Drawing on the Bible, Brian provides examples of the freedom from fear people have found through turning their thoughts to the power of God—freedom seen as protection, safety, security. He speaks of Jesus' ministry, which restored people’s health and even raised them from the dead. He also draws on his own experiences during the "The Troubles" in his home country of Northern Ireland, when he was held at gunpoint twice, and as a business owner had to operate in a dangerous environment. He talks about learning the importance of forgiveness and seeing the individuals who threatened him in their true light, as the children, or ideas, of God.

This chat covers a broad range of questions. It includes queries from people who are fearful about physical conditions such as migraine headaches, arthritis, incurable disease, and relapse after healing, as well as chronic fear. Other topics addressed include fears about terrorism, poor economic conditions, unemployment, serious mistakes, victimization, and finding housing.

The transcribed text has been edited for clarity.

Rosalie Dunbar: Hello, everyone. Welcome to a 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 “Freedom from fear” and our guest is Brian Kissock, a Christian Science practitioner from Solana Beach, California. Having survived forty years of terrorism in Northern Ireland, Brian has some very helpful thoughts to share with us today, and in addition he has a degree in theology and divinity, and has been both a Christian Science prison chaplain and has worked with homeless people. So he brings a lot of depth to this subject—to our discussion today. Brian, do you have some thoughts to get us started?

Brian Kissock: Oh, thank you so much, Rosalie, for inviting me and asking me to share a few thoughts on freedom from fear. And hello, and welcome to everyone out there. This is a wonderful opportunity for us all to help deal with fear and all its concomitants—states of thought that have troubled mankind for a long time. So how can we overcome fear? Throughout the Bible there are wonderful examples of the freedom from fear seen as protection, safety, security. When folk turn their thoughts to the power of God—there was Moses of the Red Sea when the children of Israel were being pursued by the Egyptians. Moses understood God’s laws of protection. Also Moses had the serfiat—the carapace or cloak of God’s resilience, and through many difficulties led the children of Israel to the Promised Land. Then there was David in the lions’ den, Noah facing what seemed to be termed a modern day tsunami, perhaps. The three young Hebrew boys—Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego put in the fiery furnace by King Nebuchadnezzar, emerging without even the smell of fire on them. And in the New Testament, people overcoming the dread of disease, even death, by the power of the prayer of understanding of Jesus and his disciples. And since that time, many more examples of folk who have gained freedom from disease—there’s been rescue, there’s been liberty from financial or unemployment stress, and many other issues, through reading and studying the Bible, and Mary Baker Eddy’s wonderful healing book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. I study and pray with these two books every day as contained in the Christian Science weekly Bible Lessons. They can be found on spirituality.com. They’ve been a light to my feet and a lamp unto my path.

In 1968 what is euphemistically called “the troubles” started in my home country of Northern Ireland, about the same time as I began to really study Christian Science. There was much terrorism for over thirty years. There was much fear. It has been stated that during this period, there were over ten thousand bomb explosions. One day in the city of Belfast thirteen bombs exploded. Well, today it’s a beautiful city. At that time I owned wholesale and retail stores, and over this period they were bombed many times. There was much killing. I lost a number of friends. Business people were murdered when they refused to pay so-called protection money. I was held at gunpoint twice—my life threatened. The first time I was very afraid. The gunman shouted as he ran off, “You’ve been warned. We’re going to get you.” Business owners tried to sell up. Many left the country. My business partner left. Now the point of sharing this experience is not in the rehearsal of human events, but what happened next. I had a decision to make. I had a young family. Should we, too, leave the country? I prayed about it. I tried to listen to God’s voice. I thought of Mrs. Eddy’s illustration of Sir Charles Napier, staring a tiger in the eye and sending it cowering back into the jungle (see Science and Health, p. 378). I decided I would not give into fear or threats, nor let fear control me. So instead of leaving I decided to open more stores, and two factories, giving some needed employment at the time, and for a number of years, had a successful business. I’m not retelling this for any personal status but to illustrate that we can stand up to fear, no matter how it might present itself.

The second time when I was threatened by gunmen I was much less afraid, for I had learned a lot more about forgiveness and love through Christian Science. This time I tried to see these young men in their true light—the sons or ideas of God. I tried to see the Christ in them, to know God loved them. The guns were put away, they ran off. I prayed to know they could bring no harm to themselves or others. And I’m happy to say the following day there were no terrorist incidents reported in the city for the previous evening.

Now these are fairly extreme situations which I hope you will never face. But you may be facing your own form of terrorism or fear, which I hope we can dismantle today. I know the foregoing may sound a bit bleak, but I can say that Christian Science has brought me much joy, unfoldment, comfort, and healing, and I’m profoundly grateful. So now, Rosalie, do we have some questions?

Rosalie: Oh, yes, we have a lot, and we’re happy for all of them. The first one is from Maryland, and this lady says: “I’m in much pain from what appears to be an arthritic condition. It affects my whole body and causes me to be in constant fear. I’m praying the best I know how. Any direction you can give me?”

Brian: OK. Well, first of all, one’s heart goes out to anyone who has a sense of dis-ease. We can know from the Bible—when Paul said to Timothy: “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7), we can ask ourselves the question: “What is pain?” Well, pain is a form of fear. It’s a form of mesmerism. And how do we overcome fear? By knowing that we are the divine, supreme, loved ideas of God—that there is no place where God is not, that we have every avenue and facility open to us in our consciousness because our real consciousness is God, is the divine Mind. And we are not separated from this Mind for an instant. We’re told inScience and Health: “ ‘When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father . . .’ ” (p. 14). Well, I’m sure many of us have done that many times when we are confronted or conflicted by some challenge. I believe that the first thing that we do is to shut the door on our belief of mortal mind, or that we, in fact, are mortals. We are wholly spiritual. We’re not halfway towards being spiritual. The bottle is not half full or half empty. We are wholly and completely spiritual ideas of God, and therefore because we are these wonderful ideas of God, there is not a single element of error that can confront us, that cannot be addressed through understanding. And this understanding is the prayer that we can use—understanding more of God.

