Article August 10, 1974 Issue

Change of Standpoint Heals Grief

FRANCES MARSHALL

Almost everyone at some time faces grief over the passing of a loved one. But we can all find assurance in the first chapter of Genesis, which says that man is made in the image and likeness of God and has dominion over all the earth. Christian Science teaches that God is Spirit and Life, and that the man of His creating must necessarily be spiritual, perfect, and eternal, never is born into matter or dies out of it. What appears to be material birth, life, and death is an illusion or dream and never touches the real man.

A Christian Scientist felt deep grief one morning when she received a telephone call that a beloved young niece had passed on. She contacted a Christian Science practitioner to help her lift her thought above this grief, and together they turned to the textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, for a healing thought. The patient's thought was arrested when this statement was read: "In the illusion of death, mortals wake to the knowledge of two facts: (1) that they are not dead; (2) that they have but passed the portals of a new belief."^{Science and Health, p. 251;} Suddenly her thought shifted from sorrow and loss to the standpoint of the one who had passed on. She could see that if the girl awakened, then there really wasn't any stopping of her life. She was in another state of consciousness and had "passed the portals of a new belief," unseen and unknown to those left behind, but continuing.

So the grief she herself was feeling was not really for the niece but because of her own belief in loss.

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