Articles

1. "I'm always searching for ways to artfully and soulfully bring spiritual concepts into public thought," artist Alex Cook says.

NOT YET ADJUSTED to the time change, I awoke early and lay listening to the rain as it fell softly on the roof and a green world of bamboo and rice paddies beyond the house. I was in the Japanese countryside about three hours by car north of Tokyo, visiting my son Andrew and wife, Kayoko.

My accomplishments were not mine; they were evidence of the strengthening of my relationship with my true Father-Mother, God. After I graduated from college, I thought I knew everything there was to know.

WHILE GROWING UP in São Paulo, Brazil, I didn't practice any particular faith. I rejected the only religion I knew, passed down from my parents, because I couldn't believe the church's teaching that man was born a sinner.

MORE THAN A FORM OF PRAYER, singing can actually teach us how to pray. In a profound way, effective healing prayer has the element of a song—the lyrics or message blending with the "spirit" or music, which gives wings to that message.

AS A FORMER UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR of Intercultural Communication, I've engaged in numerous interfaith dialogues in places I've lived or traveled within the United States, and regions such as the Middle East, as well as in Japan, my home country. While many such encounters have been very memorable and have enriched my life and my views of the world, one particular conversation has stood out to me for its beautiful simplicity.

ONE OF THE GREATEST ACTS of forgiveness I have known of in my lifetime was of a friend in Northern Ireland whose daughter was murdered by the Irish Republican Army. When interviewed by the world's press shortly after the incident, he spoke of forgiving the perpetrators, and spent the rest of his life trying to bring peace and reconciliation to Ireland.

I have given the name to all the Christian Science periodicals. The first was The Christian Science Journal,  designed to put on record the divine Science of Truth; the second I entitled Sentinel, intended to hold guard over Truth, Life, and Love; the third, Der Herold der Christian Science, to proclaim the universal activity and availability of Truth; the next I named Monitor, to spread undivided the Science that operates unspent.

In the fall of 2008, Barbara Vining, then President of The Mother Church, and Brian Talcott—both practitioners and teachers of Christian Science—held meetings in 20 cities with Christian Science practitioners, teachers, and nurses on "Embracing the Christian Science Periodicals. " From January through May of 2009, they held meetings on the same subject by invitation from branch churches at 43 churches in the US.

"TEACH ME TO LOVE" by Louise Knight Wheatley ( Journal, October 1908, p. 408) became a favorite poem of mine many years ago as I began developing my practice of healing through Christly love.