One evening our preschooler went to a birthday party at a children's entertainment center where kids climb, slide, and swing. Some children, however, were running wildly through the play area, and a bigger boy slammed into our son, throwing him hard to the floor. The bigger boy simply rubbed his shoulder and ran off. But as I knelt beside our son and lifted him into my arms, he was stiff and unresponsive and his face was a strange color. Our son's condition was frightening to me, and to calm myself I began saying out loud "the scientific statement of being" from Science and Health: "There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual" (p. 468). At this point he caught his breath and began to cry. He had difficulty walking, and he had a large bump on the back of his head. To calm him I sang hymns with words written by Mrs. Eddy.
Before the party I had been praying for a deeper understanding that man is solely spiritual and not physical. I had read this statement in Unity of Good by Mrs. Eddy: "Spiritual phenomena never converge toward aught but infinite Deity" (p. 10). "Spiritual phenomena never converge . . . ." I said this statement out loud to our son, and held mentally to the fact that the other boy and our son were both spiritual phenomena, spiritual ideas, in divine Mind, God. Mind always intelligently controls its ideas, so there is never a collision within this Mind. There were several Christian Scientists in our party, and I greatly appreciated the prayerful support I felt from these friends. But our son continued to cry loudly and for an unusually long time, and he seemed so uncomfortable that I decided to drive him home.
The swelling on our son's head was
gone, and he was able to walk normally.
