In this Sentinel Watch podcast from JSH-Online.com, adapted for print and part of a series, Jenny Sawyer talks with Amy Richmond, a Christian Science practitioner from Boston, Massachusetts, and Deborah Huebsch, a Christian Science practitioner and teacher from San Juan Capistrano, California. To listen to the podcast, as well as other podcasts in this series, please visit jsh.christianscience.com/the-omnis.
Jenny: We’re talking about what we’ll call the first of the four “omni’s,” which describe God: omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, and omni-action. And we’ll start with omnipresence, which is a really interesting one when you think about it, because even if many who believe in God wouldn’t specifically use the term omnipresence, there is this general acceptance of the idea that this divine presence really is everywhere. And yet Christian Science takes this idea of omnipresence even a step or two further, doesn’t it?
Deborah: I grew up in another faith tradition and learned about God who was good, of course. But also some of the things that happened that were attributed to God were not good. And so the understanding of God as wholly good makes omnipresence an incredibly powerful thing to think about and to understand in Christian Science.
Amy: I grew up in the Christian Science faith, and I had learned at a very young age from my parents and from Sunday School that God is omnipresent. That made a lot of sense to me. It made sense that God, good, was everywhere. Years later, I had this really interesting experience where I was driving in the car one day and I thought, “Well, I’ll turn off the radio, and I’ll pray a little bit.” So I started to pray. All of the sudden I heard this question, and I knew it came from God, and it was: “So, Amy, what does it mean that you reflect omnipresence?”
And I realized that I’d had this major misconception about myself as God’s creation. I thought, you know, God is omnipresent, but that I was just a little part of that. And I knew that couldn’t be right. In that instance, I got an enlarged sense not only of God’s omnipresence, but of my own identity as the expression of omnipresent God, good.
I don’t think that God being omnipresent means that it’s a physical thing. I think it means God is everywhere, spiritually. The Bible says that God is Spirit. We would say it’s a name for God. I got a new sense of how there is no place that I could be where good isn’t.
Jenny: What I find really comforting about understanding God as omnipresent is to realize that I’m surrounded. I am in this presence of Love. I am in what we call divine Mind. And so I must be really surrounded and at one with all the ideas that I need at any time.
And so then I’ve asked myself the question, “Well, OK, why is it sometimes then that it feels like I’m separated from God,” and I think it really comes down to fear. It was this feeling of fear standing in the way. So it wasn’t that God was somehow separate from me, delivering me the answer; God was there all along.
I know for both of you omnipresence has been really powerful for your prayers. Maybe you could comment a little bit on how this either changed the way you pray or helped you when you pray.
Deborah: For me to understand that all is good because all is God means everything. Every nook and cranny of this universe and galaxies and everywhere is filled with good. And for me to start my prayer there takes me out of whatever the problem is, whether it’s disease or whether it’s a professional problem or a relationship difficulty—understanding that God truly is everywhere. For my Christian Science practice and in my life, healing happens when I’m at one with this conscious awareness of only goodness.
Amy: I think that’s really what I would say, too; that I have a deeper sense of being totally connected to God. I’ve thought a lot about, well, what’s the point of knowing that I’m the expression of omnipresent good? And one of the things that Mary Baker Eddy wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures is, “The admission to one’s self that man is God’s own likeness sets man free to master the infinite idea” (p. 90). I think I got a better understanding of what I am as God’s own likeness. To think about being able to master the infinite idea is pretty amazing to me. It means better healing, bigger contributions to society at large. It’s just huge. I love that Mrs. Eddy wrote “the admission to one’s self.” It’s not that maybe we’re like God. We are like God! That’s a fact. And we just need to admit it to know it.
I think being Godlike means expressing and living all the qualities of God. Some of those qualities like peace and goodness, abundance, all of those things. It’s living that, expressing it.
I got a new sense of how there is no place that I could be where good isn’t.