I always like to start my day with God. Mrs. Eddy has given us wonderful synonyms of God and I’m sure many of you know them very well—Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. And more than that, she also gave us the idea of God being omnipresence. Now I believe that’s the presence of Love. Also, omni-action—that there’s no condition we can find ourselves when we cannot move, because we are the reflection of God’s being, which is omni-action. And God is all-power, which is omnipotence—and omniscience which is all-knowledge, all-comprehension, all-wisdom. So, using these wonderful qualities and attributes of God, we can expand our thought every day—as how do these apply to me? What situation am I in? How can I look at these wonderful attributes, and use them on my behalf, and on the behalf of other people.

Rosalie: Well, thank you, Brian, that’s lovely. And I just wanted to add: If you search on spirituality.com, look for the word arthritis, you’ll find “Mobility restored,” by Jack Lindsey, and I think there’s another article—it’s by Susan Domowitz. That Susan Domowitz article was also published in the February, 2007 Journal. So those are two articles where people tell about how they’ve been healed of issues with arthritis and those might be helpful, also.

Brian: That’s wonderful.

Rosalie: Oh, thanks. Now let’s move down to J. B. from Fayetteville, North Carolina. J. B. says that this individual has always been a person free of fear, cautious, but not fearful until 9/11. The televised images were so powerful and were repeated over and over. “I prayed to see the right image of God and His people, but could not find peace, only fear.” And now there’s the feeling of increasing fear in terms of personal fear—fear of health limitations, old age, business failure, lack of income, and so forth. He says: “I reasoned the fear away, but I do not have the underlying joy, glory, happiness, and peace I once had and long to reclaim. Mrs. Eddy asks us to expunge human history. How do I see my and humanity’s divine birthright everlasting?”

Brian: Well, I have four questions that I have on my bathroom mirror which you might helpful. And they are: “What am I seeing? What am I believing? What am I accepting? And am I impressed?” The images that we see on the television screen, we can decide whether or not we’re going to accept that this as a reality in God’s kingdom. And certainly coming from Northern Ireland, the images there every day were such that you would believe that there could be no God because there was so much devastation. But the Bible tells us that God is not in the earthquake, wind, fire, bestial ferocity. God is that still, small loving voice (I Kings 19:11) that everyone of us can hear when we elect to really listen. I have a Sunday School class and we were discussing the story of Noah and the flood. And I asked the class: Why do you think Noah was the only one to be saved? And one little girl said, “I think it was because Noah was the only one who was really listening.” So we can know that our listening attitude is very important. And it’s very important that we put out of thought all the images, all the dark images. Mrs. Eddy called them “dark images of mortal thought” (p. 418). And as we remove these from consciousness, we are opening up consciousness to wonderful things that can happen in our experience. And we’re not taken in by what mortal mind can present in all sorts of forms. As we know, there’s hardly a time when you watch the news program that there isn’t some fear expressed of something. But we have been given the capacity to reason and to discern. And we can reject these false images and not be taken in by them.

Rosalie: Gina, who is writing from Newton, New Jersey asks: “Please provide practical suggestions about dealing with the effects of other people’s rampant fears, especially those close to us who do not work with spiritual methods. It seems most difficult to stay focused when constantly faced with others’ anger, fear, or anxieties when we’re working to see God’s plan for all.”

Brian: Very good question. It’s something that we all face. It is where other people are in their particular journey, but we do not need to be taken in by any persuasive arguments. We can know that God is All. That “Truth is ever truthful, and can tolerate no error in premise or conclusion” (p. 129), Mrs. Eddy said. So, we don’t have to be taken in by other people’s fears or concerns. We do have our own mental kingdom within the consciousness of each one of us. And we don’t have to be abused by other people’s thoughts. We can say, “No,” to any suggestion. And we can absolutely know that God is providing us every moment with the right ideas, and we can obviate fear in every circumstance. I think it’s very important that we “shut the door.” Mrs. Eddy says: “ ‘When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father . . .’ ” (p. 14-15). Well, there’s always the belief that there are many mortal minds out there, and that they all are carrying their own particular opinions. But Mrs. Eddy also said that human opinion is valueless (p. 341). And we need to know that we need not be taken in by human opinion. One of the things that I like about one of the things that Oscar Wilde wrote in a play—he said about a man who knew the price of everything and the value of nothing. Well, we can know that we know the priceless treasure that we have, which is Christian Science. And we can know the value of that “pearl of great price.” And we need not be taken in by suggestions, no matter how they come to us, in what form they come to us as we can sift and discern and decide what we’re prepared to accept into our consciousness. Because our real consciousness is a Christly consciousness in which there is no terror and no fear. I hope that’s helpful.

Rosalie: Well, I was thinking as you were talking about David, because David—I know that David and Goliath is so well known and I almost hesitated to bring it up—but what I was thinking is that when David got there, everybody was like, very like, “We don’t want to go at Goliath, he’s going to destroy us.” And David was like, “Well, I’ll go and do it.” I mean to him it was sort of like, no big deal. And then they got concerned about David, and they wanted to give him armor and all this kind of thing. And he said, “No, I don’t think so.” And he wasn’t—I mean he was someone who had actually fought wild animals and so forth, so he wasn’t naïve. But he was free of those fears, and angers, and influences, simply because he was really responding to God’s leading. And that was what kept him safe. In other words, it wasn’t something where he didn’t listen to what was useful, cautious advice. Nor was it that he was trying to show off. He just kind of saw it as, “Well, if this is what the problem is, I’ll just go solve it.” And he was unswayed by the fears around him.

Brian: Yes, it’s a wonderful story, Rosalie, and it says in the Bible that David ran to meet Goliath.

Rosalie: That’s right.

