Archive for August, 2010
After Katrina: Love’s open arms
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Five years ago, hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans as well as other parts of the Gulf coast from central Florida to Texas. After the storm hit, Joanne, my wife, and I spent two long, hectic days and nights assisting guests from New Orleans.
Below is a snip from a Christian Science Sentinel article which describes what we did and how we prayed. Feel free to click the link that sends you to the complete article.
Christian Science has taught both Joanne and I that because God’s power and love are always present, we can share this love by rapidly responding with necessary, practical footsteps when there is a human need. We’ve learned that a prayer-filled life moves with both wisdom and compassion. Our story:
After Katrina: Love’s open arms
…Joanne called me immediately. She had experienced three catastrophic hurricanes here on the Texas coast and knew what items would be needed. We shopped for towels, toothpaste and brushes, shampoo and other hygienic items, and headed to the coliseum.
Twelve airplanes and two buses had brought 1,200 hungry, tired and displaced residents to be our guests. Many–if not all–had been pulled by helicopter out of the waters that flooded New Orleans.
As the evacuees arrived at the coliseum, we tried not only to supply their human needs–they had had been wearing the same clothes for the last four or five days, under less than ideal conditions–but also to welcome them spiritually by cherishing the individuality they each have as God’s children. We wanted to see these people not as bedraggled humans, dependent on our community for help, but as sons and daughters of God, safe in His care.
Through our study of Christian Science, Joanne and I are discovering that what brought healing throughout Jesus’ ministry was his understanding of everyone’s spiritual relation to God. Jesus cherished the spiritual nature of everyone he met. He refused to believe God’s spiritual child could be subject to disease, or to degrading, harmful, material conditions.
…. (read more)
Find Keith on Twitter:@TexasCS
Related post: 5 Simple Things to Help You be a Healer
When a child is sick? – Spiritual treatment and healing!
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A few days ago, I had the privilege of meeting with Cindy Cockerham (middle), Amarillo District Office Manager for Sen. Kel Seliger. Pat Clark (left) and Mary Shennum (right), Christian Scientists and members of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Amarillo, came with me into the meeting.
I was explaining to Cindy the 140 year healing record that Christian Science has established and she asked, “What do you do when a child is sick?” Great question. And I’m sure the answer we all want involves treatment and healing. At that point, Pat shared a personal experience that contained both. As Pat spoke, Cindy, Mary, and I listened intently.
Years ago, Pat was an RN (Registered Nurse) and a new mother. However, Pat’s new-born son was paralyzed on his right side. He also had a large tumor on his neck. Doctors didn’t believe he would live very long. In order to love him and take care of him while he was with them, Pat brought her son home.
During Pat’s entire pregnancy she had hated a family member who had spread lies about her regarding drug allegations. The accusations could have had immediate consequences on Pat’s nursing career. Every time this woman would call Pat’s house, if Pat answered, she would quickly pass the phone to someone else. Pat couldn’t stand talking with this woman. She couldn’t forgive her.
Then Pat’s in-laws asked her if she would like a Christian Science practitioner to prayerfully treat her and her baby. Not knowing what that really meant but wanting to be polite, Pat accepted their offer. The next morning, Pat answered another call from the woman she couldn’t stop hating. However, rather than passing the phone off to someone else, this time, Pat talked with her. The other woman was a new mother too. Not only had Pat been hating the woman, she was also jealous because the woman had given birth to a girl. During Pat’s pregnancy, she had yearned for a girl, not a boy, so she was genuinely surprised to be asking about this woman’s little baby.
After hanging up from the shockingly pleasant phone conversation with the woman, Pat started walking towards her baby’s room. As she walked, the thought came, “Go ahead, try . Try and hate her.” Pat tried, but suddenly she just couldn’t. The hate was gone. Then she opened the door and looked at her baby. He was wiggling all his arms and legs. The paralysis was gone. She looked at his neck. The tumor was gone, as well.
It was not surprising to any of us there, after hearing Pat’s experience, to learn that Pat is now a practicing Christian Scientist herself. She loves reading the Bible and putting into practice what she is learning about God and the spiritual nature of things.
