Article November 17, 1986 Issue

When you call on a Christian Science practitioner for the first time

Patricia Tupper Hyatt

Perhaps you are learning of Christian Science and feel you would like to call on a Christian Science practitioner for the healing of a personal trouble or illness—but feel hesitant. You don't really understand the process and so you don't know what to say to the practitioner.

A practitioner is an experienced Christian Scientist who, following the example of Christ Jesus, is devoting his or her life full time to helping others through prayer. You should find the practitioner to be humble, spiritually-minded, unselfish, and compassionate. However, you're also going to find practitioners to be ordinary people who eat three times a day, who laugh and cry, and who know from personal experience what it feels like to be afraid or to be in pain.

I had been brought up in Christian Science and had had practitioners work for me many times, but my mother or someone else had always called the practitioner for me. I was newly married, far from home, and ill. But I just couldn't seem to make myself pick up that telephone. What would I say? I didn't know whether I should tell her the physical symptoms I was having or not.

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