"All of the accounts put together paint the picture of a 'reality-based community' "

Recently my husband had what seemed to be flu. We prayed and he had a decisive healing which included some wonderful healing thoughts and new impetus for his business.  But then my daughter seemed to have the same problem.  Again we prayed and there was a decisive healing.  We were very grateful.  This particular belief is one that has been vivid to me in the past, and I needed to pray about fear of contagion.  It seems like every prayer recently ends up in the same place:  that God is Mind and there is no other mind.  This prayer ended up there too, with the reassurance that I didn’t need to be afraid of mortal mind or belief because of divine Mind’s allness.

I was free of fear and any symptoms.  I know that that doesn’t sound like much of a healing – not getting flu.  And I know that it’s the kind of protection that isn’t uncommon for Christian Scientists.  But that it isn’t uncommon is pretty remarkable, isn’t it?  My healing came right when the movie “Contagion” came out.  And the explanations in Christian Science of what contagion is, along with the record of Christian Scientists through the years demonstrating protection, suddenly looked very large.

This came into focus when I read the review of the movie in the New Yorker.  The review ends by saying that “the heroes (in the movie) are all … instinctively factual people.  No one prays, no one calls on God.  ‘Contagion’ lacks any spiritual dimension – except for its passionate belief in science and rational administration.  The movie says:  When there’s real trouble, we’re in the hands of the reality-based community.”  (Sept 19, 2011)

Of course that characterization of prayer being unscientific sounds odd to anyone who has experienced the practical nature of Christian Science.  In my family, I remember growing up as one of five kids who were all within 8 years of each other.  We all shared bedrooms etc.  At one point one of us got measles and then all of us had it at the same time.  Then shortly after that another “children’s” disease started going around the family.  Mom and Dad called a practitioner and, in prayer, the exposing of contagion as mental, not physical, and God as the only Mind, seemed right to them.  Us kids were healed and there was never again, through all of the years of growing up, any contagion in the family.  (This happened when Mom and Dad were very new to Christian Science.)

I also thought of a testimony that a friend recently gave me.  It was about a small community that had been quarantined for small pox.  The family of Christian Scientists in the community realized that they needed to demonstrate what they knew to be true.  It took consecration and courage and the result was healing and protection for the family and healings throughout the quarantined community.  (CS Journal , Nettie W. Anderson, Wilton, N.D.)  I have also read in the periodicals many healings and instances of protection of Christian Scientists during the global flu epidemic of 1918.

Reading these testimonies, you get the impression that the testifiers are “instinctively factual people.” And all of the accounts put together paint the portrait of a “reality-based community.”  I also ended up feeling how important our continued demonstration of this is.   With love and gratitude for all of the healings members send in,