Article September 8, 2014 Issue

Spiritual ascendency alone heals

Lynn Jackson

Last summer my husband and I went to an art gallery to look at the work of a local artist who is well known in religious circles. I had seen his wonderful paintings of the 12 disciples in a local church during a concert and was interested in his other works. One of his pieces caught my eye. We asked the attendant for its title, and she went to look it up. She finally emerged, saying: “I was looking under ‘J’ for ‘Jesus’ rather than ‘C’ for ‘Christ.’ The title is ‘Christ Walking on the Water,’ not ‘Jesus Walking on the Water.’ ”

For me, this is delightfully insightful! I felt the artist’s spiritual sense reaching out to his viewers as if to say, “It was the Christ, the divine nature that Jesus expressed, which enabled him to walk on the water.” I recalled Mary Baker Eddy’s words from Unity of Good, “Jesus taught us to walk over, not into or with, the currents of matter, or mortal mind” (p. 11). This painting of Christ Jesus, which now graces my office, walking over rough waves, a dark sky above, his hem dry, his demeanor calm, constantly uplifts thought to his overcoming of matter, his rising above the currents of mortal mind, with his Christly healing thought.

Healing in Christian Science requires a Christlike consciousness in communion with divine Love.