A New Mainstream Health Care?

Posted on May 14, 2012 by Katie Brown

Thanks to Russ Gerber, Manager, Christian Science Committee on Publication, for today’s blog. He is also a Christian Science healer and teacher who shares his thoughts about worldwide health movements. This is a reprint from his blog on the Huffington Post, April 19, 2012.

For the past few years I’ve been tracking media coverage of health care on just about every continent in the world, not only by reading hundreds of news stories on the subject but by speaking directly with the journalists who write such stories, from Africa to America to Australia.

Anyone who’s been as immersed in the topic as I have can’t help seeing trends. What I’m struck with is how much is changing in people’s pursuit of health — and how much isn’t.

What’s clear is that we have two major health care movements operating today.

What I call movement one is comprised of people who are influenced less by tradition or the medical establishment and more by what they learn from their own research, from their peers, and from personal experience.

Movement one has the attitude that there are a wide range of health practices — from the natural to the spiritual — that contribute to a healthy life and that shouldn’t be marginalized. Movement one is trending upward in popularity, while movement two focuses on technology and conventional medical treatments and is running into strong headwinds.

Movement two is the drug-based approach to health, which has been at the center of mainstream media health coverage for ages, while movement one is far less conspicuous but more commonplace than many of us realized.

That is until 1998, when news broke of a national study by Harvard Medical School researchers of Americans’ health practices. Continue reading →

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National Day of Prayer

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Katie Brown

Prayer for USA by Harley Pebley

Today Indiana citizens join millions of Americans to commemorate the 61st Anniversary of the National Day of Prayer. Praying is a way of life for more than half of Hoosiers with 60% praying at least once a day according to the 2008 Pew Forum Religious Landscape Survey.

I pray everyday communicating with God and recognizing my decision to pray as my choice.  I’m grateful we continue to have the National Day of Prayer with the controversy over prayer we have in Indiana and our country. For example in our state the  Moment of silence in  public schools has replaced prayer, and a food pantry lost federal food items over prayer when the man who runs the pantry asked clients if they would like to pray with him or his volunteers.

In 1808 Thomas Jefferson said, “Fasting and prayer are religious exercises; the enjoining them an act of discipline. Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the time for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets; and right can never be safer than in their hands, where the Constitution has deposited it.”

Whatever Jefferson would say about the Moment of silence and food pantry prayers,  I am grateful that our nation has a heritage of prayers. In 1775, colonists were asked by the Continental Congress to pray for wisdom in forming a nation. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed a day of “humiliation, fasting and prayer”.  In 1952, a joint resolution by Congress, signed by President Harry S. Truman, declared an annual, national day of prayer. In 1988, the law was amended and signed by President Ronald Reagan, establishing permanently the first Thursday of every May a national day of prayer. Continue reading →

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Recasting Age

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Katie Brown

Thanks to Anna Bowness-Park, Christian Science Committee on Publication for British Columbia,  for today’s blog.

Republished from  the interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking. April 13. 2012

“The world needs beauty. People hunger for it, and I intend to give it to them,” Josefina de Vasconcellos once told me. This eminent sculptress from England, and dear friend of mine, continued throughout her life to learn new techniques to improve her work and to enlarge her skills, which inspired me to consider “age” differently.

Josefina once remarked to me that the 80’s decade of her life was the most productive. At the time I was a 20-something young woman and she was well into her 80’s. It was encouraging to have a woman say that she improved with age. She proved what she shared with me, when, in her 90’s, Sir Richard Branson commissioned her to oversee three new recastings  of her large statue, Reconciliation, first created after World War II.

To consider this creation, and the task of recasting it, is a tremendous undertaking at any age, yet Josefina, so filled with inspiration, was energized to complete the work. It now stands in several cities, as a testament, not only to her vision of forgiveness, but also to her love for the world, her dignity of soul, her spirituality, and to her refusal to consider her age as a limitation, but as an asset.

Recasting Age

And then there is Laura Dekker. In January of last year, despite government resistance banning her from sailing around the world in her yacht, Guppy, and to dire predictions of what would become of her, 16 year old Laura became the youngest person to circumnavigate the world single-handedly.

These two women, one continuing a career of exploration well past what is often considered retirement age, the other at the beginning of her life, have something in common. They are recasting age.

Practical prayer for every day living

Another woman, who challenged the concept of age from a spiritual perspective, is the 19th century Christian thinker, healer, and teacher Mary Baker Eddy. Her groundbreaking ideas about spirituality, prayer and health were published in her book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She founded a Christian church dedicated to finding healing answers to life’s challenges through thoughtful prayer. And at 87 she founded a non-denominational and highly acclaimed independent newspaper, The Christian Science Monitor. She lived what she discovered about life, not what the world thought about age.

