“How the mighty hath fallen,”   I think as I wait in the outer office of one of New York’s top talent agencies. My amazing music career, which has been building over the past two years, is in shambles, gone as quickly as it had appeared. As a friend presents his script to an industrial show producer, I think back:

Music was always a part of my life, from the hymns my mother sang to us at bedtime, to the nights when my brother and I would creep to the top of the hall stairs and listen to our parents making music … Mother on the piano and Daddy on the mandolin. From an early age, I was banging out my own tunes on the piano. When I was 16, I wrote “Happy Landing,” the senior class musical at the girls’ school I attended, and suddenly I was BWOC—Big Woman on Campus. My show was even performed on the local television station. Was my head swelling just a little?

I majored in music at college and looked forward to a career as a Broadway musical playwright—a hope also held by my mother. “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord” (Psalms 98:4) was her theme song, and she expected me to make it mine. At the end of World War II,
I left college to marry a former submariner, and although I’d write a song or two for some local event, before too long I was raising three young children. When my husband was transferred to Ft. Wayne, Indiana, I put my music career on hold.

My mother realized that in all probability my light would not “so shine and draw all musical producers unto me” in the cornfields of Indiana. So she gathered up some of the songs I had written and sent them to Fred Waring, a popular bandleader and choral director in New York. Waring and his Pennsylvanians kept families glued to their CBS television station on Sunday nights as they performed popular hits along with inspirational choral music. My mother received a courteous response from Waring’s manager. “Tell your daughter not to quit her job to come to New York, but if she happens to be in the city, we’d be happy to see her.”

That was all the incentive Mother needed. She was ready to pack our suitcases immediately! I’d like to believe I was as talented as my mother thought I was. But was I indeed ready to uproot my family and persuade my husband to quit his job, to satisfy my ego? Did I really have what it takes to make it with a national television show? I’d been raised in Christian Science, but I knew it was time for me to step out from under my mother’s sheltering wing and make it my own.

I turned to Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, where Mary Baker Eddy wrote, “If action proceeds from the divine Mind, action is harmonious” (p. 239). That assured me that if pursuing this course was a divinely inspired decision, I could trust that my family and I would be guarded and protected by God each step of the way.

On the other hand, on page 263, Mrs. Eddy wrote: “Mortals are egotists. They believe themselves to be independent workers, personal authors, and even privileged originators of something which Deity would not or could not create.” That hit close to home, since I really did believe myself to be the author and privileged originator of some pretty terrific songs. What if this move was just the result of my ego wanting to be recognized? This time I took my cue from Jesus, who stated, “I can of mine own self do nothing: … because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me” (John 5:30). And what did God want me to do? Express Him and His creative ideas, of course.

After much prayer, my husband and I decided this was a move God wanted us to make. We put our house up for sale, auctioned off our furniture, and headed for New York. Mother offered to keep the children for Thanksgiving while my husband looked for a job and I made my initial phone call to the Waring office. 

The response was disappointing to say the least. I would need an appointment with Waring’s staff writer, Buddy Bernier, but he was on vacation until after the first of the year. I prayed not to be discouraged but to be receptive—“wherever you want me to be, God, I’ll be there”—and I found myself singing part of Mrs. Eddy’s hymn “Satisfied”:

It matters not what be thy lot,
So Love doth guide;
For storm or shine, pure peace is thine,
Whate’er betide.
(Christian Science Hymnal, No. 160)

When I called again at the beginning of the year, I found that Buddy was back in the office and ready to see me. After I played several of my songs, he seemed excited by what he heard and asked if I’d be willing to put myself under his guidance.

Of course I knew I was in God’s hands, but I agreed to follow Buddy’s instructions and play for everyone on the production team—the director, the choreographer, the musical arrangers. By Friday night of that week, Buddy was able to get Fred Waring’s ear, and I played half a dozen of my songs for him. When I finished, Fred was puzzled. “Did you want to sell me one or all of your songs or join my staff? What did you have in mind?” I looked at Buddy for direction. “Let her go home for the weekend,” he said. “We’ll work out something when she comes back on Monday.”

