 Thank you very much. I'm very happy to be here today, and I thank all of you for coming. I know that all of us have been praying and thinking very deeply about the current health crisis with the pandemic of the coronavirus, and I know we're all thinking about what we can do, including how we're putting it to practice today, the guidelines from the government of California for public gatherings. So thank you for complying with that. I'm hoping that this lecture today will help all of you understand why I think that prayer is a practical and viable tool in helping us pray for the world. I thought that I would begin by telling you how I like to introduce myself to people. I like to say that I am an earth scientist because of my background in meteorology. I'm a computer scientist because, as you heard, I also have a degree in computer science, and I'm a Christian scientist. I am a lifelong student of the science of Christianity. So as you can tell, I love science. What I love about science is how it asks us to look beyond what we can see. It seeks order from seeming chaos. It pushes the limits of what's possible and emphasizes what we can do instead of what we cannot do. I really did love my career in the earth sciences, but long before I was a meteorologist, a manager, an engineer, software developer, I was an 11-year-old girl who was scared of thunderstorms. I'd like to share with you today how I rose above that fear. I'd like to share this story with people because I think that all of us have, at one time or another, felt afraid about something that seemed so much bigger than us. I think that's how a lot of people have been feeling recently, and I think that you'll find that some of the ideas that helped me rise above the fear of severe weather can help all of us today in praying for the world about the fear of contagion. So when I was 11 years old, my family lived in Kentucky. We were just getting ready to move to the state of Oklahoma. About two weeks before we moved, I saw us sitting on a table in our living room in a magazine with a picture of a tornado on the cover and across the top, a single word headline, Oklahoma. This caught my attention. I picked up the magazine. I read the article and it said among other things that Oklahoma is in the heart of what's known as Tornado Alley, a region of the central plains of the United States that has the highest frequency of tornadoes. This made me more than a little apprehensive. I didn't realize at the time, but two weeks later when we moved, it was right at the height of tornado season in early June. For the first two or three weeks we lived there, we had severe weather of one kind or another almost every night. I was terrified. I literally thought that we had moved to the most dangerous place on earth. Over the coming years, I spent many hours hiding in my closet with my dog under one arm, I had my radio under the other, and I was just cowering in fear waiting for the storms to be over. But as scary as I was, I could see that my parents were completely unafraid, and I knew their fearlessness came from their trust in God. I wanted more than anything to feel that freedom from fear that they felt. They talked to me about how they prayed about things. For example, we talked about stories in the Bible, like the story of Elijah, when God tells him to go stand on the mount before the Lord. And the Bible says that a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broken pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake, and after the earthquake, a fire. But the Lord was not in the fire, and after the fire, a still small voice. Bible commentaries I've read agree that in this experience, Elijah was learning about the nature of God as not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in the still small voice. I was also familiar with passages from the book of Psalms, like this one. The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters than the mighty waves of the sea. And this one, God is our refuge and strength, a very present health in trouble. I was also familiar with stories in the New Testament about Jesus stilling the storm, about Paul and all his shipmates being saved from the shipwreck at sea in the violent storm, all because of their trust in God. I knew I couldn't just will myself not to be afraid. I mean, let's face it, I was trying that and it wasn't working. I knew this had to be a spiritual victory. So I began a spiritual journey that lasted many years, and there were important milestones along the way. Little by little, I was coming to understand more about God as love, not just that God is loving, which is true, but that God is love itself. As the Bible says in the book of 1 John, God is love. And I was coming to trust more and more in the ever presence and the omnipotence of this God that is love. Let me just share with you one of those milestone experiences I had. I was in high school at the time, and we were in one of those overflow classrooms in Spanish class. And, you know, this is one of those buildings that had the metal walls, the metal roof, freestanding prefabricated buildings. And while we were in class that particular day, a severe thunderstorm came roaring through town, and large hail began to fall. Now, you can imagine how loud that was on that metal roof. It was so loud, in fact, that we had to suspend class. I lived in Oklahoma for a few years by this time, and I thought a lot about how to pray in the face of severe weather. But I was still very much afraid. There were a lot of concerned looks going back and forth among everyone in the classroom that day. Right at the height of the storm, with that pounding hail and the howling wind, I just decided that I wasn't going to be a victim of violence anymore. That's exactly how it came to my thought. I am not going to be a victim of