More than a year ago, just as the pandemic began in the area where I live, I woke up one night with all the symptoms. It didn’t make any sense to me because I had lost my fear of so-called contagious diseases such as the flu years ago. 

The fear had left one day when I was at a local market, surrounded by signs advertising the arrival of flu season and advocating anti-flu shots. It suddenly occurred to me that it was as nonsensical to believe that there was a special season when everyone got sick as it would be for me to believe there was a special season when everybody believed 2+2=5. After that, I was never bothered by the flu.

So I felt perplexed as I lay in bed tossing and turning, struggling to draw a breath. I began repeating “the scientific statement of being” from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. It goes like this: “There is no life, truth, intelligence, nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all. Spirit is immortal Truth; matter is mortal error. Spirit is the real and eternal; matter is the unreal and temporal. Spirit is God, and man is His image and likeness. Therefore man is not material; he is spiritual” (p. 468).