Many “ah-ha” moments

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Question 3: Share a transforming experience like Saul to Paul which came about reading Skip’s article(s).

I have had many “ah-ha” moments when reading Mr. Phinney’s articles. Those moments are certainly not nearly as dramatic as Paul’s transformation, but are significant realizations for me.

One such moment came about while reading his article entitled, “The Cause of Christian Science needs you now” (Journal, June 2018). Mr. Phinney writes, “You’re drawn to [the Cause of Christian Science] because you see how needed it is; you’re inspired and helped by others, and you in turn love and help them. You are illumined with the growing realization of how crucial this Cause is, not just to the improvement of humanity but to its very survival. You would do anything to serve in it, give up anything to help—even career plans, greater income, personal stature, family approval, comfort, pleasures, security. You would not be impressed by the small number of fellow laborers but impelled by the immense harvest of good to be accomplished and the heartening signs of the pervasive leavening of the atmosphere of human thought already going on.”

“Yes, yes, yes!” I say in response. He then anticipates the question, “But who am I to answer such a call?” and the protest, “I love Christian Science, and I’m trying, but I don’t have the time. I don’t feel I know enough anyway.” An “ah-ha” moment comes when I recognize that mortal mind will always attempt to put obstacles in my path, countless distractions that, if allowed into thought, sow doubt, discouragement, and fear. 

Then Mr. Phinney’s article gently lifts thought above the mist to see what is truly going on. He reminds me, “this is a very different kind of Cause. It’s a Cause that enables and empowers every one who responds to it. Every step to obey, to love, to work together in unity, to bring healing even in small ways, becomes a step out of a mistaken view of ourselves into seeing the wonder of what’s being given so abundantly to each one by the grace of the divine Love that is God.”

Another “ah-ha” moment occurs as I rejoice in each of the small steps I’m able to take that turn thought “from sense to Soul” (Hymn 64), moment by moment, day by day.

Children are worth it

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Question 3: Share a transforming experience like Saul to Paul which came about reading Skip’s article(s).

During a difficult time in my life, I took time off from work to be quiet and pray about the situation. One day I studied in a Christian Science reading room, where the attendant asked me if I had thought of taking class instruction. Nobody had ever asked me this before. That day I found myself reading the bound volumes, and an article by Allison W. Phinney, Jr., grabbed my attention. I had never heard his name, so I wrote down his name along with a quote from the article that meant much to me. After this, I took a great interest in reading all of Skip’s articles.   

A couple of years later I attended Skip’s class and found it life-changing. I loved how he gave us permission to pray in the absolute. I remember him saying, “We sometimes talk to others in the relative, but we pray in the absolute.” Even though I had grown up in Christian Science, I had not learned this and instead had a feeling of dualism, of being a struggling mortal, far from God, which is old theology, definitely not Christian Science. This permission to see myself and others as perfect, sinless, immortal—right now—radically changed my life and practice of Christian Science. Healing now made sense and became much easier. I stopped being so easily duped and frightened by the deceitful material senses and learned more about trusting God, Spirit, ever-present Truth and Love, as truly substantial.

Not long after taking class, I had an appointment with Skip, who casually asked if my husband and I were thinking of starting a family. I replied that we had a cat, and we both laughed. My husband and I had been married almost 10 years at this point, but we had both grown up in families with dysfunction and neither of us dared return to family life as we had known it. My dad had attended a British boarding school where there was abuse and bullying. He regretted his own marriage and children and advised me repeatedly not to have children saying, “They’re not worth it.”

However, Skip’s simple question about starting a family planted a seed and made me think more deeply about the issue. I realized that I didn’t have to believe what my dad had told me about children. A few years later, without ever discussing it, my husband and I both decided we were ready to start a family. Our two children are grown up now, but raising them was like a second childhood for us that was so much fun. We never had any regrets and never will.

Children, as well as adults, are worth it. Skip knew this and I am grateful to have been his student.

Matter’s seeming grip vanished into its native nothingness

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Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.

Mr. Phinney’s article “Not two but one” (Journal, February 1986) is clear in explaining God’s allness and oneness. I studied that article in the Association office many years ago and have worked with its central idea regularly ever since.

During an athletic activity one Saturday, I had the belief of having pulled a muscle in my leg. The leg was quite painful; it was difficult to walk and my running was labored. I told those around me that I was okay and held to the truth about God and man (me) as best I could until the activity ended.

