Well, thanks for some response! I found the replies to be very interesting and could empathise with them! Connecting socially is always difficult and I am also known for leaving medical issues for too long and seeing the docotor's look of disbelief!! I'm not sure if recognition of the problems bring freedom (maybe eventually) but it is good to look at the world with new eyes. The trouble is, that makes me realise how much I missed in learning and studying academic subjects.
My biggest issue, I think, is - having had a childhood totally immersed in Christian Science - should I develop Alzheimer's, then will I regress to my Christian Science childhood way of thinking? Will the world to which I might regress be doubly confusing for my carers, who will most likely have no knowledge of how I used to think? Maybe I'm just being pessimistic!
Any ideas?
Sunday, 12 September 2010
Tuesday, 6 April 2010
Well, I know you're out there somewhere! And I know a year has disappeared but we are still around, still active and still waiting to hear from any former Christian Scientist!
I have often heard former Christian Scientists say that they are grateful for what Christian Science has given them....If you are a former Christian Scientist, what would you be grateful for?? I think (and I hardly dare write, "on reflection") that it has given me nothing for which I could possibly be grateful...still thinking...!!??
I have often heard former Christian Scientists say that they are grateful for what Christian Science has given them....If you are a former Christian Scientist, what would you be grateful for?? I think (and I hardly dare write, "on reflection") that it has given me nothing for which I could possibly be grateful...still thinking...!!??
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
Welcome - 2009
Welcome to ExCS UK!
We want you to feel able to contact us about any issue appertaining to Christian Science and its effects. Perhaps you need encouragement to visit a doctor or dentist or you have a query concerning relations who may still be in Christian Science? You may have painful memories of loved ones suffering or even dying without medical help because of their radical reliance on Christian Science.
Please note that you do not have to be a Christian to contact us. We are a strictly non-religious, internet and social group which exists to encourage and support.
We also hope to hear from former Christian Scientists internationally and look forward to the day when we may be able to establish an international internet group - again, with no religious bias whatsoever.
We look forward to hearing from you if you have, or are, experiencing the effects of Christian Science.
We want you to feel able to contact us about any issue appertaining to Christian Science and its effects. Perhaps you need encouragement to visit a doctor or dentist or you have a query concerning relations who may still be in Christian Science? You may have painful memories of loved ones suffering or even dying without medical help because of their radical reliance on Christian Science.
Please note that you do not have to be a Christian to contact us. We are a strictly non-religious, internet and social group which exists to encourage and support.
We also hope to hear from former Christian Scientists internationally and look forward to the day when we may be able to establish an international internet group - again, with no religious bias whatsoever.
We look forward to hearing from you if you have, or are, experiencing the effects of Christian Science.
Tuesday, 29 April 2008
All the Rugged Way
All the Rugged Way
A frail, elderly lady, pale and birdlike, walked somewhat laboriously down the busy street, quietly singing a hymn to herself, “Shepherd, show me how to go, O’er the hillside steep. How to gather, how to sow, How to feed Thy sheep”. She wore an old-fashioned two-piece costume of purple crushed velvet and a hat of the same material, impaled with a vicious looking cross-and-crown hat pin. Though it was autumn and a sunless day, she carried her customary furled parasol, which she surreptitiously used from time to time as a walking stick.
As she hobbled along she looked full into the faces of all she saw and smiled sweetly. Even the most hard-boiled businessman, intent on making money, and interested in nothing else, was somehow – through a power not of his own – compelled to return that smile.
Miss Brewster knew – after years of beaming at total strangers – that as Love is reflected in Love, so Smile is reflected in Smile. Newcomers turned to look at her and exclaim her quaintness and old-world charm to one another. Habitual frequenters of the street were well aware of her eccentric appearance and mannerisms and were inclined to avert their gaze. Miss Brewster was a Christian Scientist. She knew, as did every faithful adherent of the sect, that the “Science” her beloved Leader, Mrs Eddy, had discovered in 1866 was the one true interpretation of God’s word. Mrs Eddy had prophesied that “science” was destined to dominate the thinking of philosophers and theologians by the end of the twentieth century.
