Thanks, Kit Kurtz, for posting this lovely piece!
We have a beautiful dining table. When the two leaves are added it seats eight people, ten if you double up on the ends. My mother and I would search for friends and acquaintances that needed a place to share gratitude and Thanksgiving dinner. We were usually able to fill the table.
My mother had passed on earlier in the year so I was on my own to carry on our tradition. I had invited people at church and although I hadn’t heard back from everyone it looked like a full table again this year.
The weekend before Thanksgiving I was not feeling well, struggling with a runny nose and other cold symptoms. On Sunday I really understood the service to be God’s and I was able to perform my job as Second Reader perfectly. But after church I seemed to be sneezy again. I tried to put aside worry about my ability to read Thanksgiving and make a 1pm dinner after church for everyone. I love the idea of worry being ingratitude in advance and I CERTAINLY did not want to be ungrateful AT THANKSGIVING!
Tuesday morning I went swimming in the ocean even though I still wasn’t feeling well. As I prayed and swam I was reminded that a Christian Science Teacher had once told my mother that a cold is a sense of feeling unloved. While I didn’t want to be formulaic about my prayers I decided to examine the idea that perhaps I was feeling unloved. I discovered that with the holiday coming up I was thinking a lot about my mother and missing her. Also, my daughter had just left after spending a beautiful visit with us and I was missing her too. A hymn popped into my thought that has the line “Come ye disconsolate where air ye languish.” At that moment I felt quite disconsolate. But the hymn is about coming to God’s everpresent love—a stanza ends with the line, “Earth has no sorrow that Love cannot cure.”
I also knew that feeling sad or unloved was not my nature. I know that all love comes from Mother /Father God and is expressed by her creation, man, but man is not the source. My mother and my daughter certainly expressed love that I felt and gave back but that love was always, is always from God. As I continued to pray, a beautiful sense of everpresent Love came over me. I held to that feeling of infinite Love’s tangible presence all day and also knew that that love was there and known by everyone wherever they were in the world. By the end of the day all symptoms of a cold had vanished.
Also, just after my beautiful prayerful swim, my son and I were invited to an evening Thanksgiving celebration. I accepted. All the people that I had invited to our dinner had accepted the invitation by Wednesday evening. I felt so very loved by God in the expression of the nineteen people at dinner. If you ask God for love you get abundance. I had a wonderful two Thanksgiving dinners surrounded by Love. And yes there was just enough turkey.
What a perfectly lovely DEMONSTRATION of God’s comforting Love. Thank you for sharing…!
Thank you! Hearing the word “disconsolate” brought me back to a time in my life after my husbund divorced me & I was truly heart broken, 2 of my friends began to date him & later moved in & started a family with him,one after the other. His family turned their back on me completly. I was financially barely living indoors. My ex-husband took me to court & got the child support lowered to $100 a month. My youngest son had a lot of special needs & was in a special ed class, which called me constantly with disturbing reports. & my oldest grown up son was suffering from a belief in disease, & in the hospital every few months. He didn’t want me to come see him because I was so sad & it made it very hard on him. The granmothers had taken over, which they tried to do since he was born, having turned me into CPS when I first found CS & tried to practice it. No human could console me. & Lord knows they tried. It was a revelation to me when I realized this, & started telling my friends -thank you but don’t bother anymore – nothing helps. I cried an ocean of tears for almost a couple years straight. & then…I was led to Christian Science once more which I had been introduced to years before but didn’t study anymore. I was led to our teacher Pam (love you Pam ♥) & to take class instruction….& I got what I needed from the divine comforter!! God always comes through for us & I am soo grateful.
I love the thoughts you shared about “Earth has no sorrow that Love cannot heal.” & that is our experience. Also recently I have been concerned & praying for my youngest son & nephew who have gotten into trouble & get into fist fights a lot, or say unkind things to others. Each has a seperate set of circumstances & never see one another but needs healing. So your thought about “All Love comes from Mother Father God & is expressed by her creation, man but is not the source” is a really great thought that I’m gonna hold onto. Thank you!!