I was in a meeting with a journalist who corresponds with people in regions where journalists cannot enter because of the intensity of the troubles there. She was joyful and animated as she explained how she helps the locals get their stories out. Asked how she stays happy dealing with such serious situations, she responded, “I think people have generally found fulfillment doing what needs to be done.”

In a similar way, I find that happiness keeps bubbling up as we understand our place as the needed expressions of God’s good nature and qualities and live according to that understanding.

I’ve known empty-feeling times when human pleasures ultimately proved unfulfilling. But through my study and practice of Christian Science, steady joy has come in understanding that our fulfillment comes from divine Spirit, God. And joy keeps coming as a result of finding purpose and identity by expressing spiritual qualities, including intelligence, joy, love, and so on. The more we pray to bring out these God-reflecting qualities in our thinking, the more good things happen. This has been the story of my progress.

Christian Science presents the nature of God to us through Bible-based words like divine, infinite, Spirit, Love, Mind, and Soul. There’s great fulfillment in discerning and living the good that expresses these different aspects of God. For instance, qualities like grace, creativity, patience, and caring come from Soul. Finding happiness by expressing such qualities may be similar to what the journalist found. Her happiness came from giving a voice to those who felt they couldn’t be heard and so helping them move forward more empowered.

Ultimately, we find steady joy is in bearing witness to the constant love and goodness of the divine Spirit, and finding within ourselves our all-good, spiritual nature, which is innately ours from God. This not only feels good to us, but blesses others too. God loves us constantly just as the sun keeps shining, whether it’s a cloudy day on Earth or not. And just as the sun can evaporate the clouds, as we recognize and express His love it brightens up the room for others wherever we are.

Society might suggest happiness depends upon what we’re able to own or consume. Maybe happiness feels defined by who we get to spend time with. Maybe the thought is that it comes by immersing ourselves in exciting-looking experiences or posting social media images and videos that make us appear special. I’ve found that such efforts toward joy prove, at their best, to be too little, and true joy is not dependent upon these efforts.

Monitor founder Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Happiness consists in being and in doing good; only what God gives, and what we give ourselves and others through His tenure, confers happiness: conscious worth satisfies the hungry heart, and nothing else can” (“Message to The Mother Church for 1902,” p. 17).

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We feel this “conscious worth” as we welcome the larger scope of satisfaction into our lives. In finding and nurturing the expression of our innate identity as the image of Spirit, God, we find joy in contributing at work, home, or in the community. As we are imbued with the hunger to magnify God for everyone’s benefit, we make real traction.

Jesus reassured us: “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:10, 11). As needed expressions of infinite intelligence and divine Love, we demonstrate God, the source of the good and helpful qualities that animate us, and these qualities are manifested in healthier bodies, lives, and communities.

There’s a story that, during the construction of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, the architect, Christopher Wren, visited the jobsite and stopped to ask a construction worker what he was doing. Not recognizing Wren, the worker straightened up, squared his shoulders, and replied, “I am helping Sir Christopher Wren to build this great cathedral” (Bruce Barton, “What Can a Man Believe,” pp. 251-252).

No matter how small the thing we are doing, we can find satisfaction in it when we see how it fits into the big picture. In fact, for the big picture to be “great,” the small things need to be done as rightly and as well as the big things. The challenge for each of us is to decide toward what big picture we’re working.

The ultimate “big picture” is the manifestation of the kingdom of heaven in our lives. This kingdom contains both only good and all good. Everything within it is useful, harmonious, beautiful, capable, and loved, including each of us in our true, spiritual selfhood.

The Apostle Paul implied that, when understanding, experiencing, and expressing the harmony of God’s kingdom is our big picture, how we do the small things does matter. He wrote, “Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men” (Colossians 3:23). We can think of Paul’s words as a call to watch our thoughts in every aspect of our lives to keep every thought oriented Godward. This brings blessings to our lives.

The Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, points out that this was true of Jesus, who is our example, in relation to the Christ, his divine nature. She writes, “This spiritual idea, or Christ, entered into the minutiæ of the life of the personal Jesus. It made him an honest man, a good carpenter, and a good man, before it could make him the glorified” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” p. 166).

Within the cultural context of the time in which Jesus lived, he was probably expected to live out his life as a carpenter, because that’s what the man the world considered to be his father, Joseph, did for a living. That Jesus had a different sense of his life’s work is reflected in his answer to his parents during an incident when he was 12 (see Luke 2:41-49). He’d gone missing following the family’s visit to Jerusalem, and his parents had been worriedly searching for him for three days. They finally found him in the Temple, talking with experts in Jewish law and theology.