But the twentieth century had been and gone. And, far from dominating anything, Christian Science was in its death-throes and dwindling away. The magnificent churches built in Miss Brewster’s city in the twenties, thirties and forties of the last century, had been taken over by other creeds. Or demolished and their sites occupied by office blocks. Or – irony of ironies – a clinic of venereal medicine. The very thought of this made Miss Brewster shudder, and she immediately mentally denied that anything of the sort had happened to her beloved “Twentieth”, whenever she had to pass that church in its new incarnation.
There was just one functioning Church of Christ, Scientist in the city now. It was to the reading room of that church, Thirteenth, that Miss Brewster was making her dolorous way. She was the librarian there, and spent eight hours a day, six days a week at her post. For she was the most agile and the sprightliest of the five members of the church, and the only one who could manage to climb the steep stairs in the elevator-less, fire-trap building where the reading room was housed in a small, dim office on the fourth floor.
The other tenants were private detectives, clairvoyants, seedy marriage bureaux and introduction agencies.
With some effort and considerable pain – which was denied with every step, Miss Brewster reached the fourth-floor landing. One of the other tenants had arrived sometime before her, but was still standing outside her own door, breathing with difficulty, worn out by the stairs. She was Madam Petrula, the seventy-eight year old “clairvoyante to the star of stage, screen and radio” – or so her consulting-room window announced to an uninterested world. “Good morning, dearie,” ventured Madam Petrula. “My, we are both out of breath! And you’re looking very pale today, too, dearie.” She knew Miss Brewster always studiously ignored any remarks of a personal nature, so she continued with her pleasantries. “I have a client booked in for this afternoon. A bereaved son, in a terrible state. He could hardly speak for weeping on the phone. His mother passed over just a year ago. I got through to her last night. She’s told me to tell him she’s happy, she’s watching over him and he shouldn’t worry because everything’s going to be alright. So business is looking up. I hope you’ll be doing a bit more trade y’self today, dearie”. “Good morning to you, too, Miss Petrula,” said Miss Brewster, in her clipped, almost English accent – smiling but still rather breathless and in discomfort. She always called the clairvoyante “Miss” for she disliked the “Madam”, which she felt had undertones of something not quite respectable. She also kept her distance from the kindly medium – on the firm instructions of her beloved Leader, who had vehemently disapproved of spiritualism. “Such a lovely morning, isn’t it. Oh yes, I’m sure the reading room will be busy, busy, busy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go. There’s a lot of work to be done. Good-bye”
Miss Brewster mentally denied the existence of any power in spiritualism and tried for the thousandth time to see Madam Petrula as God’s perfect child, who would one day realize the error of her ways and come over whole-heartedly to Science.
She turned the key in the lock and entered the shabby little office. The room smelled musty. The heating had not worked for years and the landlords were reluctant to fix anything, for it was their aim to get all the tenants out as soon as their leases expired, and to sell the building for redevelopment. There were four, small, inlaid-mahogany tables in the crowded room, each with a Georgian chair of exquisite quality in front of it – relics from the time when the showpiece reading room of Thirteenth Church had been furnished like the library of an English country house and had occupied a magnificent site on the smartest street downtown.
On each of the tables lay a Bible, and the denomination’s textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The title of this revered tome was hardly ever spoken by the Scientists without the addition of the name of its authoress, Mary Baker Eddy. The hushed awe in which this sacred name was enunciated probably rivalled that afforded to the Tetragrammaton, the most holy, most secret name of God, when it was uttered in solemn assembly by the High Priest in the Temple.
It was Monday morning, and Miss Brewster set about the task, that, were she to admit it, most bothered her. Each copy of the Bible and Science and Health was to be provided with dozens of unpleasant little wire markers. These fiddly contraptions indicated the verses and lines which had been selected to be read from the two holy books for the current week. This totally unnecessary operation, made a hundredfold more difficult by the arthritic condition of Miss Brewster’s hands, would take up most of her Mondays. The only people to have visited the reading room during the last eight years had been lost searchers wanting a tarot reading, a private detective, a new spouse or a sexual encounter with someone of the opposite or same sex. They had come to the wrong office. But Miss Brewster “knew” each morning that the public would be arriving in droves to imbibe at the fount of Truth that Mrs. Eddy had provided for a thirsty, benighted world living in sin, sickness and error. And she always embarked on this fruitless chore with a cheerful countenance, though unhappy fingers.
