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Tired

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  1. des, I thought that, contrary to what you wrote: "But it is not God's dream, according to CS, it is a false belief. Now where exactly the false belief came from is another story, as that is never really explained[,]" the false belief comes from what Mrs. Eddy calls "the Adam dream," where Adam fell into a deep sleep, in Genesis, Chapter 2, you know? Where Eve is supposedly created from Adam's rib. Supposedly, according to Mrs. Eddy and CS, this dream is where mortal mind comes from. And if I am not mistaken, the Resurrection is the awakening from this Adam dream. Or, something surrounding the whole crusifixion is that awakening. Not sure exactly what, or, that is, I forget exactly what. It might be where the "veil in the [tent's holiest of holies/room] was rent in twain," when Jesus gave up the ghost. This means that man can communicate directly to God and with God, and does not need an intermediary such as a priest or other holy man. And, speaking of "man," one of my hugest complaints about the religion CS is that the Mother Church, and every Christian Scientist I have ever dared broach this subject to is adamantly opposed to modernizing the pronouns so they are non-sexist or gender inclusive. I get so darned sick of "man" this and "he/his" that. And in a religion where God is supposedly "our Father/Mother God." I'm about finished reading **God's Perfect Child,** now, and it points out that Mrs. Eddy did not elevate any women other than herself to any positions of authority within her church. Men were surrounding her constantly, and many women who were trying to make any headway would get into hostilities with her and fly the coop, so to speak, and they and Mrs. Eddy would become bitter enemies, and they'd start their own varying kinds of new-agey type churches. Except at those times, the term was not "new age." The men still hold most positions of authority in the branch churches I have been in -- that is, if there are 3 men out of 40 in the church, those 3 get the best elected positions, over and over. Even though we were instructed to carefully pray for the answer whom to vote for, and that it was not in any way a "popularity contest." I've seen a new male member of the church elected to First Reader, when women who've been loyal committee workers for many years, are passed over. That is, until all the men die off. At one point in **God's Perfect Child,** the author lists a bunch of other churches, including, by the way **A Course in Miracles,** which she traces back to major influence by Mrs. Eddy and/or her books or church.
  2. This is excellent news -- that the letter was written, that is. Not the long list of Earth's traumas and dangers, which never fail to bring me despair to the point of near collapse. For those who have not seen Bill Moyers' article on the 33 percent of the US Electorate who believe in what they call "end-times" and the false doctrine of Timothy LeHaye's best-selling (!!!) "Left Behind" series, here is Moyers' piece entitled, THERE IS NO TOMORROW. I do wish that the National Council of Churches would have been specific about including this doctrine in their condemnation. Some people are dulled out and need to have their nose rubbed in the truth of what they are doing. There Is No Tomorrow By Bill Moyers The Star Tribune Sunday 30 January 2005 One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts. Remember James Watt, President Ronald Reagan's first secretary of the interior? My favorite online environmental journal, the ever-engaging Grist, reminded us recently of how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ. In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." Beltway elites snickered. The press corps didn't know what he was talking about. But James Watt was serious. So were his compatriots out across the country. They are the people who believe the Bible is literally true - one-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup poll is accurate. In this past election several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in the rapture index. That's right - the rapture index. Google it and you will find that the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the "Left Behind" series written by the Christian fundamentalist and religious-right warrior Timothy LaHaye. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans. Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre (the British writer George Monbiot recently did a brilliant dissection of it and I am indebted to him for adding to my own understanding): Once Israel has occupied the rest of its "biblical lands," legions of the antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to Heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow. I'm not making this up. Like Monbiot, I've read the literature. I've reported on these people, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you they feel called to help bring the rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That's why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It's why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the Book of Revelations where four angels "which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released to slay the third part of man." A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed - an essential conflagration on the road to redemption. The last time I oogled it, the rapture index stood at 144 - just one point below the critical threshold when the whole thing will blow, the son of God will return, the righteous will enter Heaven and sinners will be condemned to eternal hellfire. So what does this mean for public policy and the environment? Go to Grist to read a remarkable work of reporting by the journalist Glenn Scherer - "The Road to Environmental Apocalypse." Read it and you will see how millions of Christian fundamentalists may believe that environmental destruction is not only to be disregarded but actually welcomed - even hastened - as a sign of the coming apocalypse. As Grist makes clear, we're not talking about a handful of fringe lawmakers who hold or are beholden to these beliefs. Nearly half the U.S. Congress before the recent election - 231 legislators in total and more since the election - are backed by the religious right. