ONE OF THE FIELD REPORTS at this year's Annual Meeting of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, on June 7, was a video profile of Julia Wade, Church soloist. In that segment she explained that it's through song that she feels she best expresses herself—her sense of what God is, and how she feels about the world and everything around her.

Julia is truly much more of a musician than that segment revealed. She's been singing since she was three years old, when she climbed into the willow tree in the backyard of the family home and sang "not so quietly" about the sun and stars, and the birds and the flowers she saw around her.

Later, Julia played the flute in concerts and in the marching band at high school, and sang in the choir and in school musicals. It was about that time that she realized she had been singing through her flute for many years. It had been a perfect training. It helped her focus on purity of tone.

Julia went on to major in music, with an emphasis on vocal performance, at San José State University, and spent six years as a professional singer in the repertory company of Opera San José.

Next came a stint as an artist-in-residence with the Los Angeles Music Center, followed by a move to New York City, where she has lived and worked as a performer, recording artist, and church soloist for 15 years—the last five with The Mother Church in Boston. She describes herself as a "classical crossover singer," which explains how she has come to sing not only in several major opera houses on the European continent, but also for six years in her own one-woman cabaret show in New York City.

Julia insists that she would never have survived the demands of a career as a professional singer, which involved constant travel, without the support of her daily study of the Bible and Science and Health. "Often," she says, "I am refueled by simply praying with passages like this: 'Whatever inspires with wisdom, Truth, or Love—be it song, sermon, or Science—blesses the human family with crumbs of comfort from Christ's table, feeding the hungry and giving living waters to the thirsty' [Science and Health, p. 234]. I live by that quote. It never fails me."

This "tool of prayer," as Julia puts it, has helped her find the right teachers throughout her professional career. "It's made me aware of what they have to offer, and what I can give as an artist. It's an intensely close relationship," she says, "a working agreement between two people who respect each other.

"In contrast to learning a regular instrument," she adds, "with voice you're working with something deeply within you. Your whole body is your instrument, with emotional, spiritual, and mental components. Every teacher I've been with has had something important, specific, and different to teach me. And they've always given what I needed at that moment. I'll be forever grateful to every teacher I've ever had."

Voice lessons and the choice of solos apart, a key part of Julia's preparation for Sunday church services in Boston takes place on her weekly three-and-a-half-hour train journey from Penn Station, New York, to Back Bay Station, Boston. She is never without a bulging briefcase she calls her "gig bag," which holds an iPod, CD player, and a digital recorder. It also contains several weeks of Christian Science Bible Lessons marked up with "stickies," lyric sheets with rehearsal notes, and music manuscripts being considered for the future.

Julia spends about half the train journey studying that Sunday's solo, which she learns by heart, and which The Mother Church's organist, Bryan Ashley, records in advance for her to download to her iPod. "I've found that the ability to sing without the book calls for concentration and a deep sense of knowing," she observes. "I often pray, 'I am the knowing that God is knowing.' I pray that my singing will bring healing to all who hear it—including those listening on the Internet—and that I will successfully keep myself out of the way."

Julia and Bryan rehearse for two hours in the church on Saturday evenings, refining the solo for the next day, and working through solos already tentatively planned for the next two or three weeks. They are joined sometimes by music consultant Jeff Williams of nearby Berklee College of Music, who is especially helpful when the accompaniment will be on the digital piano.

Julia is on the platform in The Mother Church Extension by 7 a.m. on Sundays so that she can silently rehearse and pray before Bryan comes in for their run-through, individual warm-ups, and technical rehearsal. Her favorite prayer is a reassuring reminder from the book of Job, "He performeth the thing that is appointed for me: and many such things are with him" (23:14).

During her "sacred, sweet" time alone on Sunday mornings, Julia reminds herself that what lies ahead is a worship service, a healing service. Quietly, she asks: "Who am I in this moment? Who am I talking to? To God? To someone in need in the congregation? To a child—or an adult with the innocence of a child? Through this solo, am I prodding and saying, 'Wake up!'? Am I comforting? Coaxing? Inviting? Saying, 'If you'll just come over here... Listen to what we have!'"

The answers always lie in the Lesson-Sermon to be read later in the service, says Julia. And this approach is reflected in some of the concerts and workshops she gives to a variety of audiences, including informal gatherings of Christian Science branch church members. As Julia explained in the video at Annual Meeting, every church has an infinite array of resources that maybe they haven't fully utilized before. She feels that members can be alert for opportunities to revitalize the music in their churches so that it opens and expands thought, touching not only members but anyone who might come through their doors seeking healing.

"Though as a singer your primary relationship is with God," says Julia, "what you're feeling and hearing, what you're moved and led to do, it's important to have outside input, too." Julia explains that she has two trusted sets of ears in her life—her New York voice teacher, Bill Schumann, and her husband, Peter Link, whom she describes as a composer, music producer, her director, and her best friend. "Peter and I have chosen to work together," Julia emphasizes, even though he works daily with many others artists in his New York studio. "We share so many spiritual goals," she says, "including our commitment to Church, and to our steady growth as artists."

The Mother Church, in particular, welcomes fresh approaches to its music ministry, observes Julia. For example, for Mother's Day in May this year, Julia had chosen to sing a new song by English composer Andrew Brewis, using the words of Hymn No. 232 in the Christian Science Hymnal. She and Bryan had rehearsed conscientiously with keyboard accompaniment, but the arrangement wasn't quite working, though they knew it was the right message and melody.

Late on the Friday evening, as Julia ran through the solo with her husband in their New York apartment, she was so moved by the purity of the message that she paused and said, "Why don't I begin a cappella, and then have the organ come in very gently?"

After a pause, Peter looked up and said, "No, try singing it all a cappella."

"And at that moment everything fell into place!"

Julia called her colleagues in Boston immediately and found encouraging support. That Sunday morning, she recalls, there was nothing but gratitude for her rendering of those well-loved words:

On another occasion, while Julia was preparing to sing a new setting by Peter Link of Mary Baker Eddy's "Mother's Evening Prayer" (Hymn No. 207), she recalled the days when her mother would sit by her bed and sing this hymn to her as a little girl. To recapture some of that intimacy, Julia felt impelled to sit on a high stool that Sunday, suggesting the intimate mother-child relationship Mrs. Eddy appears to have felt toward the Church she founded, and a number of people told Julia they'd been deeply moved.

"These kinds of experiences at The Mother Church—the ministry of Christian Science through music—make me count my time here as one of the pinnacles in my life," says Julia. "As soloist, I continue to grow in developing and practicing spiritual goals in my music for healing and outreach. I'm excited to expand these goals even further as I move into new CD recordings and concert work, which includes a new form of Christian Science lecture—a 'leccert,' or musical lecture. And I'm just so grateful." CSS