Article January 18, 1982 Issue

Performer and performance

CHARLOTTE L. HUME

The delight of discovery comes to the earnest student of Christian Science as spiritual reality unfolds. Through the study and practice of this Christ Science, the definitions, labels, and limitations of the merely human concept of things give way to the broader, grander, and more satisfying view—to spiritual facts. These, in turn, result in the healing and harmonizing of human affairs. With great assurance Mrs. Eddy tells us in Science and Health: "The spiritual reality is the scientific fact in all things. The spiritual fact, repeated in the action of man and the whole universe, is harmonious and is the ideal of Truth."^{Science and Health, p. 207.} The truth of this statement has been proved many times in my experience as a lifelong student of Christian Science.

Recently, however, as a beginning organ student, I found myself overcome by fear as the day of my first recital approached. I had practiced faithfully and happily for many months—in fact, this recital was the culmination of my first two years of study, and I was comfortable with each piece on the program. Yet the joy was now missing. I was so tense and fearful that I became ill and was unable to practice. I had tried to see the performance from the correct spiritual standpoint, but that seemed to evade me also. At this point I asked a Christian Science practitioner to pray for me. Then, as I continued to study and pray, a comforting and familiar statement about God from the Bible came to me: "He performeth the thing that is appointed for me."^{Job 23:14.}

It soon became clear that a material sense of things had to yield to the spiritual reality. A personal sense of "making music" had to be replaced by the spiritual fact that it is God, or Soul (Soul being one of the synonyms for God), who is not only the source of all action and harmony but of real identity too. I saw myself in my relation to God, Soul, as Soul's individual expression, already including the qualities that characterize music, such as precision, harmony, beauty, rhythm, and so on.

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