Article August 17, 1974 Issue

Love Is Already There

CAROL ANN McBRIDE

When I first arrived in North Africa, I was very frightened. It wasn't so much that I was traveling alone, but that the people, their way of life, and the entire culture were so totally foreign to me. Also, prior to leaving for Africa I had been warned repeatedly of the perils of wayfaring there. Apparently I had failed to refute these false concepts when they were initially presented, and as a result they were predominant in my thought as I first viewed my new surroundings.

I found myself wanting only to leave, to go anywhere but where I was at that moment. The atmosphere seemed alarming to me, and such a view nurtured a phobic unresponsive attitude on my part. I walked down the street looking straight ahead, missing both eye contact and personal contact with the people in this new land. I let my fear coerce me into heading for another town as quickly as possible. So after only one day in that part of Africa I took a major portion of what money I had left and headed farther east.

While on the plane, I opened my books to read the Lesson-Sermon in the Christian Science Quarterly and found Mrs. Eddy's warning, "You must control evil thoughts in the first instance, or they will control you in the second."^{Science and Health, p. 234;} That opened my eyes! I had allowed myself to be mesmerized by baseless fear, and I had failed to see God's perfect, loving, harmless creation. These thoughts had actually controlled me—not through any impetus of their own but through the power I had given them.

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