Child, Interrupted

If you had asked me what I remembered most about growing up as a Christian Scientist, it would have been the disappointment I felt when my grandparents arrived to take us to church. They always made their entrance in the middle of “Beany and Cecil.”

Maybe you don’t remember Cecil the Sea Sick Sea Monster. From what I understand, he began his career as a sock puppet, but was fully animated in the cartoon of my childhood. He had a signature song, Ragmop, which he belted out at some point in the episode, “R-A-G-G-M-O-P-P, RAGMOP!” And he might be right in the middle of doubling his consonants when Grandma Lucile and Grandpa Virgil arrived, dressed in their Sunday best.

I’m sure I’d have been dressed and prepared for this trip before I ever sat down to Cecil. Cecil was probably the carrot my mother dangled to get me ready, as I was quite young when these memories begin. I don’t imagine I was too excited to head off to Sunday School. I was rarely excited to do anything that involved leaving my home, where I had my coloring books, my collection of tiny things, my siblings, and most importantly, my mother. Why would I need to leave? There were unimportant people and strange relatives out there. Better to stay home, preferably with Cecil.

But they would gather us up, my substantial grandpa in one of his huge dark suits, my soft spoken but firm-about-church grandma in one of her dainty netted hats and a pair of gloves, clutching a handbag. I would never see Beany rescued from the peril unfolding on our tiny black and white television. I would never see Cecil roar into action, lisping and invincible, to rescue him. Because we had to go to church.

The Trip to Town.

Grandpa had a taste for enormous American cars and generally drove a Plymouth Behemoth. My older brother and sister would clamber into the back seat, and Grandma would tuck me under her arm in the front. If we were lucky, she would then carefully divide a stick of Doublemint chewing gum between me and my sister. “Double your freshness, double your fun, with Doublemint, Doublemint, Doublemint gum.”  I loved the flavor, which lasted about as long as that jingle.

Our breath dealt with, we were off, my siblings sliding across the back seat and bumping into each other when Grandpa swung the car around corners. There were no seat belts in those cars. We didn’t slide around on curves because there are no curves in the roads in South Dakota.

We lived in Claremont, and it was 39 miles from Claremont to Aberdeen. The Sunday round trip was nearly 80 miles. This is quite a distance, even for someone like me, who regularly travels many of Portland freeways and streets to see friends and family. But I don’t travel on gravel roads.

There were a few stretches of unimproved highway between Claremont and Aberdeen. There were also the vagaries of South Dakota winters, but no one let bad weather stand between them and church in those days. A whiteout blizzard couldn’t keep us away from the First Church of Christ, Scientist.

The Church Itself.

Oh it was a grand building. Take a look.

Doesn’t it look like a bank? Or maybe a school, one of the old ones, with boy doors and girl doors? Christian Science was still a thriving concern in the early sixties, not as much as it was earlier in the century, but it seemed to be doing fine. The fact that a town of 24K could support a church like this boggles my mind. I don’t know the history of this building, so perhaps it was something else before it was a church. It is no longer a church, it now houses a law office, and when I stepped into it in the mid 2010s, it felt as grand as ever.

As a child, I thought the church magnificent, even though I never walked up those front steps. We entered through the little door on the lower left. That led into the basement, where we attended Sunday School and the children’s service. There, I learned to recite the books of the Bible, the Ten Commandments, and a few Bible verses here and there.

After Sunday School, we waited in the “Nursery” for our grandma. Grandpa stayed upstairs, but she fetched us from this room where (I guess) the children who were too young for Sunday School were kept on Sunday mornings. It had a sand table, some books, and a few toys. The walls were painted a warm color and accented with painted animals here and there. My mother had painted some of the animals. I remember taking pride in a particular tiger. “Mom painted that.”

Grandma eventually rescued us from the Nursery and took us to the children’s service. This was quite short, just a reading and then a few hymns. My sister and brother were allowed to sit wherever, but Grandma stayed close to me, in case I went wild or something (I never did). I loved the hymns. My pleasure was slightly lessened by having Grandma Lucille warbling along beside me. But nothing could dim my enjoyment of my very favorite, “Onward Christian Soldiers.”