When Jesus’ parents asked him why he had disappeared without letting them know where he would be, he replied, “How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” While Joseph, a carpenter, acted as his human father, Jesus understood his real Father to be God. And his real life’s work was demonstrating to the world God’s love and power and the true man’s expression of that love and power.

The Bible records Jesus beginning that career publicly years later. Up to that point, the likelihood is that he did, in fact, work as a carpenter. But according to Mrs. Eddy, the Christ, the true idea of God, was entering into the tiniest details of his life.

Isn’t that what Paul is enjoining upon each of us? To let Christ enter the tiniest details of our lives as well? This isn’t passive. Yes, Christ is always active in every human consciousness, but we need to choose to listen and to act on what we hear. The temptation is to think of ourselves as limited, material beings who, at times, produce only “good enough.”

But God, Spirit, created man – the true, spiritual identity of each of us – in His image and likeness, to reflect Him (see Genesis 1:26, 27). That’s our real, eternal role – to express every quality of God in a way that’s wholly unique and original to us. If we’re expressing grumpiness, reluctance, resentment, or any other ungodlike quality as we do any task, then we’re not turning toward divine Truth.

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The true, spiritual selfhood of each one of us is a vital element in the infinitely grand universe of Spirit. Taking the opportunity of every right task, however small, to consciously let God’s qualities be expressed in our thoughts and actions will increasingly reveal that grand whole to us and enable us to see the good it contains reflected in our experience. We’ll also find Christ increasing the good we can do for others.

Adapted from an article published in the March 9, 2026, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.

I grew up before there were cellphones. I look on in wonder, and bewilderment, as seemingly everyone around me is focused on their devices. Even young children seem absorbed in the things, perhaps following the lead of their parents. 

I’m sensible enough to know that I can’t change what the world has become, that I can’t compel a person scrolling next to me on the train to share a few words of friendly conversation. But as a college teacher, I can exert hegemony over my classroom. 

First of all, when it comes to cellphones, I’ve learned that one cannot be punitive about students using them in class. I once had a colleague who tried this, threatening punishment for infractors. The result: The class mutinied. The rest of her semester was, in a word, unhappy.

Why We Wrote This

A professor finds a clever and caring way to manage student classroom cellphone use.

But neither do I think it productive to take a laissez-faire attitude toward students who are texting friends while the poor teacher labors, ignored and neglected, at the blackboard. I knew a professor who tried this approach in his math class. One day, I ran into some of his students on campus. I asked them who their math teacher was. Their response: “Some guy.” It was clear that the professor and his students were operating in two separate worlds, each ignoring the other. 

Both of these vignettes suggested to me that there must be a middle way. And so I came up with one. It goes like this: On the first day of class, I strike a friendly but purposeful tone with my students, telling them, “If I catch you looking at your phone during the class discussion, you must immediately call your parents and tell them that you love them.” 

I deliver this intelligence with a twinkle in my eye, and my students chuckle good-naturedly. Then I follow up with my end of the bargain: “This means that when you come to me with a question or concern, I promise not to text or look at my phone. I will focus all my attention on you.” 

When delivered in a concerned and caring way, but with seriousness of purpose, my students are on board. 

Well, mostly. There’s always an outlier. In my case, his name was Paul. He liked to test the waters of classroom decorum, such as coming to class in his pajama bottoms and slippers. One day, during an animated discussion of “The Odyssey,” I caught Paul looking down at his phone and pecking away. “Excuse me,” I interrupted. “Odysseus is about to do battle with the Cyclops. Are you texting?”

Paul was immediately flustered, but I didn’t have to go head to head with him, because the rest of the class, serving as my proxy, cried out, “Call your mother!”

To my surprise, Paul complied, putting his phone on speaker. When his mom answered, she asked, “Aren’t you supposed to be in class?” To which Paul dutifully replied, “Yes, but I’m just calling to say, ‘I love you.’”

I couldn’t have been prepared for what happened next. The class continued to be invested in Paul’s success by shouting, “And we love you, too, Mrs. D.!”

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I think it is too easy to forget how good-hearted these students are. They mostly want to do well. They want to succeed. Banning cellphone use in my class while acknowledging that the devices are an extension of their bodies is a delicate dance. The trick is to communicate to my students that I care about them, and when students know that you care about them, they will go to the ends of the Earth for you.

I’m sure Mrs. D. appreciates my approach.

We may have many priorities: solving a problem, finishing an assignment, finding healing. But Christ Jesus showed us that there’s one aim that should trump them all, and he illustrates it in a parable, saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field” (Matthew 13:44).

