A friend was telling me about her work with someone who had come to her for Christian healing. She wasn't saying anything that would violate any confidences. But it was her first experience of this kind, and she was telling with some relish of how much was being "uncovered" to her through her prayer. She explained that she was talking frequently to the patient about all the things that needed correction before there could be healing.

I couldn't resist asking suddenly if she would be disappointed if the healing came too quickly. We both laughed, and she saw the point.

We may need to be more ready for healing without a long course of human counsel and instruction. While prayer may indeed bring to light for patient and practitioner habits of thought that need correction, healing as understood in Christian Science isn't a talking cure, a psychological probing of personality, or a pressing for confession of sins. Even if Christian Science treatment seems required over a period of time, it nevertheless has its solid base in prayer that quietly recognizes and responds to the one Mind, God, instead of being a busy activity of the human mind.

Answering a question about healing, Mary Baker Eddy once commented: "It is not necessary to make each patient a student in order to cure his present disease, if this is what you mean. Were it so, the Science would be of less practical value. Many who apply for help are not prepared to take a course of instruction in Christian Science." ^{Miscellaneous Writings, pp. 38–39.}

At the very beginning of Christian Science healing, of course, people who were healed came from many religious backgrounds, and from none. They represented varying levels of education and of moral and spiritual progress.

One young man who had been shot in the heart was expected to die by his family and by the examining physicians. He knew nothing of Christian Science, had lost consciousness, and so couldn't converse with the practitioner, but within a few minutes after treatment began he revived. He was soon completely healed. Without any discussion of Christian Science theology, he awoke with a strong desire to practice it. He asked, "Is this something I can learn, and do for others?" And he later became a Christian Science practitioner. (This account is given in A Century of Christian Science Healing, pages 25 to 29. An early report of a similar healing can be found in Miscellaneous Writings by Mrs. Eddy, pages 439 to 440.)

There's no question that Christians can and should be encouraging to each other, helping each other to turn thought Godward. A Christian Science practitioner may share examples, insights, specific spiritual truth. He or she has every reason to be profoundly kind, loving, and patient. However, when someone asks a Christian Scientist for treatment, he is not really asking for a substitute companion or adviser but rather for prayer that devotedly embraces someone in the radical spiritual truth of God's being all-powerful and all-present and so excludes any other apparent force or factor. This prayer may or may not be accompanied by recommendations for spiritual study. It is sometimes not preceded by extensive conversation.

I recall a time, for example, when I was suffering from persistent pain. One night it had increased to the point where it was causing me to shake. It was similar to a condition I had had several years before and been healed of through Christian Science over a period of about a week. This time, however, it seemed more demanding. I talked very briefly with a practitioner that night, asking for his prayerful help, and minutes afterward the pain receded and stopped. That was the end of the problem some twenty-five years ago.

Whatever the length of time involved in a healing's coming to pass, the actual basis for healing is not verbal persuasion or even gradual education; the basis remains the spiritual and scientific fact of divine, all-inclusive reality. Because the reality doesn't include disease, pain, or evil, but only God's goodness, the recognition of this can bring a very different sense of things into human experience. Often further fundamental spiritual growth on the part of practitioner and patient is required in order to gain such a recognition. As Mrs. Eddy, the Founder of Christian Science, writes, "Through repentance, spiritual baptism, and regeneration, mortals put off their material beliefs and false individuality." ^{Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 242.}

Christ Jesus mentioned those who mistakenly think they will be heard by God because of "their much speaking." ^{See Matt. 6:7.} God of course does not really need to be informed of something He could not know—i.e., that there is something lacking in His perfect expression, or image and likeness, man. Similarly, the one and only intelligence of the universe—God, or Mind—expressed in man does not have to be talked into something. And man—that is, our true selfhood and the real selfhood of those we are praying for—has one Mind.

If when we do our talking we remember it must be based on listening to what God is saying, we may find more economy of human words, more effective love, more inspired spiritual conception, and more healing.

Allison W. Phinney, Jr.