During my first week as librarian in the Christian Science Reading Room in Melbourne, Australia, everything electrical went wrong. I had to replace the cassette/CD player, the answering machine, and an exhaust fan. Then the computer in the window that scrolled the daily online edition of The Christian Science Monitor stopped working.
I began to pray with Mary Baker Eddy’s description of electricity as “the sharp surplus of materiality” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 293). Through this prayer I saw the Reading Room as a place for exploring spirituality, seeing people in their true spiritual nature, and sharing the knowledge of a loving God. Therefore, no excess of materiality could be present.
There was a lot of technology to get used to.