Brian: He didn’t have any sense of hesitation, or any sense of fear. He went straight in there. It’s interesting—I was just thinking that years ago, when I was about twelve, I think, I was starting at what’s called a grammar school. I suppose it’s somewhat equivalent to a high-school in America. And I had a friend who lived a few doors away, and he was a lot older—he was about 17 or 18. But he played on the first fifteen Rugby team. Rugby, I don’t know if many in America know about the game, but you don’t wear pads and helmets and all the gear—a bit like what they suggested David wore. You got on the Rugby pitch in shorts and a shirt and it’s a pretty tough game. Anyway, this chap said to me: “You’re going to find when you’re playing this game that you’re going to get tagged or you’re going to get hit. He said, “I find that if I get up and start running immediately, the flow of the game and the interest and the excitement, I’ve forgotten totally about the pain. And I’ve often thought that was very helpful. Now this man was not a Christian Scientist, but I think so often we kind of wallow in our own kind of problems sometimes, and we see things in our mind’s eye as pain. But we can obviate that and dismiss it with the abiding conviction that it’s illegitimate (see Science and Health, p. 390). So that maybe has some reference to David that he ran to meet Goliath. And we can face any fear no matter what it is, no matter how it comes to us, in whatever form it comes to us or tries to come, because in most instances it’s sheer mesmerism. We’re not taken in by any form of hypnotism or mesmerism.

Rosalie: Now, Lynn in Virginia seems to be struggling with that particular aspect of things, actually. She says: “I’ve been praying about an abnormal growth in a part of the body that would seem to carry with it a great deal of fear. While I’ve made progress in the fear department, I’m still contending with far too many thoughts each day: What if it’s disease X? You have disease X. This pain is never going away. What if you die? Your friend died from X. It’s almost as if I’ve let my porter [meaning the porter guarding her thought] go on vacation. Do you have any thoughts about how to really stop these intruding thoughts and see their unreality?”

Brian: I think we stop intruding thoughts by turning our thought wholly to God, to understanding more of what God is, and knowing we can’t be deluded or impressed by something that could never have been created by God. My heart certainly goes out to anyone who has these sort of challenges. In my own experience some years ago, a growth developed on my face, and it became larger and it started to bleed. One day I was playing golf with a doctor and he said to me: “I think that growth on your face is cancer. Have you had it checked out?” Well, I thanked him for his concern and then I said: “Yes, I have checked it out.” And mentally I was saying to myself: “And I’m checking you right out of my consciousness, right this moment.” Well, I was so grateful that they had hooked their balls down the left, and I had sliced mine into the trees down the right, so I was able to walk down. And I remember walking down in absolute rejoicing, and saying to myself, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and He liveth right within my consciousness right this moment.” Well, I refused to look at my face for a few days, but when I did the growth was completely gone. So we can rejoice that we don’t have to accept any appearances, no matter how they suggest themselves to us, because names are interesting things. Mankind has evolved various names for diseases, but the question is have we accepted these as real? Are they of God? No, they’re not of God, so we don’t have to be impressed. We don’t have to be taken in by any suggestion.

Rosalie: Well, it’s interesting, because Lisa, who’s writing from Moline, Illinois, has a lovely thought here. She says: “Would you agree that filling our thoughts and prayers with deeper and more genuine gratitude can help cancel and heal fear? Have you experienced this process of eliminating fear? Sounds simple, but will it really work for physical problems?”

Brian: Yeah, I think the question of gratitude is very important. I know of a lady who had a severe physical problem. In fact the medical couldn’t help her. She went to a practitioner and the practitioner sensed after a short time that she didn’t have any gratitude. So the practitioner suggested to her that she write down all the things she was grateful for. And this lady said, “I have nothing to be grateful for. I’m ill, I’m supposed to be dying, my husband’s leaving me, we’re losing our house”—and all of these things. The practitioner persisted and said, “There must be something you’re grateful for. Call me in the morning.” So the lady called, and she’d two things she was grateful for. And the practitioner persisted and said, “OK, I’d like you to write down today anything else you’re grateful for.” Well, to cut a long story short, after a month this lady had covered forty pages of gratitude and she was completely healed.

Rosalie: Oh, that’s great! I love that.

Brian: So we can know that gratitude is a large factor in healing—that if we’re really grateful for the blessings that we’ve already received, then we’re fit to receive more I think.

Rosalie: Deborah, who says she’s from Europe, says: “For more than thirty years I have suffered from migraine headaches. I’ve worked with practitioners over the years and have had some relief. On several occasions during that time the pain has been so excruciating I’ve had to resort to pain killers. How can I find freedom from fear of this never-ending belief?”

Brian: Well, Deborah, I think that you used the right word when you said belief, because that is what we’re always dealing with, isn’t it? We’re always dealing with something that’s in thought or in consciousness, as a belief. But you are not the belief, nor the believer. We don’t have to believe that there’s anything in God’s kingdom called anything like migraine or headache or anything of that nature. We can know that anything can be healed through Christian Science, and I’ve seen many healings over the years. We can know that there is no power to fear. Mrs. Eddy said fear is nothing—can’t do anything. It can’t stop being and its action (see Science and Health, p. 151). So we can know, that like Mrs. Eddy says, fear doesn’t exist, and has no right to exist within consciousness. So nothing can throw God’s idea into a panic. And there’s no such thing as paranoid or neurotic state. Sometimes that’s how it would appear to us that something has a long, drawn out history. Well the history of error is no history. It’s simply mesmerism, it’s hypnotism that’s trying to delude us and we can know that we’re not taken in by these suggestions.

Rosalie: I think we maybe need to talk a little bit about mesmerism and hypnotism, and how that works because you’re not really saying that there’s someone in the room actually hypnotizing someone. What is it that gets somebody into a sort of a mesmeric state of thought? It’s something that isn’t sort of common to people who are not familiar with Christian Science perhaps.

