As the Berlin-Moscow Express pulled slowly out of the Warsaw railroad station where my husband and I had got aboard, we made ourselves comfortable for the twenty-four-hour journey east. I had barely pulled my Bible, and my copy of Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, from my traveling bag, when a young Russian woman on the berth across from me peeled out of her covers, sat up, and introduced herself. One of her cheeks was badly swollen, and she hastened to explain that she was in agony from a severe toothache that had plagued her for five days, the entire time of her visit with her husband, who was on short-term assignment in Berlin. None of the medicines she had taken had given her any relief, she said.
We introduced ourselves and said we were sorry that she was not well.
My heart immediately went out to her as I recalled some difficult bouts with aching teeth when I was a teen, with no one to turn to except a dentist of whom I was deathly afraid. All that had changed when I came into Christian Science. I learned that in resolving troubles through spiritual means according to its teaching, healing of pain or other difficulties was always as close as my thought was to God. But there I was, rolling comfortably through the Polish countryside in the company of someone who was in dire need of healing. What was I going to do beyond my brief expression of sympathy?
My thoughts ran all the way from wanting to help to finding excuses for not interfering. More than once I said to myself, Here I am, a Christian Scientist, face to face with someone in pain—what am I going to do?
Presently Jesus' parable of the good Samaritan came to mind. See Luke 10:25-37. In the Gospel of Luke we have the story of a lawyer who asked Christ Jesus, "What shall I do to inherit eternal life?" At Jesus' request, the lawyer answered his own question, and the Master approved the answer—that we're to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbor as ourselves. But the lawyer then asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbour?" In response, Jesus told the parable of a traveler who was on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho when he was robbed, beaten, and wounded. Two people passed by the man, took one look, then continued their journey without offering assistance. A third man felt compassion and went out of his way to ease the man's suffering. Which of the characters in this parable was I going to be?
One of the arguments against offering help in Christian Science was the assumption that because the woman may have been an atheist, she would not be receptive to a spiritual ministry. Yet right then and there I remembered a passage from Science and Health indicating that an atheistic invalid could be healed by Christian Science. See Science and Health, pp. 139-140.
At last I closed the door on all mental arguing and turned to prayer for an answer. As I yearned to know what was right for me to do, it became clear: the woman needed a healing, and Christian Science had trained me to provide for that need. With this realization I took a deep breath and told her that I practiced spiritual healing and that I could help her if she wanted me to. She immediately accepted.
As she lay down again, I thought, "I will just pray and continue to pray until she is healed, if it takes the entire journey." At first it was a very simple prayer; a holding to spiritual facts about the nature of God as infinite Spirit, and of His child, created to reflect Him in goodness and eternal well-being. I mentally rejected the notion that God's child, His spiritual offspring, could be afflicted with pain, that there was a power or consciousness opposed to God, the one all-harmonious Mind. Other spiritual truths also poured into my thought.
I took a deep
breath and told her that
I practiced spiritual
healing and that I
could help her if she
wanted me to.
She immediately
accepted.
After some time, feelings of gratitude and joy took over as I realized, in the words of the Psalmist, "The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works." Ps. 145:9. A wonderful sense of the presence and power of God, divine Love, prevailed, and I knew that Love was tenderly enfolding us all.
I must have prayed about an hour when the conductress came to see the tickets, and our fellow traveler volunteered that she was already feeling much better. As soon as we were alone again, I continued to pray Some time later she suddenly sat up and said ecstatically, "It's all gone!" She was touching her cheek, which was no longer as swollen. "What did you do?" was the inevitable question.
At this point I introduced her to Christian Science and gave her some of the literature we had brought with us in Russian translation. She found it difficult at first to grasp the new spiritual concepts, as she had indeed, she remarked, been brought up an atheist.
There is obviously more to this story than there is space to tell in this brief article. Suffice it to say that upon arriving in Moscow, our Russian friend bounded off the train, gratefully acknowledging her spiritual healing and with a Russian translation of Science and Health among her sparse belongings.
Now that this interlude is a precious memory from months past, I am wondering what lessons can be learned from this healing.