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups. They include Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, Assistant Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chair Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, Policy Chair Jon Kyl of Arizona, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority Whip Roy Blunt. The only Democrat to score 100 percent with the Christian coalition was Sen. Zell Miller of Georgia, who recently quoted from the biblical book of Amos on the Senate floor: "The days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land." He seemed to be relishing the thought. And why not? There's a constituency for it. A 2002 Time-CNN poll found that 59 percent of Americans believe that the prophecies found in the book of Revelations are going to come true. Nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the 9/11 attacks. Drive across the country with your radio tuned to the more than 1,600 Christian radio stations, or in the motel turn on some of the 250 Christian TV stations, and you can hear some of this end-time gospel. And you will come to understand why people under the spell of such potent prophecies cannot be expected, as Grist puts it, "to worry about the environment. Why care about the earth, when the droughts, floods, famine and pestilence brought by ecological collapse are signs of the apocalypse foretold in the Bible? Why care about global climate change when you and yours will be rescued in the rapture? And why care about converting from oil to solar when the same God who performed the miracle of the loaves and fishes can whip up a few billion barrels of light crude with a word?" Because these people believe that until Christ does return, the Lord will provide. One of their texts is a high school history book, "America's Providential History." You'll find there these words: "The secular or socialist has a limited-resource mentality and views the world as a pie ... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece." However, "[t]he Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's earth ... while many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people." No wonder Karl Rove goes around the White House whistling that militant hymn, "Onward Christian Soldiers." He turned out millions of the foot soldiers on Nov. 2, including many who have made the apocalypse a powerful driving force in modern American politics. It is hard for the journalist to report a story like this with any credibility. So let me put it on a personal level. I myself don't know how to be in this world without expecting a confident future and getting up every morning to do what I can to bring it about. So I have always been an optimist. Now, however, I think of my friend on Wall Street whom I onceasked: "What do you think of the market?"I'm optimistic," he answered. "Then why do you look so worried?" And he answered: "Because I am not sure my optimism is justified." I'm not, either. Once upon a time I agreed with Eric Chivian and the Center for Health and the Global Environment that people will protect the natural environment when they realize its importance to their health and to the health and lives of their children. Now I am not so sure. It's not that I don't want to believe that - it's just that I read the news and connect the dots. I read that the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has declared the election a mandate for President Bush on the environment. This for an administration: * That wants to rewrite the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act protecting rare plant and animal species and their habitats, as well as the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires the government to judge beforehand whether actions might damage natural resources. * That wants to relax pollution limits for ozone; eliminate vehicle tailpipe inspections, and ease pollution standards for cars, sport-utility vehicles and diesel-powered big trucks and heavy equipment. * That wants a new international audit law to allow corporations to keep certain information about nvironmental problems secret from the public. * That wants to drop all its new-source review suits against polluting, coal-fired power plants and weaken consent decrees reached earlier with coal companies. * That wants to open the Arctic [National] Wildlife Refuge to drilling and increase drilling in Padre Island National Seashore, the longest stretch of undeveloped barrier island in the world and the last great coastal wild land in America. I read the news just this week and learned how the Environmental Protection Agency had planned to spend $9 million - $2 million of it from the administration's friends at the American Chemistry Council - to pay poor families to continue to use pesticides in their homes. These pesticides have been linked to neurological damage in children, but instead of ordering an end to their use, the government and the industry were going to offer the families $970 each, as well as a camcorder and children's clothing, to serve as guinea pigs for the study. I read all this in the news. I read the news just last night and learned that the administration's friends at the International Policy Network, which is supported by Exxon Mobil and others of like mind, have issued a new report that climate change is "a myth, sea levels are not rising" [and] scientists who believe catastrophe is possible are "an embarrassment." I not only read the news but the fine print of the recent appropriations bill passed by Congress, with the obscure (and obscene) riders attached toit: a clause removing all endangered species protections from pesticides; language prohibiting judicial review for a forest in Oregon; a waiver of environmental review for grazing permits on public lands; a rider pressed by developers to weaken protection for crucial habitats in California. I read all this and look up at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer - pictures of my grandchildren. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, "Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do." And then I am stopped short by the thought: "That's not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world." And I ask myself: Why? Is it because we don't care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice? What has happened to our moral imagination? On the heath Lear asks Gloucester: "How do you see the world?" And Gloucester, who is blind, answers: "I see it feelingly.'" I see it feelingly. The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma - the science of the heart ... the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does. ------- Bill Moyers was host until recently of the weekly public affairs series "NOW with Bill Moyers" on PBS. This article is adapted from AlterNet, where it first appeared. The text is taken from Moyers' remarks upon receiving the Global Environmental Citizen Award from the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School.
