It was the winter of 1980-81, and we were students in southern Poland. The weather was bleak and cold; the political climate was the same. The anti-Communist movement known as Solidarity was just gaining ground, and all our friends were exhibiting a mix of faint hope and great fear. The Soviet Union had responded to Solidarity with threats and a dwindling supply of foodstuffs. While the shelves in the grocery stores had never boasted a Western availability of products even in the best of times, by that winter there was scarcity everywhere. Even the black market dried up, and it was not unusual for my wife to spend three or four hours in a line waiting to buy bread. We often went to bed hungry, and were losing weight. On the street, there were rumors that the Soviets had tanks on the Polish borders, that the secret police had doubled the number of informers, and that at any moment the hard-liners would crack down.
It was a time in which we began to turn more deeply to God in prayer than we had at any other point in our lives. We prayed not only for our own well-being and safety, but also for that of our friends and neighbors.
One dark and cold morning when the community fears seemed highest, I found an arresting statement by Mary Baker Eddy in her 1895 Dedicatory Sermon for The Mother Church. She wrote: "The real house in which 'we live, and move, and have our being' is Spirit, God, the eternal harmony of infinite Soul. The enemy we confront would overthrow this sublime fortress, and it behooves us to defend our heritage." Pulpit and Press, p. 2.