Onward Christian soldiers

Marching as to war

With the cross of JEEEEEEE-ZUZZ

Going on before!

I loved the military tempo of this hymn, and belted it out with all the gusto of Cecil the Sea Monster. It never struck me as funny that “the cross of Jesus” went out before us. Christian Scientists took that “no graven images” commandment quite seriously. There was not a cross in the entire church, and there were certainly no sad-eyed Christs in the vestibule. No plaster Marys looking sweetly down on us. And the idea of a crucifix? Not on your life. Those were seen as barbaric.

No, the only cross we saw was the one in the logo stamped on the front of our seminal text, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

This book was penned by Mary Baker Eddy, the visionary who started the church after some visions. This book was the source of the readings that went on in the adult church upstairs, where my grandparents had their service.  I believe they both did readings.

We used it downstairs, too. In the basement, after we talked about the Bible in Sunday School, we turned immediately to the companion book for explanations. Even in tiny doses, the Bible was incomprehensibly strange. The Key to the Scriptures took all that confusing, threatening, occasionally violent Biblical verbiage and made it comprehensible, kind, and metaphysical.

I want to stress that the verses we learned were very, very mild.

It wasn’t just the Bible that confused us. Whenever we heard of something wrong or frightening out in the world, my grandmother would soothe us with “Honey, that’s just Mortal Mind.” This was Grandma’s shorthand for a sophisticated and far-reaching concept, but I was too young to parse Mortal Mind as a sophisticated, far-reaching concept.

After church, we all got back in the car and headed to Elmer’s Café for donuts. This was probably the carrot my grandparents dangled to get us to behave. I didn’t ever like donuts as a child (this was shocking to all my family members, my dislike of sweets in general was considered aberrant, possibly dangerous or subversive because how could I be bribed?) but eventually, after much trial and error, it was discovered that I did like caramel rolls. So I got one of those at Elmer’s after church, and everyone calmed down.

That was church, when I was very young.

Was my mother a Christian Scientist?

That’s a good question. Mom had participated in the upgrade of the nursery—I think my aunt Elaine did, too—but I never once remember Mom attending the church.

When we lived in Claremont, she and my original father probably enjoyed their time off together by adding another shouted chapter to their decade-long argument, a call-and-response of accusation and insult which provided the soundtrack to the first five years of my life.

After they divorced and we moved to Aberdeen, my mom probably enjoyed that morning alone. Maybe she relaxed on Sunday mornings. Maybe she slept. She must have been doing something, because as far as I recall, she never once went to the church with us.

By the time Grandma and Grandpa arrived back at the house on Kline Street to drop us off, Mom usually had Sunday dinner going. It was so nice to walk into the house, and find her happy and relaxed in a kitchen that smelled like her peerless pot roast.

What is Christian Science, exactly?

That’s another good question. I have never studied Christian Science as an adult, so this is my understanding of it, based on my early training.

“Christian Science” is neither. I’ll get to the Christian part later, but there is no science present in a religion that teaches that physical illness can be overcome by correct thought. This thought isn’t the random cogitation going on in our heads at all times. This is directed and effective thought, applied to transcending life’s problems because they actually do not exist.

As a child, I did not understand this part. Do you understand this part? Does anyone understand it? According to Christian Science, the physical world does not exist. It is Mortal Mind, a screen of falseness between humanity and the purely spiritual plane, which is true reality.

This means that on an individual level, anything wrong with your life or your body is the result of what Grandma called “wrong thinking” (see, faith healing, including Christian Science kids who die of burst appendixes, which I almost did when I was five). On a global level, “Wrong thinking” is the cause of wars, pestilence, and famine.

Wrong thinking is part of “Mortal Mind.” Mortal Mind, as I understand it, is the level of flawed human thought/existence that stands between mankind and the perfection of God, which is always there, just waiting in all its splendor and glory, shining and divine. When freed of the entire mess of humanity’s wrong thinking, it is Paradise. Heaven, as much as it exists, is simply the oneness with God achieved by perfect thought unobscured by Mortal Mind.

