Family harmony — it's possible!

In his introduction, John brings out the thought that we are all one family under God the Father, and that we can bring this spiritual unity and harmony to our relations with our human families. When we do this, we can experience more peace in our lives and bless our family members too. Valerie notes that just as Jesus brought out the idea of God as Father, Mary Baker Eddy, in her discovery of Christian Science, identified God as also being Mother and as a living divine Principle that governs all of our endeavors. This loving Principle leads us to good and to healing even when family demands may seem overwhelming.

The Minards respond to questions about issues within marriage, how to deal with divorce, including one's role as a step-parent. In-laws ask for guidance on dealing with family issues, and spouses seek inspiration on how to deal with in-laws. Other topics: blended families, how to have a sense of purpose after the children are grown, knowing how to respond to a child during the young adult years.

The transcribed text has been edited for clarity.

Rosalie Dunbar: Hello, everyone. Welcome to another Christian Science Sentinel live question and answer audio event. My name is Rosalie Dunbar and I’ll be your host for the next hour. Our topic today is “Family harmony—it’s possible!” We have two guests, John and Valerie Minard. John is a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science, and Valerie, his wife, is also in the full-time practice of Christian Science healing. They live in Collingswood, New Jersey, close to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. John and Valerie, do you have some thoughts to get us started?

Valerie Minard: Thanks so much, Rosalie.

John Minard: Yeah, thanks Rosalie. We’re delighted to be here. As I was thinking about this topic, I remembered a number of years ago I was giving a little tour of our Christian Science branch church to some local ministers in the area. We went down into the Sunday School, and they noticed written on one of the walls a verse from a poem by Mary Baker Eddy, which she wrote for little children. It goes:

Father-Mother God,

Loving me,—

Guard me when I sleep;

Guide my little feet

Up to Thee.

And one of the ministers respectfully remarked that Christian Science, he said, was one of the first churches to really bring out this idea of God as Mother, not just Father. So we talked a bit about this, and they all agreed on that basic sense that we are all one family, under God. But what if that doesn’t seem to jive with the way we live our own life with our own family every day? It may seem like it’s not quite as harmonious as we’d like it to be. Well, Mary Baker Eddy says something interesting in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. She says: “Immortals, or God’s children in divine Science, are one harmonious family; but mortals, or the ‘children of men’ in material sense, are discordant and ofttimes false brethren” (p. 444 ). So the question is: Can we bring this divine sense of God’s harmonious family down to earth? Can we really bring peace, stability, supply, kindness, happiness, etc., to our human family? Yes, we can. I believe we can. Even if we’re all alone in this world, we can find the true sense of family all around us, by accepting our common brotherhood and sisterhood as children of God. We’re all in this together. We are each capable of seeing ourselves and others—our kids, siblings, aunts, uncles, parents, grandparents, second cousins twice removed, even the whole human family—all living in peaceful coexistence under the loving parentage of God. The other day I came across this wonderful translation of Ephesians 4:1 by J. B. Phillips. Here he uses the word Spirit with a capital S, meaning God. He says: “Accept life with humility and patience, generously making allowances for each other because you love each other. Make your aim to be at one in the Spirit and you will be bound together in peace.”

Rosalie: Well, that’s a lovely thought. Valerie, do you have anything further you’d like to add to that?

Valerie: Yes, I love that idea that John brought out of Father-Mother, and it’s such a healing concept. Of course, Jesus gave us that beautiful sense of God’s Fatherhood in the Lord’s Prayer—“Our Father which art in heaven.” Mrs. Eddy builds on that prayer by bringing out God’s Motherhood with this spiritual interpretation in Science and Health: “Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious” (p. 16 ). This concept of God being both Father and Mother makes me think of a loving divine Principle, governing everything in harmony. Why is this important to consider? Because keeping a family together can seem like a heavy burden—maintaining a home, getting kids to school, making meals, work schedules, etc. Wearing so many hats can seem stressful and perhaps frustrating. But letting this loving, divine Principle govern our day, frees us from a false sense of responsibility, so we don’t need to feel pulled in different directions. By letting go of our own plans, and listening to God’s guidance, we’ll find our priorities shift. It helps us give up a personal control of others. Our loving Parent relates us harmoniously to each other so there’s no room for friction. There’s a hymn by Laura Lee Randall in the Christian Science Hymnal (No. 342 ) that I love to sing because it reminds me of God’s government. The first verse goes like this:

This is the day the Lord hath made;

Be glad, give thanks, rejoice;

Stand in His presence, unafraid,

In praise lift up your voice.

All perfect gifts are from above,

And all our blessings show

The amplitude of God’s dear love

Which every heart may know.

Rosalie: Well, that’s a lovely thought, and those are both great ideas that you have all shared. So now let’s get to our questions, because we have a lot of them. I just want to repeat for our dear listeners, to try to keep your questions short. Some of them are very, very long and I’m going to have to condense them, because it takes time away from our ability to answer others when they’re so long. This one though is a short one. It’s from Julie in Bellevue, Washington, and she says: “Please address the issue of divorce and how to prayerfully handle the feelings of shame, guilt, and trauma that many adults and children face for many years. How can family harmony be restored?”

