“…a transformation in my thinking had taken place”

Rereading the Century book made me realize how practical Christian Science is and how it can be applied in various situations to ameliorate the idea that matter (material conditions) are the last word. The testimonies still hold the impact of real evidence as if they were written today. By reading these testimonies I was impelled to look back on testimonies that I had written down. One stood out very clearly that the practice of Christian Science is healing Truth.

An email written to you and your reply were the underlying recognition of healing. Ten years ago, when it appeared I was very low and without help of any kind, I was raising my daughter alone and had lost my full-time job and was about to lose a house I owned. It had been rented, and the tenants trashed the place, stealing all the copper piping and not paying the rent for several months. I had no money for the repairs, and I was unable to rent it and pay the mortgage. My daughter’s junior year spring term was about to begin, and I didn’t have the money for tuition.

I wrote these words to you. “I want to be like Joseph (faithful), but it is so difficult with everything falling down around me. My house…will be lost next month for lack of funds and I have been unable to pay for my daughter’s junior spring semester. My consciousness gets lifted when I do the lesson and listen to healing tapes, but I just can’t seem to maintain that higher thought when my family is feeling sorry for me, debt collectors are calling and all I get is ‘no’ from employers I am contacting.”

Your response was loud and clear! You wrote,

“Was thinking that the first step in every challenge is pretty important and that involves getting out of the way of what God is doing. Getting in the way involves rehearsing the terrible situation, adding up the darkness instead of counting on light, considering ‘last straws’ and going ahead fearing as much as one wants. It may also include not really changing what every spiritual sense and spiritual intuition indicates needs to be changed. The next step is be as conscious as possible of the fact that your need isn’t to bring into being something that doesn’t exist. It is to see more what does exist. That means not outlining what needs to happen in order for things to be okay but instead seeing and listening and feeling more of God’s present rightness and goodness literally, and all things working together for good.”

Your words helped me to change the way I was thinking about my life, which had been as if it was separate from God, and I knew that to be untrue. I really couldn’t be separate if God was all. I turned my thought to all the good I had witnessed (another healing concerning an immediately changed circumstance) and applied that healing and others, to my thinking about my current situation. Just as I am doing with rereading A Century of Christian Science Healing.

In looking back over these past 10-years, I can see how much I have relied on Christian Science practice as my primary support, though I’ve had spiritual support from friends. I did not lose the house; it was repaired, made possible by a loving loan from an unexpected source. My daughter graduated college, including a term abroad and recently married. And I completed my Master’s and have had two excellent positions, one which I continue to work in today.

Looking back helped me to understand the present better through a newer viewpoint. I realize now that a transformation in my thinking had taken place and was expressed in my experience of abundant blessing not only for me, but those who received what was rightfully theirs.

Each healing in A Century of Christian Science Healing is unique, but the healing on pages 213 -216 struck a chord especially because of where I am in my experience now. Just like the writer, I am wondering what my purpose is or am I just drifting through the final years of my material existence. I am seriously praying to understand God’s present purpose for me.

The writer’s words in the final paragraph of his contribution spoke to me, “I think probably the most outstanding feature of it all was that prior to this experience I felt I was just sort of drifting, and rather useless. I wasn’t quite sure what my purpose in life was; I felt that all my experiences were superficial. I was doing some interesting work, but it wasn’t satisfying.” These types of feelings are what I am currently struggling with. However, his words have helped me realize that I, too, have an opportunity every minute of every day to see myself and my fellow man in the true light. And I could have the experience the writer described: “This not only contributed to my own wellbeing, but I was able to bring it to others, which was more important.” This demonstration, which took place years ago, is so meaningful. The writer’s contribution of well-being to himself and others is very much like what you said in Class. We are not working for ourselves, but for the ages!