When I was alone, I turned to Prose Works and found a passage that reminded me that there is only one Mind. (I did not record the citation.) As I reasoned with that spiritual truth, I understood that I could not be separated from the one Mind, God. Discord and pain are not included in God’s creation, and therefore they could be no part of me. Knowing the truth sapped the hold of error on my thinking. This brought an immediate cessation of pain, although it was still difficult to walk and there was some discoloration.

By the next Saturday, the leg was no longer causing discomfort. A friend and I walked many, many miles to one of the highest points in our state. There was not a thought of the leg or the incident from the week before. We both had a joyous day.

Soon after, I asked a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful support in addressing the discoloration that remained. Matter’s seeming grip vanished into its native nothingness, and the supremacy of Mind returned the leg to its normal condition.

I am grateful for this healing and the vision of Mind’s allness that I witnessed. This healing would not have occurred so quickly were it not for the understanding that God gives.

We only get traction when we start with God as Mind

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Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.

From the very first, it was Skip’s articles that made me want to have him as my teacher. The biggest message I got from his articles, over and over, was that I can’t do anything by starting with a personal mind and trying to make that personal mind see the truth, know the truth, and be generally good.

It doesn’t work. I can’t start there.

I have to start with the one Mind and know that it is my Mind. That’s the fundamental basis of everything. It has opened up vistas that I had never seen, despite growing up in a Christian Science household, going to Sunday School, and reading the Lesson.

The article that has meant the most to me is “What is scientific Christianity?” (Journal, April 1988). I read it over and over when I was going through a period of mental imbalance. In that article, Skip describes the healing of a friend who was suffering from a mental condition that seemed very similar to my own. Here is what Skip wrote:

“[My friend] had let anxieties about certain things build up over a period of years. At one point, when things seemed the worst they’d ever been, her husband called a Christian Science practitioner on her behalf….My friend had felt she was drowning in fear, and too crazy to even be able to say what the problem was, but she hung on the telephone and listened.

The practitioner said to her, ‘Think with the Love that is God. You don’t have to think about whatever it is that seems so awful. Just think with Love.’ He told her she could begin by thinking about someone she loved and everything she loved, and he explained that would break the mesmerism. [She] did this, but it wasn’t until later that she realized how she had been healed of the longstanding trouble. It wasn’t because she made a human effort to think of pleasant things to take her mind off an actual problem. It was because thinking with Love was expressing in thought the love of Love, God’s love, honestly, clearly, confidently, systematically. And because that kind of love was coming from God and was omnipresent,…it lifted her above the dream of life in matter, gave a new view of her own relationship to God, and healed her.”

This article helped me to get above the belief of mental imbalance, although it took some time and a lot of support from a few practitioners. But the sense, which was reinforced in class, that we only get traction when we start with God as Mind and don’t try to make a personal, mortal mind think the right thoughts, has grown over time and helps with healing.

The claim of pain has completely dissolved

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Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.

I started working on this assignment before it was our assignment. I had been having a human sense of missing Skip and was wishing I could talk with him. Then an angel message came, telling me that I could start reading an article by Skip each morning. I really looked forward to them and rarely read more than one or two each day because I wanted to savor them.

During this time, I had a complete healing of foot pain that had been troubling me for many months. (Mortal mind had claimed the pain was connected to my having to stand a lot for my job). I recently realized the claim has completely dissolved. I can’t point to a specific moment when the healing occurred, but I do believe that the regular pouring in of truth via Skip’s articles led to this healing, for which I am so grateful!

Goodness, not “niceness”

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Question 2: Share a testimony other than physical healing in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles had played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and final demonstration.

In “Lessons from the movies” (Sentinel, April 27, 1987), Skip quotes this statement by Mary Baker Eddy, “Man’s real ego, or selfhood, is goodness” (No and Yes, p. 26). I really love praying with this thought, which has chipped away at a human sense of personality, my own and other people’s. I have long felt a desire to be “nice” and to be viewed as “nice” by others. Thinking about this statement has helped me realize goodness, not a human sense of “niceness,” is what I express — and what everyone expresses.

Understanding the source of peace

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Question 2: Share a testimony other than physical healing in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles had played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and final demonstration.