violence anymore. And I stood up in that classroom and I shouted at the top of my voice, God is love! I didn't care what anybody thought, and they couldn't hear me anyway over the hail. What I was doing in that moment was I was declaring the allness and the oneliness of God good, and the powerlessness, and the nothingness of evil. And the most amazing thing happened. I felt such calm. Now, I can't say that every last vestige of fear left me, but there was a marked difference, and almost immediately the hail stopped and the storm quieted. This made quite an impression on me that stating a simple biblical truth like that, God is love, could have such an effect, not only in the atmosphere of my thought, but in the atmosphere of the whole community, literally and figuratively. And I didn't think of this as a coincidence. Rather, I saw it as divinity, or the divine, or God embracing humanity. An important lesson on my spiritual journey. Now somewhere along the way, once I got into college, I decided to major in meteorology. Some people might call that ironic. Some people might say that I was just trying to understand my nemesis because I was still having to pray about fear. I can honestly say that it was not my motive just to understand my nemesis, but even if it had been without my realizing it, I can also honestly say that it wouldn't have worked. Because the more I found out through my study of meteorology, the more I realized how much we still don't know about the formation of storms, about the life cycle of the path. If anything, my study of meteorology was making me more apprehensive, not less. But I was continuing to gain in my study of Christian science. My spiritual journey culminated in a broadcast I made at the National Weather Service forecast office in Oklahoma City. I was working there as a NOAA weather radio announcer. We were having a lot of severe weather across the state on this particular day, and as is typical in a situation like that, I was doing a lot of live broadcasting. So at one point I went over to the printer and I ripped the copy off and I took it over to the microphone and I started reading on the air cold. And this is what I read. A tornado has been spotted two miles southwest of the Oklahoma City Airport, moving to the northeast at 25 miles per hour. I was at the airport. I realized while I was reading this copy from the public that I was reading a tornado warning for my exact location. And I wasn't in a storm cellar or a bunker. I was at a little building just exposed out in the middle of the airport grounds with no basement, but I also realized something wonderful. I was completely unafraid. For the first time since I was 11 years old in the face of severe weather, I was completely unafraid. I knew I was where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing, and God blessed that right activity. God blesses all right activity. And I knew, I just knew that nothing could keep me from it. Not even a tornado. The tornado dissipated and the storm passed. And I realized something else wonderful. I knew right then I would never have to be afraid of the weather again. And I haven't been. I've been in situations just that serious, but I finally learned that God is not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire or the epidemic, but in the still small voice of love. And in the still small voice of love is where true power really lies. Over the years, I've pondered the fact that my study of physical science didn't help me rise above this fear, whereas my study of Christian science did. And it's caused me to think more deeply about this science of Christianity. So I'd like to share with you today some things that have occurred to me over the years about this science. First of all, I hope that nobody here is confusing Christian science with Scientology. That's a common misconception, but in fact the two are very different. They sound kind of alike because of the word science, but unlike Scientology, Christian science is based entirely on the Bible, on both the Hebrew scriptures as well as the New Testament. This is the King James version that I have here. Science is the study of something. Christian science is the study of the Christ, the study of the life and teachings of Christ Jesus. I've also always thought that Christian science fits the definition of science given in Webster's unabridged dictionary. Let me just read you part of that definition. Science is a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws, especially as obtained and tested through use of the scientific method. So we have general truths, the operation of general laws. Earth science studies physical laws thought to be governing the Earth in order to understand and apply those laws for the benefit of humanity. Computer science studies laws governing computers, the laws of circuitry and logic in order to understand and apply those laws for the benefit of humanity. Christian science studies the laws of God, divine laws in order to understand and apply those spiritual laws to the benefit of humanity. So this point explains both the similarity and the difference between physical science and Christian science. Both are interested in law and the application of law, but physical science draws its conclusions based on the evidence of physical sense of the material senses while Christian science draws its conclusions based on the evidence of spiritual sense. I'll talk more about that as we go along. Back to this definition of science. The definition talks about something called the scientific method. So I'm guessing that that's a term that all of you have heard at some point. I think the scientific method of research is currently being taught in the first few years of formal education in the United States these days. For those of you that may not have been in elementary