  3. Lolly, You wrote: "What is likely to happen to a person who believes that 'bad' thoughts are dangerous or wrong is that they will learn quickly to repress all 'bad' thoughts the moment they arise. "Repression of thought is not honest, as it is a denial of reality-- that is, a refusal to allow for what actually comes to mind. Repression is dangerous in that it doesn't give one the opportunity to examine the so-called "bad" thoughts in order to see what sort of real power, if any, they actually have. I can easily see how a lifetime of such repression, coupled with guilt, could have a serious psychological impact on a person, especially if this repression began in early childhood." I think a BIG, BIG, BIG key is what you said, ""Repression of thought is not honest, as it is a denial of reality" My former husband, who I've already mentioned, who was raised in Science, was a good example of this, as was his mother. At least it seemed so to me. In some ways he was truly pathetic; but I felt he and other members of his family were also very dangerous. His sister was a con artist -- took people for tens of thousands of dollars. I think my ex- may have been a sociopath, perhaps even a psychopath. He could be extremely frightening -- almost killed me through carelessness (really?) more than three times, and made innuendos to encourage me to kill myself -- and allow him to help -- when I was extremely depressed. I think he wanted my money, which was a lot more than he had, but not really all that much. He almost pushed me into the frozen waters of a bay when it was nearly zero degrees fahrenheit, almost pushed me over a waterfall another time. He would lose touch with physical reality at times and be sort of unaware that there was a physical realm -- which was COMPLETELY UNDERSTANDABLE if you knew his mother! Imagine being taught, from the day you were born, that the entire world is "an idea" and that nothing you see, hear, feel, smell, touch, or taste is real! And have this drummed into you every minute of every day. If the young child were to delight himself in, say, the smell of a flower, or some food cooking, before she'd serve it, she'd be likely to remind him that the food was not really REAL -- it was just an idea of the human [mortal] mind. I loved my husband very much, but at times I think I loved a person who was just an idea -- a person of my OWN imagination, as he probably did me -- a person of his imagination. As if there were no reality in our lives at all. But we really did have some marvelous times together, hiking in the wilderness, bicycling, working in our beautiful large yard -- almost an acreage, fixing up our fixer-uppers. Still, there were major problems, because we could not make anything "stick" due to this unreality. This is as difficult to explain as it is difficult for me to understand, even now many years later, over 10 years since our divorce, nearly 25 years since we first met.
  4. des, you wrote, "..The other thing is that CS tends to be a upper middle income religion with little attraction to the poor. " There is a term for this sort of thinking, but I can never remember what it is. Do you happen to know the term -- let me explain. Basically, "If I do what God want's I will be well off. If I don't do what God wants, I will be poor." This is deeply embedded in the beliefs of just every CStist I've met. It's also embedded in just about every New Thought type church or person I've met. It also has to do with sickness: "Uh oh! What have you done to deserve this [sickness]? I know it must have been something morally wrong I did. And if I am morally better, I will get well again." A really great attitude [sarcasm here, by me] for any church to have, since any disabled person must therefore be a terrible sinner, right? Notice that Hellen Keller was not a CS; she was a Swedenborgian Christian. Now, there's another whole discussion. So was Johnny Appleseed. I will get the two books you mentioned right away, des. Naturally, anything that mentions anything but glowing reports about the church or MBE would be frowned upon by "the church." I agree with your dad, that the church left him, not the other way around. That's how I feel, too. And why I don't go anymore. And not just b/c of the Bliss Knapp book...because of so many of the things I have mentioned above. Well, time to go to the printer and get my first samples made!! I am so excited! My sweetie pie and I are going to visit Mother today, too. So I better hurry! It's 7:00 and we leave to see her at 10:30. I am taking her a sweet little nosegay type plant (asters?) in a beautiful white ceramic pot with red hearts painted all over it. Mother is 89 and is losing her extremely sharp thinking skills rapidly, but she has two new cats, and loves them. We can't wait to see her cats. We are going to order pizza for her (us) and play Yahtzee.
