IT'S CALLED AN ELEVATOR SPEECH. How do you explain to someone you've just met something vitally important to you—a business plan, maybe an idea for a book or website, or the organization you work for and its mission—in the few moments of an elevator ride?
Over the roughly nine months that I've been with the Journal, an elevator speech has been gestating. While I don't personally know what it's like to give birth to a child, I'm learning something about gestation, or at least about midwifery, and in their spiritual dimensions they're better preparers of the heart than all the wordsmithing skills in the world. My evolving thought of The Christian Science Journal and its mission is growing out of hours of work, and prayer, with my editor and publishing business colleagues. Here's a current version, good for an elevator moment or across a kitchen table: The Journal aims to advance Christian Scientists' practice of their religion by publishing a record of Christian Science healing, metaphysical insights, and progress in our Church community.
But what anyone says about this unique publishing enterprise is, ulitmately, less telling than what this magazine's readers do daily with the revealed laws of spiritual being—to benefit the human family in this era, in our own communities. Toward that end, you might want to turn first to the opening article in our year-long series, "Second-century Christian Science: Depth, Dimension, Demonstration," by Mary Trammell (p. 28). Reading it may stir, challenge, cause some soul-searching. It has for me. At one point she notes, "if we really want the priceless pearl of Christian Science, we'll sacrifice whatever we need to, however painfully, to make it our own."
