Where do we come from? Where are we going? And whose fault is it when we have problems? These questions confront us all at one point or another.

Parents caring for a sick child might ask, "What did I do or not do to cause this?"  A child struggling with performing a simple task that his friends might easily do could be asking, "Will I ever be like the other kids?"

Tough questions like these naturally pull on the heartstrings.  But finding answers may involve more than focusing on the problems in front of us. 

Jesus disciples once asked him about a case of physical disability  - whose fault was it? Did the man do something wrong? Did his parents, that he was “born this way? Their prayers hadn’t been able to heal the man. We don’t know but maybe frustration and fear for the man’s future had set in.

Jesus replied that neither were at fault. He turned them away from even considering fault and cause for the disability – away from the disability itself. He declared that the works of God, that is of divine Good, was all that was manifest in him.

He shifted the focus from material disability to God’s divine ability to bring out perfection and goodness alone.

Now the difference between the disciples approach and Jesus’ was as different as night and day. But Jesus’ viewpoint led to healing, while the disciples approach would have left the man mired in the problem.

The Christ perspective – the divine message of man’s spiritual origin and native goodness – heals. It doesn't teach to cope with or explain away problems. It completely heals them.

I think that is what set Christ Jesus apart from the doctors and helpers of the sick before him. Through his method of turning to God, identifying God’s law of Good in each case, and overruling whatever the current material belief about disease was claiming, he never doubted his cases would be healed. He appealed to God’s law the way a mathematician appeals to math facts. He worked with solutions, not on problems.

If you would like to learn more about Christ Jesus' methodology, check out these links:

• What we can learn from that crazy pig story
• Bow down to disease or bow down to good
• A lesson of focus from Christ Jesus... Oh, and my cat
• The simple theology that heals
• One spit prayer. Really!
• "What's your name?" Wake up from disease
  

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A colleague shared something her Christian Science teacher once said: “You can’t have ‘Heal me, but don’t change me.'” Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures explains, "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 the divine Mind." (Mary Baker Eddy, 162)

As a patient gives consent to what God as the divine Mind is doing for him, things change. While a patient may tend to watch the body, or what he perceives to be his problem, for signs of improvement, this isn’t the only place where change is happening. Working together through prayer, practitioner and patient become witnesses together of the power of the Christ to produce/reveal harmony in human minds and bodies.

In Christian Science treatment, change is a normal response and should be expected. But sometimes in the process of change things may look and feel a bit messy. Christian Science uses the term "chemicalisation" to describe "the process which mortal mind and body undergo in the change of belief from a material to a spiritual basis." (Science and Health, 169)

Have you ever set about cleaning a cupboard by dumping out all of the contents on the counter? Were you to stop too soon and judge your progress by the mess, you might lose the vision of what you are trying to accomplish, get discouraged, and shove all the junk back in the cupboard to be dealt with later, or maybe not at all.

Let’s say you told a friend about your cleaning project and enlisted her help. She may not be able to decide for you what to keep and what to throw out as useless, outdated, irrelevant or just WRONG, but she could help you keep your vision clear, encourage you to keep going and not be distracted by the short term mess. She might ask you to think about whether the things you are hanging onto are useful, beneficial and a blessing. She might remind you that it was courageous to start the project and that the same courage that got you started to clean up the messy cupboard would support you as you sorted things out.

So now, let's say the case isn’t a cupboard, but is a physical problem generating some fear. And the friend you call is a practitioner that you invite to help you through her prayers. The practitioner would pray to witness to your spiritual perfection – that you are, in Jesus’ words, “perfect as the Father is perfect” as the image and likeness of God. Through her silent or audible mental treatment she would not and should not make human decisions for you relating to your care, but she would systematically cast out useless, outdated, irrelevant and just plain wrong fears that pull you down into disease. From the mount of spiritual vision she would see you out of the mess. She might even tell you what she sees about you, reminding you silently and sometimes audibly that you can see it, too. Christian Science healers are engaged to give Christian encouragement, to express patience and remove fear, and to inspire and help their patients with “legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.” (Science and Health, 367)

You, as the patient, would have a role to play, too  –  that is, to consent to the treatment and to the change of base that it produces. This doesn’t just happen at the point of asking for prayer. Sometimes, as patients, we need to give consent DURING treatment to what a practitioner is seeing, saying and knowing about our case. Just as we may invite a friend into our house, we may invite a practitioner into our mental house to help us sort things out, but it is still OUR house. Decisions are made there that are ours – alone with God – to make.

