For Kittie Burris, laughter is much more than a natural reaction to a funny joke. It’s a healing ingredient. For example, when she told me how she came to marry her husband, Don, she recited an amusing story about how she was convinced that as a Christian Scientist, she had to marry another Christian Scientist. “I dated all the Christian Scientists,” Kittie told me. “I was engaged to a Christian Science practitioner.”
When she went to her Christian Science teacher and confided that she wanted to marry a Christian Scientist, but was “making a mess of relationships,” her teacher “started looking through a book of notes,” Kittie explained. “What are you doing?” she asked. His response: “I’m looking to see where in my teaching I should put ‘Have to marry a Christian Scientist.’ ”
A natural storyteller, Kittie went on: “It was funny, but the end of it was I married a hard-drinking Irish cop!” Yet she was sure she made the right choice. Her husband, Don, gave up smoking and drinking, fully supported her eventual decision to become a Christian Science practitioner, and later, after Kittie became a teacher of Christian Science in 1997, he went through Primary class instruction with her.
