09-9 VN! Irby-Williams Article 2

Years ago, at a gathering of Christian Science nurses, someone asked Richard Bergenheim, CSB (authorized teacher of Christian Science), "What is the most important quality for a Christian Science nurse to express?" We watched as he frowned, shook his head, inflated to twice his size, and replied sternly: "There's no one 'most important quality' in Christian Science nursing!" Then he put his hands together above his head and slowly spread them apart until they reached the sides of his legs, as he said, "A Christian Science nurse reflects the FULL SPECTRUM of Christ qualities, listening for and expressing whatever the treatment is silently calling forth in the room at each moment." He said that if one thinks of himself as a "principled" Christian Science nurse, bringing order and clarity whenever he is in the room, he may be working against a healing where more gentleness and love is being called forth in the case; likewise, a Christian Science nurse who identifies herself as gentle and loving, might be working at cross-purposes with a treatment calling for order and discipline in the case. He warned that just partially expressing the spectrum of Christ qualities is the belief of personality, which our Leader says "limits man" (Miscellaneous Writings 1883 - 1896 by Mary Baker Eddy 282:4).

What kind of education promotes the discovery of the full spectrum of Christ-qualities and helps one put them to use as a Christian Science nurse?

Each of us has different needs, of course, but there are common elements. Most of us can use cheerful encouragement, patient nurturing, prayerful support and some helpful hints along the way as we come into our own--the realization and demonstration that we include all we need. But what every one of us needs is to be nursed. To educate a Christian Science nurse is to nurse the nurse--to witness, uphold, foster, cherish and nurture it into expression. It is, to use a phrase in wide circulation among Christian Science nurses, "To provide an atmosphere conducive to healing,"--an atmosphere where the full spectrum of Christ qualities is expressed impartially and where the perfect Christian Science nurse is beheld. It's simple, not complicated.

But, as Ralph Wagers, CSB, often said, "The strategy of animal magnetism is to substitute the lesser for the greater and get us so involved in the lesser that we lose sight of the greater." The carnal mind would have us get all wrought up in that which is only a misleading shadow of Christian Science nursing and Christian Science nursing education, distracting thought away from impartial and universal Christ-light and focusing attention on the "lessers" of curriculum, program, person, place, and time.

The education of Christian Science nurses has very little to do with program or curriculum or place. There is no formula for teaching or learning Christian Science nursing--no right or wrong order of learning or experiencing nursing principles and skills, no necessary sequence of experiences and opportunities. These things are incidental to Christian Science nursing education. If it were otherwise, Mrs. Eddy would have told us so.

The best Christian Science nursing instructors are not experts or halo polishers, nor are they policemen, correction officers or drill sergeants. They are not "trainers", but mirrors, helping others see themselves from a perspective outside of "self"--even throwing upon them the "truer reflection of God" that is their nature (see Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy 259:7). But to be a faithful mirror requires staying free of distorting elements--e.g., the ill-temper, complaint, deceit that Mrs. Eddy specifies are distinctly un-nursely!

To be a faithful mirror requires obeying the new commandment of Christ Jesus: "By this everyone will know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another"; and "My command is this, love each other as I have loved you" (John 13:35, 15:12 Today's New International Version)

To love as Jesus loved is to love without distinction; he was not impressed one way or the other by race, class, creed, or credentials. The effective Christian Science nursing instructor lives the Christ-light without partiality. As his disciples, we cannot be selective about where and when we express light among one another. This requires, for example, that we cherish, whole-heartedly, each honest manifestation of Christian Science nursing and Christian Science nursing education, wherever it is expressed, eliminating all comparison, criticism and condemnation. We cannot afford to indulge in thoughts or actions that are uncharacteristic of Christ-light and which would undermine our Christian Science nursing and teaching practice, keeping our much-needed light under a "bushel" of personal sense.

There's nothing territorial or mysterious about genuine Christian Science nursing education. It is an "open secret" as Mrs. Eddy might say (First Church of Christ Scientist and Miscellany 289:1), involving light, not the darkness of assumptions, suspicion and competition.

A Christian Science nurse is discovered, revealed, unfolded, developed (like a photograph, already complete), "born" (see Scientific Obstetrics, Science and Health 463:5). It is the divine Love's manifestation as the healing Christ which accomplishes this discovery and revelation. Twice in Miscellaneous Writings on pages 98 and 338, Mrs. Eddy quotes this verse from a poem by Horatius Bonar:

Thou must be true thyself,
If thou the truth wouldst teach;
Thy soul must overflow, if thou
Another's soul wouldst reach;
It needs the overflow of heart,
To give the lips full speech.

Teaching requires, not a trickle, but an "overflow" of heart--a heart that represents the full-to-overflowing nature of Christ, Truth. Too small a love--exclusive, territorial, judgmental, condemning--is unattractive, even repulsive, to the unborn Christian Science nurses of the world. But a love that is big enough to embrace all mankind operates in accord with God's law of attraction, drawing to it those many Christian Science nurses who are waiting to be discovered! Mr. Bergenheim's warning about "personality" in Christian Science nursing is a clue to the success of individual Christian Science nursing practice and to Christian Science nursing and education as a whole. The FULL SPECTRUM of Christ-qualities and their full expression--impartial and universal--is needed to quell personal sense and to promote the healing practice of Christian Science nursing, individually and universally.

Christine Irby Williams is a Christian Science practitioner in Houston, Texas, and former Director of the Tenacre School of Christian Science Nursing. She facilitates workshops and Bible classes for Christian Science nurses.