Christian Science shows us how to enter the kingdom of God by spiritualizing our thought. The spiritualization of thought heals the body. I'd like to share two experiences which illustrate this fact.

Never having been very athletic, I hoped to see that our "easy hike" in a national park stayed easy. My husband wanted me comfortable, but also longed to see the really wild and lovely country, away from crowds. It was decided that we make a short trail for ourselves a little bit off the one shown on our map.

After hiking about an hour we began to blaze our trail up a valley called "Chaos Canyon." Soon we had to scramble over enormous boulders and up extremely steep slopes. Besides getting very tired, I was carrying a growing burden of anger with my husband for making this decision.

Thinking it might get easier, we pushed on, only to discover a four-hundred-foot-high glacier in our path. Due to the late hour, the difficulty of getting to this point, and the threatening weather, we thought that the quickest way out was up. The climbing was treacherous. We had no ropes or ice axes, no hiking boots—and the mist turned to drizzle. I felt angry and scared. Up to this point we had been making only feeble attempts to pray. But when my husband slipped, and then caught himself, we realized that we had better earnestly listen for God's guiding ideas.

We tried climbing up the sheer wall of rock next to us, but the rock began to crumble. Right then, audibly to my thinking, I heard, "Thus Truth engrounds me on the rock." That's a line from Mrs. Eddy's hymn "Christ My Refuge." The whole verse reads (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 253):

We were God-impelled back onto the glacier, and every step was sure-footed to the top.

But there my mental struggle became very severe. I was exhusted and angry. I couldn't breathe naturally. I knew very well that the body was simply manifesting these thoughts—and that I had some real mountain-climbing to do. I had to climb in thought into the mountains of Mind—the realm of spiritual perception. This decision made, breathing became more normal.

But the path to spiritual perception still seemed steep. There were so many material reasons to feel bad. We still had over five miles to go. I had much time to argue on the side of spiritual reality, the presence of God's government, to really accept God as the only Mind, realm, and source of consciousness and action. This brought a great change.

About halfway down the mountain it was as though a cloud had parted and I was at the summit of a glorious peak. It was so clear that because God's good, knowing, and acting were all that were real, the material sense of danger and carelessness was a dream, an illusion. I felt light and free, happy and strong. Soon we were laughing, and practically running down the trail.

There was never a moment of recrimination after that, and no trace of aftereffects from the climb, which would have been a challenge to even an experienced hiker.

Later that summer, after backpacking into high mountains for a day and a half, just before nightfall I walked through a nest of wasps hidden in undergrowth. I was stung many times. My husband was with me, and together we fairly shouted "the scientific statement of being" from the textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy (p. 468). Soon I was calm enough to go back to camp.

In my tent I turned to the Bible and Science and Health and reread that week's Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly. I came to the statement in the textbook (p. 514), "All of God's creatures, moving in the harmony of Science, are harmless, useful, indestructible." I saw and felt that I was an expression of Love, and so was all creation. I felt deep affection for all creation, and calm certainty that this spiritual creation was present and indestructible.

A peaceful sleep came quickly, and the next day we hiked out some thirteen miles to civilization. It wasn't until I was in the shower that night that I remembered the wasps. There wasn't a mark on my body.

The influence that Christian Science is having on my me is unspeakably more profound than these two healings. The discipline and form that church membership is giving to my thinking and action is a priceless gift. The purpose, desire, and capacity for constructive and unselfed living are gently unfolding. I am sincerely grateful for an understanding of God, omnipresent Mind, and that we have Christian Science to study and demonstrate.

(Mrs.) Claire M. Fisher
Park Ridge, Illinois