Christian Science in Orinda, California

After arriving at a large airport terminal where I was to meet my sister I gathered my luggage. One piece had been set aside as it must have arrived on an earlier flight. Finally getting all together I looked for my sister arriving on another flight. Not seeing her I called her on my cell phone. Shortly we happily met and went to another level of the airport for lunch. As I reached for my bag that contained my money, credit cards, driver’s license, ID, jewelry, in fact everything except my cell phone, it was gone. I mentally retraced my steps and then physically retraced my steps asking the woman at the luggage center and she assured me I had had the bag when talking to her. I talked to the Customer Service desk, Lost and Found and airlines desk I was greeted with lots of negative suggestions. One woman said.” Oh, purse snatchers”. I remembered asking directions from various people. Could they have surreptiously taken my bag? I began looking with suspicion on everyone I passed. There were three floors in this airport terminal and many people. Fear really crept in as the wedding that weekend that we had all looked forward to would certainly be soured for me and others as I would have to bother with closing accounts, borrowing money, and filing paperwork on lost items and sadness at losing some very precious (to me) jewelry.

Then I woke up! I declared there were no dishonest people in the entire airport. That Love was guiding me to do the right thing. That God was right with us. My sister and I prayed. She had some wonderful citations (helpful passages from the Bible and Science and Health, by Mrs. Eddy) with her and we prayed together. Having my cell phone I called a Christian Science practitioner and left a message for help. I then remembered putting down all the bags to make the earlier cell phone call. This new idea sent me back down two levels and as I went I heard my name called over the public address system. It had been over an hour since I had left that area. As I approached the Customer Service center, tears beginning to well in my eves, I saw a police officer was looking through my bag. He asked for some ID, which I of course did not have. He asked if everything was in the bag and I found everything intact. With a smile he said, “This is way I like to see these problem resolved.” With joy I left another message for the practitioner with my happy news that all was well. No more did I look with suspicion, but with love and appreciation for everyone I passed. What a wonderful beginning that was for a joyous weekend! I thank God for His goodness in opening my eyes.

B.F.

On a recent Saturday, I was struggling with a cold and a sore throat that looked like they would keep me at home for the day. This was frustrating because my sister and I were going to be participating in a local tennis doubles tournament that afternoon. After sulking for an hour, walking around the house, I began to notice all of my resources: the C.S. Sentinel magazines on the counter in the kitchen and the dining room table, a Science & Health on the kitchen table, the Bible-lesson in my backpack, the Sentinel radio edition CD in our car. This was a good reminder that I could and can always turn to God, Love.

I curled up on the couch in the living room and began to read a healing that was published in the Sentinel magazine. One of the passages from Science & Health that had helped the man in his healing really stood out to me. It says,

“Christian Science brings to the body the sunlight of Truth, which invigorates and purifies. Christian Science acts as an alterative, neutralizing error with Truth. It changes the secretions, expels humors, dissolves tumors, relaxes rigid muscles, restores carious bones to soundness. The effect of this Science is to stir the human mind to a change of base, on which it may yield to the harmony of divine Mind” (p. 162).

While the whole rigid muscles and tumors thing wasn’t really what I was looking for, the part about “change of base” and yielding to the harmony of divine Mind was very helpful. At camp, one counselor talked about instead of struggling with a problem or holding onto it, to simply “Let go and let God”. I began to accept certain facts about myself and my relationship with God. After reading the passage in the Sentinel, I decided to look it up in Science & Health to read it in context. I ended up reading almost the whole chapter, and then continuing on to Physiology. I read a little in Prayer, Footsteps of Truth and then flipped to some of our Sunday School’s favorite pages, the 390′s. As I was reading, I began to forget about the cold, and got more and more into the reading. I paused when the phone rang and realized that I hadn’t even blown my nose for at least 30-40 minutes.

However, at that point, I began to feel the same symptoms again and was slightly discouraged. I decided that it was okay to blow my nose, but I was going to keep my mind on the spiritual track. Every time I took a tissue, I would take a pen and write one small truth on the actual tissue box. Some of the ones I wrote were:
“Mind governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance.”
“God is Love.
“Thou art whole.”
“Blot out the images of mortal thought and its beliefs in sickness and sin.”
“Divine Mind has all power.”
“The indestructible faculties of Spirit exist without the conditions of matter.”

After doing this for a while, I remembered something else. I had built my house on the rock, not the sand, and so therefore nothing could shake or break my strong house.