I called a practitioner for help one day because I was sinking under a problem. I just wanted out. She asked me a question and gave me a little homework, something to think about while she prayed for me. I got off the phone and blew up. Was she kidding me? I was already sinking and now I had to do THIS on top?

Fuming and ruminating, I didn’t do it at first. Then a thought interrupted the fuss, suggesting that were I to look at my case the way the practitioner did, I might not feel so lousy and burdened. So I did the little homework she had given me, and in so doing I changed the base of my thinking from the problem to the spiritual solution at hand. I was quickly healed..

In short: The practitioner prayed. She gave me something to consider and do for myself. I consented to change my base of thinking as I did the little homework. And I was healed. 

There is a passage in Yvonne Fettweiss's and Robert Warnack's book Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer that is oft-quoted as though it is the final word for all things relating to the responsibility of practitioners and patients in treatment.

These comments are sometimes cited to prove that a patient has nothing and a practitioner has all to do in the work of healing. But as Jesus’ own example shows us, that isn’t necessarily true. Of his recorded healings we see that sometimes he made demands on his patients and sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he spoke to them at length and sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he expected things of them before, sometimes after, and often not at all. In other words, his approach adapted according to the needs of the case.

So did Mary Baker Eddy’s. She wrote letters and made statements, such as that oft-quoted one, to individual practitioners and certain groups of pupils, speaking to their specific need and the needs of their cases. Would these comments apply to some others, also? Of course, they would. But at other times she addressed similar situations in different ways. This is why having access to her many counsels is so good for us. We have lots of good guidance to help us find our way in healing.

Here are some other examples showing how she herself dealt with the sick:

The chapter titled, "Interlude: Advice for Healers" in Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer has loads of comments on the healing practice. They illustrate a variety of approaches to working with patients - sometimes engaging them, and sometimes not, in the work. We need to exercise wisdom and discernment to know which insights relate most directly to our present cases. When it comes to private correspondence and conversations, however inspired they may have been to meet the demand of the hour, what applies to one does not necessarily apply to all.

What is written in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, however, does apply to all of us. Mrs. Eddy wrote the Christian Science textbook as a scribe under orders from God. Science and Health underwent assiduous scrutiny, refinement of vocabulary and perfecting of content, - to a much higher degree than any other of her writings. She asked practitioners to place Science and Health in the hands of all their patients. Patients, therefore, shouldn't be surprised if a practitioner encourages them to open it and see what it says to them.

It is natural to want to help others through your prayers. Practicing prayer for others needn’t and shouldn’t be scary. Healing prayer is very fulfilling. It is motivated by love for God and man. While not every practitioner decides to advertise as a healer, taking out a listing in The Christian Science Journal can be a next step as the commitment to practice Christian Science healing matures into full-time availability to help others. But whether one is Journal-listed or not, the conditions and standards of practice are the same. Each one needs to do what is necessary to give effective help.

To an early practitioner, Christian Science discoverer Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “Every day treat yourself that no evil suggestion nor argument can swerve you or frighten you--or deter you from healing and doing just what is needed here . . . Three times each day treat yourself for this temptation then watch that your house be not broken open.” [MBE to Alfred E. Baker, 2/2/1899, F00147]

I remember a time when I felt totally blocked as a healer. Really stuck. I couldn’t see any progress in my cases and felt afraid. Maybe I shouldn’t be practicing, I thought. Then I confronted head-on that aggressive and false suggestion that I couldn’t heal. Three times a day I treated myself, my practice and my community to understand that God through Christ was the healer, and that as God’s reflection, I express His eternal, healing Christ.

