I’ve loved serving as a Reading Room librarian and attendant over the years, and so appreciate this important work.
While I was serving in a Reading Room one day, a young visitor came in and introduced herself as a graduate school student. She said she knew nothing about Christian Science and had just decided to walk in. Then she suddenly told me, before bursting into tears, that her friend had committed suicide. She was sobbing and trying to understand “why,” so we sat down with a box of tissues. As I prayed about how to respond, spouting citations to her didn’t feel like it would be a helpful step to take. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy says, “The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love” (p. 367).
The “tender word” that came to me to say at that moment was that I was so sorry to hear about her friend. And to her question of “why?” I shared what I had learned from Christian Science. I was inspired to tell her that there’s no point in trying to understand the darkness. There’s no logic there. If we look for light (ideas, insights, or inspiration) within the darkness, we find none. Instead, if we turn on what I told her was the Christ light, then we start with what we know is true.
