Our spiritual location – permanent and safe

One night after several busy days in New York City, I went back to my hotel room overlooking Times Square, and as I got ready for bed everything seemed to be pulsating. Billboards flashing messages, throngs of people on the streets below – even the building’s air conditioning seemed to be emanating energy.

I went to sleep as usual but awoke with a sense of disorientation and anxiety. I was close to panic. I realized that it was imperative to relocate myself – not physically but spiritually, as a dweller in Truth and Love.

I turned to that week’s Bible Lesson from the “Christian Science Quarterly.” The opening Bible verse asked, “O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? or to thy faithfulness round about thee?” This was followed by the affirmation, “The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them” (Psalms 89:8, 11).

The theme continued to enlarge upon God’s creation of the universe as good and perfect and God as supreme and loving. Within minutes, the disorientation and anxiety dissipated, drifting away as if never there. My awe and gratitude at the reversal were beyond words. I slept peacefully the rest of that night, and the following night, too.

Knowing what and where we are – immortal, made in God’s image and likeness – enables us to navigate our steps with dominion. The Christ, the spiritual idea of Truth and Love, gives us confidence even in the midst of jarring influences. We are never suspended, unmoored, or disassociated from our intimate relation to God, good.

Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, writes in one of her sermons, “Our surety is in our confidence that we are indeed dwellers in Truth and Love, man’s eternal mansion” (“Pulpit and Press,” p. 3). Our true dwelling place is God, who is Truth and Love.

Some years earlier, I was visiting another city. While walking across an arched bridge over a waterway, I found myself behind an open cart piled high with furniture. At the top of the bridge, the worker pulling the cart lost control of it, and some of the furniture toppled, landing on me. My leg was hardest hit, and the pain was penetrating.

I felt alerted to locate myself spiritually, and as I prayed this divinely inspired message came to thought: “There is only one city and one place” – meaning that we are all perfectly held in God and His kingdom.

I realized that I could be nowhere but in that one city: all-encompassing divine Love. I was aware of and at home in this Love, mentally transported beyond any dramatic human scene. In that moment, I understood that all is Love – that geographic borders were human concepts that could neither define nor limit the beauty of my experience.

I felt connected to all that is good and to my fellow man. I felt love for the worker who had been pulling the cart and for all those around me, who now felt like neighbors. The pain subsided. I had no fear about the incident. The spiritual awareness of my location as never interrupted or marred was like a sacred bubble in which I felt enveloped for the rest of my time there.

A few days later, I met up with a friend as planned. We hiked steep and challenging paths. I had full freedom of my leg and ankle and felt no pain or limitation of any kind.

The perfect city that I had glimpsed in my consciousness was “the city [that] lieth foursquare” (Revelation 21:16). This is the eternal city in which we all reside. It is our oneness with the Father, God, an unbroken and intimate connection with our creator, Love, which can be experienced here and now.

“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mrs. Eddy says that this city described by St. John indicates the present possibility of perceiving and experiencing divine Love’s allness (see p. 574).

In difficult situations, reaffirming our spiritual location provides glimpses of divine reality – of all-encompassing divine Truth and Love, which include all and embrace all. Locating ourselves rightly is healing. It happens within thought and is the activity of Christ, which is ever-present, ever-active, ever-centering. We can never be outside of or displaced from our oneness with God, divine Love.

Adapted from an article published in the Feb. 5, 2024, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.