“I got down on my hands and knees and began to speak calmly and quietly into her ear that God loved her, that He was taking care of her, and He was here right now.”

What do you feel the word creation implies?

From the spiritual standpoint presented in Science and Health, by Mrs. Eddy, creation is the eternal fount of everlasting good constantly presenting itself in our lives. Creation is God's activity of continually blessing what He has created, which is the object of His love. God's blessings can take the form of: fulfilling progress, expanded or deepened understanding, new opportunities appearing, the elimination of obstacles and the harmonization of discord. We learn this to be in Christian Science, constant, natural healing.


In your own words describe your impressions of the chapter "Creation" in Science and Health."

The first six lines of the chapter, "Creation" sum it all up for me. "Eternal Truth is changing the universe.  As mortals drop off their mental swaddling-clothes, thought expands into expression. 'Let there be light', is the perpetual demand of Truth and Love, changing chaos into order and discord into the music of the spheres." (SH, p. 255)  All error is, simply put, some form of chaos. But, God sends light to this chaos (which is metaphysically nowhere).  We are left with "the music of the spheres;" with the beauty and bliss of original spiritual creation. This is what this chapter teaches me.

Throughout the chapter, Mrs. Eddy correlates the following ideas with spiritual creation: limitlessness, boundlessness, freedom, expansion, incorporeality, enlargement, infinity, infinite reflection, infinite ability, infinite range, infinite possibility, achievement, rising up, ascending. She also includes ideas like goodness, perfection, harmony, reality, immortality, peace, bliss, glory.

Mrs. Eddy contrasts the above spiritual ideas of creation with the material concepts (i.e. infancy), concepts that are constricting and compressed.  Here are more: finiteness, materiality, the lost image, poor thought models, sickness, discord, chaos, death.

Throughout the chapter, Mrs. Eddy shows us the contrast between the spiritual and the material. She indicates that we need to grow out of mortal infancy, the childish ignorance of material viewpoints. She leads us into the spiritual maturity of freedom, infinity, constant good and continual bliss. The question is, will we follow her unmistakable instructions into what our hearts have always longed for...into what our hearts tell us is the only valuable thing worth living for? My answer must be yes everyday.

How can an increased understanding of true creation make a difference in our life? Better yet, share how the truth of creation has been or is being demonstrated in your life.

For me my continual asking of God to show me how and when to heal (as I am alert to this demand!), creates the leavening of the truth in my experience. This leavening forces me to drop off the infant views of myself as inadequate or unable to heal. I also begin to drop off the image of life as small, constricted and limited. I am then enabled to step into God's demands and as I say "yes" to them, I am given the opportunity and the ability to fulfill them.

Last summer I experienced a sort of "windfall" so to speak, of opportunities to fulfill God's demand to share Christian Science.  I am a member of a Black Gospel Choir, which is dedicated to the African American tradition of religious music.  We traveled to the "Gospel Music Workshop of America," the largest annual convention of Gospel Music in the world. It is a week-long convention, offering educational classes, musical training, as well as continual concerts of Gospel music. Our little community choir was due to perform on a Tuesday night after a decades long hiatus of appearing at this convention.

On the afternoon of our performance day, a small group of choir members and I were entering a large convention room to participate in a mass choir. As we entered the huge room, I walked with one friend while another went on ahead. As I walked, I suddenly saw our friend up ahead fall flat to the cement slab floor.  I was not alarmed and said to myself, "She will be getting up in a minute, for sure." But...she did not get up. My other friend began to run ahead and I quickened my steps too.  Evidently, our friend was looking up and did not see the raised cord encasement that protected the wiring on the floor. She had tripped and fallen.  As a Christian Science nurse, we are trained to be calm but prayerful.  I immediately began to pray to myself to see her exemption from this discord. When we got to our friend, I was surprised to see that she still did not move to get up. Other health professionals began to gather around her, as well as security staff.  There was a buzz of concern and mortal thought appeared to be everywhere.

I got down on my hands and knees and began to speak calmly and quietly into my friend’s ear that God loved her, that He was taking care of her, and He was here right now. She began to rouse.  She was stunned and a little in shock, but she nodded her head and thanked me.  Her glasses had been tossed forward on the ground and I collected her things as I continued to speak loving thoughts of God's care into her ear. I mentioned that I was a nurse also. As medical thought bombarded the situation, I sat right next to my friend, holding her close and continually telling her of God's protection and care of her.

We got her onto a chair and she was asked the usual questions to determine her mental fitness: "What was her name, where did she live, how old was she?" She managed to say a few coherent words, but all the while she was saying "thank you" to me and nodding her head in agreement of my simple metaphysical statements. I told the other friend to text the choir director informing him of what had happened, asking him to pray. He is an ordained minister.

After some examination by the medical staff there, it was determined that our friend should go to the hospital to be examined for a possible concussion, or some other problem. Her face was turning shades of purple as she had two black eyes and her nose was colorful. Three of us helped her to a car and I rode with her in the back seat. On the way, I wished that the driver and security personnel would stop talking about the city sights, and support my friend with the Truth as she was very unsteady.  As a friend later told me, "How could they support her with the Truth - they didn't know how!" So it was up to me to supply the need and affirm the Truth.  I continued to make strong statements of spiritual fact and to declare her exemption from accident and injury.  She agreed with every statement I made and she gained in clarity and strength every moment.  

When we got to the emergency room, my friend and I were left alone to fill out papers and wait for a doctor.  We sat together for a long time and continued to talk about God's love and power.  She insisted all along she was not going to be kept from performing later that night.  We even began to quietly sing some of our Gospel songs which affirmed God's presence and power. A lady sitting across from us smiled.  Others were listening. The truth had an effect on others. God's goodness is not exclusive to us, it belongs to everyone.

My friend began conversing normally and she seemed very much herself as we talked and laughed together. She was examined.  It was determined that there was no concussion or any other injury, she was only bruised.  She was told to visit a dentist the next day to avoid any infection from an injured tooth. (The next day the dentist said there was no danger of infection.)  My friend performed that same night with the choir in front of hundreds of people (literally in the front row) while the event streamed live around the world. Interestingly, no one in the audience noticed a thing. Nearly 12 hours had lapsed from the time of the incident to the moment we performed. Neither one of us had any opportunity to stop or rest before performing. However, she was triumphant in not letting this aggressive discord keep her from glorifying God.

I love it when my friend explains the healing to friends.  She always says something like this, "I was lying on the ground and I could hear people saying, 'I'm a nurse, don't do this, I'm a nurse don't do that, we need to do something else’. Then I hear my friend whispering in my ear things like, ‘God loves me, He's caring for me…’” She heard and remembered the Truth above the chaos of mortal opinion and prognosis. She was not moved to thank others for their medical attention, however well intentioned it may have been.  She was moved to hear and be grateful for the Truth.  It was a whisper, but it reminds me of Mrs. Eddy's statement in Science and Health, p. 559, "The inaudible voice of Truth is, to the human mind, ‘as when a lion roareth.’”

The denouement, so to speak of the story is that because of this experience, many people in the choir heard that I was a Christian Scientist and a nurse at that.  A different choir member wanted to hear all about Christian Science on the plane flight home, while another member sat across the passage way of the plane to listen in.  I gave one of them the extra Science and Health I had brought to share with someone if the occasion arose, and both received periodicals I had packed in my bag.  I call that a never-ending fount of opportunity to share Christian Science and to heal!  Hallelujah!