Forgiveness is a wonderful thing

My guest post for today is by the Australian/New Zealand Manager for Committee on Publication – Daryl Francis,  who recently attended a conference on Spirituality and Health in Adelaide, South Australia.  Thanks for posting your thoughts on this topic Daryl.

Posted on July 28, 2011 by Daryl Francis

Forgiveness is a wonderful thing. It promotes health.

Exercise, good diet, regular check-ups, the right medications – isn’t that what most people think of when they think of what promotes health?

Forgiveness promotes health? What?

I’ve mentioned that forgiveness was the main theme of the conference on Spirituality and Health that I attended in Adelaide a couple of weeks ago. Lots of health professionals from the world of medicine supported the idea that forgiveness promotes health with anecdotal and empirical evidence and studies (with lots of statistics!) made over long periods of time.

Forgiveness is not new…  it is put forward as a virtue in many faith traditions. We find it in the Lord’s Prayer… “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us,” in the 1662 Anglican Common Book of Prayer, or “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors” in the King James version. There are other commonly read translations of Matthew 6:12.

I would put it that forgiveness is more than a virtue though. It is a force for well-being – health –  and it’s something we can all practice.

What happens when we get steamed up about something someone else has done to us, really offended us, and we stew over it for days, weeks, even years? Have you ever met anyone like that? Are they happy campers? Bitter dark thoughts dim anyone’s perception of whatever good is present, and that seems to be a short cut to stress and depression which some claim leads on to many other physical diseases. Being able to forgive can short circuit those negative outcomes. It promotes healing without the side effects of medications.

At the recent conference in Adelaide, there were some very moving accounts of the healing power of forgiveness. One of them was given by a woman who had come to Australia just a few months ago with her family looking for a safe place to live. One day a neighbour’s son came to their door and shot her husband and son for no apparent reason, through the glass front door of their home. Her husband was killed and the son was still in hospital as she spoke about it. This brave woman was working hard to keep her emotions in check as she told her story just three months after the event. What was giving this dear woman such strength?

She told us that the moment she realized what had just happened she was obviously shocked and devastated, but immediately the thought came to her, “I must forgive this boy right now or it will be eating at me for a very long time.” (That’s not an exact quote, but as near as I recall) She told of how she insisted on seeing the boy as one of God’s very own children right on the spot. Literally, as the child of God who was even at that moment loved by God, and by his family.

What a powerful example of forgiveness that was. No-one hearing it was unmoved. To me, it was an act of unlimited love being demonstrated. This mother told of the continuous love and support pouring out to her from friends and neighbours – some she had not even met before – over the following weeks. I have a very strong feeling that this dear mother will rebuild her life successfully.

In the King James Version of the Holy Bible, part of the Lord’s Prayer reads, “And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors”. (See Matthew 6:12)  Mary Baker Eddy, who founded Christian Science gives her understanding of those words as, “And Love is reflected in love.” (page 17, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Eddy.)

Forgiveness is more than a virtue, it’s a healing power.

Could it be that we all have the power to think ourselves young again?

Today with so much emphasis on reversing the aging process, I found colleague Kay Stroud’s blog thought provoking and refreshing.  Thanks Kay……..

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Kay Stroud

What if it were possible to turn back time? Could it be that we all have the power to think ourselves young again?

What a refreshing joy to see the realisation dawn on an elderly person’s face that getting older doesn’t mean decrepitude, sickness and uselessness! Did you catch the “Young Ones”, the series aired on the ABC over the last four Tuesdays? This program showed how a person’s environment can shape the way that they think, and how, in turn, the way people think shapes how they feel.

There was obvious and astounding physical and mental improvement in just a week as six of the UK’s beloved stars in their 70s and 80s progressed through this experiment, living as though it were in their heyday in 1975. The final program next week examines ‘how our preconceptions about old people and how we behave ourselves can have enormous impact on how we feel about the elderly and how we age’.

This is not the first time this sort of experiment has been carried out. Even back in the 19^thCentury a “sketch from the history of an English woman (was) published in the London medical magazine called The Lancet. Disappointed in love in her early years, she became insane and lost all account of time. Believing that she was still living in the same hour which parted her from her lover, taking no note of years,s he stood daily before the window watching for her lover’s coming. In this mental state she remained young. Having no consciousness of time, she literally grew no older. Some American travellers saw her when she was seventy-four, and supposed her to be a young woman. She had no care-lined face, no wrinkles nor gray hair, but youth sat gently on cheek and brow. Asked to guess her age, those unacquainted with her history conjectured that she must be under twenty“.

