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Prayer in the peace of the grove
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
There's a park I love to visit in my Canadian hometown of Victoria. It has a pond where children feed the ducks. There are trees where great blue herons nest in the spring. There's a petting zoo, an eagles' nest, a concert shell, a rose garden and hilltop views of the ocean and mountains. But my favorite place of all is a grove of cedar trees.
These graceful trees, with their drooping branches, huddle together to make a perfect hideaway for childhood games of adventure and imagination. The low-scooped branches can be horses racing to the finish or boats sailing off to distant lands. Their roots can be maps of mysterious places or an obstacle course extraordinaire.
I've enjoyed many visits to this wonderful grove, both with groups of preschool children and on my own. When I visit this special place, I feel the world is full of possibilities—of joy, imagination, excitement. I'm reluctant to leave the trees’ sheltering bows and go “back to the real world.”
For a few weeks, I was struggling with feelings of apathy—stemming from what some might call the “winter blues.” Hedged in by the snow and the cold, I was sliding back into some bad habits—eating poorly, no longer taking my daily run and in general mismanaging my free time. All this made me feel worthless, ashamed and just generally down.
In fact, my mood was so low that I was ashamed to even pray about it. That was a first for me—I have always been able to turn to God in prayer whenever I've had a problem.
But then one day a few weeks into my blue funk, an idea struck me. I always felt vibrant and alive in the cedar grove at my favorite park, no matter what time of year it was. Could I leave my joy, imagination and excitement in the grove? In fact, I couldn’t. I've learned from my study of Christian Science that these qualities are part of my identity—part of my being as a child of God. They’re not about a particular location, because they come from God, and God is everywhere. God is the Source of all creativity and energy. And, as His creation, I must be like Him.
Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “This is the doctrine of Christian Science: that divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object; that joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; that good can never produce evil; that matter can never produce mind nor life result in death.”
To me this passage explains that divine Love, or God, can’t lose His joyful child—and that child is me. This understanding filled me with relief. I felt exuberant, free and hopeful for the first time in many weeks.
I clung to this promise of continual joy, embracing my “grove” of uplifted thought. Each time I noticed my thoughts sliding into apathy, I would remember God’s promise of continual joy and wonder in my life—not just in the cedar grove, or on a beautiful spring day, but everywhere and all the time.
The spiritual power behind these thoughts lifted me out of my depression and apathy. I claimed the happiness that is always mine—and yours, too.
I’ve started running again and I’m happy about the way I spend my free time. I don’t feel hopeless anymore, even though there’s still snow on the ground. I know I'm always in the shelter of God's love.
Finding a path to constant joy:
Science and Health
304:9-14
288:31-2
King James Bible
Isa 55:12