Article November 20, 2006 Issue

HEALING THE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS OF THE PAST

ROB GILBERT

In a live Internet chat on spirituality.com, ROB GILBERT, a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science from Upland, California, spoke on the topic "Healing the sights and sounds of the past, one prayer at a time." Rob has a Master of Theology degree from Boston University, where he majored in Biblical studies. While serving as a chaplain in the United States Army, he worked in military prisons and hospitals, and served a tour of duty in Vietnam. Since his military service, Rob has spoken to medical audiences, college classes, and in jails and prisons, about the power of prayer to heal. These excerpts from the chat have been edited for publication. To hear or read it in its entirety, go to www.spirituality.com/chats/healingpast.

In her book Retrospection and Introspection Mary Baker Eddy wrote: "The human history needs to be revised, and the material record expunged" (p. 22). How do you "expunge" mortal history? On my first reading of that statement, I thought, "Oh my gosh, how can you revise or expunge what's over and done with? It's happened. It's had its effect—on my life, other people's lives."

Then, it began to dawn on me that the biggest effect of the past is what I currently believe about it. And rather than seeing it as an event that happened, which I can't go back and change, I can change what I believe today, because that's what's having an impact on my life.

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