school for a while, I'll just remind you of the six steps of the scientific method. Step one, ask a question. Step two, do some research. Step three, form a hypothesis. Four, test the hypothesis through experimentation. Five, analyze the results. And six, publish the results. So for example, one time I read a firsthand account of someone who had had a conversation with Sir Isaac Newton in which Newton told him what he thought when he saw the apple fall from the tree that led to his discovery of the law of gravity. Apparently that really happened. Isaac Newton was sitting among some apple trees when he saw an apple fall and here's what he said he thought. Why should that apple always descend perpendicularly to the ground? Why should it not go sideways or upwards but constantly to the Earth's center? Assuredly the reason is that the Earth draws it. So then he went on to describe what he was seeing in mathematical terms and then tested his equations by looking at the motions of the planets in the solar system. And once he felt that his math was accurately describing what he was observing then he published the law of gravity for all the world to use. So that's an example of the scientific method. Well, I have always thought of the discovery of Christian science as having followed the scientific method. So I'd like to take a few minutes now and talk about how the discoverer of Christian science, Mary Baker Eddy, applied the scientific method in her discovery. Who remembers the first step in the scientific method? Yes, you were listening. Good. Ask a question. And the question Mary Baker Eddy asked was, where is true healing found? She grew up in New England in the early 1800s in a family of congregationalists. They loved God and they loved the Bible in her family. They read it every day. She was rather frail and sickly as a child and this condition continued well into her adulthood. But rather than is turning her away from God, she sought even more earnestly to understand God's role in healing. And she did this while investigating various methods of treatment which took her to the second step of the scientific method doing some research. She investigated not only conventional Western medical treatment but also other forms of treatment available at that time like homeopathy, hydropathy or water therapy, mesmerism or hypnotism. And she did find some measure of help for each of these different methods of treatment but she didn't find permanent cure. She was also left wondering about all of those stories she loved in the Bible in which people were healed through prayer alone. All during her research Mrs. Eddy remained a devoted student of the Bible. She really took to heart Jesus' words, He that believes on me, the works that I do, shall he do also. And it was her deep desire to understand the meaning of those words that propelled her forward. During this time Mrs. Eddy not only received homeopathic treatments but she also administered them. She later said one of the cases that came to her was a falling apple on her road to discovery making reference to Newton's experience. This was a case of a woman who had been diagnosed with Dropsy or an abnormal retention of fluid. Somewhere along the way Mrs. Eddy realized that she had prescribed for this woman the same medication that a previous homeopath had prescribed and she started to become concerned that a prolonged use of this particular drug would have an adverse effect on the patient. But the patient feeling that she was being helped by this drug didn't want to give it up. So Mrs. Eddy out of concern for the patient decided to try giving this woman unmedicated doses but she watched her very carefully. The woman continued to improve. At one point this patient said she would try giving up the drug but on the third day she relapsed and then she said she couldn't get along without it. So Mrs. Eddy started giving her the unmedicated doses again and this woman started to improve again and ultimately she completely recovered under that regimen. This case proved to Mrs. Eddy that it was not the drug but the woman's faith in the drug that had cured her. There was also another case of healing that Mrs. Eddy later called a falling apple and this one led her to the next step in the scientific method forming a hypothesis. This was her own healing in 1866. She was walking on the icy streets of Lynn, Massachusetts when she slipped and fell. It must have been a serious fall because a local newspaper at that time reported that she was taken up in an insensible condition to a nearby home. The next day she was moved to her own home and pronounced in critical condition. After several days of being treated by a physician with no improvement she was diagnosed as having suffered severe internal injuries and the doctor felt there was nothing more he could do. In her extremity Mary Baker Eddy asked for her Bible and while she was reading an account of Jesus healing someone she gained a deep insight into the nature and reality of being. So much so that she got up from her bed, she got dressed and she walked into the next room where her friends were astonished to see her recover. She later wrote that she was ever after in better health than she had before. The days of her being an invalid or a semi-invalid were over. As Isaac Newton had pondered the falling apple Mary Baker Eddy pondered what had happened to her and as he had done she formed a hypothesis. Hers was based not on human conjecture but on what she called divine revelation. And it was this. That spiritual healing of sickness and sin as Christ Jesus practiced it is based on universal divine laws that can be learned and applied today. Here's what she wrote about that experience. I knew the principle of all harmonious mind action to be God and then cures were produced in primitive Christian healing