For me the most vital concept of Christian Science is God as Father-Mother. My love for this idea goes back to my first involvement with the church.

You see, my parents were having serious problems in their marriage, and I was deeply troubled about this.

When I was twelve, one of my friends asked if I could visit for the weekend, which would mean going to a Christian Science Sunday School with her.

On Sunday morning there I was in a class of girls about my age, and the teacher talked the whole time about God as our Father-Mother. She made it clear that God was the Father and Mother of my mom and dad, just as He was of me. She explained how this Father-Mother loves all His children, and knows nothing but harmony for them. Little did she realize what that meant to me. I came out of that hour all fired up, and I went home and talked to my mother the whole week about this Sunday School.

I wanted to go back, but Mother said, "Well, you can't do that. You're a member of another church." I kept at her and kept at her; I was almost at the point of tears. Finally, my mother's curiosity got the best of her, and she arranged to take me to the Sunday School and attend the church service herself.

After church she said, "You're absolutely right. There is something here." From then on she went to the Christian Science church services, and my brother and I went to Sunday School.

Gradually our home situation began to change. The Bible promises, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee." ^{Isa. 26:3;} My mother's daily study of Christian Science brought peace and greater harmony to our home. There were fewer arguments, fewer medical treatments and financial difficulties. We were happier and healthier.

To me this illustrates the vitality of church and the naturalness of children finding satisfaction in it. Love of church is natural when we grasp the deeper significance of church attendance. Church thrives as the individual understanding of the eternal Truth that is always with us. We take this understanding to the Sunday School, the job, the housework, the P.T.A. meeting, the family gathering.

I do wish we were reaching more young people with this vitality of church. I suppose it's a question of the adults—you and me—doing more than just telling children what's true; what counts is actually living and loving what's true.

In her Message to The Mother Church for 1902, Mrs. Eddy writes: "To live and let live, without clamor for distinction or recognition; to wait on divine Love; to write truth first on the tablet of one's own heart,—this is the sanity and perfection of living, and my human ideal. The Science of man and the universe, in contradistinction to all error, is on the way, and Truth makes haste to meet and to welcome it. It is purifying all peoples, religions, ethics, and learning, and making the children our teachers." ^{'02, p.2.}

We don't often think of children as our teachers. And yet their questions are determined to get at truth, and to me that's what teaching is all about.

Before I discovered the Christian Science Sunday School, I could never find anyone to give me answers about God; not logical, acceptable answers. Yet in my heart I felt He was a God of love, who knew only good for His children. With my own marriage and children, the basic lesson was proved over and over again: God, Life itself, is Love. Once we understand this, it's not difficult to yield to His authority.

But waiting on and following Love's direction doesn't mean that the answer, humanly speaking, is always what we might expect or even like. When our daughter was five, she began to rebel about going to Sunday School. I was baffled. I loved going to church so much, and up to this point she had always enjoyed Sunday School. Finally, after months of prayer and working with a Christian Science practitioner, I consulted with her father, who did not go to church at all. Perhaps I should consider his preference, I thought. Had I ever weighed his attitudes about religious instruction for the child?

The prospect of an alternative Sunday School for our daughter hit me hard. It was unbearable to think of not taking her with me to the Christian Science church. I wrestled and prayed but at last was convinced of the Christian import of considering her father's feelings.

I asked my husband if he wanted to take our daughter to another church. "I wouldn't know where to take her," he said. Still I felt in this instance it was not best to force Sunday School teaching on her. We decided that, for the time, she would stay with her dad on Sunday mornings.

Of course there are endless examples when a parent, encouraged through prayer, has firmly insisted that a rebellious child attend Sunday School and have the continuous benefit of this spiritual education. And later events proved that decision was sound. But in our particular case, this resistance had other dimensions, and the usual common sense or authoritarian approaches simply didn't seem correct. Most important was the need to lift my thought above self-will. I had to reject the role of anxious parent worrying about supposed mental forces at work. It was necessary to acknowledge the supreme control and presence of the one Mind and the impossibility of any opposing mentality.

I learned to trust mightily that this child could not be away from her Father-Mother God's care. I struggled and succeeded in understanding more about her involvement with Truth and Love. God, through His Christ, continues expressing and identifying Himself to us wherever we are. The continuity of that identification reveals man's life, intelligence, integrity.

I was able to yield to this spiritual reasoning and happily trust God. I was confident that under these unique circumstances this was the most appropriate step, and for some time our daughter spent Sunday mornings with her dad while I went off to church.

Then one morning she came to me and said, "Mummy, I'd like to go back to Sunday School with you." I could never put into words the joy I experienced at that moment. From that time on she was an enthusiastic student in the Christian Science Sunday School. Later she became a member of The Mother Church, had class instruction, and has continued to be a student of Christian Science.

This experience taught me that the relationship of children to church as well as education must be individual, not dogmatic. This relationship emerges quietly and with equilibrium as we acknowledge that we are all God's spiritual offspring, not a collection of interrelated egos subject to or trapped by timetables and traditions. Children and parents are blessed and truly educated as parents practice the very truth that we hope our Sunday School children will learn and accept.