Patricia Tuttle is a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science who lives in San Francisco, California. She speaks warmly of her grandmother, who, along with regular attendance at Sunday School, helped Patricia develop her love of Christian Science.
She says that her grandmother “was a devoted Christian Science practitioner” with whom she spent most of her holidays. “And so, Christian Science and my grandmother were really the love of my life.
“When I was about six, I had an incredibly excruciating headache, and it went on most of the day. Finally, my grandmother was called for help. Instantly, the headache stopped. To this day I remember—along with the pain disappearing—the sense of happiness and well-being flooding my thought.”
What led you to go into the full-time healing practice?
We tend to think the practitioners are those individuals listed in The Christian Science Journal, but aren’t we all in the full-time practice of Christian Science the minute God’s healing love touches our hearts? Some of us advertise in the Journal, but all of us are engaged in demonstrating the truths we love. When we’re striving to let God’s thoughts motivate our actions, we’re practicing Christian Science publicly, and this may lead us to become Journal-listed at some point. It did with me.
I was living and teaching overseas in an American school for the United States Department of Defense, but my cherished desire to be a Christian Science practitioner kept presenting itself to my thought. As I contemplated this step, I felt an increasing awareness of God’s calling, and that now was the time. So about six months prior to the close of the school year, I resigned my position for the following year.
About this time a substitute teacher became available. Our principal wanted to employ her, and, as I had accumulated a lot of sick days, he suggested I make lesson plans and she could teach my class one day a week—blessing us all.
My public practice began one day a week. During those six months, I had this incredible sense of drawing closer to God and to our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy. I felt like a member of her household being taught by her—studying the Bible and her textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. I also devoured her other writings compiled in the book called Prose Works.
My practice began to grow—not because I was telling anybody I was in the practice, but because when we are learning to reflect Love and yearn to utilize this love to help others, God brings together supply and demand, as He brought together Paul and Ananias (see Acts 9:10–18).
Mrs. Eddy points out, “ ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself’ has daily to be exemplified; …” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 7). Our neighbor is not a material object outside of divine Love—nor are we. Our neighbor is God’s beloved idea within Love’s consciousness, where we all “live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
A practitioner’s role is to bear witness to this truth. Loving God, Christian Science, and our neighbor is what makes our practice grow. The receptive heart is drawn to this reflected love.
There’s God and His idea, period! When we begin to be conscious of this, we begin to be conscious of our oneness with God. Surely this is what Jesus meant when he said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30). He didn’t mean he was God; he meant that he and God were one in being.
What do you feel is most essential for someone to be a successful healer?
Each of us needs to edit our thinking daily, to let go of the personal sense of self—the human mind and its opinions and will—to surrender, quietly, those false characteristics, in order that the manifestation of God can shine through, blessing ourselves and others.
In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy gives the analogy of the windowpane: “The manifestation of God through mortals is as light passing through the window-pane. The light and the glass never mingle …” (p. 295). Just as the glass must be transparent for the light to shine through, so the practitioner must be the transparency that allows the Christ, the manifestation of God, to bring to light the patient’s already perfect selfhood as God knows him or her. God is the healer, not the practitioner.
In Christian Science, we perceive our nature as God’s reflection as we learn to be still and listen to God.
When I was a very young child, about three or so, I learned a lesson about not asserting myself personally in trying to solve a problem. I spent a holiday with my grandmother, who was looking after my uncle’s parrot, Laura, and Laura made a lot of noise. I didn’t like that noise at all, so I made a lot of noise back, trying to silence her. It must have been dreadful for my grandmother to have this little three-year-old squawking louder than the parrot, and the noise getting louder and louder. She must really have been praying!
I’m told I finally got into my grandmother’s chair, and, as I had seen her do, I grabbed Science and Health (apparently holding it upside-down, very tightly). I closed my eyes, but the most important thing was, I closed my mouth. The parrot was miraculously still, and so was I.