Cindy smiled throughout our time together. Afterward, she told us that she really enjoyed meeting us. I believe, it was the spirit of Christ expressed by Pat and Mary that Cindy felt. And it is the same beautiful feeling that can be experienced when a child is sick – or anyone for that matter. It is the spirit of Christ that permeates Christian Science prayerful treatments and brings healing.
@TexasCS
Related post: Living in tune with spiritual laws
5 Simple Things To Help You Be a Healer
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Although the Christian Science denomination uses the word Christian in its name, many people don’t know it is Bible, Jesus, and prayer based. It is definitely Christian.After many years of prayer and study of the Bible, I’ve found 5 simple things that have helped prepare me to be a Christian healer. They might help you too.
Be honest. God gives His power to those who will use it to bless others. So, He gives His power to those who are honest. If we want our prayer armed with spiritual power, we must be honest.
Don’t be critical. If we’re critical of anyone, we’re not seeing how God creates them, guides them, and loves them. If we want to heal we should strive to see everyone, the best we can, as the spiritual image and likeness of God.
Don’t keep score. While we are keeping track of other’s mistakes, we are not arming ourselves to be a healer. It’s not how someone else is acting but how much of God’s love we are expressing that makes our prayers effective. Love never keeps score.
Be forgiving. Forgiveness means starting over with love, — wiping the slate clean. Christ impels and strengthens us to do so. Let our love be expressed in forgiveness.
Value your moral courage. No matter what we are doing, if we’re doing what is right, doing what is God inspired, our moral courage will keep us safe.
These are my 5. Now, in your comments, l want to read yours.
@TexasCS
Related post: Prayerful treatment reaches and heals the body
Do you Monitor?
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Recently, while I was in Lubbock, I met with Russ Poteet, News Director for KAMC-TV ABC & KLBK-TV CBS. Nice guy. Intelligent. Has a kind manner.
When I asked Russ if he knew anything about Christian Science, he asked, “Is it connected to The Christian Science Monitor?” The Monitor’s reputation for dependable journalism and balanced, in-depth news coverage has been consistent since Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, founded it in 1908. It has now won seven Pulitzer Prizes.
The Mary Baker Eddy Library‘s website, states, “In an age of corporate conglomerates dominating news media, the Monitor provides a uniquely independent voice in journalism, and, though published by The Christian Science Publishing Society, the Monitor is not a religious periodical.”
Eddy expected Christian Scientists and all spiritually minded people, for that matter, to be active; to never hide from nor neglect troubles. Christian Science was all about solving problems, finding healing solutions. Eddy understood the healing power of prayer. The continued publishing of the Monitor provides spiritual thinkers the opportunity to pray about the issues the world faces. During our conversation, I learned that Russ was familiar with the Monitor’s Daily News Briefing. The Briefing is how I’m alerted to the issues most needing my daily prayerful attention.
I’ve found it important to watch my thought as I monitor world thought/situations. As I accept what is most God-like (tenderness, campassion, selflessness, wisdom, and purity) in myself and others, and mentally reject the fearful, hateful, and selfish temptations that create friction and pain, I see the world approximating, to some degree, a bit more of heaven here on earth. I’m learning that prayer helps us all to act increasingly wise and responsible. It motivates us to correct what needs correcting and to protect what is vulnerable. My prayer rejoices that the love and strength of Spirit constantly animates and guides all thoughts and actions.
If I allow news to just entertain me, I feel I’m being selfish. The world is no better off. More and more, I want to use news to help and heal the wounds of the world.
After talking with Russ, I met with Jeff Klotzman (right), News Director at KJTV-TV Fox 34 in Lubbock. Jeff is a thoughtful man. Enjoyed meeting him.
When I stepped into his office, Jeff told me, “All I know about Christian Science is what I’ve read in the Monitor.” Hmmm. Sounded familiar.
At the end of my chats with both Russ and Jeff, I told them I would keep them informed of trends in spirituality, items that their station’s viewers might want to be aware of. Each told me to send them the ideas and trends. We all want to see a better world. As I continue to monitor world situations, I expect my prayer to make a difference. Do you Monitor?
@TexasCS
Related post: Living in tune with spiritual laws
Is Christian Science faith healing?
