Article April 19, 1993 Issue

Root out the dandelions!

We can experience lasting healing as we
carefully "tend" our thinking.

Robert A. Moss

I'm not much of a gardener. The other day I went into the garden and mowed down all the dandelions that were spoiling the lawn. Much to my surprise, in a few days they were all back again. A friend laughed when I told him. He said, "You only cut the tops off; you didn't pull up the roots."

That made me think of the whole subject of healing, and how we deal with disease through the practice of Christian Science. Material methods of treating illnesses do what I did with the dandelions; they tackle the effect of the problem, not the cause. They don't go to the root of the problem, which is always thought. Pills and drugs don't heal thought.

The body doesn't get diseased or ill by itself. The tear comes to the eye as the result of a sad thought; the smile comes to the lips because of an amused or a happy thought. And while the connection may seem less obvious, a study of Christian Science helps us see that illness and all other kinds of discord have, fundamentally, a mental origin. They stem from the underlying misconception that man can be separated from God, good. Illness isn't sent from God, divine Love, nor is it the product of certain material conditions over which we have no control. As Mrs. Eddy says in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health, "It breaks the dream of disease to understand that sickness is formed by the human mind, not by matter nor by the divine Mind."

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