Brian: Well, sometimes we can be hypnotized, or the belief is that you could be hypnotized by someone. And I’m sure there are many familiar with the lovely story of the Christian Science practitioner who went to India, and was standing on the boat as it docked, and standing beside an Indian gentleman. And the Indian gentleman said to him: “Why have you come to India?” And he said, “I’ve come to investigate hypnotism.” And with that, it seemed like a huge storm hit the boat. The luggage and the baggage were strewn all over the dockside. And then suddenly it was calm again. And this man, the Indian man, turned to the Christian Science practitioner and said, “Is that what you mean?” And then he said, “The only way that you can’t be hypnotized is if you know one true fact, and stick to it. For example, the fact that God is my real mind, that God is Love. These are true facts, and if we stick to those, then we can’t be hypnotized or mesmerized by any thought that would try to suggest itself.” I don’t know if that’s a satisfactory explanation of mesmerism or hypnotism but I’ve had some experience myself of folk trying to hypnotize me, and I remembered that story that I couldn’t be hypnotized if I held onto one true thought like one and one is two, or God is my true mind.

Rosalie: I was thinking more of the sort of general mental atmosphere. For example, there are certain times in the United States when it’s—if you’ll pardon the expression—flu season. And you turn on the television, and they’re saying X number of people have flu, or these schools have closed. And then you go to the store, and it says: “Get your flu shots,” because otherwise you’re going to get sick. And you look at the newspaper headline and it says, “Oh, guess what? You’re going to get flu.” And it goes on and on and on, and it kind of builds a self-fulfilling prophecy. But then your coworker’s sitting next to you, and obviously has symptoms of illness, and you start thinking: “I’m going to get the flu. I’m going to get the flu. I’m going to get the flu.” And pretty soon you’ve essentially mesmerized yourself, because you’ve seen all of these different illustrations of it, and guess what, there you are. That’s a kind of mesmerism I was talking about.

Brian: Yeah, I think I did hear a story some years ago that might be relevant. On the East Coast of America, doctors’ offices and hospitals were inundated with people one Wednesday morning with what the medical folk said were mystery symptoms. They couldn’t understand it until someone discovered that in an episode of Dr. Kildare the previous evening, these symptoms had been minutely described. So, sometimes we kind of rush to take on these symptoms when we need to deny them and say, they’re no part of God, and no part of God’s peaceful creation and blessedness. And we can dispose of them in that way, I think.

Rosalie: Well, exactly, and that’s what I was sort of hoping to get at, that sometimes there is this feeling, like the man who said the growth on your face was cancerous, where these different diseases come along, and all these different voices are saying things that make you feel, “I must have it.” And there you go. But you can resist that, as you were saying by the one, true thought that God is Love and would not send anything like that to anybody. God is Truth and this is certainly no part of Truth, etc. So I just wanted to make sure we had covered that for people who are unfamiliar to Science.

Brian: Well, it’s interesting, Mrs. Eddy said in Science and Health, page 170: “The description of man as purely physical, or as both material and spiritual,—but in either case dependent upon his physical organization,— is the Pandora box, from which all ills have gone forth . . . .” So, we need to be laying our earthly all on the altar of God, and drinking of Christ’s cup. The word Christ, I think, that we use in Christian Science is very interesting because I think the real Christ-consciousness is the consciousness that knows only good, that is only benevolent and official, and that can help greatly when we’re challenged.

Rosalie: Yes. I wanted to mention to the individual who was asking about migraines, that if you go to spirituality.com after the chat—please stay with us until then—you’ll find, if you’ll search on migraines, you’ll find at least one, possibly two articles that help to address that. So, just go search on migraines on spirituality.com and I think we’ve got, “Freed of migraines,” by Mary Sipe and possibly, “Migraines healed through reliance on God” by Pamela Mactell. Both of those were articles published in the Christian Science magazines so if you can’t find them on spirituality.com, you should be able to find them at a Christian Science Reading Room that has back issues of these two magazines. So that will provide some additional help for you.

Then, moving on, Debby in the Midwest says: “If God and the universe are completely spiritual, how does God help us when we have a material problem—sickness, lack, relationships, grief, accidents? If He doesn’t even know it, how do we pray to resolve the problem?”

Brian: That’s a very good question. We go back, again, to our definition of what God is. Mrs. Eddy said that “God is a Spirit.” Funny, my 11-year-old grandson described God as a Spirit on a flying machine, going everywhere and seeing everything at the same time. He had a pretty neat grasp on it. But, the fact that it is Spirit, indicates to us that we are wholly spiritual, as well, and that we don’t have to accept the mortal belief that has been going on for centuries that we are material creatures. I think Mrs. Eddy said we’re made up of a compound of spiritual ideas that work in harmony. And each of these spiritual ideas coordinate together. Now we’re told that we have hearts and brain and lungs and stomach and so forth. But each of these represents the action of divine Mind, and it can’t be corrupted or impinged upon. And once we recognize that this coordination, or compound of spiritual ideas, is really ourselves, then we begin to lose the sense of mortality. We begin to move away from the belief of what we’ve been told for so long. And that’s where Christian Science probably departs from traditional thought, and that it recognizes man as being wholly spiritual. Mrs. Eddy, in her “scientific statement of being” indicated that matter did not have any intelligence because all was infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation. And I believe that this infinite manifestation is each one of us—doesn’t matter what our culture is or where we come from, whether we’re Iraqi or from Afghanistan or from Ireland or wherever, that each one of us is the beautiful, spiritual, free idea of God—“uncontaminated and unfettered by human hypothesis.” And we’re certainly “divinely authorized.”

Rosalie: This individual is asking about—she says: “After trying for two years to heal a difficult problem, succeeding, only to find two more supposedly incurable diseases”—this is from Kaz in London—she says: “How to you rise above fear that you won’t ever be well—or even worse, that these diseases will eventually rob you of your independence?”

