WITNESS TO THE CHRIST

MARY TEN EYCK has lived in St. Louis for the last 19 years. She and her husband, Scott, have two adult children—their son, who lives in Dallas with his wife, and their daughter, who lives in Boston. Mary speaks with great tenderness of her childhood and of her parents' devotion to Christian Science. Even though the family home was some distance from the closest Church of Christ, Scientist, each Sunday while she was growing up her parents would faithfully drive one hour each way to church so that Mary and her siblings could attend Sunday School.

On the way to church, the children would talk with their parents and grandmother—who accompanied them—about that week's Bible Lesson. On the way home, they'd talk about what they'd learned in Sunday School. Mary says that even after busy days, her mother would gladly read to her from the Bible and Science and Health and from the Christian Science Sentinel. All this, plus other opportunities that her parents provided, helped lay a strong foundation of love for Christian Science.

Mary first publicly advertised her practice of Christian Science healing in the Journal in 2002. She became a teacher of Christian Science in 2006.

ROSALIE DUNBAR: Clearly, a willingness to serve God is central to those thinking about going into the public practice of Christian Science healing. Mary, would you elaborate a bit on that as it relates to your own experience?

MARY TEN EYCK: It's essential to be willing, to be humble. When I was considering advertising in the Journal, I so valued this passage from the Bible: "He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" [Micah 6:8]. That enabled me to see that as God's idea I was spiritually equipped to do whatever He was unfolding for me. My willingness to serve God was really the expression of my unity with God as His reflection. I felt a special closeness to God as this idea of the public practice became clearer to me. It was a very sweet time of quiet communion with God, trusting Him to lead and guide me.

ROSALIE DUNBAR: So it's important to have the willingness "to walk humbly with thy God," to know that you can trust God to help, no matter what kind of call for healing you receive.

MARY TEN EYCK: Absolutely. In that respect, another Bible passage that was especially meaningful in those early years of the practice was the account of the widow who comes to the prophet Elisha for help. She is desperate for money to feed her sons. Elisha asks her, "What hast thou in the house?" And she replies, "Thine handmaid hath not any thing in the house, save a pot of oil." He then says, "Go, borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbors, even empty vessels; borrow not a few." When she has filled all the vessels that her sons could find with the oil that flowed abundantly, Elisha tells her to sell the oil to pay her debt. She had all good—right there, right then—always [see II Kings 4:1-7].

I love that account because it is a reminder of the spiritual fact that as God's reflection, man—and this term refers to both male and female—includes all good. In fact, I often thought about Mary Baker Eddy's definition of oil in the Glossary of Science and Health: "Consecration; charity; gentleness; prayer; heavenly inspiration" [p. 592]. Those five qualities are so important to the practice of Christian Science. One's consecration to God, one's love for God and for all of humanity, one's gentle, pure thought, one's earnest prayer, and one's heavenly inspired consciousness, constitute a heart ready, willing, and eager to see divine Love's care always evident and at hand.

Christian Science teaches us that we are each a spiritual idea. There are not two of you or me or anyone. Our identity is entirely spiritual, without any taint of the belief of life in matter, or to put it another way, without the belief of limitation. In "Recapitulation," a chapter is Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy asked, "What is man?" She answered, "He is the compound idea of God, including all right ideas ..." [p. 475]. I cherished the thought that there wasn't something I had to get or to do. I already include all I need because I am God's idea, His spiritual image and likeness.

I love this passage in Science and Health: "The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,—perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration" [p. 259]. To me, that describes what happens with healing. It's the Science of Christianity being demonstrated.

What you're saying is that it's not really a matter of needing a particular personality or being a specially gifted person, so much as having that Christlike understanding to bring about the healing.

That's right. The Christ is always speaking to human consciousness. It's God's Word. The Christ is what God is saying to each of us. It isn't the practitioner's word. It isn't the belief of a human personality. It's the law of God. No matter what the circumstance or condition needing adjustment or healing, through the activity of the Christ, God is revealing His pure love, telling us what really is going on: the unchanging perfection of God and man. Mrs. Eddy wrote, "Principle and its idea is one ..." [Science and Health, p. 465]. One. And that one is God. Man is at one with God—inseparable from Him. That is the basis of healing—to understand that God is the divine Principle, the only law. The law of God is divine Love actively expressing Himself.

When you were first advertising in the Journal, did you ever feel uncertain about your work as a practitioner?

I'd been taking calls for quite a few years before I began to advertise in the Journal. I was learning to trust the spiritual fact that God is always supplying the ideas we need. Sometimes a little doubt about my ability to do the work would prompt the questions, Do I know enough? Have I practiced enough? When these questions knocked at the door of my thought, I would turn to and trust what Mrs. Eddy said in Science and Health: "The All-wise does not bestow His highest trusts upon the unworthy. When He commissions a messenger, it is one who is spiritually near Himself" [p. 455]. That was very reassuring to me. I knew that the willingness and deep humble desire to serve God in the way of His appointing would be safely and wisely sustained and defended by Him.

The practitioner's activity is to bear witness to the message of the Christ and to see that divine Love is all there is. God tells you what is true about Himself and His child. This leads to the realization of the present and always spiritual perfection of God and His idea. What we call healing, God knows to be the unchanging, perfect condition of Himself, His idea, and His universe.

So the practitioner yields to the Christ instead of relying on human reasoning in response to a call for treatment?

