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The Sea Turtles Recently during a stay at a beach resort I saw a sign saying, “It is turtle season again, so please close the blinds at sundown. ” Of course, I complied.

Thought will finally be understood and seen in all form, substance, and color, but without material accompaniments.   — Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures , p.

I could sense the grief a friend felt as she recalled the days of church services filled with members, lots of children in the Sunday School, and a packed church parking lot. But afterward, I felt a need to answer what has been a question for me as well—What happened? Why aren’t churches as full now as they used to be?  There are plenty of reasonable explanations for the decline in the numbers attending church.

Years ago my wife and I traveled to the state of Washington to spend the summer as campground hosts at Mount Rainier National Park so that I could make the two-day climb of the mountain. As a 30-year-plus resident of Colorado, I’d lived “at altitude”—most recently at 9,200 feet on a mountain near Denver.

I’ve always been deeply grateful that I was born into a home where Mary Baker Eddy was revered and Christian Science was studied. Our family had many proofs of its healing power.

Like Mary Baker Eddy, I too am a daughter of New England. I grew up in Massachusetts, and vacationed in New Hampshire and Maine.

I love Mrs. Eddy’s understanding of God as Father-Mother; that Jesus Christ is not God in a human form, but is the Son of God, as Jesus himself said in the Bible.

Mary Baker Eddy’s single-minded willingness and desire to obey God has anchored my own life. Although it was difficult for many of my friends to comprehend, I was raised in a household without medicine, and, much more important, without fear.

We acknowledge God’s forgiveness of sin in the destruction of sin and the spiritual understanding that casts out evil as unreal. But the belief in sin is punished so long as the belief lasts.

The Mother Church receives many appreciative letters and e-mails each year from new members of the Church. Nathan Talbot, the Clerk of The Mother Church, received the following e-mail from a new member, a former  Trappist monk who is currently employed in environmental services at a hospital and is aspiring to be a Christian Science nurse.