What a gorgeous idea. How simple, and how transcendent. How specifically appealing this was to the various adults in my family. Think of the name of that companion text, “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.” Their own minds held the key to unlock the divine. You didn’t have to pray. All you had to do was think correctly.

Understanding, Questioning, Believing.

I experienced my childhood faith as benevolent and somewhat annoying, simply because I could have been spending that time doing something that interested me. But I was not damaged by going to church, not was I damaged by my unusual faith.

Christian Science contains nothing frightening or negative. There is no sin, no devil, no hell as it is commonly understood. I remember hearing about all that stuff from some Catholic kids. I can summon up the memory and my emotions right now, but I don’t know if they were cousins or neighbors, just that they were Catholic, and we were in a wood-paneled basement room and they were telling me all about the Devil.

I wasn’t scared. I was utterly disbelieving. I could not believe that they believed what they were telling me. A devil was a Halloween costume, a seasonal figure, like the cupid shooting arrows on Valentine’s Day. And here were these kids earnestly telling me about Satan and sin, and the Lake of Fire what would burn me for all eternity.

They might as well have been describing how to walk through walls or time travel. It wasn’t real.

Like all children raised in a faith, I thought people of other faiths were misled. I still don’t believe in Satan, sin, or the Lake of Fire, and I still think anyone who does has been sadly misled. But as a child, I certainly didn’t believe that I could have been similarly bamboozled by my elders. My own belief wasn’t shaken until age seven, when I tried to repair a Little Kiddle through the power of thought. It didn’t work.

Cracks are where the light comes in, to paraphrase Leonard Cohen.

Leaving Aberdeen

We moved to Rapid City the summer before I started fourth grade. My grandparents were no longer there to take us to church. But they were very, very concerned that we should go. So every Sunday morning, our mother harried us into our church clothes and dropped us off in front of the local First Church of Christ, Scientist for our Sunday school classes.

I don’t have a clear memory of that church, and the only photo I could find was of this present location.

Could this really have been the place? I find it unlikely, but I don’t remember. I only have a clear memory of looking across a room at my brother, slumped in a chair with his elbow on the table, kind of facing out from his class. He wore a gold dress shirt and a dark tie. He looked so defeated.

We were good kids, obedient kids. We showed up and did the lessons and Mom picked us up and drove us home. But I started to get the feeling that it was strange for us to attend without an adult.

We only stayed in Rapid City for a school year, long enough for Mom and my adoptive dad to meet and marry (six weeks after meeting). That summer, we moved to Minneapolis. We attended one of two churches there. I’m not sure which. I went looking for photos, and found this one:

You can read the sad story of this building here: A historic church is crumbling. Can anyone save it? This might have been our church, or we might have attended a different, grander church, which is now a thriving Seventh Day Adventist tabernacle. Here is a photo of the other building back in its Christian Science days.

You can read about it here: Forgotten Minnesota

Whichever building it was, this church was grand. We attended for a few months, long enough for me to go Christmas caroling with a group of church members. We strolled the wintry sidewalks of Edina, singing up a storm. We’d never done anything that fun with the churches in Aberdeen or Rapid City.

No matter how welcoming that congregation was, no matter how fun, it was strange that us three kids showed up at yet another church without our parents. And it is telling that I was the only one of us three kids who wanted to participate in caroling.

Then, of course, it happened.

I was ten or eleven when Mom sat us down and had a serious talk with us about church. It took me a minute to understand what was happening. She was asking us how we felt about going to church. She seemed to imply that attendance was…optional.

The disbelief I felt rising inside, followed by glee. She was letting us decide. Did we still want to go? We all said no.

My grandparents, who drove over to visit us in Minneapolis now and then, were sternly disappointed. Grandma was such a soft-edged person. But when it came to church, she was firm. But Mom made it clear to her parents that we had all independently made the decision, which kind of let her off the hook, as far as their disapproval. That was all on us, the errant children who wouldn’t go anymore. My grandparents were deeply disappointed in us, but they were no longer in the same state.

All those years of careful inculcation, the rides, the hymns, the readings, the donuts, the copies my sister and brother had received of the Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. We left it behind.

By the way, where did Jesus come in?