The Christian Science Sentinel (May 5, 1986) that included Mr. Phinney’s article “What if peace were powerful” sat on my desk for many years. That article gave me a basis for understanding the source of peace, which is fundamental to seeing the truth in an arena where conflict can appear to be constant.

I recall hearing great readings about peace at a Wednesday evening testimony meeting in March of 2020. That same day, my work as a journalist took me to a national gathering of cyber officials. I wrote about efforts to coordinate the activities of the government in this area, and ultimately a new director position was created. I attribute this development to a greater understanding of God’s government and His peace, both of which have an effect when applied in the human experience. In 2021, I was grateful to convey some of this reporting in articles in The Christian Science Monitor.

Released from the gate of fear, doubt, and distrust

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Question 2: Share a testimony other than physical healing in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles had played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and final demonstration.

My children drop copious amounts of food on the floor, supplying our dog Lucy with an almost never-ending source of treats. At times, Lucy gets stuck behind our baby gate and lies there sadly, seemingly blocked from all those good things. All I do is open the gate and she bounds over, devouring the morsels ready for her. 

This past year, I also seemed to be trapped behind a gate, but my gate consisted of fear, doubt, and distrust. My kindergartener was really struggling in school, and I felt helpless to support him in his journey. I kept asking myself How can I fix this? But as Skip writes in “The kind of consciousness we need now” (Journal, December 1986), “When we suppose we have a mortal mind, we open ourselves to everything that the false impression of mind in matter includes.

This mesmeric impression is filled with vivid doubts, materialism, and despair.” Working with Skip’s articles, I began “opening the door to the infinite ideas and intelligence of Divine Mind,” which he describes in “Christian Science Treatment: ‘method infinitely above that of human invention’” (Journal, October 1986). By releasing my sense of personal responsibility and human power, God’s loving care became apparent. I stopped outlining what I thought had to happen with my son’s school situations. I also began seeing my son in a new light.

Around that time, I attended a conference at work, where the keynote speaker stressed that parents who focused on their children’s positive qualities instead of their physical appearance or negative qualities, were proven to be better parents. This drove home how the world is beginning to recognize that seeing our fellow men—and our children—as perfect reflections of Soul makes a difference. I’m so grateful for the progress that my family has seen these past weeks!

Breaking the mesmerism of grief

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Question 2: Share a testimony other than physical healing in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles had played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and final demonstration.

I had a wonderful healing of grief connected to reading one of Skip’s articles. For many years, I had been the constant companion and assistant of our beloved dog. When she passed on, I felt bereft and could not imagine not feeling sad when thinking or talking about her.

On JSH-Online, I read the pamphlet Overcoming Grief, which includes a reprint of Skip’s article “What death does not do” (Sentinel, February 13, 1989). These sentences in Skip’s article were particularly helpful: “We go on gaining moment by moment in the understanding that God is the only real Life. And this means recognizing that our whole purpose is to live love, not just receive it from other persons. There is a world waiting for our love.” 

That article helped break the mesmerism of grief, and I was completely free of it by the Wednesday evening meeting that week—which I could not have believed possible. It is so freeing to think of our wonderful dog with love and not grief. This powerful healing proved divine Love’s power and presence. It made such an impression on me that I have shared that pamphlet and Skip’s article with others who have been working to overcome grief, so it continues to bless.

The desire to criticize just melted away

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Question 2: Share a testimony other than physical healing in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles had played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and final demonstration.

Skip’s article “Seeing others scientifically” (Journal, October 1987) has been a touchstone for me ever since it came out. When I am thinking about my relationships with others, whether family, friends, fellow church-members, or colleagues, passages from that article often come to thought. Here are a couple of examples:

“Suppose, for example, that you’ve been to lunch with a longtime friend. It has been pleasant, but, as usual, afterward you’ve spent some time analyzing the friend’s ‘too much of this’ and ‘just a little too little of that.’ You’re deep in thought about the material personality. Suddenly the friend calls you on the telephone for greatly needed metaphysical help with an illness. Where are you? In the wrong place—and not enough of a friend!”

“Every relationship we have is in one sense the sort of relationship a Christian Science practitioner has with a patient.”

The following experience showed me how important it is to see others scientifically. In my work as an educator, I coordinate a program for struggling students. One day I was talking with a colleague about what more we could do to help the students. It had been a difficult day, and I could see that my colleague was frustrated. But I was not expecting her sudden verbal attack about an aspect of the program that I had initiated. Her comments felt bitterly personal, and I was hurt and troubled.