Valerie: Well, as you were reading that question, I was reminded of something in Isaiah 54 in the Bible. In the fourth verse it reads: “Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shall not remember the reproach of thy widowhood anymore. For thy Maker is thine husband: the Lord of hosts is his name.” And then further on it says: “For the lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, . . . . For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee.” [verses 4-7 ] I love that idea that God is our true husband, or in other cases, wife, and that we can never be separated from God’s love. And if that’s the fact, then we can never be divorced from right companionship. So there’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Rosalie: John, do you have anything you’d like to add?

John: No, I love that thought. Another quote from the Bible comes to me, that we “are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power” (Col. 2:10 ). As we discover our own completeness, our fullness and our wholeness, then we have that sense of peace, even in difficult situations where a loved one leaves us, or passes on, we can move forward, knowing that we have a wonderful purpose and future in that sense of being God’s complete child.

Rosalie: And what I was hearing when you were saying that, was that you’re feeling that the relationship is really between God and us, it’s not that we need another human being to make us complete. Is that kind of what you’re talking about?

John: Exactly. And that’s the relationship we need to work on most. It will harmonize every other human relationship as we cement and clarify our relationship with our Father-Mother.

Rosalie: Now, we’ve got kind of a long question here about grandchildren. I’m going to have to condense it. It’s from Cindy in California. She says: “How can you pray for your grandchildren who are in the midst of a battle between their parents?” And she says: “The father is no longer in the home and the mother is using the children as weapons to get back at him by telling them bad things about him.” And she’s the mother-in-law of the wife. She then goes on to say she’s worried about her son and his welfare, and also, of course, about the whole family situation. She says: “Please tell me how I can pray for peace, harmony, and forgiveness, and let go of any resentment toward my daughter-in-law, to be able to acknowledge and stay with the thought that no matter what, God is in control.”

John: Those last ideas—praying for peace, harmony, and forgiveness—what a lovely healing thought. I think the challenges in a family, whether they may appear to be anger or resentment or maybe even jealousy or a sense of lack or being wronged, are all different masks of fear. And they can be handled as fear in ourselves. The Bible tells us the antidote for fear is love. “There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear” (I John 4:18 ). We can see God’s perfect expression of love right where those children are, right where those relatives are, and to know that they are rightly guided, rightly cared for, provided for. And with children, we can see the Christliness in them. That sense of the Christ is God’s presence, our divine qualities, you might say. We can respect things like their innate desire to discern right from wrong, and know that their purity is intact. Acknowledge their Christliness, and they’ll never grow out of it—not something that can be taken from them. It’s always there. These fears are only false suggestions, and we can turn to that higher sense of, again, our own completeness, and their own completeness.

Valerie: There’s a citation in Science and Health that I’ve prayed with. The first part of it goes: “One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself; . . .’ ” (p. 340 ). And that word “constitutes the brotherhood of man” I find so interesting. You know it’s not based on personalities that get along or don’t get along, or husbands and wives that are working out financial issues or even parental issues. God’s constituting their relationship. God is ordaining their relationship, and relating them properly right now. So, however the next steps have to happen, we can know that God is in control. And because it’s God’s control, under Love’s sweet control, it can only be a blessing. And there doesn’t have to be a fallout of bad feelings or abandonment or any other of those things that come up during a divorce.

Rosalie: You’ve brought to me an inspired sense of that passage that I hadn’t had before. I was thinking as you were talking, that what you’re basically saying is that it’s not a question of little gods, as in a little child being the god, the mother being the god, the father being the god, or even the in-laws being the god. It’s that when all are looking to the one God, and worshiping that one God, then the harmony comes as a result. So that it’s not so much getting a bigger human sense of love, as seeing that Love, divine Love, in all its goodness and omnipotence and omnipresence. That’s what’s really there. That’s such a wonderful thought, that it kind of takes away the relationship of a group of people sort of trying to make it come together, when you see that one God that’s being worshiped instead of the different personalities.

John: That’s exactly it, yes—that clear sense of our divine unity under God naturally expresses itself in harmonious family relationships.

Rosalie: That’s a very neat thought, Valerie, thank you for that. Then Sharon in Omaha, Nebraska, says: “What can be done when adult relatives are invited to live with you and there are mutual benefits, but then different ways of running a household create conflict? It’s difficult to talk about without hurting one another’s feelings. Also, sometimes isolated issues feel so petty that they tend to add up, and suddenly it doesn’t feel like your house anymore.”

Valerie: Well, I think starting with God—whether they are family members that are just arriving and moving in, or even with our own children, we always need to remember that God is in charge of that household, and there’s one Mind, one intelligence, relating and governing everyone together. When we ask God for guidance on how to approach these situations, a way will open up. For instance, one little thing that we do in our family is sometimes have family meetings, and in a very impersonal way, we’ll air whatever the situation is that we would like to change. And we work together as a group.

John: And we always have a rule of no judgmentalness—no judgment in whatever anyone says during the meeting.

Valerie: That’s right. I think just knowing that God—that idea of consciousness—establishing your relationship with everyone in that house, governing and guiding, there has to be a solution.