Mortal mind never has power to squawk, to be a drama, to create chaos, sickness, or sin, because it is a lie. In fact, error is already a lie before the practitioner is called. The practitioner’s duty and joy is to prove this by drawing so close to God that the belief in evil’s reality yields to truth. The Bible instructs us to “be still, and know that I am God” (Psalms 46:10).
Another important thing to remember in giving treatment is to maintain the calm conviction that God and His idea are right here, no matter what the material senses seem to be saying. In Yosemite National Park there’s a lake called Mirror Lake because it’s so still that you can hardly tell the difference between the real object and the reflection.
The reflection is perfect because there is no agitation in the lake. The lake is absolutely still. In Christian Science, we perceive our nature as God’s reflection as we learn to be still and listen to God.
Is there any particular metaphysical concept that has been especially meaningful to you?
Perhaps one of the most important concepts that always comes to my thought is, “God able is / To raise up seed—in thought and deed” (Mary Baker Eddy, Poems, p. 79). To realize that no matter what the situation—whether it’s a decision that has to be made or something that seems hopeless—this realization that God “able is … in thought and deed” is very valuable to me.
Also, some weeks ago I was pondering this statement in No and Yes: “Man outlives finite mortal definitions of himself, according to a law of ‘the survival of the fittest’ ” (Mary Baker Eddy, p. 25). This is such a wonderful statement! Whatever mistakes—whatever seems to go wrong—we outlive those mortal beliefs.
What role does the Christ play in healing?
Christ is our very nature. In Unity of Good Mrs. Eddy says: “Human beings are physically mortal, but spiritually immortal. The evil accompanying physical personality is illusive and mortal; but the good attendant upon spiritual individuality is immortal. Existing here and now, this unseen individuality is real and eternal” (p. 37). This unseen individuality is the Christ—our spiritual identity as God’s beloved child. This is the Principle and idea that is one.
We thrive in adversity, because there are not two states of existence. There is just one, and we can know this.
When Mrs. Eddy is explaining the Christ, she says, “If we say that the sun stands for God, then all his rays collectively stand for Christ, and each separate ray for men and women” (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 344). This shows our spiritual relationship to God.
The Christ is what heals. Mrs. Eddy uses the word Christ in different ways to bring out the different aspects of the Christ, but the Christ is what saves—the Christ-idea that comes to us to break through a mortal sense of things.
Much in the world argues that matter is real and can block out God, that matter is substantial and determines health. How can we challenge that belief?
This is nothing new. The argument is from the same mortal mind that humanity has always been dealing with. Mrs. Eddy refers to this in Science and Health and in her other writings. For example, in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, she says, “Like the verdure and evergreen that flourish when trampled upon, the Christian Scientist thrives in adversity; his is a life-lease of hope, home, heaven; …” (p. 139). Can you think of anything more contemporary today?
We thrive in adversity, because there are not two states of existence. There is just one, and we can know this. The unreal arguments of mortal mind would masquerade in our thought as the real and powerful. But we have the resources to prove their unreality. We have to ask ourselves, “What are we accepting?”
Mrs. Eddy says, “The substance, Life, intelligence, Truth, and Love, which constitute Deity, are reflected by His creation; and when we subordinate the false testimony of the corporeal senses to the facts of Science, we shall see this true likeness and reflection everywhere” (Science and Health, p. 516).
We must learn to face these aggressive pictures about problems in our world not with a humanized concept of God as limited and finite. We can arm ourselves with the facts of Science, which are recorded in the Bible and in Science and Health, and which reveal omnipotent goodness.
How do we “subordinate” them “to the facts of Science”?
First, we have to know the facts, accept and ponder them; then love them, and cling to them as we are taught and as Jesus did. But then how does light subordinate darkness? It subordinates darkness by being light.
And how do we subordinate mortal mind? By being who we are spiritually, by allowing God’s thoughts, God’s ideas, to be reflected as our very mentality so that our consciousness of God’s presence becomes the light, the truth of our day.
