“…healing is the essence of Christian Science”

I’ve really appreciated the Association assignment this year. I had read A Century of Christian Science Healing years ago, but reading it with our Association and my own healing practice in mind was a different experience. After our son, Adam, passed on in 2017, I never experienced a crisis of faith, anger toward God, doubt about the effectiveness of Christian Science healing, or other reactions I’ve heard some express. I just thought, well, I guess I’m just not a very good healer. As a result of that thinking, I really haven’t had too many healing experiences in the past couple of years. I’ve never stopped studying, participating in church, or being inspired though.

When I reread this book, I was impressed by the great variety of testifiers in terms of their backgrounds, circumstances, problems, feelings toward God, religion, Christian Science – if they’d even heard of Christian Science in many cases. It reminded me that there is no hierarchy in Christian Science, no special proficiency required, and no barrier to healing. It brought home the fact that healing is the essence of Christian Science, and I need to heal if I am going to call myself a Christian Scientist. I found myself praying to be shown the way and the opportunity.

Recently, I was having dinner with a group of Christian Scientist lady friends from the various branch churches in my area who dine together once a month. The last time we were together, one of them suggested that we choose something to pray about collectively. Another suggested our branch churches. We all got to work. I started with the definition of Church in Science and Health. I remember years ago hearing a talk in which the speaker said when you spell “church,” UR is in the middle of it, suggesting to me that “you are” enveloped in the structure of Truth and Love, and that you really can’t fully participate in church without showing forth the proof of church’s utility: without demonstrating divine Science by healing. I’m well aware that the only reason Christianity spread was through healing, and it’s why Christian Science gains momentum whenever healing works happen now, wherever that may be in the world.

I was so inspired by reading the assignment that during the welfare part of my church’s January business meeting, I recommended that we as a church read A Century… not as a book club, but just individually for inspiration and to understand the importance of the individual’s part in this Movement. I had a chance to talk with one of the members who wasn’t there that night because she was struggling with a physical problem and asked her if she’d read the book recently, and she reread it and gained inspiration and is back in church. Others have said they’re reading it, too, and have cited particular stories that mean a lot to them.

I’m serving as Second Reader now and was blown away when I walked out to the desk the very week after our little dinner group had taken up the work to see more congregants than I’d seen in a very long time. This trend has continued with new people and members we haven’t seen for some time. There were about 25 kids in the Sunday school, up from the usual 12 or so. My daughter who teaches the youngest class said she had a new child who has begun to come regularly and now has 2-3 as opposed to 0-1. I reported back to the friends in the dinner group, and they said they were seeing the same thing in their respective churches. This past Wednesday looked more like a Sunday service. I know it’s not numbers we’re looking for but solid workers and healers and those who want to, or know they can, be healed and seek it.

I’ve been examining my own thinking and weeding out anything that isn’t part of the structure of Truth and Love – such as unloving thoughts like “why does so-and-so only come to church when he has usher duty” or fearful thoughts like “I’d love to go to another branch church this Wednesday to hear a friend read, but I’d better not because my own church needs me to be there” as though I’m personally responsible for the viability of my particular branch church. Am I going to church to worship God and heal, or am I just attending church?

Then my own healing practice: I so wanted to give a testimony of true, definitive healing and to be part of the “structure.” I had my opportunity. On a Wednesday night at church I began to have a runny nose, and the next day I went though a couple of boxes of tissues and was feeling other symptoms of cold. I thought: “Are you just going to ride this out or are you a Christian Scientist?!” Mrs. Eddy says in “Christian Science Practice” that she “has healed hopeless organic disease, and raised the dying to life and health through the understanding of God as the only Life.” A couple of sentences later she says, “We must begin, however, with the more simple demonstrations of control, and the sooner we begin the better.” (p. 428) This spoke so kindly to my heart over my regret at not healing my son while telling me firmly to get on with healing now in this simple demonstration over cold. I felt, too, that I owed it to the world that seems so focused on the latest virus and fear of its spread to heal this version of so-called contagion.

