A Message By David James Nolan

" . . . . a cup of cold water in Christ's name . . . ."

Friends,

The following post is self-explanatory. It came about due to an
incoming email I received from a long time friend. He and I were
friends and school mates in the little town where we grew up as
kids, and we have continued to remain in touch over the past half
century. When I write to my non-Science friends and associates and
attempt to give them a bit of exposure to what Science is and does,
I often include a copy of what I write to some of my good Christian
Science friends and associates. Our dear _________received a copy
of the below yesterday, and she wrote me today and requested that I
place a copy here upon the Mary Baker G. Eddy Group for all to see.
Although it doesn't contain the high, pure unadulterated truth we
are all so accustomed to being exposed to, it does, as Christine
has written, "ring true." So, in that spirit is the following be
uploaded, hopefully for your reading pleasure.

+ + + + + + +

Over the years I've cultivated and nurtured an enormous host of
friends and associates who have grown to know both me as well as my
insatiable hunger and thirsting for ever more spiritual
understanding of God, and that I satisfy these cravings by my study
and application of Christian Science. In the main, the majority of
my circle of friends know very little, if anything, about Science,
so I endeavor to share with each individual some insights that are
tailor made to their specific need, that may arise at any given
moment in their respective life-experiences.

____ _______, my friend for over fifty years, wrote the following in
an email that he sent to me this morning:

"We're like fine wine Bro. Getting better with age. Only wish I
could get my bones to believe that. They are telling quite a
different story. Get up in the morning and feel a pain that you
didn't have the day before and say "now, what in hell is that all
about?"

I couldn't resist writing the following and sending it back. I now
await his response!

"You've no idea of the peace of mind and heart that is descended
upon me right now, knowing as I do that you've come up and out of
the 'salt mines' for today and that you're by now at home and
enjoying that much deserved rest that awaits any man who spends his
time during the day engaged in such extracting details and
laborious expenditures of energy. Oh, how well I relate to
awakening in the morning to discover one or more of those "new" and
heretofore unfelt discomforts, pains, soreness es or quirks within
the ol bod, only to find myself wondering, just like yourself,
"now, what in the hell is that all about?" I surmise that we each
have our own unique way of dealing with such challenges if and when
they appear upon the screens of our life. I wouldn't be so bold as
to assume to be privy to how you have come to cope with the
on-coming encroachments of age? You may get either a good laugh or
a cloud of bewilderment if you knew how I've been trained to deal
with the thief of old-age. Here is the best definition of old age:
Old age is merely an accumulation of unresolved problems!

My entire life has been given over to learning how to demonstrate
the only "gift" that was conferred by divinity upon humanity at the
time of the Creation. That eternal and priceless "gift" happens to
be "dominion." "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after
our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."
Gen. 1:28.

Well, ____, wouldn't you agree that 'old age' is one of the
"creeping things" that "creepeth upon the earth?" We're never
young one day, and then old the next! Age creeps in upon us almost
unnoticeably; yet creep it does, incontrovertibly! And it brings a
host of other "creeping things" along with it when it arrives! Its
non-invited presence is first felt about mid-life when suddenly we
notice a diminution, or diminishment, of the quality of our
eyesight! Yep, very slowly, but surely, our arms suddenly become
too short to hold away from our eyes the small print that we could
very plainly see yesterday but that's been replaced today with just
a hazy blur! Other "creeping things" manifest in such unique ways,
as seen in the thinning of our hair; the gradual impairment of our
hearing; the slow conversion of the color of our hair into a
thinning field of grey or white where a thick stock of Chestnut
brown or brunette strands had once existed!

After a half century of intense plumbing of much of the sacred
literature of the world in search of an understanding of what
"dominion" actually means, my quest was rewarded some time back
when I happened across the most absolute and precise answer to my
humble inquiry when standing one morning in front of my bathroom
mirror shaving. My life consists largely of abiding in the Word,
and letting the Word abide in me. Thus, I had just begun to
silently recite the Twenty-third Psalm, when suddenly spiritual
lightning and its attending roaring thunder broke in upon me and
revealed divinity's answer to my human inquiry; namely, "What is
dominion?"

As though God spoke to me early that morning, I heard the
long-sought answer to my life-quest inquiry! "The Lord is my
shepherd; I shall not want." From that moment to this I've never
ceased to realize, and this, with ever increasing clarity and
spiritual understanding –– that the most basic definition of
DOMINION is TO NOT WANT! Thus, "I shall not want." The very
moment we cease "to not want," and begin to want, is the very
moment we lose, or relinquish, the possession of our God-given
DOMINION!

To "WANT" is to deny one's God-given DOMINION, and should we
indulge such conscious cravings, then thereby, do we cast ourselves
into a mental prison that is fabricated of constant desires! We
lose our DOMINION the moment we begin to WANT! What, possibly, is
there to WANT that could conceivably be more than what is already
within the sea; over the foul of the air; over the cattle upon the
earth; and over all the earth; not to neglect including over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth? Could there possibly
be anything other or more? Methinks not!

So, having lived under a regimen of such austere spiritual
sensitivity and discipline, as that which I've just described
above, you will now understand the stance I take when confronted
with one or more of those bodily discoveries that report a new
physical discomfort or impairment of some form or type upon
awakening in the morning. Instantly, whenever such a sensory
impression interjects itself into my conscious awareness, I quickly
resort to my shield and buckler as I flee into my high tower –– the
sacred inner sanctum at the core of my BEING where the Holy of
Holies lives and from whence It governs my life. Once securely
centered within, I reassume the posture of DOMINION, and thence, do
I reason with my body [the very place in which the new physical
malady is being felt] thusly:

"Contrary to popular world-belief, I opt to disbelieve that I exist
and live in you! Rather, do I understand that you exist and live in
me! Why so? Well, as unintelligent matter, my body cannot 'think'
about me; however, as intelligent Spirit, the "I" which "I am"
does, most assuredly, think both as me and therefore about my body.
Thus, the intelligent Spirit which is me is obviously greater than
the unintelligent matter of which my body appears to be fabricated
–– that matter in which I believe this discomfort and pain are
being felt! Matter has neither any capacity nor intelligence to
inform the Spirit which is me of either any pain or of any
pleasure, for matter, as such, is non-intelligent, and thus, must
it exist as subserviently and subordinately lesser to that Spirit
within me which is, indeed, omnipotently Greater!"

Suddenly, I discover the body which I have correctly identified as
existing within me, as being completely devoid of any complaint and
discomfort and I go about my day entirely free from having been
imposed upon when awakening in the morning only to find myself
faced with another glorious opportunity to demonstrate, with
absolute certainty, the spiritual gift of DOMINION which was so
magnanimously conferred upon me and all by divinity, at such time
"When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God
shouted for joy!" Job 38:7.

I imagine all you WANT now is for David to cease meandering through
the chambers of his mind and allow you some peace and rest?

Your wish is my command!

With Christly affection . . . .

Dave Nolan