So can a contemplative form of prayer change the way we view age – any age – with its health implications and fears? My experience is that it can, because the great wonder about prayer is its capacity to change the way we think – if we are willing to let it. Continue reading →

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Pain Free Living

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Katie Brown

Tennis Ball by Sleeping Sun

Who has not cried out to a higher being for help and healing when severe illness or injury has overwhelmed them with pain? The immediacy of the cry often happens even before calling 911.

No one actually knows how frequently the pain subsides before the paramedics arrive. And, people who experience or witness on the spot healings generally don’t collect data. More often they share these experiences by word of mouth much like those in Jesus’ day who shared his healings on the Galilean hillsides. In an August 29-31, 2011 Fox News Poll conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research and Shaw & Company Research 77% of people interviewed believe prayer can literally help someone heal from an injury or illness.

Once when I fell backwards striking my head hard on the tennis court after hitting a high lob, pain surged. I prayed to God immediately and was able to get up, take a short break, and finish the match. I felt no painful effects later from the fall.

Relief from chronic or acute pain is a significant issue in our society today.  Many people are concerned about the increased use and abuse of legal pain killers and about their side effects when taken over long periods of time.  In “ER visits surge for abuse of legal drugs”  data released by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention June 18, 2010 shows that in 2008 about one million people were in emergency rooms for abuse of prescription and over-the country drugs. Continue reading →

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Health Challenges: Spiritual Solutions

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Katie Brown

Note: Thanks to Bob Clark, Christian Science Committee on Publication for Florida, for today’s blog.

Health Challenges: Spiritual Solutions

Deepak Chopra has become a household name. Most people interested in spirituality and health have probably read one of his 65 books, 19 of them York Times best-sellers. Twenty-million copies in 35 languages are hard to miss.

 His newest book, published last month, is Spiritual Solutions: Answers to Life’s Greatest Challenges—compelling reading from a recognized leader in the rapidly merging fields of spirituality and health care.

According to Chopra, our greatest challenges fall into four categories: Relationships; Health and Well-Being; Success; Personal Growth. Most of us have challenges in at least one of those categories, if not all of them.  Spiritual Solutions offers some practical answers which don’t require specialists or expensive therapies.

And what exactly is a “spiritual solution”? Let’s take a look at the book’s “Health and Well-Being” section for an example. Here Chopra tells us, “Most people define health solely in physical terms, by how good they feel and what they see when they look in the mirror. Medicine relies on drugs and surgery, which reinforces our fixation on the physical.” Continue reading →

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Prayers to stop bullying

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Katie Brown

School desk at Southborough Historical Museum by my_southborough

The recently released movie “Bully” sends a powerful message to young people to stand up to bullying and not to stand by. The real life issue of bullying needs to be stopped. It can lead to physical abuse and even suicide. Tragically, bullying is much more harmful than the bullying I remember as a child and really needs our prayers.

When I was in elementary school two boys sitting at desks behind mine put gum on my chair, and I sat on it wearing my new wool skirt. My feelings were very hurt to think my classmates would do that to me, but I finished the school day saying nothing, not even to the teacher.

At home my mother worked her magic to get the gum out of the skirt telling me God loved not only me but my schoolmates too. She said she’d pray about it with me to help me forgive those boys by looking for something good in each one of them. With tears on my face Mom and I sang my favorite hymn together, Hymn 304 from the Christian Science Hymnal.  The first verse is:

Shepherd, show me how to go
O’er the hillside steep,
How to gather, how to sow, —
How to feed Thy sheep;
I will listen for Thy voice,
Lest my footsteps stray;
I will follow and rejoice
All the rugged way. Continue reading →

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Health a problem…try a place of worship

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Katie Brown

Country Church and Bridge by D.Bjorn

You sleep late weekends, read the newspaper, jog the block with your dog, do chores, run errands…no thought of attending a worship service. Rather typical for some while others get up and head out with the family to their place of worship…churches, synagogues, and mosques. Who’s healthier?

Think about it, the healthier one could be the one who attends a worship service. Not that your parents ever told you that, if they insisted you go. They probably wanted you to learn about God and make friends…share fellowship. Affiliating yourself with a place of worship puts you in a caring atmosphere with a support system from others filled with optimism and hope for better days, contributing to your physical health and emotional well being.

There’s proof of that in Dr. Jeff Levin’s book. God, Faith, and Health: Exploring the Spirituality Healing Connection. Levin examines the beneficial principles of the health effects of public religion through theosomatic medicine. Theosomatic…what’s that? Continue reading →

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“God In The Box”

Posted on April 3, 2012 by Katie Brown

Footbridge, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana by Taber Andrew Bain

A guest blog by Kathie Millican, Bloomington, Indiana

“If you’ve ever been curious about God, Jesus Christ, Adonai, Allah, Buddha, something spiritual you can’t describe, what agnostics question, or why atheists don’t believe, then see God In The Box. It’s is a documentary film that follows filmmaker Nathan Lang and his crew, as they explore the diverse and curious ways we see God, in our mind’s eye — through the lens of their amazing Box.” Among other honors this film was the official selection of the Heartland Film Festival of 2011.