While not a healing per se, but a heading in the book on, “The Healing of The Nations,” (p. 249) is consistent with these ideas of working on identity of self and for others. The writer quotes Revelation (22:2) “the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.” I love how the writer associates this statement with life: “Christian healing must necessarily extend to the collective aspects of living. But the deepest spiritual intuitions of mankind have always pointed to the fact that it must start with individual regeneration.” I feel we, as Christian Science healers, are not only working for religious reform (a Christianity more closely related to Jesus’ own life) but also for the greater purpose of a more spiritual life for all; I believe that was Mrs. Eddy’s wish for all mankind. If I can apply this all-inclusive thinking in my daily work I believe my purpose will become clear and certainly great growth in Christian Science will appear.

“…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.

“To love God…is our birthright to heal and it has been done everywhere AT ANY TIME”

The first testimony/account that spoke directly to me was of a youngster of not quite 13 years old who took five children (mostly cousins) on a canoe ride that ended up being some three miles from the nearest shore.…The canoe overturned, and they all fell into the water.…Almost all the children attended Christian Science Sunday School, and so they repeated poems of Mrs. Eddy and the Scientific Statement of Being and prayers learned in church. The writer decided to swim after a boat that he had seen not long before. He reminded himself that “I knew that we could not at any time be separated from God.” He had no training in long distance swimming but was buoyed by his remembrance of the truth, and he was able to reach some fishermen who took him back. This took two hours. All the children except for one were still hanging onto the side of the canoe. The writer found her a little distance from the canoe calmly floating in the water. The four year old who had been floating was asked what she was thinking all that time. Her response was that she knew the water was over her parents’ head but not over God’s head.

There were other examples of Science working out uplifting healings.

There was an absolutely warm, uplifting account of a brother who was a Christian Scientist who worked with his sister while she was in a hospital diagnosed with cancer, expected to expire in a few days. He maintained his vigilance, his trust in God’s care, and never left the hospital for five days. He never seemed to sleep or eat but was always mindful to remind everyone he came into contact with that his sister Mary was God’s child, and that there was no death but life in God. “He would never admit that I would die.” (p. 61) When during his sister’s second or third night the nurses recorded that she had expired, he came to her and put both his hands on her cheeks and called her name. He called out her name twice, and she returned. “After I awoke from that condition,” she wrote, “I felt and knew that I was healed.”

Another fascinating experience took place when the Japanese army conquered Bataan Corregidor and many American sailors and soldiers, to escape Japanese prison camps, took to any kind of escape transit to leave the Philippines. Their plan was to go through New Guinea, though “enemy-infested” waters, a distance of 1,500 miles. Their only navigational tool was a page from an atlas and a practitioner who said that he would pray for them. They made their way without sickness, hunger, or conflicts with any natives. After arriving at New Guinea, the writer met a commanding officer of an active vessel who offered to take them to Australia because their primitive outrigger would never make it. The officer had just arrived soon after the Americans and was only to stay for five hours. One of the writer’s shipmates, who was an atheist, remarked, “too many things worked out just right to be the result of chance. There has to be a law of some kind.”

Another account had to do with a Christian Scientist who said that he had been a Scientist for 49 years, and he never once had to get a practitioner’s help. Perhaps one can see this as more braggadorio than a sincere statement of commitment to Science. I don’t. I see it as someone who hasn’t “fallen off his perch” (The Story of Christian Science Wartime Activities 1939-1946, Christian Science Publishing Society Boston, MA, 1947, pp 265-266) but is always aware of guidance and love every day. There is an old hymn that I love which says, “Love (God) place my feet on higher ground.” I can only figure that he must have been practicing “renewing prayer” while keeping his thoughts elevated.

Christian Science could be said to be a delivery system that can reach anyone, anywhere, at any time. Century tells of healings where the practitioner was not in the same room but hundreds or over thousands of miles away. Christian Science is a religion that looks to the inward man, not impressed by the worldly aspect. It is a faith that will not shrink. “Then said Jesus unto the twelve, will you also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” To love God with humility, grace, compassion and not give credibility or power to any other thought is our birthright to heal and it has been done everywhere AT ANY TIME.