Mrs. Eddy defined Christ as “the divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 583) She also spoke of this Christ as “voicing good, the divine message from God to men speaking to the human consciousness.” (ibid 332) She explained that this Christ is “the divine image and likeness, dispelling the illusions of the senses; the Way, the Truth, and the Life, healing the sick and casting out evils, destroying sin, disease, and death.” (ibid 332)

I affirmed regularly that this very Christ is always a present and effective healer; that where I am, the healing Christ is manifest. As I did, I began to feel the authority that Christ gives each one to heal through prayer. I began to think of myself less as a personal healer and more as a perpetual witness to and expression of this healing Christ through every treatment I gave. I stopped being afraid that I couldn't heal. And then things started moving, really moving fast.

Sometimes healing came so quickly that I asked myself if I had had the time to give the case a full Christian Science treatment. But my three-times-a-day prayer always showed me that its not a personal me doing something extraordinary in prayer. My role is to witness the Christ expressed in me and in the patient - to witness to the Christ-message of God’s perpetual care for His creation - the divine message of unending good that restores harmony where discord seems to be.

I am trying to keep up a regular practice of treating myself three times a day “that no evil suggestion nor argument can swerve [me] or frighten [me]--or deter [me] from healing and doing just what is needed here.”  It isn't always easy and sometimes I have to set an alarm to remember to do it. But I am striving to be regular about it, because, bottom line: Good healers are needed. And those of us whose love for God and man move us to want to lift up our brothers and sisters in healing prayer, have every right to be effective in our holy work.

If you have ever found yourself caught in a battle against illness and have struggled to find peace and healing without making much headway, this audio blog post is for you.

Christ Jesus was a master at turning water to wine. The wine they drank was not like the intoxicating drink of today. It was mixed with water, to make bitter, undrinkable water sweet and pure. This redirection from bitter to sweet, unhealthy to healthy, was a theme in all of Jesus works.

Here you will find a 4-minute audio clip that discusses the healing of a woman whom Luke described as "bowed for 18 years."  Listen to insights into how Christ - the spirit of Truth that Jesus expressed - transforms  minds and bodies from a bitter battle with disease to the sweet worship and praise of the infinite and ever-present Good that heals.

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What makes the healing prayer taught in Christian Science distinct from other types of prayer for healing? Mary Baker Eddy devotes an entire book - Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures - to this question. Specifically, page 12 clears up some of the fog and mystery surrounding Christian Science prayer. Interestingly, the discussion begins with a statement of what it is not. The healing prayer practiced in Christian Science is not a human “mind over matter” blind faith-cure method. 

Mrs. Eddy writes, “‘The prayer of faith shall save the sick,’ says the Scripture. What is this healing prayer?  A mere request that God will heal the sick has no power to gain more of the divine presence than is already at hand.” 

If we use prayer something like a balloon or emergency flare we send up, - “Hey, I could really use some help over here on my problem,” - where is God in this prayer?  Circling around somewhere outside the problem, needing our help through prayer to find it and fix it?

Holding sickness at the center of a case and bringing God to it indicates a misunderstanding of the Everpresent One. Spiritual healing involves correcting misperceptions of the who and what and where of God. God is the infinite All – the one reality, power, presence. If we are holding onto a problem, or a disease, to be one fixed reality, which we hope another reality, our God, will come to heal – this is a human “mind over matter" blind faith-cure attempt.

Sometimes faith-cures have positive physical results and sometimes very negative. It all depends on the strength of the human will of the healer acting through his blind belief. But whether the results are good are not, there is no guarantee they will be permanent. And if one’s spiritual understanding of the one reality as God, or Good, isn’t growing, the case can be left in a worse state than before, vulnerable to any new belief – regardless of the appearance of a physical improvement.

As Mrs. Eddy says, "The common custom of praying for the recovery of the sick finds help in blind belief, whereas help should come from enlightened understanding. Changes in belief may go on indefinitely, but they are the merchandise of human thought and not the outgrowth of divine Science."

When it comes to the healing prayer taught in Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy makes an important distinction between a blind belief - holding limited human thoughts about God - and the total yielding to divine Principle, to the Science of God and man, in the human understanding. Mrs. Eddy puts blind belief completely outside of the practice of Christian Science when she explains, “It is neither Science nor Truth which acts through blind belief, nor is it the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth, - of man’s likeness to God and of man’s unity with Truth and Love.”