  5. Thank you, Aletheia, for the welcome. I feel welcome by all, even though the "word" "Welcome" was not spoken/written. It feels like a welcoming group. As for the double post, I don't know how that happened! Sorry. It was the second one I meant to post. I tried to zap the first one, then post the edited one, but obviously that did not work! The reason I didn't say a lot of negative stuff at first about CS is that for me, at least, the subject of CS is so enormous, and enormously complex, in many ways -- politically, from the adult or child point of view (as des truly points out!), spiritually, practically, and many other ways -- that it is just impossible to really write all about it that I feel or know or surmise. Here's another one: I have suspected, or did suspect for years, anyway, that the Christian Science Church could well have been "duped" or used by the military for clandestine and monetary purposes. Cases in point: Several people in the Watergate affair were Christian Scientists. Doubtless des knows who they were -- I do not. More recently I have observed a number of things, but this is still not very recent. It was in the 1980s and I don't know what's going on about this, now. In the 1980s, the Monitor Magazine (was that it's name?) ran full page ads for the defense industry, showing things like military attack planes and helicopters. Hardly the sort of things one would tend to expect from a Christian Publication, it seemed to me. At the branch church I went to, and another small "society" nearby (so-called b/c it did not have a practitioner among its members, I think), there were people who had mysterious sources of income, and travelled to odd places in the world, with irregularity, and frequency. Places like Iran, and countries in other parts of Africa. A man in our church, who worked for the County, whose wife was a CS Practioner, had the most amazing "spread." It was at least 5 acres, in a ritzy part of the County outside of town. It had a 4000-5000 ranch-style house, with a triple garage; a lawn that sloped down like something you'd see in a movie; a wrought iron gate maybe 12 feet high to protect the property,with a long, winding driveway. There was a trout pond in front, as well as a creek; and in back, a forest and horse field with two horses. The man was in and Army Reserves, and took trips, too. The wife said, "The Military has been SO good to us!" When pressed about what he did, she'd say, "Oh, something about helping small countries set up democratic governments...." Another man, who said he was retired from the Air Force, showed up in our congregation one day. He was soon elected to First Reader. That was after he took a 5 month trip around the country. He said it was to "get his head together," since he was recently widowed. These things were taking place during the time when the Monitor Magazine was going out of business for overspending; and when the Mother Church had spent so much money on the Monitor Magazine, and upon several enormously powerful short wave transmitters in at least three countries in the world, and also a TV station. The Mother Church was on the brink of bankruptcy, and the church was split. Many of the staunchest and most loyal members of the Christian Science Publishing Society had resigned, and were resigning, at this time. The wife of one of them told me that the situation was very very secretive and so bad it was impossible to imagine. She said it was frightening. Given these scenarios, would it not be a short hop for the US Military to take over these transmitters, to give the Mother Church a lot of money to get it back on its feet? Where did the money come from, to make the church rich again? People like the men I mentioned in the branch church would be hidden carefully away, loved dearly by the ignorant old ladies in these little churches in small towns. And oh, remember that even though the literature addresses both male and female religiously, in practice in many of the branch churches, it's the FEW men there who are elected to the major offices. And also, friends: please remember: I am talking now only of the politics of the church and churches: not about the Christian Science religion. There are those who practice the religion, who are outside the church. And those who practice it who are inside the church. Those that do not know a thing about it who are also inside the church. I think there are a lot of very lazy people in the Christian Science Church. It is for these reasons I got out of the church. But I still take what I like and leave the rest. I love the positive aspects of Christian Science. I have a lot of trouble with interpretations of the Bible which focus mainly on the negative: "Don't to this," and "sin" and "Satan." Better to look at what to DO, and what WORKS, and Love. After all, God is Love, and Love is God.
