“… so the tree inclines.” Virgil set this guideline for parents in 50 B.C., and my mother has been repeating it ever since! Of course, she meant that the examples we set for our children often carry through to their adult lives. I had reason to realize that on several occasions in the last few months.
After I took up residence in my apartment in New York City, I was quick to locate the closest Christian Science church in my area. At a recent Wednesday evening testimony meeting I sat waiting for the meeting to begin, but was somewhat annoyed by two children running up and down the aisle. They were hiding in the pews, and popping up to surprise each other. Where were their mothers? I thought. The organist had already started to play the prelude when a couple came in with two more children, and the six of them filled a back pew as the parents took control of the two who were running around.
As we sang the first hymn, I cleared my negative thinking about children being boisterous. They were, after all, God’s children, and how could I fault them for attending church?
When the testimonies began, it was interesting to hear the mother of the brood expressing her gratitude for blessings received. Among her blessings, she said, was the adoption of the three little girls sitting with them, all of whom were from Vietnam. What followed was a testimony by her biological daughter, who timorously stated her own thankfulness for her new sisters. And after several other members of the congregation stood and gave testimonies, each of the young Vietnamese girls stood to offer their own gratitude. Even though they got through their testimonies shyly, their sincerity was evident. Last but not least, the father of the group stood and gave his testimony. It was definitely a family affair!
How admirable, I thought, and how impressive that they all were able to express gratitude for Christian Science in their lives.
I thought of my own three children, now parents themselves, and some even grandparents. But in a flash I wondered, Where did I go wrong? All three of them were fine, upstanding citizens, successful in their own right. Yet over time they had drifted away from Christian Science. My two daughters had joined other churches while they were raising their families, and my son, who had laughingly described himself as an atheist at one time, listened to testimonies of my healings with amused tolerance.
Nothing can be lost in divine Mind.
While I was in church that day, I looked at this new family, all professing their reliance on Christian Science, and I found myself wondering how my own family had slipped so far from “the Truth.” Now, we were hardly physically close as a family—with them living all over the world—but still, I thought, I had worked steadily to give them a strong foundation in Science when they were young.
In a family letter I wrote that week, I mentioned how much I enjoyed the new church I was going to, and how it was inspiring me to write some articles for the Christian Science periodicals. To my surprise my son wrote back, sharing a story about his wife’s loss of an earring while she was gardening one day. As they searched, suddenly the thought came to him that nothing can be lost in divine Mind. Minutes later, they found the earring in the grass. The testimony really was special to hear from my son, but what excited me most was what he ended with. He said that even as a so-called atheist, he could use something he’d learned in Christian Science.
After that it became easier and easier to talk to him about some of the articles I wanted to write. One of them, which ultimately appeared in the July 23, 2012, Christian Science Sentinel, was based on a series of books I read to my children as they were growing up: Marjorie and the Dream, by Katherine M. Yates. These stories, recommended by Mary Baker Eddy in 1904, were an easy way to present the basics of Christian Science to my children. As I talked to my son about my writing efforts, I asked him if he remembered that particular series I read to him all those years ago.
Instantly he responded that yes, he remembered. In fact, he said, “It turned my life around”—referring to a family incident in college that had enraged him—and ultimately healed him of his anger.
I knew that one of the stories he might have been thinking about was when the character in the book, Marjorie, a somewhat willful child, is led by “the Dream”—an elf—to a beautiful place on a hilltop. On the way there, they have to wade through a swamp filled with evil little dwarfs called “Errors,” named Envy, Resentment, Anger, and Hatred. There are many other children going through the swamp, fighting them off, but suddenly a sweet voice calls to them. It tells them that it is impossible to simply shake off these Errors that cling and pinch and bite, but if they pick them off, one by one, and hold them up to the light, they’ll see their nothingness, and the Errors will disappear.
My son told me that he carried that grudge—that “Error”—on his shoulder for a long time, because he wanted approval, and that he couldn’t shake it off—until years later. He explained how he went to the family member and finally brought himself to say how badly he had been hurt. The family member didn’t even remember the incident! And in that moment, my son said, he realized the “nothingness” of the hurt. The nothingness of error.
“I have Marjorie and you to thank for that realization, Mom,” he said.
Since then, my son sees himself as more of a believer. And I’ve realized that all children, no matter how far away from us they may seem, are always in the loving care of their Father-Mother God. Once the idea of Christian Science and God’s love is planted, it’s always there.
Phyllis W. Zeno is a writer and editor living in New York City.