I again became very engrossed in my reading and writing, and when I stopped for a moment to de-smudge the box, I realized I was singing to myself (Mothers Evening Prayer, a hymn by Mary Baker Eddy), something that I hadn’t been able to do all morning. Immediately, I felt my head clear as well as my nose and I could swallow painlessly. I got up and found myself fully energetic…. I had an urge to go jump on the trampoline! I am so grateful for this experience and for Christian Science, and especially God!

M. A.

In July, my family held their family reunion at Lake Tahoe. There were about 20 of us, including several of my teen-aged grandchildren and their friends. One day, 15 of us decided to rent bicycles for a 4-hour bike ride. I had not been on a bike for over 25 years, so I “practiced” in the Lodge parking lot.

After riding about 1 1⁄2 hours down to the south edge of Lake Tahoe for our picnic lunch, I hit a tricky curve and flew head over heels. When my sons picked the bike up and away from me, I heard a sound like a bone cracking in my ankle. I started praying for myself, knowing that I couldn’t fall from God’s grace, and that accidents could not happen to a child of God. I could not break away from God’s goodness and perfection, which I continually express.

I was able to ride for another 20 minutes to the lunch spot, but when I tried to get back on the bike after lunch, my ankle had swollen and there was pain when I tried to walk. I was able to get a ride back to the lodge, where I tried to get comfortable and called a Christian Science practitioner. He told me how he and his wife had been skiing years ago, and she fell and fractured her ankle coming down the slope. The ski patrol brought her down the hill. While she lay on the bed in pain, he prayed, but with no improvement. Finally he realized he was starting from the wrong premise. He was praying to heal a fractured ankle–to make it well. He should have started with God and prayed to see that as God’s image and likeness, she could only express God’s perfection. He didn’t have to petition God to make an injured body into a well body, since in God’s sight, she was never touched by harm. Starting from this correct premise melted the conviction of pain and injury, with the result that the next morning she jumped out of bed and skied comfortably all day.

I expected to get the same results! But it took me a little longer. I needed my son to drive me back home from the reunion, as I was not able to do so. The hardest thing for me through this experience was to erase the mental picture of seeing myself lying on the ground, and hearing the crack of the bone. But the material senses do not have any genuine authority or reality in God’s sight. Our Leader, Mrs. Eddy, tells us that “…..Man is not material; he is spiritual” (P. 468 in Science and Health.)

I was inspired and uplifted by daily prayer and treatment from the practitioner, and in about 2 weeks I had a complete healing. During this time, my family called or e-mailed me every day and I would say, “All is well.” The truth was that I could not express anything that God was not expressing! What really needed correcting was believing I could be separated from God. After all, God made everything, and He made it good. (The Bible tells us so!) So now I can take my 4-mile daily walks and play golf every week. I expect to be able to climb the mountains again at our next family reunion. All truly is well!

J.P.

On Wednesday afternoon recently, I was trimming deadheads with a pair of electric grass clippers and accidentally cut into a finger on my left hand. The shock and blood sent me running into the house where my husband cleaned and bandaged the wound. My first thought about this was from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. She writes, “Accidents are unknown to God…” on page 424* and although the complete sentence did not come to me at the time, I reasoned that since God did not know it, I could go back and finish the task at hand, which I did. After dinner, I attended the Christian Science Wednesday night testimony meeting in Orinda. At this service the congregation is invited to pray for all gathered there. I prayed for the health and well-being of all present, acknowledging each one’s relationship to the divine consciousness, Mind. I did not specifically include myself, as by then I had quite forgotten about my finger. When I got home, my husband offered to change the bandage before we went to bed. When the old dressing was removed, we discovered that there was nothing showing but a pink line where the cut had occurred. My heart was filled with gratitude and in a few days nothing remained and it would have been impossible to even find a trace of the cut.

*(The complete sentence in the chapter Christian Science Practice reads: “Accidents are unknown to God, or immortal Mind, and we must leave the mortal basis of belief and unite with the one Mind, in order to change the notion of chance to the proper sense of God’ unerring direction and thus bring out harmony.”)

I would like to tell about a healing that both my daughter and I had recently. My daughter is three and full of wonder. We were just returning from a day in the field attempting to capture an endangered snake. About half way home we hit some traffic on the freeway in San Francisco and my daughter vomited all over herself and the back seat of our rental car. After a moment my thought was calm enough to find a shoulder large enough to pull out of traffic and try to clean up as much of the mess as possible and make my daughter more comfortable.

Once I was back in the car driving a flood of awful thoughts came to me. They started with, “What happened, is this the flu, did she eat something that made her ill?” And to throw in a little parental guilt, “What did I give her to eat and was it fresh?”

