Friday, January 12, 2007

Remembering a Life

This past week was my mother's birthday and it's caused me to reflect, as I often do on her birthday. She was the one most responsible for bringing me to the Lord. She was a devoted Christian Scientist who had an extraordinary transformation in her life when she came to Christ in 1974. She impacted so many people around her. Not long ago, my dad told me that in the last years of her life, when we were living in Hawaii, she use to go the local Episcopal Church for Eucharist and prayer. I had no idea - my first introduction to the Episcopal Church was when I first walked into Truro in 1979. But according to dad, she was on the Canterbury Trail. I can certainly see that now.

What would she make of all this mess today? I am not sure she'd be all that surprised. She won a full four-year scholarship to Smith in the early 1950s (her roommate was Sylvia Plath), but she hadn't been there long before she found that the school was teaching a radical secular humanism which she totally rejected and so she resigned her scholarship and put herself through college, graduating from Hunter College in New York City while working at McGraw Hill.

When we were living in Charleston, South Carolina in 1971-72, we were all still devout Christian Scientists. We only saw the Christian Science Practitioner when we were sick (though we were all immunized, and I do remember my dad giving me aspirin when I had a fever). But my mother was all ready searching, she had tried out Edgar Casey and Transcendental Meditation (that was an interesting time) and then thought it might be a good idea to have an inductive Bible Study on Sunday mornings before the service began at the Christian Science Church in downtown Charleston.

Well, that went on for a while and she a got a good group together. Only they were studying the Bible without the Science and Health by Mary Baker Eddy (not done). They were just actually reading it - the whole thing, not just the bits like the Science & Health instructed, each week. Somehow, the "Mother Church" in Boston got wind of it and told her to shut it down.

That sure left a lasting impression. Why was this beloved church suddenly getting so put-out because some lady in Charleston wants to study the Bible with a bunch of other people? It had them scared to death and they shut it down. She was pretty ticked off about that. I wasn't so unhappy because we were coming to church early and I had to hang around for an hour being still.

We moved to San Diego and she got so sick with cancer and through friends back east, a local pastor from the United Methodist Church (who had no idea she was a Christian Scientist) came to visit her in the hospital and shared the Gospel with her, not only in word, but through friendship. After a year of conversation, she made a commitment to follow Jesus rather than Mary Baker Eddy and we gave up going to the Christian Science Church, after four generations in my mother's family.

She then started praying for her family, for my dad, my brother and me. I was a particular challenge in that I was wanted to grow up as fast as I could so I could be a flower child and move to San Francisco with flowers in my hair (of course, by the time I would actually be old enough to do that the flowers would all be gone, replaced with Disco balls). But I was pretty determined to be rebellious (I escaped to an Alice Cooper Concert on my twelth birthday, but that was another story). So she was praying, and getting all her friends to pray. Finally she persuaded me to go to a Christian coffeehouse sponsored by this pastor's church. It turned out it was a Spirit-filled scripture-based, Jesus-centered church and the outreach was to to all the hippies floating down the coast from San Francisco to San Diego. And of course, the Jesus Movement was in full swing. Bob Dylan was about to be hit up north in LA and Bono was getting hit in Ireland. I couldn't believe it when my mother said, I was then thirteen going on twenty-one at the time, that I could stay out until midnight as long as I stayed with her designated people (who looked like hippies to me). I thought she had either lost her mind or she'd become, like, the coolest mother ever. So I did it, I went, and well, that changed everything for me.

We moved to Hawaii and the cancer returned and it was a challenge for our family. But we stayed together, laughed together, cried together, prayed together, and somewhere along the way my mother and I became friends. Good friends. In her last weeks we started each morning off, before I went to school, with Bible Study. She was teaching to the end.

I try to live my life in a way that I would hope would honor her. In these rather tough days, I think about her and her little Bible Study in Charleston, and the Mother Church up north and all that it led to. God turned a defeat into a brand new life. And then He did it again. And again. And again. And He'll do it again. That's His Promise.

Thanks, Mom, I do miss you. Thanks for giving me life - and showing me the Way to Life.

-Mary

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your story, Baby Blue. It is really nice to read about something other than you-know-what. My mother has been gone for several years, and sometimes I think about her and wonder how she would react to various things. But I have learned something since her death: there is a lot of her in me. Perhaps you have enjoyed a similar lesson? See you Sunday.

Dave said...

Prayers for you and for your mother's eternal joy and rest.

Anonymous said...

Baby Blue, Eloquent words and thoughts. Thank you.
This old "Circuit Rider" also had a praying mother, now gone many years, and a praying daughter, whose birthday was last Saturday.
She went to join Grandma, Grandpa, and Jesus 23 months ago next week.

"Clancy" The Circuit Rider from Florida

Verndigger said...

Hello Mary - very interesting story and touching thoughts re your relationship with your Mother.
However, as a lifelong 7 decades student of Christian Science, this part bothered me:
"Why was this beloved church suddenly getting so put-out because some lady in Charleston wants to study the Bible with a bunch of other people? It had them scared to death and they shut it down."