Because of the concentration required to place the markers correctly, Miss Brewster found it difficult to do her “metaphysical work” at the same time. She allowed herself a ten minute break between each completed book, when she would sip a glass of warm water. Mrs. Eddy had disapproved of coffee or tea as drug-like substances. Metaphysical work is the name given to spiritual exercises done by Scientists to ensure the realisation in human thought of the Truth behind every seemingly real, but in the Absolute- false, picture that the world presents. So, although to human thought it would appear that nobody ever visited the reading room, in reality it was a bee-hive of activity; although Miss Brewster seemed to be crippled by arthritis, she was in fact as lithe and supple as when she was a little girl running around the garden chasing butterflies. Although Christian Science seemed to be soon on its last legs, it was actually the world’s strongest religion, with the greatest number of followers – and adding tens of thousands to its ranks every day.
Although Miss Brewster was indeed sick – and if Truth be told, sick and tired of all these seeming contradictions between reality and Reality, she forced herself to drift along with the same thought patterns, day after day, year after year.
At one o’clock, having completed half of the book marking, Miss Brewster decided she would close the reading room for twenty minutes and take a little air outside. There was provision in the rules for the librarian to take an hour for lunch, but in all the years she had served there she had never once ventured out, thinking that some office worker on a lunch break might have called and found the reading room closed. Today the false claim of mortal mind that she was feeling faint and in terrible arthritic pain would not yield to her firm metaphysical challenge. Before Miss Brewster left the reading room she “knew the Truth” about it being protected by Divine Mind during her absence, and also that any visitor reading her spidery note – “The reading room will re-open at 1:20. Thank you for your patience.” –would not be too inconvenienced.
She locked the door behind her and tried to pin the note to it. But she did not have the strength to push the thumb-tack in. “Oh dear”, she thought. “Perhaps I had better ask Miss Petrula”. She had never been inside the clairvoyante’s office, always refusing the many offers of hospitality. Madam Petrula had called at the reading room occasionally over the years, but she had always sensed that she wasn’t welcome, and stayed at the threshold to tall Miss Brewster of the latest developments with the landlords, and to cheerfully accept the free Christian Science literature she was given. Miss Brewster had always thought that inviting Madam Petrula in might set a precedent, and that the spiritualist would interrupt the legitimate work of the reading room – the promotion of Christian Science to the enquiring public. Her erroneous views might also affect the healing atmosphere that Miss Brewster worked so hard to establish every day with her consecrated, uplifted Thought.
Mentally working for protection from the malign influence of spiritualism and to overcome the claim of pain, nausea and fatigue, she somehow managed to drag herself over to Madam Petrula’s door and knock timorously on it. Madam Petrula was drinking a cup of tea and reading “Spirit News” when she heard Miss Brewster’s taps. For a second or two she thought it might have been her spirit guide, Silver Cloud, trying to get through to her. Then Miss Brewster called out, “Miss Petrula, help me please, dear.” Madam Petrula quickly got up and opened the door. She was met by an ashen-faced Miss Brewster. “Goodness, dearie, you look awful pasty. Are you alright? Do come in and have a cup of tea.” “No, no. Thank you very much, Miss Petrula. I would just like you to help me pin this note to the reading room door. I’m going out for a little time, and I want visitors to know that I won’t be too long.” “Yes, of course, dearie. Give it to me – and the thumb-tack.” Miss Brewster – uncontrollably trembling – handed her the note. But it wasn’t the right note. It was another one she had quickly scribbled just before she came out. In her delirium she had picked up the wrong note. As Madam Petrula was pinning the note to the door, Miss Brewster collapsed and died. Madam Petrula immediately knelt down to attend to her. “Oh dearie,” she said. The note on the door said, “God is my Life.”
A frail, elderly lady, pale and birdlike, walked somewhat laboriously down the busy street, quietly singing a hymn to herself, “Shepherd, show me how to go, O’er the hillside steep. How to gather, how to sow, How to feed Thy sheep”. She wore an old-fashioned two-piece costume of purple crushed velvet and a hat of the same material, impaled with a vicious looking cross-and-crown hat pin. Though it was autumn and a sunless day, she carried her customary furled parasol, which she surreptitiously used from time to time as a walking stick.
As she hobbled along she looked full into the faces of all she saw and smiled sweetly. Even the most hard-boiled businessman, intent on making money, and interested in nothing else, was somehow – through a power not of his own – compelled to return that smile.
