The desire to heal others is instinctive, imbedded deep within every human being. The three healers who took part in this conversation have dedicated their lives to helping others through Christian prayer, and to teaching others how to heal spiritually. Tom Black is a member of The Christian Science Board of Directors and taught the Board of Education's most recent Normal class (training teachers of Christian Science). Tom is from Detroit and currently lives in Boston. Board of Education President Karl (Sandy) Sandberg practices and teaches healing in Norwell, Massachusetts. Olga Chaffee is also a Christian Science practitioner and teacher, and is the Board of Education's vice president. She lives in San Diego. They talked with Sentinel writer Warren Bolon, who opened the discussion by asking ...

Can anyone learn how to heal spiritually, through prayer?

Tom Black: Absolutely. Healing is not denomination-specific, or gender-specific, or age-specific. I remember when I was first in the practice, I was out of my home office one day, and in disobedience to a strict rule, one of our children answered my phone. She must have been four or five at the time. The woman who had called later told me that she had been desperately ill. My daughter told her that I was not at home, and then said, "But you know, God loves you, just the way you are, right now." That patient told me later that she was completely healed right at that moment. That's one answer to your question—healing is based on universal, scientific laws, which even a child can understand, and when understood, these spiritual truths result in healing. It's not a mystery. It's a divine Science.

Olga Chaffee: Healing is instinctive. As a mother, even before I knew anything about how to heal by applying the truths that we learn in Christian Science, that desire, the love, responds immediately to a child in need—you know, you want something quick, now! And you want to be able to do it yourself. You don't want to wait. It's just part of your being, your nature, to respond to a need for help.

Sandy Sandberg: Just thinking about that question—"Can anyone learn?"—I absolutely agree, anyone can learn. But the question before that question is "How much do you want to learn?" If there's a willingness, a desire, a compelling need to learn, anyone is going to learn. In Philippians, Paul writes, "For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure" (2:13). And with God lies the impelling power, causing us to want to learn how to help our fellow man, how to heal.

Tom: I think when most people think of science, they think of a textbook on physics or chemistry. And they think of mastering certain formulas, of having command of certain "scientific principles," by which they mean the so-called laws of matter. But I think of spiritual healing in terms of law, as something related to that concept of science but almost infinitely different. Related, in the sense that there are rules and laws, but they are the laws of God's love—of compassion, caring, tenderness, and patience. Even more than that, they are the laws of spiritual understanding. One reason I mention this is that we don't have to have a feeling that we need some great intellect in order to be healers. But it really is pretty important to have a pure heart.

Olga: And there's no formula, no "one size fits all" in healing through prayer, because this work has to do with love. Love is not something that you can plot on a graph, or measure in any way. If you're looking for things to do to be a healer, maybe it's in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt., chaps. 5–7). That's where you go—walking in the right direction toward it.

How did each of you get started in your healing practice?

Sandy: I simply had an honest desire to help people. I did that for a number of years in different ways. I was trained as a public school teacher, and that's a marvelous way to help people. Eventually I became a military chaplain, representing our Church as a Christian Scientist in the military, helping people that way. But from the bottom of my heart, this earnest desire to be able to heal, to be able to alleviate pain and suffering, discord and lack of every kind, was just so strong in my heart.

I cultivated that desire for several years, until finally I felt that I just couldn't contain it any longer, so I launched my public healing ministry and started praying for people on a regular basis. Of course, at the beginning, with no one knowing what I was doing, one might wonder, "How on earth did anyone find you?" I wasn't advertising anywhere. I think it was hearts being in tune with what God was causing and producing.

The first calls that came to me for help were from friends who knew nothing of my commitment to practice healing, but who had felt impelled because they had a problem they wanted to have prayer for, and simply felt impelled to call me. I felt if God wanted me to do this work, then God would provide the opportunity for the work to be done.

Olga: I grew up conscious of the work of practitioners. I had it in my head that that's what you did when you were, like, a grandmother—you know, old! That it was nothing that I needed to be worried about right now. If somebody asked me, "How did you get started?" Well, as far as I'm concerned, I didn't get started. I woke up, and it was happening. Suddenly your friends start calling, or somebody from your branch church calls for help, or a neighbor says, "Well, you're a Christian Scientist; so you pray, don't you?" They would tell me what was wrong with them, and I would pray. The next thing I knew, this was going on all day long. So I thought, "What am I waiting for? What am I fighting?" You just do it.

Tom: When I was a sophomore or junior in high school, I'd been praying one day about my own identity and had some insights about that question, and the thought occurred to me, "You know, some day I'd like to be a practitioner." I think God was talking to me even then about that desire. I had various jobs and activities, like Sandy, in the military and other places. But always I had thought that what I wanted to do was practice. We hear a lot these days about prenuptial agreements. My wife and I had a prenup—that as soon as practical, we would leave our jobs, and she would support us while I got started in the practice. So the time came when there was nothing else that I could think of on the face of the earth that I had any interest in doing except helping others. So we packed up and moved to another city. She taught school, and I practiced healing.