The kingdom of heaven, the spiritual reality that’s full of harmony and goodness, is certainly something we’d all want to attain. Jesus told us it’s right here, at hand – the only reality. But to discern the good that God is giving us, Jesus also taught that we need to be willing to see beyond what the material senses are showing us, beyond their limited perspective.

This week’s Christian Science Bible lesson on “Reality” gives us great insights into how to strive to understand and see more of spiritual existence, as Jesus did. And here we’ve collected an assortment of articles from the archives of The Christian Science Publishing Society that illustrate what it means to figuratively “sell all we have” to claim the kingdom of heaven as ours, as well as the healing and progress that come from doing so.

In “Don’t get squeezed into the world’s mold,” the author shows how we don’t lose anything by living life from the basis that divine Spirit gives us – but we gain greater freedom from limitations.

The writer of “Solid ground” shares how a solely intellectual knowledge of God can’t bring whatever stability we yearn for in our own lives or the world, but as we wholeheartedly accept the spiritual perfection of life, healing follows.

“Got joy?” describes how we can turn to God and away from materiality – without delay – to find a contentment that doesn’t fade.

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As the author of “Focusing on the right answers” writes, we don’t need to get caught up in the problems we’re facing, no matter the scale. As we pray – accepting only God’s kingdom as real and present – harmonious resolutions appear, and we progress.

If you’re new to the weekly Bible Lessons from the Christian Science Quarterly, you can view a free sample of a previous week’s Bible lesson here. Subscribers to the weekly Lesson can log in here.

I was thinking about the war in Iran when I asked my Christian Science Sunday School students this question: “Do you see yourself as capable of healing the way Jesus did?”

One made a face that summed up everyone’s feelings, and we all laughed. It was a face that said, “Um, hardly.”

But we agreed: It was a question that was worth thinking about. Especially since Jesus told us that we could heal the way he did – and do even greater works. Could that include having a healing impact on what happens when a war breaks out?

Christ Jesus wasn’t overwhelmed by the big problems he faced – and was even able to heal them – for two reasons. First, he knew what God is. And second, he knew who he was as the Son of God. With this understanding, nothing could stop him. Similarly, the issue for us is whether we’re starting our prayers from this standpoint: fully aware of what God is, and fully embracing who we are as His children.

Our class felt pretty confident about knowing what God is. Two books we learn from in Sunday School – the Bible and “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy – tell us everything we need to know about God’s nature. God is infinite Love, the all-knowing Mind. God is omnipotence, omnipresence. And God is both good and All – meaning there’s no place or space for anything harmful, oppressive, or bad.

Prayer helps us understand God in a way that makes us so sure of His goodness that it replaces any fear or worry that something bad could exist. But sometimes, before we can even get there, anxiety or disbelief creeps in and says, “Yeah, but who am I to think I could pray effectively enough that my prayer can make a difference here?” That’s when it helps to know what it means to be God’s child.

I was praying about this later, because I realized that “God’s child” felt like just words to me. And as I prayed, it was like my thoughts were a room where the lights were going from low and dim to full and bright.

God showed me how a really little child learns everything about who they are from their parents. All he or she knows about their identity comes from Mom and Dad. This was spiritually significant because it showed me that what we think of ourselves – as capable or not – is completely irrelevant. It’s only what God, our divine Father-Mother, knows of us that could be real or true. God sees us as He made us: reflecting clarity, compassion, insight, and strength.

God also showed me that a child relies completely on his or her parents. Doesn’t feel responsible. Gets to be the recipient of goodness and love – doesn’t have to create them. This helped me not feel overwhelmed about praying for the world, because I got it that my job was to see what God has already done for everyone. I didn’t have to make things OK, but accept that the Father-Mother of all of us was the One maintaining, protecting, and loving His whole creation.

Feeling in such a new, convincing way who I am turned out to be a big boost for my prayers. In the days that have followed, I’ve noticed how I feel equipped to deal with problems, big and small, that come up in my own life. In fact, at one point when I faced a disturbing issue that seemed like it didn’t have a solution, I responded almost automatically by remembering that I’m a child of God – and all that implies. To my surprise, I felt what I can only describe as the peace of God’s presence – and then got an immediate idea that showed me exactly how to solve the problem.

My prayers about the war in Iran have also been strengthened. I’ve needed to be consistent about praying; it seems like there are distressing details to confront each day. But seeing the results I’ve had in my own life, I know I’m able to pray about these bigger things, too. I feel strengthened to pray more broadly by starting with who I really am spiritually and understanding that from there, I am free to expect the same immediacy of God’s power, and its healing effects for all of us, that Jesus showed us through his healings.