Well, he didn’t enter by the usual door, I can tell you that much. That basic thing about “Christ died for your sins” seems key to every other Christian faith, a fundamental belief in the Blood of the Lamb. Jesus had to die to wash us all clean of our sins and save us from hellfire damnation. That’s why you have to embrace Jesus as your savior to live in Heaven.

I was not taught that. In fact, I was not taught much at all about the crucifixion. I knew it had happened, but didn’t pay attention to it until I was eleven, and we were living in Booneville, Arkansas. My grandparents had driven down to stay with us for Christmas. I was finishing up the school week at Booneville Elementary before the break started.

An aside: I went looking for a photo of Booneville Elementary in 1971, but couldn’t find one. There’s an elementary school, but it’s far newer. I did, however, find a postcard of the highschool I attended for part of my seventh grade year, which has also been torn down and replaced.

It is no more, BUT LOOK AT IT, FOLKS.

Anyway. Back to sixth grade.

On the day before we took our Christmas break, my teacher shut the door to our classroom and solemnly announced that she had a gift for us. Great, I liked Christmas gifts, but she was oddly somber. She then passed out Chick Tracts. Do you know what these are? I hesitate to link to them, because I don’t want to encourage traffic to their site, but I describe them in Love and Mayhem at the Francie June Memorial Trailer Park.

Driving down the street, you might see the occasional bumper sticker—“Get Right or Get Left!” or “This truck will be unoccupied in case of Rapture!” And someone in the Park, probably Jeeter Tyson, passed out those small religious comic books about the appearance of Satan, masked as a cat, a neighbor, a stranger, a magazine.

In one of those terrifying little comics, three fornicating, joy-riding teenagers discover that their late-model four-door sedan is really Satan. In another, a fornicating boy discovers that the girl with the long hair and the dramatic “Y” of black-ink cleavage, the girl with whom he has committed back-seat sin, is really Satan.

On her rare trips home, Raven always found those little comics stuck into the latch of her sleeper door. As a child, she’d find them on the ground while roaming around the fairs…She would read them, throw them back down, and go off to try to forget the voice of Satan speaking through a Jack-o-Lantern or whatever horror was printed up and passed out like something for children to enjoy. She thought of those comic books as sneaky. They put fears in your head. They would haunt your dreams with their frightening threats, if you let them.

Dreams are made for haunting.

My teacher had us all read our little Jack Chick comic books, and then she explained that Christ had died for our sins. We needed to be washed in the blood of the Lamb, or we would go to hell. She was giving us a chance at Everlasting salvation. Also, Merry Christmas.

This was the first time in my sheltered little spiritual life I’d encountered such a thing. It was ugly and terrifying, so I took that little tract right home to my Grandma Lucille. And she calmly read it, and then explained the crucifixion to me. Mortal Mind had led those soldiers to put Christ on the cross. It was an error, and to rectify it, God had brought Jesus back to life. It wasn’t a sacrifice. There was no washing clean of our sins, as sin does not exist. It was simply Mortal Mind, and God had fixed it.

I sat there, washed over by Grandma’s kind, soft voice as she spoke with authority on the only thing she’d ever really studied in her life, which was her faith. She was patient and loving and reassuring. She offered a vision of faith that involved no hellfire threats, and a view of Christ’s agonizing death as a human mistake, divinely rectified.

I was greatly comforted by this interpretation of events. Together, we threw away the evil little comic book. After Christmas, my grandparents returned to South Dakota, but I still didn’t go back to church.

A Common Question: Did we go to the doctor?

The short answer: Not often enough.

The long answer: Christian Scientists are not forbidden to seek medical care, but they are not encouraged to, either. This thought-healing stuff works best alone, as opposed to combined with medical care. My theory is that medical professionals would point out what wasn’t working, and faith in the working was necessary for success.

If you are ill, you can pay a Christian Science practitioner to help you. I believe Grandpa Virgil was a practitioner, defined as someone who can work with a person experiencing bodily illness to make it go away through prayer.

But there is no supplication in Christian Science prayer. You do not appeal to a higher power of any kind to take away your illness. You essentially argue with yourself until you are cleared of the false belief, the Mortal Mind inflicting your illness. Once you rid yourself of that, you’ll be healed.

