LESSONS FROM THE PLAYGROUND

   

CRASH!! I felt the shock through my whole body!! What started as a fun experience on a Teetor Totter turned out to be a lasting life lesson for me.

My young friend from across the street and I had gone to the school playground to use the equipment and do what 8 year old boys do, running, jumping, recklessly enjoying the playground equipment.

We had been having a good time on the teetor totter, first balancing each other and then taking the ride up and down. As daring young men, of course, we went up and down as fast as possible, but suddenly, when I was at the top, my friend thought it would be funny to jump off. I came plummeting down hard on the concrete with a resounding crash. I was shocked and couldn’t believe that he did that.

But I soon recovered my pride and my sense of humor, and that experience has been a helpful reminder to me through the years that life sometimes hands us these “jarring” experiences.

More than just playground pranks, these situations reflect the precariousness of our joy, our attitude, our income, our career, our relationships, and other aspects of life when based on merely a material sense of the human experience.

Many of us may have received that jolt just when everything seems to be in perfect balance, just as we are experiencing success, the “top of the teeter”, so to speak, the bottom drops out and we come crashing down, and it hurts.

Recently, in the wake of several severe JOLTS in my own experience, a friend was talking to me about the challenges of maintaining a balance in our daily lives. We are constantly faced with balancing, trying to maintain a leveling of the perceptions of sickness and health, success and failure, poverty and adequate supply, life or death, happiness versus sadness. When this idea of balance gets out of skew, we come crashing down as I did on the teeter totter.

Apparently the modern versions of teeter totters now

have “safety springs” which can stop the riders from abruptly hitting the ground, gently cushioning the fall. But are there “safety springs” for us in our life experience? Can we soften the blow of “out of balance” situations? Can we make our “playground of life” a safe and happy one?

Students of the Bible have found that, through the rich and courageous experiences of those who have gone before, we can gain a better understanding that life is spiritual, and not based on the fickle nature of matter and its inherent problems. We can prove that balance need not be a factor in our lives.

HOLY BIBLE

In the Old Testament we learn of challenges faced by Moses, Daniel, the three Hebrew children, Elijah, David and others. These strong believers knew that God was protecting them. Understanding that this mortal, material existence is not the baseline of reality, they threw the entire weight of their trust on the spiritual side of the equation. They did not weigh their fate in the “Scales of Justice” or human logic, which are traditionally shown as weighing a cases’ support versus opposition. They trusted in the power of God, good, to save them.

Christ Jesus, a man who more nearly reflected God, his Father, than anyone in history, showed that there IS only one side.

Rather than weighing the good versus the evil, he

SCALES OF JUSTICE

demonstrated the Allness of God, his Father, our Father, and consequently the nothingness of sin, sickness, death, materiality, poverty, hunger, all of the woes of mankind. In so many instances he was faced with the pleas of the material world to balance things, to acknowledge the reality of matter, disease, sin and even death. But, he was unwavering in his understanding that life is spiritual, PERIOD. His view is reflected in his admonition, “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.” (Matt5:48) No wavering. No compromise.

He proved the unreality of disease, he healed leprosy by understanding that man is the pure image and likeness of God, Mind, untouched by the ravages of illness. He gave sight to the blind by his understanding that man’s vision is for seeing spiritually, seeing God and the effects of God’s radiance in our human situation.

In a world where sin seemed to attach itself to mortals, Jesus saw purity and forgave and lifted the burden of the false concept of sin from those who suffered under its illusion. He raised the dead by understanding that Life HAS no opposite. Life IS!! He dealt solely with spiritual truths.

He didn’t “teetor” about complete understanding of and placing his reliance on God, the divine intelligence in which "we live and move and have our being", as described by the Apostle Paul (Acts  17:28). Nor did he weigh whether a person was good or bad, whether they “deserved” to be healed, whether they were worthy of being fed or released from bondage, whether they were deserving of his teaching and counsel. His clear vision and understanding of God, described as LOVE, looked beyond the frailty of the human conditions and saw each person as God’s loved child.

How refreshing that model is in an age where blame, criticism and judgment are so common and widespread.

Not only did Jesus heal and support, he taught his disciples to heal also, to understand this total reliance on spirit. And they went about the countryside healing, uplifting, blessing.

And, he challenged us to do the same, and to do even greater works than his, because he was being lifted up above this dream of life in matter when he said:” Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father." (Jhon 14:12)  His "instruction manual" for us to follow can be found in The Bible, Matthew chapters 5-7.

We need no balance, no scales, no teetering, we need only to begin to understand that this material life is a fickle, poor substitute for the spiritual life, the love, the intelligence, the purity, the gentleness and kindness that is our heritage and the truth of our being.

And so, with all due respect and my deep love to my wonderful friends in the news media and medical fields who sincerely and loving practice their crafts, as the television blares out advertisements selling us on how sick we might

be,how that pain in our leg could be serious, how this pill or that surgery will cure our ills; and as the news readers sadly comment on the ravages of war and storm, the unkindness of man to man, the immorality of this singer or that movie star, we can choose to teetor with those stories and their tragedies, OR we can hold to the Truth as practiced by those early examples from the Bible, and of folks today who are living a spiritually rich life based on demonstrating love, and trusting in God’s gift of life that is spiritual. 

Mary Baker Eddy, early religious pioneer, who founded a

religion based on the teachings and healing practices of Christ Jesus, states in her 
book, Science and Health with key to the Scriptures: “Jesus of Nazareth was the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. He plunged beneath the material surface of things, and found the spiritual cause.” *(p 313)

And in perceiving how he used this Science in healing, she wrote: “Undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the material senses, Science, still enthroned, is unfolding to mortals the immutable, harmonious, divine Principle,  — is unfolding Life and the universe,ever present and eternal.” (p306)

So Mr. Teeter Totter, you can stay on the playground of the mortal dream, and provide a fun time for many, but as for me, I have decided to stay on firmer ground of Spirit!!