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We may feel we have a long way to go in doing those “greater works” that Jesus promised we would do, and bringing healing to the world. But knowing we have a place to start – and then starting? That has to make a difference: for the conflict in Iran, and for any other problem to which we want to bring healing.

Originally published in the Christian Science Sentinel’s TeenConnect section, March 23, 2026.

Truthfulness is a valuable quality; upholding truth in our words and actions is certainly laudable. Throughout the Bible, truth is associated with God. Deuteronomy, for instance, speaks of God as “a God of truth” (32:4). A God of truth is naturally the source of all truth, of all that is legitimate, good, and real. And these adjectives describe the very nature of God – of Truth itself.

Clearly, anything that is erroneous or untruthful cannot originate in divine Truth. Mary Baker Eddy explains, “That God is Truth, the Scriptures aver; that Truth never created error, or such a capacity, is self-evident; that God made all that was made, is again Scriptural” (“Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896,” pp. 49-50).

The understanding in Christian Science that God is All, and that He made everything good and created man in His image and likeness (as stated in Genesis 1), is a powerful starting point in spiritual healing. It recognizes that man, in divine Science, reflects divine Truth and can therefore be conscious only of what is good and true. The apparent opposite of Truth – called error, sin, sickness, disease, death – has no reality or power, and no basis in Spirit.

Christ Jesus consistently challenged the error of the material senses, or falsehood of life and intelligence in a mortal mind or man. He called it the devil and said, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him” (John 8:44). Understanding this removes all supposed legitimacy from error and reveals it as absolutely nothing, no thing.

Once I had the opportunity to think deeply about the allness of Truth and the nothingness of error. Actions I had taken while managing a community-related project were misinterpreted by someone, and my role in the project was mischaracterized. What had seemed to be a successful project outcome was labeled a mistake, and my actions were described to me as intentionally and personally willful. Knowing that I had prayed diligently throughout the project to hear and follow God’s direction, I felt hurt by this description of my actions, as well as misunderstood and persecuted.

I discussed the situation with friends and family. I repeated the hurtful words that had been spoken to me, and their reactions were largely sympathetic. While I appreciated this support, I just couldn’t get past feeling caught between different relative truths.

Eventually, I resolved to humbly pray about the situation. Soon this sentence from “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” by Mary Baker Eddy came to thought: “Neither sympathy nor society should ever tempt us to cherish error in any form, and certainly we should not be error’s advocate” (pp. 153-154). Aha! Had I been looking for sympathy, and did that desire cause me to cherish the error by holding it in thought? And even more importantly, had I been behaving as error’s advocate?

I dug a little deeper into the meaning of “advocate.” Dictionary.com defines it as “a person who speaks or writes in support or defense of a person, cause, etc.” I knew that strategies of an advocate may include systematic and continuous repetition intended to persuade and influence. Wow. Why would I want to put any time and energy into defending error or persuading anyone else to?

I realized that I had inadvertently been holding on to the error that I had a mind separate from God that was mortal, fallible, and at odds with other minds.

Now I set out to argue for truth. I reasoned that there is only one Mind, from which originates all truth, and that this truth is objectively factual, not a human, subjective construct. It can’t be misunderstood or mischaracterized, because in the allness of Truth there simply is no room for error.

While I prayed along these lines, I felt a sense of peace, along with the assurance that God had always been leading the way forward and would continue to lead me and everyone involved. I felt secure in the knowledge that nothing but what God knows of me is true or known to others.

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As for the project, many are still benefiting from its elevating influence in our community. While that has been gratifying to witness, the peace I gained from this experience was the true reward. As we come to understand God as “a God of truth,” we can all feel the profound import of Jesus’ promise, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).

Adapted from an article published in the March 2026 issue of The Christian Science Journal.

I recently went birding for the first time in two years – having twin babies has a way of putting your hobbies on hold. But this trip to one of my favorite spots, Huntley Meadows Park in Alexandria, Virginia, reminded me why I love it so much. 

Ambling along the wetlands boardwalk, I saw two birds for the first time: a common yellowthroat and a blue grosbeak. 

I’m no ornithologist, but I’ll venture a scientific observation: If the McDonald’s Hamburglar were a bird, he’d be a common yellowthroat. Go ahead, Google it. Tell me I’m wrong.

Why We Wrote This

In a world built for speed and efficiency, birding is delightfully unhurried, an invitation to slow down and notice the natural world. As our essayist puts it, it’s a refreshing antidote to modern life.

