loves color. No, she isn't an artist. She's a Christian Science healer, delighted by the wonder and beauty of the everyday world. "Color is Soul! It's expressive. It's me, part of my individuality," she said, after I oohed and aahed over various chromatic elements in her second-floor apartment on Boston's Commonwealth Avenue. (During her one-year appointment as President of The Mother Church, Mrs. Neely will be living in a Back Bay brownstone next door to Mary Baker Eddy's onetime address.) It wasn't just her sparkling green toenail polish that caught my attention. It was the painted African mask on the wall near the bay window and the red vase, purple crystal, and miniature gold orb of Jerusalem on the white mantle of the fireplace, to name just a few of the keepsakes that Neely has collected on her travels as a lecturer.
Most of all, you see color in Cindy Neely's radiant smile and warm expressive eyes, and you hear it in her calm, reassuring voice as she talks about her life of healing ministry. And her past.
"I grew up on the south side of Chicago. As a young adult I stopped going to church and had lots of problems, and I became addicted to drugs—marijuana—for two years," Neely recounted. "I was in my mid-20s, a single parent. When I was healed of the drugs, my whole life changed, and I wanted to do something for humanity, give something back to the world. I was free! I was committed to God, and I wanted to serve Him in any way possible."
