To love and serve: a conversation with Irmela Wigger

Suzanne Smedley | from The Christian Science Journal

The way to feel love is to be loving, no matter what.

Irmela, as a child you clearly felt God’s love, but you’ve said that a series of unhappy experiences early in life compelled you to think more deeply about the real meaning of that word.

After I got married, very soon my husband and I had two young children. I had the feeling that I should please my husband and not go to church (he was against Christian Science and not very religious), and I became very unhappy. Although I loved my husband dearly, I did not feel that same love I felt as a child coming back to me. But at some point I realized, “I’m loving because I want to be loved. And this feeling of love cannot be the real love.”

This insight was also the beginning of your journey back to church, wasn’t it?

Yes. At the time, my husband and I lived outside of Hamburg, and one day I suddenly remembered a time when, as a teenager, the church had been such a support to me, and I thought, “I cannot live without church.” You see, my father was a Christian Scientist, and when I left Denmark and came back to Germany to live with my parents, I was thirteen. We went to church together every Sunday and Wednesday as a family, and that’s when I came to know and love Christian Science.

What was it about your church experience then that impelled you to go back?

I remembered having this feeling of being loved unconditionally … of being myself without trying to do something for love. And I wanted to know that love again. So, my husband and I got a house near the church in Hamburg, and I started going with our two children.

My thinking about love had to change from wanting love to giving love.

A half-year later, my son had an accident, and he passed on. Then I was more in need of church. We adopted two children, and then I gave birth again to a son, and I went with the four children to church. During that time I found out that my thinking about love had to change from wanting love to giving love, without thinking about getting anything back. I got stronger and stronger in this love. And I came to a point where I said to myself, “Even if my husband leaves me, I couldn’t leave this church.” And that was the point where my husband started to come with us to church.

I had all the jobs you can have in church—and loved it. But my husband became mentally sick. He couldn’t, after the loss of his son …

He didn’t recover?

No, he got depressive and manic. I didn’t really want to know at the beginning, and I couldn’t understand because I loved him dearly. Suddenly, he took his life. He tried to take mine, too. After the attack, someone found me and took me to the hospital. When my mother found out, she called my Christian Science teacher to pray for me. And when my teacher started to work, I lost the shock. Although I was near death, I could tell the doctors, who wanted to do a lot of medical things with me, that I was getting Christian Science treatment, and that I chose not to have medical care.

I remember it was autumn. I was alone in the hospital room, and I looked out of the window at the trees colored with wonderful autumn colors, and I thought, “God’s love is still here with me; nothing has changed. I can rely on Him as I did in difficult times. He will lead me and take care of my children because He is their only Father.” I felt loved and cared for, and I could forgive my husband so totally. One week later, I could leave the hospital.

I was, at that time, First Reader in the church. One week after leaving the hospital, I read the Sunday service. I was so grateful that the church members really knew that I could do it. They really stood behind me, so you understand why church is very dear to me. It took me through all these difficult years. Therefore, I long for everybody to find out again what church brings in our life.

What has being active in your branch church taught you?

I felt God’s love shining through me like the sun shining through a window pane.

It has brought to my life an understanding that church is about serving God, and from this serving we get a pouring out of Love—God’s love—you can’t imagine. When my husband passed on, I really wanted to understand this Love better. I prayed a lot. And suddenly, one morning I woke up and all was bathed with Love. I could see everyone in the shopping center, everywhere, and everyone I met, was really in this Love. And for three days I was so surrounded by it. I felt God’s love shining through me like the sun shining through a window pane. This feeling that God is with me in every situation is still with me.

What do you think happened? Some people pray and pray to feel God’s love, yet still feel separated from it.

I think they may have the same thing that I had—a wrong sense of Love. As I found out, not feeling worthy, not feeling loved, was egoistic, because it focused on me. And I didn’t want to be egoistic.

That reminds me of the words to a hymn … here it is—Hymn No. 360 by Elizabeth Charles in the Christian Science Hymnal:

Is the heart a living power?
Self-entwined its strength sinks low;

It can only live in loving,
And, by serving, love will grow.

