'Don't hold up the wind!'
Originally appeared on spirituality.com
Mary Baker Eddy opened her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, with the promise, “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings” (p. vii ). While taking a lesson in windsurfing a number of years ago, I gained a new perspective on what it means to lean.
A calm lagoon seemed the perfect place for me to spend a few hours learning how to windsurf. The instructor gave me a board, a short sail, and some basic instructions in footwork. I ventured into the waters of the lagoon. The wind was perfect, the water warm. It wasn’t long before I could steer the board wherever I wanted to go around the lagoon. I was having a dandy time! Then the instructor hailed me to shore and gave me a bigger sail – bright pink and well above my head. I took the rope and pulled the sail out of the water as I had before, but with the weight of the larger sail I fell straight backward into the water. Again and again I tried, always with the same result.
The instructor then yelled to me from shore, “Stop trying to hold up the wind!” At first I had no idea what he was talking about. But within a few minutes, I got it!
In windsurfing, you adjust footwork and lean backward, knowing that the sail will catch the wind. For just a split second you are in freefall before the wind completely fills the sail. But you do have to lean back, or else—ironically—you fall into the water while trying too hard to hang onto the sail.
What a lesson that has provided for my practice of Christian Science! How tempting it can be, in the midst of trial and tribulation, to forget it is not our job to hold up the wind of God. What a joy it becomes to consider Christian healing in the context of that lesson. Healing in Christian Science requires that we let go of reliance on what the material senses are telling us and trust the healing wind of the Almighty, moving on the waters of our thought.
The first chapter of Genesis metaphorically describes Christian healing. The narrative reads in part, “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters” (verse 2 ). Those waters represent the chaos of mortal thinking, all too familiar to most of us (see Science and Health, p. 454 ). In Christian healing, we see the powerful wind of Spirit—a Biblical name for the Almighty, or God—move in the realm of human endeavor, even as a strong wind moves over the water. The wind is invisible, but we can see what it is doing.
In the same verse in Genesis, the word rendered “moved” (translated from the Hebrew) means the strong and gentle movement of a mother bird brooding over her young. The more we know of the Almighty God, the more we lose reluctance to lean back and trust that all-gracious Spirit with every detail of our lives.
As my windsurfing lesson went on, I found myself gaining confidence. “This should be effortless!” the instructor exclaimed. “No white knuckles from hanging on so tight.” What a difference! The sail caught the wind, and all I needed to do was hang back on one arm and enjoy the ride, with the other hand steering as easily as if I were holding a teacup. The lagoon was no longer big enough for the speed I was going, so I headed for the ocean waters outside the lagoon—which suddenly I could navigate with ease.
In Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy defined wind as “that which indicates the might of omnipotence and the movements of God’s spiritual government, encompassing all things” (p. 597 ). While it is our job to align our thought with God in prayer, it is never the human mind that heals—it is the Spirit of God moving on the face of the waters of human illness or accident or sorrow. It is the Spirit of God that still says to that darkness in the human mind, “Let there be light!” We can remember that no matter how difficult the human circumstance to be overcome, that next line ever and always reads, “and there was light!” (Gen. 1:3 ).
It’s not our job to hold up the wind!