Late one beautiful morning in Boston soon after Christmas, I paused for a moment to contemplate what I had been studying and turned to my window, scanning the horizon from my eighth-floor apartment. The view constantly changes. As Mary Baker Eddy says, “Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 66).
This day held a special moment. At a distance of about one mile I observed a rising steam column from a tall building. It was beautiful in grace and form—like a white cloud sentinel. The higher it rose, the more the outside of the top of the column expanded. It represented to me that it was escaping from the pull of the earth—of the matter concept of the universe. Suddenly as if by an effortless touch, the top of that column separated itself from the long trail that was following. It was free as it rose higher and higher.
As I watched it float even higher, its symbolism became clear to me. Inspired thought rising and “rising higher and higher from a boundless basis” is the transitional process from material sense testimony to spiritual sense harmony (Science and Health, p. 258).
