A person's life is sometimes compared to a jigsaw puzzle. Fine, if God is understood to be the designer. He always sees the picture whole. But who, at one time or another, hasn't thought that the pieces of his or her own puzzle seemed, well, puzzling? Later, though, with the perspective of experience, we can see that those pieces had a holy kind of logic to them, a seamless fit. For , one of the retrospectively "easy pieces" is the German course he took at Evanston Township High School in Illinois. One day, years later, Mr. Ferris would launch German-language lecture tours in Europe as member of The Christian Science Board of Lectureship, even giving a lecture in German in the former German colony of Namibia, in southern Africa. He and his wife, Rosemarie, who is originally from Germany, traveled on five continents, including a trip to Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw in 1969, where he gave the first Christian Science lectures behind the Iron Curtain.
The main piece of Charles Ferris's life, his practice and teaching of Christian Science healing, also took distinct shape early in life. After graduating from the University of Chicago, he served as a chaplain's assistant in the army and at that point decided to dedicate his life to the practice of prayer-based Christian Science healing. Immediately after leaving the army, Mr. Ferris opened his public practice office in Minneapolis.
Those first several years brought financial challenges. "My practice didn't grow quickly," he says. "I lived frugally, and at one point, before I was advertising my practice in the Journal, I took an early morning job with a hotel's valet service to support my practice." But Ferris stayed with the inward urge he knew was God impelled: Heal the sick, comfort the brokenhearted, help those whose life choices have missed the mark. After decades of healing and teaching hundreds how to heal effectively through spiritual treatment, he continues to practice and teach from his home base in Minneapolis—finding spiritual ideas he can turn into greater service.