While winterizing some lawn equipment, I was running a push mower so that the oil would get hot and facilitate the draining of the dirty oil. After turning the mower off, I then grabbed it to turn it upside down, but in that act the mower slipped from my hand and the hot exhaust hit the underside of my arm next to my wrist. I felt no pain nor fear, but I knew that I had to address the event firmly but without any unnecessary chatter. That is, I did not get upset, call myself clumsy, or give much thought as to what could happen with the burn. I knew from lots of experience that God is my help, that I am 100% spiritual, and that animal magnetism has absolutely no hold on me. I knew my expected end and could claim dominion now. I asked my wife to get me a large bandage while I cleaned up the burn. I noticed that the skin layers indicated third degree burn, but I was completely calm because degrees don’t interfere with God’s healing process and the healing can be done quickly. Within a few days I removed the heavier bandage, cleaned around it, and put on a lighter gauze. There was never any pain, infection, nor scar, and it was completely healed in two days after applying the second bandage.

P.S. Something I found in the Reading Room. It was a letter directed to the staff in 1883. It resonated with me. I had never heard it before. The letter was much longer, but I’ll share this.

“You have dominion in Him, over the world; the flesh and the devil; dominion that is omnipotent; Your life is in Him. No power can bind you. God is the only Life. Spirit is the only substance. Love is the only cause. Harmony is the only law. Now is the only time.”

“I am so grateful that I was never afraid”

Two things that have stayed with me from reading this book are:

1. How certain were many of the healers. I love the humble, rock-solid confidence with which Christian Science treatment was given.

2. I have loved reading where the healings took place. Bunch, Iowa; Trenton, Nebraska; Sussex, England; Denver; Los Angeles; Pilot View, Kentucky; Tokyo; Chicago; Norfolk, Nebraska; South Africa; Texas; ’the Near East’; in chemistry labs; on aircraft engineering drafting tables. “Love lived in a court or cot is God exemplified, governing governments, industries, human rights, liberty, life.” (My 287)

I found the following so reassuring, because no matter how humanly technical or complicated, the spiritual answer is neither technical nor complicated. In his first assignment as an aircraft engineer, Dwight Mills was to design a jet gear mechanism. (p. 227) There were difficult control issues, and he learned that other engineers had been working on this problem for almost a year without a solution. After studying the problem, he concluded that there was no mathematical analytical solution. There were an infinite number of possibilities for locating three main centers around which the gears would operate. As he began to feel helpless and overwhelmed, he said, “I went back to my usual way of working out difficult problems – through prayer, the prayer of spiritual understanding…I knew that God provides everything we need – if we are alert enough spiritually to discern it.”

So, one day at his drafting board, he leaned back in his chair and prayed. He started by thanking God for His goodness, realizing the ever-presence of the divine Mind’s all-power and infinite capacity. He reasoned that man actually reflects the capacity and intelligence of the divine Mind. After praying and feeling this closeness to God for 30 or 40 minutes, he went back to his drawing. Within minutes, without any calculations, it came to him where all three pivot points for the gears should be located. And it turned out to be the perfect solution for this complex design. It was put into production, and the basic design was still flying at the writing of this experience. He said, “To me this was a clear proof that when we listen for God’s guidance humbly and prayerfully, we can be led to the right answer, even though from a human standpoint the problem appears to be without a solution.”

Another notable experience echoed one of my own. Velma Lewis Ingraham lived in an impoverished ’near eastern’ country where she regularly encountered a desperately dirty, deprived young boy “with lovely brown eyes and a quick warm smile.’ (p. 217) She said, “There seemed to be no way of helping him with any degree of permanence.” Then one day she realized that Jesus must have seen so many people like this, and as it says in Science and Health, “(he) beheld in Science the perfect man...and this correct view of man healed the sick.” (SH 476-7) As she was giving him some coins, she realized how inadequate this was, and “Out of the depths of her heart (she) prayed: ‘Lord, open Thou mine eyes that I too may see! Let there be light!’ And suddenly there was nothing but the light of spiritual reality. She was no longer conscious of the boy or the place; ...she was only aware of God’s presence and of His spiritual, perfect universe. For several days the boy did not even come into her thought. Then one day she met him on the street, and he was completely clean, changed. She asked him, “Who told you to do these things?” And he said, ”No man...and pointed upward and said “I tell me.” That was the beginning of a complete transformation in his life.