This happened moments before I was due to teach, so I had little time to do anything but mentally put the confrontation aside and try to be calm and upbeat for my students. However, I was still smarting inwardly. As I lowered the shades for a video, a heavy shade suddenly broke free of its casing and crashed down on my hand. By the end of class, my thumb was bruised, swollen, and painful.

It felt as though the world was rushing at me, intent on harming me in one way or another. I knew that my thought was “in the wrong place,” and that I needed to do much more to see my colleague as a practitioner would see someone who calls for help. I knew that, no matter how hurt my feelings—or my hand—were, I had no choice but to turn to God and hear what She was knowing about my colleague.

As I drove home, I started to pray in earnest, humbly asking God what I needed to learn. The thought that came quite quickly was that I hadn’t wasted a second blaming the shade for hurting my hand; similarly, I should not waste another second in mental criticism of my colleague or in nursing hurt feelings. I started to see that I didn’t need to fix her, just to see her as Jesus would, through the eyes of love. The moment I had that thought, the desire to criticize my colleague just melted away, and I spent the rest of the drive home appreciating how much she cares about our students.

The next day, a moment for us to speak arose quite naturally. My colleague apologized sincerely for her outburst. I was able to say with equal sincerity that I forgave her and was eager to move on with the work together. Within a day or two, my thumb was completely healed, without any bruising or swelling, and my relationship with my colleague has been much more harmonious ever since.

I will say, too, that over the years, Skip’s article and the wake-up call it contains have come to mean more and more to me in my branch church membership. I now see more to value and love in people who, humanly, are very different from me, and I know that we are united in our love of church and our commitment to live as Christian Scientists. As Skip says in his article, seeing others scientifically “doesn’t deprive you of a tangible sense of love. It deepens it.

Nothing else on earth produces the feeling of unity and brotherhood, the joy of beginning to perceive the truth of ourselves and others as more than a nonexisting ideal but as a present scientific fact.”

No need for memorials—the Christ is here now!

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Question 3: Share a transforming experience like Saul to Paul which came about reading Skip’s article(s).

In April 2018, I drove several hundred miles to attend a historical commemoration. For years, I had studied this particular event and its circumstances, which involved the assassination of a major figure and the response to it.

When I arrived in the city for the event, my car hit a pole and was totaled. In the hotel room that night, I worked with Mr. Phinney’s article “New religion and old religion” (Journal, March 1988). That article includes an anecdote about a memorial service for a sailor who had been lost at sea. But during the service, the sailor himself walked in. The article states, “You can imagine people’s joy. . . . You can also see that this event would change nearly everything in regard to the agenda for the day.” Skip’s article elucidates the fact that the Christ is always present. There is no need for memorials of something from the past, when the Christ is here now!

This recognition had immediate effects in my life. I finished the trip harmoniously and I also had a significant healing of a physical problem of at least five years standing. In the weeks following, I made a final decision to leave my career as a history teacher and enter the field of journalism, where I remain today. In this experience, I found more of “the life that maketh all things new” (Christian Science Hymnal, 218).

A renewed sense of vigor, clarity, and joy

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Question 3: Share a transforming experience like Saul to Paul which came about reading Skip’s article(s).

This week I realized that my one-article-a-day plan was not going to get me through all of Skip’s articles before Association, so I started reading a lot of them each day. Collectively, they have had a purifying, rousing effect on my thought, which seemed to have become a bit cloudy and discouraged about my practice of Christian Science and its place in the world. Skip’s articles really cut through the animal magnetism. Reading articles from 30 years ago that address the same claims that try to argue with me today has helped me realize that they are just timeworn impositions. I feel a renewed sense of vigor, clarity, and joy in my thinking, and I am so grateful for this!

It was humility that brought me through

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Question 3: Share a transforming experience like Saul to Paul which came about reading Skip’s article(s).

One of Skip’s articles that I’ve found deeply moving is “Restoring Christian healing in contemporary times” (Journal, December 2011). Rather than being an engine of change, this article sums up the change that has been taking place in me over the last several years, prompted always by the Bible, Mrs. Eddy’s leadership, and Skip’s voice, with its patience, humor, bluntness, and rigor. And love. Always love.