This bird has mocked me since I began birding six years ago. It’s very common, you see – one might even call it the everyday or can’t-miss-it or dime-a-dozen yellowthroat. For me, it might as well have been a resplendent quetzal. But on this special day, I was finally rewarded for my patience, as the diminutive masked beauty settled delicately on a slight branch overhanging the boardwalk. 

As for the blue grosbeak, I’d heard rumors of it and tracked its appearance on eBird, a bird-tracking app. I always hoped to see one, but never really expected to. With its prominent beak and sapphire blue and pumpkin orange plumage, this bird looks like it hangs out with toucans in Costa Rica – and yet here it is, smack-dab in our unassuming Beltway woods.

Approaching a small meadow, I’d spotted something perching on a bird box – larger than a bluebird but not a blue jay – and when it turned for a moment to preen itself and flashed that bright orange wing bar, well, I could hardly believe it. 

That’s one of the charming things about birding. Anyone can be good at it. It’s not like chess, golf, basketball, piano, rock climbing, or really any other hobby. With birding, you could very well put binoculars to eyes for the first time and see something a veteran birder never has. 

Birding is delightfully free of decisions. You just sit back and watch what unfolds around you – sun shining, insects buzzing, birds flitting, leaves rustling. Who knows what you’ll see? 

It also reveals the treasure that surrounds us. Some of my most magical discoveries have taken place on the half-mile wooded loop in my neighborhood, where I’ve come across a flock of cedar waxwings feasting on berries; two indigo buntings playing tag above a lazy, trickling stream; and three generations of a hawk family hatching, fledging, flying, soaring. 

But here’s what I love the most about birding: It slows you down. That’s in stark contrast to everything else in our modern world, which is built to speed you up – social media, cable news, Grubhub, express lanes, iPhones, Spotify, those moving walkways at airports. 

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Not the case with birding. It forces you to pay attention, to observe the world with an unrushed gait and an unhurried eye. If you hope to see anything, you have to stand in place for extended periods of time without looking at your phone. Crazy, I know. It’s a delightful antidote to our modern world. 

As author and naturalist Joseph Wood Krutch once put it in a 1961 essay in Life magazine, “We have not merely escaped from something but also into something; ... we have joined the greatest of all communities, which is not that of men alone but of everything which shares with us the great adventure of being alive.” 

“Bless you!”

Over several years I have been using this familiar phrase in my conversations, or I have offered “blessings.” Recently, I wanted to examine what blessings are more closely.

Through my practice of Christian Science I have come to understand that all good is from Spirit, God. So, God is the source of all blessings. And the act of blessing goes well beyond the kindness of saying the words “bless you.” The blessings we are able to impart are God-impelled expressions of good, not personal initiatives, with great meaning and power.

The word “bless” in various forms appears hundreds of times in the King James Version of the Bible, including statements from Jesus, and from God. Numerous times throughout the Scriptures God is recorded as blessing people. In fact, Jesus showed us in his teachings and healings that God continuously blesses all creation, including each one of us, imparting goodness but never sending harm in any form. As the Bible says, “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it” (Proverbs 10:22).

In “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, describes the great span of the good that belongs to God: “All substance, intelligence, wisdom, being, immortality, cause, and effect belong to God. These are His attributes, the eternal manifestations of the infinite divine Principle, Love. No wisdom is wise but His wisdom; no truth is true, no love is lovely, no life is Life but the divine; no good is, but the good God bestows” (p. 275).

These spiritual, limitless attributes of God are also reflected by every one of us, as the expression of God. These attributes are blessings from God. We don’t create, own, or personally generate them. Nor can they be taken from us or lost in any way. And as the outcome of understanding that we reflect all of these attributes, we each express the diverse gifts of Spirit in our individual way, as the Bible puts it (see I Corinthians 12:4-7).

One of the beautiful things about God’s blessings is that they are limitless and all-inclusive – limitless because they are of God, who is infinite, and all-inclusive because no part of God’s creation is left out. The love of God embraced and expressed, like a ripple reaching every part of a lake, touches all who are open to the blessing.

In the spring of last year, the phrase “a wider sphere of thought and action” kept coming to thought (see Science and Health, p. 265). I felt that my “sphere of thought” was already pretty wide. In my practice of Christian Science I strive to stay informed about global issues and pray about them. The Monitor is my favorite news source, and I love that “the object of the Monitor is to injure no man, but to bless all mankind” (“The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany,” p. 353). As I pray, I expect healing and resolution.

