CASTING NO SHADOW

Time moves across the landscape of Betty Jenks's Christian Science healing practice in Boston, Massachusetts. The phone rings as she takes calls from various time zones around the world. Some call from places where it's still yesterday, others call today—still others from tomorrow.

What is this illusive concept commonly perceived as "from here to there?" Recently the Journal presented Betty Jenks with some popular ideas about the passing of hours, days, and years.

And in no time at all, she took each one of these myths on—scientifically.

Myth: Time is a fact of life. We just have to live with it.

Could be. But how are you going to live with it? Let's start with the important question—what is time? Where did it begin? What is it based on? The way we record time is by calendars and clocks—all based on days and years and hours and minutes. And what is a day based on? An illusion. Is anything based on an illusion ever real or true? The illusion, of course, is that the sun rises and sets every 24 hours. But the sun doesn't rise and set. The sun doesn't move—the earth does. Yet this "movement of the sun" is how early civilizations began to mark time. And as time has gone on, the world has agreed to this arbitrary framework as an efficient way to govern our days.

However, if taken as a governing factor in our lives, the illusion of the day-and-night theory tempts us to feel confined and imposed upon by extremes—from boredom and emptiness to overwhelming pressure. Mary Baker Eddy exposed this concept of time as something not to ignore. Instead, we need to awake to the necessity of time being our servant instead of our master. She wrote, "Organization and time have nothing to do with Life" (Science and Health, p. 249). And she provides the spiritual definition of time in the Glossary to Science and Health: "Mortal measurements; limits, in which are summed up all human acts, thoughts, beliefs, opinions, knowledge ..." (p. 595). It's this idea of being limited that introduces pressure and fear and frustration.

We are not the victims of limitations. On the contrary, Science and Health explains: "The objects of time and sense disappear in the illumination of spiritual understanding, and Mind measures time according to the good that is unfolded" (p. 584). By having an enlightened view of time as having no beginning and no end, and therefore without measurement, we can indeed "live with it"—and transcend it—even in its so-called measured view.

Myth: To see time as unreal isn't practical.

Well, you can be far more practical working in the infinite! If you're trying to be organized, you're speculating that this will take 20 minutes, or that will take three days, or two years. If you're spiritually orderly, you're listening to God, and the spontaneity of what's needed comes right then and there—because it's revelation. You think, How did I do that? It's so much more powerful than the traditional approach, "I'll start here and hopefully I'll end up there."

To see time as an illusion is, in fact, the only practical approach to life. This understanding actually enables us to regulate our days with disciplined focus. We see the illusive nature of trying to manipulate our experience into a period between life and death. Thereby, we discover the freedom from the myth that says we begin with birth and immediately have to try to avoid death. Our word mortality comes from its Latin root, "mort," meaning "death." Yet, in reality, as Christians, we understand from the Bible and through Jesus' resurrection and ascension that life is eternal and therefore does not exist in mortality. With God as our only source, Life is expressed in joy, activity, balance, control, purpose. There's no guesswork involved. When we understand these spiritual facts, we become free of doubts and fears and of feeling dependent on negative situations that appear beyond our ability to do anything about.

So, when time is viewed from this spiritual perspective, it is a fact of life that we can live with.

Myth: There aren't enough hours in the day.

Well, there's no question that when one has to work 14, 15 hours a day and then go home, prepare meals, and take care of children, it can impose a great sense of stress—almost of injustice. But what are you going to do about it? In French, the word righteousness is translated with only one word—"justice." The Bible says, "And the work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever" (Isa. 32:17). So, with this concept in mind, you're not thinking, Oh, I worked 14 hours today, and now I have to go home and do this and that.

You can see how we can make a little god of time and then we bow down and worship it, as if to say to time, "You're turning on me and you're threatening me." OK, it may have been a long day, but you don't need to suffer because of it. When we never have time for ourselves or even a decent rest, we need to realize that every day has the same number of hours—the difference lies in what we do with them! It's far easier to free oneself from the burden of "injustice" and to accept each hour as complete—filled with joy, needed energy, and gratitude.