In the article, Skip describes his visit to Adelaide Still, a Christian Scientist who had worked as Mrs. Eddy’s personal maid. She told Skip, “You know, Mrs. Eddy often revised Science and Health and even her personal letters. Frequently, she would insert various changes of words or phrases with her pen, yet finally throw the whole away and begin again. Then she would say to me, ‘Adelaide, look in the wastebasket and find that last paper we threw away. I think it has something in it we might use.’… [Miss Still] would then willingly fish in the wastebasket until she found and handed to Mrs. Eddy the exact piece of crumpled paper.

“[Miss Still] certainly wasn’t telling me that Mrs. Eddy…was making mistakes or having to use trial and error. What was coming through to me was Mrs. Eddy’s humility, the impersonality of her work, the spiritual demonstration involved. Her patient ‘waiting on God’ assured that what was written would, in fact, be God’s own giving.

“The encounter…was less a lesson in writing than in life! It helped put me on a path of understanding the all-important difference between human knowledge and skills, and the Mind-directed rightness that takes shape in our lives through transparency to God’s infinite goodness and intelligence.”

During the past few years, I have had many experiences that seemed so hard to face that I knew I couldn’t manage them humanly. In one instance, I faced an illness that prompted medical intervention and surgery. After the surgery, it seemed that I would be subjected to endless rounds of doctor visits and prescriptions. I knew that I wanted to be a Christian Scientist, so I prayed deeply, humbly to know how to free myself. What came to me was to read the “Patient’s Bill of Rights,” which states clearly that a patient has the right to refuse treatment. I was able to share that conviction in an email to the doctors, and they let me go without argument.

A second challenge occurred when I was required to teach remotely and then in a hybrid classroom, with some students in the room and some online. There were so many new skills I needed, but I had no interest in learning them. When I stopped raging inwardly at the injustice of it all and truly listened, I recognized that I could do this for my students because God loved them, and I did too. Again, it was humility that brought me through.

Finally, I have recently been able to truly let go of my adult children. To do this, I had to recognize, really deeply feel, that they are God’s and not mine. That humble recognition has released me from any sense of sadness about their moving out into the world and living their own lives.

So…have I transformed from Saul to Paul yet? Not quite! But I am increasingly seeing how the “human history” can be revised “and the material record expunged.” It’s through humility.

Becoming conscious of God’s allness

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Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.

One recent Wednesday evening as I was driving home from church, I began to feel some difficulty breathing. It wasn’t a huge thing, but it did demand immediate attention. My thought turned to God and various statements from the Bible and Science and Health, and I also sang some hymns to myself. I got some relief, but not complete freedom.

When I got home, I immediately got back to work on this year’s assignment. As I did, my thought became completely involved in what I was reading, and the freshness and newness of Christian Science came through. Soon after starting to read, I realized that I was no longer laboring to breathe, and that I was no longer impressed by the claim of congestion and whatever mortal mind said might have caused it. I realized I was free, and that was it.

What made the difference? Becoming conscious of God’s allness and the nothingness—the fraudulence—of anything that would deny God, or Truth. This change in consciousness is so evident in the demonstrations behind Skip’s writings. Skip’s articles strip away the accumulated layers of mortal mind that would obscure the light of the Christ and go straight to spiritual fact and law. That makes them immeasurably helpful and timeless.

Staying with the work

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Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.

Reading Skip’s articles in succession is inspiring me to work with more discipline and regularity. This seems very basic (as in I should have mastered this long ago), but I’m gaining a better understanding of the fact that all the work that needs doing takes place in thought, as our thought opens to the presence of Christ, Truth, revealing all we need to know and showing us what we can thereby dismiss as untrue. 

One article that points out the importance of staying mentally high is “Unselfing—strength to build and rebuild for the ages” (Journal, October 2015). Regarding the many powerful healings of early Christian Scientists, Skip writes, “the woman who discovered and founded Christian Science explained that something more would be needed if these substantial demonstrations of divine Love were to continue. That something would require not being drawn back constantly after healing to an imagined home base of material existence.” Skip goes on to say, “Believing one lives in matter as a limited self that’s trying to ‘get’ more of Science has little to do with the enormous dimension of the spiritual revelation that frees us to be what we already are.”

The theme of staying with the work that comes through clearly in this and other articles has helped me to do just that. 