So I prayed asking God how I could broaden my sphere of action. The answer I got was to serve in my local Christian Science Reading Room, where people can purchase or study the Bible and Science and Health, the Christian Science Quarterly Bible Lessons, Christian Science periodicals, as well as other literature – and pray. I felt that such service was a perfect answer for me!

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And so it has proved. This has blessed me with the opportunity to bless others, blessed our Reading Room with increased hours, and blessed our community members with greater opportunities to come in and dig into the healing ideas shared in the books and magazines. Everyone who stops in expresses gratitude for our presence.

“The Lord bless thee, and keep thee,” the Bible says (Numbers 6:24). How awesome and inclusive that we are all being blessed and kept by God! There is no limit to how God loves us. We can each cherish and share blessings, as impelled by God.

It was the kind of marketing not even Hollywood money could buy.

In February, Steven Spielberg’s secretive summer sci-fi movie was unveiled. “Disclosure Day” is about humans discovering that they are not alone in the universe. The trailer features a mysterious crop circle and a character alleging a government cover-up. In another scene, a television weather reporter suddenly begins speaking in an alien language during a live forecast. (Translation: “Cloudy, with a chance of UFOs.”)

Eleven days after the “Disclosure Day” trailer aired, President Donald Trump started talking about extraterrestrial life. In a social media post, the president wrote that he was directing government agencies, including the Department of Defense, “to begin the process of identifying and releasing government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs) ...”

Why We Wrote This

The promise of new government UFO records and films that explore out-of-this-world connections are renewing attention on the question of whether humankind is truly alone in the universe.

For Mr. Spielberg’s latest close encounter of the cinematic kind, it was great timing. Since then, Mr. Trump has said that he doesn’t think aliens exist. Federal agencies have yet to release new information. But no matter what the files might reveal, extraterrestrials are a subject of fascination in popular culture. Stories such as “Disclosure Day” and the imminent movie adaptation of the sci-fi novel “Project Hail Mary” invite us to reorient how we think about humankind’s place in the universe.

“Movies have definitely opened us up – even more than print science fiction – to the idea that something is out there,” says Fraser Sherman, author of “The Aliens Are Here: Extraterrestrial Visitors in American Cinema and Television.” “There has always been a feedback loop between popular interest in the subject and movies.”

Aliens’ path to pop culture

Extraterrestrials first started showing up in fiction in the late 1800s. Most notably, H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” (1898) imagined technologically advanced invaders from Mars. They had squid-like tentacles and reptilian faces. In an alien beauty pageant, they’d be stiff competition for Jabba the Hutt.

During the early 20th century, science fiction flourished through new mediums. In 1902, the visually lavish movie “Le Voyage dans la Lune” (“A Trip to the Moon”) depicted intelligent, bipedal, insect-like lunar inhabitants. Newsstand pulp publications such as “Planet Stories” featured luridly illustrated sci-fi yarns. Orson Welles’ 1938 radio adaptation of “War of the Worlds” panicked some listeners who thought they’d tuned in to a report of an actual alien invasion. Extraterrestrials had become popularized.

“There were numerous places where people could be influenced by what they saw or heard,” says Michael Stein, editor of “Alien Invasions! The History of Aliens in Pop Culture.”

Those fictional aliens preceded the first widely reported UFO sighting. In 1947, a pilot named Kenneth Arnold told news organizations that he saw nine flying discs. “Flying saucer” entered the popular lexicon. And science fiction. In “The Day the Earth Stood Still” (1951), the alien ship was shaped like a giant disc. The trope persisted in TV series such as “V” in the 1980s and with the 1995 blockbuster film “Independence Day.”

There has been a comparable relationship between fictional depictions of extraterrestrials and the physical descriptions people have given when reporting alien contact. A similar feedback loop extends to alien conspiracy theories – for example, the alleged government cover-up of a 1947 UFO crash near Roswell, New Mexico.

“A lot of the old Roswell mythos and so on, and people’s perceptions of it, are shaped by what they’ve seen on ‘The X Files,’” says Jesse Walker, author of “The United States of Paranoia: A Conspiracy Theory.”

Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon has spent decades spreading UFO disinformation. It created false documents and fabricated images to cover up secret weapons programs at bases such as Area 51 in the Nevada desert. Even so, many UAPs, including accounts of naval pilots encountering wingless objects capable of astonishing speeds and maneuvers, remain unexplained.

Pondering contact with extraterrestrials

But science fiction works best when it invites us to imagine fantastical elements beyond our immediate experience. In Andy Weir’s bestseller “Project Hail Mary,” for instance (spoiler alert), astronaut Ryland Grace is 11.9 light-years from Earth when he encounters an alien spaceship.

