"AS A CHILD I GREW UP HERE, and this fountain was my playground," Jacqueline Woodley said, gesturing beyond the long reflecting pool beside her. "I threw my little coins in this water right here where we stand. And several years later on my journey, I'm back again. Can you believe it?"
Back again, one early summer day. This time for the TMC Youth Open House on the same church plaza where Ms. Woodley remembers cooling off as a young girl.
But today, Ms. Woodley and her friend Laureatha Duncan, who invited her a few months ago to The Mother Church for her first Christian Science service, represent not so much the youth, but the many "youthful thinkers" that the TMC Youth team also saw at their Open House on Sunday, and regularly engage on their website, tmcyouth.com.
Both Ms. Woodley and Ms. Duncan, neighbors since childhood in the Roxbury section of Boston, were attending their first "Annual Meeting weekend" and planned to attend the Annual Meeting on Monday.
At the Open House the two ladies mingled among children, their faces painted patterns of bright yellows, reds, and oranges by volunteers, and with the teens and other adults sipping juice packs and chewing on chocolate brownies and candy bars offered by the TMC Youth team and The Mother Church's newly-arrived summer interns. But the hosts were mostly there to answer questions about the website and get feedback on its content. "A lot of people were interested in the media things on the website—the new Bible Lesson video snippets and the college-focused podcasts 'time4thinkers,'" said Dawn-Marie Cornett, who's in charge of Christian Science Organizations and intern support. "People would stop us and say they loved the TMC Youth site and how happy they were that it was addressing the needs of young people." (To access time4thinkers, go to time4thinkers.com, or find the link to the site on tmcyouth.com)
Likewise, Ms. Duncan took the opportunity to express to those she met her enthusiasm for the religion she began to embrace about a year ago. "I'm telling you, I like Science and Health ... I liek the teachings, and I want to learn how to do the healing that Mary Baker Eddy did. It's so uplifting—a woman of her time doing what she did."
Nearby, others from the community relaxed and played on the expanse of lawn in front of the Church Extension, or stopped to listen to the talented young vocalists and musicians invited to perform at the Open House. For a few minutes, an international tour group of bicyclists stopped on the plaza with their guide and took in the happy gathering.
After all, what better way to spend a Sunday afternoon.