  6. des, I am very glad to meet you. I am glad to meet someone who was raised in CS, because I have heard "your" story many times. I have seen it in action, too. I have also been told by a CS practitioner that "mental illness is very common in people who were raised in CS." She was not raised in CS, but her husband was. My ex- husband was raised in CS. Not only was he hospitalized for mental illness, but he was, I believe, some sort of pathological liar and maybe sociopathic. It would make sense in a way, since his mother was self-blinding to reality. He used to ask me if I thought she had mental illness. I didn't know much about mental illness at the time, and I didn't know....but she used to call her thinking, "fancy mental footwork." There are parents who will "spank" their children, then say "there is no pain." This man's mother almost let her two teenage children die when they needed surgery for an inherited disorder that everyone knew about -- except the kids. The father was on a business trip, and when he came home, the two teens were lying on the couches severly ill -- he was not CS, and rushed them to the hospital. They had the defective organ removed, and they are now fine. The recovered almost instantly. This woman would ridicule a child for showing any creativity. She was so subtle it was frightening. After I got to know here, and realized her sweetness was fake, I used to call her the "marshmallow-coated razor blade." Now, as for my own situation, which in a way is similar to yours. Forgive me for not doing this cool box-quote -- I don't know how to do that. des, you wrote: "CS never did help me, but denied my disability (Aspergers-- a form of high functioning autism). Of course, nobody back then knew anythign about it, but the thing is they denied the idea that I had it. I didn't relate to other people, no I was just bright/gifted." I had almost the identical problem -- so it's not confined to CS parents! My parents were also dysfunctional, and were as pro-modern-medicine as anyone could possibly be. May I requote you somewhat and make it MY statement: "My parents never did help me, but denied my disability (bipolar disorder). Of course, nobody back then knew anything about it, but the thing is they denied the idea that I had it. I didn't relate to other people, no I was just bright/gifted. The did send me to a psychologist when I was eleven, but I hated her, and somehow she managed to change me from a lively, open child into a hidden, frightened, silent one. To this day, my mother will not tell me the reason I was sent to the Psycholgist. The reason I got at the time was for 'vocational counselling.' That made no sense to me at the age of eleven, and it does not, now." des, you wrote: "IF you aren't healed then there is something wrong with you in the most classic example fo blaming the victim..." Right, that's part of the way CS is practiced by the members. Personally, this is one of the reasons I dropped out. There are mixed ways to read Mary Baker Eddy's writings on this. In at least one place, she demands that her religion NOT be used this way. But her overall rigidity, I suppose, could easily lead to this, as it most certainly has. I know other families who have experienced much the same sorts of things you did, and my ex- did. des, thank you for these statistics. I was not aware of them. And th anks for the reference. It is surprisingly difficult to find reliable information on CS. And for those of you who don't know this, there is the "Committee on Publication," which works round the clock nationally and locally, to "correct" misinformation about CS. That is, anything that critical, whether it's true or not. "The implication is that CS is a better, safer way of treating people than medicine. Facts tell a different story-- the death rates of CS compared to regular populations, Seventh Day Adventists, etc. are MUCH higher. (All research recorded in God's Perfect Child living and Dying in the CS church by Carol Fraser.) No studies have ever been done or even allowed by the CS church. The deaths that have been recorded were preventable and curable disorders like bowel obstruction. Testimonies printed do not have scientific validation that is required for real "science". The two people are known to the person, etc. Statements about diagnoses and so on aren't confirmed by medical authorities, and unlike real science no negative efforts are recorded (in early times in the CS church they were). Also there is no attempt for 2nd party colloration, another opinion (perhaps it's a virus and not MS for instance). " "Most CS are very unaware of the body." That's part of the practice of CS. The less you know about the body and disease, the easier it is to deny reality of pain, disease, etc etc. Strange, since Mary Baker Eddy does also write that it is fine to consult a doctor to find out the nature of the disease, in order to pray about it and deny its reality. Now that I have agreed with so much that you have said, des, I will say this: I believe that almost anyone who is raised in CS, esp. the way you were and SO MANY ARE, would hate or dislike it as much as you do. It only makes sense. However, for me, who was raised in a dysfunctional, negative environment (home, school,and the Presbyterian Church which was not