Miss Brewster knew – after years of beaming at total strangers – that as Love is reflected in Love, so Smile is reflected in Smile. Newcomers turned to look at her and exclaim her quaintness and old-world charm to one another. Habitual frequenters of the street were well aware of her eccentric appearance and mannerisms and were inclined to avert their gaze. Miss Brewster was a Christian Scientist. She knew, as did every faithful adherent of the sect, that the “Science” her beloved Leader, Mrs Eddy, had discovered in 1866 was the one true interpretation of God’s word. Mrs Eddy had prophesied that “science” was destined to dominate the thinking of philosophers and theologians by the end of the twentieth century.
But the twentieth century had been and gone. And, far from dominating anything, Christian Science was in its death-throes and dwindling away. The magnificent churches built in Miss Brewster’s city in the twenties, thirties and forties of the last century, had been taken over by other creeds. Or demolished and their sites occupied by office blocks. Or – irony of ironies – a clinic of venereal medicine. The very thought of this made Miss Brewster shudder, and she immediately mentally denied that anything of the sort had happened to her beloved “Twentieth”, whenever she had to pass that church in its new incarnation.
There was just one functioning Church of Christ, Scientist in the city now. It was to the reading room of that church, Thirteenth, that Miss Brewster was making her dolorous way. She was the librarian there, and spent eight hours a day, six days a week at her post. For she was the most agile and the sprightliest of the five members of the church, and the only one who could manage to climb the steep stairs in the elevator-less, fire-trap building where the reading room was housed in a small, dim office on the fourth floor.
The other tenants were private detectives, clairvoyants, seedy marriage bureaux and introduction agencies.
With some effort and considerable pain – which was denied with every step, Miss Brewster reached the fourth-floor landing. One of the other tenants had arrived sometime before her, but was still standing outside her own door, breathing with difficulty, worn out by the stairs. She was Madam Petrula, the seventy-eight year old “clairvoyante to the star of stage, screen and radio” – or so her consulting-room window announced to an uninterested world. “Good morning, dearie,” ventured Madam Petrula. “My, we are both out of breath! And you’re looking very pale today, too, dearie.” She knew Miss Brewster always studiously ignored any remarks of a personal nature, so she continued with her pleasantries. “I have a client booked in for this afternoon. A bereaved son, in a terrible state. He could hardly speak for weeping on the phone. His mother passed over just a year ago. I got through to her last night. She’s told me to tell him she’s happy, she’s watching over him and he shouldn’t worry because everything’s going to be alright. So business is looking up. I hope you’ll be doing a bit more trade y’self today, dearie”. “Good morning to you, too, Miss Petrula,” said Miss Brewster, in her clipped, almost English accent – smiling but still rather breathless and in discomfort. She always called the clairvoyante “Miss” for she disliked the “Madam”, which she felt had undertones of something not quite respectable. She also kept her distance from the kindly medium – on the firm instructions of her beloved Leader, who had vehemently disapproved of spiritualism. “Such a lovely morning, isn’t it. Oh yes, I’m sure the reading room will be busy, busy, busy. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go. There’s a lot of work to be done. Good-bye”
Miss Brewster mentally denied the existence of any power in spiritualism and tried for the thousandth time to see Madam Petrula as God’s perfect child, who would one day realize the error of her ways and come over whole-heartedly to Science.
She turned the key in the lock and entered the shabby little office. The room smelled musty. The heating had not worked for years and the landlords were reluctant to fix anything, for it was their aim to get all the tenants out as soon as their leases expired, and to sell the building for redevelopment. There were four, small, inlaid-mahogany tables in the crowded room, each with a Georgian chair of exquisite quality in front of it – relics from the time when the showpiece reading room of Thirteenth Church had been furnished like the library of an English country house and had occupied a magnificent site on the smartest street downtown.
On each of the tables lay a Bible, and the denomination’s textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. The title of this revered tome was hardly ever spoken by the Scientists without the addition of the name of its authoress, Mary Baker Eddy. The hushed awe in which this sacred name was enunciated probably rivalled that afforded to the Tetragrammaton, the most holy, most secret name of God, when it was uttered in solemn assembly by the High Priest in the Temple.