Deborah: And because we are Godlike, doesn’t that mean that everyone else is Godlike? Doesn’t that mean that since God is everywhere, God is in those very places where there seems to be warfare or violence or hatred? Our job as Christians, it seems to me, is to have the same kind of vision that I think Jesus had, where he saw what was true and challenged evil. He saw beneath the surface of things and he drilled down to what was actually true. He did this with sinners, with sick people. He even raised the dead, because he could see the fundamental underlying reality of the omnipresence of good.
One of my favorite healings in the Bible is when there were men sitting all around in the synagogue and Jesus essentially asked a man to come forward, who had a withered hand. Jesus knew that this man was perfect, he was spiritually perfect, and so Jesus asked him to “stand forth.” What that meant to me was he was asking the man not to be afraid to stand up in the presence of goodness, of God, and then Jesus said to the man, “Stretch forth thy hand” (see Luke 6:6–10).
I’ve often thought, The man didn’t say, “Oh, I can’t do that,” or “Don’t you see, I have a withered hand and it’s been this way forever.” The man was willing to do the natural thing, which was to express his perfection, the omnipresence of perfect form and movement. And Jesus, seeing that, enabled the healing to actually happen outwardly. I think that’s the way we see omnipresence expressed in our healing work.
Jenny: I love your use of the word natural, Deborah, because there can be a feeling that it’s like we’re trying to bring God down to negotiate for us in a difficult situation, or intervene on our behalf, or fix something. And even if we’re not thinking that explicitly, that can be kind of a subtle, underlying belief. But to recognize that really here and now, there’s one reality, and we do live in the presence of God at all times, is so important. We may not feel like we’re recognizing it, just like the man with the withered hand didn’t recognize it before Jesus pointed out the way. But truly, there is just one place where we can be.
Deborah: I think there’s the sense of good being spiritual and extending through all space. How about omnipresence meaning throughout all time as well? The implications of that fact are just incredible. I had a wonderful healing when I realized that. I was raised in an abusive family and grew up severely challenged with bulimia. And it took me a long time before I could get over it.
The thing that changed that awful kind of addiction was that I began to understand that God is present throughout all time as well as all space. That meant that God had to be present when I was a child, even though it looked like there was cruelty and deprivation.
In retrospect, there were evidences of this good which shone through. For example, neighbors would be especially kind, at one point making sure I had some appropriate clothes for college. It was evidence that because good is omnipresent, God is omnipresent. That power was there then. I realized that was really the truth, instead of what this awful history was saying. And I was healed of the effects of abuse—in this case, bulimia. It was a really powerful moment for me.
Jenny: If you start to expand out and think about all the qualities that God encompasses, whether it’s love, whether it’s harmony, joy, peace—we could go on and on because God is infinite. We can see that those qualities exist through all time and all space.
Deborah: Well, yes, it gives me great comfort to know that God’s omnipresence is expressed throughout all time. That would include the future. We might be worried about what’s going to happen in the future. We might be worried about some of the global challenges that we’re all facing. But God’s omnipresence has it covered, because goodness is already in place. That’s a very comforting and a very powerful thought. Whenever I get concerned about, for example, what’s going to happen to the planet, or whatever the problem is, I just can go to the omnipresence idea and recognize that that loving presence of God is in place—past, present, and future.
Amy: And I really love to think about how the omnipresence idea applies to everything. There’s no situation that you could bring up that couldn’t be healed by understanding that God is everywhere and is only good.
Jenny: Well, that brings up an interesting question: How can we take this spiritual concept of omnipresence and have it as the foundation for our prayers when we’re praying about world issues? I’m wondering if we can talk a little bit about how we use this spiritual fact of omnipresence to help us in our prayers about the global pandemic?
