Coming home to Truth

(Note: this is a long one, but it's good!)

I shared this with you all before, that the universal ideas of Christian Science are fully explained in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. When sharing this book with others, I often heard responses from new readers of Science and Health like

“This is what I have always believed” “I always knew this to be true” and “I have known this all along.”

To many of these first time readers (and actually for us old time readers as well!) these ideas aren’t foreign, but feel like a homecoming, welcoming us to see as real the hopes and ideals we had always hoped would be true. Reading Science and Health ideas like: God is all Love, that good is not helpless, that Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need, etc. these cherished ideals are true and can be demonstrated over and over again.

Once when I was working in a Christian Science Reading Room (a specialty bookstore focused on the practical healing ideas of Christian Science and its founder, Mary Baker Eddy), a woman came in to ask about The Christian Science Monitor. We got to talking about Mary Baker Eddy, who started this international newspaper, and her other achievements. When I told her that Mary Baker Eddy discovered a system of healing based on Christ’s work and Scripture, her eyes opened wide!

Taking a deep breath, she started pouring out her story of how she was healed through prayer while she was a patient at a hospital.

“People thought I was crazy, but I can’t explain it any other way,” she said.

I assured her that she was not crazy, and talked to her about healings I had had. This conversation felt so good! Not only was I able to validate that she had a healing, I could introduce her to hundreds of healing experiences where healing was accomplished through prayer alone. (Many Reading Rooms keep an archive of articles and testimonies of healing that had been published for over a hundred years.) My hope is that she gained some peace after her visit and realized that she was not alone.

At another time, a visitor stepped in the doorway of the Reading Room, but didn’t commit himself to coming all the way in. He explained that when he was in prison, he got a hold of some Christian Science literature and some of the ideas really stayed with him. He carefully shared an incident when he was working in the prison kitchen and accidentally poured hot oil over his arm. Immediately he said his thought went to one of these spiritual ideas and he felt that he was totally safe. Sure enough, there were no marks from the accident whatsoever.

After telling me this, he must have thought that I didn’t look amazed enough because he said,

“I don’t think you heard me, I said that it was hot oil poured all over my arm!”

(I am used to stories like this, and learned that I need to be a bit more responsive!) Like the woman mentioned above, I shared how happy I was to hear this and introduced him to scores of stories of healing through prayer and offered encouragement for his spiritual path.

The recognition of healing through prayer seems to be growing. Browsing the web there are a growing number of sites like The Order of St. Luke and their stories of healing, spirithome.com, lifechallenges.org, (and their report on the recent Harvard symposium on Spirituality and Healing), spirituality.com, etc. etc. It is fascinating to follow some of these sites.

I used to think that Christian Scientists had a corner on the market for healing through prayer. Indeed, the very purpose of the Christian Science church is “to reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing.” Now, I can see that healing through prayer is broadly practiced in a wide variety of ways.

I needed to ask myself, what distinguishes Christian Science? And I came to the conclusion that it is its textbook, Science and Health. This book, dedicated to the sincere seeker for Truth, explains how healing through prayer works, and how it can be demonstrated. It continues now, as in its over 125 years of its publishing history, to heal those who read it again and again. It has the potential of bringing into sharper focus the science behind healing through prayer – taking it beyond an unexplained phenomenon to a repeating practice.

A good friend of my mother-in-law used to be a nun and shared with me her healing of multiple sclerosis through prayer. This was done under a doctor’s watchful eye, and with the help of her church’s prayer groups. She commented that she is hearing in her own church community of more and more healings being accomplished through prayer. Delighted to hear that I was in the practice of healing prayer, we had a lively and happy discussion on the growing recognition of healing through prayer.

Another new friend explained to me her work with a prayer practitioner who lived across the country, and how sessions with this practitioner were helping her gain a sense of dominion over her life. More secular in its orientation, the prayer she worked with touched on aligning thought with one’s spirituality.

My hope is that this site is one, that along with others, can help bring that validation that healing through prayer is alive and well and spreading. We are all coming home to the cherished realization that

“with God, all things are possible.”

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