Prayer, Lent, and Christian Science

I had an interesting weekend. Instead of going to my Unitarian church for worship, I visited the Methodist Church down the street. I did this because the church celebrates the Eucharist the first Sunday of each month. I wanted to partake of the Eucharist and begin thinking about the Lenten season and my spiritual disciplines for the next forty days.

This Sunday was also Transfiguration Sunday. Therefore the lectionary readings for the service included the story of Moses and his experience with God at Mt. Sinai. God instructed Moses to meet him up the mountain so that God can give him the tablets of stone with the Law inscribed upon them for the instruction of Israel. Moses went up Mt. Sinai, to a God that descended on a cloud. And Moses met Him on the mountain for forty days and nights.

The readings also included the story of the transfiguration of Christ before Peter, James, and John. Moses and Elijah also appeared before them as Christ Jesus was glorified.

The pastor took all these readings and preached on the importance of prayer. It is important enough that Christians should not "jump into" prayer, "willy-nilly." Christians should prepare themselves to meet with the Divine through prayer by reading the Bible, studying it, and using the scriptures as a means to form our prayers.

This afternoon after class, I went to listen to a Christian Science Lecture at UH. The woman was a CS practitioner and spoke about how prayer is used to "unlock" our potential for good. She described her experience with "Christly-scientific" prayer and how it helped her in her career as a paralegal and as a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice. This was my first CS lecture and my first time actually talking to other Christian Scientists in person. I also learned that there was a CS organization on campus and that they meet on a weekly basis.

I can definitely see some similarities between both perspectives on prayer. The Methodist perspective takes prayer seriously, in that it is a means of approaching God, but that an understanding of scriptural truth was requisite in order to fully appreciate and benefit from prayer. CS teaches that understanding God and who we are as His children is vitally important to prayer as well.

This Lenten season, I have decided to read through Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, as well as the Bible. And I am going to spend a lot more time in prayer, as well as at the CS room at the A.D. Bruce here at U of H (they have a lot of books, Bibles, and journals about spirituality and healing).

Although I find it hard to divorce myself with some of the traditions of the church, I also find the principles in CS to be quite helpful in learning more about myself and God. Sometimes I wonder if I can ever reconcile both of these things. We shall see.