The following experience of mine is parallel, seeing the hand of God move, and the Mind that is God speaking, being heard, and transforming.

For a number of years, I oversaw the Monday noon soup kitchen at 2nd Baptist church in my community. One raw winter day as we were cleaning up, there was a banging on the door and a man came in. At this soup kitchen we never saw people that were in such desperate condition. He had a garbage bag wrapped around his shoulders, cardboard strapped to his feet, and, as he shuffled to a table to sit down, seemed barely conscious. I brought him a bowl of potato salad, which is all we had left, and he began to shovel it into his mouth. I sat down near him and introduced myself and asked him what his name was. He mumbled something, and I asked again. He replied loudly, “Dennis!!” I said, and meant it deeply, “Dennis, I am SO glad you came here today!” 

After he left and I went home, he was with me in thought. Actually, for weeks I prayed about this picture of degradation, refuting it as a lie about God’s man, as a lie about him. I remember knowing, acknowledging, insisting on man’s eternal innocency as an idea of pure Mind. I acknowledged that he was loved forever. “In Science man is the offspring of Spirit. The beautiful, good and pure constitute his ancestry. His origin is not in brute instinct...Spirit is his primitive and ultimate Source of being. God is his Father, and Life is the law of his being.” (SH 63:5) Then, one time when I turned to God again about this, what came to me was, “This is the first time anyone has ever known this about him. This is his virgin birth!” I was moved to tears. I was so grateful. And then, he completely left my thought.

Maybe a month later at a soup kitchen meal, he came in. He was clean and dressed normally, clear-eyed, and he looked right at me and spoke. It was clumsy, as though he was not used to speaking. But it was direct. He came to that noon meal off and on for a couple of months. Then I saw him riding a bike around town. And then, he didn’t come back.

Recently I had a wonderful healing for which I am deeply grateful.

One evening, the corner of my pant leg caught on a kitchen drawer and I pitched forcefully backward, landing on the stone floor, my head fully connecting with the corner of a kitchen cabinet door as I fell. I lay there. My husband called a practitioner, and she spoke to me about my untouched spiritual being right then. After a while I sat up, and the pain subsided. I went to bed shortly thereafter and slept deeply. But early in the morning I was roused to get up and go to the bathroom. The next thing I remember was my husband trying to get into the bathroom, but I was unconscious on the floor blocking the door. He roused me, but there were intense symptoms of illness. Once again, I listened to the practitioner as I lay on the floor. Eventually I was able to lie on a bed. 

The practitioner shared with me many ideas, including:

• “God is the creator of man, and, the divine Principle of man remaining perfect, the divine idea or reflection, man, remains perfect.” YOU are the expression of God’s being. 

• There’s NO REASON for this situation, because it ISN’T. 

• You have on the helmet of salvation, and God is supreme. 

• God is the source and condition of all existence and the source and condition of your existence.

I am so grateful that I was never afraid. I became clearer and could think about the adjustments to the day that needed to be made. Then my daughter called, and when I told her I’d had a fall, she didn’t ask details but was tenderly compassionate. Then remembering what she’d learned in Sunday School, clearly affirmed “There is no spot where God is not!” That made me smile. And by the time we’d finished talking, I was sitting up, ready to shower and get dressed. It was a quiet day, but I never lay down again that day. Except for a little tenderness to the back of my head, there were no more symptoms. And I continue to be vigorous and free.

