Of Good Report

Lois Carlson, a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science from Chicago, participated in a JSH-Online live chat titled, “The Christ-power behind forgiveness. ” This excerpt from the chat has been adapted for publication.

While I was attending a Christian Science testimony meeting one evening, there was a period when no one stood up to testify. I wondered why we were all there that night.

Until recently our Christian Science branch church had a bunch of wonderful kids who preferred to play in childcare on Wednesday nights rather than attend the Wednesday evening testimony meetings. The “regulars” were four girls—Amelia, Danika, Ellen, and Michaela.

The town of Norwood, a working-class suburb of Boston, held its 11th annual street fair in early September 2013, and I had an opportunity once again to volunteer at our Christian Science Reading Room’s table. In real estate it is said that location, location, location is everything, and our Reading Room has a prime spot on Main Street, where there is an abundance of business and pedestrian traffic.

When our Christian Science chaplain left the interfaith body at the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island about nine years ago, my church wanted me to step in. I was happy to accept, since I’d served in another interfaith group.

I was going through the Christian Science Bible Lesson-Sermon in French with a voice coach around 10:30 one morning when I found I had to stop what I was doing to write down a thought that would not let me alone: “There is nothing outside of Mind. ” At around one o’clock that afternoon my phone rang.

My three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter had stayed overnight at my home, but never for five days. By the third day she was beginning to be a bit weepy about missing Mommy and Daddy and was getting generally grumpy, including about going to church, which she had attended only once before.

When praying the Lord’s Prayer every morning, I enfold the community in this prayer, knowing that God is not just my Father, but our Father—the Father of all the dear people in our country. I acknowledge our true identity as children of God, and that His children express honesty, gentleness, usefulness, kindness, and purity of thought.

Tema is a harbor town in Ghana, where I have a home. The route I take to church in Tema takes you up a little hill, and when you round the corner at the top of the hill, you face the Atlantic Ocean.

A black woman in the South, during the years of segregation, taught this writer a powerful lesson in the true meaning of Church.