Dear Reader,
The high school textbooks I studied were useful. At the time, though, I felt a desire for something more balanced between the intellect and the emotions, and textbooks weren’t where I found it. I found it in music. A short phrase I later came across captures why, and perhaps surprisingly it is a citation from a textbook: Mary Baker Eddy’s primary work on Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. It says, “Music is the rhythm of head and heart” (p. 213).
This was a textbook I could read, in fact devour, and still continually return to, because the Christian Science textbook exudes intelligence and heart. Take this sentence, for instance: “The wintry blasts of earth may uproot the flowers of affection, and scatter them to the winds; but this severance of fleshly ties serves to unite thought more closely to God, for Love supports the struggling heart until it ceases to sigh over the world and begins to unfold its wings for heaven” (p. 57).