So is the common denominator giving your consent to what God is asking you to do?

Sandy: Yes, and whether we are moving toward the healing ministry of Christian Science, or are endeavoring in some other way to express God's goodness and love, every one of us is able to begin to look at whatever we're doing—whether we're a stay-at-home mom, an architect, a lawyer, or a truck driver—from the standpoint of practicing the Science of the Christ. We're all able to do this.

Sandy, the Bible verse you quoted earlier might help answer the question "What's the source of the instinct that makes us want to heal, to help others?"

Sandy: Yes, it's God working in us "to will and to do." The will of God is that element in us that causes us to want to be and do good. Every one of us has felt the desire to love, the desire to be or do good. To begin to recognize that that desire has been put there by God, and, in fact, is God manifesting Himself in us, in just the way we can understand Him, connects us inseparably with the source of infinite power, of infinite good, that heals every ill that we can think of.

So when we feel that urge to help others, we're actually sensing "God with us"?

Olga: That's right—Immanuel.

Tom: Most people think about kindness or compassion as something kind of nice—that if you do it, it's good; if you don't do it, it's not so good. But we're talking about something else, aren't we? We're talking about a quality of human goodness that is elevated to spiritual dimensions, so that it is a power, a presence, an active healing agent—the Christ, if you will. Right, Olga?

Olga: That's correct. When somebody approached Jesus saying, "Good Master ...," Jesus said, "Don't call me good. God is good." As you were bringing out, Tom, human goodness is effective, is truly good, and heals, if it's patterned after the divine—if it's divinity embracing the human situation. Otherwise, human goodness can come couched with fear and doubt, with a certain amount of limitation. But when goodness is based on the understanding of the Science that operates under divine Principle, or divine Love, then there are laws of healing that are not man-made laws. Healing is not something I make happen, but it just happens by virtue of what is ... it's the only thing that can happen, because that's God's law.

Sandy: We're touching on a crucial point about what Christian Science practice really is. It is not human do-goodism, that is, simply one human being doing something out of the desire to do something good for someone else ...

Tom: ... which is a fine motive.

Sandy: ... it is fine, but it's based on the belief that a person is the source of that good; that they can call into being this sense of love or compassion; that the human heart is where it starts. But the Science of Christianity has elevated love and compassion with the realization that they do not come from a human being. Rather, they come from and start with God, and therefore have all the power of God behind them to heal the ills of the world.

Olga: People ask me: "How does prayer work? What do you do?" It's not just praying to see if something is going to happen, if there's going to be a healing. Prayer, and the practice, work because you already know what the outcome is, the only outcome that can possibly be.

Tom: It's spiritual insight. Science and Health says, "The prayer that reforms the sinner and heals the sick is an absolute faith that all things are possible to God,—a spiritual understanding of Him, an unselfed love" (p. 1). And that kind of faith involves seeing something that is already present.

Olga: People who are just trying to figure out what Christian Science healing is about sometimes worry—"Can I still get healed if I don't understand it?"

Tom: A correlative question might be "Am I able to heal if I don't fully understand the Science?"

Sandy: That brings it back to your five-year-old daughter, Tom, who understood just enough to tell that dear woman on the phone, "God knows you. God loves you. He cares for you." Such a simple, pure thought, but with so much conviction and trust that that alone was sufficient to heal.

Tom: So, what is it that brings about this change through prayer, the spiritual awakening and also the physical change? One of the phenomenal discoveries that Mrs. Eddy made was the relationship—and it's commonly accepted today—between thought and the entire human experience. She realized that thought governs experience. And that as thought is changed, experience changes. ... When prayer changes thought at its very depths, then human experience changes, and sickness turns into health.

Most people who know anything about Christianity would associate healing with Christ Jesus. But Jesus is not here today. How does Christ heal today?

Sandy: We, along with all Christians, love this marvelous statement of John in his Gospel: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (3:16). God's Son, the Christ, certainly is the power, the activity, of God, coming to each of us in a way that we can understand, and be blessed by it today, and be healed. Jesus represented the Christ more than any other human being has, so he was given that title—Christ, the Messiah. Today it is this Christ, or activity of God, that comes to each of us to heal sickness, sin, any challenge that we could ever imagine. And Christian Science defines the Christ in this most wonderful, clear way—as the "divine manifestation of God, which comes to the flesh to destroy incarnate error" (Science and Health, p. 583).

Tom: It is a perfectly natural thing to entertain the Christ at the depths of our hearts so that we're able to heal. It's not something that's unnatural. It's as natural as water flowing downhill.

Olga: Well, in fact, when you stop and think, it would be unnatural not to feel it.

Tom: I think of the Christ as Truth, the very truth that God knows about each individual. So if I were to call you, Olga, and say, "Would you please pray for me?"—you would be thinking about what God is knowing about me, right?

Olga: Yes! I was just going to say, it's a discipline. When you first learn this method, it's ...

Tom: Counterintuitive to the world's way of thinking.

Olga: Well ... yes, it's learning to think from God, not about God. How does God see this situation? This individual? You don't start with the problem; you start with where and what God is, and go from there.