by holy uplifting faith but I must know the science of this healing. So she continued her research focusing intensely on the Bible. She was convinced of the truth she glimpsed but she knew she needed to understand it better so that she could explain it clearly to others. And she also knew that she shouldn't publish her theories and her deductions until she had thoroughly proven them. So as Mrs. Eddy moved to the next step in the scientific method she submitted her discovery of the rules of Christian healing to what she called the broadest practical tests. There are many, many healings documented throughout this period of Mary Baker Eddy's life. I'll just share a few of them with you here. And these were not just minor ailments, they ran the full range of physical difficulty and disease including healings of contagious disease, diphtheria, tuberculosis, many of these in person and Mrs. Eddy feeling no ill effect from having helped those people. In other kinds of cases specifically there was a case of a man who wrote to Mrs. Eddy that a large timber had crushed the bones of his foot. He asked for a prayer treatment. Mrs. Eddy gave him one and the man reported that he was restored at once. He said that very day I put on my boot and walked several miles. In another case Mrs. Eddy's prayers cured an entire family. Very quickly the father was healed with rheumatism, the son was healed of the disease of the vowels, the daughter was healed of deafness. Her case had been given up as incurable. Many years later Mrs. Eddy was asked about this particular family and how those healings were accomplished. She replied, it is love that heals. Only love. And by this she meant the love that is God. She always gave God the credit for being the healer. There was a case of a man who had been diagnosed with enteritis and bowel stoppage. When the medical community felt there was nothing more they could do for him. Someone sent for Mrs. Eddy. Her prayers cured him that day. I like this particular example because this case was reported in a Boston newspaper. It was called a remarkable case. Not only because the man had undergone this wonderful physical healing but also he had undergone a complete character transformation. The paper reported that his wife said the thing she was most grateful for was his radical change morally and spiritually. Mrs. Eddy moved to the next step in the scientific method, analyzing the results of her work. She realized that as this last case illustrated people were not only being healed physically they were being renewed morally and spiritually. She came to see that Christian healing must be accompanied by a renewed sense of oneself because the true healing is mental. This is consistent with stories in the Bible in which people's names were sometimes even changed to denote their changing character. Jacob was renamed Israel. Simon became Peter. Saul was renamed Paul. She also found that people were healed most readily when they entrusted themselves wholeheartedly to her treatments. So conventional medical treatment begins from the premise that there is a broken physical body that has to be fixed. Christian science treatment begins from the premise that God's children created spiritually are already perfect and our task is to understand this more clearly. You can see that these are two competing points of view. Mrs. Eddy found that those were healed most readily whose thought was not divided between these two perspectives. At this point Mrs. Eddy was having consistent success in her own healing practice. Early in her research she had reasoned that if in fact her work was based on universal laws that she ought to be able to teach these laws to others and they ought to be able to repeat her healing work. So she began taking students. Over the years some students were more successful than others as is the case in any scientific endeavor but there was consistent progress in the growth of Christian science and in a number of cases healed as a result of its practice. So after nine years of research and practical application Mary Vaynereddie felt she had proved the truth of her hypothesis. That spiritual healing of sickness and sin as Christ Jesus practiced it is based on universal divine laws that can be learned and applied today. So she published her results in this book. It's called Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. This was first published in 1875. Mrs. Eddy continued healing and teaching after it was published. She taught many students and ultimately formed a board of education which continues today offering avenues for people to take classes in learning about the science of Christianity. And she also edited Science and Health hundreds of times always looking for better, clearer ways to explain her discovery. There's a place in Science and Health in which Mary Vaynereddie gives what we might call the spiritual sense of the scientific method in three steps. Divine revelation, reason and demonstration. I'll take just a minute and talk about each of those. First, revelation. You may be interested to know that Mrs. Eddy included proof as an aspect of revelation. She never felt that she could reconcile any spiritual concept that come to her through divine revelation unless she could validate it through practical application. Actually, this concept of revelation was never a huge leap for me as a physical scientist. Remember I said one of the things I love about science is how it asks us to look beyond what we can see. New who looked beyond the falling apple. Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope looked beyond darkness. They trained the telescope on a dark region of the sky a region where nothing appeared to be hypothesizing that there actually was something there if they could just look deeply enough into space. Sure enough, thousands of never-before-seen galaxies with billions of stars became evident. Christian science teaches that a deeper look into the realm of infinite divine love reveals the nature of God and God's love for all creation and this deeper look into the spiritual cosmos is made evident through transformed lives including physical healing. The second of this three-step summary of the scientific method is reason. All scientists reason through things logically. Actually, computer science is all about logic and reasoning. Isaac Newton reasoned that the phenomenon of the falling apple could be explained through universal law. There may be great reason that the phenomenon of Christian healing could be explained through universal law. It does take logic and reasoning in order to apply these laws for healing and I'll talk more in just a minute about how I've done that. But first, the third of this three-step summary of the scientific method is demonstration. Proof. All scientists require proof and I am no different. I don't study Christian science because somebody told me I had to. In fact, I tell people that in my case the interesting question is not how I started studying Christian science because I grew up in it. It's not very interesting. The interesting question for me is why I stay with it. I stay with it because I've seen it work. I see its relevance and its effectiveness in my life. Or to say it in slightly more scientific speak, I have my own evidence that supports what Christian science claims to be. For example, one time I was baking cookies. And while I was baking cookies, I was thinking about a friend of mine but I'm sorry to say, not in very complimentary terms. I was pretty annoyed with my friend. And while I was in the midst of all of this mental turmoil, I went to take a fully baked tray of cookies out of the oven but I forgot to use an oven mitt. Now I got those cookies almost all the way to the counter before I realized what I'd done. And by this time, my hand was seriously burned and I was in a great deal of pain. What I did in response to this acute health crisis was the most natural thing in the world for me. I called a Christian science practitioner. A practitioner is someone who is devoted full time to helping others through prayer. So I told this experienced Christian scientist about the situation and she reminded me of my spiritual identity. She said to me very firmly, the flame shall not hurt you. I recognized those words as being from a hymn, an old Protestant hymn and there are a couple of arrangements of that hymn in the Christian science hymnal. Also realized what she was doing was stating a spiritual law and her point was this law applied to me. As I say her words, the flame shall not hurt you. Reminded me of something Jesus said. Jesus said God is spirit. And I knew that I, as a child of God, as the offspring of spirit, had to be like God. I was reminded that my true identity is spiritual and not material. And furthermore, I realized that a spiritual being could not in truth be touched by a material flame. I could see that in a very real sense I had a choice to make. I could either accept that the physical law of the oven flame governed that situation or I could rely on spiritual law which supersedes and annals physical law as Jesus proved every day in his ministry. And because of the many times I have relied on spiritual law to good effect, I chose spiritual law. We got off the phone, the practitioner agreed to pray with me about this and I went and I looked up that hymn in the hymnal and I'll just read the full verse. When through fiery trials your pathway shall lie, my grace that is God's grace all sufficient shall be your supply. The flame shall not hurt you. I only design your dross to consume and your gold to refine. Well, this certainly seemed like a fiery trial as the hymn put it. And I was reminded of that story in the Bible about the three Hebrew men who were thrown into the burning fiery furnace. Their trust in God was so great. Their understanding of their inseparability from divine life was so strong, so clear. Not only were they not burned, their clothes were not burned, the smell of smoke didn't even pass on to them. I found this very encouraging. For the next 15 or 20 minutes I just held tenaciously to this concept of myself as a spiritual being, as a spiritual idea of divine mind of God. And after about 20 minutes I was so grateful to be able to call the practitioner back and tell her that there had been significant progress. The hand which had seemed quite abnormal in both appearance and function was rapidly returning to a more normal state. And the pain had also diminished somewhat although it wasn't gone. I was talking with the practitioner the second time. I started berating myself about those unloving thoughts I had about my friend. The practitioner interrupted me and she said, again, very firmly, you never had an unloving thought. Well, that was in complete opposition to what I've been thinking when I was baking cookies. And yet I realized again what she was doing was stating a spiritual law. And her point was this law applied to me. It was logical to me that God, who is love and only love, could never hate. He could never create a child who could hate. I thought about this hymn again. I only designed your dross to consume and your gold to refine. You know, the dross is that waste material that's sloughed off in the refinement of precious metals. And so I reasoned that in this case, the dross to be consumed, the dross to be thrown away, was a false concept of myself as less than loving. And the gold to be refined was the right concept of myself and of my friend as well. I didn't want to leave my friend out of my prayers. The right concept of both of us as loved, as loving, and as lovable. And as I thought about these things, all of that