My mom collected antique clocks.  They continuously ticked in every room of our house, and my dad wound them every Sunday afternoon. The clocks ticked and chimed, and each pendulum swung back and forth, back and forth. Pendulums were a backdrop of my childhood.

The clocks’ mechanisms were fascinating and their cases beautiful, yet a clock’s movements cannot have an impact on or dictate anything to anyone. I’ve thought about how the movement of a pendulum can be symbolic of an imaginary “pendulum power.” Now I am learning that I am not governed by any vacillating entity or pendulum because all true power is sourced in God, the one, infinite Mind. Mind’s all-powerful action is consistent and always good, not swinging back and forth between discord and harmony. No seesawing between ups and downs, no spectrum stretching from good to evil—just Mind’s eternal wholeness, completeness, and peaceful action. And I am the expression of divine Mind’s perfect action.

Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Man is not a pendulum, swinging between evil and good, joy and sorrow, sickness and health, life and death,” and that “. . . joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy; . . .” (pp. 246, 304).