Pain gives way to Truth
Years ago some friends and I decided to drive from Boston to the Grand Canyon to raft down the Colorado River. There were several carloads of young Christian Scientists looking forward to the ten-day white-water raft trip. The night before we were to hike down to the bottom of the canyon to meet the guides, we camped out. Rising early in the morning, we packed our gear into the cars and started toward the trailhead. I was one of the drivers. I didn’t see a stop sign and drove through it, and I was hit broadside by an oncoming car, with the driver’s side taking the full impact of the collision. There were no injuries other than mine. The left side of my body from shoulder to ankle was badly bruised and painful.
The prayerful support I felt from my companions was immediate and calming. I thought there was no way I would be able to join the group, so I asked that they go down to the bottom of the canyon without me. All went except one person, who stayed behind, encouraging me. As soon as I could, I called my mom to help me through prayer. She said she would pray immediately. I recall feeling that same calming effect that was so prevalent during earlier experiences when I had relied on Christian Science for healing.
I remember sitting down by a tree and praying—trying to see clearly my identity as a child of God and my absolute oneness with Him. The car was towed to a holding yard, as it was not drivable. The friend who stayed with me said we could still meet up with the group if we took a shorter but much steeper path down to the bottom of the canyon. The path was rough and the weather was hot, but I was feeling better and decided it would be OK to go. Shortly after, on the way down, I began to experience more pain, and hiking with my heavy backpack was almost unbearable. Yet I didn’t feel led to turn back. Instead, I found myself mentally singing my way down the path, step by step, filling every thought with the words of Hymn 139 , “I walk with Love along the way” (Minny M. H. Ayers, Christian Science Hymnal). Eventually we made it down on time and joined the group.
That evening the pain intensified. I found a quiet, somewhat private place to pray, and looking up at the vastness of the brightest stars I had ever seen, I caught a glimpse of what Mary Baker Eddy meant when she wrote in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Become conscious for a single moment that Life and intelligence are purely spiritual,—neither in nor of matter,—and the body will then utter no complaints” (p. 14 ). I felt God’s presence in a very tangible way.
Suddenly the pain began to give way to a quiet acceptance of the truth that my real, spiritual selfhood was changeless, perfect, intact, and incapable of being harmed.
Years later, a friend would share with me a statement that her Christian Science teacher had had her memorize, and it perfectly expresses the idea that was present in my thoughts at that moment: “As when shadows come together and no harm ensues, so when objects meet in what is called an accident, it makes no impression on true consciousness, for in the realm of Spirit, nothing has happened.”
Although to human sense the accident made quite an impression on the car, it was dawning on my thought that true consciousness had never experienced a separating incident from God’s perfection. Immediately all pain left. Although the left side of my body remained discolored for several days, there was absolutely no further discomfort, and I enjoyed the full activity of the trip in complete freedom.
When I went to make arrangements to repair my car, I was told that it was totaled beyond repair. In fact, when the man who’d stored the car during the raft trip saw that I was the driver, he expressed much disbelief, stating that he’d thought for sure the driver was in the hospital.
I am most grateful to be a student of Christian Science.
Thomas C. Blair
Colorado Springs, Colorado, US
