Wonderful mankind

Mankind has a billion faces - earth's peoples come in all colors. As my husband and I help on a regular basis in a local homeless shelter we encounter some new colors every time we show up, and we get a better sense of man - God's creation. We see Love in action. We feel the brotherhood of man. We are grateful for every single member of mankind.

"The Son of Man" - this description accompanies Jesus Christ in the New Testament. Mary Baker Eddy writes: "Jesus called himself “the Son of man,” but not the son of Joseph. As woman is but a species of the genera, he was literally the Son of Man. Jesus was the highest human concept of the perfect man. (Science and Health with Key, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 482)

So in a way Christmas is about "man" - and we all are invited to learn something fresh. The other morning I opened by favorite book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy (my beautiful edition in dark blue leather with gilt edge), to continue with the Christian Science Advent Calendar, and I found the answer to the question "What is man?", question #14 (starting on p. 475). I am in awe every time I read this text. It seems to me a little miracle that a book like this, with a text like this, exists on our planet. That it found its way into the memory of humanity, being read and studied side by side with the Bible. 

When I open the door in the Christian Science Practice, when I answer the phone or read an Email, I meet naturally seldom individuals who want to know how I am doing - that is part of being in a service to humanity, and this is not the point. I meet with calls for help, problems to solve, challenges to overcome, sicknesses to heal.

I am amazed to see how deeply we are loved. I experience that divine Love always has an answer, a first, intelligent, individual answer, which comforts and sets the heart and mind on a new path, a fresh perspective. Sometimes the solution, the healing, the release comes quickly, sometimes it takes time to walk the talk, to feel at home in the new world of goodness and care, to see the whole picture. To stop criticising or lashing yourself and accept the goodness of man. After all, Jesus was the son of man --- and that means something.

When I study the answer to the question "What is man?" I am already prepared for this radical, revolutionary description by what I studied the previous two weeks. I have already learned about Principle and Love, about Spirit, Mind and Soul, about Life and Truth, about the scientific statement of being, about intelligence and substance being spiritual and untouchable by material sense, about the oneness of God and the non-existence of gods, about the singularity of Soul and the non-existence of souls, about the inability of creeds to move thoughts and lives forward and the ability of honest, consecrated efforts to meet the demands of the "Science of Soul". I am prepared:

"Man is spiritual and perfect; and be‐ 
cause he is spiritual and perfect, he must be so under‐ 
stood in Christian Science. Man is idea, the image, of 
Love; he is not physique. He is the compound idea of 
God, including all right ideas; the generic term for 
all that reflects God's image and likeness; the conscious 
identity of being as found in Science, in which man is 
the reflection of God, or Mind, and therefore is eternal; 
that which has no separate mind from God; that which 
has not a single quality underived from Deity; that which 
possesses no life, intelligence, nor creative power of his 
own, but reflects spiritually all that belongs to his Maker."
(Science and Health, p. 475)

It takes a life to grasp every detail of the answer, but it is worthwhile the effort to understand it, to struggle with resisting convictions ("because I said so"), to quarrel with oneself instead of with others. Can we make the shift from "mortal" to "man"? In order to get real, I have to spend time with God and with His/Her creation. I continue learning from and yielding to Truth. I have to leave conventionality behind. I love this question, "what is man", for this question is about all of us, it is about you and me. It is about the role model Jesus Christ. You are in for a treat. Thank you for being who are. Thank you for being.