In 1955, before leaving home for employment in a distant town, an overnight train journey away, I applied for membership in The Mother Church. I had grown up attending a Christian Science Sunday School while living in Plymouth, Devon, England. As I left for my job, at the age of 17, my family waved goodbye at the train station, telling me I would probably stop attending Sunday School now that I didn’t have them to take me along anymore.
How wrong they were! Wearing this “invisible badge of honor” across my heart, my membership in The Mother Church, I went to great lengths to get myself to a distant Sunday School in Barnet, in the Greater London area. In order to do this, I had to connect between two bus services. This was more than a one-hour journey away, which caused great interest among my fellow work students. We all lived together in a very old many-roomed mansion, within walking distance of our place of employment. Our cook always kept my noontime dinner hot in the oven until I returned.
One time, the rest of the fellows I lived with held a meeting while I was out, and when I got back, they requested that I explain why “going to church” every week, no matter what the weather, was so important to me. Their enthusiasm and interest was initially a real surprise. But I realized that my commitment to go to church must have explained to them why I did not smoke or drink or use bad language, or any drugs, which were all too common in our engineering work environment.
