirituality.com host: Harriet, this is a little bit off the subject, but because it is related specifically to today, I thought we ought to do this one question on this subject. Elizabeth from San Francisco, California, is writing, “Were you aware that today is the hundredth anniversary of the San Francisco earthquake on April 18, 1906? Why don’t we have to fear?”
Harriet: I’ve been thinking about earthquakes. And one of the things that I thought—you know, people talk about natural disasters. There’s nothing natural about a disaster, because it doesn’t come from God. “God is natural good ….” And we have to affirm in our thought that good is natural.
Another thing I’ve been thinking about is that we think that we stand on the earth. You think you go out, okay, you’re standing here on the ground. There’s a statement inScience and Health that says that “rocks and mountains stand for … grand ideas.” And also in the Glossary of Science and Health—and I don’t have these in front of me, so I’m not saying it exactly maybe—but rock is “spiritual foundation.”
So when you think you’re standing on the earth, instead begin to think that you’re standing on a solid and grand idea. You’re standing on a spiritual foundation. It can’t be moved. The rock of Truth cannot be moved. And this is the rock that you’re standing on. So I would go around acknowledging that, acknowledging the presence of the spiritual reality there.
Another thought that I’ve had about so-called disasters—since I live in an area that went through one last summer, which was the Hurricanes Katrina and Rita—is that even though these things seem to affect large numbers of people and large areas, and we think, Oh, my gosh, what could I possibly do about that? they are experienced individually.
Whatever comes into your experience comes to the individual door of your thought, and you can meet it there. We don’t have time to go into it, but the experiences I had during the hurricane and at others times show that we individually turn to God to see what reality is. And you can individually know that you are standing on this rock of grand ideas, of spiritual truth.
And as you become aware of that for yourself, then you begin to bless everyone else. Because then you can think of them that way too, until you see this is the spiritual universe. It’s not the discordant, disruptive universe of the matter paradigm. It’s God’s creation, and that’s where we all live, all of the time.
spirituality.com host: We’ve got about four questions lined up, and we’re going to give this some extra time so we can do these four questions, if that’s all right with you, Harriet?
Harriet: Okay.
spirituality.com host: All right. This is from JC in Chicago, who says, “I know that God is good and that I am inseparable to from Him. I have been praying for a healing for three years now. Although I have grown in my spirituality tremendously, and have gotten out of my depression, I have not been healed. I have stopped praying about a healing now, and just want to feel God’s love and protection. How come I can’t feel God, His direction and love? I know He loves me, I just can’t feel it. What should I do to feel His love?”
Harriet: When I’ve had times that I haven’t felt so inspired, shall we say, what I’ve found is not to give in to that. In other words, let’s say we say a prayer. We pray, we acknowledge that God is present, we’re one with God, and then we say, But I just don’t feel it. Well, we just negated the prayer that we did. It’s just like if you wanted to go somewhere and you took two steps forward and two steps backward, you’re still where you started.
So I say this: the negative thoughts—they’re not your thoughts, because they’re not coming from God. And God is the only Mind. I love that Mrs. Eddy says that Jesus “knew of but one Mind and laid no claim to any other.” When we are willing to do that and listen and let the depth of what that means sink into our heart, then we will have the inspiration. It’s ours. It comes with the one Mind.
So you might not know how to work something—I don’t know, maybe you’re like me and you don’t know how a car really works. All you can do is turn on the key. But the whole thing of it is still working. Maybe this isn’t a great analogy, but, in other words, it’s running anyway—God is loving you anyway, whether you’re knowing it or not. And I would say, Stop negating your prayer. Stick with what’s true.
spirituality.com host: Lois in Eugene, Oregon, is asking—she’s reading an article in The Christian Science Monitor that stated something to the effect that young black males are still at risk. “On the subject of suicide, the material picture offers such aggressive suggestions that would seem to engender hopelessness, which is a major component in suicide. How can we pray for young black men, and indeed, for everyone, to know more clearly their true identity and their preciousness?”
Harriet: You know, it’s interesting. I printed that article last night. I get the Monitor on the Internet because we’re not getting mail here in New Orleans yet. And I printed that editorial, and I sent it this morning to the board of our church and said, “Wouldn’t this be a great prayer project for our church?” so I agree with you. This is something that we do need to pray about. And you know why? Because we can. And prayer will make a difference.
It’s seeing that no one is left out. No one is worthless. No one can be deprived of this heritage. There are no haves and have-nots. No one is less than the full expression of God. In Science and Health on page 475 is the question, “What is man?” And the answer could be startling if you read it for the first time, because it’s starts out by saying, “Man is not matter ….” It talks about man being the image and likeness of God, spiritual and perfect. Farther down in that paragraph it says, for instance, that man—and when Science and Health says man, we’re talking about both men and women, using man as a generic term—it says that we include “all right ideas.”
Each one of these precious people, each one of us and everyone, includes all the right ideas, including purpose, education, health, goodness. It also says “… that which has not a single quality underived from Deity.” So the true nature of man does not have hopelessness or criminal instincts or ignorance. And it also says, “… that which has no separate mind from God.”
So everyone is part of this Mind of God, part of this expression. And as I said, I just read that yesterday, and I’ve just started thinking about how to pray. But if everyone listening would take up this prayer, what a difference we could make for our country.
spirituality.com host: This is from someone who describes themself with a spouse recently deceased, and they’re in New England. They write, “My spouse recently passed on. Handling all the new things, plus trying to keep a house, car, etc., going, while also trying to have some sort of ordinary life sometimes feels overwhelming. For instance, preparing an ordinary meal can feel exhausting and lonely with no one to share it. Do you have any thoughts?”