It was Monday morning, and Miss Brewster set about the task, that, were she to admit it, most bothered her. Each copy of the Bible and Science and Health was to be provided with dozens of unpleasant little wire markers. These fiddly contraptions indicated the verses and lines which had been selected to be read from the two holy books for the current week. This totally unnecessary operation, made a hundredfold more difficult by the arthritic condition of Miss Brewster’s hands, would take up most of her Mondays. The only people to have visited the reading room during the last eight years had been lost searchers wanting a tarot reading, a private detective, a new spouse or a sexual encounter with someone of the opposite or same sex. They had come to the wrong office. But Miss Brewster “knew” each morning that the public would be arriving in droves to imbibe at the fount of Truth that Mrs. Eddy had provided for a thirsty, benighted world living in sin, sickness and error. And she always embarked on this fruitless chore with a cheerful countenance, though unhappy fingers.
Because of the concentration required to place the markers correctly, Miss Brewster found it difficult to do her “metaphysical work” at the same time. She allowed herself a ten minute break between each completed book, when she would sip a glass of warm water. Mrs. Eddy had disapproved of coffee or tea as drug-like substances. Metaphysical work is the name given to spiritual exercises done by Scientists to ensure the realisation in human thought of the Truth behind every seemingly real, but in the Absolute- false, picture that the world presents. So, although to human thought it would appear that nobody ever visited the reading room, in reality it was a bee-hive of activity; although Miss Brewster seemed to be crippled by arthritis, she was in fact as lithe and supple as when she was a little girl running around the garden chasing butterflies. Although Christian Science seemed to be soon on its last legs, it was actually the world’s strongest religion, with the greatest number of followers – and adding tens of thousands to its ranks every day.
Although Miss Brewster was indeed sick – and if Truth be told, sick and tired of all these seeming contradictions between reality and Reality, she forced herself to drift along with the same thought patterns, day after day, year after year.
At one o’clock, having completed half of the book marking, Miss Brewster decided she would close the reading room for twenty minutes and take a little air outside. There was provision in the rules for the librarian to take an hour for lunch, but in all the years she had served there she had never once ventured out, thinking that some office worker on a lunch break might have called and found the reading room closed. Today the false claim of mortal mind that she was feeling faint and in terrible arthritic pain would not yield to her firm metaphysical challenge. Before Miss Brewster left the reading room she “knew the Truth” about it being protected by Divine Mind during her absence, and also that any visitor reading her spidery note – “The reading room will re-open at 1:20. Thank you for your patience.” –would not be too inconvenienced.
She locked the door behind her and tried to pin the note to it. But she did not have the strength to push the thumb-tack in. “Oh dear”, she thought. “Perhaps I had better ask Miss Petrula”. She had never been inside the clairvoyante’s office, always refusing the many offers of hospitality. Madam Petrula had called at the reading room occasionally over the years, but she had always sensed that she wasn’t welcome, and stayed at the threshold to tall Miss Brewster of the latest developments with the landlords, and to cheerfully accept the free Christian Science literature she was given. Miss Brewster had always thought that inviting Madam Petrula in might set a precedent, and that the spiritualist would interrupt the legitimate work of the reading room – the promotion of Christian Science to the enquiring public. Her erroneous views might also affect the healing atmosphere that Miss Brewster worked so hard to establish every day with her consecrated, uplifted Thought.
Mentally working for protection from the malign influence of spiritualism and to overcome the claim of pain, nausea and fatigue, she somehow managed to drag herself over to Madam Petrula’s door and knock timorously on it. Madam Petrula was drinking a cup of tea and reading “Spirit News” when she heard Miss Brewster’s taps. For a second or two she thought it might have been her spirit guide, Silver Cloud, trying to get through to her. Then Miss Brewster called out, “Miss Petrula, help me please, dear.” Madam Petrula quickly got up and opened the door. She was met by an ashen-faced Miss Brewster. “Goodness, dearie, you look awful pasty. Are you alright? Do come in and have a cup of tea.” “No, no. Thank you very much, Miss Petrula. I would just like you to help me pin this note to the reading room door. I’m going out for a little time, and I want visitors to know that I won’t be too long.” “Yes, of course, dearie. Give it to me – and the thumb-tack.” Miss Brewster – uncontrollably trembling – handed her the note. But it wasn’t the right note. It was another one she had quickly scribbled just before she came out. In her delirium she had picked up the wrong note. As Madam Petrula was pinning the note to the door, Miss Brewster collapsed and died. Madam Petrula immediately knelt down to attend to her. “Oh dearie,” she said. The note on the door said, “God is my Life.”
by Anon.