The discoverer and founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, retold the above account in her seminal book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (p.245). As are many thinkers from all walks of life today, she was profoundly interested in the scientific research of her day.

Eddy’s many healing demonstrations of the principles of Christian Science equipped her to be able to explain it this way, “Impossibilities never occur. One instance like the foregoing proves it possible to be young at seventy-four; and the primary of that illustration makes it plain that decrepitude is not according to law, nor is it a necessity of nature, but an illusion.”

In actual fact, we can each prove that as the ‘image and likeness of God’ we are not like a pendulum, swinging between evil and good, joy and sorrow, sickness and health, life and death, but have boundless health, opportunities to progress and fulfillment. Halleluiah!

Posted in Christian Science, Healing, Health care, Kay’s posts, Prayer, Scientific research, Spirituality, Videos | Tagged ageless being, Christian Science practitioner, Christian Scientists, decrepitude an illusion, Healing, Health care, how we age, image and likeness of God, Kay Stroud, Ken Girard, Lancet, Mary Baker Eddy, Prayer, Science and Health, Scientific research, spiritual healing, time for thinkers, UK’s beloved stars, Young Ones ABC Program | Leave

Guest Post: Health fads the fashion

Today’s guest post is from Steven Salt, from Ohio. He throws  a serious, thought provoking light on health fads – along with some light hearted observations. Some of it direct from Australia.

Fads come and go.  That’s their nature.  Somebody starts something, it catches on, and before long, everybody’s doing it, whether or not it’s a good idea.  Once the novelty wears off, it’s on to the next.

In the 1920’s there was flag pole sitting.  In the 1940’s it was gold fish swallowing.  Later came phone booth stuffing, Chinese fire drills and streaking.  Flash mobs are still going strong.

Another one of today’s fads is planking. Definition: lying face down in an unusual place. Yep, that’s it.  Find a place and lie face down.  What’s the point?  None, other than you are participating in the latest fad.  You’re current, with it.  You have a jump on everyone else.  Yippee!

Many fads are health related.  Food and diet fads, exercise machines and routines, and medication and herbal supplements attract our fancy.  How about the Beverly Hills Fruit Diet, giggle machines, and Fen-phen?  They have come and gone.

Today with many new drugs entering the marketplace, advertisers are hitting the airways with a product that needs a buyer.  The buyer needs a reason to purchase.  So the advertiser sells the symptoms that the product supposedly alleviates.  During a 3 to 6 month advertising campaign the description of those symptoms can weigh on us.  And that’s the point.  Just accept one of the symptoms and the chances of you buying the drug go up.

This is also creating a culture of self-diagnosis.  Not only can you preempt the doctor’s evaluation by telling him what’s wrong, you can prescribe just the right medication, the one you saw advertised on TV.

Disease can have an element of novelty.  The author of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, once wrote, “A new name for an ailment affects people like a Parisian name for a novel garment. Every one hastens to get it. A minutely described disease costs many a man his earthly days of comfort.”  My guess is that designer labels from Paris were the fashion fad of Eddy’s day.

She does bring up a good point about the attraction of ailments.  Sure…nobody wants to be sick. But when thinking about the intense focus on bodily pains and observations promoted in the media, it could just be that we are looking at a fad, today’s disease du jour.

Awareness to this tendency might be just the thing needed that keep us from falling victim to its attraction.  So, watch out for all those commercials describing specific symptoms.  Don’t take it in. Years down the road, you’ll thank me.  As for those pictures of you lying face down in the middle of that busy sidewalk…well I can’t help you there.

-

-

What’s at the door of your thinking?

My guest post for today is by Daryl Francis.  Daryl’s comments are reflective of the way I (and I’m sure many, many others) feel about the recent news broadcast to the world.

Posted on May 4, 2011 by Daryl Francis

A few days ago we had news that Osama bin Laden had been found and shot. He has been held responsible for thousands of deaths around the world in recent years and I sense that many, many people feel that he needed to be brought to justice.

I’m wondering quietly about the jubilant reactions of crowds in some parts of the world shown on news broadcasts.

Will the fact that he has been eliminated bring the acts of terrorism he encouraged to a halt? Sadly, on its own, I doubt that it will. The kind of thinking that led to terrorism in the first place seems to have become such a part of Osama’s followers’ thinking that whether he is there in person or not is possibly irrelevant to them.