John: We’re all familiar with Mrs. Eddy’s idea of home being “. . . the centre, though not the boundary of the affections.” And it’s “the dearest spot on earth” (p. 58 ). I also love the idea that a true home is actually the kingdom of heaven. She defines that as “The reign of harmony, . . . the realm of unerring, eternal, and omnipotent Mind . . .” (p. 590 ). So there again, living in that home, living in that sense of being included in God’s control, God’s affection, in God’s harmonious interaction—establishing that, will reflect itself in our human home and family.

Valerie: I think, even if someone’s just staying for a short time in a home, when you get used to a particular routine, and someone else disrupts that, we all, in a way, need to deal with those very same feelings. As I was thinking about this, the thought came to me, you know, it really comes down, in a way, to human will—that perhaps we have to have things done in a particular way, and when they’re not done that way we get a little upset. But I love what it says in Science and Health: “What we most need is the prayer of fervent desire for growth in grace, expressed in patience, meekness, love, and good deeds” (p. 4 ). And when you think of that, that really is what home is. That’s really when you think of home, it really is a place of grace and patience and meekness and love and good deeds. So maybe these experiences are actually good opportunities for us to rise in a higher sense of what home is.

Rosalie: And that comes back to—now we’ve got another case here of someone moving into another person’s home. This individual is writing from Charlotte, North Carolina, and says: “I recently moved in with my sister, while my husband and I find a permanent home in North Carolina. It’s been a difficult adjustment since she would much rather live alone. Our relationship as sisters has changed for the worse, and our personalities are constantly clashing. I’ve tried seeing her as the perfect child of God she is, but can’t seem to get rid of so much hate and judgment I have against her. Can you please help with a better spiritual approach than just happy thoughts?”

John: Christian Science certainly isn’t just about holding happy thoughts or positive thinking. It’s really about reestablishing what God is making right now. Val and I sometimes talk about—and it’s sort of mentioned in this week’s Lesson—the idea of “put[ting] on the [whole] armour (Eph. 6:11 ). We talk about this idea of putting on our “Teflon armor,” where nothing can penetrate it, and nothing can stick to it. It’s that sense of dominion, so that our own personal feeling is above and beyond what could be affected or influenced or pulled down by another’s actions or words. It’s gaining that confidence in our and others’ direct expression of God’s being, so that we know who we are, and we’re confident in that, and we’re unflappable. And we can get to that point through love and prayer. I think one of the practical things that helps us often, is every morning before the kids get up, we try to really pray for ourselves, and affirm our Godlikeness. I like to work with the seven synonyms, affirming those qualities—that I have them, that others have them, and really establishing that sense of dominion and God’s priorities for the day, so that we can approach the day with one of responding to the divine and not reacting to the human.

Rosalie: John, do you want to tell about the seven synonyms? because many of our visitors may not be familiar with them.

John: Sure. Mrs. Eddy’s definition of God lists seven key words that are derived from the Bible, and those who read the Bible will recognize them: Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love. And these are all names for God. I love—in a sense they’re a starting point for understanding what God is. And therefore, knowing what we are. We can take any of those ideas, and expound upon them to establish what we are. For instance, you could simply take the word Principle and you could say: Principle is the firm, permanent, harmonious basis of being. It is the cause, the originating Maker of all things. This divine Principle is invariable, and I reflect this Principle. I am the very outcome of this Principle. I’m at one, the very idea of Principle. So I, also, express that dominion, that strength, that uprightness, that purity and wholeness. You can see how each one of these can lift our thought away from the sense of being victimized by our circumstances. We’re residing in that place of God’s dominion.

Rosalie: I’d also like to mention for our listeners who aren’t familiar with the Website, that there is a searchable copy of Science and Health on spirituality.com, and Mary Baker Eddy, who’s the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, includes a whole chapter on “Marriage,” in that book. So after the chat is over, if you’d like to read that chapter, which is quite wonderful, it’s extremely helpful in all kinds of relationships, not alone marriage. If you have a work problem with getting along, or any kind of church problem, that chapter on “Marriage” is filled with great spiritual concepts that you can use in prayer. It’s an absolutely wonderful chapter. But stay with us on the chat and then you can go read that chapter. But now we’d like to continue with the questions. This one is from someone who hasn’t told us who they are, but they’re asking: “How does one pray about a situation with a family member who is extremely hurtful with remarks, and subsequently disowned the entire extended family? No one communicates anymore because of this one person’s decision to cut everyone off. An attempt has been made to smooth everything out, but the person hasn’t responded in a long time.”

Valerie: You know, even though you haven’t seen this relative in a while, you still can relate to all their Godlike qualities, and affirm them, and forgive. It’s an opportunity to forgive them, for whatever reasons they’ve left. I find, too, it’s very helpful in Science and Health it says: “If mortal mind knew how to be better, it would be better” (p. 186 ). And I find that such a loving thought. Because sometimes we just don’t know why people do the things they do, and sometimes they don’t know either. But when we can wrap them up in that Love, for whatever reason that was maybe their highest sense of handling the situation, but we can support their spiritual selfhood by knowing that, just as God can give you the spirit of forgiveness, God can give them the spirit of forgiveness. And that whatever seemed to be making upset—or whatever the problem is they’re still working on, we can know that the Christ is ever-present in their consciousness, declaring what’s actually going on between the whole family.