Brian: I think that’s a fear that many people have, but fear is speculation about the future, isn’t it? And we can know that “. . . now is the accepted time; [today] is the day of salvation” ( II Cor. 6:2), that every day is God’s day, and we can see this perfection of being, and not be taken in by suggestions of what is going to happen in the future. The word now is very important in our vocabulary. We can see ourselves as free of all suggestions. Sometimes when we’re on this spiritual journey, shall we say, we need to know that we’re not trying to fix matter. We’re not trying to change matter. In fact, we’re not trying to change a belief. We just need to simply stop believing that there is such a thing in the kingdom of God. And we’ll find that our ills begin to disappear as we spend more time in deep study and in listening to God, and expressing more of God’s nature in the Golden Rule by reaching out to others. Then we begin to lose sight of self, because we’re really acting out what Jesus instructed about going into all the world, and heal the sick, and raise the dead. “Freely ye have received, freely give” (Matt. 10:8). We kind of lose ourselves, I think, whenever we’re able to minister to others. I think that probably is one of the most helpful things for me and various ministries that I’m involved with.

Rosalie: We have a question from—I’m not sure how to pronounce it, but I’m going to do my best—Rooshal, who’s writing from Bournemouth, England. She says: “I’m looking for accommodation for myself and my friend. How can I overcome the fear that we shall not be able to find a suitable place to live?”

Brian: I think a lot of people are concerned about home at the moment. Mrs. Eddy describes home as heaven (see Science and Health, p. 254). And I think that we do live in the kingdom of heaven. And as we do not permit ourselves to be afraid, then there unfolds in consciousness all sorts of ideas. In the prison where I serve there is great fear that when the inmates are released they will not be able to find somewhere to stay, or to get a job. And one of the things I think they find helpful is the idea that ideas are not limited, that we understand God to be infinite Mind, and therefore there must be an infinitude of ideas that are available for each one of us. And I believe that Mind unfolds to us in ways that we can understand—it could be a person or it could be a thing or an idea—but these suggestions about home are helpful—that we rest our case with the divine Mind that understands everything. And we find there is an unfoldment in our experience, and that can be related to home or a place to stay.

Rosalie: One thing that I’ve found really helpful is in one of the books about Mrs. Eddy, which I’m not quite sure which one. It might be Twelve Years With Mary Baker Eddy, where Mrs. Eddy said that “Home is not a place, but a power.” And she talks about the sort of not a material sense of home, but all the qualities that home represents. And people have often found their home through just writing down the qualities and dwelling on what qualities—spiritual qualities—would you want to have in your home? There was one time—this was quite some time ago—when I came back to the apartment building where I was living at the time in Boston, and found that I couldn’t get in because there’d been an oil leak in the basement and the fire department had closed the building. I had a cat inside, and had no clothing or anything, and took quite a bit of talking to get myself in to retrieve my pet. Even so, I had a friend who also lived in that building and so we both were able to get our pets and our clothing, but now we’re still out on the street with nowhere to go. The thought that came to me was this concept that home is not a place but a power. And the thing that was wonderful about it was that at that particular moment, I felt relatively powerless because I had no idea where we would go, especially when you have an animal. And this thought came to me to call someone who I knew from work, who I would never in a million years have thought of calling because it wasn’t a close, personal friend or anything like that, and it turned out this woman had a larger apartment then I knew, and she took us in. And for about a week we stayed in her apartment. I’m not saying that that would be the solution for our questioner, but it is an example of how an unexpected answer can come and be the right answer. But don’t feel powerless. Embrace the qualities of home in your thought and those will guide you with God’s direction to steps that you need to take to find your place for now. And the place for now may be a place for just a little while, and then you may move on to something better. But the key thing is that you are already living and moving and having your being in God, and you are not homeless. You include all the qualities of home right now. I think you were going to say something Brian, right?

Brian: Yeah, just on—we are never actually homeless because, as you said, Rosalie, we do live and move and have our being in God. And it’s not a physical place, but it’s a place of consciousness. I’ve seen so many instances of folks finding out a place just by turning thought to God—to listening to the voice within. And the situation has been resolved.

Rosalie: Andy, who’s writing from Bothel, says: “Can you speak to fear of food poisoning—caffeine, unknown substances in our food, contaminants, etc.?”

Brian: Mrs. Eddy wrote a very interesting sentence once that Christian Scientists should not be concerned with the chemistry of food (see Rudimental Divine Science, p. 12). And this has been very helpful to me. Also, I think Jesus talked about if ye shall drink any deadly thing it shall not hurt you (Mark 16:18). I think that we find that there’s so much paraded before us with regard to diet and health foods and all sorts of things that sometimes we spend a lot of time thinking about these things, but I think we can dismiss them, largely on that basis of what Mrs. Eddy said, that we need not be concerned about the chemistry of food. I don’t think that she thought about gluttony. I think that that’s something that we can deal with—overeating and so forth, or under-eating. But not to spend time working out calories and all the other things that have come up. It’s interesting how names evolve. The word cholesterol I understand came from a hundred-and fifty-old word called cholesteriac. A margarine company wanted an advertising agency to find out how they could in some way denigrate butter. So they found out that there was a biluary acid steroidal substance in butter that they claimed wasn’t good for man, and so they put advertising out to that effect years ago and they changed the last two letters of cholesteriac to cholesterol. So it’s kind of interesting how names sometimes come up in our lexicon, and how we need to be just very careful that we don’t accept into consciousness deleterious offerings with regard to foods and so forth.

Rosalie: Now Julie in Bellevue, Washington, is leading us back to your experiences. She says: “Please share some prayerful ideas on how to address the fear of terrorism and human rights abuses in the world. What ideas were helpful to you when you lived in Northern Ireland?”