I remembered these words from the Lesson on Truth, “the sword of Truth gleams afar and indicates the infinite distance between Truth and error, between the material and the spiritual, – the unreal and the real.” (p. 538) This idea of the infinite distance between Truth and error had really stood out to me in neon at the time. I thought, error is nowhere near me, not even knocking on the door for admission, it’s not even light-years away; it’s infinitely separated from me because I live, move, and have my being in Truth. Also in that Lesson was the idea of the two-edged sword, covering both affirmation of the truth and denial of the erroneous. I spent a lot of time with the Scientific Statement of Being, which seems like the ultimate two-edged sword. I also had in mind that it was right to be at my post on Sunday as Second Reader and to be totally well as evidence of Truth’s effectiveness. By practice Saturday morning I was ready to go and free of all symptoms.

So to answer the questions from the assignment this year:

I know healing is for everyone to experience; no one is barred. To be part of this Movement, we must be proving its effectiveness. I want the world to know Christian Science because it’s what heals. Healing is what spreads the Gospel.

My very favorite story is on p. 217 by Velma Lewis Ingraham, who was living in a poverty-stricken area – in the Middle East perhaps? (She called it the Near East.) She experienced a revelation about how Jesus healed. She kept running across a young boy who was indescribably dirty and had sores but who had “lovely brown eyes and a quick warm smile.” The testifier realized that Jesus must have been in many crowds of people just like this, and she knew that he didn’t spend any time listing all the human problems that needed to be fixed, but he turned away completely from the material picture to see the creation of God, perfect and whole. She says, “He sought God, accepted only the presence of God, and the ‘things’ necessary to the change of the scene were added.” The woman prayed that her eyes would be opened in a like experience and was flooded with “the light of spiritual reality,” so that she was unaware of the boy or her surroundings and didn’t even see him for a few days, but when she did, he was changed, clean, with no sores. He told her that “I” had told him what to do as he pointed up to the heavens. The woman knew he had been spoken to directly by God. His life improved dramatically after that, as did the testifier’s.

To me, this represents the essence of Christian healing – praying for revelation, not for matter to be changed. She left it all to God, and God did what God does – speaks to the heart of the one who needs it, revealing the truth to all who witness it and thereby elevating everyone.

If I had to pick only one more story, it’s the one on p. 84 of the British woman, Sarah Walker, who was alcoholic along with her husband who also abused her. Everyone and everything had left her – husband, friends, neighbors, money, her health. She literally had nothing when a Christian Science practitioner knocked on her door who knew nothing about her but gave her an on-the-spot verbal treatment of Love and then food and clothing. She had her instantaneous healing of alcoholism as did her husband who was 20 miles away and came home the next day, and their lives, friendships, and family were restored to them. This healing shows the truth of “whatever blesses one blesses all” as the husband was simultaneously healed, and also that there is never a situation that is too extreme for healing.

When our daughter was a little girl, one day she was having a stomach issue that caused her to throw up repeatedly. That evening I gave her a bath and wrapped her up in a blanket and sat with her in a rocking chair. I told her that as much as I loved her, God loved her even more. I said I would never want anything bad to happen to her, because I’m her mother and love her, but God’s love is all-powerful and guarantees that no error can be in her experience. I sang Hymn 208, Mother’s Evening Prayer, to her and put her in her bed. She told me later that she was thinking about what I’d said to her and then drifted off to sleep thinking those thoughts. She woke up totally well in the morning. It’s always stayed with her, and she’s told of the experience on a Wednesday evening.

Since reading the book I feel more alive to the possibility of healing and more committed to participate actively in the Movement of Christian Science. I’ve been more diligent in doing my daily work and striving not to be impressed by the suggestions of materialism, selfishness, and division that seem to circulate in the news. There is so much good going on, and it’s a waste of time to get sucked down into a mire of despair. That’s focusing in the wrong direction. Each one of the healings in this book is an example of overcoming suggestions of material obstacles, illness, hopelessness. [If I could cite one more account from the book that had great impact on me, because it’s an example of overcoming all odds, it’s the one on p. 136 by Adrienne Vinciguerra, the woman in the prisoner of war camp in Austria in 1942. I heard one time that all healing is one of sight in one way or another – seeing the truth about something. It was impressive to me that she must have been healed of poor eyesight, but her account doesn’t even focus on that. She does say she was reading the Bible and Science and Health (given to her by the eye specialist!) by a single bulb in the ceiling. Also she was protected from being seen by the guards as she walked out of the camp and went undetected as she traveled around with no identity papers. It reminds me of the story of Elisha and the blinded soldiers from the Lesson on Love a couple weeks ago.] To wrap up, my strongest take-away is to know God better as each of these testifiers did, and so I’m now reading Science and Health through.