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The chapter, Science
of Being, is the second-largest chapter of the Christian Science textbook. The
subject was evidently of great importance to Mary Baker Eddy, and so it is to
us, including in the sphere of economics. Economics begins with the Principle of
the General Welfare, decking a festive table for a feast that symbolizes, an
actually demonstrates, the riches of our humanity. Economics has nothing to do
with poverty. Poverty results from the habitual lack in spiritual perception.
But old habits, axioms, believes, and traditions can be put aside with a
childlike exploration of the sunshine in the bright new day that divine Science
opens up for human living, lifting the human living up towards the realization
of our native air: divine living. The barriers that we face here seem to be
dark, cold, unmovable, but in the celebration of universal Love, what is
apparent become transparent like panes of glass that cannot resist the force of
a profound spiritual ideas, and shatter and fall away.
Many of the vistas in
the novel, Glass Barriers, are symbolic, though the historic periods of
renaissance that some of the stories touch upon were quite real whose
testaments, in the form of monuments built in stone, still stand. They have
weathered the ages. They urge us to understand and acknowledge that divine Truth
spans all ages, all times, and that what we call progress, even scientific
progress, is but a new, and perhaps an advanced, realization of the profound
spiritual dimension that has always existed. False education, dogmas, customs,
political manipulation, narrow perception, may have darkened the human scene for
many a period, but the light remains, and so does the option for society to step into the
light, acknowledging the power of the human being to take the requisite, divinely
appointed, steps.
The greatest
acknowledgement of the divine idea is found in the 'monuments' that we 'publish'
in the flow of our living as a testament of the brightness of the divine idea
that we understood and have lived with. For example, a thousand years ago more
than 80 great temples were built in central India, all in one general area and
in essentially a single century, the Temples of Kajuharo. An economic
achievement on this scale (which actually cannot be achieved with slavery)
speaks of a powerful renaissance that reflects the power of a spiritual idea.
With these great achievements we publish the majestic dimension of the human
being. We crossed the earth-bound and stepped onto the moon. In the sphere of
Christian Science healing society has published a flood of monuments to the
power of divine Love, and still does, and will continue to do so. And sometimes
the footsteps are still small, a few daring pioneering footsteps in a still dark
landscape, footsteps towards the light as the novel, Glass Barriers, aims
to exemplify, even if but symbolically.
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