Last summer, I was at happily dancing at the reception for a family wedding when one of my knees suddenly gave way. The pain and incapacity made it necessary to leave the reception. My family helped me to the car and then got me situated in our hotel room. I worked with the idea that a joyous occasion couldn’t be marred by an injury that had nothing to do with the truth of my spiritual identity. As Mrs. Eddy tells us, “divine Love cannot be deprived of its manifestation, or object” and “joy cannot be turned into sorrow, for sorrow is not the master of joy” (Science and Health 304:10–12).  

By morning, the pain had subsided, but it seemed necessary to buy a pair of crutches to get around. I also called a practitioner to support my work. I was able to go to a post-wedding brunch that day and had a great time with no pain. Interestingly, most people seemed not to notice the crutches as I made my way around and fully participated in the happy occasion. However, one family member tried to convince my husband to get me checked out at an emergency care clinic, so there was a need to ward off malpractice and mental suggestion. My husband never wavered in his support of my decision to rely on Science. 

We decided to head home on our four-day return car trip rather than stay and tour the area. I continued to work with the practitioner daily. By the third day, I was able to shed the crutches entirely, and thank and dismiss the practitioner. Although I was able to walk when we got home, it was a while before I felt totally free of limitation. But it was joyous work to stay with the healing, and I learned more about diligence in the process. The experience was also an opportunity to more consistently claim a higher thought about myself and others.

Last weekend, we went to another wedding where I danced with happy abandon, thinking gratefully of this healing. 

Our cat Zeph – part of God’s actual creation

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Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.

Some years ago, our cat Zephaniah, or Zeph for short, began manifesting a wound-like problem on his hind quarters. Over time it started metastasizing; it would appear on part of his tail or hind quarters, disappear, but then show up elsewhere. I specifically included Zeph in my daily prayers for the family. My wife and I took turns reading to him from the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings. 

We were greatly helped by Skip’s editorial, “God’s Animals” (Sentinel, May 25, 1987). Here are some passages that especially stood out: 

  • “The teachings of Christian Science . . . show, for example, that just as we don’t know the real nature of God’s man until we let the Christ, or spiritual idea, illumine our view of man, so also we don’t know the rest of creation as God has actually made it until we’re conceiving it spiritually. As the Christ, Truth, lifts up and transforms our thought we can also expect to come to understand more about all God’s ideas as He has made them.”

  • “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy makes the point, ‘God is the Life, or intelligence, which forms and preserves the individuality and identity of animals as well as of men.’ Specifically, then, disbelieving the picture of unbridled carnivorousness, violence, instinctive behavior (i.e., animality) described by the senses, in favor of hewing to the divine facts of a spiritual creation, can begin to give us a different, healing perspective. And this perspective makes us more discerning of God’s actual creation—of the true nature of the divine Mind’s ideas—in our everyday experience.”

  • “Many wonderful healings of farm animals and pets have come about through prayer on this basis. I recall as a youngster, for example, seeing our dog healed of a veterinary-diagnosed slipped disk and at another time of a longstanding lump on the head. Once when she was lost I was spiritually impelled, as I prayed, to walk off the road into the middle of a large cornfield, where I was able to go straight to her, pick her up, and take her home.”

Our family also sought support from a Christian Science practitioner, who assured us, “Treating the claim spiritually does not put the animal at a disadvantage. Spiritual healing is the highest sense of love. We’re not depriving, but giving a sense of freedom and the holiness of life. It can be a blessing, not just a recovery.”

At one point, things seemed to take a turn for the worse. Zeph, who usually likes to get around the house, ceased to come up from the basement. He moved very little and seemed to be in a state of resignation. Then our spiritual work assumed even greater fervency. The first day after this occurred, I canceled a meeting with a community group in order to spend the evening in prayer and spiritual study. During the next week, my wife and I continued to work actively as Zeph remained in one spot in the basement.

After the weekend, I made the following entry in my journal: A precious, spiritual experience last evening. When I got home from work, I brought some fresh food down to Zeph. I expressed my love to him and mentioned some truths on the way upstairs. After changing clothes, I headed downstairs and discovered Zeph on a living room chair—his first time out of the basement in more than a week. I decided to sit on the couch and read some of the Lesson to him. He came over, climbed onto my lap, and tenderly kneaded my tummy. I felt he was expressing his gratitude and love for me. How wonderful to see him respond to prayer and treatment and outward expressions of affection. 