“I learned that human planning…can obscure the simplicity of the Christ”

In the past weeks, while we all have been sheltering in place, numerous friends and family members have told me they feel “disoriented.” Days slip into weeks, weeks slip into months, and all time seems the same. Familiar routines, workdays, commutes, and forms of communication that once served as markers in time and space have disappeared. There is plenty of free-floating fear and uncertainty to handle.

This is a telltale sign of animal magnetism, a belief in a directionless and destructive power apart from God, a power with modes and methods that try to pull focus away from the reality of substantial good and towards illusive chaos and inharmony. I know I’ve prayed with many others along the lines of the hymn: “Your lovingkindness is a wondrous thing; / We will shelter safely underneath Your wing.” (Hymn 528:2)

The privilege of attending regular Wednesday and Sunday Christian Science services online has been a wonderful way to stabilize thought and focus our prayers for the world. I worked to understand my true “orientation” to help counter the persistent belief of disorientation, and I have been grateful for the opportunity to learn more about our direction and orientation as taught in Christian Science, and how that rock-solid foundation can help us and the world when everything around us seems chaotic and disorienting.

Over the last two years I have been working very hard to find a new direction in my career and business life. During this time, I learned that my true orientation was not a path, outline, or direction that could ever be determined, limited, understood, or charted by mortal mind. Aligning with omnipresent Spirit to find true orientation demands humility and more listening.

My career had been fulfilling, but I felt it was time for something else. I worked with a practitioner, and I took the necessary practical steps to transition away from my very stable employment, which I had pursued for the last 40 years. I thought it was time to start a new chapter. My wife and I moved from the East Coast to the West Coast to explore a different setting and new opportunities.

At the same time, I was very careful to fulfil every conceivable human obligation to my old firm, and I continued to support it, developing business, transitioning clients, and doing actual client work for 18 months, even though I was no longer receiving a salary. The firm was very grateful and respectful of my plans. In the beginning, it felt like I was constructing a detailed path and direction by trying to be a good partner and contributing to the firm and the younger employees, while at the same time outlining the precise terms of my escape from the corporate world.

However, during this transition period I wasn’t satisfied, and I kept thinking that my new direction should be something else, something different, more exciting or fulfilling. After pursuing some short-term ideas and opportunities, I felt worn down physically and mentally, a bit like Mrs. Eddy’s traveler:

“… going westward for a pleasure-trip. The company is alluring and the pleasures exciting. After following the sun for six days, he turns east on the seventh, satisfied if he can only imagine himself drifting in the right direction. By-and-by, ashamed of his zigzag course, he would borrow the passport of some wiser pilgrim, thinking with the aid of this to find and follow the right road.” (SH 21:25)

So, I was very surprised several months ago to receive a call from my old firm asking for help. It was the last thing I expected, and it wasn’t something I would have thought would have been a progressive step. I gladly accepted and returned East. I have been able to serve and provide exactly the help needed at exactly the right time, and I have grown and learned lessons in patience and humility at the same time. My health has improved, and I’ve had healings of sickness and severe physical discomfort along the way. I learned that human planning, coming and going and “rushing around smartly” (Mis. 230:12) can obscure the simplicity of the Christ and postpone the quiet listening time we all need to stay on the pathway of progressive good, which provides dominion over disorientation. This quiet time counteracts the loss of focus animal magnetism depends upon for its illusive existence.

I saw that it is not about where we are, what we are doing, or even what’s happening in the world around us, no matter how fearful or uncertain the times appear to be. It is very much about knowing our oneness with God and then taking the next step by knowing our neighbor must be one with God as well. In that true view, no disorientation, fear, or chaos is possible. Our thinking becomes more closely aligned to God. It moves away from mortal mind’s outlines, predictions, plans, and false views of others. As Mrs. Eddy writes:

“The Christian Scientist keeps straight to the course. His whole inquiry and demonstration lie in the line of Truth; hence he suffers no shipwreck in a starless night on the shoals of vainglory.... Fidelity to his precepts and practice is the only passport to his power; and the pathway of goodness and greatness runs through the modes and methods of God.” (Mis: 268:14–17; 270:23)

I am very grateful for the Association and for the abundance of healing reports from the members, from our Association readings and from A Century of Christian Science Healing. Mortal mind would have us quickly forget and pass over healings large and small. That suppression and oppression cannot stand in the face of the constant inflow of healings Association Day is based upon. Those healing reports make me appreciate and focus on the essential evidence of active healing in my life and my community.

