The weather within
Like many others, I have been praying about the fluctuating weather extremes the world has been experiencing. Because Christian Science teaches that what we hold in thought results in what we experience, my prayers have led me to consider what I think of as “the weather within.”
The founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, explains in her book “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” that man is “the compound idea of God, including all right ideas” (p. 475). This means to me that the spiritual man of God’s creating has pure, unadulterated consciousness, which includes the right idea of earth and its activity.
So, to be free of dangerous winters, suffocating summers, and volatile flooding, we start by looking at the climate we are harboring within our own consciousness. We won’t experience moderate, temperate weather until we find ourselves to be moderate, temperate people – God’s people, reflecting His divine nature, which is gentle, benevolent, kind, and peaceful.
Christ Jesus spoke of the divine nature of God expressed in man as the kingdom of heaven. He assured us that we already possess this kingdom of harmony because it is within us, within consciousness. Science and Health gives the following definition of the kingdom of heaven: “The reign of harmony in divine Science; the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent Mind; the atmosphere of Spirit, where Soul is supreme” (p. 590).
This atmosphere of Spirit is expressed in our God-given dominion over the sense of a physical environment. In Christ, the divine idea of God, man is serene and tranquil, and so is the weather that comes from within.
Jesus demonstrated this when he was asleep on a small fishing boat in the middle of the sea and a violent storm arose. How could he be asleep on an open boat in the middle of a storm? Perhaps because to his consciousness there was no storm. Awakened by his terrified disciples, he spoke to the storm and simultaneously to their fear, saying: “Peace, be still.” And the account continues, “And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm” (Mark 4:39).
Jesus’ command was first for peace and then for stillness. This can be seen as a spiritual impetus for being at peace in our thinking first, and then the manifestation of thought – in this case the storm – will be stilled as well.
Jesus changed the disciples’ thoughts first, and this in turn affected barometric pressure. The peace of the Christ within annulled the fury of a storm without. The same is true today, as Christ stills violent, destructive weather on earth. As God’s offspring, we, too, can embrace the spiritual nature of God within ourselves and daily demonstrate it.
Destructive weather stems from an aggressive mental suggestion that weather is an unchained physical force that can be hazardous. But knowing God as the one divine Mind, we understand this Mind to be the only consciousness – emanating only harmony and peace, which we reflect.
One Sunday our branch Church of Christ, Scientist, held our church service on Zoom because of a hurricane. We sang a hymn from the “Christian Science Hymnal” that includes these words:
The storm may roar without me,
My heart may low be laid;
But God is round about me,
And can I be dismayed?
(Anna L. Waring, No. 148)
To me this meant that to a mortal, material sense, a storm may appear to rage, but it would be without my fear, belief, or consent because I knew the kingdom of heaven was within me and everyone, and the peace of God was all that could be seen and felt.
Suddenly the wind and rain died down. The storm was over. Had I personally changed the weather? No. But I’d changed my thought about it and felt the immediate effect of that change in my experience.
Mrs. Eddy wrote, “The atmosphere of the earth, kinder than the atmosphere of mortal mind, leaves catarrh to the latter” (Science and Health, p. 220). A supposititious opposite of the one divine Mind, termed “mortal mind,” appears to create the volatility seen in unforgiving and destructive weather. But this fallacious, so-called mind can be overcome through the understanding of the kingdom of heaven. Then we discover that there is no dread of the coming days and seasons because we take our harmonious, mental atmosphere and internal climate with us wherever we go.