Yes. That Hymnal was a big help. I often sat in the car and sang Mary Baker Eddy’s “It matters not what be thy lot, / So Love doth guide … (Christian Science Hymnal, No. 160).  If you are so gone in your sorrow that you cannot get a clear thought, these hymns are so good. I remember a time when I was crying and couldn’t stop. And suddenly, I thought, “I do not want to be … ‘poor I’”—what’s the name in English?

… to have self-pity?

Yes, “I don’t want to have any self-pity.” So I tried very hard not to, and that helped a lot. I have learned that the way to feel love is to be loving, no matter what. That’s the only way.

So you were a single mother for many years. How old were your children at that time?

My children were nine, eleven, thirteen, and seventeen.

Your church family must have been a big support to you as you raised them.

I cannot be grateful enough for church. This opportunity to serve in church, to really focus on giving away what you have received—that was a new kind of love that I learned. And that was a starting point of wanting to become a Christian Science practitioner. Before my husband passed on, I took Christian Science class instruction. I wanted to help my husband when I saw how bad it was with him. But I couldn’t help him. And that was a very hard thing to let him go and take his way.

But it must have been such a comfort to know that his life continues on—in a way I can say I don’t fully understand yet—if we believe everything Jesus taught and demonstrated.

It really was a comfort to know that. After I had forgiven my husband, I saw that all he had learned in Christian Science would be of good. It was so clear for me that it would eventually relieve him of all these awful thoughts he had.

When you have a case that has gone on for a long time—and I realize every case is different—how do you address that situation prayerfully?

Healing is always immediate when the patient understands that he is spiritual.

I try to start anew every day … to be newly inspired. We really have to see the patient every day as the wonderful expression of a wonderful God until the condition is healed, without blaming the patient in any way if the condition stays a long time. Healing is always immediate when the patient understands that he is spiritual. But it sometimes takes a while until this point of recognition is reached.

In the book We Knew Mary Baker Eddy [a collection of reminiscences by people who knew Mary Baker Eddy], Frank Gale wrote that she stressed in her classes, “In order to heal quickly we must not recognize any disease in a patient, even as a belief, because we make more or less a reality of it when we do; but we should go to a patient with the feeling that he is well and we want to show him that he is well.” Then he said, “She told us that when she had healed instantaneously she had lost sight of the personality and realized only the presence of the spiritual and perfect” (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 89–90).

As the expression of God, who is Mind as well as Love, the patient has only the thoughts that come from this one Mind. So he can’t possibly believe that he has X or Y problem. God wouldn’t tell us we’re sick or sinful!

I think that’s a very good point because if the healing is not coming right away when I pray, I sometimes wonder if the patient has something in thought that he’s not seeing that’s preventing the healing. And Mary Baker Eddy says in her writings, in so many words, “No. Don’t believe the patient even thinks something is wrong with him.”

When you give someone a Christian Science treatment, you’re always treating thought, aren’t you.

Yes, it is the only place where disease seems real.

Sometimes waking a patient up from believing disease is real requires the healer to speak with spiritual authority to the patient, like when Elisha told Naaman, “Go and wash in Jordan seven times” (II Kings 5:10). And when Jesus said to the invalid, who had probably lost all hope of healing, “Take up thy bed, and walk” (John 5:11). What I find so extraordinary is that both Elisha and Jesus had such supreme confidence in God’s power that they could talk to the sick that way!

I love when Jesus said to the widow woman, “Do not cry,” when her son, her only child—the only one who could take care of her—was dead. It was as if Jesus said: “Don’t believe that life is in matter. Look away from this false picture and see that your child can never be separated from God who is his only Life.” And, as we know, her son came back to life (See Luke 7:12-15).

Have you ever had to speak to somebody with that same authority?

Yes, sometimes it’s good to tell patients, “You can decide if you want to stay in bed, or if you want to get up and not listen to the thoughts that come saying, ‘I am sick.’” And sometimes they get to the point where they understand this and they ask themselves: “Am I willing to listen to the Christ speaking to me and to take a strong stand for Truth?” And when they do, then the healing comes. Wasn’t that what Jesus expected when he said to the man with the palsy: “Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house” (Matt. 9:6)? What if he had not obeyed?