There we have Mary Baker Eddy’s statement of what constitutes the Christian Science practice of healing prayer, “the human understanding of the divine healing Principle as manifested in Jesus, whose humble prayers were deep and conscientious protests of Truth, - of man’s likeness to God and of man’s unity with Truth and Love.” 

Jesus’ theology of the perfection and spirituality of man as the likeness to perfect Spirit who is God, and of man as inseparable from Truth and Love, heals. When one protests for, affirms with well-reasoned understanding, the truth of God and man, healing is the natural outcome. Health is the outward evidence of an inner truth. Prayer doesn’t change reality, or exchange one form of reality for another. It is the confirmation of Truth’s, God’s presence and the permanence of health in God’s creation. Healing prayer affirms what is real and true, and physical, mental, emotional and spiritual healing confirms the truth.

Jesus said, “To this end was I born… that I should bear witness unto the Truth.” (John 18:37)The same goes for each one of us. Healing is normal to the Christ. It is not a special talent or unique dispensation given to some and denied to others. Christian healing – Christian Science healing - is the natural confirmation of God’s presence and power – His Christ - here and now reflected in us.

Christian Science has this beautiful, clear, pure, spiritual simplicity to it.  The entire theology can be boiled down to a few basic points:

1) God exists. 
2) God is good.
3) God is all. 
4) The universe, including man, is the reflection of God.
5) There is no evil.

Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, explained that her work consisted of 2 parts:

1)  Discovery of this Science – of these five basic points
2)  Proof by present demonstration that this is the Principle by which Jesus healed.

We can’t have the discovery without the proof.

Mrs. Eddy discovered the action of the divine Mind on human minds and bodies.  But limited mortal thought patterns have worn a groove in collective human consciousness, probing, diagnosing and picking apart matter as both cause and effect. Hence we are drawn into thinking that problems are material and thus complicated or difficult to heal.

For Christ Jesus, theology and medicine were one. Jesus’ theology is simple and clear.  God is all, Good. Evil is nothing, unreal. What we face in every case is a challenge to the simple theology of the Christ.  Can we depend on the fact that God is good? Can we prove it? Is man really reflection – the image and likeness of God? Can we demonstrate it?

Every case touches on a theological question.  The task of a Christian healer is to simply answer the question and watch the proof appear.

The work should always be this simple.  But it isn’t without opposition. That which Mrs Eddy named mortal mind – limited, matter-based reasoning that generates doubt and fear - would make the task of healing seem complicated, unclear and difficult. Fear and doubt impel us to overwork, or underwork the healing activity of prayer, to doubt our experience with the Christ, to change methods repeatedly and ultimately let the problem run the case.

I received a phone call from a father whose child had jumped from a tree house and injured his calf. It appeared to be broken. I was asked to pray for him while the family sorted out the practical care. When I hung up the phone I immediately thought, Well, God, what do you have to say about this? 

I had Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures open on my desk. My eyes fell on a statement of Jesus found on page 45, “Spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.”

Looking up from the book, I thought, Don’t be fooled by the picture of flesh and bones. That is not who this child really is.  His substance is Spirit. All that he is and has comes from the Spirit that is God.

It seemed such a simple response to the theological question, Is this boy the image and likeness of God?

As I considered the implications in prayer – that he was in fact spiritual and that anything pro or con going on with flesh and bones didn’t touch him – a doubt cropped up. I wanted to be sure I was getting the message correctly. I wondered, But wasn’t Jesus just talking about himself? Then I turned the page and read, “The divine Spirit, which identified Jesus thus centuries ago, has spoken through the inspired Word and will speak through it in every age and clime. It is revealed to the receptive heart, and is again seen casting out evil and healing the sick.” (46)

OK, I thought, so Spirit knows this child the same way it knew Jesus - as perfect, spiritual, whole, unbroken, invulnerable, unfallen. The same Spirit voicing truth through Jesus' words to his disciples was communicating to me in the inspired Word of Science and Health in this age. My receptive heart was accepting the message.

