The Christmas-sense of Soul

What better season than the Christmas season to reflect on the true foundation and meaning of one’s very identity, one’s soul – that inseparable and unchangeable being one with the Holy Spirit. How can each of us know what our individual expression of soul is? To me, the example, the model, the highest human representation that the world has ever known, who continues to give me practical lessons for daily living and healing, is Jesus the Christ.

When I pray daily about expressing my God-given soul, I like to think of it as embodying and radiating those spiritual qualities that are consistent with Christ-like qualities, such as kindness, joy, compassion, gratitude, goodness, vitality, selflessness, faith. Each day I strive to expand my expression of soul in order to come closer to understanding my true source of being – and better see myself as God, the one Soul, sees me!

This Soul-sense is life itself, the very cause of existence and the perpetual animation of being. In proportion as it is understood and consciously expressed, it is a power, an impulsion, that manifests itself and reduces whatever matter-sense appears.

As a single ray of light gives evidence of the whole sun – and eliminates darkness in its path – so am I the effect and living proof of the harmonious divine Soul. This Soul-sense or Christ-sense that I embody heals whatever isn’t consistent with the divine qualities. This is the ‘Christmas-sense’ that I strive to live and express throughout the year.

In the early years of the last century, the “Ladies Home Journal” was probably the most popular woman’s magazine in the United States. Since Mary Baker Eddy was a well-known author on spirituality, theology, and medical reform, a religious leader and successful businesswoman, she was asked to pen some thoughts – an early 20th century blog! – on the meaning of Christmas in her life:

“…I celebrate Christmas with my soul, my spiritual sense, and so commemorate the entrance into human understanding of the Christ conceived of Spirit, of God and not of a woman – as the birth of Truth, the dawn of divine Love breaking upon the gloom of matter and evil with the glory of infinite being.”

A few weeks later, on Christmas Day, Eddy sent this message to her nearest and dearest, all who lived and worked in her household:

“…[I wish] you all a happy Christmas, a feast of Soul and a famine of sense.”

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Virginia Harris is a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science spiritual healing with an office in Wellesley. She was on the faculty of Harvard Medical School’s symposium ‘Spirituality & Healing in Medicine’ and today is a public speaker to medical audiences. More from Ginny at www.VirginiaHarris.com.