so much negative as it was hypocritical and just plain silly, in my humble child's opinion at the time), the positive way of looking at the world in CS has been a tremendous blessing for me. So, it's like the Twelve Steps of AA (and other Twelve STeps groups say): "Take what you like, and leave the rest." Of course, this is NOT something CS allows -- take it ALL, or as MBE says, quoting Jesus at the Last Supper, "Drink ye all of it." The reason I am calling myself "Tired," is that I am tired of fighting the same battles, politically. I am 62, almost 63. I have worked politically most of my life(first letter to the editor published at age 8), and I see that things are worse now, not better. I just wonder what to do. I feel real hopeless thinking about 33% of the Electorate being bornagains, and deliberately trying to destroy the earth and its peoples. I also get tired a lot due to my disablity. But I work all the time -- I started a new small business, which is very exciting to me; I'm the founder and co-coordinator for the residents' council in my large apartment complex; I'm an artist in every way possible that I can do w/o wearing myself out: musician, singer, photographer, I draw and paint, dance....go to the theatre often with my significant other, who is a senior actor, a professional in film and stage. So in a lot of ways I am not tired. Probably if I get to a church, I won't be tired. THe problem there is, I sleep and rest on Saturdays and Sundays. I sure would like a church that meets on Friday nights. I did find one church in my area, though, and maybe they have weekday services sometimes.
  7. des, I am very glad to meet you. I am glad to meet someone who was raised in CS, because I have heard "your" story many times. I have seen it in action, too. I have also been told by a CS practitioner that "mental illness is very common in people who were raised in CS." She was not raised in CS, but her husband was. My ex- husband was raised in CS. Not only was he hospitalized for mental illness, but he was, I believe, some sort of pathological liar and maybe sociopathic. It would make sense in a way, since his mother was self-blinding to reality. He used to ask me if I thought she had mental illness. I didn't know much about mental illness at the time, and I didn't know....but she used to call her thinking, "fancy mental footwork." There are parents who will "spank" their children, then say "there is no pain." This man's mother almost let her two teenage children die when they needed surgery for an inherited disorder that everyone knew about -- except the kids. The father was on a business trip, and when he came home, the two teens were lying on the couches severly ill -- he was not CS, and rushed them to the hospital. They had the defective organ removed, and they are now fine. The recovered almost instantly. This woman would ridicule a child for showing any creativity. She was so subtle it was frightening. After I got to know here, and realized her sweetness was fake, I used to call her the "marshmallow-coated razor blade." Now, as for my own situation, which in a way is similar to yours. Forgive me for not doing this cool box-quote -- I don't know how to do that. des, you wrote: "CS never did help me, but denied my disability (Aspergers-- a form of high functioning autism). Of course, nobody back then knew anythign about it, but the thing is they denied the idea that I had it. I didn't relate to other people, no I was just bright/gifted." I had almost the identical problem -- so it's not confined to CS parents! My parents were also dysfunctional, and were as pro-modern-medicine as anyone could possibly be. May I requote you somewhat and make it MY statement: "My parents never did help me, but denied my disability (bipolar disorder). Of course, nobody back then knew anything about it, but the thing is they denied the idea that I had it. I didn't relate to other people, no I was just bright/gifted. The did send me to a psychologist when I was eleven, but I hated her, and somehow she managed to change me from a lively, open child into a hidden, frightened, silent one. To this day, my mother will not tell me the reason I was sent to the Psycholgist. The reason I got at the time was for 'vocational counselling.' That made no sense to me at the age of eleven, and it does not, now." des, you wrote: "IF you aren't healed then there is something wrong with you in the most classic example fo blaming the victim..." Right, that's part of the way CS is practiced by the members. Personally, this is one of the reasons I dropped out. There are mixed ways to read Mary Baker Eddy's writings on this. In at least one place, she demands that her religion NOT be used this way. But her overall rigidity, I suppose, could easily lead to this, as it most certainly has. I know other families who have experienced much the same sorts of things you did, and my ex- did. des, thank you for these statistics. I was not aware of them. And th anks for the reference. It is surprisingly difficult to find reliable information on CS. And for those of you who don't know this, there is the "Committee on Publication," which works round the clock nationally and locally, to "correct" misinformation about CS. That is, anything that critical, whether it's true or