We did not regularly see a family doctor, but there was a doctor named Dr. Shusha (I called him Doctor Shoeshine) who we saw now and then. We didn’t receive well care. I’m not sure there was such a thing as well care in the 1960s.

I took my polio vaccine in a sugar cube at the little Claremont school. I had the chicken pox and the mumps, but lots of kids had those. I discovered after my first daughter was born that I have no Rubella immunity. I’d never gotten the MMR vaccine. I’ve had three, now, but apparently they don’t take. So thank you to all of you who’ve had an MMR shot, because I can still get Rubella and German measles.

But what about the kids who died in the 80s and 90s?

Well, their parents were devout idiots. But I see how it happens. As mentioned earlier in this post, I languished with an attack of appendicitis for several days. I remember roaming the house clutching my tattered blankie, lying down on our deacon’s bench, getting up, pacing, crying, moaning. Nothing helped. The only similar pain in my life was the first time I gave birth, during transition. I did a lot of roaming around and moaning during that, as well.

In a more traditional household, it is likely that if your five year-old was doubled up with pain for days on end, you’d take her to a doctor. Mom didn’t at first. I have heard two different stories about it. In the one my sister tells, she was babysitting me and Mom was at a club. She called Mom and told her I couldn’t settle down and she had to come home. In the story Mom told, a neighbor came by and saw me writhing and roaming, and told my mother about a boy in town who’d had an attack of appendicitis. “She’s acting just like him,” this nameless neighbor said.

I have a dim memory of this woman standing in the front doorway, speaking, but it might be confabulated. However it happened, Mom was soon driving, and I was in the backseat of car with my blanket, then in an operating room telling Dr. Shoeshine “You talk like a Mexican,” and counting backwards from ten, and then awake, in a hospital bed, groggy and feeling my stitches under the bandage.

My mother could have called a practitioner. She took me to the hospital instead. Accordingly, I am still here. I have a huge keloidal scar that my doctors over the years have explained as, “That’s how it looks when the surgeon has no idea what he’ll find when he opens you up.” The doctor told my mother that my appendix would have burst within the hour.

Another question: Did we go to the dentist, orthodontist, eye doctor?

Very rarely. We occasionally went to see a dentist who might have been a friend of my original father’s, or he might have been one of the great-uncles. I am not sure. There was a family connection to this Aberdeen dentist, that’s all I know.

Luckily, as my permanent teeth were coming in, we drank Claremont’s artesian well water, which tastes like sulfur but naturally contains a lot of fluoride. I had zero cavities as a child, so the lack of dentistry was not a big issue. Then, after we’d left that well water behind, my 12-year molars came in a year late and riddled with cavities. They are all capped, now. The rest of my teeth are still pretty good.

No one in my family needed braces, so I don’t know if we’d have gone or not. We definitely went to the eye doctor, because my mother, brother, and sister had terrible astigmatism. They wore glasses and got them as needed. My vision was oddly perfect until my forties, and I got my first pair of glasses at fifty. The church gets no credit for that.

Where is the CS Church today?

It’s still here. Or there. Somewhere.

At one time, Christian Science was the fastest growing faith in the world. There were churches and reading rooms everywhere. I have always had a soft spot for the reading rooms, staffed as they are by women like my grandmother.

The Church survived a few setbacks, scandals, and public critiques, including a long one published by Mark Twain. It has lost ground since membership peaked in 1960. The Church doesn’t publish its membership numbers—probably less than 100K. But the teachings at its heart have inspired countless other metaphysical churches.

Christian Science also inspired Marianne Williamson. In the mid-1980s, I remember being at dinner with a couple who had discovered the Course in Miracles. The husband, with awestruck and shining eyes, told me the Crucifixion was human error, and the Resurrection was God’s rectification of that error.

“Oh,” I told him, “That’s just Christian Science. I was raised believing that.” I felt bad for stealing his thunder, but come on. Did he really think this was a new idea? Mary Baker Eddy wrote that down in something like 1870, and she probably borrowed the idea from a faith healer who treated her for her own myriad ailments.

Would I ever go back?

