Love — The natural Christian Science response in caring
An article was published in the Daily Pilot about a woman with an upbringing in a Christian Science family. The article attributed to Christian Science the father’s reaction to his wife’s death.
Response to death was atypical
Re: “Source of great county stories has one of her own,” (Feb. 4): Many people respond to the loss of loved ones by sealing off their memories, as Jill Lloyd’s father evidently did. I’d simply like to add this isn’t a Christian Scientist’s normal response to grief.
One’s first response, as a Christian Scientist once wrote, may be “to feel the very heavens should open and weep …” But that doesn’t close the story, as the article itself shows. God’s love and grace heal the heart in surprising ways. Those we’ve loved are cherished all the more for what they have given, not forgotten or their lives denied.
For Christian Scientists, the humanity expressed by Jesus is the model for living. Rather than glossing over death or the new life seen in his resurrection, it is the practical following of his teachings — loving others, humility, and gentleness opens the door for true healing here and now.
Anne Cooling
Christian Science Committee on Publication for Southern California
Aliso Viejo
1 COMMENT
An Excerpt from the Article:
“Lloyd was in kindergarten when her dad told her and her siblings one night that they would hence forth be a family of four. Mom’s not coming home. There would be no more discussion. Lloyd ran into her parents’ bedroom. Everything of her mother’s was gone. Her clothes. Gone. Her perfume bottles on the vanity. Gone. Even photos of her had vanished. “It was horrible,” she says. But every time she began to cry, her father ordered her to her room. Tom Lloyd was a World War II and Korean War Army veteran, a career officer who would one day reach the rank of colonel. He ran the house in military fashion…Her parents were devout Christian Scientists, a religion that eschews doctors, believing that prayer heals sickness and death is an illusion.”
A letter to the editor allotted us 150 words to respond. Prayer led us to use that space to specifically address two of the leading impositions. Given this article spoke to a person’s experience growing up, it was important to respond with compassion and with care not to devalue her experience, even while correcting the assumptions and mischaracterizations about the practice of Christian Science on the whole.