The Neil-Marshall Black Culture Center at Indiana University was nearly filled to capacity with students who came to watch the film along with a very brief version of “God in the Box” filmed at Indiana University in March.

Here in Bloomington, as in other cities around the country, people were asked to enter the box and answer two questions: What does God mean to you? What does God look like to you?

The answers were varied. For some, there were no answers, only questions. For some, only silence. Others were too moved to speak, they could only weep. Some were visibly frustrated by what they felt to be misconceptions about God in major religious teachings. Some were very comfortable with what God means to them. Others were uncomfortable with what God means to them.

A rabbi, an AME minister, a Moslem, and a mythology scholar were interviewed, and quotes regarding God from present and past luminaries were shared on the screen. Filmmaker Nathan Lang reminded those from the street who were entering the box that there were no wrong answers.

Being a Christian Scientist and a student of the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, a statement I read in a little book she authored called The First Church of Christ, Scientist and Miscellany came to mind. It was from an article first published in the December 1, 1906, Christian Science Sentinel. Continue reading →

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Hitting the Wall? Chill. It’s Spring…..just Unfold!

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Katie Brown

Spring 2012 by Karen Dorsett

A guest blog by Sharon Vincz Andrews, Bloomington, Indiana

Working to the point of exhaustion?

Too many responsibilities?

Stressed out?

Stop for a moment and consider this:  growth and progress are often expressed in nature in the most gentle ways.  A seed reaching up through layers of soil (or even concrete!), the flower bud gradually opening to the sun and rain, the first steps of a child guided gently by a loving parent.  Mary Baker Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, says, “All nature teaches God’s love to man, but man cannot love God supremely and set his whole affections of spiritual things, while loving the material or trusting in it more than the spiritual (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, page 426:8).”

So, there’s a clue.  Ask yourself: I am trusting the material more than the spiritual? We’re all guilty of that.  How many times in moments of stress, worry, or fear do we look to our own personal intelligence, goodness, skill or strength to answer the question? A good friend of mine likes to say, “Ask God first.”  We can stop in the midst of the chaos and rather than just toughing it out, turn to our loving Father-Mother for an answer.  Then the sense of our unfolding nature takes hold of consciousness and we can breathe again.

Think about that idea of unfolding for a minute. It’s like you are a love note from God (remember how kids fold notes to send to each other?)…sent out into the universe, blessing those who “read” you, each new view of you becoming a joy to yourself and to others. Your eternal unfolding isn’t painful or difficult or matter-based or tied to any human do’s and don’ts. It’s the natural order of the universe–eternal development, action, movement, revelation.  Unfolding (either a note or a consciousness!) does not require adding anything or taking anything away. It’s all about revelation……. of what already is. Wow. That’s a comforting thought. We’re all just finding out who we already are as beloved children of God.  Here’s a wonderfully enlightened statement from Eddy on  “unfolding:”

“Each successive stage of experience unfolds new views of divine goodness and love (Science and Health, page 66:44).“ Successive means: following, sequential, continuous, in a row.  So we don’t have to fear that any good has been lost or that views of God’s goodness and love that we once knew are now gone or misplaced. Each stage is necessary for the next one to build on and carries with it all the goodness and understanding and spirituality that went before.  One more glorious thought from Eddy invites us to stop, chill, pray, listen:

“God, Spirit, gathers unformed thoughts into their proper channels, and unfolds these thoughts even as He opens the petals of a holy purpose in order that the purpose may appear (Science and Health, page 506:18).”

The opening of the petals of a flower is a powerful image that dispels hurry, stress, and fear of deadlines.  It says, “Trust God, He is in control, He governs, He reveals your purpose, your progress, your infinitely unfolding nature.”

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Bridge to understanding Christian Science

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Katie Brown

Bridge by Cindy Seigle

FROM THE GET GO

From the get go I’ve been a Christian Scientist, someone who adheres to the tenets of the Bible-based religion Christian Science. From the get go is my way of saying I was raised in it by my parents. While appreciating my religious heritage, I fully realize that each individual who discovers Christian Science does it in their own way with God.

Certainly, Mary Baker Eddy, the actual Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, had her own journey to the discovery. Born in Bow New Hampshire in 1821, she was raised by parents who were devout Congregationalists with a great love of God and the Bible that they instilled in her.

In 1866, she was healed of a serious injury when she read one of Jesus’ healings in the New Testament.  She searched the Bible to understand how she was healed,  discovered the science of Christianity, and wrote about it in the primary book on Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, published in 1875. In 1879 she established The Church of Christ, Scientist, “a church designed to commemorate the word and works of our Master, which should reinstate primitive Christianity and its lost element of healing (Church Manual, page 17).” Continue reading →

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