LATE ON A WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON in Oslo, Norway, with the promise of flowers breaking the gray shadows of winter, four Norwegian members of The Mother Church had come to Oslo to meet with three representatives of The Christian Science Publishing Society—Leide Lessa, managing editor of The Herald of Christian Science, Irmela Wigger, a Christian Science practitioner and teacher from Hamburg, Germany, and myself—to discuss a new publishing strategy and the future of the Norwegian Herald. We met in a small hotel meeting room because a year earlier members had closed the church in Oslo, sold the building, and disbanded as a Christian Science Society.
Although it was not on the agenda, Leide opened the meeting with brief readings from the Bible and Science and Health. We then sang a Mary Baker Eddy hymn from the new Christian Science Hymnal Supplement ("Satisfied," No. 447), joined together in silent prayer, and prayed aloud the Lord's Prayer. Then, quite spontaneously, each one shared a significant testimony of healing: a seriously sprained ankle healed quickly through Christian Science treatment; a challenge getting to a Christian Science Association harmoniously resolved; protection from injury following a bad fall; and how one individual found Christian Science. Everyone expressed their deep gratitude for having Christian Science in their lives. We sang another hymn and continued with the originally intended purpose of the meeting.
There had not been a Sunday service or a Wednesday testimony meeting anywhere in the whole country of Norway in over a year. Yet, in a small hotel meeting room, a true sense of Church was blossoming. Not of church that is housed within walls, or built by human hands, but the Church that Mary Baker Eddy described in the Glossary of Science and Health: "The structure of Truth and Love; whatever rests upon and proceeds from divine Principle.