One summer I had a job at The Mother Church. My Christian Science teacher was Editor of the periodicals. One particular lunch hour, I was so emboldened that I went to his office. His secretary ushered me in, and I heard myself say, “Sir, why aren’t we progressing in the Christian Science movement?” There I was, a young person looking at him with fiery eyes, and he looked at me quietly for a few moments.
Finally he said, “Well, my dear, I think some of us are!”
Our real mission is not just healing sickness, but overcoming sin.
And then he said something that I have never forgotten: “You may be thinking nothing is going on in an individual or a situation, but you don’t know the tears that individual may be shedding, the struggles for mastering the very thing that you are criticizing. You don’t know how near that individual is to victory.”
I had an experience as a chairman of a committee where every idea that was brought up was blocked by an individual in a way that was unpleasant. He was very experienced, and I was young and inexperienced. The situation kept getting worse, and finally I thought, “Why should I be going through this? I’m going to resign.”
Then the Christly thought came: “What if Jacob had been on your committee at the time he cheated his brother? What would you have seen?” As you know, Jacob stole his brother Esau’s inheritance by tricking their father (see Genesis 27:1–38).
I thought, “I certainly would have seen that he cheated his brother, and I would have had a point of view about it!” But then the thought came, “Would you have been so spiritually sensitive, so quietly listening that you would have detected the little tiny seed of spirituality that was beginning to grow in his experience and transform his life?”
I realized that my need was not to get off the committee, but to exercise spiritual sense, which is defined as “a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (Science and Health, p. 209). Spiritual sense makes us conscious of the good that is going on, even when it appears to be absent or invisible.
This doesn’t mean we ignore evil; it means that evil loses its power to be a reality to us, little by little. We’re here to bear witness to the good—to God’s allness—because every individual, every human being has that seed of spirituality. Our role is to let the Christ bring it into evidence.
What guidance would you offer to someone who is just starting out in the practice?
First of all, being Journal-listed is a sacred step, but it isn’t a “big step.” When we’ve been serving God, then Journal-listing is a natural next step in serving Him more. The quality of our thought determines the quality of our practice. Our real mission is not just healing sickness, but overcoming sin.
I pray to be brought together with individuals who are searching for something more than just a quick fix in matter. My goal is to “give a cup of cold water” (see Science and Health, p. 570) to those who will want to carry forward God’s great cause of salvation.
When starting out in the practice, we may feel that we need a huge understanding of Christian Science, but no matter how long we have been practicing this Science of being, we are still beginners. The disciples were beginners. Mrs. Eddy’s students hadn’t even finished class when they used the little they had learned to help someone else.
Mrs. Eddy spoke of herself as bringing “crumbs fallen from this table of Truth” (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 106). Not the whole loaf, mind you, just crumbs. Long after she had become the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, she considered herself a beginner in this Science—not knowing more than the “ABC’s” (see We Knew Mary Baker, Expanded Edition, Volume II, p. 553). But what she didn’t know and hadn’t yet demonstrated didn’t prevent her from doing God’s work.
So often when I have been struggling with a problem and have just gained some spiritual insight, the phone rings and there is someone asking for the very truth that is freeing me.
Not long ago, for example, the telephone rang at 2:00 a.m. All I could hear on the other end of the line was, “Please help me.” The individual was obviously in great pain. I reached out to God, Mind, and began to declare out loud some truths from the Bible and Science and Health that came to thought.
Even though the patient continued to exhibit intense pain and fear, I would hear, “Oh, I love Christian Science so much. Oh, I love Christian Science so much!” So there was a sense of the patient reaching for the Christ. This gave me courage, and as we continued together the individual began to repeat the words with me until, little by little, freedom came.
Is there any greater happiness than helping another awaken to the Christ? I think any practitioner can say with Isaiah, “I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send … ? Then said I, Here am I; send me” (Isaiah 6:8).
