The desire to criticize just melted away
/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.”