I taxied over to the Upper East Side of New York City to meet with a visual and concept consultant. Her numerous creative projects range from an avant-garde Manhattan bistro to conceptualization of a theme village at Epcot® in Disney World. In a field like this, people want out-of-the-box, transformational thinking, and Ms. Barratt credits Christian Science with giving her the ability to deliver. As she tells it, Christian Science liberates her capacities to "think big" in all kinds of ways, including breaking free from being bound by overly familiar words and a "think small" study of Christian Science. Barratt's unique appreciation of the magnitude of Truth ("the great I AM," or God), which Christian Science unveils, shone through our chat, as you'll see from these excerpts.
I like to see things in context. Mrs. Eddy's sentence, "As you work, the ages win; for the majesty of Christian Science teaches the majesty of man,"1 actually comes from a letter she wrote to a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, in Atlanta. She begins the letter by saying, "You have met to consecrate your beautiful temple to worship of the only true God" 2 To me, it's a double message. She's acknowledging their delight in their new building, but she's primarily turning their attention to a higher concept of church, and therefore to a higher concept of themselves. She continues, "...it has been in the hearts of this people to build a house unto Him whose name they would glorify in a new commandment—'that ye love one another.'"3
She's trying to take what they've built with stone to a higher level. So you can see that it context, that sentence we started with has a powerful meaning: "As you work, the ages win, for the majesty of Christian Science teaches the majesty of man."