When one of Jesus’ disciples couldn’t heal a man’s son who was “lunatic,” which Bible scholars say was probably a case of epilepsy, Jesus told them it was because they lacked faith, and that this healing of what seemed to be a very difficult case came only “by prayer and fasting” (see Matt. 17:14-21). I take that to mean great spiritual growth. How do you nurture that in your own practice?

I have learned to give myself a Christian Science treatment every morning to put myself on a strong foundation.

I have learned to give myself a Christian Science treatment every morning to put myself on a strong foundation. I do a lot of thinking, and praying for myself, and I’m always writing. Every morning I write pages of a treatment using the synonyms for God [Life, Principle, Spirit, Soul, Mind, Truth, and Love], and then I think about how they relate to me. After I write my thoughts down and finish the treatment, I crumple the pages together and throw them in the waste, because every day is new, and every day I give myself a different treatment. Then I read the Christian Science Bible Lesson and pray for the world. I sometimes rise at five in the morning to do this so that I am prepared when the first calls for help come at about eight.

With that kind of spiritual preparation the healing work must be easier.

Yes, but what is very interesting is that it sometimes seems much easier to help newcomers to Christian Science than those who have been Christian Scientists their whole lives.

I’ve heard others say that. Why do you feel that’s the case?

I don’t know, really …. We all have times when the waves of life are rough and we feel responsible for the healing we seek, so we study and pray very hard. But sometimes that makes the problem seem more real to us. Also, when we’ve been studying Christian Science for a long time and a Christian Science practitioner asks us to read and think about a certain passage in the Scriptures or in Science and Health, we might be tempted to think, “Yes, I have already worked with this Bible passage, or that Science and Health passage—yes, I know that already.” We are often so used to these words from the Scriptures that we sometimes forget what a power there is behind them. And then we miss the inspiration that heals. But when we find our way back to our childlike trust in God, the healing will come. To pray with Christian Scientists of many years is very inspiring when through our prayers they find their way back to their first love—the healing message of Christian Science.

So we don’t need to struggle and spend hours reading these books and studying them for this inspiration that heals.

When we pray, we do not have to change anything.

To someone who struggles and makes finding this inspiration so hard, I would say, “Don’t try so hard—stop, and let divine Love do the work.” When we pray, we do not have to change anything. We only need to see what God has created and done for us now and here—and to accept it.

It sounds as though you’re saying that we need to approach this Science with an uncomplicated, receptive thought, and be willing to be taught, transformed, no matter how many years we’ve been studying it.

I always try to bring my patients to that point, so they again feel this wonderful nearness of God’s love, and as I just said, it’s like they have found it new again. In the Preface of Science and Health, Mrs. Eddy wrote, “The Wisemen were led to behold and to follow this daystar of divine Science, lighting the way to eternal harmony” (Science and Health, p. vii). What I like is that they were led not only to see the star, but to follow it. God has made us able also to follow this star that leads us to the newborn babe, this new inspiration of the Christ that heals.

This brings us to another point that people often ask. Do we need a church organization to feel God’s love and to practice this divine Science? In Germany, as you well know, organized religion is unpopular.

I hear this often from my students and others. They sometimes remind me what Mary Baker Eddy said in Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896: “But the time cometh when the religious element, or Church of Christ, shall exist alone in the affections, and need no organization to express it” (Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, p. 145). Mary Baker Eddy has said this, people say. And I say, “Do we already live church? Are we doing what Mary Baker Eddy expected church to do—are we affording “proof of its utility”? Are we “rousing the dormant understanding,” “casting out devils … and healing the sick” (Science and Health, p. 583)? When we do that consistently, then we may not need a physical structure. But I think it’s not in the next hundred years.

I really see how people need church as I have needed it. They need it to feel God’s love and to help each other. Praying together at the services often healed me. I remember one healing I had that was very outstanding when I again started to go to church. For many years, three or four times a year, I always became sick with a high fever and pain, and one Sunday I felt sick again. I thought I shouldn’t go to church. But then I had the strong feeling I should go, and I did. The healing of that condition came during this service, and I never suffered from it again.

If you know that you go to church to bring some special gift to it—your understanding of God, your practice of Christian Science, your experience—you cannot get anything out of it but blessings.

