I am a composer, conductor, and pianist. The week before a big concert, where I was to conduct an orchestra and seven solo singers, intense symptoms of an ear infection appeared in my right ear. There was pressure and excruciating pain, and my hearing in the affected ear was considerably reduced. At the time, I was in the middle of intensive daily rehearsals that required I work up to six hours at a stretch. I felt completely overwhelmed, and called a Christian Science practitioner for help.
The practitioner suggested I take as my remedy “a high attenuation of truth” (Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 153). He reminded me that the appearance of symptoms of a sick ear was not from God, divine Truth, and therefore was illusory, an utterly false claim. He also used the example of Beethoven to make the point that hearing is not a physical attribute, but a spiritual one, having nothing at all to do with the material apparatus of the mortal ear.
When I started to state my concern that an ongoing infection might permanently damage my hearing, the practitioner, with the intent of rousing my thought, very firmly and clearly pointed out the choice that I had before me. “Chad,” he said, “you can either take that high attenuation of truth, or you can go to the doctor and get a penicillin shot. It’s up to you.”
I remember these words clearly because they were the precise words that broke the mesmerism of the claim—they woke me up to the choice before me between a spiritual approach to healing and employing material methods; they made it possible for me to choose aright. While I considered my situation, I received a clear directive, a spiritual intuition, asserting that taking a drug would be, at best, a temporary fix, and that if the root of the problem, which was wholly and purely mental, was not addressed, it would certainly appear again and have to be dealt with down the road. I wanted to deal with the false claim now, not later. Once I made this decision—to rely entirely on prayer and not on material means—I felt an inner peace and confidence, and a determination to face down the false claim. I would be a warrior for Truth.
The practitioner assured me that he would pray with me right through the evening of the concert. As God’s spiritual expression, he told me, I would have all the energy and poise I needed, and I would hear everything. He reminded me too that I could be grateful for this opportunity to demonstrate Truth.
During the rehearsals that followed, I invariably completely forgot about my so-called condition. I was aware of symptoms only in the downtime between rehearsals. Those symptoms seemed overwhelming at times, and were particularly insistent during the night. Yet none of the musicians or singers I was working with during the day had any idea of the challenge I was facing.
I called the practitioner for additional treatment through prayer the afternoon of the concert, and I started to complain to him about the persistence and severity of the pain. But he stopped me immediately and assured me that I could “rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good” (Science and Health, p. 393).
That evening, at the concert itself, I had all the energy I could ever want. And more important, I was conscious to a greater extent than ever before that my fellow musicians and I weren’t making the music on our own, separate from our creator. Instead, we were bearing witness to and expressing the beauty and harmony of God’s nature. As a result, the music-making had a natural precision and ease and rightness to it that are difficult to describe. The concert was a stunning success. Everybody felt it.
It took several more days, however, for the symptoms of the claim to clear up. At one point, there was a discharge from the affected ear, and again the temptation to go see a doctor—rather than trust God—presented itself; I had to rouse myself and renew my determination to see a wholly scientific demonstration through to the end.
After ten days or so, the symptoms completely left. It was then that I began to notice something remarkable: The hearing in my right ear, which had always been noticeably less acute than that of my left ear because of an ear infection I had when I was about eleven years old, had improved dramatically. I was hearing with a new depth and accuracy and dimensionality. I was able to discern individual voices within a complex musical passage with such clarity that it was almost as if I could “see” the shape and texture of the individual phrases, as if they were visible objects.
This brought to mind something Mrs. Eddy said in the textbook: “As mortals gain more correct views of God and man, multitudinous objects of creation, which before were invisible, will become visible” (Science and Health, p. 264). I am reminded too of Mrs. Eddy’s definition of ears in the Glossary of Science and Health: “Not organs of the so-called corporeal senses, but spiritual understanding” (p. 585).
Certainly my demonstration, through the choice to stand uncompromisingly in the truth against the material evidence—and with the clear conviction and support of the practitioner—has deepened my spiritual understanding, and accelerated my growth as a student of Christian Science.
Chad Hardin
Guilford, Connecticut, US
