The week after Association, as I turned to address this claim with greater clarity, my prayer was deeper and more focused. I saw the need to claim my innocence and deny the belief of a mortal past with imperfection and impurity as somehow stuck to my identity. This prayer was more scientific and authoritative, and it was effective.

I thought this passage applied well in supporting them but also in support of myself. I wanted to feel God’s clear direction.

The officer came on board and each party expressed their view to him. The flight attendant represented her argument quite strongly. The college student seemed at a loss. I was then led to speak.

I realized that the desire to give, support, and nurture was all from God. Therefore He was already at her bedside supporting, caring and loving her with the real Father-Mother Love—which was all I wanted her to feel.

I knew that Mary Baker Eddy had healed an antagonistic journalist of throat cancer without any co-operation from him. Also Eutychus was not receptive to Paul’s preaching and fell asleep, yet was raised from the dead. I could not accept that my friend’s thinking debarred him from healing.

Sadly over the last many years since, this is something I have struggled with often. I have continued to love Church and Christian Science and have prayed daily for myself and others. I have seen and helped in wonderful healings - but this I’m not proud to say has never been far away.

Well, my sister asked me to pray every day for her. God gave me this very assuring statement from Science and Health: Spirit blesses man, but man cannot ‘tell when it cometh.’ By it the sick are healed, the sorrowing are comforted, and the sinning are reformed. These are the effects of one universal God, the invisible good dwelling in eternal Science.” (S&H 78:28) I felt the power of this truth as I prayed each day.

I recalled that while Mrs. Eddy tells us not to mix medicine and CS treatment (she calls it “quackery”), she does allow for treatment in an emergency situation. (In Mis. 89:4-19, she deals with this situation exactly. Starting at line 11, we read: “If the patient is in peril, and you save him or alleviate his sufferings, although the medical attendant and friends have no faith in your method, it is humane, and not unchristian, to do him all the good you can;”)

My sense is that this interest in yoga seems to be a subtle attempt by malicious animal magnetism to interject into the daily practice of CS and to our branch churches collectively the idea that mind and body are physical, needing control and rest, and yoga will harmlessly provide that discipline. CS students are unknowingly used by this error.

In some work with church friends this past year, we have been prompted by the times to watch, read, and discuss some of the filmed and written stories and bios recounting the leaders as well as the ordinary people’s experiences during the war years, 1940-1945.

I came across one of these jottings today and found it spoke powerfully in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks in Paris. This was in the very first issue of the 1943 Sentinel, and the testifier was named Charles Rossitter Stuart:…

This was not what I expected - my first reaction was “I’m not prepared for this,” but God literally pushed me right back on the phone and I heard myself making arrangements to visit. When I hung up, two things became apparent: First, this was no random event – I had awoken unusually early that morning with a very clear thought, and had taken advantage of it by starting the week’s Bible lesson, continuing my own ongoing study, and was on the Association readings when the call came – I was prepared!

When this individual first stepped into our Reading Room last fall just to get warm and presented his woeful mortal picture, it was clear that any words I shared would just seem like empty platitudes without proof that God is Love. I began to pray to see that all of Mind’s ideas were working together to present that proof, and listen for what my individual part might be.

I’m happy to say, each challenge has been, is and continues to be met through steady devotion of thought to the Truth in a way I’ve never come close to consistently proving prior.