Harriet: I certainly know what they’re talking about, because my husband passed on about five years ago. But we don’t have to stay there. I think maybe I’m saying something I said earlier, but everything that comes into our experience, first comes to our thought. And it’s at that place that we accept it or we reject it.
When the thought comes, This is lonely, then we say, I’m not going to accept that; “legions of angels” are here—meaning God’s thoughts are all around me. I’m not by myself. I’m not “an isolated, solitary, idea.” As Science and Health says, I reflect infinite Mind, the “sum of all substance.”
Or if the work seems overwhelming, you have unlimited intelligence. If there’s some help you need, it’s going to show up as part of Love’s provision. It’s challenging each limiting thought that comes and saying, Is this from God? No. Then this doesn’t have to be part of my life.
We might turn to a copy of the Christian Science Sentinel or The Christian Science Journal and read how other people are making these wonderful discoveries of spiritual reality in their life. That lifts us up, and then we know, I could do that, too, because I, too, am a child of God.
So don’t be discouraged. And don’t feel like you have to go through some stages of grief. Wow, what a downer that is, and what a limited sense of life. There are no stages of grief—grief is a lie about man’s oneness with God and the inseparability that we have from good, from Love.
spirituality.com host: The spouse is inseparable from Love, too.
Harriet: Absolutely. You’ll find ways to think about your spouse. Maybe they had a special Bible verse they loved and you could think about them that way. That has brought me a lot of peace and comfort, to think that my husband is knowing these things of God also, and is not separate from God—he goes right on in Love.
spirituality.com host: Now we come to the last question, which is a hard question, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to participate in answering this one.
Harriet: Sure.
spirituality.com host: It’s from Kevin in Seattle, and he says, “All these nice thoughts are helpful, but to a person on the verge of suicide, I feel like they may not be much help. What is the root cause of suicide? It seems like if we could figure that out, we’d be able to help people see a way out other than taking their life.”
Harriet: So did you want to talk about it first?
spirituality.com host: Okay. Well, let me just say that many, many years ago, I was in a suicidal depression that went on for quite some time. And we don’t have time to go into any details, but one of the things that really helped me were the spiritual ideas that I got from studying Christian Science and the Bible and so forth. And all of those ideas individually kept me going until I reached the point where I was totally free of that situation.
They do sound like nice thoughts if you’re just talking about them in the abstract, but I have to say to you that I would have never got across the river without them. And the individual ideas that I could cling to kept me going for a long period. And there were lots of individual stones that helped me get across that river.
But one of the things that I feel deeply from that experience is that if you simply keep praying and simply keep affirming whatever comes to you as true—you know, taking a Bible verse a day or a statement from Science and Health or a combination or some other helpful thought, and just work with a thought a day and be grateful, work on gratitude, you will get across.
For me, it was a moment of really just the Christ coming into my life and helping me to see the presence of God in a way I hadn’t seen it before. And it wasn’t the great, tremendous “legions of angels” kind of thing, but just a moment, a perception of some flowers that were just so beautiful that I felt that I had never seen anything as beautiful as that before.
It broke through that sense of mental darkness I’d had, long enough for this inspiration to come: which was to be grateful; that if I wanted to survive, I had to be grateful for every single thing in my life, ranging from, as you said earlier, Harriet, the blueness of the sky to the color of the grass to the fact that I could breathe, that I could walk—all those different seemingly small, routine things.
I became a master at the art of gratitude, and that was ultimately the key to being totally free. But those individual thoughts, those individual ideas like the ones you’ve shared, were things that helped me get across the river so I could get to that point.
So now, please, Harriet, you go ahead.
Harriet: Well, thank you, for sharing that, and I agree. You know, sometimes it can sound like Oh, you’re just shouting platitudes here. And if that’s all the further we get, then, of course, they have no weight. But they’re not platitudes, they’re truths. And that’s the difference. It’s a truth, because God is Truth.
But I would say, going back to the question, that the root cause of suicide is the belief that we’re separate from God. And rather than going into why do we feel this, in other words, going into trying to explain the wrong answer, I would work with why is it that I’m not separated from God? How is it that I’m one with God?
And that’s what I was talking about at the beginning—this oneness with God. And on the deepest level, and the most effective level, the place where healing really takes place, is not in our striving or wishing to make our mortal, temporal material sense of life better. It’s not about fixing up the matter paradigm.
It’s about seeing that Life—the only Life there is, God, of which you are an intimate, invaluable part—is spiritual and eternal. And it’s being willing to turn in that direction and begin to accept that you are spiritual—and yes, perfect; and yes, now.
So by walking in that direction, we find that divine Love has made us that way to accept our goodness and our wholeness, and accept our oneness with our Father-Mother God.
spirituality.com host: Thank you so much, Harriet. Is there anything you’d like to say before we close?
Harriet: I think I’ve said quite a lot. Maybe I could just end with a thing that Jesus said, “It is the spirit that quickeneth.” The Spirit is the real and eternal, the satisfying, the uplifting. And the matter is only the shadow. As we turn to this goodness of Love, divine Love, we’ll find the way. Keep trying.
Citations used in this chat
Science and Health
King James Bible