Brian: Thank you very much for that question, Julie. Throughout the world today we can say there’s a leaven going on in human thought that folks want freedom and emancipation and self-determination. We see it along the coastline of Africa, and so forth. One of the helpful things that I prayed with at the time was to try to see all men and women as the divine, beautiful ideas of God, to see the Christ in every person—and that applies to politicians and to these leaders of military hunters, and so forth. If we can see them as they really are, and not be pulled into the dream of them being terrorists, I think that this helps the situation. I think that we have enough power to change the world by recognizing and seeing man in his true light, as the idea, the reflection, the manifestation of God’s being. And not to be taken in by labels that say that he’s a terrorist or a warmonger, and so forth. Those are some of the ideas that helped me in Northern Ireland, but it took quite a long time because initially I was pretty angry. But anger doesn’t solve anything. The only way that we can improve situations is by learning about forgiveness. Forgiveness is another powerful element in healing—forgiveness of ourselves for having cherished such thoughts, and then forgiveness of whatever might have been perpetrated upon us.

Rosalie: That’s very helpful. This is a question about global warming. Trudy in San Diego says: “Could you share some ideas to deal with the claim of global warming, which for some people is pretty fear-inducing?”

Brian: Yes, indeed, we’re faced with a lot of physical challenges it seems today, and some of them have been attributable to global warming. It’s a case that I think is unproven. I like to think that there’s a balance in the universe. But it certainly behooves us to cherish and nurture the spiritual idea of earth, and of the universe. The universe is God’s expression, in a way, just as we are. We need to see it in its true light and not to corrupt it in any way. But I think that recently we’ve seen so many evidences of earthquakes and tsunamis and tornadoes and so forth that we’ve been asking ourselves the question: Why is this happening, and what can we do about it as Christian Scientists? Well, I think that we can learn that we do have power within us. Jesus said: “I give you [all] power over the enemy” (see Luke 10:19). And that we can know that anything that would disrupt us is an enemy to be dealt with. We can stare into the face, as Mrs. Eddy did, of approaching storms and see only the face of God.

I had a little instance a few years ago that might be helpful. I was coming back from Annual Meeting—June in Boston—the flight landed in Cincinnati. It could be said I was kind of walking on air, but the aircraft had to make a landing. Anyway, the pilot came on—we’d discharged some passengers and took on some more, and the pilot announced that we were going to be grounded for as much as three or four hours, that there was a violent storm approaching the airport. I thought, I can reflect on gentleness and gentle rain and peace and harmony, and these wonderful qualities that are Godlike qualities, and not be taken in by this suggestion. Well, there was some rain, but after half an hour he came on to announce that the flight would be taking off very shortly, that the storm had suddenly veered away. I was very grateful, and I think that all of us can do something through prayer and understanding to dissipate violent electric storms. Electricity is a very interesting word. Mrs. Eddy has quite a lot to say about electricity. She also noted it as friction, and sometimes that’s what’s going on with folks—that there is this sense of friction between people. But we can thoroughly dismiss and strip it of all reality, and know that it has no power over us. We know that electricity is not a force, but God is the power, and it’s God’s universe that we live in. So it’s one of the areas that we can perhaps think about, and what Mrs. Eddy has to say on that subject is very interesting.

Rosalie: I have two things that people have sent in. One is from Frank, who says the quote about “home being a power, not a place” is on page 211 of Twelve Years With Mary Baker Eddy, the amplified edition by Irving Tomlinson. It’s in the chapter 11, titled “Home.” And then Shel from Detroit has sent an experience to us: “Once, when I was verbally assaulted by someone and called a practitioner in distress, she said, essentially, that I could not enter another’s dream. After that the whole incident, which seemed so overwhelming, became like a dream—a very vague, distant, non-event. So I think this also applies when we see others suffering physically or emotionally, that we don’t have to enter into another’s dream, that it’s impossible to do so, and in this way we can stay outside of it without losing our empathy for our fellowman.” But I think we could go a little further with that, Brian, don’t you think, and saying that while we do stay out of the dream, we can express compassion, and can certainly know that God is with that person, guiding them just as much as He is with us. Don’t you think?

Brian: Oh, yes. I think Mrs. Eddy refers to the tender encouragement of a patient, to listen to his fears, and to address them, and that’s really what we need to be doing. That’s living the Christly life. But at the same time, not being taken in by any suggestion because whatever we hear that is not Godlike, is a lie. And a lie by any name is a lie. So we don’t have to accept that. I have to smile, some years ago when I heard of a practitioner. Someone called him with a problem and he said, “I don’t care whether you call it a double whammy of tootie-fruity ice cream with nuts on the top, it’s still a lie.” So, we don’t have to be taken in by any lies or suggestions. This life, from a material or mortal point of view, is really a dream. When you asked me to take part in the program, I was thinking back to Northern Ireland and that it seemed like so much of a dream. I mean at the time, it sure seemed to be difficult, but I think that we need to know that this mortal dream we can give up. And as a writer says, we can expunge the mortal history, and I think that’s important that we do because every moment is new. Every moment is a delight, and we should see it that way. We shouldn’t be ruminating over the past or speculating about the future. Someone asked a man, who was a Christian Science practitioner, who it was said was well over a hundred, “to what did he attribute his longevity? “I learned to refuse to ruminate, and I learned to refuse to speculate. I learned to live every moment in absolute rejoicing.” What a great recipe for longevity.

Rosalie: Yes. This individual says—this is Evangeline—“I live alone and I always seem to be a victim of someone I trusted. Now I’m fearful to associate with anyone. No one will help me, they just say, ‘I told you so.’ I live in constant mistrust of other people.”

Brian: Well, you can know, by seeing the Christ in everyone that it lifts your consciousness and it lifts them. Don’t feel that you’re a villain or a victim in any shape or form. But just to know that you are the expression of God’s being, and therefore you have all of God within your consciousness. And as we see folk in the correct light, I know that this changes. Sometimes we think: Well, I have to try to change the other person. But really what we need to do is change our thought or misconception. And very often we’re dealing with misconceptions. But we can put them out of consciousness in relation to anything, and know that we don’t have to be taken in by these suggestions, but to see the Christly light in everyone. It’s interesting how people respond when that happens. A friend of mine was in New York attending a business conference and she felt very lonely. And she would go out in the evening and all she could see she thought were grim faces of people rushing to get the underground, and so forth. But she decided to change her thought, and instead she decided to see the Christ in everyone. I think it was five people who stopped her and said, “Don’t I know you?”