Posted by: | CommentsMy new blog post at Healing Now answers the question, “Is Christian Science faith healing?” Read a snip here, then click the link for the rest of the story. Enjoy. –
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Recently, finishing up a whirlwind ride through Abilene, I talked with Brandi Fordyce (left), the Assignment Editor for KTAB-TV CBS and KRBC-TV NBC, and later with Laura Madison (below), News Anchor and Managing Editor for KTXS-TV ABC.
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During these meetings, I touched on the often asked question, “Is Christian Science faith healing?” I explained that it is not. Christian Science does not involve pleading with God to heal the sick and then accepting His will, good or bad. Nothing in Christian Science theology says it’s God’s will that anyone suffer, be sick, or die. Christian Science shows God to be entirely good, and therefore His will for each individual is only health and life.
Faith is a part of Christian Science, but Christian Science takes a step further. … read
Inside info – Healing Now @ HoustonBelief
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You are the first to learn that I am beginning to post at Healing Now as well as blogging here at Christian Science Texas. Let the party begin!
Healing Now is a new blog, — one of many blogs at the Houston Chronicle’s Faith platform called HoustonBelief.
At first, some of the posts at Healing Now will be reposts from this site. Others will be fresh and new. So, check out both sites, often. Both blogs are dedicated to correcting in a Christian manner misconceptions about Christian Science. See you here and there.
@TexasCS
Related post: Living in tune with spiritual laws
An independent evidence of the power of God to heal through the Science of the Christ
Posted by: | CommentsToday, while I’m preparing to talk with reporters and editors in Lubbock and Amarillo, I thought I’d give you something to chew on. Below is a guest post by our friend, Tony Lobl. Tony is spokesperson for Christian Science in British and Irish media and in UK, Irish and EU legislatures. I have seen Tony in Texas at least once, which makes him qualified, I believe, to speak on my behalf. If you like exploring, you can sift through all his blog posts here. Enjoy!
Tony says:
In my job of press relations for the Christian Science movement, I am often having to deal with what I call “sideswipes” against the healing practice of Christian Science, or its founder, Mary Baker Eddy. By that I mean that the bulk of the article/broadcast has nothing to do with Christian Science but the journalist/broadcaster throws in a sentence or two which in that short space manages to seriously mis-convey the faith and/or its founder. (I recently commented on an example of this in an Evening Standard article.)
So it is nice to come across what could be called a “positive sideswipe” in a comment in response to a Huffington Post article that takes a skeptical view on the power of “visualization” – a skepticism that Christian Scientists would share, although for different reasons. (That will be the subject of a future blog!) The article is called The New Spirituality, by Vic Stenger.
The person writing the comment apparently does believe in visualization and has apparently benefitted from it, which suggests he is not a member of the Christian Science church. But he also shared the following experience of healing, which is not a form of visualization, but – as he himself says – shows that “There’s another dimension…to reality”. To the Christian Scientist, this “other dimension” is what Jesus called “the kingdom of heaven [that] is within you” and which Mary Baker Eddy describes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as “the spiritual realm of the real“. This is what is being evidenced to some degree by each healing that results from “divinely scientific prayer” which seeks to bring human thought into line with God’s perspective of His/Her perfect spiritual creation.
Here is his moving account of healing:
I have [been] healed twice just by reading a Mary Baker Eddy text, for example. One one of those instances I thought I was dying, after weeks of having an increasingly debilitating headache that finally augmented to an unbearable, excruciating pain that left me obliterated and bedridden as I awaited for death. But then I stood up, looked for the aforementioned text, and read that disease is a false belief and that G-d is, not like the anthropomorphic G-d we were taught to [believe ourselves to] be like, but something even way more grander. And as I read the pain started to fade till it disappeared, just as I finished reading the page revealing a higher level of what we consider to be “real”.
Thanks, Arturo Reaza N – and I celebrate with you that you experienced the power of God’s Word to heal, as laid out in the Bible and Science and Health.
Mary Baker Eddy, the Bible, & that other book?
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Watch and listen to Phil Davis, Christian Science practitioner, Manager of the world-wide Christian Science Committees on Publication, and all-around nice guy, as he responds to questions about Mary Baker Eddy and her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. I believe you will find it informative. I did.
@TexasCS
Related post: Living in tune with spiritual laws