John: Yes, and never lose your affection for that individual. It may be that they’re yearning for a way not to be cut off, a way to be included. I love in Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy talks about how we can gain more human affection. She says: “Human affection is not poured forth vainly, even though it meet no return. Love enriches the nature, enlarging, purifying, and elevating it. The wintry blasts of earth may uproot the flowers of affection, and scatter them to the winds; but this severance of fleshly ties serves to unite thought more closely to God, for Love supports the struggling heart until it ceases to sigh over the world and begins to unfold its wings for heaven” (p. 57 ). We can know that Love is supporting this struggling heart, and we can be an agent for expressing that Love.

Valerie: The Bible story of the prodigal son is very similar to this, in a way. In the story there are two sons and the younger asks his father for his inheritance early, which the father gives him. He goes away from home, and it says in the Bible that he spent his living on a wild life style, basically. He really gets down to his last dime. He takes a job, working with the pigs, and of course, doesn’t have any food and so forth. He remembers how good he had it at his home. Then he thinks, “Well, maybe I’ll go home, maybe my father won’t accept me but at least I can be a servant.” What I love about this story is the attitude of the father. As the son is coming home, the father is already there—I like to think—with open arms, just so happy to see his son. He, of course, reinstates his son as if he’s never left. And that’s really what’s spiritually true.

John: Yeah, and that compassion of the father, of course, is mixed with wonderful joy at seeing the son return, but he also has a deep understanding and compassion for the son who stayed, and was faithful to his father. And he says to that son, when that son feels resentful—“You’re giving this guy a party and I stuck around—and he says: “Son, . . . all that I have is thine” (Luke 15:31 ). And I love this idea that all that God has, all that God is, is ours—it’s our rich inheritance. And we can lose nothing.

Rosalie: A lovely thought. Now we’ve got a few more specific kinds of questions here. This one is from someone in Virginia, who says: “My husband likes watching very violent shows every night, and listens to some hateful music. He has also been heavily involved in Internet porn. I love all things good and detest these things he is into. How can I keep the mental environment clean and pure for our family?—we have small children. And how can I help him grow out of this? He’s also a very fun person, a dependable worker, and has improved a lot over the years as father and husband. I’d love to hear your ideas.”

John: Our culture today seems to just be rife with influences along these lines, to pull us into the sensual, the physical image of individuals, and so forth. Mrs. Eddy talks a lot about healing sin. One of the key ideas that I think of is to try and show in some way or another, that the greater joys, the true pleasures and wonderful happiness of life, comes from something beyond these kind of temporal desires. To know that there is a higher joy, a higher satisfaction in life. I think the way that one would communicate to someone who seems to be lost in these attractions would be to appeal, again, to the good—like the caller alluded to—to appeal to the good in that individual, and help support and bring that out by example. And to know that true love for a spouse, or for the children, comes only from an increased purity. That’s our true nature—is purity. I love what’s read at the end of every Sunday service in Christian Science churches throughout the world, that verse from I John: “Behold, what . . . love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. . . . now are we the sons of God, . . . . And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (3:1-3 ). So put our hopes, put our desires, put our interests and inclinations in God, and we’ll find a natural purity. It will just come to the surface and those things will fall away.

Rosalie: Yes, I think the fact that she’s saying that he’s improved a lot over the years is a sign that unfolding good is happening. I think there are a number of places in Science and Health where Mrs. Eddy points out that “. . . progress is the law of God” (p. 233 ). She goes on to talk about the uplifting of human thought and how that uplifting is possible, and if done lovingly and persistently, can lead to the kind of outcome that I think our site visitor’s looking for. Don’t you think?

John: Yeah, definitely.

Valerie: And I think just affirming, too, that there’s no pleasure in sin. God’s child cannot be attracted to anything but what’s spiritual and good. And that is the most satisfying thing anybody could want. That’s the thing—we need to see that it’s not a part of God’s child. There’s something in Science and Health. It says: “A spiritual idea has not a single element of error, and this truth removes properly whatever is offensive” (p. 463 ). I think also, there’s something—I love the second verse of Hymn 73 in the Christian Science Hymnal. I love this. It says:

God is Mind and holy thought is sending;

Man, His image, hears His voice.

Every heart may understand His message,

In His kindness may rejoice.

Lo, He speaks, all condemnation ending,

Every true desire with Love’s will blending;

Losing self, in Him we find

Joy, health, hope, for all mankind.

Rosalie: That’s an inspired thought, isn’t it?

John: Yes. The only true attraction is that of Spirit.

Rosalie: Now, this is from Lana in Indiana. She says: “I love being a step-mom, but feel that the kids’ mom has not been comfortable with my relationship with them. Too much love? I’ve really backed off.”

John: Could you repeat that again? I wasn’t quite sure what the question was here.

Rosalie: I think that she may feel that the natural mother is jealous of her relationship with the children. Let me read it to you again. “I love being a step-mom but feel that the kids’ mom has not been comfortable with my relationship with them. Too much love? I’ve really backed off.” And I think when she says “backed off” she means that she’s kind of trying to maintain a balance so the mom isn’t so threatened.