Rosalie: That’s nice. This is from someone who’s not telling us where he or she is, but they have a question that’s really a fear of relapse question. “I have called a practitioner from time to time regarding an illness and the prayer results in freedom from the illness. However the condition continues to return from time to time. I will admit that I have difficulty being afraid that the condition will return. How could one address the fear of the illness returning in prayer?”

Brian: In God’s kingdom there is no law of inconclusion. It’s not like someone has described an aircraft at the end of a runway with all the engines turning, and all the passengers aboard that never takes off, because we can know that there is a law of conclusion. There is always an ending to a belief. And that’s all we’re ever dealing with is a belief. But you, in reality, are not the belief, nor the believer. So we need not be taken in by it.

Rosalie: This is another one that’s anonymous. “How can I conquer the fear that I am not good enough, not important enough? I feel that it was deeply embedded in me during childhood, and keeps appearing in my life in different ways but never altogether overcome.”

Brian: At the beginning of the program Rosalie mentioned that I’m a prison chaplain, and I often hold services at the prison. And there are folk who come there from all over the world, from all sorts of different backgrounds, and people who have had all sorts of problems. I try to inculcate in them a sense that they are the beloved ideas of God, that they are whole and complete and perfect. I often use the word magnificent. And it’s interesting that when I use that word, many of them who might be slouching in a chair, sit up straight because they’ve suddenly had a new view of themselves. So I think that we need to cultivate this sense that we are magnificent. We are the magnificent ideas of God, and not to accept any lower or lesser idea, but to see ourselves as we really are—as this beautiful reflection, and to hold to that, and not to accept human opinion. Mrs. Eddy said that human opinion is valueless (see p. 341). It’s how we see ourselves that’s important and how we see other people in their true light.

Rosalie: Now we have a cluster of questions about finance, and one person is going on a job interview after being out of the workforce for approximately nine years, another person is asking about fears in general about the world financial markets, and then Jean in Spokane, Washington, is saying: “Can you offer some ways to go about praying about the economy and how long the current situation will last?” because her son has been caught up in it and his salary’s been reduced, and she’s been able to help out but she’s not sure how long she can do that. So we’ve got someone, as I’ve said, ready to go for a job interview, someone who’s just generally worried about the financial markets, and then the mother who’s concerned about her son being out of work, and I just thought maybe we could take that as a group.

Brian: OK, Rosalie. Yes, I know that this is a big concern of the moment is the job market. One of the inmates at the prison made a very interesting statement a couple of weeks ago. He said that if you really want to work there’s always work around. And there is no limit on ideas. I had a neighbor once that would come over and would ask me questions about Christian Science, and he was curious, but he also had an MBA degree. After awhile I said to him—I’m not using his real name—I said, “Bill, you don’t seem to work. Have you got some independent means?” And he said, “Oh, no, I’m looking for a job, but all the jobs that are offered to me are kind of beneath me.” It reminded me of Naaman who said, when he was conflicted with leprosy, “I’m not going to wash in the river Jordan. I want the pure waters of Pharpar.” I can’t remember the exact quotation. But I felt in this instance that there was kind of like a sense of arrogance and not humility. I said to him, “Bill, you know it wouldn’t really matter to me what I was doing, because I could bring to that particular job qualities of God—service. I said I wouldn’t mind being even a washer up, or a waiter. I could bring ideas of service and punctuality and cleanliness and all sorts of different qualities. It was interesting about a month later he came to me and he said, “I’ve got a job.” I said, “That’s great, Bill, what’s the job?” He said, “I’ve got a job as a waiter.” And I said, “Well, good for you—just keep your thought open to possibilities.” And a few months went by, and with great excitement he came see me to tell me that he had run into a CEO of a major company. He’d been serving her at table, and I imagine he’d been giving good service. Anyway they got chatting and she invited him for an interview, and he got the job and it was exactly the job he was looking for. And he got an apartment in LA and a new car. I just think that there’s infinite possibilities, because there’s no limit on ideas. The other thing regarding the economy, the Bible says “Your abundance may be a supply for their want,” and their abundance a supply for your want: “that there may be equality” (II Cor. 8:14). So I don’t think that we need to accept that there is diminution, that we need not accept that there are not jobs out there. It also says, “My God shall supply all your need” (Phil 4:19). So I believe there is an infinite nature that we can appeal to that understands infinite ideas, and these ideas come to us in surprising ways.

Once I was faced with a critical business situation, and I wasn’t sure which way to turn. I had asked a Christian Science practitioner for help, and she relayed some thoughts to me to hold onto, which were very helpful. But one day a man came in to the yard of the factory, and he said, “I don’t know why I’m here.” A good start—I was thinking to myself, “I think I know who sent him.” Anyway he gave me a piece of information that led to me starting a new business. So we can know that in Mind’s infinite unfoldment that we can be assured that these ideas will occur to us when we really learn how to listen to God’s voice. The divine economy is unaffected by our thoughts about economy, about shortages and layoffs, and so forth. So I think the more we turn to the understanding of this infinite divine Mind, that’s our real Mind within our own consciousness, we’ll have ideas unfolded, and we’ll see how to go and where to go and we’ll find that there are jobs. So we need not accept what is promoted constantly on the news media about the economy. We are about God’s business. The Bible says “about [our] Father’s business” (Luke 2:49), and we can rejoice in that. And know that “things [do] work together for good to them that love God” (Rom. 8:28). So let us love good.

Rosalie: Thanks. Ann says: “A friend recently asked me to pray for her mother who is ill. This friend is very afraid of the diagnosis given her mother. What ideas can I share with her to comfort her fear? She has expressed interest in Christian Science but has little familiarity with the Christian Science view of God.”