“… great sense of joy in the healing work”

1. Yes. As a result of re-reading Century – and I re-read it twice – I felt a sense of heightened expectancy/certainty of healing results from prayer, and, very importantly, a great sense of joy in the healing work.

2. . It was hard to choose just two favorite accounts, but two which really spoke to me were Richard Knox Lee’s account (p. 80), and the account from Captain Arthur G. Cross. (p. 131)

   Richard Knox Lee’s prayer, before he was introduced to Christian Science, was to a God who he knew not at all, but of whom he asked to be given another chance to live and do some good in the world. This prayer really resonated with me. I am sure that there are many today who are seeking such a God and are so ready for the cup of cold water. His account of how the practitioner went straight to his thought to set it right; the description of the elements of her treatment which resulted in him losing his fear of death; his subsequent complete restoration to perfect health and his reward of “a wonderful happy and hard-working life” was inspiring. When I was 21, I went to see my teacher and told him that I wanted to be a Christian Science practitioner. I have been seeking to learn what is required of a practitioner and to understand how to do better healing work ever since! I know I have made progress and am looking for more.

   Captain Cross’s description of the way he resolved the case of the totally uncooperative prisoner in his charge by going into his cell with such a strong sense of love and seeing him only as the son of God is a method of treatment which is speaking increasingly loudly to me.

3. I remembered again a landmark healing I had in my late 20s when I was working in London. Throughout my childhood I seemed to have been plagued with very regular incapacitating headaches. Despite my mother’s and various practitioner’s assistance, I had not been healed even once. Struggling again with great discomfort I went into the Reading Room on London Wall at lunch time and just sat in an armchair insisting, from the Daily Prayer, that since Truth reigned in me, nothing could be true about me if it wasn’t true about God. I was there for between one and two hours, working with total conviction with this single truth. Eventually the librarian tapped me on the shoulder informing me that it was two o’clock and maybe I needed to go back to work. I went, and a short time later, the pain just dissolved, and I was free for the first time ever. It was a clear proof that “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”

4. I think what I want to do differently as a result of the inspiration gained from reading Century is really summed up in two points: always holding an utter conviction of God’s goodness, presence, total care, and provision for all His creation; and endeavoring to reach and maintain the spiritual attitude of thought which refuses to believe that anyone is living in the dream of life in matter, but all are known to be the perfect blessed children of God. This will require praying without ceasing and constant deep dives into all “the books.”

“I was impressed by this old form of parlance: the conviction that treatment heals”

What stands out from reading these accounts of healing is the utter conviction that characterized both early workers (practitioners) and patients, as well as how treatment and the healing process occurred under the circumstances of those historic times. Healings occurred often through in-person treatment: visiting a practitioner’s office or a home visit by a practitioner. And the term treatment was very specific, sounding more like it is used in medicine. Patients reported healing after one treatment, or being much improved after one treatment, then healed completely after a course of five treatments. Today, we know that the healing work is treatment and learn through class instruction how to give treatment, but nevertheless we refer more to asking a practitioner for “help”; or to “work” for us. I was impressed by this old form of parlance: the conviction that treatment heals.

In the early years, as recounted in A Century of Christian Science Healing, if a person could not visit a practitioner, they would seek “absent” treatment. Today, while in-person visits to a practitioner still occur, it is far more common to “call a practitioner” by phone, as well as email communication. Today most treatment is “absent” though we don’t use that term. Our interactions between patient and practitioner are nearly instant; one can generally reach a practitioner very quickly, even at vast distances; we are easily globally connected. What impressed me in the accounts of absent treatment in these historical accounts is the faith and trust in God that would underly a patient’s efforts as they sought help at a distance – despite the hours or days it might take for communication to happen via the mail or telegram. And “absent” often really meant significant distance and remoteness, or to get to a practitioner required a huge effort. Or, just how far people would travel in order to meet with a practitioner.