Monday, 24 March 2008
Saturday, 17 November 2007
Famous former CSists
It's fascinating who grew up in CS... here are just three well-known people.
Ellen De Generes - US talk-show host
John Simpson - UK journalist and author
Kelsey Grammer - lead star of US sitcom Frasier
Ellen De Generes - US talk-show host
John Simpson - UK journalist and author
Kelsey Grammer - lead star of US sitcom FrasierMonday, 12 November 2007
History behind this site
The motivation for setting up this site is because of my personal experiences concerning the effects of Christian Science which began in January 2001.
You can read a little about this story, which was published by our local press, on the Christian Science links on www.rickross.com
My late mother began to exhibit bizarre behaviour and then suffered two falls at her home. She was taken to hospital where she received a full assessment of her condition. I was informed that she had breast cancer (a huge shock for me),had suffered it for some time, and that she also was malnourished. My mother had followed a strict vegan diet for many years without taking any mineral/vitamin supplements - both of which she considered to be "medical". She refused all medication and was sent to a rest home to recuperate before the next stage in her care could be considered.
My mother denied any reality that may have dawned on her at this time and she called for a Christian Science practitioner to help her "acknowledge her spiritual perfection with God." All medication was refused by her and also sterile dressings - in accordance with Christian Science teaching. My mother was a radical relier on Christian Science and Mrs. Eddy's words in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures make it quite clear that one cannot rely on medical aid and Christian Science - the two systems being considered incompatible.One day, my mother decided that she was healed and to prove this, she demanded to return home immediately. She refused all assistance, apart from a meals on wheels service five days a week.I used to shop for her. During this time she set about making her home "perfect" for me to inherit. It was extensively filled with Christian Science literature. She could not accept that I had left Christian Science years previously. Everything had to be in its correct place and even the carpet pile had to be immaculately straightened. From March 2001 until early 2002 we, as a family, were frozen into silence and could only observe my mother's decline. As the decline progressed, she would refuse and return anything that she could desperately think of as being "medical" and which she thought may be impeding the speed of her physical recovery. This would include a personal alarm worn around the neck, a raised toilet seat etc. She would not accept any medical intervention whatsoever, as she thought that this would impede the manifestation of the physical healing of the breast cancer. She believed that in reality she was healed. She would allow no talk of her health and obvious weakness - indeed, we were forced to watch her exhibit hurtful and more bizarre behaviour, mental deterioration etc. etc. My mother's memory began to fail and her recognition faculties worsened. Eventually she did not recognise where she lived and became obsessed with the idea that I had put her into the "wrong" home. She telephoned and asked innumerable people, including local government officers,members of the Christian Science Church, etc to take her to her address and no amount of logical reason would convince her that her home was indeed where it always was. No-one could ascertain the physical progress of the cancer.
She suffered another fall in the road, was taken to hospital but insisted on returning home and gradually, as the strength left her, we watched her crawl up the stairs on her hands and knees...anything but admit she had a problem. In her mind, Mrs Eddy's words would heal her - indeed, had healed her in reality, and so therefore she thought she would have to work harder at "knowing the truth" to bring it to pass on this earth.At the beginning of 2002, after nights of distressing 'phone calls because she did not recognise night or day, we could not obtain an answer from her. My husband and I spent an hour looking for her and finally tracked her to hospital where she had been admitted during the night. She had been found wandering the streets. She had packed a lot of clothes and literally walked out of her home. I believe she had begun to realise that she could not heal herself of cancer and the awful reality of this admission forced her to abandon all that was vaguely familiar to her. We don't know where she was trying to reach or how she ever got to hospital. She never once mentioned her home again.The open wound of the cancer was large. Indeed, over the last few years of her life she had watched part of her body disintegrate and denied the reality of her senses because she would repeat to herself constantly, "There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter." (Science and Health). My mother died in a nursing home on June 4th 2002. She suffered silently. She did not understand the question as to whether she would like "pain relief". What was that? She had received no medical aid whatsoever for more than forty years. She had never been registered with a doctor since about 1958. No-one could have studied Christian Science harder than my mother. She had dedicated her life to it and had sacrificed normal family life, outings, physical comforts etc etc in preference for the study of Christian Science. Latterly, she became convinced that she had seen Mrs. Eddy and that she had been told by her to stand and walk. The awful realisation that she could do neither devastated my mother and she would stare at me in horror. This placement in a nursing home and losing all personal privacy was definitely not what she had envisaged Christian Science would do for her. She was heart-broken and her family are still recovering from the painful memories and stress. Not one member of the Christian Science Church ever asked to visit her.
