In Minneapolis, all spiritual thinkers and sacred institutions are being asked to focus their spiritual work on de-escalating the fear, division, and threat of violence currently gripping our community. The question pressing on every spiritually awake heart is: What can I actually do to help?
We can pray. Prayer is deliberately standing firm in divine Truth until the lie that there can be any power apart from Truth, God, collapses. Prayer isn’t wishful thinking or passive hoping. In Christian Science, prayer is seen and experienced as a power for good. In “No and Yes,” Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, says: “True prayer is not asking God for love; it is learning to love, and to include all mankind in one affection. … it shows us what God is” (p. 39). God is infinite Love. And we are created to rise in the demonstration of Love, God, resisting all that suggests Love’s absence or powerlessness.
One way that we can pray is with the confidence that “the cement of a higher humanity will unite all interests in the one divinity” (Mary Baker Eddy, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 571). When we do, something shifts. We’re refusing to accept polarization and violence as inevitable. We’re denying power to the notion that hatred can be anyone’s motivator. We’re affirming that every person living in or passing through our city is, in reality, the beloved expression of the one divine creator. This understanding dissolves the mental atmosphere that breeds conflict. True prayer directs thought to better choices and clearer thinking on behalf of all involved, and leads to genuine de-escalation.
In Ecclesiastes, chapter 9, there’s a story about a besieged city saved by one poor wise man. This man delivered his city not through wealth, status, or political power, but through wisdom. One way to describe wisdom is as spiritual understanding fortified by confidence in the omniscience of divine Life, Truth, and Love.
Today, we have immediate access to the same understanding that poor wise man proved – that harmony is the reality, and that violence is a false claim masquerading as power.
Mrs. Eddy writes, “Evil is not supreme; good is not helpless; nor are the so-called laws of matter primary, and the law of Spirit secondary” (Science and Health, p. 207). Evil is the foe, but it’s not a person, place, political party, demographic, policy, or institution. It is the lie that hatred, violence, division, and fear have power. As Mrs. Eddy declares in a poem, “False fears are foes – truth tatters those, / When understood” (“Poems,” p. 79).
When we pray, we can go deep into the spiritual origin of who and what we are, thus reaching a recognition of the spiritual substance of being that is the reality. We’re never fighting people. We’re dissolving the lies of ignorance, self-will, revenge, and reaction that would make violence seem normal or inevitable. Our oneness with God gives us the insight, discernment, courage, and stamina to overthrow these false foes.
At the branch Church of Christ, Scientist, I’m a member of, part of our response to the request for spiritual thinkers and institutions to prayerfully work toward healing in the community came through our regular weekly testimony meeting. That night’s readings from the Bible and Science and Health explored how spiritual law supersedes material law and explained how God’s kingdom is here on earth as it is in heaven.
Testifiers related powerful experiences of prayer de-escalating tense situations – while serving in a Christian Science Reading Room, serving in the Peace Corps in Uganda, and in other situations. One spoke of praying for and feeling love for the whole city, which helped them feel safe in what looked like a dangerous situation on the subway.
These aren’t isolated incidents. They’re daily proof that the law of God, Mind, targets and dismantles chaos, comforts and protects all creation, and lets us know what we need to know, in the right place, at the right time, all the time.
Just like the poor man who, by his wisdom, delivered his city, we can see our cities as God created them: embraced in God’s love, whole, harmonious, safe. We can see every person, on whichever side of the issue they may be, as included in God’s care. “The work of righteousness shall be peace; and the effect of righteousness quietness and assurance for ever” (Isaiah 32:17). This is spiritual law. This is what happens when we refuse to give power to violence and fear, when we know that good is supreme, when we love our cities with full hearts.
