, Manager of Christian Science Reading Room Activities, sat down with Christian Science practitioners and teachers and to discuss several challenges Reading Rooms are facing. Last year, Karen visited over 60 Reading Rooms in the United States and London. Here are a few excerpts from their conversation. You can also listen to the complete discussion in a three-part video series: Videos addressing key issues in Reading Rooms — Segment 1, Segment 2, Segment 3.
Karen McCoy: Probably the most frequently stated problem is that there are not many people walking through Reading Room doors. Some librarians ... seem to feel that we are invisible to the public, and some say that people will walk by and read what's in the window, but rarely do they walk through the door. Is it that people aren't interested in Christian Science?
Leigh Daugherty: When I was visiting Reading Rooms, we were so struck by the promise that we saw. We saw wonderful Reading Rooms and people that just loved being there, and yet they were agonizing over the feeling that they had so much to give and so little response to what they had to give. Coming back after one of the trips, Karen and I were speaking about the words of Jesus, and the Sermon on and the Mount stood out to me so much, where he was saying, "Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on an hill cannot be hid" (Matt. 5:14). . . . What is that hill? We can think of the Reading Room as a city that is set on that hill, but what is the hill that it's set on? Isn't it the love of God for his idea man? The way that Christ Jesus brought that unity of God and man forward. The way Mary Baker Eddy was led, and Science and Health was dictated to her to bring that love forward, and that it cannot be hid. The next verse speaks about how you don't light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick. I think that many of these people were feeling that their light was under a bushel—that they had so much appreciation for the love of God for man, and so much conviction that Christian Science was the answer, was "the light of the world," but not seeing the response. It was so clear that a bushel sometimes is what we put over ourselves. It isn't just the carnal mind imposing it on us; it's sense of yielding to those impressions and feeling belittled in the presence of it; feeling like nobody wants what we have to give. Just feeling small, alone in the face of this divide. And the answer as I've been working with it since our visits is so much more faith in that hill supporting the Reading Room, supporting that light being seen. We heard so many nice experiences about people who really had gotten a vision; a clear sense on a particular day as they were working that this truth was desired, was sought after, and saw the response to that as they were handling their own sense of belittled alienation. . . . I've seen that so often myself. As you are clearing away your sense of being small, and seeing the vastness of the Truth that is speaking, then suddenly the results are there.