Three examples stood out to me:

1. The account of the scientist who was working in a very remote forest in India and completely out of touch with civilization when he severely injured his leg. There was no practitioner in India at the time, and the nearest village with a telegraph office would have entailed having his men carry him 30 miles through the forest to send a telegram or be taken by ship to Bombay – a very long and expensive process to reach any help. Instead, he turned completely to God in prayer and took a stand for his perfection. He was instantly healed of the pain.

2. A very early (1914!) account of the woman living entirely alone in Ecuador who awoke one night in pain with a high fever and vomiting blood. People helping her brought a doctor, but she refused the medicines and instead sent a message to a Christian Science friend in Huigra, 150 miles away. She was healed as soon as the message was received. These extremes of distance and remoteness and primitive forms of communication did not phase these seekers of healing or shake their absolute conviction that healing was happening.

3. There were many accounts of how far people would travel in order to get in-person treatment, such as the account written in 1928 by a woman living in a small town of Dorpat, Estonia, where no one had ever heard of Christian Science. Being very ill and with no one to turn to, she moved to Riga, Latvia, which when I Google-mapped it, discovered was 260 miles away — no doubt a major journey at that time. There she found a practitioner and was lovingly treated and healed.

I am amazed and humbled by Association members’ reports of their healing activity, both in the responses to the assignment, in the fruitage section, and in the thoughts and healings of contagion. I’m grateful for their dedication to the healing work. A small but meaningful healing I had last year came about as a result of the lovingkindess I felt from those around me at a Wednesday evening testimony meeting. Just before leaving for church, I stumbled on an uneven staircase and jarred my foot. It hurt but didn’t hinder me from driving to church and walking in. But as the service went on, the pain increased to such an extent that I had great difficulty getting up out of the seat to sing the second and last hymns. I couldn’t put any weight on the injured foot. It became obvious to those around me that I was suffering, and friends offered to drive me home. I felt such love and care and was grateful for their offers of help, but I managed to drive home and literally hopped on one foot into the house. In bed, even the weight of the blanket on the foot was painful, but I really felt enveloped in divine Love. I declared the truth of my being and gratitude for the love and kindness of my church friends. When I woke in the morning I was healed. There was no pain, no gradual period of improvement. Just a complete healing of injury. This demonstration was to me a clear example of the healing mission of Church.

As a result of reading this book, I will be reminded of that deep conviction and commitment both to the possibility and the conviction in the healing power of Christian Science. I want to focus more specifically on what treatment is, while at the same time bringing the spiritual fiber of these early Christian Scientists to bear in my own healing work.

“…when God is acknowledged as the only power directing us”

Thanks for the opportunity to revisit an “old friend” in the form of the book A Century of Christian Science Healing. Thankfully I still have my copy (1966 edition). I think I read it once or twice many years ago, in the early days of my study of Christian Science. As I recall, I found the overwhelming “tide of healing” described in it really helped solidify my understanding of the power and scope of what Christian Science can really do. This was clear proof that Science can sweep away any and all claims of error when correctly applied and that it really is the Truth that makes us free. This was what I had been looking for since I was very young.

Today as I completed reading it again, I am experiencing many of the same thoughts and feelings that I had then. I have noticed, as I walk to and from my office each day, an enlarged view of all I see. The material objects don’t change much, but the context they now exist in has changed. It is more and more apparent that the picture that mortal mind is presenting is less important and powerful to affect us when God is acknowledged as the only power directing us.

I realize how important this changed outlook can be as we face the seemingly endless rancor and division that try to color almost every aspect of public life today. It is as if we are drowning in a sea of negativity and doubt, and only divine Science can show us the way out.