not. "The implication is that CS is a better, safer way of treating people than medicine. Facts tell a different story-- the death rates of CS compared to regular populations, Seventh Day Adventists, etc. are MUCH higher. (All research recorded in God's Perfect Child living and Dying in the CS church by Carol Fraser.) No studies have ever been done or even allowed by the CS church. The deaths that have been recorded were preventable and curable disorders like bowel obstruction. Testimonies printed do not have scientific validation that is required for real "science". The two people are known to the person, etc. Statements about diagnoses and so on aren't confirmed by medical authorities, and unlike real science no negative efforts are recorded (in early times in the CS church they were). Also there is no attempt for 2nd party colloration, another opinion (perhaps it's a virus and not MS for instance). " "Most CS are very unaware of the body." The reason I am calling myself "Tired," is that I am tired of fighting the same battles, politically. I am 62, almost 63. I have worked politically most of my life(first letter to the editor published at age 8), and I see that things are worse now, not better. I just wonder what to do. I feel real hopeless thinking about 33% of the Electorate being bornagains, and deliberately trying to destroy the earth and its peoples. I also get tired a lot due to my disablity. But I work all the time -- I started a new small business, which is very exciting to me; I'm the founder and co-coordinator for the residents' council in my large apartment complex; I'm an artist in every way possible that I can do w/o wearing myself out: musician, singer, photographer, I draw and paint, dance....go to the theatre often with my significant other, who is a senior actor, a professional in film and stage. So in a lot of ways I am not tired.
  8. Hello, Everyone!! This is my very first post here at the Progressive Christian site. I found the site when I was looking for answers regarding what I consider the threat that 33% of the US Electorate believes in "The Rapture," and are working diligently and aggressively to make war, kill Jews, Arabs, other people who do not agree with their own views, and destroy the environment. I found this out the other day by reading a recent article on AlterNet, by Bill Moyers. That's only by way of introduction, though, and has nothing to do with this thread. I'm really glad to find this thread. There has been nothing like at all on the web that I've been able to find -- and I have been looking for several years! Regarding Christian Science, des wrote without condemnation, only curiosity: "The scary implication is this, imo. If you can control 'good' thoughts to make 'good' thoughts, can't you use bad thoughts to make bad things happen? If you can think yourself well, you could therefore think yourself sick. If you can think good happening in the world, can't you think bad coming into the world." Cynthia wrote that it makes her nervous to think of controlling her world with her thoughts. I was active in the Christian Science Church for 10 years, as an adult. Very active and very fervent in my practice. Also, I have training to be a Christian Science Practitioner, which is a healer. I guess I would say I know a lot about not only the practice of Christian Science, but also I've studied the times of Mary Baker Eddy and have drawn my own conclusions about what caused this religion to essentially explode in size, during the historic period it did. There are so many things I love about the practice of CS, but much of the questions and concerns each of the writers above has raised is equally valid, IMHO. Maybe I can answer des' and Cynthia's questions, because I think those are two very fundamental ones. But there is another one -- the major purpose that Christian Science has. Yes, Mary Baker Eddy does say that a major point of Christian Science practice is the healing of the sick. And "controlling one's world" through one's thoughts is really quite a simple and practical matter, from one standpoint, but from another it is also spiritual. I have always wondered why it is, that, while the Bible is filled with examples of Jesus' healing of the sick -- SPECIFIC stories -- most churches completely ignore these passages, and focus on sin, the devil, etc. The mainstream churches also focus on Jesus' birth, and death, and resurection, but ignore his ascension. Christian Science points out that there are healings, raising from the dead, and ascentions in the Old Testament, too. I'm getting off my track, here, though. When I came into Christian Science, I was a very depressed and unhappy person. I had been raised in an argumentative home, trained to find fault with just about everything and everybody. Look for the bad; look for the "fly in the ointment," as we said in those days. Look for the "monkey wrench in the machinery." Christian Science taught me to look for the good. Look for beauty. As the Bible says, "Seek ye the Lord, where he may be found." Gradually, I learned to h ave gratitude for the beauty in life. I would push away thoughts of hostility, hatred, disappointment, disgust, impatience, and anything that would tend to make me mentally OR PHYSICALLY uncomfortable. I began to have more