When I returned the next week, I was delighted to discover that I had my own office with a piano and would receive a salary to write material for each week’s TV show! With Buddy’s guidance, I began to write songs to fit every occasion: rousing openings for the choral group, holiday songs for special celebrations, comedy songs for individual performers. I never failed to be thrilled when I heard Fred’s theme song start the show: “I Hear Music” segueing into “Dream, Dream, Dream.” I was even more excited to hear at least one of my songs on national television each week! And how reassuring it was to know that I would never lack for fresh ideas, that I reflected God, infinite Mind, and could always rely on Him for inspiration.

I had to recognize where my true success lay … in being “about my Father’s business.”

Life seemed perfect. My husband was absorbed in his new job directing training films, our children were with us in a lovely apartment, and I was churning out musical numbers to my heart’s content. When Billy Rose contracted Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians to produce their stage show, “Hear Hear,” in a month-long performance at the Ziegfeld Theater on Broadway, I was bursting with pride. My name was on the billboard in front of the theater!

Yet around this time, I started to realize that in the midst of my success, my ego had again allowed me to confuse the definition of “me” with the definition of God from Science and Health: “The great I am; the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-acting, all-wise, all-loving, and eternal; …” (p. 587). While writing songs, I was recognizing that creative ideas come from divine Mind rather than from my mind, but when “my” songs were performed I was once again thinking of myself as an individual “privileged originator,” leaving God out of the equation. You could even say that EGO stood for “Edge God Out.”

Suddenly Fred changed his mind about a weekly television show. Instead, he would just do four holiday shows on TV. The rest of the year he would troupe his performers on tour buses around the country, playing for colleges. Much as he liked the material I had been writing, there was really no need for new material now. And just like that, after two years my career was over. Now I was just another out-of-work songwriter. Yet my husband and I still had three small children to support. I knew I had to rely on the Science that had strengthened me through the years and recognize where my true success lay … in being “about my Father’s business” (Luke 2:49).

Down the hall from my office was a writer who specialized in industrial shows, presenting new products to salesmen, dealers, and distributors. Recognizing my struggle to stay afloat, he began farming out small assignments to me … a song here, a jingle there. At first I thought it was ridiculous to be writing silly ditties for toothpaste or face creams, but I began to realize that creativity could take many forms.

A statement by Louise Knight Wheatley, a Christian Science practitioner who had also been my mother’s teacher, came to mind: “As God’s spiritual reflection, man has boundless opportunities, infinite capabilities, ceaseless occupation. … Since the reflection of good can never lack anything which is good, man already possesses all he requires to conduct his business harmoniously, uninterruptedly, and perfectly. His business, being the reflection of God’s business, must be active, progressive, productive, prosperous, and successful now” (“Seeking First the Kingdom,” The Christian Science Journal, November 1916, p. 431).

A sense of ego might have declared it beneath me, but if the occasion arose, I could write love songs to garbage disposals or torch songs to ice makers or cantatas to pickle relish. Because I reflected divine intelligence, I reasoned, I possessed everything I needed to conduct my business harmoniously—and since it was God’s business, who was I to think myself superior to it?

This brings us back to where we started. As I await an interview at the talent agency, the door to the inner office bursts open, and two songwriters stomp out of the office, followed by a red-faced producer. “You’re fired!” he shouts.

As they scurry from the office, he looks around and sees me sitting there. “Who are you?” he snaps.

“I’m a songwriter …” I quaver.

He pauses only a minute. “Do you want to write the Plymouth show?” 

(I feel like Judy Garland in an Andy Hardy movie: “Hey gang, let’s put on a show!”) Not only did I write the Plymouth show that year, over the next 18 years I wrote music and lyrics for more than 500 industrial shows for Buick, General Electric, Kraft, DuPont, Zenith, and so many others.

As I continue to recognize that I reflect divine Mind, I’m grateful to be able to prove in some measure that “this Mind, then, is not subject to growth, change, or diminution, but is the divine intelligence, or Principle, of all real being; holding man forever in the rhythmic round of unfolding bliss, as a living witness to and perpetual idea of inexhaustible good” (Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, pp. 82–83).