Immediately on the heels of these thoughts came the Christ message. “Nothing happened to God’s sweet, perfect idea. She is entirely spiritual, a reflection of God. There is no power that can change that fact. God is omnipotent good, the only power.” Meanwhile my daughter went back to sleep and the Christ message continued: “There is no cause or source outside of God, so the only thing that she can have is infinite, eternal good. You can’t have done anything wrong because you are God’s reflection too and your motives are pure, intending only good for your daughter.” At that point I just firmly declared my daughter’s identity as God’s entirely spiritual child. And I knew this was effective prayer. I felt satisfied that because Truth was the source of my declaration, suggestions to the contrary had no substance or foundation to sustain them. With that I let go of the fear for my daughter’s well being. However, aggressive mental suggestions continued to badger me, trying to sneak in and claim to be my own thought. The whole rest of the way home I had the most fun bringing every thought into conformity to the Christ. The suggestions that came to me about possible cause or source became almost laughable. They were just impotent in the face of the Truth shining in my consciousness.

When we got home my daughter woke up, got out of the car, vomited once more on the sidewalk and was done with it. I gave her a bath and by the end of it she was playing like nothing had ever happened.

What an exhilarating experience this was for me! To feel God’s presence so effective and constant was marvelous and I wish I had words to convey my gratitude to God for this experience. I guess my greatest expression of gratitude would be to continue conscious of the Truth and witnessing every thought being brought into conformity with the Christ, following with not just words, but deeds. I am also grateful to every practitioner I have ever spoken with, for every Sentinel, Journal, and Sentinel Radio article or conversation I have read or heard, for all of Mrs. Eddy’s writings, and for the Bible. I feel like what I am learning from all of these sources has led me to an understanding that allowed this healing experience.

W.D.

I’ve lived in Northern California for almost twenty-five years, and when the month of May arrives, allergies have been a struggle for me. Sometimes it has been worse than others, but always a struggle. I have had so many physical healings through the application of truths I’ve found Christian Science, but somehow this seemed in another category. I used to think I just had to get through it, for once June came, I was pretty free.

This past May was no exception, and in the first week I found myself sneezing and wheezing unmercifully. I am a school teacher, and one day I could hardly get through a complete sentence without sneezing multiple times and, of course, blowing my nose. My students felt so sorry for me. I went to a meeting after school, and they finally adjourned it early in sympathy for the pathetic state I was in. Several well-meaning colleagues offered me Claritin, a popular allergy medicine. That kind of caught my attention, not because I wanted the Claritin, but because I wasn’t using my form of medicine, which is prayer.

I got in the car to go home, and in desperation for something to help me think better, I pulled out a Christian Science Sentinel Radio program CD that someone had given me. I hadn’t listened to it, despite having had it for months, but I was delighted to find a remarkable healing of allergies as one of the four healings given. The speaker voiced the very same thing I had been thinking, that somehow this allergy problem was outside the realm of possibility to be healed. She said,  “I just thought I had to put up with it,” and then she talked about something that I found very interesting. To the medical world, there is no real “healing”of allergies; all you can do is manage the symptoms. That is all, for instance, that Claritin could do. She began to see that real healing was possible, for all we are ever working with is “thought”. My thoughts about pollen seemed to induce this reaction. But what was pollen, something outside of God’s love for me, something that could separate me from good, from freedom, from health? I listened to that healing on the CD several times and the light just went on in my thought about the naturalness of healing this belief. I wasn’t changing the body to stop reacting, but I was seeing myself purely spiritually, untouched by the belief of reaction. I was free that night. I listened to the same healing three times again on my way to school the next morning. My thought had completely turned around from the inevitability of this problem every spring, to the absolute insistence in my thought that I was free, that pollen or any atmospheric belief could not separate me from God. And I was free all that day. Once of my students even noted that I wasn’t sneezing any more and what a difference that was. (It had been almost comical the day before). That was it, the rest of the month, not a sneeze. The change was like night and day.

I am so grateful for this change of thought and for this woman’s willingness to share her testimony, as I want now to share mine. There is no physical situation that is outside the realm of healing, of that I am sure.

R.A.

When I was growing up, I had a lot of ear problems. Earaches, infections and hearing loss all troubled me often. I had to wear special ear protection when I was swimming, and at school, I always sat up front because of my “special needs”.

When I started going to the Christian Science Sunday School, I began learning how to “say no” to error and to “stand porter at the door of thought” (from page 292 of Science & Health.) This meant that I could watch my thinking and reject hurting ears. I was beginning to see that that pain is a lie, a falsity about God’s loving creation. A lie is not real. It doesn’t exist. Learning these things made a huge difference in my life. The constant ear problems stopped.

