With an afternoon to spend in St. Louis recently, my family and I decided to visit the St. Louis Arch. It looks more impressive close up than from a distance.
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| Arch |
Standing underneath the rainbow shaped towering structure, one has to crane his head to the back of his neck to see to the top of the arch, and can’t help but marvel, “What keeps this hollow arc of thinly covered steel from tipping over?”
We got into the transit cars that take you to the top, and joined dozens of other people ogling through those peek holes you may, or may not, see at the top of the arch.
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| Arch with viewing windows at the top |
It’s a long way up at 630 feet!
As I leaned over a ledge in the tight and narrow viewing room to look straight down to the ground, a quick sensation of “Don’t lean too far, the tower might tip over,” seized my body. I pulled back. “Oh, how ridiculous,” I thought. “Everyone else is leaning over without worry, and the arch is not tipping over. You can lean over too.” I chuckled. Then I leaned over and peered down, and the view was eye-popping.
When I finished taking in the scenes, I strove to understand better why I could feel safe and not worry about the tower tipping.
I realized that I was not standing in a tower of steel. I was standing in the presence of God. It was the laws of Love that held me safely in place and would keep me safe while on my short venture.
Engineers of the arch glimpsed the laws of God to a degree that enabled them to construct the tower and design an impressive structure. And they likely called the laws they calculated, laws of physics. But the laws of physics did not create themselves, nor do they exist in a void independent of other causative factors. There is a Mind in this universe bigger than any law of physics, and it is the Mind of God.
It was a law of God that held me securely in that arch and would keep me safe until my feet were back on the ground. I lost any fear of the arch tipping over. LOL.
Mary Baker Eddy wrote,
“Spirit is the life, substance, and continuity of all things. We tread on forces. Withdraw them, and creation must collapse. Human knowledge calls them forces of matter; but divine Science declares that they belong wholly to divine Mind, are inherent in this Mind, and so restores them to their rightful home and classification.” Science and Health, p. 124.
We had a great view of the stadium where the St. Louis Cardinals were playing the Colorado Rockies, if you happen to be a baseball fan.
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| Busch Stadium |
Wow, this “Gateway Arch” is a high arch! A football field is 300 feet long, which is a long distance to run even on a nice day. But you related this arch is 630 feet high. This is twice the football field’s distance. No wonder peering down from this height – at least at first – gave you some second thoughts about security.
A structure built solely on the so-called laws of physics will possibly fall, for the structure must first be based on the everlasting laws of God, then physics fall in place and holds.
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Evan
In your recent trip to St. Louis, you described riding to the top of the arch. You then declared that you were “not standing in a tower of steel.” I was surprised how easily you were able to dismiss and ignore the tower itself. This can be misleading to others. Sorting out which is human opinion and which is God’s truth is not always obvious. It seems to be at your own personal discretion which is mortal mind and which is spiritual law.
The arch itself was built based on the best human opinions at the time it was built. And as you described in your essay the vanity of opinion, “opinion is based on material observation, physical testimony, sensations of the human mind and body, mortal sense testimony, or anything of a temporal nature, it’s contaminated by untruths.” Amazingly, engineers built that tower based on material observation and sensations of the human mind. Through both success and sad experience, we have learned to rely on human understanding of certain truths.
I am sure the engineers don’t mind if you declare the tower to be “the presence of God.” It would seem however, that such spiritual code words can be used to describe many things in our physical world and daily life of our choosing. Do we deny that matter had any role in our safety at 630 feet up? Or do we declare spiritual ideas to be all that exists and an elevator is a spiritual idea? If matter is the opposite of spiritual, is it just a case of denying matter and relying upon the spiritual? After a steel tower has stood for 20 or 30 years and tens of thousands of visitors have rode to the top safely, it becomes easier to declare that to be the “presence of God”?
And what of medical care? Can we choose to view them spiritually? Which efforts by our best doctors are only human opinions? And which treatments was a “glimpse of the laws of God?”
Healing is indeed spiritual. But it may require more than simply denying mortal sense and affirming God’s love. We may be required to rely on human efforts along with our sincere prayers for divine help. The two are not necessarily contrary.
Maybe my words would have been clearer if I wrote, “not mentally standing in a tower of steel.” You bring out many useful queries that challenge thought to question whether we live in a material universe or a spiritual one. I find it helpful to view what we call a material universe as a limited view of the infinite universe of Spirit we do live in. As our understanding of Spirit grows, we see things more and more in a spiritual light. What you call a material tower today, will be seen as a spiritual idea in the future, and appear as such. But we all have a bit of spiritual growing to experience before we fully comprehend and experience that truth! Step by step…