And if we could show the young people in our Sunday Schools that Christian Science really works, those who have left would come back to it.

Without a doubt, being an active member of a church requires a great deal of unselfishness.

If you are working in church you have to learn to pray about things you wouldn’t have to on your own, like in a marriage. And you learn a lot about working with people that helps you in your own life.

God shows us if we are right or wrong, if we trust.

When we have our church meetings, the members don’t always think the same things are right. If there is voting, and something comes up that I think is not right, I have learned to pray about it and to ask God to tell me if I’m wrong. If I was right, God would show everyone and change the decision. It’s so wonderful to see that God shows us if we are right or wrong, if we trust. And it has always been so.

We learn in church to really respect each other, to nurture each other, and even forgive each other. And in our church family in Hamburg we laugh a lot with each other! We all have a good sense of humor …. We’re always laughing together about something. I think it shows that we trust each other, and it really unites us.

That lightheartedness is so important as we go about our church business. It can seem so easy to lose that feeling of joy, especially when a smaller number of members in a branch church feel burdened having to do lots of committee work. It becomes easy to lose sight of our joyous mission to preach the gospel and heal the sick!

Mary Baker Eddy warned about the churches being over-organized (see Irving C. Tomlinson, Twelve Years with Mary Baker Eddy, Amplified Version, p. 156). We do too much trying to get all correct and orderly, and then we lose sight of the love and joy of the healing work. Yes, we need to express divine Principle, but Principle includes Love. We must have them both in the right balance. We must see what work is necessary to fulfill that mission of Church and ask ourselves, “What do we really need in terms of organization that will demonstrate what Church really is?” That’s the point that Mrs. Eddy brings out in her definition of Church in Science and Health. And if we are not healing in church, what are we doing? This healing aspect of our church services is so important because it’s what draws people to church.

No one can be held back from getting the spiritual inspiration they need.

As Christian Scientists we really need to dig deeper … to understand that God is All. There is no other power. No one—not our friends or neighbors—can be held back from getting the spiritual inspiration they need. God will lead them. But if in church the members are not loving each other, not respecting each other, the people feel this. They come once or twice and never come again. We really have to live what we say and what we teach.

And if we are “living” church it seems natural that we would share Christian Science with our neighbors.

I often think we are afraid to tell our neighbors who we are and what we know. I just had a nice experience with my new neighbors who have a little child. When she was about four or five months old, I one day heard her crying. I met her mother and asked her what was going on, and she said the child was getting her teeth. I said, “Shall I pray for her?” She looked a little astonished, but she said, “OK.” I prayed and didn’t hear her crying again.

Some months later, when I again had something to ask the mother, she came to me with her morning dress on and said her family had the flu. And again, I asked if I could pray for her. This time, she quickly said, “Yes.” Next day I met her and her daughter on the street, and both were well. We should not be afraid to offer prayer for our neighbors.

Fear of failure seems to be a reason people often hesitate to do this.

We should really trust. It’s not us, but God who is doing the work. If we want to help our neighbor, Love is there to help us do it.

Didn’t Jesus say, “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me” (John 12:32)? So it is with church, isn’t it? The church grows as the members grow spiritually and are “lifted up.”

Yes, and we have to do this growing together. Church costs us a lot of time and a lot of engagement, but who would want to be robbed of the spiritual growth we get from it? Church is the best thing we can have. It is so precious!

I’ve been thinking a lot about the cover theme of the Journal in January, “Commitment to the Cause.” What is it that our churches need today? Isn’t it a return to our first love? To having our hearts burn—to be on fire with Jesus’ teachings and for preaching the gospel and healing in his name, as was the case with two of Jesus’ disciples on their walk with him to Emmaus after his resurrection? The Bible says that on their walk Jesus taught them about the things in the Scriptures concerning himself, and afterward they said to each other: “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?” (Luke 24:32). Shouldn’t we, too, feel this burning heart when the Scriptures are opened and read to us at our church services, along with the words in Science and Health?

Nearly every day I learn and understand more about God and my oneness with Him from these two books, and that lets me, too, be on fire. For me, Christian Science has been the “pearl of great price” (Matt. 13:46), which I would never give up for all the riches of the world.