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Back in our early twenties, my wife and I moved from Boston back to our native Albany, New York, area. We brought with us our young dog, Cannon—how we loved that dog!  I hadn’t found employment yet, but a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, nearby had set aside funds to paint the exterior of their building.

I greatly enjoyed reading an interview about The Christian Science Monitor in the June 2016 Journal. The Monitor ’s principled standard of striving to report unadulterated news encourages idea-based solutions for global human needs.

“God is Love” ( I John 4:8 ) is displayed on the wall in most Churches of Christ, Scientist—usually behind the Readers’ platform. In the Glossary of Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy includes a definition of Church that begins by identifying it as “the structure of Truth and Love” ( p.

This author writes, “Jesus couldn’t have fed the multitude while accepting the limitation of having only five loaves and two fishes. Similarly, we can’t escape our problems if we’re convinced that we’re firmly stuck in them.”

I’d never heard the term “impostor syndrome” before until I attended a talk on the subject, one of a series given by my university to help graduate students cope with the stresses of graduate school. I learned that in the academic world the term is used to describe the feeling that we’re “faking it”—that we really don’t know all that we know as scholars and aren’t as smart as our intellectual accomplishments suggest.

In reviewing the Bible story of Jonah, I’ve wondered what it must have been like for him, having been swallowed by a great fish. There he was, trapped in darkness, isolated, struggling with fear and despair.

“Would you like me to pray for you?” my brother asked me as he sat down next to me. He could see that I hadn’t been feeling well throughout our morning activities on our family vacation, and he wasn’t shy about offering to help in this way.

Woven throughout the Bible are accounts of people retreating into the wilderness to find refuge from the besetments of the world. These experiences often became holy times of communion with the Divine, during which the individual was awakened and uplifted.

Mary Baker Eddy’s inspiration for these magazines came with two solid requirements: that they be “ably edited” and “kept abreast of the times” (Mary Baker Eddy, Church Manual, p. 44).

The following is an edited summary of the 2017 Annual Meeting of The Mother Church, held on June 5 in the Extension of The Mother Church and broadcast live online. To watch the full replay, visit christianscience.