John: Well, there may be a right balance there. Sometimes love involves withholding something. For instance, with our children we don’t give them everything they ask for—automatically sort of satiate their wants for candy, and so forth. I think if we’re praying about the right way to love, we sometimes find maybe there’s a quiet way that doesn’t necessarily involve being involved with that individual, but holding to the fact that they are loved, that they are cared for. And being an example: “. . . to know that your example,” she says, I believe, “more than words, makes morals for mankind!” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 110 ). The way we act, the way we respond, will show more love and soften any resentment or friction.

Valerie: It might also be helpful to really just love that mom. I know that’s kind of a sensitive situation, but she is the child of God, too. And you can know, just like that—in a way, it’s kind of like the other part of that prodigal son story, where the older son was feeling a little jealous of his brother getting, perhaps, all the goodies now that he was home. Where the father said, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” (Luke 15:31 ). In our prayer we can know that the mom can feel that she has everything she needs, including the full love of her children, and no one can replace that. Everyone has a proper relationship with the children—she does, as well as you. And there’s no fear in that relationship. There’s no fear in Love, as John said earlier. God is properly relating each of you to each other. So, if that’s true, no one can feel left out or usurped or overshadowed.

Rosalie: Now this site visitor’s writing from Ontario, Canada. It’s a little bit related to what we’ve just been talking about. “Can you share some thoughts about harmony and blended families where there can be a sense of territoriality and fear of losing one’s inheritance, etc.?”

John: There again, it’s having that universal sense of family. And when you think of it, if God is our Father-Mother, then our relationship to each other is more like brother and sister, even though it may seem to be, you know, aunt-uncle, whatever. Even our children—our connection is more like a brotherly-sisterly kind of affection. And so we can think of any family member in that way, and disassociate them from a particular hierarchical role or even history. We don’t have to accept ourselves as products of our upbringing or our education or past events or even genetic heritage. Those are just limits that would hold us back from seeing our true God-given nature, to just know that we have all that we need. Financial issues with families can be divisive. They can sort of pit us against each other. But I think the issue is to have that sense of our own self-completeness, and knowing that God is providing for all of our needs—and that provision may come in very unusual ways. It’s not just about money. It’s about a lot of other things. The more we give, the more we will receive in a human relationship—any kind.

Valerie: There’s a line from a hymn that I like. It says: “I richly shall inherit/All good, from Thee alone” (No. 135 )—meaning God alone. I think when we remember, as John said, that all good comes from God, then we don’t have to outline that it’s going to come from somewhere else. And that really frees us. In fact, it lets us love more because our love is unconditional. It’s not like, “I’ll love because so-and-so’s going to leave me money!” It’s loving because we want to love. Jesus really had it. He said, never ask for tomorrow, it’s enough that God will meet our every human need. And Mrs. Eddy says that, and in all the Christian Science churches, on the plaque it says: “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” (Science and Health, p. 494 ).

Rosalie: Now we have quite a few questions that we still need to answer so I’m going to move into a slightly different set here. This is from Ginny, who’s writing from Santa Anna, California: “Many years ago the Clerk of The Mother Church told my sister that criticism was the termite of our foundation. I believe that it is the same in our families. How do we pray to correct this ongoing problem, which seems to be so much a part of our government also? This cannot be a universal law because it is not God’s law. It seems that if someone else is wrong, then we are right. Please help us with this thought.” In other words, help us get beyond criticism.

John: Criticism, there again, I think it’s another mask of fear. If we’re feeling that we’re critical, or even commiserating about our own challenges—maybe being impatient or angry or annoyed—there again, there’s a need to address that as fear. Handle, which is a term that sometimes Christian Scientists use to mean specifically address, to specifically affirm the divine truth that replaces whatever human challenge we’re facing. In the case of being put off balance or being seemingly attacked by someone or something, we need to handle that again, that fear that someone could upset us, that someone could disturb our wholeness and our completeness in some way.

Valerie: I think also, staying with that Golden Rule is so helpful: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I think, again, first thing in the morning, praying to be a peacemaker. That’s very helpful. Harmony is really the effect of peacemaking. So when we’re conscious of being a peacemaker, and really listening to what would God have us do or say, then we might hold our tongue, or say something in a more supportive way. There’s a line from a verse, it says: “Take my every thought, to use/In the way that Thou shalt choose” (Hymn No. 324 ). And I love that. When we have that peacemaking right in the forefront of thought, it could just ripple throughout the whole family.

Rosalie: Now this is kind of a long question, I’ll try to condense it a little bit, anyway. “How do you parent a twenty-year-old daughter who is, and has been a complete blessing to the family, except in recent years in the area of honoring her father and mother? She is so good and self-confident and independent and successful, but in the last three years she has gotten more and more uncommunicative, and willing to be of help to her dad and mom. She might feel she is superior to us and doesn’t need us. I was a good parent for many, many years, but I don’t feel it would be wise at this point in time to discuss this with her like I used to. There have been indications that this approach would make things worse. Can you tell me what is going on here?”

Valerie: That’s such a good question. Again, it pulled me back to the prodigal son. I mean, that’s in a sense—now your daughter hasn’t spent her substance in riotous living, but she’s kind of moving away a little bit. But you know what? Look at what the father did. He kept right on loving. And that’s the key item. We continue to love.