We may know about healings in Christian Science, and we may have had some of our own. Certainly they are greatly cherished, not only for physical well-being restored but perhaps more so for the learning and spiritual growth gained in the process. The learning may have had to do with getting to know oneself spiritually, perhaps seeing the uncovering, through divine law, of undesirable traits or of emotional hurts that have been harbored for years, never really left behind entirely. Considering such experiences from a spiritually informed point of view enables us to see that they invariably involve a false concept of identity. Healing in Christian Science helps us see who we really are. And it enlarges our understanding and sense of God's goodness and dear love for all His children.
As I look again at this particular healing, a number of thoughts come to mind that I find instructive. Here was an instance of suffering that elicited a response from someone who knew about suffering but who also knew that suffering, contrary to human opinion, was not inevitable; that it could not only be alleviated but could be healed entirely by spiritual means in Christian Science.
The healing had come about through the prayer of spiritual understanding. Although asking God for help is a legitimate aspect of prayer and is quite often the very first step in turning thought to Him for healing, the prayer of spiritual understanding goes beyond sentiments of hope or faith in God —as important as these are—or a mere request for divine intervention. It requires some knowledge and conviction of the actual nature of God and of man and of the cause-effect relationship between them. It demands that the spiritual truth of creator and creation be recognized and held to in thought until healing is complete.
In the above experience, knowing the truth—consciously declaring the fundamental metaphysical facts and denying the supposed validity of suffering —brought spontaneous joy, and gratitude for an actual realization of the divine presence. Yet while denying that which was seen to have no basis in God, or Truth, was important, it was at the point of surrender to God as the one Mind, and after a personal sense of prayer was relinquished, that the healing came along. An all-encompassing sense of peace antidoted the sense of suffering, and proved conclusively, once again, that physical illness is really a mental experience that can be addressed and overcome through prayer. In the words of Mrs. Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science: "If a sense of disease produces suffering and a sense of ease antidotes suffering, disease is mental, not material. Hence the fact that the human mind alone suffers, is sick, and that the divine Mind alone heals." Science and Health, p. 270.
We know from the Gospels that Jesus told his followers to cast out devils, alias evil spirits. He once addressed and cast out a "spirit of infirmity" that had afflicted a woman for eighteen years and had kept her physically disabled. See Luke 13:11-13. This incident illustrates that the woman's illness was not what it appeared to be—a material condition over which she had no control—but was instead a false belief. Jesus proved that the woman had a divine right, hence the capacity, to be free from disabling thoughts or spirits. She responded to his understanding of her normal, spiritual state of freedom and was instantly restored to wholeness.
From my standpoint, perhaps the most crucial part of the experience with my fellow traveler was overcoming the reluctance to help. For some time the natural desire to help was neutralized by thoughts of skepticism, fear, and the human inclination not to become involved. When this mental dispute led nowhere, and I resolutely turned away from human reasoning, with its cyclical pros and cons, to God as the divine Mind that knows all things, the vision cleared, and with it came the understanding of what needed to be done. The coming to thought of the powerful symbol of goodness in the person of the good Samaritan, even though it was not acted upon immediately, was nonetheless a decisive factor in favor of taking action. Could I possibly have "passed by on the other side"? There were times in my life, to be sure, when under similar circumstances the priest and the Levite would have carried the day. What, then, made the difference in this case?
As I look back on the experience, it seems that there was a lessening of human will and a humble desire to be divinely guided. The example of the good Samaritan stands out as a shining light, a powerful reminder of the relevancy of the teachings of Jesus in a day and age when humanity so often looks to technology and material medicine to alleviate the suffering and confusion in society.
There are other vital elements in the experience, such as the wonderful, childlike receptivity of the woman to God's caring love, unimpeded by an atheistic upbringing. Hers was a thought that allowed itself to be touched by spiritual ideas.
What stands out ultimately, however, is the absence of a personal sense of either responsibility or accomplishment. The supreme willingness to let God as divine Mind govern and heal was key to the eventual lifting of pain. It was not so much one person helping another person out of a human predicament. It was the power of Love, God, being reflected in love, and in the process casting out fear and a sense of suffering. It was an opportunity to be of service in the way the Apostle Peter once expressed it. As J. B. Phillips translates: "Serve one another with the particular gifts God has given each of you, as faithful dispensers of the wonderfully varied grace of God." I Pet. 4:10.
All thy works shall praise thee, O Lord; and thy saints shall bless thee.
They shall speak of the glory of thy kingdom, and talk of thy power;
to make known to the sons of men his mighty acts,
and the glorious majesty of his kingdom.
Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,
and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.
Psalms 145:10-13