Then, a little while ago, when my sister had her ears pierced, I decided to get mine pierced too. They were fine for a few days, then one morning I woke up, and when I looked in the mirror, my earlobes were so swollen that so that my earrings were completely hidden. I almost panicked for a split second. Oh not again! I said. I thought I was done with ear problems! And then I knew I was not going to get anywhere with that kind of thinking. I remembered that what I see in the mirror can’t give true information about how God sees me. I am God’s reflection, not the mirror’s reflection of pain and swelling. So then I sang some hymns and read and highlighted the Bible Lesson.

However, I was still thinking about my ears very negatively. And then I thought about how I cannot be sick, because God is not sick. Since God does not have ear problems, I could not have ear problems. I started to read the Lesson again, wanting to fill my thinking to overflowing with good thoughts and allow no bad ones. My new favorite Science & Health quote helped a lot too (page 242):

“There is but one way to heaven, harmony, and Christ in divine Science shows us this way. It is to know no other reality- to have no other consciousness of life- than good, God, and His reflection, and to rise superior to the so-called pain and pleasure of the senses.”

In Sunday School, we had been writing out the steps in Christian Science treatment, and these helped too. This includes realizing that God is Love, Life, Truth, Mind, Soul, Spirit and Principle, and man reflects Him. Saying yes to this and no to pain helped.

I looked at my calendar and saw many good things to look forward to, including a Leadership Council trip to New York City and a school class trip whitewater rafting. Then I realized my ears weren’t hurting at all anymore. The error had been eliminated and replaced with a bursting, overflowing cup of positive thoughts. I realized I am perfect (including my ears). God has always been right by my side. I became fully aware that this is true.

I was so happy. Even though the doctor had to take care of getting my earrings out, all the pain was gone. I felt so free, letting go of the untrue, unreal junk that had been infecting my thought. I have learned from this experience that when I let my thought and decisions be guided by what I know is really true about God and man, I can rise superior to anything that lies in my path. Yay!

H.A.

I was with my seventh grade Spanish class in Mexico and I had a chance to pray for myself. I was snorkeling off the coast of a beach with my classmates and my snorkeling mask broke. I kept choking on salt water so I had to keep my head out and out of the water. I was having a bad time, my eyes were getting irritated, and I was really cold.

I started singing “O Gentle Presence” (a hymn by Mary Baker Eddy)* to myself, focusing on the thought that God was there with me and protecting me. Originally I was afraid of snorkeling because my friend in the group before me had gotten stung by a jellyfish twice. But I kept denying this fear and frustration with my mask.

After a couple of verses of the hymn, I started to feel a warm presence around me, I stopped shivering, and I was able to fix my mask. After that, I saw three sea turtles, a barracuda, and lots of fish! This experience has showed me that I can pray on my own, even if my mom isn’t there to help. This has really proven to me that God is ALWAYS there and listening and taking care of me.

A.R.H.

*Mother’s Evening Prayer

by Mary Baker Eddy

O gentle presence, peace and joy and power;
O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour,
Thou Love that guards the nestling’s faltering flight!
Keep Thou my child on upward wing tonight.

Love is our refuge; only with mine eye
Can I behold the snare, the pit, the fall:
His habitation high is here, and nigh,
His arm encircles me, and mine, and all.

O make me glad for every scalding tear,
For hope deferred, ingratitude, disdain!
Wait, and love more for every hate, and fear
No ill, — since God is good, and loss is gain.

Beneath the shadow of His mighty wing;
In that sweet secret of the narrow way,
Seeking and finding, with the angels sing:
“Lo, I am with you alway,” — watch and pray.

No snare, no fowler, pestilence or pain;
No night drops down upon the troubled breast,
When heaven’s aftersmile earth’s tear-drops gain,
And mother finds her home and heavenly rest.

I am grateful that Christian Science is applicable in small events as well as big ones.

Recently, when I was driving down to serve in our church’s Christian Science Reading Room (a place where anyone can come to find out about Christian Science), my nose began to bleed.  Since I was driving on the highway and there was no place to pull over, I held tissues to my nose and continued on to the Reading Room.  When I arrived there, my nose was still bleeding, and I said to the church member who was serving there, “I need your help!”  She put her arms around me and said, “You’ve got it, Honey!”  She lovingly and confidently prayed to see me as safe and whole in God’s arms, rejecting the notion of inharmony in the form of a nosebleed.  Right away, the bleeding stopped, and I was healed.  I was able to take over my duties at the Reading Room, as I had set out to do, even more confident that what we are offering here is of immeasurable value to any and all.

I am so grateful for God’s healing power.

BVV