Article March 24, 2008 Issue

FIRED UP ABOUT CHURCH

BY JULIE FURBUSH

ONE BIG CAR. Six good friends. Road trip! But to church?

For weeks, different friends had piled into my car Wednesday nights, and we'd driven from our university for about half an hour to get to Christian Science testimony meetings.

One night, in particular, music was playing, conversations were flowing, and the general mood was a powerful mix of lightheartedness and joy. Most of the members of our new Christian Science organization on campus had come along. Not everyone had been raised in Christian Science. I felt that we were all a troop of spiritual thinkers on the move. That night, my college roommate of now four years had also come with us; this was her first time visiting a Christian Science church. She was talking with our other housemate, my best friend, whose name is D, about God. In my passenger seat sat a childhood friend visiting from his college a few states away. We were having a conversation about praying to God through something my grandfather had once called immediate, "nanosecond prayer."