welcome September 23, 2002 Issue

When the spirit moves you

Bettie Gray

When I Was Growing Up , I had teachers who sometimes urged us to do our schoolwork by saying, "When the spirit moves you." They said that with a little grin—a little sarcasm—but I detected a little good will there, too, and soon realized the phrase had wedged its way into the footsteps of my days. At some point, I learned that the source of my teachers' language was an old big-band song that said, "When the spirit moves you, you'll shout, 'Hallelujah!' "

Hallelujah? For me that was a long way down the road. I spent years wandering down dead-end streets. So what was moving me then? Was it maybe a spirit that wasn't divine, that wasn't God? Maybe a spirit of confusion, loneliness, selfishness, self-condemnation?

Whatever it was, by the time I was in my mid-30s, my life was spiraling downward with disease and depression. At a really low point, Mary Baker Eddy's book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures came across my path. The book said God was totally good and the only Spirit there really was. Well, that was news to me. Good news. The first few days of reading that book healed me of so much sickness and so many illogical notions about God that I felt completely rerouted—picked up, turned around, and sent off in a happy new direction—moved by Spirit. Hallelujah? For sure.

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