From that point on, Zeph never returned to a state of resignation, although the challenge continued for a period of weeks before completely yielding. Throughout this period, I worked with this passage from the chapter “Genesis” in the textbook: “All the varied expressions of God reflect health, holiness, immortality—infinite Life, Truth, and Love” (Science and Health 518:21). This made it clear how much more there is to Zeph than meets the eye—he reflects infinite Life.

The claim never returned. What we witnessed together as a family was not just a recovery, but a blessing!

The true sense of womanhood

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Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.

Last year, I started to have perimenopausal symptoms, including hot flashes, sleep problems, and irritability. At first, I did not recognize that these symptoms are thought to be associated with a woman’s change of life, but a female practitioner helped me to understand that they are part of a false sense of womanhood. To help me gain a sense of my true selfhood, the practitioner recommended working with references from Mrs. Eddy’s writings, including “Let us feel the divine energy of Spirit, bringing us into the newness of Life and recognizing no mortal nor material power as able to destroy” (Science and Health 249:6–8). 

The practitioner also recommended Skip’s article titled “Womanhood and ‘Christ’s all conquering love’” (Journal, July 1985). After reading this article several times, I began working with this statement: “Our prayer is not to bring into being something we wish to be true about ourselves but to penetrate the fog of mortal mind, which would hide the present individuality already given us by God. The qualities of true womanhood such as purity and unselfed love, and their close correlation to divine Life and Love, are characteristic of our true selfhood now.” 

Skip’s article helped me understand that I wasn’t going through a change of life that needed to be corrected. Instead, I remained an unchanged individual expression of God, which did not include a mortal sense of hot flashes and irritability. Those symptoms were illusions imposed upon my thinking, and I did not have to accept that I would have to experience them until they had run their course. 

I also saw clearly that I didn’t have to turn to human solutions to find relief, but I did have to put in the work to overcome this attack on my womanhood. I put in the work and continued to work with a practitioner for support on challenging days. The hot flashes started to subside and became far less frequent. 

The irritability was more challenging to overcome, as I was constantly faced with stressful personal and professional situations. There were days that this fog of mortal mind tempted me to just accept that I was going to be irritated by everything that happened throughout the day. But then the practitioner would remind me of my true identity and that God’s love for me would bring me to my rightful place. Soon I was able to pause when moments of irritability came in, turn to God, and understand that my true womanhood was not affected by any physical change of life. 

I know that I have been healed of the belief of perimenopause or menopause. This healing illustrates what Skip says in his last line of “Womanhood and ‘Christ’s all conquering love.’” “May our demonstration of womanhood be such that one word from Christ, Truth, gives us the soaring joy of Christ’s irresistible victory, opens our eyes to the spiritual scene and to the unquestionable supremacy of divine Love’s purpose.”

I knew God as my Father-Mother and that is all I needed to know

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Question 1: Share a physical healing or healings in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and ultimate healing.

A few years ago, I received news that my father was very ill and wasn't expected to live much longer. He was receiving medical treatment and the family was sharing time with him around the clock. This situation presented quite a dilemma, because I had been estranged from my family for many years. Although my siblings and I were raised in Christian Science, I am the only one who continued with it. Because of abuse by my mother and my family’s hatred of my devotion to God, I had been unable to have any kind of relationship with my parents or siblings. So I had to leave them all and start over in another city.

After receiving the news about my dad, my heart was broken. I began to doubt the decision I had made to leave them. Did my decision contribute to his illness? How could I go back there after having grown out of that experience? If I did go back, how would I be received? I felt that I must have let my dad down. But I had prayed each step of the way before leaving, and God had shown me so many things that I needed to see. How could God be wrong? 

With my thoughts swirling, I began to feel the symptoms of a heart attack. Shortness of breath and extreme pain in my chest made it difficult for me to stand. I knew I needed to see more of God as my Father. 

In Skip’s article “Unselfing—strength to build and rebuild for the ages” (Journal, October 2015), he refers to testimonies from decades ago that he found online, saying, “Powerful healings like these were so obviously valid and real and frequent, they were enough in themselves to develop a new momentum—new spiritual experiences shared throughout a family, news of healing traveling from neighbor to neighbor. Wednesday evening testimony meetings with people waiting to be next to speak of current healings. Naturally, all this produced joy, growth, and a stirring sense of fresh possibilities.” Skip’s statement reminded me of the most important reason for leaving my family—to be free to live and to have the ability to support a Cause that heals.

