Article October 7, 1944 Issue

Joyous Completeness of Being

FLORENCE HOOD JOHNSON

In a distressed state of thought, a young mother entered the office of a Christian Science practitioner. She told the practitioner that she was living in an apartment house with her two very small children, a son and a daughter, and said that the son was causing her almost constant trouble, because he was "all boy" and not adapted to apartment house living. He wanted to play vigorously all the time, and when she bought him building toys and such playthings he hurled them against the wall and smashed them. Nothing she could say or do would curb this very exuberant energy.

The practitioner saw that the key to the whole problem lay in the mother's description of the little son as "all boy." She quoted to the young mother the account of creation as found in the first chapter of Genesis, in which it is stated that God made man "male and female"; therefore man possesses both the feminine and the masculine attributes found in his Father-Mother God. The practitioner also showed the mother Mary Baker Eddy's description of the true sense of man's completeness of being, as found on page 577 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "The Lamb's wife presents the unity of male and female as no longer two wedded individuals, but as two individual natures in one; and this compounded spiritual individuality reflects God as Father-Mother, not as a corporeal being. In this divinely united spiritual consciousness, there is no impediment to eternal bliss.—to the perfectibility of God's creation." She urged the young mother never again to think of her children as "all boy" or "all girl," but to remember that the spiritual identity of each child is a complete expression of perfect manhood and perfect womanhood, because it is made in the image and likeness of the Father-Mother God. She also urged her to trust this wise and loving God to manifest His attributes in each child. (See Mrs. Eddy's Message to The Mother Church for 1901. p. 7.)

About a week later the mother reported to the practitioner that she had never seen such a change in two children in such a short time in all her experience. The little boy, when at home, had quieted down and become interested in the indoor playthings; the little girl had suddenly awakened to a sense of joy in the athletic sports her brother enjoyed on the children's playground. They were companionable as never before.

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