'To Bless All Mankind' December 5, 2016 Issue

A prayerful response to #StopSuicide

Ingrid Peschke

Adapted from an article published in The Christian Science Monitor, September 9, 2016.

Many people have been using the #StopSuicide hashtag on social media to rally around national suicide prevention.

My daughter’s English class also addressed this topic when the students analyzed Langston Hughes’s succinct poem, “Suicide’s Note”: “The calm, / Cool face of the river / Asked me for a kiss.”

My daughter, a Christian Scientist, observed that by personifying the river, the poem suggests that the apparent allure of suicide does not originate with individuals, but comes first as a suggestion to their thought. The poem also expresses how suicide beckons with the possibility of retreating from one’s problems to a calmer place—but, like a charlatan, its promises are empty.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial

Principle, Love, and Christian healing