Never is a more precious gift given to us than the privilege of watching the blossoming of a spiritual concept in thought—from its beginning stages, tightly wrapped, hardly indicating the beauty to come, to the full blossom and fruition that pours forth God's praise. Never planned, frequently surprising, these stages come with the variation of prairie rains—from the low, quiet rumble of our intuitive listenings to God to the brilliant and breathtaking flashing, the illuminations of spiritual inspiration and healing.
When I was a small child in a Christian Science Sunday School, our teacher read a sentence from Science and Health in which Mrs. Eddy addresses the one reading as "dear reader."See Science and Health 253:9-14. At the time, I felt a child's blush of embarrassment over being addressed in terms of endearment by someone I didn't know. I remember furtively glancing around at my classmates to see if their reaction was similar to mine.
Later on, after I had studied grammar and syntax in school, my response to reading "dear reader" again was "Oh, a parenthetical phrase." By that time, however, I was experienced enough in Christian Science to know that Mrs. Eddy meant precisely what she said; intuition told me there might be more involved than just a matter of style.