mental turmoil I've been feeling just simply washed away and right along with it, the pain diminished until it was gone. The next time I really looked at my hand was maybe a couple of hours later and it was perfect. There wasn't a mark on it and I was able to use it normally in every way. I also mentioned that my relationship with my friend was restored immediately, restored like new, just like the hand. Now some of you may wonder that I was so willingly turned away from the physical evidence like that. I'll tell you the truth. The most real moments of my life, the most compelling moments, have not been revelations of physical science or a brilliantly executed piece of software code, although those things are rewarding. They are. After 11 years on the Hubble Space Telescope project, I still love all things Hubble. But the most rewarding, the most compelling, the most real moments have been revelations of divine science. I'll give another example about that in a minute. It is true that in the practice of Christian healing there are no thermometers or wind gauges or blood pressure measurements. But Christian scientists do gauge thought. Jesus said to the man at the pool of Bethesda, will you be made whole? I've often thought he was asking the man to measure where his thought was. Are you willing to be made whole? Often when Jesus healed someone physically, he would say something to them like, go and sin no more or be not afraid. First and foremost, he was addressing thought. The connection between thought and physical healing cannot be measured physically, but that's what people are always trying to do, trying to devise some sort of medical test in order to validate prayer. I contend that it can't be done because prayer and its effect can be discerned only through spiritual sense or what we might call the Christ Spirit. The person who best understood Christ was Jesus. In fact, Mary Baker Eddy called Jesus the most scientific man that ever trod the globe. She called him this because she said that he plunged beneath the material surface of things and found the spiritual cause. Jesus said, as I hear, I judge. He told his disciples, blessed are your eyes for they see and your ears for they hear. He was talking about hearing and seeing spiritually. Jesus is the perfect example for us because he taught that this Christ, this sense of the power and presence of God that he relied on to heal and save others 2,000 years ago. He taught that this Christ is eternal. One time Jesus was deep in prayer. He was praying for himself or his disciples for their ministry. And he said, I'm not praying just for these alone but for all those that shall believe on me through their word. That includes all of us. Paul wrote about this to the Corinthians. He said, I have not seen nor ear heard. Neither have entered into the harm of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. But God hath revealed them unto us by his spirit. For the spirit searcheth all things, the deep things of God. The spirit that Paul is talking about here is the Christ spirit. The Christ is what enabled me to overcome the fear of severe weather and enabled me to learn how to love my friend better. Christ can enable us to rise above the fear of contagion. If this seems esoteric, you might think about it this way. We don't see wind or friction or gravity but we see and feel the effects from these things. The love of a child. Now that is real. It's tangible. But you can't measure that physically. Or think about music for a minute. Say that you have two pianists and they both sit down at the same piano at different times and play the same piece of music. Maybe they both get all the notes right, all the rhythm correct. Technically, it's perfect. One of those performances may leave you feeling unmoved while the other performance may absolutely uplift you, transport you. The difference in those performances is not the notes on the page or the piano. It's the inspiration of the musician. You can't measure that physically but you know. You know when it's there and when it's not. Again, what I love about science is how it asks us to look beyond what we can see. Along this line, there is a helpful definition in science and health of the biblical word profit. It's a short definition, so I'll just read it here. Profit a spiritual seer. Disappearance of material sense before the conscious facts of spiritual truth. This definition reveals to me that every prayer in Christian science is a kind of prophecy. It's exchanging a material view of things for the conscious facts of spiritual truth. And therefore, every healing in Christian science is the fulfillment of prophecy. It's looking into God's infinite law of infinite good and being a witness for the unfolding of that good. Let me just give you one more example which further illustrates this idea of seeing spiritually. One night, I was awakened with a stabbing pain in my side. It was more than annoying. It was a little alarming. And I tossed and I turned for a while and finally I got up and I opened a book on my bedside table. This was a book written by Mary Baker Eddy about Christian science called Unity of Good. I opened this book at random and my eyes fell on a sentence at the top of one page. It said, A lie has only one chance of successful deception to be accounted true. A lie has only one chance of successful deception to be accounted true. When I read that, I had a brilliant flash of spiritual illumination. The best way that I've been able to think to explain that experience is to say that I glimpsed absolute truth. What became so clear to me in that moment was that God's universe is the only universe there is. It is entirely spiritual and it is entirely harmonious without any bitterness or hatred or discord of any kind. In that moment, I could see that even the suggestion of