When we're feeling burdened by not enough time, that's the very moment to challenge the myth of being a slave to clocks and calendars. Our birthright is as the children of God—divine Love—and when we begin with this premise, we will prove in our daily lives these words of comfort from Mary Baker Eddy: "Through divine Love the right government is assimilated, the way pointed out, the process shortened, and the joy of acquiescence consummated" (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 292). Now that's the true use of time! When we put our days under the government of God, the path is laid out, the process is shortened, and the joy of accomplishment is right there.

Myth: Retirement involves too much time and too little purpose.

The retirement years may present us with the time-honored suggestion that the body begins to slow down or even to deteriorate—and that our mental faculties are subject to this decline, as well. Hardly a happy outlook.

Such an expectation stultifies active thinking and leaves us with self-pity, daydreaming, procrastination, boredom . . . all feeding us with fear and doubt. We even begin to feel it's time to give in. Why? All because of mortal opinion. I love the definition of opinion in the Oxford English Dictionary. It reads, in part, "a belief strong enough to be an impression but not strong enough to be truth."

The impression might be strong, but it will only gain fulfillment if we consent. I consented to the opinions of old age without realizing it when I was 19 years old. It was a miserable year—all my friends had gone off to college, I had no money, and I was stuck in a factory job. I saw no future, hope, or purpose, only a lonely life ahead full of self-pity. And then I turned 20, and various ideas and opportunities began to pop up. And from that time on, I knew that I'd gone through—and disproved—the "old age" bit and would never have to do it again!

The experience taught me that neither time nor age has to be a factor in our outlook. No one will deny that when one is all alone there's the temptation to feel doomed by what appears to have cut us off from friends or family or activities or to feel that we no longer have purpose. But most of us think of finding "purpose" as being "a reason for living." That's ridiculous! Having a purpose is having the dedication to one's continuing discovery of his or her innate, ongoing desire to bless ourselves by blessing others.

From early childhood, the joy of discovery and wanting to share those discoveries with others is so natural. But we become jaded as we progress in this so-called "time" framework, and we often become sensitive to any rejection as meaning some failure on our part. But guarding our childlike innocence and expectation enables us to continue in our purpose to share the good we see and feel with others. In fact, retirement should be a time of spiritual maturing in our lives that gives us the greatest sense of calm and accomplishment we have ever known.

But how to go about it? I received a phone call from a woman who's not a Christian Scientist, but who's an avid reader of The Christian Science Monitor newspaper. She's arrived at that time of life when much is being written about her generation of "boomers" facing retirement. She called to tell me how thrilled she was with an editorial that appeared in that day's issue. It had pointed out the growing interest of boomers in reaching out to bless others—and the opportunities that abound. She was so inspired and roused with renewed interest not to give in and give up—but to give.

Each day the news provides plenty of purpose for each of us to prayerfully stay connected to all of humanity—the household of God. This individual purpose involves sharing in the progress, the accomplishments, the needs, the sadness, the famines, wars, economic successes and failures of our worldwide family. Retire? From what? A new beginning is at hand, free of all time-oriented opinions.

Myth: An illness is harder to heal the longer it's been hanging around.

Christian Scientists are modest in their claims but convinced that persistence and consistency have their reward. And sooner or later, everyone will come to the understanding that "patience must 'have her perfect work'" (Science and Health, p. 454). When we understand that God is the ultimate source of power, there's no sense of time. We need to find that conviction—and to me that's what the word patience means: Conviction. If I'm baking a meatloaf and I'm really famished, I put it in the oven and think, Oh, but I'm hungry now. But if I pull it out in ten minutes—yuck. Having conviction is knowing that when I go back there in 45 minutes, the meal will be ready. The expectation for completeness is there because the idea was complete before I put the meatloaf in the oven. Actually, it's the same with a physical healing—the healing is complete before the individual ever turns to prayer.

The idea of waiting feels enmeshed in the concept of time instead of in the realm of thought. But when you have freedom in your thinking—because thinking itself is unbounded, unlimited by anything—you're lifted out of the concept of time restraints or even history. So how can you say, "This illness has gone on for two years now." Two years what? The illness has never gone on, because it never started. Since disease is an illusion, it has no real substance—it's a lie. OK, you've worked for two years, yet the condition hasn't been overcome. People tend to feel challenged by this, but what an opportunity for consistent prayer—to challenge this lie. When you go to school as a child, you're encouraged to think—to discover. You may bumble through in order to separate right answers from wrong ones, but the minute you see that 2 + 2 = 4, you'll never accept any other conclusion, because you've proved what's true.