friends, to become a more effective community leader. I stopped making enemies when I would do progressive outreach and do environmental and social lobbying. Instead of solitary, loud argument before councils and boards, I would be able to encourage, motivate, and attract other people to come with me, to work alongside me, and to do research or whatever needed to be done. Most of the time, too, instead of making enemies of the opposition, we would be able to come together in "synergy," and come up with practical solutions where all were blessed. Mrs. Eddy wrote, "what blesses one, blesses all." There were no losers. I learned to see where the winners were, where, and in what manner, people won. Sometimes I might think I had lost a battle, but through Bible reading and prayer, I could see that, in fact, I had not lost; that the other party had not lost either. On one occasion, for instance, a neighbor won a lawsuit against me, and gloated in the newspaper. It was about her barking dog. I was initially very upset, but as I read the Bible in the way Mrs. Eddy did, I found passages that made me realize that since I never acted hostile toward her, for 3 years, and that I had only asked her to keep her dog quiet -- that even though she gloated and laughed at me, and taunted me saying "So much for your 'win win' ideas!'" I HAD won, because (1) she was happy; (2) I was happy because the dog stopped barking! So, controlling my world through my thoughts is something like this. As for thinking bad thoughts about people and bringing bad things to them, des, here is my thinking about that. And what I know about the historicity of this "false belief." Historically, in 1866 when Mrs. Eddy wrote **Science and Health, with Key to the Scriptures,** and some years prior, the great entertainment in the US was stage hypnotism. Stage hypnotists were all over, and very popular. They'd come to town, raise a large tent, and entertain. Mrs. Eddy realized that hypnotism could cause pain to disappear. She came up with the "theory," if you will, or what she felt was a divine revelation, that God did not create pain, that pain is a figment of the human imagination ("mortal mind"). So that pain does not exist. She DOES STRESS, however, that the suggestion of pain, the hypnotic suggestion of pain, is enormously strong. Some types of pain or disease are stronger for some people than others, and "We cannot heal what we do not understand." Unlike what many members of the Christian Science Church would have us believe, Mary Baker Eddy did not prohibit going to doctors! She did strongly encourage people to heal themselves and their children through prayer. (More about the children issue in a minute.) But at no time did she say this should mean endangering the life of a child; nor did she prohibit going to doctors nor taking medication if a person could not break through the hypnotism. I find this extremely interesting and convincing. For many reasons, some of which I will list here, as the results of my research. - I saw a stage hypnotist -- live. Not on TV. It was really amazing what he could suggest that people do, and they would do it. He suggested they were cold, and they would shiver. He suggested that the people in the audience were naked, and the stage subjects (who were high schoolers) were horrified. Then, he suggested that the subjects themselves were in their underwear, and they started wrapping themselves in the stage curtains in terror. - Did you know that, in cases of multiple personality disorder, one personality can have a disease like diabetes, where another personality does not have this problem? I want to find out more about this, and unfortunately can site no source for this info -- can anyone? I would like to have it. - I have had many physical healings myself, through Christian Scientific prayer. - I healed my cat of distemper, through prayer. No question about it. - I recovered lost items many times, including lost keys for a friend, through prayer. There is so much more. An interesting book is **Spiritual Healing in a Scientic Age.** published by the UC Berkely Press. The Christian Science Publishing Company puts out a monthly and a weekly magazine, where people report on their healings, all of which are verified by 3 people. As for healing children: First of all, children in Christian Science homes tend to be very healthy, physically. However, I don't like the way many of them are raised, emotionally. I agree that many Christian Scientists are extremely rigid. They do not believe in marital or psycho therapy, either, and in cases where this would be called for, families are living in 19th century dysfunction. As for the notorious cases where children have died because of use of prayer alone, my argument is -- how many thousands, if not millions of children die or are maimed for life because of mainstream medical treatment alone? Boggles the mind. I personally was treated terribly -- horribly -- by doctors and nuses, as a small child. So much good comes from the teachings and true practice of Christian Science. And there is so much misunderstanding of it - not only from people outside the church,but unfortunately, from people inside it, and the corruption that takes place there, too. Tired
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