Yes. You trust what Mind is saying about Himself and His idea. For a practitioner, it is so important to affirm that spiritual perfection is all that is known to God. Therefore, spiritual perfection is all that is going on and known to His child. One's thought is so filled with the allness of divine Love that there is nothing but divine Love's presence to be known, felt, and manifested. The specific spiritual ideas needed in any case are always present because God is always revealing what is true about Himself and His likeness. The practice is never about trying to find out what's wrong so you can then figure out what's right. It's always starting from the standpoint of "perfect God and perfect man," as Mrs. Eddy so wonderfully put it.

Understanding God and His relationship to His reflection enables one to realize with spiritual clarity the unchanging spiritual substance of each of us as God's image and likeness. As a practitioner, one is not attempting to change a bad physical or material situation into a better material situation. God, Spirit, is substance. Therefore, there is no matter, since Spirit is the only substance. So there is only one reality, and it is spiritual. The practitioner is affirming that the patient knows that this is the truth.

What about conditions that don't yield readily, where the patient calls back and says, "I'm still having difficulty"?

In the divine allness and goodness of God, all that is going on, all that is happening, is spiritual and good. So even though outwardly a condition may appear unchanged, something is happening and that something is the activity of the Christ. It is revealing what is absolutely true. The practitioner encourages the individual to stay focused on what God is and what man is as God's child. One lovingly persists in affirming and acknowledging what God is always maintaining about His idea—spiritual perfection and man's oneness with God.

What is going on is that through the activity of the Christ there is a shift in thought to some degree from the belief of life in matter to God, divine Mind, as the only substance and intelligence. And so it is important to stay focused on God. I can give you a little example.

That would be great.

At one time my husband and I were on a ship, and we were going through a series of locks to raise the ship from an ocean to a lake. There were three locks, and it was a rather large ship. As we were standing on the deck, I couldn't tell that the ship was being lifted. It seemed as if nothing was happening. So I decided to look at one point on the land. I kept my eye focused on this one point. As I did so, I could see that we were rising effortlessly. To me, that experience represents what happens when thought is so completely focused on God and His idea. The activity of the Christ lifts us to the spiritual understanding of what is true—perfect God and perfect man. In other words the Christ enables one to see what is actually true: the spiritual, perfect relationship between God and His idea.

What advice would you give to someone who is seriously thinking of going into the public practice of Christian healing?

I can honestly say that taking Christian Science class instruction was the most important step for me. It enabled me to understand what God is, what man is, and what the belief of evil is not. I also learned how to give a Christian Science treatment. So I would say that class instruction was the catalyst that gave me a much fuller picture of what the practice is—the importance of it for oneself and the importance of the practice of Christian Science for the world. Class instruction instilled a joy in me to serve God with all my heart.

I found there was a need to specifically handle the belief of animal magnetism—the belief that there is a mind apart from God that has intelligence, substance, life, and activity.

This belief, and it is only a belief, is powerless because God is the only Mind and power. However, it is most important to handle this belief in regard to one's spiritual growth and commitment to the practice of Christian Science. The belief of what the Bible calls "the carnal mind" is the belief of hatred against the pure Christ, Truth. It is what Paul speaks of when he says, "The carnal mind is enmity against God" [Rom. 8:7]. Just as Christ Jesus found that his mission was not completely understood or appreciated by certain individual states of thought, Paul saw the wisdom in being alert to overcome the claim of determined opposition to God. So, too, every day we must spiritually defend our right to practice this truth without interruption, disturbance, or distraction. For the mental work to be well done, one's thought must be daily, divinely defended from the belief in a mind apart from God.

I found it absolutely essential, and I still do today, to affirm that there is no mind but God. He is the only Mind. Therefore, there is no mortal mind or malicious mental malpractice—no hateful intent—that can divert or destroy one's natural inclination to serve God in this way.

Is there any point about Christian Science that has been especially meaningful or valuable to your practice and teaching that we haven't talked about?

I continue to appreciate and daily value the revelation of Christian Science that came to Mary Baker Eddy. When this Science was revealed to her, she didn't just say, "Oh, this is wonderful! I'll keep it to myself." She was obedient to God, and she wrote a book so that all may understand divine Science, the eternal laws of God. It was a very unselfish, dedicated motive. She was impelled by divine Love and her own love for all of humanity. As we understand Christian Science, then practice and demonstrate it, we see blessings and healing for the world.

In the chapter of "Recapitulation" she included the question, "Are doctrines and creeds a benefit to man?" And she said that "her highest creed has been divine Science, which, reduced to human apprehension, she has named Christian Science" [p. 471]. I love this statement, which makes clear that Mrs. Eddy cannot be separated from what was revealed to her. The messenger and the message cannot be separated. I think it's important in one's work, certainly in my work as a practitioner, to recognize her place as the Discoverer of Christian Science, to acknowledge it, to affirm it, just as I acknowledge that Christ Jesus is the Master Christian. He is the great Exemplar. Mrs. Eddy is the sole author of Science and Health. She discovered Christian Science. To me, realizing Mrs. Eddy's place, spiritually defending it in one's own thought, is of utmost importance in one's practice of Christian Science. Without the messenger of Christian Science, Mrs. Eddy, we would not have the message of Christian Science—the divine, scientific Principle of healing that reveals the eternal laws of God.

Rosalie E. Dunbar is News Editor for the Christian Science Sentinel.

Through the harsh noises of our day,
A low sweet prelude finds its way;
Through clouds of doubt and creeds of fear
A light is breaking, calm and clear.

Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more
For olden time and holier shore:
God's love and blessing, then and there,
Are now and here and everywhere.

—John Greenleaf Whittier
Christian Science Hymnal, No. 238