Article May 30, 2011 Issue

A night bright with light

Fay Coulouris —Englewood, Colorado, USA

I often wondered how I’d missed the “pearl of great price” (Matt. 13:46) that was literally at my feet throughout my childhood. Growing up in Lynn, Massachusetts, I would walk by Mary Baker Eddy’s Broad Street home every week, and on Sunday afternoons my family would drive by her Swampscott house on the way to visit relatives in Salem. But I did not carry away a memory of her name, nor was I ever impelled to ask any questions about her. 

As a teenager I began questioning everything in my life for some meaning. Each day I walked along the shoreline by Red Rock, going over and over my unanswered questions. Endless struggles to understand life, its problems, and my place in society as a first generation Greek-American led me to explore many philosophies and religions. By the time I became a college student, Christianity had become a deep disappointment. God was becoming more distant every day. Eventually I found some peace in the teachings of Zen Buddhism. Its simplicity and compassion appealed to me and quieted the turmoil in my thinking.

While visiting a woman in a hospital one day, I attracted the attention of a guest visiting another patient. As a Jewish woman who also had a deep devotion to a strong culture, she wanted to introduce me to ideas that would help me better understand all cultures and peoples. And she handed me a biography of a spiritually minded woman she thought would interest me. As it turned out, it was a biography of Mary Baker Eddy.

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