Spring: A Sweet Season of Renewal
While Mary Baker Eddy is best known as the founder of Christian Science, and author of the bestselling book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which presides along side the Bible as the pastor of the Christian Science Church, she was much more.
She healed people the way Jesus did, and taught others to do that as well. She was also a poet, seeing both metaphor and God’s glory abounding everywhere. Full of the wonderment of Life, she knew we possess and reflect God’s dominion over all the earth.
She especially loved spring as a “sweet season of renewal,” and rejoiced when seeing “floral apostles” which so beautifully direct our thought to “the one source, divine Life and Love, in whom is all salvation from sin, disease and death.”
She spoke of leaves clapping their hands “as nature’s untired worshipers,” and even heard the grass underfoot silently exclaiming with Jesus that, “The meek shall inherit the earth.”
She saw nature in spring “like a thrifty housewife” which “sets the earth in order… taking up the white carpets and putting down the green ones.”
She refers us to little birds out in all kinds of weather, which are not susceptible to coughs, colds, or contagion, since these things are “engendered solely by human theories.”
In one of her other books, titled Miscellaneous Writings, she waxes eloquently about the voices of spring: “Spring passes over mountain and meadow, waking up the world; weaving the wavy grass … stirring the soft breeze … her little feet trip lightly on, turning up the daisies … rocking the oriole’s cradle, challenging the sedentary shadows to activity, and the streams to race to the sea. Her dainty fingers put the fur cap on pussy willow, paint in pink the petals… The snowbird that tarried through the storm now chirps to the breeze; the cuckoo sounds her invisible lute, calling the feathered tribe back to their summer homes. Old robin, prophesies of fair earth and sunny skies. The brooklet sings melting murmurs to merry meadows; …the winds make melody through dark pine groves. … Human hope and faith should join in nature’s grand harmony, and make music in the heart.”
“The alders bend over the streams to shake out their tresses in the water-mirrors; let mortals bow before the creator, and, looking through Love’s transparency, behold man in God’s own image and likeness, arranging in the beauty of holiness each budding thought.”
“With each returning year, higher joys, holier aims, a purer peace and diviner energy, should freshen the fragrance of being. … Thus abiding in Truth, the warmth and sunlight of prayer and praise and understanding will ripen the fruits of Spirit, and goodness will have its springtide of freedom and greatness.”
It is no surprise that someone who treasured the slightest flower, bird, leaf or grass as evidence of God’s majesty, should spend her life relieving mankind from suffering. Just as Jesus healed the suffering multitudes by seeing God’s inherent goodness as ever-present and indwelling right before him and in everyone, Mary Baker Eddy healed others by his example. She teaches us to do so as well, by scientific reasoning and demonstration, along with poetic metaphor.
We start to learn to heal by seeing God’s goodness expressed wherever we can, like in the sprouting spring flowers and cheerful birdsong at dawn. These point up to bigger manifestations of God’s goodness. As we practice finding goodness, we will get better at it. Like any muscle, the more we use it the more capable we become. Soon you can see God’s goodness blooming everywhere, and proportionately, healing will naturally unfold. It is a joyous, invigorating prospect bearing abundant fruit.
Meanwhile, we can celebrate springtime with Isaiah of the Old Testament when he says in chapter 61, “For as the earth bringeth forth her bud, and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.”
by Polly Castor