John: Yeah, it reminds me of a line in the Bible: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6 ). The mothering that you offered that child is a permanent thing. It won’t be for naught. Sometimes I think teenagers, in the college years, or getting into the workplace—these can be difficult, transitional times for kids. They may appear to lose their footing, but your steadfastness, your patience, and love, as Val was saying, will go a long way. A friend of mine recently related a story that—let me see if I can find it here. When her kids became teenagers, when they turned thirteen—they were a couple of sons—she sat them down, and put her hands in their face, and they looked at each other, and she said something like this: “The whole world says you and I are not going to get along for the next few years. I don’t believe it. Do you?” And in each case, the child said, “No.” She was challenging this belief that throughout those teenage years and through college, and she had a wonderful, close relationship with those boys. She had a connection that she was able to maintain through those difficult years. I think to this day they talk to each other regularly on the phone. She’s not a doting mother. She doesn’t try to give them advice, but they share like friends, with that sense of trust. It’s a wonderful example of how we don’t have to accept that there must be friction between family members at any stage in their progress—whether it’s the terrible twos, the troubled teens, or—I don’t know what the twenties would be called—the challenging twenties. You can remove these labels, remove this inevitable sense of a child growing distant in some way, and build on the loving, harmonious relationship that is the true model of our divine family.

Rosalie: I think also there’s one thing that, in addition to praying and recognizing the spirituality that you have, and that the child has, and the fact that God is with them no matter what’s going on and will be guiding them carefully and intelligently, there is also—it’s not wrong to pray for an opportunity to feel at one with the child again, and to be able to communicate and to share thoughts and feelings. Sometimes those opportunities arise very unexpectedly, but to be ready, and to be able to hear when that cue comes where you might be able to have another good conversation. And maybe the child is actually hoping that there will be that opportunity, and has some things to share as well, so just to keep an open thought to that possibility, and that that opportunity can be provided by God, will be another way of being blessed.

John: That’s a wonderful point, Rosalie. Just briefly, I think in all of this when we talk about prayer, we’re not talking about something that’s distant or just going away in a closet and listening to God. I find that prayer leads to some specific action, almost always. It’s a change of thought first, and that manifests itself often in some change of an action in my life.

Rosalie: Well, it leads me to this question from Missy in Morro Bay. She says: “Thanks so much for the ideas you’re sharing. I especially like what you said about how God, our loving Parent, relates us perfectly to each other so there’s no room for friction. Could you give us an example where you saw that idea transform a situation in your life?”

Valerie: Yeah. Well, I’d guess I’d say it was probably a little experience. But I find being open to those angel messages really helps. We had a situation where the kids started getting at each other in the car, and I found myself kind of getting embroiled in it as well. Then my husband said, “Let’s all sing a hymn” right in the middle of all this going on. And he said, “Let’s sing”—was it “Shepherd, show me,” or “O gentle presence”?—one of Mrs. Eddy’s hymns. We all started singing. And what was so interesting is that by the end of the hymn, I totally forgot what the problem was. Nobody mentioned it again. It had been totally squashed. And I love those angel messages that we get. There’s another small example I could give of my daughter. She started doing the behavior that I thought she had outgrown. And when this came up again I could feel myself losing patience. And just as I was about to say something, the angel message that came to me, was give her a carrot—not one that you chomp on—but rather than punish her, give her something that she could work toward again. And so I really caught myself in mid-sentence, and said, “OK. Let’s make a chart. And every time you perform this, we’ll give you a little star, a little sticker. And she was so excited about picking out what stickers she was going to do, she immediately did what I was hoping she would do. That was a very small example but what it taught me was to really listen, and kind of pausing before I kind of run away with things, and say: “OK, Father. What do you want me to do here?”

Rosalie: This is a question that was asked by a site visitor to the Website itself, and that we thought might fit in here with this conversation, and that is: “How can I free myself from a sense of chaotic living?”

John: That seems often to be the norm, doesn’t it? where we’re pulled in every direction, particularly when we’re raising kids and we have other demands—work and so forth. I remember when we were growing up, we used to love the cartoon in the paper called, “Family Circus.” It was such an apt title, and some of the cartoons were really right on. I suppose most parents feel kind of like a ringmaster at a circus—maybe the kids are running rings around us. But as a parent, I sometimes find it’s helpful to just join the circus. You don’t have to leave home to join the circus! Let it be a delightful adventure sometimes, particularly with younger kids, to clown with them, to play with them, to dance with them. We do that literally. We have dance night sometimes before bed where each child picks a song and they dance to it. But to appreciate, and celebrate, and cultivate their joy. One of the hymns has a wonderful line: “. . . cast your burdens on the Lord,”. . . . And bear a song away” (No. 124 ). To just revel in the good. It may seem chaotic, it may seem like it’s all over the place, but there are opportunities where we can, you might say, “go with the flow.” Mrs. Eddy has a wonderful phrase where she’s talking about some qualities of God, and she says to, “. . . keep pace with highest purpose” (p. 514 ). And when we let God be our purpose and priority, we can keep pace with that, even if it’s active.

