How I Found Christian Science July 18, 2011 Issue

When Christian Science dawned in my life

Mark DeGange—Ballwin, Missouri, US

While growing up I recall my mother wrestling with the concept of good and evil. How could a sweet little baby come into the world with sin? she wondered. What did they do wrong? It didn’t make sense to her. As a hospital delivery room nurse, she daily witnessed the love newborns inspire in us. She was deeply disturbed by her church’s stance that they were “sentenced” from the get-go. I was disturbed by the unavoidable outcome—that I was a sinful mortal who must be absolved of evil tendencies. So I regularly confessed to those deemed holier than I. The idea of being at the bottom of this hierarchy was disheartening. God felt out of reach.

By the time I finished my private school education, I decided that if God had created us this way—as fallen—I wasn’t interested. This was not a God I could respect or have any desire to turn to. I severed my religious ties. I would go it alone and find heaven another way.

The search for Truth (or what I termed limitlessness) took me in many directions. One period it was love of the absolute nature of mathematics; next, singing the highest, purest note, or pushing past limits in marathon running. The quest eventually became, What are the limits of love? I began studying meditation; worked with spiritual healers from New York, to Alaska, to Greece; threw myself into spiritual practices; made pilgrimages to places ranging from Navajo lands to India; and in one of my trips stayed in a Tibetan monastery in the Himalayas. I was probably like the baby bird in the P. D. Eastman book who goes to and fro asking the question, “Are you my mother?”

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