pain, even the suggestion of in harmony could not be true. It couldn't be true. It had to be a lie, a lie that I didn't have to believe. It was just crystal clear to me. At once, the pain was gone. It was so sudden that it startled me. It startled me physically as well as mentally. It was a jolt. My concept of who I was and my place in the universe changed in an instant and this healed me physically, instantaneously. This change in consciousness resulted in a change in the body. That moment of divine consciousness of spiritual clarity that glimpsed of absolute truth stands out as a beacon to me in my life and I cannot ignore it. I confess that sometimes I wanted to. Sometimes it just seems easier to believe the way the world believes, but I cannot ignore it. It's evidence that is more real to me as a scientist than anything else I have ever experienced. Now, I have one more point that I would like to make before I begin to wrap things up here. If I'm having trouble applying the teachings of Christian science or not getting the results I'm looking for, I don't abandon the science, but I might question the application. It's like math. Sometimes just because I had trouble working problems in calculus or using imaginary numbers, and yes, there is such a thing as imaginary numbers in math, I didn't dismiss the whole of mathematics as foolish. Rather, I realized that there were other principles of math I've been able to prove. There were others who've been able to work these problems. And I knew that if I could just understand the principles that lay behind these problems better and practice applying them, that I too would be able to work the problems at hand. Similarly, these glimpses of absolute truth, along with the body of other evidence I've gleaned in my life through healing, through studying application of Christian science, along with the thousands upon thousands of healings I know about from others who have practiced Christian science over the last hundred and fifty years. All of these things tell me there must be something to this science. There must be. And it makes me want to learn more. Astronomers are always trying to find out more about the physical universe by looking farther and farther out into space. One of the reasons they do that is the farther out you look in space, the farther back in time you go. The farther out you see in space, the farther back in time you're looking. I think that is a cool and mind-bending concept. Those galaxies that were discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope were thought to be among the oldest in the universe, 12 to 13 billion years old. And we were able to see those because the Hubble telescope can look so far into space. But the measurement of time in space, even vast amounts of time, vast amounts of space, is still a finite proposition. I knew that even as much as I loved working on the Hubble project, I was never going to be able to find spirit through the lens of the telescope. But looking at the universe through the lens of Christian science reveals infinity and eternity. For me, that's the coolest concept of all. The discovery of Christian science introduced a whole new way of looking at the universe which makes other theories obsolete. That's why my study of meteorology didn't help me overcome the fear of severe weather. But my study of Christian science did. It gave me a whole new way of looking at what I was measuring as cause and effect. Now, I have been asked if one has to have a background in science in order to study Christian science. The answer is emphatically no. Christian science is for everybody, regardless of your profession or your background. Mary Baker-Eggen wrote that the understanding of Christian science is not intellectual. It's not the result of scholarly attainments. It's the reality of all things brought to light. She also wrote, regardless of what another may say or think on this subject, I speak from experience. And she did speak from experience, decades of experience of applying universal divine laws for the benefit of humanity. And I also speak from decades of experience that support what Christian science teaches. Let me leave you with this thought. One of the things I have always loved about Christian science for the time I was a little girl is that Mary Baker-Eggen respected me enough and respects all of us enough not to expect to take what she says at base value. She told her students that they should follow her only so far as she followed Christ. She said everything she taught was based on her understanding of the Bible. She wrote, You can prove for yourself, dear reader, the science of healing. And so ascertain if the author has given you the correct interpretation of Scripture. Proving it for yourself is what any good scientist would do. I'm so glad that all of you came today. I would encourage all of you whether you're here today in person or you're listening over the television or over the internet to go to the website Christianscience.com which is the official website of Christian science. And right there on the homepage of Christianscience.com there's a link which will take you to a bunch of resources that will help all of us pray about the current epidemic of the coronavirus and how we can help humanity rise above the fear of contagion and how we can rise above fear ourselves. Also, for those of you who are here in person when you walk out the door you'll find that there's a table with copies of the Bible and Science and Health as well as some other literature that you're welcome to look at and take with you. Also the Bible and Science and Health are available on Christianscience.com So I hope all of you will check out those resources and many more about what Christian science is about. I thank you all for coming today and have a wonderful day and a wonderful weekend.