Valerie: I think also, it’s very tempting to want to compartmentalize our life. We have our work hat, we have our home hat, we have maybe the sports hat, or whatever, and I think it’s helpful to remember that we’re not divorced from God, from having a spiritual sense of things as we go about these different activities. We always have our God hat on. And if we do that, we won’t feel as frustrated, perhaps, as “Oh, I’m taking the kids once more in the car to a soccer match.” We can say, “OK, dear Father, this is Your day, this is Your moment, that it must be fulfilling, it must be healing. There must me something useful here that can be a blessing.” And that restores our joy, to know it’s not so much what we’re doing, but it’s how we’re doing it. And we can demand to have a sense of joy in our day. We don’t have to just kind of barely get through one thing and then go to the next. We can demand to be joyful, and insist upon it. Mrs. Eddy says, “If you wish to be happy, argue with yourself on the side of happiness” (Christian Healing, p. 10). That joy makes things go so much smoother.

John: What does she say? “Be active, and, however slow, thy success is sure” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896, p. 340 ).

Rosalie: Now, we’re coming to the end of our time. Would you all be able to stay about fifteen more minutes, John and Val?

John and Val: Yes.

Rosalie: Because we’ve got quite a few more questions, and I think we could get through a few more, anyway. Those of you who are listening, who have to leave, we’ll go on another fifteen minutes or so, so if we haven’t answered your question, come back, because we may have been able to get to it. And this one that we’ve got here right now is from someone in Africa who says: “My husband has two married children. I sometimes feel in the way, and a third person involved in a relationship, which is very difficult. Jealousy and humility are the difficult things I have had to deal with.” She may meanhumiliation there, not sure.

John: Well, there again, we’re not a third wheel, we’re not left out of Love, we can’t be separated from meaningful, close companionship. It all boils down to reestablishing that wonderful, beautiful relationship with God. Even in a marriage or in a situation that may humanly seem wonderful—everything going well—there can be an underlying fragility there. What if an accident happens, or what if someone finds someone else? Basing our relationships on human relationships is always kind of a precarious situation, but having first established that complete love, that complete wholeness and support, confidence, and joy in our relationship with God, we can find new relationships that will be lasting and permanent, because then we’re approaching a relationship, not from what can I get out of it or what do I expect from it, or how am I going to be satisfied by this person, or does this person fit my particular profile? We enter a relationship, instead, with: How can this be an avenue for me to express the love that’s just welling up and overflowing inside of me? What can I give? And when we give, we receive.

Valerie: It’s that unconditional love I think is really what the demand is in those types of situations—to love no matter what, and trust that Love will dissolve whatever is offensive there.

Rosalie: Linda in New England says: “What’s great about being a parent is the sense of purpose raising children provides, and the sense of belonging a family offers. Once children are out of the house, any insights on how to expand that sense of purpose and belonging—how to expand a sense of parenting if one loves doing it?”

Valerie: That’s a great question. I had a friend say something similar to me. Her daughter was going off to college, and she said, “How am I going to cope with this empty nest?” And it was so interesting because soon after, I was walking and looking up at the trees, and I saw an empty nest! But guess what? The parents weren’t there waiting for their little birds to come back. They were gone. It reminded me that just as God has a beautiful plan for the children to progress and develop in their lives, that continuity of good, of growth, and development, and adventure, and progress, is also true for the parents. They don’t need to feel that God’s love is going to stop once their children go. God has wonderful plans for all His children. And if we wait on God, maybe not outlining how that love is going to appear in our life, we’ll see new avenues to share.

Rosalie: Kevin, who’s writing from San Jose, California, says: “Inaction and lack of communication seem to be the way my family deals with situations. How do you make the transition from quiet inaction to effective prayer?”

John: Certainly, stagnation is not progress, is it? I think there again, to be an example of what you want to be. We don’t need to be chained down by other people’s sense of how they live their day. Even if they’re a roommate or a family member or someone that we have to live with, we cannot let anything hold us back and disturb, and prevent our progress. Mrs. Eddy—and I think you alluded to earlier about progress being “the law of God,” she says, “whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil” (Science and Health, p. 333 ). So, progress demands something of us. It demands, I think, often, taking action, moving in our highest direction of our sense of self-worth, and our sense of purpose. Even if we don’t quite know what that is, we can do what we think is the most right, and through that action, we discover a higher purpose, and we progress. And your example there, again, may help awaken others to a need to fulfill their lives in more specific ways.

Rosalie: This is someone who isn’t telling their location, but they say: “Since I’ve been married, I have had to deal with a sister-in-law, mother-in-law problems, and a step-daughter who have no love for me. I find this very difficult to understand how such hate can go on in a family, and very often behind one’s back. I look forward to some healing thoughts on the program.”

