Dear Association Family,

With the vast sense of hope that the dawning Christmas season is bringing, this is a good time to be counting and treasuring our gifts. More than the physical gifts lovingly wrapped and placed under the Christmas tree, let us cherish the spiritual riches that have been bestowed upon us. Among those precious gifts is all that has so bountifully come to us through the Association. How grateful we are that the fullness of Spirit and the purity of Christ that first brought forth the newborn Association, now lovingly sustain what Spirit alone could form. 

Our Leader beautifully expresses our present opportunity: “The memory of the Bethlehem babe bears to mortals gifts greater than those of Magian kings, – hopes that cannot deceive, that waken prophecy, gleams of glory, coronals of meekness, diadems of love. ...May this consciousness of God’s dear love for you give you the might of love, and may you move onward and upward, lowly in its majesty” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany 258:17–20, 27).

The title of next year’s Association address is “Founded on the Rock.” As our speaker, AJ Kiser, CS, notes, “Christ Jesus said about the one who follows his teachings, ‘He is like a man which built an house, and digged deep, and laid the foundation on a rock: and when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it: for it was founded upon a rock’ (Luke 6:48).”

AJ has also provided the following assignment:

Please read the Gospel of Luke and the chapter “Atonement and Eucharist,” on pages 18–55 of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. While you read, look for answers to these questions:  

  • Love, as a synonym for God, occurs more times in “Atonement and Eucharist” than in any other chapter in Science and Health. How does this chapter define Love?

  • What is required to live as a transparency for Love, God?

  • Christ Jesus often rebukes rabbinical error. How does a Christian Scientist fearlessly face down popular beliefs that oppose the practice of Christian Science?

  • What are the benefits of building one’s life on the Rock?

Please remember to send your fruitage and testimonies of healing as well as responses to the assignment to the Executive Committee, exec@phinneyassociation.org, as this is most important to the vitality, life, and growth of our Association. If you don’t use email, please send them to Pamela Phinney, 7 Saddle Way, Kennebunkport, ME, 04046.

Our speaker also indicates that he would welcome “any inspiring anecdotes from your experience knowing your teacher. They could make it into the address or simply be a support to me in the compilation of the material.”

As Skip observed in one of his editorials, “There may be times in our efforts to be practical followers of Christ Jesus when the light of Christ seems a distant point of illumination. We may feel far off from spiritual understanding. Yet, as we follow, as we go forward, we are being led to the appearing of the Christ-idea, and this takes place within, in our consciousness. There is no truer or more fulfilling way to celebrate Christmas” (“Living by the Spirit – what it takes now,” The Christian Science Journal, December 1991).