sermons

INTRODUCTION: Almost a year ago, my son Brett and daughter-in-law Tamara flew in from Dallas to Ft. Myers for a very important medical appointment for Tamara. Over the past several years, she had gone through seven major surgeries below her navel. Despite the help she had received, her gastro-intestinal system still didn’t function right. And because of the regimen she had to follow, she was told she shouldn’t have children.

Now the only light in this gloomy prognosis was that one of her physicians at the Baylor Medical facility in Dallas said we might try something very radical: Take out the large intestine and hook the small intestine to the colon. However, that means you will have serious and daily diarrhea for two years; but there’s a 50 percent chance you might then function normally, and possibly be able to have children.

It was not a very promising option! At the request of Brett and Tamara, I asked one of the gastro-intestinal physicians in our congregation if she would consult with Tamara about this proposed option, and assist her in deciding whether it was worth the risk – which she agreed to do. Beforehand, she read Tamara’s extensive files, and also consulted with an OB-GYN colleague. And then she spent an hour and a half with Tamara. Her conclusion: The radical surgery being recommended was far more questionable than she would prescribe.

We were deeply appreciative of her taking the time that she did and being truthful about the proposed procedure. I was in the waiting room afterwards as Tamara came out. She had this look of pained resignation: no medical options and never to be a mother. Once back in Dallas, she struggled with accepting what every medical person had said about her chances for health and children: slim to none. Then a friend said, “Tamara, why don’t you go see Dr. Chen, a Korean acupuncturist?”

For someone reared in a medical family, that seemed “far out.” But having nothing to lose, she decided to see what it was all about. She was intrigued by what he said. In his strong accent, he told her that if she would come to him for a year, he thought he could help her.

Again, having nothing to lose, she agreed. Within only three weeks, something very strange happened. Her body – her gastro-intestinal system – started working for the first time since she was a teenager. She was stunned. Then lo and behold, she missed her period, and after a few weeks, she took a pregnancy test. It came back positive.

She and Brett were so excited and so nervous about it, that they didn’t tell anyone, afraid that it might be ephemeral. But soon, her physicians confirmed it: Tamara was an expectant mother. And for nine months and two weeks, she had no complications and carried her baby to term. I know because I was there July 17, when my beautiful little grandbaby, Ella Rose was born.

Tamara thinks all of her physicians are wonderful and caring. They worked so hard to help her. She would never ever put down the help they gave her. But for reasons she cannot explain, a physician from Korea, practicing an ancient Eastern form of medicine, put needles in her body, and it caused her gastro-intestinal system to heal, and enabled Ella Rose to come in to the world.

Now keep that model before you for a moment: desperation, a sense of failure, and nowhere to turn – then a miracle! Only this time, it’s 150 or so years ago. It’s another young woman, Mary Baker Eddy, and she too is suffering from a variety of serious ailments – lung, liver and stomach problems –which have also led to depression. She’s tried a lot of things that didn’t work. But then, she hears about a man named Phineas Quimby, who uses massage and a special form of mental healing and encouragement. She goes to him and it works for her. She is so taken with what happened, that she stays on to study and serve as his associate.

But Quimby dies, and shortly after his death, Ms Eddy slips and falls on an icy street. She’s confined to bed and given little chance of recovery. In response, this time she begins reading the Bible. She enters into a period of solitary meditation, in which she is consumed by the notion not only that God was in her life, but also that God was the only life. The notion pervaded her and brought a dramatic healing of her body. To the amazement of all those present, she got out of bed, dressed, and walked out of her sickroom healthy and whole.

Ms Eddy and everyone else wondered: How did that happen? In answer to that question, Ms Eddy began a profound study of Christian scripture in tandem with reflection on her healing. Her concern came to be, how to translate what had happened to her, so that other people could benefit as well. The result was her book, Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures. Ultimately, she founded a church that has spread throughout the world, including one here in Ft. Myers, Florida, from which we have guests visiting today, and who will be present in the discussion groups.

So what does Christian Science have to say about the topic we’ve been addressing this summer? What is its take on happiness?

1. The very first thing that Christian Science underscores is a new kind of thinking.

Ms Eddy was a very devout Christian, which meant that she used the language and resources of Christian scripture to express her views, but with an interpretation unique to her. That interpretation came out of her sickness and her healing. She spent three years studying the Bible to understand how her healing had taken place, and followed that with nine years of applying what she had learned to others. Her interpretations of scripture are found in her book, Science and Health. That’s why both Christian scripture and Ms Eddy’s books of interpretation are critically important to Christian Science.

And the conclusion she reached was that we had been looking at the world wrong. We saw evil, sin, the devil, and matter, instead of God, love, divine mind. In fact, finding a place of healing and wholeness depended upon seeing the world differently.