Valerie: I think it’s so important to remember that error is neither “person, place nor thing” (p. 71 ). It may appear like a person, a person saying something unkind, but in fact, it’s just a lie about them. There’s a story—I’ll try and make this short—about a man on a horse. The horse didn’t want to move, and this little snake comes by and bites the horse. Well, the guy thinks that it’s the horse that bucked him off. It really shows the impersonal nature of how error would love to get us at each other. But you know, there’s another part to that Isaiah 54 that I just discovered recently, and that I just love. It’s the last verse. It says: “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me, saith the Lord” (verse 17 ). The thing that I thought was so interesting is that use of heritage. It’s our heritage to put down these lies that say anyone can be used as an instrument to get to us, or that we can be used as an instrument to get to anybody else. Our heritage is to put down these “snaky beliefs,” I like to call them, that says someone is not the child of God. And when we do that, there’s healing.

Rosalie: I think it also gets back to something you both addressed earlier, which is about the various personalities and understanding the oneness of God and that our relationship is always with God, in keeping the problems sort of below that, recognizing that the problems are not where are thought needs to be dragged, but just keep our thoughts always aligned with God—which kind of ties in with the “snaky thought” that you were just talking about that would take you away from thinking about God.

Valerie: That’s right. There’s one Mind operating, and that one Mind is interrelating every single family member in just the right way, so no one feels left out or usurped or undermined.

Rosalie: And I think, too, that sometimes when we’re praying as you were describing, that does open the door to building a relationship, maybe with just one person in the family. But then gradually, as that thaw occurs, the next steps come through, or something happens where you all have to work together on something all of sudden and that brings it about. You can never really predict, but the one Mind really is guiding and governing.

Valerie: That’s so true. Mrs. Eddy says something in Science and Health: “Working and praying with true motives, your Father will open the way” (p. 326 ).

Rosalie: There you go. Now, we have one last question and that is from Lorna, who’s writing from Kingston, Jamaica. She said: “I would like to know more about healings.” Do you all have any particular example that you’d like to share that might be a good example of family harmony? It doesn’t necessarily have to be your own, but maybe something you’ve read about in the magazines, or something?

John: Was it a healing—is that what she said?

Rosalie: Yeah, “I would like to know more about healings.”

John: Oh, healings.

Rosalie: Yes, I think she’s talking about this sense of family harmony, and just examples.

John: I was thinking about this, too, and I think much of what we’ve found is a preventive element through the daily prayer that we’ve been talking about. I pray each day for the family, and I love that sense of including them in our daily prayer. Sometimes I’ll pray specifically about one or the other. For instance, our son for some time had complained about tummy trouble and it seemed to be something that was recurring. As I began to pray about this daily, just to know that there can be no imbalance, that there can be nothing influencing or infecting his purity, his wholeness, his progress. And I began thinking more about my own fear about the children and their future and so forth. It’s interesting how, when we pray, sometimes something is revealed in our own thinking that may at first glance not appear to be related to the challenge. But I came across a hymn that was very helpful in this respect. It’s Hymn No. 382 and it goes—there’s a question in the first verse, a two-part question in the first verse, and the answer in the second verse. And this handled my fear about the progress of my son, and the future, and so forth. It says:

What is thy birthright, man,

Child of the perfect One;

What is thy Father’s plan

For His beloved son?

The answer:

Thou art Truth’s honest child,

Of pure and sinless heart;

Thou treadest undefiled

In Christly paths apart.

And as I thought about this purity, this idea of sinlessness, that nothing can be influencing or affecting this child, I had such a sense of peace about it. And we haven’t heard any complaints about that tummy trouble for some time. Just that idea, include our family each day in our prayers, and let the Christ tell you what needs to be prayed about.

Rosalie: Valerie, any thoughts there?

Valerie: I just love this idea of being a peacemaker. Just really putting in the forefront of thought: How can I be loving, how can I be kinder, how can I be flexible in situations and not push human will? Every day is different, so we really need to be alert that what worked one day may not necessarily work the next day. So we really need to always turn to God. But I find the more I do that, I see a difference in the day.

Rosalie: Well, that’s just great. Thank you both. Do you have any closing comments you’d like to make before we end?

John: Yeah, just one thought from my notes that didn’t come up. Sometimes as a parent we feel like: “I’m just not getting it right. I’m trying the best I can and the kids aren’t responding in the way that I feel they should.” It may try our patience a little bit, but I’ve found this quote from Miscellaneous Writings, which I think really addresses much of what we’ve talked about today, specifically with raising children. She says: “When the Mother’s love can no longer promote peace in the family, wisdom is not ‘justified of her children.’ When depraved reason is preferred to revelation, error to Truth, and evil to good, and sense seems sounder than Soul, the children are tending the regulator; they are indeed losing the knowledge of the divine Principle and rules of Christian Science, whose fruits prove the nature of their source.” But, she says: “A little more grace, a motive made pure, a few truths tenderly told, a heart softened, a character subdued, a life consecrated, would restore the right action of the mental mechanism, and make manifest the movement of body and soul in accord with God” (p. 354 ). So we never need to feel like we’re failing, or that the children are somehow slipping out of the age of innocence, slipping away from us. All that we’ve given them, all that we hold in our concept of them—that Godlike idea—stays with them, and it will be with them all their lives.

Rosalie: Well, thank you both very much. It’s been a great time we’ve had together here. Today’s topic was “Family harmony—it’s possible!” and our guests were John and Valerie Minard, who are both Christian Science practitioners in Collingswood, New Jersey—that’s near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. John is also a teacher of Christian Science.