Time is never a factor in healing, because in reality, there is no past and no future. And that's true regardless of how you look at the concept of time. You cannot retrieve one moment of the past and tomorrow is always out of reach. We can't grasp it before it arrives. We only live in and can experience now. This understanding dissipates fear. As someone who's endured three different healings that required "time," the last one for two years, I can truly say—paraphrasing the Apostle Paul's comments—that I, too, could joy in affliction. That's because I grew in my conviction that Jesus' comforting assurance that "With God all things are possible" (Matt. 19:26) is not an empty promise.

Myth: I don't have enough time to pray.

But do you have enough trust to put your decisions in God's care? Isn't it often better to go ahead and do whatever it is? God will stop you if what you do isn't right. You don't pray and ask, "Is this a right decision?" If you trust God, don't you think He's going to stop you if it's not a right idea? Sometimes we're tempted to allow the indecision and confusion of "I don't know what to do" to linger. And then we procrastinate—justifying our delay by saying, "I'll just pray about it!" I say, go! Do! Knowing who you are! Mrs. Eddy says, "There is but one way of doing good, and that is to do it! There is but one way of being good, and that is to be good!" (Retrospection and Introspection, p. 86). We don't pray, saying that I will be good, that I will do good. Prayer is not about time. It's action. Prayer is not taking a little bit of time out of your day for something. Yes, of course, we all need to stop and pray—just as we can hardly live without eating. We all need our spiritual nourishment. But we're not praying for "things," which means we're not even praying for decisions to be made. We're praying to see that we're already abiding in divinely bestowed good.

The seed is complete—a complete idea within itself, just like a carrot. It starts as a little brown seed, but when you plant it you don't say, "I'll go get some orange paint and some green paint. Let's see, the orange goes on first and then the green on top." The seed already has that color within itself, in that little brown seed. It just needs cultivating, cherishing. And that's how every right idea comes to us and then comes to fruition.

Myth: Some people have untimely deaths.

What is a timely death? When is it "timely" to allow death to take over? Is it at 80 or 90 or even 100 years? If we agree to a certain time frame, then if you live beyond those years, you'll have an untimely death because you passed the time of timely death! It's all based on a belief that death is a process or an event.

The fear of death challenges every "living" thing with a struggle to preserve what appears to be its "life." Even the tulip bulb pulls back when a frost is imminent, or an animal flees when it senses danger before the threat is even evident. However, Jesus' statement that he came that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (see John 10:10) hardly indicates that we must have a timely or an untimely death. He overcame death altogether, not only for others but for himself. His example of overcoming the grave banished forever the concept of death being a reality.

It's the fear of dying—the bane of mortal existence—that prevents us from even glimpsing the fact that the continuity of our being is assured of being uninterrupted. Jesus' message is clear: Now is the time that each of us can be free from any belief or experience of death as being timely or untimely. In reality, no power called "death" can ever threaten our ability to live abundantly now.

With all of these myths, one thing stands out to me. Each one is based on an illusion. Though we all remember our past and curiously speculate about our future, to attempt to revamp that past or to outline that future ignores reality. Life is always now.

To me, what this all comes down to is similar to being fooled by a shadow. Say you've just painted your living room wall in a lovely, soft, mellow yellow. You put everything back in place that night and go to bed with a wonderful sense of satisfaction. The next morning, you go to admire your handiwork and there's a long grey streak to one side of the bookcase—just above it. You're devastated! Your first thought is to go to find the paint can and paint that portion again. But then you decide maybe you can get a bucket of gentle suds and wash it off, since the paint is supposed to be washable.

Then you examine that gray streak and suddenly you realize something: It's just a shadow, and it had never touched the wall. The shadow had no substance, even though it appeared to. You feel a little foolish but ever so relieved! That shadow had no power to do anything, to mar anything, to ruin anything. And there's one way and only one way it can be removed. With more light. Because in full light, there is no shadow.

So what explodes any myth? More enlightened thought. It makes no difference if the myth is called age, fear of some disease, a shackled past, or a limited future. All of these threats to our peace and stability are still only shadows with no beginning in time and no time needed to see restoration and healing. More light will dispel these shadows, revealing reality—that which exists now and has always existed.