Article September 11, 2006 Issue

PRAYER IN A BOMB THREAT

BY KARI MASHOS

SEVERAL YEARS AGO when I was still singing professionally, I was about to premier a onewoman opera about a holocaust survivor. About three weeks before the premiere, a co-sponsoring organization of the premiere, which teaches and advocates tolerance, received some bomb threats intended to stop the performance. The danger to my own safety and that of others could not be taken lightly. The FBI and the city police got involved.

I find it helpful and effective to pray every day, and these threats certainly seemed like a good reason to start praying. I'd been learning that prayer is a desire to understand and feel the presence of God. And that requires a humble willingness to let go of any thought unlike God. I began my praying with the First Commandment: "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3). I asked myself: Am I praying with the understanding that there is only one God, or am I believing or fearing there is another power besides God — meaning, in this case, hate?

I thought of what Mary Baker Eddy wrote about that commandment in her book Science and Health: "The divine Principle of the First Commandment bases the Science of being, by which man demonstrates health, holiness, and life eternal. One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; . . ." (p. 340). I like that idea of the one God constituting "the brotherhood of man," that God does not cause hatred and violence, but that God, good, is the unifying Lawgiver. Having no other gods but the one God, meant that in my prayers I would not allow myself to believe or fear that there was another god, another mind — an evil mind — that could set out to do harm.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

PRAYERS FOR PEACE