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7/10/2014 How is your bedside manner? It's more than just what you say, or even what you do with a patient. Bedside manner, the good and the bad of it, extends to what you think, how you think, and what you do when you are NOT at the patient’s side. Christian healer and teacher Mary Baker Eddy understood that the morality and the spirituality of the practitioner affect outcomes on their cases, regardless of their method of practice. How did she know? Experience. Before the discovery of the scientific method of divine healing, which she would name Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy practiced – and later abandoned – homeopathy. A woman came into her homeopathic practice with a case of what was then called dropsy and today would likely be called edema due to congestive heart failure. The woman had been unsuccessfully treated by another homeopath, whose dosage of medicine caused an apparent bad reaction. Mrs. Eddy took the case and treated according to her understanding of proper dosage, and the woman steadily improved. But Mrs. Eddy soon discovered that, in fact, her prescription was identical to that of the prior physician – the same type and dosage that under his care produced horrible side-effects and under her care resulted in improvement. Why were the outcomes different? She later would explain in her textbook on Christian Science, “The doctor’s mind reaches that of his patient …His thoughts and his patient’s commingle, and the stronger thoughts rule the weaker. Hence the importance that doctors be Christian Scientists.” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, 197) She also wrote, “The moral and spiritual facts of health, whispered into thought, produce very direct and marked effects on the body.” (ibid 370)  About that homeopathy case and other cases like it, Mrs. Eddy later noted that she was always praying to God to keep her from sin, and to guide her in her care for others. The Greek word for “sin” is Hamartia (Ham ar TEE ya) which can be translated ‘to miss the mark”. To be kept from sin includes to be kept from making mistakes and to hit the mark rightly in all things. "The doctor’s mind reaches that of his patient… “ Mrs. Eddy encouraged healers of all methods, medical doctors included, to clean up their thoughts and life of anything that might affect their patients adversely. She wrote, " If hypocrisy, stolidity, inhumanity, or vice finds its way into the chambers of disease through the would-be healer, it would, if it were possible, convert into a den of thieves the temple of the Holy Ghost, — the patient’s spiritual power to resuscitate himself." (ibid 365) I read that one day and thought, "Hypocrisy? Stolidity? Inhumanity? Vice? Who me?" Then I remembered a case where I asked something of a patient – to consider a spiritual concept more deeply – that I had not and was not doing myself. His healing did not come. When I realized my error, - the hypocrisy even - of demanding something of someone else that I was not practicing myself, I got to work and did the assignment. Then the man was quickly healed. What about stolidity? It's the state of being unmoved mentally, impassive, unemotional. Had I ever been stolid in my treatment work, perhaps going through the technical motions but stopping the prayer before I felt the mental movement of the Holy Ghost in my consciousness? Hmmm.  How about in my life? Had I ever passed by someone in need without praying? Or put on a hard face when confronted with poverty or crime in the street or on the news? I could see I could do better for my practice by eliminating all traces of stolidity from my life. Inhumanity? Now here I was really sure I was innocent. But then I asked myself if I had ever delayed to pray for someone until I was finished working on something else. Had I ever put my personal needs before someone in pain or suffering from fear? I remember the time I forgot to treat a patient that I had agreed to pray for. I got busy with another commitment and hours passed before she got the help that she had requested and that I had agreed to give. That's neglectful. Putting selfish interest before the needs of others, too, is cruel. Neglectful, cruel and inhumane are synonymous. What about vice? Well, we all know my Oreo cookie story. (Listen here if you don’t.) Look. This post isn’t about true confessions. I am talking about cleaning up one’s bedside manner to be a better transparency for the healing Christ. We can all likely do better. I know I can. In fact, until we consistently heal instantaneously, we must DEFINITELY do better. In Christian Science practice, the healer has to be sharp and aware. His treatment must witness to the Holy Ghost and its healing action on the patient. But if the healer is distracted or preoccupied by unhealed hypocrisy, stolidity, inhumanity, or vice, he may not be as sharp and as aware as he needs to be of what the Christ, through the Holy Ghost, is doing for the patient. Here are two tips for improving your bedside manner.
 We want to be good, really GOOD at helping and healing, right? Good bedside manner involves more than a friendly face and a kind word. Regular prayer to be kept from sin and asking God or guidance on cases should unmask and destroy any lurking sin that would prevent one from being a genuine aide. Don't let yourself be stuck in self-condemnation or guilt. Science and Health is quite clear on this point. Mrs. Eddy explained that they, along with a faltering or doubting trust in Truth, God, "are unsuitable conditions for healing the sick. Such mental states indicate weakness instead of strength… You must utilize the moral might of Mind in order to walk over the waves of error and support your claims by demonstration.” (Science and Health, 455) Christ Jesus gave wise counsel to all healer’s: “First cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:5) And the Daily Prayer reminds us to "let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love be established in me, and rule out of me all sin." (Manual of The Mother Church, Article 8, Section) Patients, too, have a role to play in healing. No free passes here! My next post will speak to this recently unpopular and sometimes touchy point. Not a subscriber and want to be?
It's easy! Just sign up in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE FIND LINKS TO MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT LISTEN TO A COLLECTION OF MY "YOUR DAILY LIFT" 2-MINUTE PODCASTS 7/7/2014 Nothing can deter you from healing 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. Let us lift up our hearts and our hands to God in heaven, and say... Not a subscriber and want to be?
It's easy! Just sign up in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE FIND LINKS TO MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT LISTEN TO A COLLECTION OF MY "YOUR DAILY LIFT" 2-MINUTE PODCASTS 7/30/2012 The simple theology that heals 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. Love it? Please share it for others to enjoy.
Let's work together to share the love. Also, if you aren't yet a subscriber, a full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. It's easy to sign up in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE READ MORE BLOG POSTS FIND A LIST OF MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT  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?
Love it? Please share it. Let's work together to share the love.
Also, if you aren't yet a subscriber, a full-text version of the blog can be delivered to your email inbox. It's easy to sign up in the sidebar. You may also wish to: VISIT MY WEBSITE HOME PAGE READ MORE BLOG POSTS FIND A LIST OF MY OTHER PUBLISHED CONTENT 11/1/2011 Are you taking good care of yourself? That is what a friend asked me when I was feeling completely overwhelmed in my work. I was just starting out as a Christian Science practitioner and every call for help felt like a heavyweight responsibility. (Practitioners are dedicated to helping others through prayer. It involves a 24/7 commitment to be ready and available to pray.) On the day I called my friend, I had received two early morning requests for prayer within minutes of each other and I freaked out. I hadn't really gotten down to praying for the first one before the second call came in. I have to admit that when the friend asked me, "Michelle, are you taking good care of yourself?" I wanted to clock her with the phone. Who was she kidding? Take care of myself? I had people to pray for, beds to make, clothes to wash, and I hadn't even had time to brush my teeth!
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I have practiced Christian Science professionally in some form since 1979. But my journey with Christian Science started in a Sunday school where as a young child I was taught the Scriptures and some simple basics of Jesus' method of scientific Christian healing. A significant experience at the age of twelve opened my eyes to the great potential of this practice. After impaling my foot on a nail, I prayed the way I had learned in Sunday school. Within moments the pain stopped and healing began. By the next morning the wound had disappeared completely. Having experienced the great potential of Christian Science, there would be no turning back. |
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© 2011-2021 Michelle Boccanfuso Nanouche, CSB. All rights reserved. Pages reviewed and updates 6/30/2021.