You can read a little about this story, which was published by our local press, on the Christian Science links on www.rickross.com
My late mother began to exhibit bizarre behaviour and then suffered two falls at her home. She was taken to hospital where she received a full assessment of her condition. I was informed that she had breast cancer (a huge shock for me),had suffered it for some time, and that she also was malnourished. My mother had followed a strict vegan diet for many years without taking any mineral/vitamin supplements - both of which she considered to be "medical". She refused all medication and was sent to a rest home to recuperate before the next stage in her care could be considered.
My mother denied any reality that may have dawned on her at this time and she called for a Christian Science practitioner to help her "acknowledge her spiritual perfection with God." All medication was refused by her and also sterile dressings - in accordance with Christian Science teaching. My mother was a radical relier on Christian Science and Mrs. Eddy's words in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures make it quite clear that one cannot rely on medical aid and Christian Science - the two systems being considered incompatible.One day, my mother decided that she was healed and to prove this, she demanded to return home immediately. She refused all assistance, apart from a meals on wheels service five days a week.I used to shop for her. During this time she set about making her home "perfect" for me to inherit. It was extensively filled with Christian Science literature. She could not accept that I had left Christian Science years previously. Everything had to be in its correct place and even the carpet pile had to be immaculately straightened. From March 2001 until early 2002 we, as a family, were frozen into silence and could only observe my mother's decline. As the decline progressed, she would refuse and return anything that she could desperately think of as being "medical" and which she thought may be impeding the speed of her physical recovery. This would include a personal alarm worn around the neck, a raised toilet seat etc. She would not accept any medical intervention whatsoever, as she thought that this would impede the manifestation of the physical healing of the breast cancer. She believed that in reality she was healed. She would allow no talk of her health and obvious weakness - indeed, we were forced to watch her exhibit hurtful and more bizarre behaviour, mental deterioration etc. etc. My mother's memory began to fail and her recognition faculties worsened. Eventually she did not recognise where she lived and became obsessed with the idea that I had put her into the "wrong" home. She telephoned and asked innumerable people, including local government officers,members of the Christian Science Church, etc to take her to her address and no amount of logical reason would convince her that her home was indeed where it always was. No-one could ascertain the physical progress of the cancer.
She suffered another fall in the road, was taken to hospital but insisted on returning home and gradually, as the strength left her, we watched her crawl up the stairs on her hands and knees...anything but admit she had a problem. In her mind, Mrs Eddy's words would heal her - indeed, had healed her in reality, and so therefore she thought she would have to work harder at "knowing the truth" to bring it to pass on this earth.At the beginning of 2002, after nights of distressing 'phone calls because she did not recognise night or day, we could not obtain an answer from her. My husband and I spent an hour looking for her and finally tracked her to hospital where she had been admitted during the night. She had been found wandering the streets. She had packed a lot of clothes and literally walked out of her home. I believe she had begun to realise that she could not heal herself of cancer and the awful reality of this admission forced her to abandon all that was vaguely familiar to her. We don't know where she was trying to reach or how she ever got to hospital. She never once mentioned her home again.The open wound of the cancer was large. Indeed, over the last few years of her life she had watched part of her body disintegrate and denied the reality of her senses because she would repeat to herself constantly, "There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter." (Science and Health). My mother died in a nursing home on June 4th 2002. She suffered silently. She did not understand the question as to whether she would like "pain relief". What was that? She had received no medical aid whatsoever for more than forty years. She had never been registered with a doctor since about 1958. No-one could have studied Christian Science harder than my mother. She had dedicated her life to it and had sacrificed normal family life, outings, physical comforts etc etc in preference for the study of Christian Science. Latterly, she became convinced that she had seen Mrs. Eddy and that she had been told by her to stand and walk. The awful realisation that she could do neither devastated my mother and she would stare at me in horror. This placement in a nursing home and losing all personal privacy was definitely not what she had envisaged Christian Science would do for her. She was heart-broken and her family are still recovering from the painful memories and stress. Not one member of the Christian Science Church ever asked to visit her.
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