Edna Lister in 1964, nearing age 80

Great souls often come to earth with a vision and a sense of "mission." In her own words, Edna Miriam Lister said: "I came to earth with one idea: I thought everyone could walk with Jesus. At age four I knew I must save earth. At age six I knew I must lead Armies of the Faithful back to God. At age eight, I saw the Master, and knew God as Personality. I then asked the meaning of "search with your soul," and "hunger and thirst after righteousness." At age 12 I knew I would write a book to raise earth's vibration. I desired a career in grand opera and the political world, but a strange man said to me, "What is that to thee? Follow thou me." Then I saw the Master, who said, "God is deathless, ageless and abiding. Avoid the appearance of evil." All I have given you has come from this."

We have drawn the portrait presented here from Edna Miriam's diaries, her letters to friends and students (who saved them), students‚ notes and reminiscences, personal memory, and conversations with her son and daughter-in-law, Ted and Kay Abstein. Her biography is and for some time shall remain a "work in progress," yet here a brief overview of a person, whose candle flame of knowing grew into a torch, and further, into a billions-of-candlepower beacon for all who care to follow the Light.

1888 – age 4

Edna Lister: The Woman, the Seeker

Edna Miriam was dynamic and vivacious, with twinkling fire in her eyes – all five-foot-five of her. A golden honey blonde in her youth, she silvered to pale champagne through the years. She was a well-endowed size eight, with an unerring sense of timeless fashion, and dressed smartly. She loved hats and high heels.

Born in Tacoma, Washington, December 5, 1884, she belonged to a generation whose parents saw little benefit in educating women. Her father, she said, "didn't see any reason for educating daughters." Yet she had an enquiring mind, was "hungry for truth," never stopped educating herself, and left a massive personal library. (Several vignettes, contained in the prologue of "Eternal Youth," give insight into her early "mystic dreamer" bent.

The Self-Inflicted Fires of Adversity

Impulsive and a romantic, she married young, at 17. Her husband was 35. She was a mother at 18, and lost her second child, Gloria, when she was 20. A professional salesman, her husband moved her up and down the West Coast, and finally to Portland Oregon, where he deserted her and their son, Russell. Always pragmatic, she divorced him "when it became apparent that he never was coming back."

In 1907 she met Henry Theodore Abstein, who held a degree in mining engineering from the University of Nevada, and who had already staked gold mining claims in the Rockies, near Yellow Pine, Idaho. They married in 1910 and set off to homestead in the mountains, arriving in winter, having traveled the last thirty-some miles by dogsled. She was hardy, not a hothouse orchid.

Having grown up in the shadows of Mt. Rainier, the Cascades and the Olympics, she loved Psalm 121: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." As she wrote in a letter to her Cleveland group in 1939, "I confess that I tried to "inhale" enough mountain‚ to carry me through my next lap in the East!"

1933

Edna Lister's Evolving Philosophy of Life

In 1912, she lost her second child, a two-month-old son, whom she named Karl. It was the "dead of winter," and she "had been left alone in the cabin for weeks." The cabin was half a day's horseback ride from the nearest town. She had no neighbors. Her reading material consisted of a Bible, Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," and the collected works of early philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle. She wrote in her books, which were obviously her best friends.

Early in 1916, she gave birth to her last child, Henry Theodore Abstein, Jr. Edna Miriam's other son, Russell, was spending his school years with her mother in Tacoma, later with her sister Blanche in Portland, Oregon, joining her in Idaho during the summers. These separations gave her "an aching heart."

In 1920, her husband Henry began building the "ranch" house and outbuildings near Yellow Pine, where he had purchased a large tract under the Homestead Act. A real palace for that locale, it was the first house in town to boast indoor plumbing and a bathroom!

Her private papers from this period contain several sets of "correspondence courses" on religion, fledgling psychology, metaphysics, and "New Thought" Truth work from various sources. Her library contains all the books associated with the courses, which were extremely popular at the time, especially among intellectually hungry women, who were often living in isolated conditions, as she was. She wrote her critical commentaries on them all.

Her book and course-work annotations reveal an increasingly structured belief system, rooted in the Transcendentalist School of New England, but which remains uniquely her own. For instance, while she embraced the Kantian Idealism of the Transcendentalists, and favored quotes of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, she rejected their Unitarian views in favor of Universalism. She despised the Sophist philosophers, with the exception of Socrates, whose questioning method she often used, and displayed an increasingly Stoic view.

Edna Miriam's notations include comments ranging from "utter hogwash!" to "Exactly!" Clipped together among her papers are "philosophy" notes on such terms as "pantheism," "immanent" and "transcendent." Her comments, "philosophy not enough – must be more. Must find the pattern," illumine the nature of her quest, Who and what is God? The term, "pattern," is intriguing, since she quoted Exodus 25:40, "Thou make them after their pattern, which was shown thee in the mount," in her lectures. She was uncovering the Original Divine Plan of Life.

1944– at Mt. Rainier

Edna Lister remained in the Idaho Backcountry for fourteen years before returning to Tacoma. The gold mining claims provided only a subsistence-level living. Her sons needed an education, civilization, and she needed to earn money to help provide it. While Edna Miriam and her husband Henry Abstein never lived together as man and wife again, they remained friends throughout their lives. They shared holidays with their son Ted when Henry came to Seattle, and he provided a standing invitation to stay at the ranch to "recharge her batteries."

(To be continued, with Edna Lister's Education in "New Thought" and more.)