Deborah: Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about that whole situation and contagion and the fear of contagion. And I was thinking in the Bible about where spiritual power was exercised to deal with the fear of contagion. For example, Jesus and the lepers. Leprosy was such a feared disease, but Jesus was so unafraid of leprosy that he touched a leper and the man was cleansed; he was free. And what was it, I’m asking myself, that made it possible for Jesus to touch a leper without fear that he would be infected by leprosy? I had to think it was his understanding of God’s all-presence, because if God is ever present, omnipresent, then there isn’t any room for anything called leprosy.
Amy: The other thing that you’re reminding me of, Deborah, is that many of us have had experiences where we have had healings of contagious disease. And I think that gives me faith and hope that there’s always an answer, that we don’t have to be afraid that something’s impossible to heal. I can say that in the past few months there have been two times where I’ve woken up, and I’m not claiming that this was COVID, but I woke up with a very sore throat. And really thinking about God’s ever-presence is what immediately healed me. So I know that God being all good, there’s always an all-good answer for us.
Jenny: It brings to mind an experience I had in college when I was an RA or resident assistant/counselor in my dorm. Everybody on my hall whom I was responsible for was coming down with a flu-type thing. I remember at the time feeling like, OK, I’m one person in all of this—what can I do? Perhaps selfishly, I started by thinking, “Well, I can at least pray for myself, because I’m not really interested in getting sick.” But, you know, what I love about prayer is it does take us beyond ourselves. I mean, it’s one of the most surefire ways to move myself to a place of unselfishness, even if that’s not my starting point.
And so in praying about it, my thoughts started to expand beyond myself and to really see that if I was claiming protection from disease for myself, based on the presence and power of God truly being all and all-encompassing, then that all-encompassing nature of good had to include everybody. It’s almost like I could feel my prayer extending to include the whole hall, the whole dorm, the whole campus, the whole world.
And it was really interesting, because not only did I not get sick, but that really seemed to mark a turning point in my dorm. Nobody else got sick. Several of the people who hadn’t been well recovered pretty quickly. I’m by no means taking personal credit, but that was a great example to me of the power of God’s omnipresence.
I’ve thought about it in the years since then of how really understanding that all-encompassing nature of good not only protects us and proves the presence of health for us, but does so for those around us as well.
I also love the fact that it’s not that we’re having to change something; we’re just getting a more correct view of God and ourselves. And you could say part of that more correct view is really understanding what it means that God is omnipresent.
Amy: That’s really good. One of my favorite stories about Mary Baker Eddy has applications to world issues today. It took place in New Hampshire and involved a farmer and his cows (see Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck, Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer, Amplified Edition, p. 177). It happened at that time that Mrs. Eddy was living in New Hampshire and there hadn’t been enough rain in the area. This neighboring farmer’s well was empty because there hadn’t been enough rain, and the cows were beginning to go dry. They weren’t able to produce any milk, because they didn’t have enough water.
One of Mary Baker Eddy’s household staff members told her about this situation. She said to the worker, “Oh! if he only knew, Love fills that well.” She’s talking about God when she says Love fills that well. The next morning the well was full, and it hadn’t rained. That, to me, is a really great example of how knowing that Love is omnipresent has healing results, and it can help our world.
Recently, as I have been praying about drought, I’ve been thinking that it’s always nice when we have a rainy day—I’m grateful for that—but that I shouldn’t be so focused on the rain as being the only way to have a solution; that there are infinite solutions from divine Mind or God. Why couldn’t we have a solution like Mary Baker Eddy did?
When you do understand that supply is omnipresent, then why couldn’t there just be enough moisture available? So I continue to pray, and I also think it’s helped me have a more expansive sense of prayer in that instead of looking to one solution, one way to solve a problem, it’s opening up my thought to a lot more good.
Deborah: I think, Amy, as you said, we don’t have to limit how things are going to be solved. The spiritual basis of that is the fact that good is infinite. There is no limit to good. It’s everywhere. And therefore it’s present. It’s right here at the door of our consciousness.
Jenny: Well, speaking of the infinite, I think there’s really no limit to what we can all learn about omnipresence. We do have to wrap things up. But this has been a wonderful, far-reaching conversation.
