Sample article from the April 1999 issue of The Christian Science Journal...

The divine consciousness reigns supreme. And yielding to God's government brings storm-stopping calm, variety but not violence. 
 

Channing Walker

Life on this planet requires water. Weather, an atmospheric phenomenon, is what lifts it from oceans and distributes it over the earth's surface. Life flourishes. Flowers bloom. Forests green. Animals and humans prosper. And the weather contributing to all this expresses a spiritual fact: God, who is divine Principle, governs the universe through law. This divine law maintains supply and demand in perfect balance. It bars excess or extremity. It bans deficiency or damage. It preserves a harmonious equilibrium. As we gain the consciousness of God's perfect law of supply and demand, we see more evidence of it in weather conditions that are productive, not destructive. 

That's where prayer comes in. It brings us into accord with the divine consciousness, with the one Mind, which calms and heals. Can prayer, almost unnoticeable in its quietude, really affect big-as-the-sky phenomena like weather? Absolutely. Prayer tends to silence the mental din, pounding like hail on a tin roof, that would prevent us from hearing the voice of divine harmony. Then we discern holy things from God worth contemplating. For instance, through quieting of the carnal mind's limiting, materialistic impressions of life, we're able to see that God is in complete control of His creation and that His creation is actually spiritual, totally concordant. We perceive that under His law of perfect harmony, apparently contrasting elements, such as stillness and action, coexist. Neither overclouds the other. Both are needed, and they're not in conflict. This perception of what's really going on in God's creation helps bring that reality into human view, into concrete expression. 

The spiritual reality, in which there's no conflict, is the fact of existence whether we know it or not. But it's better to know, because humanly what seems desirable for one agenda does not for another. The sailor wants a windy day, the crop duster wants a windless day. If prayer were simply asking for divine intervention in material circumstances, who would win out—the sailor or the crop duster? And what about the skier who doesn't want windy or windless, he just wants snow? Inevitably, there would be more losers than winners. But prayer in its truest sense isn't a mental route to material change by spiritual force. It is a silent knowing, a realizing, of God's seamless consistency and power. God is never at odds with Himself. Conflicting mortal agendas don't collide in God or His spiritual universe. They don't exist there. 

Spiritualized consciousness discerns this. But thought quaking from fears, rivalries, and irritations fails to notice. Prayer is a means of stilling clamorous thought and claiming the consciousness that does notice, and does realize what God is and does. This is our true consciousness, because man is God's image, the expression of divine Mind. Mind, God, creates the universe and maintains it at the point of complete usefulness. Nothing of God devolves toward harmfulness. 

Because there is no outside to God, and because all genuine understanding is of God, prayer suffused with this understanding is bigger than the sky, bigger than the weather. The consciousness filled with God-bestowed understanding, reflecting divine power, reigns supreme. Even global phenomena don't go untouched. Such prayer lifts us to a higher perspective, where we get a kind of God's-eye view of creation and realize that harmony is the reality, not destruction. Through God-inspired prayer we can see extremes dissipate, supply and demand balance out, and calmer weather follow. 

While Christ Jesus and the disciples were crossing the sea, a sudden squall slammed down.¹ Evidently, an unshakable tranquillity enveloped Jesus. He was asleep. In desperation, the disciples roused him. The outcome? Consciousness with storm-stopping calm prevailed. He declared, "Peace be still." And we're told "the wind ceased, and there was a great calm." 

But when Jesus spoke, who was his audience? The Bible says he "rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea, Peace, be still." Yet weather has no ear. If, however, Jesus was addressing thought, his actions fitted a divinely inspired pattern. Then the course for quieting a raging storm at sea parallels the course for quelling a raging fever or pacifying a raging crowd stalking an about-to-be stoned victim. In one instance he might address the fear-filled thought of the individual, in another, the localized fuming of a self-righteous mob, in still another the general belief called forces of nature and considered material law. In all instances, wasn't Jesus, through divine power, addressing and transforming the underlying thought with its faulty notions of evil as power? 

The implications of this are profound. It means weather extremes are an objectification of the excesses of mortal thought. And the remedy for mortal thought—and its harmful objectification—is the exact opposite: the divine consciousness. The consciousness of good, of harmony, of the balance of supply and demand, is the consciousness that God bestows on man. Even so-called material laws are subordinate to this consciousness. Winds and waves comply with the demand of this consciousness—of divine Mind—for harmony. 

We can prove this. We don't have to challenge the whole universe. We just need to change thought. We do best to start with our own. It's not a case of pretending thunder and lightning are nonexistent. It's a case of holding watch over our own thought, of yielding to the pure consciousness of God's perfect government. If, for example, a confrontation storms through the school or office, do we leap in, and get pummeled with complaint and criticism in the process? Or could we disengage from criticism, self-righteousness, complaint—basic ingredients of a so-called mortal selfhood—and help quiet a stormy office? Consciousness filled with unselfed love, reflecting the calm of the one Mind, puts us on the side of subduing rather than fueling emotional whirlwinds. This can begin as simply as not carping about the complaint topic of the day. Gradually, thought swings away from self. It turns toward the face of God. We inhabit the atmosphere of Love. We glimpse the harmony of its balance. 

But this balance is not blandness. It is not sameness. If things were always the same, there would be no polar icecaps, no breeze then calm, no rain then sunshine then back to rain. A static state is not God's design. His law of supply and demand maintains variation but not violence throughout His spiritual creation. Our clear recognition of this blesses the whole earth. 

As unselfed love permeates our outlook, mental turmoil clears and the quietness of divine consciousness dawns. Thought is purified. We see more of the evidence of divine Love maintaining perfect equipoise. In responding, through the Boston Globe, to a request that she send "to the people of New England...a sentiment on what the last Thanksgiving Day of the nineteenth century should signify to all mankind," Mary Baker Eddy said in part, "...that divine Love, impartial and universal, as understood in divine Science, forms the coincidence of the human and divine, which fulfils the saying of our great Master, 'The kingdom of God is within you;' that the atmosphere of the human mind, when cleansed of self and permeated with divine Love, will reflect this purified subjective state in clearer skies, less thunderbolts, tornadoes, and extremes of heat and cold . . . ."² 

Her words come out of experience. A recent biography cites instances in which her prayers mitigated weather extremes. For example, Adelaide Still, a worker in Mrs. Eddy's household, records this: "On several occasions I saw Mrs. Eddy dispel a storm; the first time was on August 3, 1907, in the late afternoon. The sky was overcast and it was very dark. Mrs. Eddy sat in her chair in the tower corner of her study, watching the clouds with a smile and a rapt expression on her face. She seemed to be seeing beyond the storm, and her present surroundings, and I do not think that she was conscious of my presence. In a few moments the clouds broke and flecked, and the storm was dissolved into its native nothingness. About half an hour later I took her supper tray to her, and she said to me, 'Ada, did you see the sky?' I replied, 'Yes, Mrs. Eddy.' Then she said, 'It (meaning the cloud) never was; God's face was never clouded.' This agrees with what another student has recorded as having been said by Mrs. Eddy, namely, 'When I wanted to dispel a storm, I did not say, "there is no thunder, and no lightning," but I said, "God's face is there, and I do see it." ' " ³  

We can all see more of God's law working. As the sense of mortal selfhood yields, as thought is cleansed, as we part from a mistaken, material perception of life and creation, we glimpse more of the atmosphere of divine Love right here, in perfect balance, without harmful extremes. 

(Channing Walker is a contributing editor.) 

1 See Mark 4:35–39. 

2 The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pp. 264–265. 

3 Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1998), pp. 284–285.