Reading & Meditation (Joy) by Rev. Christine 5/9/2021
My reading today is from “Powerful is the Light” by Hazel Deane, copyrighted in 1945. Hazel interviewed Nona Brooks to write this story of her life. I’m skipping to the back of the book. I have read from these pages to my students while taking the Fundamentals of Divine Science.
It’s a June morning, 1938, in Chicago. Nona Brooks is 77 at the time. Always, as she said so long ago, “It is not a religion we are making, it is a life.” The woman who steps out of the elevator and walks gaily toward the little breakfast room that the hotel maintains for its permanent residents, is vibrant with life.
“How I do dislike the long-faced, pious attitude.” she says, laughing. “We’re not being good when we practice these truths. We’re merely being practical. We’re doing the very best thing that we can possibly do for ourselves.”
To Nona Brooks it is as real as that. To Nona Brooks the practice of Omnipresence is more than devotion, more than a lifted consciousness. It is a daily, matter-of-fact experience of reality, as real as the light on that day when she looked and the carbuncle disappeared; as real as the light on that day when her own healing took place; as real as the light in that garden in West Virginia so long ago. Truly, she would say, Powerful is the light!
But as truth is without beginning, so it is without end. Whether truth deals with the science of the physicist, with atoms and protons and electrons, or with the science of the metaphysician, with that equally intangible substance called Spirit, called God, truth will always continue to grow in revelation. It will never be finished. The books will never be closed. Always we but touch the hem of the garment of future possibilities, always we move from “an incomplete view but to one that is less incomplete.”
Nona is talking of these things and she is laughing, for she knows that it will never end. “Some day,” says Nona Brooks, laughing, “some day we’ll sit on the edge of a cloud and talk this over.”
Here we have a view of a woman who has lived, and taught; and lived what she taught. Up until the last days of her life, Nona was teaching 2 classes, and editing the Divine Science monthly. She made her transition on March 14, 1945, eight days prior to her 84 birthday.
Meditation
We will now move into meditation. I invite you to get comfortable, close your eyes, and begin with some good deep full breathing. We acknowledge every breath as the life and breath of Infinite Spirit, the Presence of God that lives and moves through our whole being. As I speak to take these words within for yourself.
“The Joy of the Lord is your strength” Neh. 8:10
I now bring my whole attention to the presence of God - the Divine Presence - Infinite Spirit that is absolutely everywhere both invisible and visible. I am in God and God is living in, through and as the I that I am. I acknowledge God as the joy that is everywhere present. Right here and now I am in the presence of God’s joy. God is expressing joy which reverberates through every aspect of my being; mind, body, and soul.
I am joyously living in the Kingdom of God. (Repeat)
God’s Joy is this invisible power that is expressing life and more life. Every star and cosmic body in our universe is a joyous expression of light. The bees and butterflies joyously flittering from flower to flower. The birds singing joyously early in the morning. Joy is the igniting of every heart beat. Every drop of blood is pure joy pulsating through my veins. Joy is the nucleus of every atom and cell of my body. Divine ideas are expressing and creating joyously through me. The Joy that I am empowers all that I think, say and do. I am the embodiment of God’s joy in expression.
Let us take a moment to feel the joy of being fully alive in the presence of God, as we go in to the silence... Strike Gong.
In gratitude for this realization of joy we say “Thank you God.” I now invite you to bring your attention back to your breath, back to your body, and stretch a little. When ready open your eyes.