Insights on Church
I’ve wrestled with how to enhance my role as an active church member beyond serving an organization. Geoffrey Barratt’s article in the September 2014 Journal comes as a welcomed blessing to all of us desiring to share healing with our communities and the world. Committee work to keep church organizations moving forward is necessary, but living Church outside of its walls is by far the most satisfying and needed activity we can engage in. Please continue sharing these valuable insights on Church.
Read in one sitting
I wish to express my sincere appreciation for the September 2014 Journal. I found every article, the Annual Meeting report, and the editorial design outstanding. I picked up the Journal to glance at it, and I could not put it down until I’d read it through at one sitting. What a wonderful pleasure!
A seat for you
Thank you for such a beautiful interview with Connie Coddington by the Journal’s Joan Taylor in the August 2014 issue, titled “A seat for you at a practitioners’ roundtable.” I just filled a shift at our local branch church’s Christian Science Reading Room and received the mail only to find Connie’s interview.
I pulled up a chair immediately to this universal and expansive “kitchen table,” reading the entire interview. I am currently a Reader at a Church of Christ, Scientist, and would love to bring this new/old idea of “Christ-healing” to our membership for consideration in sponsoring one of these “practitioners’ roundtable” discussions.
Deeply grateful
What a wonderful gift. The picture of the boy on the cover of the July Journal is so beautiful and alive. Every article and testimony touched some part of my heart. I am deeply grateful to all who contributed.
Douglas Paul’s article “Employment within ‘the wide channels of The Mother Church’ ” was another article that drew my attention to many aspects of church building which I hadn’t previously brought to mind. It made me value my own and others’ contribution to our Church without walls.
Treasured article
I am deeply grateful for “God’s law of ascending order” by Barbara Cook Spencer in the July issue. I read and reread it three times.
The article has provided me with inspiring metaphysical truths with which to work and pray. I love all the wonderful ideas expressed in the article, especially
“I found myself declaring aloud that a lesser idea in creation didn’t have the power to nullify the ascending order of creation, elevate itself to the position of a greater idea, and then dominate the greater idea ….” This article will be copied and kept with other treasured Christian Science articles.
Delightful poem
Many thanks to Evelyn Brookins for her delightful poem titled “June Poem” in the June Journal. With what artistry she transforms the trembling butterfly afraid to fly to the final inspiring paragraph that reads:
Let none remain in mortal shells
but soar beyond, where Spirit dwells.
False past must go, old ways disposed,
so wings may sprout, with life re-clothed.
Food for thought
I would like to thank you for the excellent lectures that you have been publishing in the “Shared Reflections” series. My German friends who don’t know enough English are very grateful that these lectures are being translated into German.
Not just the lectures, but the entire Journals are so good. Real food for thought and for spiritual growth.
And the same with the Sentinel— such outstanding articles/experiences. The best part of the day is in the evening on the terrace with either the Sentinel or the Journal. It is so enriching.
‘Likes’ both web and print
I want to say how much I enjoy reading my print copies of the Journal (and Sentinel) in conjunction with the Web versions. Given the task of expressing gratitude each day, I find JSH-Online an ideal way to accomplish that goal. I click along through the Web issue as I read the paper magazine, and after I finish each article, not only can I “like” it, but I can take a moment to formulate into words just what I’m grateful for—a new idea to ponder, a sense of encouragement in a challenge, a wonderful sense of unity with our holy Christian Cause. I often enjoy the audio versions as well, but usually I find myself so thirsty for the ideas that I just read them from the print more quickly.
What a joy it is to be able to share our gratitude with all the authors directly and immediately, to have these different media available to us, and to use each and every one spontaneously as the Spirit moves us!
