“Never Alone: How Spiritual Ideas Work in Us” by Melanie Wahlberg

 

The talk focused on universal healing precepts found in the Holy Bible, especially in Christ Jesus’ life and teachings, and showed how they are available for anyone to understand and experience. The talk was free, open to the community, and was sponsored by First Church Christ, Scientist, Palo Alto.

“In the middle of difficult circumstances, it would be so reassuring to feel supported in our efforts for progress, instead of feeling alone. In this talk,” says Wahlberg, “I discuss what I’ve found helpful in my practice of Christian Science healing: that God loves us deeply, is an active presence of good in our lives, and provides fresh ideas about our spiritual nature that wipe away fear and reveal inspired solutions.”

Wahlberg discussed the approach to spirituality and well-being that explains these ideas, Christian Science, and shared examples of healing from her own life and the lives of others. She explained why Christian Science is both Christian and scientific, meaning that anyone can prove its effectiveness for themselves. The practice is fully described in the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, written by the founder of the Christian Science movement, Mary Baker Eddy.

Wahlberg touched on the life of Mary Baker Eddy, a mid-nineteenth century woman from New England, and how she came to understand, confirm, and teach what she felt was original Christian healing. Eddy herself said she was especially inspired by Jesus’ demand, “He that believes on me, the works that I do will he do also; and greater works than these will he do, because I go unto my Father” (found in the Gospel of John 14:12 in the Bible).

For over 150 years, people around the world have also worked to follow Christ Jesus in this practice of Christianity and continue to do so today, with healings of physical ills and personal difficulties for themselves and others.

Melanie Wahlberg has been a practitioner of Christian Science healing for many years, helping people on a daily basis through this scientific approach to prayer.  She travels from her home base in Lake Forest, CA, to speak to audiences as a member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship.

For more information,
650.327.1642 or email clerk@cspaloalto.org

A talk on Christian Science by Lyle Young

Lecturer Lyle Young

Lecturer Lyle Young

Location: Folsom Historic District, Amphitheater, 200 Wool St, Folsom, CA 95630

Who are we, really?  You and I, and all humanity?  The health, harmony, and joy we experience in life depends on our answer to this question.

Mary Baker Eddy, who founded the Christian Science church, had a profound insight into the nature of God as infinite Love.  She perceived that God is the only substance, intelligence and Life of the universe, without the opposition typically ascribed to darkness or evil.  Moreover, Eddy realized that this was the basis of Jesus’ healing works.

This is revolutionary.  Eddy didn’t say that conflict, struggle, and disease exist as unavoidable realities, then in addition there’s also God’s love.  Rather, she saw infinite Love, and genuine creation as the perfect spiritual expression of this Love, instead of the imperfect, material existence we typically assume unavoidably defines us.  To Eddy, infinite Love, being infinite, simply excludes the possibility of anything else.

Such an unusual theology might have ended as a footnote to history, except that Eddy and her students boldly used it to reinvigorate Christianity and its lost element of healing.  Since then, some 65,000 accounts of healing have been verified and published — healings of everything from cancer to AIDS to blindness, from drug addiction to broken bones.

Here’s one example. Decades ago, a friend of mine was diagnosed as having several tumors in her abdomen. Though the doctors didn’t think she could live much longer, they recommended an operation to determine the best treatment.

Meanwhile, my friend was praying with a Christian Science practitioner.  She was understanding herself not as wholly or partly material — dependent on her genes or her childhood, or on surgery or chemotherapy — but as purely spiritual, part of the perfect spiritual creation mentioned above.  

At her husband’s urging, my friend underwent the exploratory operation. But this time the doctor didn’t find one single tumor. In fact he said to her later that she was “clean as a baby.”

To the degree that we understand our identity as purely spiritual — knowing that each of us shines, now and eternally, as a unique expression of infinite Love — we experience healing.  The result is wellness, opportunity, spiritual progress, and the highest degree of joy.