In the movie Pure Country, two men reminisce about their boyhood visit to a fair, where one of the attractions was a dancing chicken. They knew the owner of the chicken had rigged a stove to heat underneath the stage. When he started the music, he would turn on the stove at the same time, causing the chicken to hop from foot to foot.
“You know what I always wondered?” one of the men asks. “Why didn’t that chicken just hop off the stage?”
Moments after watching the movie, I opened Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy and read: “Upon this stage of existence goes on the dance of mortal mind” (p. 250). For me the story from the movie and the quote from the Christian Science textbook are helpful reminders that God’s beloved children can never be forced into doing something contrary to divine wisdom.
