Do you catch yourself mentally quarreling or being impatient with traffic or with some issue in regard to your position, school, church, or family? If you do, you could be acting like Xanthippe!
Early in my experience as a student of Christian Science, I was working with a group of people who were endeavoring to come to an agreement about a particular method to pursue. A lot of bickering went on and nothing was accomplished. I was greatly disturbed over this; I was really trying to pray about it and to apply truths learned through my study of Christian Science. One evening while I was washing the dishes and considering the problem, the word Xanthippe came to my thought with great emphasis. I remembered that Mrs. Eddy had mentioned this woman in Science and Health, and I immediately decided to find out who she was. In writing of the marriage relationship, Mrs. Eddy says, "Husbands and wives should never separate if there is no Christian demand for it.... If one is better than the other, as must always be the case, the other pre-eminently needs good company. Socrates considered patience salutary under such circumstances, making his Xantippe a discipline for his philosophy."
Science and Health, p. 66. From a dictionary I learned that Xanthippe was Socrates' peevish, quarrelsome wife. And I immediately saw a connection between this type of person and the bickering attitudes that had been troubling me. I understood that the insight was a reprimand from God, divine Mind, and I gladly decided to refuse to be or to see a peevish, quarrelsome, or ill-tempered person. I told no one of this experience but just hugged it to myself with gratitude for Mind's correction. Having seen what needed to be corrected, I prayed daily to be more patient, humble, loving, and compassionate. I could claim these qualities because they were mine as God's likeness, His reflection. Disciplining my thinking—a necessary step in correcting it—required much patience and persistence, but I gained support from the thought that what God did not cause or create was not real and had no power. Science and Health tells us, "The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,—perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration."
Ibid., p. 259.
At the next meeting of the group, the problem that had caused so much dissension was not even mentioned and never came up again. My effort to correct my own thinking had paid off, and this enabled me to realize I could think truly and act rightly about any person, thing, circumstance, or event that might arise.
