I am making a petit point pillow. Petit point is like needlepoint but worked with split thread on very fine canvas. Also, I often read extremely tiny print, including the daily stock quotations from the newspaper, which list fractions. What is remarkable to me about all this is that I am doing these things without glasses. For over twenty years I had been unable to thread a needle or to read even large print without using reading glasses. At times I even used a magnifier.

Years ago, before my healing of defective vision, I knew of a First Reader in a branch Church of Christ, Scientist, who was healed of the need for eyeglasses during his term of Readership. When I learned of the healing I thought, "How wonderful!" Occasionally, after some prayerful study, I would remove my glasses to see if I could read without them, but the page was blurred. So I more or less accepted the inevitability of having always to wear glasses.

A number of months ago I decided to do some consecrated study in Christian Science of words having to do with seeing. I researched eyes, sight, vision, perception, light, and other terms. I looked up the dictionary meaning of each. Then I read how Mary Baker Eddy uses them in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and in her other published writings. A word I really loved was focus. One dictionary describes it as "a center of activity, attraction, attention."

Science and Health assures us (p. 504): "The rays of infinite Truth, when gathered into the focus of ideas, bring light instantaneously, whereas a thousand years of human doctrines, hypotheses, and vague conjectures emit no such effulgence." My study took on a new dimension as I gained more light—a better understanding of God as revealed in Christian Science.

Getting down to basics, the first chapter of Genesis emphasizes that God made man in His image (see Gen. 1:26). Because God is Spirit, Mind, as Christian Science reveals, man's being is not material but spiritual. True seeing, then, is included in one's innate spiritual selfhood. In reality we are not mortals dependent on material eyes for vision. The Glossary of Science and Health gives a definition of "eyes" (p. 586): "Spiritual discernment,— not material but mental.

"Jesus said, thinking of the outward vision, 'Having eyes, see ye not?' (Mark viii. 18.)"

Practically speaking, one cannot see unless there is light. And even when there is light, one's understanding has to translate what is seen. For example, astronomy explains that the earth rotates as it moves around the sun, whereas the sun seems to be a ball of fire moving across the sky each day and disappearing at sunset.

It has been said that to see well, you must see good. In working on the question of sight, I endeavored to see good everywhere. I also strove to eliminate from my thought criticism, gossip, and unnecessary reference to evil happenings—all of which tend to cloud our view of our fellow beings.

Laying aside the glasses seemed a natural thing to do. One day, while I was studying the words focus and light, I suddenly realized I could often go without using the glasses. For a brief period I kept a pair with my petit point just in case the light was not right. I also carried another pair in my purse to use in reading menus in darkened restaurants. But soon I found I didn't need the glasses at all. In fact, I could see better without them.

In The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany Mrs. Eddy states (p. 164), "What is gratitude but a powerful camera obscura, a thing focusing light where love, memory, and all within the human heart is present to manifest light." My gratitude to God is unbounded. And the blessings continue.

KATHRYN HELEN ANDERSON
Hollywood, California