Articles

I’d never heard the term “impostor syndrome” before until I attended a talk on the subject, one of a series given by my university to help graduate students cope with the stresses of graduate school. I learned that in the academic world the term is used to describe the feeling that we’re “faking it”—that we really don’t know all that we know as scholars and aren’t as smart as our intellectual accomplishments suggest.

In reviewing the Bible story of Jonah, I’ve wondered what it must have been like for him, having been swallowed by a great fish. There he was, trapped in darkness, isolated, struggling with fear and despair.

“Would you like me to pray for you?” my brother asked me as he sat down next to me. He could see that I hadn’t been feeling well throughout our morning activities on our family vacation, and he wasn’t shy about offering to help in this way.

Woven throughout the Bible are accounts of people retreating into the wilderness to find refuge from the besetments of the world. These experiences often became holy times of communion with the Divine, during which the individual was awakened and uplifted.

Mary Baker Eddy’s inspiration for these magazines came with two solid requirements: that they be “ably edited” and “kept abreast of the times” (Mary Baker Eddy, Church Manual, p. 44).

The following is an edited summary of the 2017 Annual Meeting of The Mother Church, held on June 5 in the Extension of The Mother Church and broadcast live online. To watch the full replay, visit christianscience.

Every time I attend church, I am very grateful to be there and know that healing is radiating out in so many directions. On a recent Sunday morning I was looking forward to attending church after helping out my family.

It was the fall of my eighth-grade year. That summer my family had moved almost a thousand miles from New Jersey to Missouri.

Jesus said he would found his church on the “rock,” Christ, and promised: “The gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (see Matthew 16:13–19 ). The early Christian Church certainly proved it was able to withstand relentless persecution, as it grew and demonstrated its efficacy.

Our church , a branch of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was dwindling through attrition. We were down to just a handful of members, and our spirits were flagging.