The Touch of Class April 15, 2013 Issue

Becoming a better healer

Glenn Felch

The “call” to take Christian Science Primary class instruction can reach one in the most unusual locations and unexpected ways.

I was serving in the United States Army as an artist during the Vietnam War, having been drafted out of graduate school. Along with four other artists, I was sent to Thailand to record the noncombat activities of the army in that country, such as building roads and transporting supplies. We were somewhere in the countryside, surrounded by a wide expanse of rice fields, when our lieutenant found me and delivered some mail—a letter from home. It ended with a simple postscript: “You might like to know that _____ will be teaching her first Primary class late this summer, when you will once again be a civilian.”

As I’ve thought about that message over the years, what is remarkable is not that it found me in a rice field in Southeast Asia, but that my first response to it was “Great, that’s for me!” Except for observing how much annual Christian Science association meetings meant to my mother and grandmother, I had never given any serious thought to class instruction. But throughout my military experience, I had placed such wholehearted reliance on God that it was completely natural for me to see this next step as a way of expressing gratitude for all the protection, friendship, spiritual growth, and service that had unfolded for me up to that point in the army. 