Skip continues, “Yet the woman who discovered and founded Christian Science explained that something more would be needed if these substantial demonstrations of divine Love were to continue. That something would require not being drawn back constantly after healing to an imagined home base of material existence, with its self or personhood in matter.” This was it: I couldn’t be drawn back into that material experience. No matter what was enticing me to feel sorry or guilty, I had to hear God’s will for me and my dad. 

Skip writes further, “Joseph Mann, who had been healed by a Christian Scientist as he was dying of a gunshot wound, recalled Mary Baker Eddy saying years afterward to him: ‘You have had a wonderful experience. You were thrown violently out of the house [the mind-set that thinks it’s living in matter] and picked yourself up outside; go not back into the house’ (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, Vol. II, p. 161).” This, too, was it! I knew I couldn’t go back!

The pain continued to get worse. I was the only person at home, yet I knew I wasn’t alone because God was with me. He had always been with me and He wasn’t going to leave me now. I continued to reach out to God and put down the fear that was trying to take hold. I was also receiving support from a Christian Science practitioner, who told me that I only have a heart of love and that heart is filled with the love from God. I began to feel a calmness and a strength in this knowing. 

The pain didn’t subside quickly, but I kept holding to the fact that I belonged to God and His love for me. I began to feel a wonderful peace and the pain began to lift. I could breathe without struggling and fear of the pain ceased. I was able to climb the two flights of stairs to my bedroom without difficulty.  

As for the family situation, the lie of guilt left. I knew God as my Father-Mother and that is all I needed to know. I took comfort in knowing it for my parents and siblings, too. Afterward, it took some time for me to completely release the past with my family, but I found my way to this release by wholly trusting in God. Now and then, the temptation to ruminate comes to me, but I put it out where it belongs, for I know that God led me then and He continues to lead me now. God doesn’t make mistakes.

Beacons of light in benighted surroundings

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Question 2: Share a testimony other than physical healing in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles had played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and final demonstration.

I first became aware of Skip’s editorials in the late 80s. Ever since, they have stood out to me as beacons of light in benighted surroundings. I could find absolute Truth in them and they spoke to me as nothing else ever has, except the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings. The clarity, demonstrated Christianity, and genuine spirituality in Skip’s writings helped wake me up to see what I had been missing in the inspired Word of the Bible and Mrs. Eddy’s writings. 

At the time, my human circumstances seemed rather bleak and dark. But through spiritual growth, my thought and outlook have changed, and accordingly, my experience has changed drastically. Gaining a better understanding of the basic truth about God and man is the reason for this. Every step of the way, Skip’s writings have been enormously helpful because of their genuineness and directness.  

Love knows no limit, clearly!

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Question 2: Share a testimony other than physical healing in which reading one or more of Skip’s articles had played an important part in your own spiritual study and prayer and final demonstration.

The inspiration I gained from reading these three articles by Skip has resulted in healing: “Face to face with infinite Love” (Sentinel, April 2, 1984), “More love on a small planet (Part 1)” (Sentinel, April 16, 1984), and “More love on a small planet (Part 2)” (Sentinel, April 30, 1984). 

In the first article, Skip writes, “we grasp the fact that the God we have been praying to is Love itself, already acting, already being, and there is no place where this infinite Love is not present. A recognition of Love as God inevitably changes our impressions of disease and of evil as hopelessly dangerous and irresistible, just as it did for John, Peter, the other disciples, and Paul.” 

In Part 2, Skip writes, “we can’t have a real understanding of Love apart from our demonstrated embodiment of love. But understanding can increase our assurance that Love is the underlying scientific or spiritual reality in our lives. And through this understanding we grow surer that the way Jesus showed so long ago has already revealed the way of the future—the inevitability of more love on this small planet.”  

For many years, my husband had been nearly estranged from some of his family, the result of some soured real estate dealings. I wasn’t working specifically for healing, but I did tell my husband about some of the ideas I was grasping from Skip’s articles. Then suddenly, two of his relatives began to reach out to my husband on a regular basis. My husband, who had not initiated this contact, readily acknowledged that the change had to have come from the bigger picture he was gaining from our discussions. Since then, he has reconciled with a third member of his family, complete with apologies and forgiveness. This has led to an additional connection and ongoing conversation with a fourth family member. Love knows no limit, clearly!