Brian: Very good. I think sometimes when we’re asked to pray for someone can be kind of difficult if you can’t communicate with that person, or if they’re, for example, under medical help. You can pray for your friend to know that she can be led in the right way. Obviously sharing Science and Health, and then asking her if she finds that she has questions to be ready to answer those questions. I think the sharing of Science and Health is very important. I think that it is the Comforter that Jesus promised, and I think that the more that we share it with the world, the more we’ll find things begin to change in all sorts of aspects, whether it’s the economy or in relation to sickness or fear or terrorism or war. So I just think it’s a very important part that we can be playing of going out into all the world and preaching the gospel.

Rosalie: Ray, in Ventura, California, says: “There seems to be a fascination for the end of the world. Different people come out with dates, and an important date is coming up in 2012. What prayer dispels this?”

Brian: Yeah, I’ve seen these dates at various times over the last twenty, thirty years I suppose. I think Jesus mentioned it—I’m trying to remember the exact quotation. “There is no end time.” We need not be fearful of this speculation. What we need to be doing is improving the present time, and making it God’s kingdom, and understanding more of God’s kingdom right this moment rather than spending our time speculating about what might happen, because that’s a kind of fearful thought, isn’t it, in regard to the future. The only thing that we really possess is this moment. We don’t have anything else—we don’t have the past and we don’t have the future, so we can rejoice in this moment, and know that this is the moment that we have been given. We can just see God, and rejoice that our Redeemer liveth, and liveth within me.

Rosalie: We have time for just a few more questions, and I hope you all will be able to find some answers from the ones we’ve gotten to. This is from Kathy in Seattle, who says: “Fear often comes suddenly when I fear falling or losing my balance.” She says: “I need some thoughts to straighten up my thinking.”

Brian: I think that God created man balanced and poised and as we are at that cusp, we don’t need to accept that there is any fallen state of grace. Mrs. Eddy says that man is “unfallen, upright, pure, and free” (p. 171). And that’s the real state of our being. So have no fear that you can fall from grace.

Rosalie: Jean, who’s writing from Georgia, says: “How do you deal with yourself and your work if you think you have made a major mistake in your life, hurting other people, including yourself and your work? How do you go on with your life?”

Brian: Well, this is a very good question. It’s one that I’ve had to try to answer myself at times. I think it goes back to what I was saying about learning how to forgive yourself. Sometimes it may be necessary to try to make some form of reparation to the person that you feel that you might have hurt. But, at the same time, you’re not in their dream. We need not be in anyone else’s dream. We just need to rectify and regenerate our own consciousness. Now just thinking that Mrs. Eddy made a very interesting statement and I’m not sure if I can recall it, but it had to do with what she called “unregenerated memory.” It was in a note left by Martha Wilcox, who was one of Mrs. Eddy’s workers. “It takes a regenerated life to enter heaven and a regenerated memory in order to stay there. Indeed, the Christian Scientist knows that he must have a regenerated memory in order to have peace. Evil memories, blame, guilt, self-condemnation, only continue the belief of mortality and malpractice that oppress. To cherish recollections of believing that there ever was an injury is the most dangerous thing a Christian Scientist can do. There must be complete forgetfulness of past wrongs and sorrows.” That’s the end of the quote. I think we all need to be healed of the memory of past mistakes and regretting them. If we dwell on regret beyond reformation we are actually malpracticing ourselves.

Rosalie: I have two questions that I’m going to merge into one, and these will be our last two. Angela in Missouri says: “It’s sometimes said that fear is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just that thought causes more fear and then it starts to circle around.” And Alice in Seattle is asking: “How do you overcome a chronic fear? It seems like fear causes things. How can I not be afraid of fear?” And those two seemed related, and I thought we could do those last two and then we’ll have to end for today.

Brian: OK. Well, I think it’s a good question to end on. How do we overcome a sense of chronic fear? I think we overcome it by understanding that we are the loved of Love—that there is no place that we can ever find ourselves where God is not. Now I think that this obviates fear and eliminates it from our consciousness. God is Love and we can know more of this Love as we reflect on it. “God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Tim. 1:7). And we can rejoice that that is our present state and that we don’t have to accept the error’s being part of our consciousness. Give me the last question again about—sorry the first part of the question, Rosalie, please.

Rosalie: That was about self—

Brian: Oh, yes, self-fulfilling fear. One of my favorite characters in the Bible is Job, and Job, you could say, had self-fulfilling fear, in that he said, that “which I greatly feared is come upon me” (Job 3:25). And he was very fearful about all sorts of things. He was fearful about his children, he was fearful about his possessions. But the interesting thing is that all of the time, Job was seeking God. Job was trying to understand God. He said, “I want to reason with God” (13:3). And then finally he was able to say, “I see God face to face.” And I think his fear, dread, anxiety were all eliminated. And it said that Job received back more than he possessed before. But he also had a large quotient, I think, of understanding. So, I think we can learn a little bit from Job. There’s also a wonderful chapter in Mrs. Eddy’s book, Science and Health, called “Animal Magnetism Unmasked.” It really is kind of an answer to Job. So that’s worth studying.

Rosalie: Again, if you have any specific things for example, growths and those kinds of issues, you might just search on spirituality.com because there could be some articles there that would provide some additional help. Also, for employment there are articles there about finding a job, keeping a job, economy—so do spend some time on the Website checking out some of the resources that are there. Brian, do you have any closing comments that you’d like to make before we leave our visitors?

Brian: Well, let’s just know that fear doesn’t hold the high ground—that we can be like Nehemiah when he said, “I am up on the wall and I’m rebuilding this wall, and I’m not coming down.” And we do not have to ever come down to any fearful thought. We can “Dismiss it with the abiding conviction that it’s illegitimate” (p. 390). We are the beloved ideas of God, and we don’t have to be fearful over anything.

Rosalie: Great. Well, thank you so much. In case you would like to know, if you came in late, our topic today was “Freedom from fear,” and our guest was Brian Kissock, a Christian Science practitioner from Solana Beach, California.