Find inspiration in the latest issue

As I was reading through this issue of the Journal, I came across an arresting question in the article “Climate change and mental change” by Leslie Revilock.

She writes: “What is mankind’s mental climate? Is it characterized by moral and spiritual qualities, or indignant reactions, extremes of opinions, anger, fear, outrage, self-justification, and selfishness?”

The latter are what she calls “traits of human will,” which she goes on to say “can be reflected physically in extremes of temperature, drought, or violent weather, such as huge storms, volcanic eruptions, and tornadoes.”

No doubt, we’ve seen increasing evidence of these events throughout the world as temperatures rise, both internally and externally, making more obvious the connection between our mental atmosphere—the atmosphere of thought—and the physical atmosphere in which we live.

Ever since its founding by Mary Baker Eddy in 1883, The Christian Science Journal has addressed the mental cause of discord and disease, explaining that healing and harmony are the inevitable result of a spiritualization of thought, or what Ms. Revilock calls “a change in our concept of God, the harmonious Principle of the universe—a change to a deeper and larger and entirely spiritual understanding of God as Love and Truth.” She goes on to say: “What is also needed is to see ourselves as God’s manifestation. This includes the recognition that we are expressions of Love and its qualities—peace, harmony, compassion, temperance, and confidence—and that we have the God-given ability to behold and know each other this way.”

Our lead article, “Freedom from human willpower” by Janet Clements, includes this passage from Mrs. Eddy’s writings that speaks to the importance of this mental shift or change of atmosphere: “. . . the atmosphere of the human mind, when cleansed of self and permeated with divine Love, will reflect this purified subjective state in clearer skies, less thunderbolts, tornadoes, and extremes of heat and cold; . . .” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 265).

Every one of the articles and testimonies of healing in this issue, which are too numerous to mention here, encourage and inspire us to press on with the necessary mental clean-up of yielding our own will to God’s will, and they give us a renewed sense of God’s love and care for us, the environment, and the universe.

Suzanne Smedley