A popular children’s book by Janell Cannon, Stellaluna, tells a story about a baby fruit bat who gets separated from her mother and is initially raised by birds. Stellaluna finds it difficult to live like a bird—to eat bugs instead of fruit, to sleep in a nest instead of hanging upside down from a tree branch, and to fly during the day instead of at night. But one day Stellaluna meets another bat, who kindly points out that Stellaluna is not, in fact, a bird, but a bat. Stellaluna is shown how to live like a bat, and everything changes. Stellaluna gives up trying to get through the work of the day by being something she isn’t. Joy returns. Life makes sense.
When it comes to our own healing work and approach to church in Christian Science, do we know who we are? Or do we sometimes approach it like a bat working really hard at being a bird? In other words, have we accepted the assumption that we’re troubled mortals living in difficult situations, with insufficient means for making things better? If so, then metaphysical work is going to feel hard and discouraging, not to mention exhausting.
Trying to do spiritual work from within a belief that life and intelligence are in matter is like trying to eat a bowl of soup broth with a fork. You may get just enough to taste the value of the broth, but the prospect of being nourished by the soup, let alone getting to the bottom of the bowl, becomes more daunting than something to savor.
