THE HERALD BROADCAST

Announcer: This is The Herald of Christian Science, produced by The Christian Science Publishing Society in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

Moji: On our program today ... we're going to be talking about taking a stand for what's right. ... I'm Moji Anjorin Solanke.

Elliott: And I'm Elliott Reinert.

Moji: All over the world, people are striving to take a stand to do what they believe to be right.

Elliott: That's true, Moji. We're going to hear a man who worked for many years for the United States government, for the foreign service. His name is Bill Root, and Bill is going to give us some brief comments about how he prayed when he had to take stands during his career. He's speaking with Laurie Haas .

Laurie: Bill, would you say that taking an ethical stand is relying on God?

Bill: Taking an ethical stand can be consistent with relying on God, but not if taking an ethical stand is viewed as insisting that my personal view of what is right must prevail. Throughout my consideration of ethical problems, I have clung to the Biblical passage that God is Spirit and have been helped by Mrs. Eddy's description of God in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, in which she gives several names for God—one being Principle. God is also Love and Truth. These names help to give a comforting and constructive meaning to the word Principle, so that I am not tempted to pursue my own will but rather to concentrate on the loving, spiritual nature of God and therefore the Principle which helps us find the resolution to difficulties and bless all parties concerned.

Moji: ... Our next guest, Barbara Brandon, was blessed by a healing she'd had very early on in life.

Elliott: Yes, and that healing, which she was reminded of by her father, Orin Brandon, is what gave her the courage to take a stand when she needed to do what was right.

Barbara: My husband owned a nightclub, and we were living in another country. It was a jazz club and had a casino attached to it. Quite a number of famous people were coming in, and I should have been quite happy with my life, but I was just miserable. I didn't enjoy the drinking really, although I was doing it quite heartily.

After a couple of years of this, I found myself deserted by my husband, completely broke, and in a very bad emotional state. Then one day my father sent me something that just turned me right around. It was his account of a healing I had when I was born. The account was broadcast by The Christian Science Publishing Society on a program called The Truth That Heals. Here's what he said during that broadcast:

Orin: The doctor had told me, "She'll never be able to walk like ordinary children, and there is nothing that medicine can do about it." But he knew that her mother and I were interested in Christian Science. He advised us to get in touch with a Christian Science practitioner, which we, of course, did.

The practitioner said, "Just know that you are not the creator of a child. She is God's idea. God created her, and He created her perfect, and God is capable of sustaining her as such." She said, "She'll walk when it is time for her to walk." And she did. On the very days that the baby books that the physicians gave us said she should walk, she took her first toddling baby steps. And she has been walking perfectly ever since.

Barbara: When I finished reading my father's account of this healing, I felt quite an overwhelming sense of gratitude and, for the first time in a long time, a great sense of humility. I'd never felt very connected with that healing, because it happened when I was an infant, and I really didn't remember it.

In thinking back, I realize now that the healing of my feet raised a question of identity. My parents had to recognize me as an idea of God and therefore complete and not dependent on material structure. Now that I had grown up, I had to awaken to this spiritual identity on my own. ... I had to come to my own understanding of it. I was still drinking quite heavily, more or less to go along with the crowd. But the time had come for me to stand on my own feet, to take a stand for what I felt was right. For example, I had to quit condoning the immoral behavior of other people, going along with the accepted standard in that crowd.

When I decided to take a stand for what I felt was principled, this is when the regeneration began. ... I contacted a Christian Science practitioner that I had known when I was in Sunday School, because I still needed quite a lot of help on a deep feeling of heartbreak and a sense of loss, a sense of failure.

Within a matter of ten days or so I was completely healed of smoking and drinking, and I'd started going back to church. I had discovered that true happiness doesn't depend on superficial things in life. And I'd found a real sense of peace and joy. To me the fact that the original healing of my feet has helped me over and over again through the years shows that a healing isn't just a one-time thing.

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