No. Some years after my grandfather was incapacitated by a stroke, my grandmother relocated to Bainbridge Island for a few years (my parents lived there). She attended a Christian Science church. I don’t think she would have considered the move otherwise.

My brother occasionally accompanied Grandma to that church. Of us three older kids, he was always the most open to matters of faith. He had a curious mind and a gentle, accepting heart. I know he believed in an afterlife. My sister has been up and down with religion, following her own crooked path. She doesn’t attend any church these days, and as far as I know, she doesn’t believe in an afterlife.

I used to say I was agnostic, but that implies faith that there is some kind of a God sitting up there somewhere, and I don’t believe that. Not exactly. Despite this, I attended the Catholic church for years with my kids and then-husband. That was a compromise on my part. We wanted the kids to have a church experience, but I didn’t have one to offer. So I said, fine, I’m nothing and you’re something so let’s go with the something, which was his Catholicism.

My then-husband would never have attended a church without a hellfire-based doctrine. He was also sure I’d be going to Hell, which was just one of the many pain points in our marriage. After the divorce, he told me to stop attending his church, that he and his new girlfriend were going to start taking the kids, so I should stay away. I stayed away, but he never picked up the baton. It’s a helluva baton, getting three kids church-ready. I can’t say as I blame him.

Still, it surprised me, how much I missed going. If you were raised with church, Sundays can feel strange and empty without it.

What do I believe today?

Not much, and then everything. People who read my Gentry books assume I’m an observant Catholic, unless they’re Catholic, and they see all the holes in what I’ve written. People who read the trailer park book assume I am anti-Christian, because there;s not one positive example of a Christian in that entire book, except maybe Memphis, who is also scarred and limited by his own faith.

Everything I believe conflicts with everything else I believe. Christian Science has no doubt profoundly influenced who I am, but I do not believe I can mentally argue my way into wellness or think my way into Paradise. I still don’t believe in sin, the Devil, or the lake of fire.

Do I believe my own actions matter? Of course, and not at all. A person is less than an atom in the cosmos of infinity. I remind myself daily that my own concerns are so puny as to be imperceptible, and I also remind myself to live as if every action matters. These ideas contradict each other and I do not care. I have to live as if both are true.

I’m interested in religion, and skeptical of it. I try to be tolerant and respectful of whatever other people believe. If someone holds beliefs that are racist and intolerant and hateful, I excuse myself from their presence and avoid them strenuously. The statement, “If you’re using your religion to hurt people, you’re doing it wrong,” isn’t in the Bible, but it should be.

I don’t believe in a God that listens, but have been known to send up a supplicating prayer or two during plane landings. I do not believe God cares who wins the game. If there is a God, I do not believe he/she/it would care whether or not I believe in him/her/it. If there is a God, let’s hope pronouns have been transcended.

I do not believe in a personified God. If there is something that could be called divine, it is huge and impersonal, like the mathematical principle that orders the universe. We can’t perceive it. All religions are human attempts to understand this impersonal and infinite principle, but we are only human. Whatever we devise is woefully incomplete.

I’m fairly certain I’m an atheist. The problem is, I find many atheists to be smug and rude, crowing in a self-congratulatory way about how smart they are and how laughably stupid believers are. I really don’t want to be aligned with that attitude. I try to be respectful of religions.

I love churches, and religious art, and sacred music. I do not believe God lives in the houses of worship, nor do I believe God has ears to hear our songs and prayers. God has no face, but I love our representations of it. I love all of it, and I’m grateful for the hospitals and universities started by the church.

I also believe that most Western religions have been used as fronts for child predation and the subjugation of women and the oppression and destruction of indigenous people. At times, my cynicism and disgust are so great that I think predation and suppression are the only actual functions of organized religion.

And then I remember the years I went to church with my ex husband and my children, and how important it felt to have a place to say thank you for the blessings of my life, to listen to hymns, and to share a sense of community.

I am unable to reconcile these tremendous contradictions.

The same Bible verse is painted on the walls of all Christian Science Sunday schools: “God is Love.” I like that one. I wish for it to be true.

This is the one life I know I’ve been given, and I’m trying to live it as best as I can.

That’s really all I believe.