Search: healing

I was born in Italy and moved to Brazil with my family as a teenager. Ever since my childhood I had felt drawn to religion and spirituality even though my family was not very religious.  Brazil offered me the opportunity to pursue my spiritual search, and I was able to get better acquainted with the Bible, which I loved. Then in college I was introduced to Christian Science by the young man who later became my husband. I immediately felt it was the deep truth I was looking for.

In my twenties, religion seemed outdated, irrelevant, boring. It was the ‘60s – the era of recreational drugs, the war in Vietnam, and the ‘sexual revolution.’ After attending graduate school in New York, I pursued a career on Madison Avenue in advertising and marketing.

Christian Science came into my family when Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy healed two of my great grandmothers of incurable diseases. Faithful teachers in Sunday School taught me to love the Bible and to practice its teachings.

Occasional visits to a Christian Science Sunday school when I was a child had shown me the practicality of its teachings. Attending a Christian Science lecture was a turning point, and some of the ideas shared brought my first demonstration of healing during exams a month later.

Awful poverty in a polygamous family--these words describe well the condition in which I first became aware of my existence in the remote countryside of South-Eastern Togo, West Africa, where I was born. Traditional animism, worship of and belief in many spirits, nurtured my heathen early education.

My family was entering into the study of Christian Science during my infancy. My childhood was graced by love felt through my mother’s selflessness and trust in God. As my father grew into the practical understanding of Jesus’ teachings, he and I shared many searching metaphysical discussions. At college and graduate school I studied philosophy and then taught philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. However, this initial academic work, which I enjoyed and valued, deepened my underlying conviction that the goodness sought by the world and myself is most directly found through the study of Christian Science and its healing practice. On my return to the United States in 1971, I focused on preparation for becoming a practitioner. After entering the practice, I soon continued contact with academic communities as a Regional Representative to Christian Science organizations at universities. In the 1980’s, as a member of the Christian Science Board of Lectureship, I addressed audiences throughout the United States and in over 30 countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Recently, I completed 10 years of service as state Committee on Publication.

A friend invited me to a Christian Science testimony meeting. That started me on a spiritual journey that has taken me from merely believing in God to a growing understanding of God as Love itself, an all-powerful and ever-present Parent.

I live in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, with my wife. We have four children.

As a small girl I attended Christian Science Sunday School in Provo, Utah. I remember distinctly learning that God is Love, and accepting it as true.

Attending Christian Science Sunday School as a child, I loved what I learned there of God—He’s everywhere, always Love, and All. But going out into the “cold, cruel world,” I couldn’t reconcile what I was seeing with a God who is Love. Putting my Bible and Science and Health on the shelf, I forged ahead, just trying to live a moral, meaningful life. I married, had children, was happy, but missing was a depth to life.  Science and Health beckoned to me. Opening it, I saw my grandmother’s note inside: “Judith Ann—Read this.  You owe it to yourself.” I did, for the first time. When I came to “The calm, strong currents of true spirituality.