In her book Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream, author tells of the extraordinary spiritual journey of a seven-year-old Canadian girl sent from home by her father in 1864 to be a servant in the home of another family. Martha went on to found what would turn out to be the first American franchise business. The Harper Method salons—of which there were over 450 around the world by 1925—featured a system of skin and hair care that Martha frequently said was based on her understanding of the spiritual truths she had learned about freedom and beauty through her study of Science and Health.
She had been introduced to that book in 1888 by Helen Pine Smith, a Christian Science practitioner in Rochester, New York, at a time when she was working as a servant in a household and simultaneously trying to mass-produce a recipe for hair tonic that she had brought with her from Canada.
Apparently, the young Martha had collapsed from exhaustion, and Mrs. Smith, who had just completed a course of instruction with Mary Baker Eddy, was called in to pray for her. "Smith and Martha likely prayed together to better understand God, the Divine Mind, and to yield to God's healing power," writes Plitt of this close relationship, which would continue for many years. She goes on to add: "As they talked, Smith may have reminded Martha that each person was a reflection of God. Martha, therefore, was important." Martha Matilda Harper and the American Dream (Syracuse University Press, 2000), p. 35 .
And although Martha's story began in North America over 100 years ago, her discovery that "each person was a reflection of God," and therefore "important" would likely sound familiar today to Sara Conteddù of Aosta, Italy, who operated a negozio da parruchiera, or hair salon, for 30 years. One day, one of her customers introduced her to Science and Health.
"I was in the shop [and not] feeling at all well," Sara said recently during a telephone conversation from her home in the Italian Alps. "I was suffering from a stomach ailment that had gone on for many years. A doctor had recently told me that I would need an operation for an ulcer. I was very anxious about my life. The problem came and went, but this was one of those days that I was really ill. There were two or three clients in the shop, and they could tell I wasn't well—I was almost ready to faint.
"One of these women, who'd been a client for quite some time but had never once spoken to me about Christian Science, said, 'Are you not feeling very well?' And I replied, 'I can hardly stand it.'
"This woman didn't say a word, but sat down in a corner of the shop and closed her eyes, and after just a few minutes, I felt totally refreshed. I was well. The swelling had disappeared. This woman looked at me and said, 'Now you're better, aren't you?' And I said, 'Yes, it's completely gone.' And she said, 'I know. Because I prayed for you.' This was a shock to me, because I'd never heard of someone being able to cure someone else just through prayer. I almost laughed out loud. But then I realized this wasn't something to laugh about. It was something serious. The evidence was very plain. I'd been healed immediately.
"She continued to be quiet. So I asked her what prayer she had said. And she said she didn't know how to explain it to me, but she had simply known one thing—that I was a perfect daughter of God.
"Her statement was even more shocking to me than the healing had been. No one had ever said that of me. I looked around and said to her, 'But are you speaking of me, or of someone else?' "
Sara says she had never thought of herself as someone special before this moment—only as one person among millions of people. And yet, she says, she knew that something wonderful had happened to her. A short while later, as she was recounting her experience to a friend, the friend asked her to go back to the customer and ask her specifically what prayer she had said so that she, too, could be healed. So the next time her customer came in, Sara said to her, "Won't you teach me these prayers?"
The woman replied, "But I don't know how to explain it to you. It's not just a specific prayer you utter and then that's it. There's a book I read, along with the Bible. If you'd like, I'll give you some things to read."
Sara agreed to take something to read. "The first thing she brought me," says Sara, "was L'Araldo [The Herald of Christian Science in Italian]. And that's when my great discovery began. Everything I read struck me as completely true. And I thought, Why hasn't anyone bothered to explain this to me before? It all seemed like something I already knew, but also, it was the truth. I asked her to give me more to read, and she brought me everything there was translated in Italian. The more I read, the more I wanted to know."
At this point, Sara's customer brought her Science and Health. "I was almost glad when I didn't have any customers!" says the former hairdresser. "Because then I could just sit in the shop and read Science and Health. It almost bothered me when somebody came in."
IT WASN'T LONG before Sara was sharing what she was learning with her customers. "I just felt this recognition that God was in the midst of us, taking care of all of us." Many of her clients began to read Science and Health as well, and began to be healed by what they were reading.
Sara says that for perhaps ten years after she'd started studying the book, she continued to work in the shop, helping her clients with problems whenever they asked her. When something was troubling them, she told them to be calm and to have faith in God. And she began to visit a nearby prison, to share what she was learning with the prisoners. And although many of the inmates were there for serious offenses, she says, "I never once felt fear. . . . It didn't even feel like a prison to me. I had the feeling that I was among family members that I hadn't seen for a very long time. I felt that [the inmates] were my brothers, and that they needed to be consoled."
She continued to share the truths she was learning in Science and Health with anyone who needed them. "And then one day in 1993," she says, "I was sitting alone in my shop, quietly reading a passage from the Bible, when it came to me as clearly as if a voice had spoken it: Stop wasting time."
Sara was surprised at the thought, because she was comfortable with her home and her work. She felt contentment with her life. But then, again, as if a voice had spoken it, came a second thought, which, she says, she strongly feels came from God: "Ma guarda." ["But look."] "The world is full of hairdressers. But of those willing to console others with the ministry of Christ, there are very few."
At the end of the year, she sold her shop and became a Christian Science practitioner. Now she helps others find healing, just as she found healing that day in her shop, when one of her customers was willing to pray for her.
Sara says her former customers from the hair salon still tell her often that they miss her hair-dressing skills—as well as their regular visits with her. In fact, only four or five days prior to this conversation, she'd run into one of her former customers in the supermarket. "What are you doing that is so interesting you've abandoned us?" the woman asked.
Sara laughed. "I told her, 'Well, go get yourself a copy of Science and Health at the library, or at the Christian Science Reading Room, and read it, and then if you want to, come visit me to talk about it."
And the former customer replied, "I will."