What are some of the challenges to launching a healing practice?

Tom: Well, on the face of it, it's money.

Sandy: It sure is.

Tom: How are you going to provide for your family? But eventually, each of us has to cross that barrier. The fact is, the same God who gives the desire to help and heal others also supplies the ideas, the inspiration, and they sustain and prosper the healer's practice. But I think that there is another element, a mental element, at work for those who want to enter into this sacred work, and that is what Mrs. Eddy identified as animal magnetism ... or the negative mental elements of the world that would impose themselves on our thought, and make us think we can't heal others, or we shouldn't do it, or we'll never make a success of it. And sometimes we think those are our own thoughts.

Olga: Oh, yeah ..., "You're going to starve. And you're going to put your family through all kinds of misery."

Or maybe that our own flaws are too great?

Sandy: That "I'm not good enough." Or, "I don't know enough." But to return to the money issue for a moment, spiritual qualities—the abilities and attributes that God gives each individual—are infinite. Your practice involves proving that fact daily.

Tom: When I first went into the practice, I took a legal-size sheet of paper and wrote down all the reasons I shouldn't go into the practice. Such things as "I could never talk with somebody about being healed if I had a cold myself." All kinds of reasons. But as I thought about this long list—and one of them was "I'm about as far from being ready to do this as Saul was after abusing the early Christians"—I thought, "Those are not my ideas. That's not my concept of me." It was that negative, mental suggestion trying to infuse itself into my consciousness and prevent from happening what God was naturally calling me to do. That was not the end of those suggestions, but it was a wonderful perspective to gain. If you're going to enter into this work, you've got to learn to nullify those kinds of suggestions.

Sandy: In a word, it's defeating fear—fear of not being able to succeed, of failure, of not being good enough, of lack of income. Fear based on the belief that there's something outside of God capable of holding us back.

Olga: And it's so important to heed what the Bible says, "Perfect love casteth out fear" (I John 4:18). That Principle—divine Love being the basis of all healing and the Principle of this Science—gives no opportunity for fear to creep in and to have a say in what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Tom: This Love might be thought of as God, or the "sustaining infinite." The very first line of Science and Health is, "To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings" (p. vii). We had three little babies right after I went into the practice, and it seemed to be daunting every once in a while. But as those anxieties were set aside with the kind of love you're describing, Olga, the love that comes with power and with clear-minded spiritual insight, my practice steadily grew.

Olga: Both of you, as husbands and fathers, felt responsible for a family. In my case, it was as wife and mother. How many times—you've got to get the dinner ready, you finally get it on the table, and the minute you start dishing it out, the phone rings. A patient is calling, and the family expects you to be there with them. Or you're putting a child to bed, and that child is just hanging on to you, and you are constantly feeling, "OK, what comes first?" One day it dawned on me that it's not a question of what comes first. It is Father-Mother God—neither is first or second. There's absolutely no conflict in God or in serving God. It took me a while to catch on to that. But when you finally catch on, you begin to see that your practice does not conflict with any need that you have to fulfill.

What is the Board of Education's role in forwarding the practice of Christian healing?

Sandy: The Board of Education was created by Mary Baker Eddy to provide the opportunity for individuals to learn how to teach Christian Science healing, to further the activity of healing throughout the world.

A Normal class for teachers—and normal is a term used for a school for training teachers—is held every three years. The Board of Education supports and nurtures each class, and those individuals who are engaged in teaching Christian Science healing to their pupils. In fact, any individual can apply to one of these teachers for Primary class instruction and learn how to help others by being a Christian healer.

Tom: You don't have to be a member of the Christian Science Church to have instruction in healing, but you do have to be committed to the ideas in Science and Health, and to the theology in the book. The teacher corps is almost 200 individuals around the world who are teaching Christian Science. The Board of Education is composed of just its three officers.

Olga: The most basic qualification for healing lies in answering the questions "Where's the heart?" "What are your motives?" It's of the heart, not of the head.

Tom: Jesus' disciples had a squabble once over "who shall be greatest?" That incident may point to the fact that the very foundations of spiritual healing are meekness and brotherly love. That is the substance of this work. The desire to be great, to be rich, to have a backyard swimming pool, those desires are not sufficient to make us successful in this work. Not that we can't have those things, because it's natural to be successful. But the desire for them is not what it's about.

Sandy: I realized some time ago that as comfortable as it might be for me to take the Bible and the Christian Science textbook, and go off to an island or a mountain somewhere in the wilderness, and work all these things out for myself—to be very happy and comfortable—that's not the message of Christianity. It's not the message of the Bible. That message is, that working out our relationship with God, discovering what that relationship is and what it means, includes the demand to work it out among your brothers and sisters in the world.

CSS

The Board of Education's page on The Mother Church's website (www.churchofchristscientist.org/primaryclass/) lists Christian Science teachers alphabetically and by location, and includes helpful information. The Christian Science Journal (available at any Christian Science Reading Room) also lists practitioners and teachers.