Articles

I TOOK MY FIRST DANCE class when I was six, and fell in love with dancing. As a senior in high school I was faced with the age-old question that visits every dancer—should I dance or go to college? My parents, quite literally, dragged me kicking and screaming through the college application process.

CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MET ME where I was in life at a time when I most needed direction. At eighteen, after years of emotional turmoil and feeling unloved, I left home and found myself alone in Philadelphia searching for answers.

WHEN I WAS A FRESHMAN in high school, my family moved to Scottsdale, Arizona. I got a part-time job working at a drug store on Indian School Road and every time I went to work I would pass this place with a sign out front that read, "Christian Science Church.

AFTER 26 YEARS OF MARRIAGE, my husband passed on unexpectedly. And although we'd been having difficulties in our relationship for the previous decade, I was feeling a greater sense of hopefulness in their resolution before his passing.

"THANKS, BUT WE NEED the strength of 10 .

WHEN I WAS IN SUNDAY SCHOOL, I had a teacher who stressed a point that has stayed with me all my life. Our class was at that wonderful age when "Why?" seemed to be our standard response to everything he said.

YEARS AGO A HIGH SCHOOL swim team in our area always performed exceptionally well. One or two swimmers on that team consistently came in first during local, district, or state meets.

THE STRATEGIC PLANNING professional who was meeting with the Board of the nonprofit organization I was serving on told us kindly but bluntly, "Your organization has a completely unsustainable business model. It's amazing that you've raised this much money each year to support the organization, but this can't be done year after year.

As an active portion of one stupendous whole, goodness identifies man with universal good. Thus may each member of this church rise above the oft-repeated inquiry, What am I? to the scientific response: I am able to impart truth, health, and happiness, and this is my rock of salvation and my reason for existing—Mary Baker Eddy ( The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p.

MARY BAKER EDDY LOVED her country, the United States, and revered the "heroes and heroines" who sacrified to establish its democratic ideals and religious liberty. Yet her 1886 Fourth of July Independence Day comments, which began with patriotism, quickly came to focus in on the critical needs of the Christian Science movement.