Choosing favorite healings from the large number of outstanding ones was not easy, except for one. It is the healing of Joseph Mann that occurred in 1886. (p. 25) I remember hearing about this healing either from fellow Christian Scientists or a lecturer in the early days of my study. The first time I heard it described, I found myself thinking this is really unequivocal proof that Christian Science is the truth. That healing provided such indisputable proof of what Mrs. Eddy had taught about Science and its power that it became a touchstone for me whenever circumstances caused me to doubt Science.

As for a second testimony, I found myself especially drawn to the later healings in the book that had been aired on the Radio series “How Christian Science Heals” in the late 50s, especially Ralph Burr’s. (pp. 27-29) This was a time before I had even started studying Christian Science, but I knew enough about it to believe that it was the truth that I was looking for. I only heard these broadcasts sporadically and never knew when I would run across one, but each time it happened I was filled with the feeling that these healings were without a doubt examples of God in operation in the lives of ordinary people, and that someday I would have the chance to study it myself.

Ralph Burr’s demonstration of Divine Mind’s ability to provide an answer to a perplexing technical question reminded me of an incident early in my teaching career when a colleague and I were teaching multiple sections of a biology lab in which the students were to determine the amount of protein in their cell cultures. They were using an assay method that had multiple steps and required use of several different reagents. This assay was the major work of that week’s labs, and the results would be used for further work that they would do. Unfortunately, the assay was not working properly, and a week’s worth of labs were in jeopardy. My colleague and I had spent hours trying to find the problem behind the failure but without success. We were facing having to cancel the lab for a large number of students if we could not find the solution.

We had come to what seemed like an insurmountable wall, and we looked at each other with no idea as to what to do next. I thought at that moment, “We have not tried everything; I should pray.” I suggested to my colleague that we take a few moments to clear our minds and see if new inspiration might come our way. I started my prayer from the standpoint of only one Mind being in charge; that everything that needs to be known is already known by God, and that we cannot be cut off from that knowledge. A feeling of certainty came over me, and, after a fairly brief interval, we both looked up simultaneously and said, “We must look at the technician’s notebook.” This is a record of how the tech prepared each of the solutions we had been using. Often this record is not kept current, but we quickly found the necessary page and immediately saw that one reagent had been prepared at a ten-fold higher concentration than it should have. The problem was solved, and the week’s labs were saved. God was clearly in charge of this situation, and it didn’t take long for us to realize it when we looked in the right direction.

In regard to your last question for the assignment, asking how we can be more active in healing ourselves and others through our understanding of Christian Science after reading this book, I can only say that it has given me a more expansive view of the applicability of Christian Science to all aspects of human existence.  

This was brought home to me very clearly in the final chapter, “The Horizon of Healing,” which provides a powerful overview of Christian Science in action in a number of different areas. The Christianity and Science section was particularly prescient in recognizing in 1966 the very issues still facing humanity today from “the total extinction of the human race” to “the indefinite prolongation of human life.” To me, this illustrates how all-encompassing this Science has been, and still is today, to address every single problem of humanity. Even when I feel overwhelmed with what appears to be the reality of all the world’s problems, and my faith in my ability to do anything about them wavers, all I have to do is return to this book for proof that the Science which Mrs. Eddy gave the world is still with us showing the pathway forward.

“So I'm rebuilding. And walking with God.”

I find myself rebuilding, which feels good.  I fell down there for a while.  I was suffering with the sense that things were wrong (with these times), that I was having family issues; and then my son’s dog died (I was taking care of her).  And then a calf was stillborn.   

But as I was driving one day and praying for my daughter’s stomach problem, I came to the place where it dawns that one isn’t fixing anything. That perfection is real. That perfection is real because God is perfect and all.  And today I said, “well then I want to know YOU better.”  Also, yesterday I caught a message that I am the diamond of God’s cutting.  Not that guilty incompatible one to whom nothing goes right.

So I’m rebuilding.  And walking with God.