Articles

SOMETHING IN A NAME "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.

LATE ON A WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON in Oslo, Norway, with the promise of flowers breaking the gray shadows of winter, four Norwegian members of The Mother Church had come to Oslo to meet with three representatives of The Christian Science Publishing Society—Leide Lessa, managing editor of The Herald of Christian Science, Irmela Wigger, a Christian Science practitioner and teacher from Hamburg, Germany, and myself—to discuss a new publishing strategy and the future of the Norwegian Herald. We met in a small hotel meeting room because a year earlier members had closed the church in Oslo, sold the building, and disbanded as a Christian Science Society.

1. Shirley Paulson began an earnest study of the Bible when she started teaching Sunday School.

ONE SUMMER EVENING at Pacific Beach as I paddled back into the surf to catch another wave, I noticed a fellow surfer riding toward me in a classic soul-arch stance: upright, back arched, chest out, hips forward, like a matador when a bull makes a pass. The surfer's technique was unlabored and elegant, like nothing I'd ever seen before.

I HAD, OF COURSE, SEEN REPORTS about the high rate of Palestinian civilian casualties during the intense fighting last year in Gaza. But the human side of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suddenly came into sharper focus when a college classmate of mine lost two brothers there—gunned down as they attempted to return home with their father during a planned lull in the fighting.

The Journal receives a number of contributions that, because of space constraints, we can't publish in full. In these pages, however, we can offer excerpts that we found inspiring and insightful—some spiritual "nuggets" worth tucking into thought.

WHEN ASKED, "WHY DO YOU RELY ON Christian Science for healing instead of medicine?" I immediately recall my first healing. When I was three, I had an ear infection that my dad felt should be medically treated.

MY FATHER WAS usually a snazzy dresser. However, in his free time, he preferred a pair of old overalls for digging in his garden or taking me on blueberry-picking jaunts in the woods.

IMAGINE GROWING UP as a child without fear, free to push beyond limitations, having complete confidence that God, being divine, all-powerful, ever-present Love, is always there to protect us and that suffering is not God's will. And then imagine this confidence being played out in immediate healings through my own prayers—at age seven, after falling on my glass jar of spiders, which broke into many pieces; at age eight, when I was stung by a swarm of bees one summer at Girl Scout camp; and at age ten, when someone accidentally poured a boiling liquid on my leg.

THERE IS A JAPANESE SAYING, Shoshin wasurezu, which roughly translates as "don't forget your original motivating spark. " Shoshin literally means "first heart.