Has anyone else noticed that when we, as individuals give permission – mental consent – to a certain kind of behavior, it’s not always long after that that we see it turn up in our own experience? It’s been my observation that if we refuse to give consent to certain kinds of behaviour, it’s less likely that we will become involved with those behaviours.

How important then, is it to stay alert to what is knocking on the door of our thinking?

In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “Your decisions will master you, whichever direction they take… Stand porter at the door of thought.”

Over the decades, I’ve found that to be good advice. It’s kept me out of trouble many a time.

Posted in Safety | Tagged behaviour, justice, Mary Baker Eddy, mental permission, Osama bin Laden, Science and Health, terrorism | Leave a comment

April Fool’s Day – 1st April, Golden Rule Day – 5th April

When growing up I reveled in the fact that April Fool’s Day gave us a legitimate excuse to play an innocent practical joke on family members, friends and especially teachers!  Almost always the jokes would be reciprocated.

My guest post for today by London colleague Tony Lobl talks about another kind of reciprocity – that of good deeds.  We are reminded of this on Golden Rule Day – 5th April.  The idea of ‘doing for others what you would like to have done for yourself’  has been around for many centuries and is a central part of most religions/belief systems.  Tony tells us of its origins……..

Posted on March 30, 2011 by loblt| 2 Comments

And, no, this is not an April Fool’s joke!  Five days from now an idea is being celebrated.  It is a profoundly Christian idea…to Christians like myself…a profoundly Jewish idea to Jews, a profoundly Hindu idea to Hindus, etc.  (See graphic at bottom of this blog.)

Which only goes to show that no-one has a monopoly on a good idea, not any religion…

Nor all the religions!  According to think humanism “Humanists try to embrace the moral principle known as the ‘Golden Rule’, otherwise known as the ethic of reciprocity, which means we believe that people should aim to treat each other as they would like to be treated themselves – with tolerance, consideration and compassion…”

Of course, a good idea doesn’t need to wait for a certain day to be enacted.  Golden Rule Day is all about promoting the Golden Rule’s everyday – and moment by moment – consideration and implementation. Including Friday…

So, here is a Golden Rule for April Fools Day: don’t fool others in ways in which you wouldn’t want to be fooled.

Mind you, that leaves plenty of ways to fool your family and friends in ways you would find funny if done to you. So have fun! (See, for instance, The Five Best Online April Fools’ Pranks, in The Christian Science Monitor.)

Here is a video for “Golden Rule Day” by Charter of Compassion founder – and successful author – Karen Armstrong:

And here are the various messages she is referring to which evidence “the centrality” of the Golden Rule to so many different faiths.

Celebrating the real woman!

This week, most newspapers and media outlets have featured articles in honour of the centenary of International Women’s Day (8th March).

The Weekend Australian sponsored a four page report titled ‘Women in Leadership’ and my local paper featured a short bio on 100 high achieving women in Western Australia’s first Women’s Hall of Fame.

I have had the privilege of working with so many outstanding women over the years and have gained wisdom and insight from all.  I am grateful to them for their mentoring and friendship.

I am also profoundly grateful to another woman,  Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science.  I am a student of Christian Science and have found that through the study of Eddy’s inspired writings and the practical application of the healing ideas in her primary work, Science and Health, I have seen changes for good in my own life and the life of those around me.

My guest post for today is from a fellow Christian Scientist living in Texas,  Annette Bridges.  Annette talks about Mary Baker Eddy and her ground breaking accomplishments for the betterment of humanity.

Thank you Annette……..

The Top 10 Misconceptions About Christian Science

Guest post from Eric Nelson:

Thanks for this Eric. Your top ten is pretty much what we get here in Australia – not necessarily in the same order though.

Last Friday I had coffee with Bruce Reyes-Chow – former Moderator of the Presbyterian Church (USA), founding pastor of San Francisco’s Mission Bay Community Church, avid social networker, Oakland A’s fan, and widely-read blogger.

Most of our time was spent chatting about all things “social media” – with a couple of detours to compare notes on baseball and Mac computers. I was impressed by his many accomplishments, his love of church, the authenticity and depth of his passions – and his good questions. Towards the end of the conversation, something Bruce asked really stuck with me:

“What do you think are the Top 10 misconceptions about Christian Science?”