Prayer and music performance
For almost as long as I can remember, performing music has helped to define my life. I recall in detail my first piano recital as a little girl and how fear overcame me when I walked up to the piano in front of the audience. However, my studies continued—and so did the performing opportunities as I advanced and grew in confidence. The power and beauty of the music I was playing far outweighed any performance anxiety.
By the time of achieving a professional commitment to a career in music, I was beginning to understand the healing potential of beautiful music and joyously desired to share it at the highest level possible. The thoughts of the great cellist Pablo Casals began to inspire my music: “Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.”
At various times, however, physical conditions relating to just that portion of my body most essential to an instrumentalist, namely my hands, fingers, wrists, or arms, attempted to prevent a performance. In every case, I dealt with the challenges through prayer and triumphed in Spirit.
For example, when I was called to step in as guest soloist in the exceptionally demanding piano part of Beethoven’s great “Choral Fantasy,” one of my fingers became severely infected and very painful to the point of me not being able to use that very important finger on my right hand. While praying for God’s direction—being too late to call for a substitute—it occurred to me to affirm the integrity of the performance and know that it could not be marred in any way. I also asserted that the unique individuality of this music was forever whole and complete—just as my own individuality was also whole and complete, spiritual and perfect. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy counsels: “The Christlike understanding of scientific being and divine healing includes a perfect Principle and idea,—perfect God and perfect man,—as the basis of thought and demonstration” (p. 259 ). This was my basis to go forward.
As an outward confirmation of this idea, I tried writing my name with my remaining useful fingers. I saw that my handwriting was still clearly recognizable and identifiable as my own. I reasoned that if I didn’t need that finger for writing, I also did not need it for playing the piece. With that freeing thought, I effortlessly performed with nine fingers instead of ten—and the music was completely expressed, and greatly appreciated by the audience, too. No one knew except me. Furthermore, the complete healing of the finger soon followed.
In another case, on the morning of a major music competition, one of my fingers was slammed by the forcible closing of an electronic garage door. Initially stunned by the extreme pain and immobility of the finger, I called a Christian Science practitioner to support me through prayer. Even though I could not use the finger at all, it did not seem right to withdraw from the competition. My friend and I were entered as a duo, and I did not want to deprive him of this opportunity, especially because it was our last year being eligible to compete. He, too, was a Christian Scientist and was praying along with me. Once I made the decision to go forward, the practitioner sent me off with these encouraging words from the Bible: “I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk [perform] in my statutes” (Ezekiel 36:27 ).
Because of a cancellation of other contestants, we were asked to immediately take our place on stage—with no time to rehearse or check the condition of the finger. Once on stage, I gained complete dominion. Not only did we play well, but we even won! The victory that day was much more than winning the competition. It was again the victory of the supremacy of Spirit over matter. I knew that God was the source of the performance and not me. Job assures us in the Bible that “he performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him” (23:14 ). Within a few days, the finger was completely healed.
We hear much talk about “performance” or “stress” injuries related to certain kinds of repetitive hand, wrist, and arm motion. For years I had observed fellow musicians and office workers succumbing to these painful and debilitating claims for long periods of time—and in some cases resorting to surgery, drugs, and braces to relieve the pain. With the onset of a particularly demanding concert schedule one spring, I suddenly found myself unable to use one of my wrists due to such an injury from heavy practicing. I then realized I had been accepting these claims for others while at the same time thinking myself immune—instead of insisting that they are not true for anyone at any time because we are all spiritual ideas, not subject to material laws of cause and effect. I finally had to face whether or not I could keep all of my performing commitments. In deep humility I asked God what to do.
The answer came in the form of a favorite passage from Science and Health: “Whatever it is your duty to do, you can do without harm to yourself. If you sprain the muscles or wound the flesh, your remedy is at hand” (p. 385 ). If it was not essential to play (my duty), then I trusted that there would be another musician to fill that role (the remedy). Indeed some commitments were given to others, but I knew that if it genuinely was my duty to play, then I could trust that I could do so “without harm to myself”—or to the performance. With two of the programs demanding extremely powerful and fast repetitive action, I claimed my dominion with every note and performed all the music without any harm.
In all three cases, I had seen firsthand what Eddy writes in Science and Health: “The superiority of spiritual power over sensuous is the central point of Christian Science” (p. 454
). I have seen that the power and joy of performing beautiful music cannot be marred by any
obstacle.
Marie Jureit-Beamish
Stuart, Florida, US
