Article December 9, 2002 Issue

Prayer: ACTION, not REACTION

By Joan Taylor

WHEN I BEGAN WORKING as a screenwriter in the film business, the first advice I got was to have a tough skin. Why? Because the shabby treatment of writers in Hollywood is notorious. Recently I saw how effective it is to pray before responding to these perceived slights that appear to be status quo in my industry.

I found myself becoming increasingly angry with a producer I'd been working with on a script. For several days running, he had missed our scheduled phone conferences without calling to cancel. The following day his office would reschedule, and he would miss the call again. A familiar response surfaced—that of being the typical "beleaguered writer." and the resentment grew. I was about to pick up the phone and tell him exactly what I thought about his selfishness, but something stopped me. I realized it was a Wednesday, and that's the day of the midweek meeting at our local Church of Christ, Scientist.

Why did that thought stop the angry response? Well, over the years I'd had many healings at these meetings. They're about giving gratitude for God's help, and for me the particular readings and testimonies at these services are almost always exactly what is needed to address a specific problem or issue one is working on. That afternoon, it occurred to me that I needed to pray to be more receptive to what God knew of both me and this producer as spiritual—what St. Paul called "the new man," and what Mary Baker Eddy explained in her book Science and Health as "the real man."