Mr. Weir consciously eschewed tropes of aliens that look like little gray men with egg-shaped heads. His alien resembles a large spider, but with rotating limbs and a stone-like carapace. The species lacks eyes but visualizes objects through sound waves. It lives in a different atmosphere. Ryland nicknames the alien “Rocky.” Turns out that Rocky is on a mission, like Grace, to save his home planet.

The author sought to ground his fiction in science. To that end, he asked himself how that species, known in Mr. Weir’s book as Eridians, could build a spaceship and leave their planet. That led him to explore ideas about the Eridian language, the formation of its civilization, and their capacity for compassion.

“If everybody in your society has that, then when something happens to me, they all come and help me,” says Mr. Weir, whose book has been adapted into a movie starring Ryan Gosling as Grace, and which opens March 20. “Compassion comes from empathy. I find it hard to believe you could have one without the other.”

The optimistic outlook about humans and aliens in “Project Hail Mary” is similar to that found in movies such as “Enemy Mine,” “Arrival,” and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.” They aren’t engaged in war. Humans and extraterrestrials realize they share qualities in common. A shared “humanity,” if you like. The “Star Trek” movie playfully gets at that idea when one of the aliens claims, “You’ve not experienced Shakespeare until you’ve read him in the original Klingon.”

In “Project Hail Mary,” Grace and Rocky share the ability to communicate, empathy, and compassion. Those three things provide “all the ingredients you need for friendship,” says Mr. Weir, whose breakout novel, “The Martian,” was also made into a film.

Mr. Weir says that if humans made contact with intelligent aliens in real life, it would be “the most important moment in human history.” The author says that the first thing that a devoutly religious person might ask is whether the aliens have souls. Many have pondered that hypothetical question.

“It will appear as if God had more than one child, so to speak, and I don’t see any problem with that,” says Avi Loeb, author of “Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.” “If you believe in God being capable of creating the universe, definitely creating other siblings in our family would make a lot of sense.”

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Mr. Loeb, a Harvard University astronomer, compares such a scenario with the Copernican revolution - the discovery that the Earth revolves around the sun rather than vice versa. We would have to rethink the idea of being at the center of our universe.

In the trailer for Mr. Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” a nun expresses a similar thought: “Why would He make such a vast universe, yet save it only for us?”

Most people rely on the physical senses to inform or confirm their life experience. But do the physical senses show us what’s really happening? Or are they deceptive?

Last year the unreliability of the physical senses was reinforced for me on a visit to Hawaii. I awoke at 4 a.m. to sit outside and gaze at the stars. I watched the constellation Orion hour by hour until it leaned over so far that it looked like Orion’s foot would dip into the ocean and get wet. I laughed because I knew the underlying stellar facts of what I was seeing. Orion wasn’t tipping over; the Earth was rotating on its axis at 1,000 miles an hour.

This week’s Christian Science Bible lesson, on the subject “Matter,” offers insights on whether we should believe the testimony of the physical senses by highlighting the perspective of Paul, one of the greatest Christian missionaries ever. Paul warned the early churches of Galatia against self-deception, saying, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting” (Galatians 6:7, 8).

Paul referred to God as Spirit to teach people about their true spirituality as God’s offspring. He urged listeners to grasp their innate God-given capacity to understand God as the source of their health and well-being; in short, to see what’s true.

We know from the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible that Spirit’s creation is spiritual and “very good,” though the material sense of things is quite different. That raises the question: How can we yield to the spiritual facts of God’s harmonious creation instead of consenting to the opposite so-called facts of matter?

To answer this, it’s helpful to consider what Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, says in “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” on page 471: “The facts of divine Science should be admitted, – although the evidence as to these facts is not supported by evil, by matter, or by material sense, – because the evidence that God and man coexist is fully sustained by spiritual sense. Man is, and forever has been, God’s reflection. God is infinite, therefore ever present, and there is no other power nor presence. Hence the spirituality of the universe is the only fact of creation.”

God, Spirit, universal good, is the only power. Understanding that Spirit alone has power and presence dispels matter’s deceptions and brings healing. I experienced this spiritual truth when I went on a hike with my husband. It was early spring, and normally there would be no insects, but all of a sudden large black wasps swarmed my bare arm and stung me. I felt intense pain and saw welts rise on the arm. I was sure the sting marks would soon disappear. But by the next day the inflammatory symptoms had spread aggressively up and down the arm, suggesting an allergic reaction.