I have never seen any attempt by The Mother Church (of which I am a member since 1957) to discourage CS'ers from reading the Bible on its own.

I have read the entire Bible right through 3 different times, using a different translation each time, starting with the KJV.

Mary Trammel, a present member of the Christian Science Board of Directors, co-wrote a biography of the Bible which you may obtain at any CS Reading Room; "The REforming Power of the Scriptures".

AND, Mary, if one reads Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, one cannot miss being directed back to the Bible on most every page. on page 406 of Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy says:
"The Bible contains the recipe for all healing."

in addition, I find it difficult to believe that The Mother Church would request that a branch church 'shut down' a bible-study group simply because they were studying the Bible.
It is conceivable there was some other reason, perhaps it was thought it was interfering with or detracting from the church service.

and as you may recall, branch churches are INDEPENDENTLY governed democratically, and are not under the authority of The Mother Church. See the Manual of The Mother Church.

Thhis not to deny your recollection of your Mom's experience, but simply to make the facts straight for other readers.

In the same vein, it is necessary to counter your statement "she made a commitment to follow Jesus rather than Mary Baker Eddy".

Mary Baker Eddy says "follow me only so far as I follow Christ."

and Christian Scientists consider Jesus their Master, as often stated in Science and Health, and revere (NOT worship) Mary Baker Eddy as the discoverer and founder of Christian Science.

regards,

Verndigger

Unknown said...

Thanks for commenting Verndigger. That is what happened. The officials at the Mother Church in Boston intervened and told the leadership at the First Church of Christ Science in Charleston, SC to cease the Bible Study before the service. It shocked her too, believe me. She loved the church and believed wholeheartedly in it.

I am recovering Christian Scientist. To learn more about those who are walking a path like mine, please feel free to visit http://christianway.org/ I know it may not be what you are looking for right now. It took a long time for me to see that "Truth" was not Christian Science but Jesus. He was not the Way Shower, but The Way. But most of all I found that the love of God is so wide, so deep, so long, that nothing, no nothing can separate us from that love - not mortal mind, nor error. But it's not by our own efforts, but by what Jesus Christ did on the cross. For indeed He is the Truth and He sets us free.

Thank you so much for posting. Please feel free to drop me a personal e-mail and we can talk some more offline if you wish, any time. I don't know all the answers! I can only share with you my testimony. I am very honored you decided to post here. Thank you. That took courage.

-Mary
"Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free." (John 8:32)
BabyBlueAnglican@aol.com

Anonymous said...

Thank you for this deeply moving story, Mary. I was also raised in CS until becoming Episcopalian in 1973. I thank Christian Science for teaching me that "God is Love", and I have many happy memories of family and church associated with CS. However, I know that I made the right decision when I became an orthodox Christian.

Miss Sippi

Anonymous said...

An afterthought:

It's possible that your mother's group was shut down simply because it was not an official church function. I can't recall of any CS church I ever attended that allowed ANY meetings in the building other than church service and official church meetings. Just a thought.

Miss Sippi

Unknown said...

As I recall, all the people attending the Bible Study were members of the First Church of Christ Scientist in Charleston. In a way, you've alluded to an issue though - what constitutes and "official function." The only functions I can ever remember were the Sunday morning Sunday School and service for the adults and the Wednesday night testimonies. The Bible Study was however attended by only Christian Scientists.

Yes, I will always remember the words on the Sunday School classrooms of "God is Love" and "Ye shall know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free." I also still love the song "Shepherd show me how to go." I still love that song, as well as "O Gentle Presence." There was much to love - but it wasn't until decades later that I learned about Gnosticm and saw so much of it in Christian Science. It turns out that CS is very very old.

bb

Verndigger said...

Hello again, Baby Blue Mary ! :-))

I shall take up your invitation to correspond by email, not to prove your way wrong or my way right, but to discuss and share, and gain a deeper understanding.

I must however make one further clarifying comment here, for the benefit of your readers. you said:
"it wasn't until decades later that I learned about Gnosticm and saw so much of it in Christian Science. It turns out that CS is very very old."

Christian Science simply is NOT gnosticism.
rather than try to show that here, I refer you to an excellent website that has definitions of gnosticism from different Bible commentaries and encyclopedias.
http://tinyurl.com/y77tpf



Also, here is a site that makes clear the differences between Christian Science and gnosticism.

http://tinyurl.com/y3mgmk

and one last comment about the last sentence in the quote above, hinting that Christian Science was not discovered by Mary Baker Eddy:

Mrs Eddy was healed from the effects of a serious fall by reading one of Jesus' healings in the Bible.
In order to discover HOW this occurred, she retired from society and studied the Bible constantly for three years.
As she did this she made notes, and from these notes eventually wrote Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
So it can be seen from this that every idea and thought in Science and Health comes from the Bible.

The whole book must be read in order to grasp its true and complete meaning.

with intent only to clarify,

Verndigger

Anonymous said...

Mary,

Are you familiar with The Christian Way website* and forums**?

Do Go Be Man
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* www.christianway.org
** www.christianway.org/forums