“…the change in view for me has been to see what it really means to trust that infinite Love is ever-present, is All”

When I saw the excerpt from Capt. Eastaman in the references, it brought tears to my eyes because Mary Baker Eddy’s gentle encouragement to him to “heal your wife yourself” has been present in my thought for a year and a half as we have sought healing for my wife, to really leave all for Christ, for her to be lifted out of such a dark dream. Even before Century was part of our assignment, I had been holding to the truths expressed by Peter Henniker-Heaton – in particular, the place where he writes: “...great spiritual joy filled me – joy that God governed and nothing could interfere with His purpose of present perfection and satisfaction for all.” Even before there was evidence of the unreality of the aggressive physical claim, he was filled with spiritual joy – that has been a rock for me.

I would say that the way Century made changes in my view of Christian Science healing is that I saw, over and over again, how the testifiers became conscious and convinced of God’s ever-presence; it didn’t matter what the circumstances seemed to be. And even if the advice from others – medical professionals or just witnesses and acquaintances – seemed troublingly specific, the consciousness of God’s goodness being real and undeniable broke through or was made clear to them. To me a lot of the testimonies were so many different versions of that sentence in Science and Health where Mrs. Eddy writes, “The metaphysician, making Mind his basis of operation irrespective of matter ...” – and many of the testifiers were not even thinking of themselves yet as “metaphysicians.” They just knew that matter held no more truth or comfort or healing for them. So, the change in view for me has been to see what it really means to trust that infinite Love is ever-present, is All.

There were two accounts of healing that were especially meaningful to me this time through. One was the healing of a couple’s son of rheumatic fever after the doctors said there was nothing more they could do, and after the doctors encouraged the father to go home and pray. (pp. 160-162) To which the father replied that he didn’t “know how to pray” and had found no answers to his own prayers about his own invalidism. He couldn’t reach his minister by phone, and minutes later a business acquaintance called about another matter, asked whether they had tried Christian Science and came right over. After talking with the Christian Scientist and then a practitioner for about ten minutes, he returned to the living room “free, happy, and assured….that the boy is in God’s hands.” He didn’t even feel a need to return to the hospital that evening, as has been their routine; he said he “positively knew [his son] was in God’s hands.” This example of the consciousness of God’s all-power, Love’s all-presence coming clearly to the father, establishing reality in his thought, in his experience, has stayed with me. And, of course, when they return to the hospital the next day, their son has had a healing – and the healing began “within an hour after [his] leaving the hospital the day before…” Even more meaningful is that the healing wasn’t isolated to just the boy; the father, too, had a complete healing of multiple conditions that had been going on for years. 

The second one that really stayed with me this time through is told by the husband who worked for years on the railroads (pp 184-188). He returns home from one trip to discover his wife has badly injured herself, she’s distraught, and three physicians have said they can’t do anything for her. Her distress moves him to remember a copy of Science and Health given to him by his mother years before that he has stowed away in a drawer. His preparations for reading to his wife include getting his drink, his cigarettes, and getting comfortable with having no expectations that anything is going to change. The book took him over in one sitting; I loved the clear way he describes the feeling, that he “became all in this thing, forgot about everybody else and everything else.” Again, I read that as a simple acknowledgement that Truth’s reality and ever-presence were established in his thought, naturally, without fanfare, and that Love couldn’t be denied or resisted by human planning and willpower. “Truth is affirmative and confers harmony” has never seemed stronger to me: “affirmative” isn’t a slight or meek “yes”; but a bold, unassailable “yes,” an affirmation of reality and ever-presence that allows no room for any opposite. What’s really striking about this testimony, too, is that he goes on to describe healing of many character traits he isn’t proud of: gambling, drinking. And he describes how reading that “C.S. silences human will…” helped him get a better understanding of Life, that the “I came out entirely.” New purpose in his work, a promotion, a new perspective on how to manage others in his work. It all becomes about “learning the meaning of Love.” I have prayed with these insights a lot this year, both to redeem my sense of what my daily prayerful work is for, and how that can lift up my thinking about the job I go off to every day (except for the past few weeks, in which I’ve just gone upstairs to my “remote learning” job!)

The book brought a healing back to me. I took my high-school-age son to an early spring soccer tournament – miserable, cold weather, tough conditions to play under, a lot of mental clouds on the field, too, seemingly. He got a bad leg injury that brought EMTs onto the field, but he declined being carted off, took crutches, and I walked along with him as he hobbled to the car, upset, in pain, too distraught and mad about the whole situation to want to listen. We got in the car, I turned on the heat, I was moved to simply say to him, “You can have a healing.” He gradually calmed down as I drove and tried to just keep something simple in thought, a hymn (“No snare, no fowler, pestilence or pain…”) and “perfect Love casteth out fear.” He was hungry so I found a pizza place, and when I got out of the car to order, I called my wife and asked her to call a practitioner. We ate and didn’t talk much. He wanted to join the rest of the team at a restaurant nearby while they had lunch. He needed the crutches to get in the restaurant; there was no place for me to find a quiet spot, but I stayed with the thoughts that had occurred to me in the car. He visibly cheered up being with some teammates he liked and respected. The team had another match after lunch. Long story short, he needed crutches to get from the parking lot to the field; stood watching everyone warm up for the first 10 minutes; began putting both feet on the ground, still with crutches, and kicking the ball with teammates for the next ten; last ten minutes of warm-up he began jogging around, kicking, moving. The match began, he walked around the field to where I was standing to ask me if he could play! I said absolutely, if he felt up to it. He said he did, asked the coach, and played for the last 20 minutes of the match. When we got in the car afterwards to head home, I just turned to him and said, “God is good.” And he said, “Yes, He is.” At home I called the practitioner and reported how rapidly the situation had turned around. He said that he had gotten the call on his way to serve in the Reading Room, and he just kept praying with, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” That was all that God knew about our son, about me, about all involved. That was the truth, he said, he was pouring in through floodtides of Love. I felt deeply grateful for this proof of God’s goodness – that that is all we can experience in reality. We are never separated from it; we are all beloved by God.

I love Hymn 109 in the references. ”Here, O God, Thy healing presence/Lifts our thoughts from self and sin…” and it expresses what I am trying to do to be more active in healing. Here and now is the place and time to pray, to feel God’s “healing presence.” It has too often felt as though, early in the morning when I am reading the Lesson, studying and praying – or at different points during the day – that I think of my job as throwing off the burden of self and sin and then I can get down to work. But I’ve come to think differently (freshly?) about the other ideas in that first stanza, what’s really being said: God’s healing presence, ever-presence, lifts us above the complicated picture (mortal mind’s) of self and sin, gives us light, helps us naturally welcome Love in, turns us heavenward, which feels like home – the place we want to be – and unseals our hearts. So that hymn just puts so clearly how I have been thinking since reading Century.