That Is None Of My Business!

I may have told this before but it's worth re-telling. A well-known Christian Science lecturer had finished his talk and was greeting some who came up to see him afterwards. One woman said to him, "Oh, I have loved listening to your talks ever since I was a little girl, and, as you can see, I'm no spring chicken now. Mr. ..., I know I shouldn't ask you this but could you tell me exactly how old you are?" His answer: "Why, Madam, THAT is none of MY business!"

I've thought about this often and the choice of a subject for my blog, Getting Older Is Getting Better, was not an easy one because I don't subscribe to revealing my age either, or even that I am of an older generation. Still, I'd like to know that I am helping others of any age not to give the number of years they've lived in this span of conscious being any power to diminish their capabilities on account of being "old." My religion is my science and it teaches that we are each a child of God, not a child of man (or woman.) Radical? Unbelievable? Not when we understand that all there is, substantially, to each one of us is measured in conscious thought. Those who are bent on claiming that the human, material body is the sum total of their identity will take issue with this. But even they, if with a mind open to the possibility that there is more to man than a fleshly body, will see what I mean.

Scientists today claim that we are made of stardust. Were we to trace our origins back that far, what might we find? I suspect we'd find that even stars have no beginning in the strictest sense since nothing comes from nothing. One of these scientists, (I can't remember his name,) gave a talk at UCI. His topic was Science and Religion. I'll never forget his opening remarks. They went something like this: "Here we are, together on this Ship of Life. It seems there are two major groups among us, the scientists and the religionists. Now the religionists go to the bow of the ship and peer out with their binoculars to see where we are headed. Then they go to the stern and look to see where we came from. They can only see so far with the limited visibility they have, so they study what others have found and seek knowledge within themselves where they suspect dwells the seed of truth for everyone. They keep looking, both outwardly and inwardly.

The scientists, on the other hand, go to the bow of the ship, take out their binoculars and say, "We can't see anything out there." Then they go to the stern and look. So they say, "We can't see anything out there either. Then they turn to their shipmates and say, "Let's examine the walls of this ship!"

Now, I ask, which of these seekers has the better solution to working out the problem of being? And I answer, both. We need to seek answers in both visible and invisible ways. Each of these can be credible if we are sincere and open minded. The answers often come from out of the box of either religion or science. We need to be aware of that and open. In this sense each of us has an equal opportunity to find the truth.

My "truth" tells me that I am more than a lump of clay, though that lump, uniquely designed, represents me for the time being. If you've ever lost a loved one you know that if his or her fleshly body should reappear without the mind and spirit by which you identified him or her before, that bodily presence would be a stranger, no matter how familiar it looked. My truth tells me that I am not just this perishable flower of a person I appear to be to myself and others. I'm not even the branch or stem I grew on. Nor am I the main trunk reaching down into the ground. Should I trace my beginnings back to the stars, I could not find the real essence of my being. The visible me changes but the invisible me remains intact. The IDEA of me, what others will remember most of me, even that may fade away in time. So, my business is not in the length of time I remain on this earth or stay visible to others, it is that of seeking Truth wherever I find it and living it. I may accept false beliefs for a while but sincerity will lead me past these as long as I approach each day with an attitude of gratitude and a willingness to learn more of the reality of being.

It's one grand adventure, this life we know. Discovery is what it's all about. And it doesn't matter one iota to me how many times I've moved around our beautiful sun. That, is none of MY business either!