From her interpretation of her life and Christian scripture came this fundamental statement of Christian Science:

We have a group that’s been studying quantum theory and its impact on consciousness. Compare what Ms Eddy said about matter’s being unreal and temporal with what Albert Einstein concluded. He said that what we see and think and feel about our world and Universe is not really the way it works. Instead of our body's being matter, we are made up of atoms – tiny particles moving at lightening speed around relatively huge empty spaces. Those atoms, those particles, are fluctuations of energy and information, emerging not from matter, but from a void. They rebound, collide, and disintegrate into the void. And the body, contrary to being a solid mass of matter, is really a huge empty void, with a few dots and spots, and random electrical discharges.

So in proposing that we understand the world as spirit and that we reject the notion of matter, Ms Eddy isn’t that far off. But it’s not easy to think differently. Her insights were controversial and met with considerable opposition. That was especially true in her second insight, namely:

Though the option was left up to the individual, there was a significant segment of her followers who utilized prayer for their physical needs, rather than traditional medicine. They emphasized a focus on God, love, health and wholeness, rather than sin, failure and sickness. But it was more than a focus: There was training and preparation; in fact, there were strict requirements to becoming a Christian Science practitioner so as to be able to share and practice the insights of prayer and healing Ms Eddy had gained all those years ago.

It reminds me somewhat of Abraham Maslow. After being a psychiatric intern in a state hospital for five years, he questioned his training. He wondered, why do we study sickness rather than health, sick people rather than healthy ones. Why not study how people stay healthy, rather than why they get sick? His analysis was more complicated than that, but suffice to say that he emphasized the study of wellness as an option to the focus on illness. Instead of thinking sickness, think health.

But how does thinking differently change things? How can we be happier by changing the way we think?

There are several of you in the congregation who play golf. I’m sure you’ve had the experience of getting ready to hit the ball over a pond or canal of water. You’ve said to yourself, “Don’t hit the ball into the water.” Guess what? You hit the ball right into the water!

You’re standing over a putt and you tell yourself, “Don’t hit it too hard.” Guess what? You hit it too hard!

When your kids were little, did you ever tell your daughter or son not to stick a bean in her or his ear? Then to your utter amazement, what did they do? They stuck a bean in their ear!

Have you ever told yourself, I’m not going to think of that depressing or upsetting incident? What happens? It’s all we think about!

Why is that? The late Italian psychiatrist Robert Assagioli wrote in The Act of Will that “images and mental pictures tend to produce the physical conditions and external acts that correspond to them.” Or more simply put, what we think creates what happens.

Neurophysiologist Karl Pribam labels this process as, “feel forward.” His research showed that an image in the mind fires the same neural connections in the autonomic nervous system as does the actual act of doing something. That means that “doing” and “thinking” are one and the same to the autonomic nervous system!

So what if you consider your life in terms of prayer. And you begin to pray about certain parts of it. You begin to imagine yourself having more time to do what’s truly important. You begin to think about taking care of yourself physically, mentally, and spiritually. You image those things in your mind. And you pray for them to be a reality. If the research I mentioned is accurate, it means your body will begin to think in those terms by the mere act of your imaging it.

That might very well be true in terms of happiness, as well. In an 1886 sermon Ms Eddy stated: "If you wish to be happy, argue with yourself on the side of happiness; take the side you wish to carry, and be careful not to talk on both sides, or to argue stronger for sorrow than for joy. You are the attorney for the case, and will win or lose according to your plea."

Christian Science teaches that it means perceiving happiness as God's will for us – not a choice, not subject to any outward condition, and not dependent on us.

Rather, it is God's nature to endow His creation with happiness, contentment, and gladness. That's because of a simple fact of being: God is good and includes all good. So each of us, as His expression, embodies every good quality and idea without fail.

So what application can we make from all of this. I think we do so within the context of our own understanding. And when we do the first thing that we say is this:

1. There is one reality, no matter who we are or where we live or what we know or what we have experienced. And each of us is addressed by that reality every moment of every day.

2. The second question is, how do we respond to the reality before us, the reality of the encompassing mystery of our existence? You may recall that Albert Einstein said, The fundamental question for all of us is, “Is this a friendly universe?”

That’s an easier question to answer in the affirmative in America where we have food and clothes, good weather, medical resources, and a democratic society, as compared to a starving mother with a sick baby in the Sudan and with a rapacious government.

3. The task then becomes how do we access this friendly universe. Ms Eddy said through prayer. It’s an option open to each of us to discover, to experience, and to realize.

Several years ago, I did some free lance writing which included a video for the FAA on air traffic control safety. When one of the air controllers learned I was a minister, he told me this story:

A voice of desperation comes in over the speaker and shouts, "Pilot to tower...pilot to tower...I am 300 miles from land...600 feet over water...and running out of fuel…please instruct!"

The air controller immediately responds and says, "Tower to pilot... tower to pilot...repeat after me: 'Our Father, which art in heaven.…'"

Christian Science does emphasize prayer, but not as an afterthought, rather as a way of life, as a way of thinking and believing. It has much to recommend it. Amen and blessed be.

[1] Presented on August 14, 2005, during the “Made in America” segment of Unitarian Summer 2005, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting in the Foulds Theater at the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

[2] Science and Health, p. 468.