Then up popped a fear. Can it be this easy? What about the broken bone? Don’t I have to do something about this in my prayer?

I looked down once again at the book and read the next phrase as though it was being spoken with force, “The Master said plainly that physique was not Spirit…”

I remembered Jesus’ instruction in the Sermon on the Mount and thought of it in relation to prayer, “Let your statement be, 'Yes, yes ' or 'No, no'; anything beyond these is of evil." Matthew 5:37

I needed to say Yes, Yes to the plain and simple reality of unbroken, uninterrupted spiritual being. And I needed to say a direct and clear No, No to the physical belief that the child was material and breakable.

That was it.  I consented and said YES, YES.  In fact, I was so taken by what I was saying YES to, that I forgot the case entirely and continued reading.

The phone rang about 30 minutes later. It was the mother. She told me that two minutes after they placed the call, she was holding her son and praying to know what to do next. They had discussed calling an ambulance or driving him to the hospital. Then they heard a distinct sound coming from his leg “like the sound of a zipper.”  And he was healed just like that.

The pure simple theology of the Christ is revealed. And it heals.

Gertrude Stein wrote in her book Everybody's Autobiography (1937), "It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing."

I must say I do agree. At least it can look that way to an observer. And it often feels that way to the one going through the process of sitting, thinking, squirming, waiting, wondering, gazing out the window, staring at the wall, clipping fingernails, thinking... all the while waiting for some outward sign of forward movement.

Oh, how many times have I experienced just that. Each time I think I will discover some new way to circumvent the process. And then, here we go again.

A couple of years ago, I was in the middle of what looked and felt like a "doing nothing" patch. I had been staring at the walls for a decent chunk of time as January dragged into February. When it looked like February might pass into March without much to say for it, I reached out to a Christian Science practitioner for help.

Christian Science practitioners (like me) pray for people to help them out of stuck places in their lives. I wasn't sure what I was looking for from this prayer, other than the ability to trust that all this quiet, and thinking, and sitting, and doing nothing but scrutinize my white walls, was OK... And to know that I wasn't nuts. Because, frankly, I wondered what was wrong with me that nothing seemed to be going on in my life.

So she prayed for me until I saw the reinforcing power that develops in deep periods of quiet. I would describe what I saw this way:

Think of the formation of a wave. A wave develops well under the surface on the ocean floor. The current (think undertow, when it happens near the shore) pulls back, and finally pushes up, propelling the water forward with amazing force. We glory in the beauty of the activity on the surface, not always recognizing the invisible, silent, essential build-up of strength that precedes it.

I turn to Mary Baker Eddy for a clear description of the metaphysics of this wave development. She wrote, "Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause, — wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory." (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 323)

No matter what it looks like on the surface, something powerful is happening.

I have been a pusher all my life. But I love to think now of these strength-yielding pauses. I believe it is absolutely essential to allow oneself the mental space - white wall space - to pause, to be - to think and wonder and even squirm (!), - as one waits on the onward push of God, omniactive good.

Its not really a time thing. I have had pauses that last but a second before the next breakers of inspiration jettison me forward onto the shore of some new adventure or activity. Others have been long. Really long. What looked, up close, to be a two month pause a couple of years ago, was really the last momentum-gathering undertow at the end of a six year deep-think pause. But the force of that build-up has carried me through some of my most productive and interesting years yet.

Looking for a little Prayer MOJO today?  

• Respect the pause. Don't be too quick to judge yourself harshly or chalk up the quiet to laziness. 
• Recognize the force and momentum that a good pause can bring to your projects and to your prayers. Consider it refueling. It is OK to shut off the phone, click off the computer (even if it means missing my blog posts), and have a good think. Or stare at a white wall and see what is there to be seen. 
• Realize the power, but not the pause, lasts for ever. Value the experience of the pause, not as a means to a goal, but as a gift from God to be valued in its own right.

Psalms says the children of Israel "were glad when it grew calm, and he guided them to their desired haven. Let them give thanks to the Lord for his unfailing love and his wonderful deeds for mankind." (107: 30,31 NIV)  I think that points to the genius and joy in the calming pauses God gives in our journey of seeking and finding Him.