That’s when I prayed by asking God, Spirit, to show me more of my true spiritual being. Then I recalled that on the hike I was voicing criticism of our city government for making decisions that I felt ignored what longtime residents wanted. My thoughts had been filled with irritating beliefs instead of appreciating all the good that God, Spirit, constantly gives everyone, including me. No longer deceived by a material view of things, I noticed the pain stopped and the sting marks quickly faded away, and there were no aftereffects.

Since then, I’ve become more alert to deceptive thinking, and when I spot it I immediately focus on God, good, by moving from one spiritual thought to another. Letting my thought move higher with the joy of spiritual sense, I see more of God’s glorious earth and feel more of Spirit’s peaceful presence.

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A statement from the Bible lesson asks a crucial question: “Spirituality lays open siege to materialism. On which side are we fighting?” (Science and Health, p. 216). We don’t have to be led astray by the testimony of the physical senses. Instead, we can each decide daily to perceive more of the spiritual sense of life.

If you’re new to the weekly Bible Lessons from the Christian Science Quarterly, you can view a free sample of a previous week’s Bible lesson here. Subscribers to the weekly Lesson can log in here.

There cannot be peace in our homes, our local communities, our country, or our world unless we, as individuals, are at peace. As the second verse of “Let There Be Peace on Earth,” Hymn 521 in the “Christian Science Hymnal: Hymns 430-603,” says, “Let there be peace on earth, / and let it begin with me” (Jill Jackson, © Jan-Lee Music 1955, 1983). But it must be a spiritual peace, as both the Bible and the writings of the discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, make clear. The Bible says, “To be spiritually minded is life and peace” (Romans 8:6), and Mrs. Eddy states, “The calm and exalted thought or spiritual apprehension is at peace” (“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures,” p. 506).

This spiritual apprehension, or spiritual-mindedness, has no knowledge of conflict – not because it is ignorant or naive, but because it understands that God, Spirit, is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent and that man is God’s reflection, made in His image and likeness, as the first chapter of the Bible tells us.

It’s crucial to differentiate between this spiritual man of God’s making and mortal man. If we see ourselves and others as this mortal man, then we are believing either that we are not God’s reflection or that we reflect the changeable nature attributed to the Jehovah of the Old Testament. God is Principle; therefore, God is wholly good, and so are we as God’s spiritual image.

One Bible-based synonym for God is Mind. This infinite Mind not only knows all but is the source of all true knowledge, intelligence, wisdom, and understanding. Since God, divine Truth, created all that truly exists, if God didn’t make it, it is not a reality and cannot be known. It follows, then, that warfare, hostility, or conflict is not reality, since it doesn’t come from God. Instead, reality is the harmony, peace, and love that are God’s eternal qualities.

What prevents us from experiencing the peace within that isn’t dependent on circumstances—the spiritual peace that expresses God? One obstacle is entertaining fear. A small example of how eradicating fear achieves tranquility occurred for me this past winter.

On a Sunday in January, my youngest son texted me that he and his wife were quite ill with a stomach bug. I felt a strong urge to go to my son’s home and offer to care for him, his wife, and my baby grandson. But as I drove, I realized that I was afraid that the illness would be passed along to me, rendering me unable to help this sweet family. I thought frequently of this assurance from Science and Health: “Whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself” (p. 385). By the time I arrived, the fear had been replaced by peace.

My daughter-in-law said she was afraid I would also become ill, so she would keep her distance. But I assured her that I was not concerned. During my time in their home, I cared for my grandson and did some laundry and light cleaning. On my last night there, I was holding and rocking my grandson, trying to get him to sleep. Feeling congestion in his chest, I silently and firmly denied that it had any validity in light of God’s ever-present goodness and care. I felt such love for this innocent baby. Within moments, the congestion went away. The next day, I drove home. I never got ill, either at my son’s house or after my return home. Nor did my grandson.

Each time we eradicate fear in this way and experience the healing impact of doing so, it reaches well beyond just our own lives. While this alone can’t achieve world peace, in this instance it contributed a healing sense of peace to the mental atmosphere in my son’s home.

Does it not make sense that this same contribution to the destruction of fear in the face of contagion can be applied to the destruction of our fear of the contagion of conflict? Yes. When we experience tranquility on the spiritual basis of understanding that God is ever present, all-knowing, and all-powerful, we not only overcome fear but also increasingly see the unreality of any disruptor of peace, such as hate or apathy.

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Just as a stone tossed into a pond generates outward-moving ripples, this spiritual peace, the uncovering of this deep-settled calm in our own consciousness, ripples out and blesses the world.

Adapted from an article published in the March 9, 2026, issue of the Christian Science Sentinel.