A journey of love: a conversation with Alessandra Colombini

Suzanne Smedley | from The Christian Science Journal

Christ Jesus’ spiritual consciousness, not an emotional atmosphere of sight and sound, is what healed. That’s what we as healers need too.

SUZANNE SMEDLEY: Alessandra, you’ve been in the Philippines for about a week. I understand that the Christian Science movement is really moving in the Philippines.

ALESSANDRA COLOMBINI: Christian Scientists are so active here. There were almost 300 people at the lecture I gave on spiritual healing last Saturday at a university in Baguio, in the northern region of the Philippines. Many had come a long distance from several mountain villages around the city. And it was raining! I loved their dedication, considering the distance they had traveled. About a third of the people at the lecture were youngsters and teenagers, and they were distributing Christian Science literature and ushering. People were so receptive to the message of the lecture. Newcomers voiced their appreciation during the question-and-answer period following the lecture, and the questions were really good. Many of the people came to talk to me in private afterward, and some even came to my hotel bringing friends who wanted to know more about Christian Science.

I was told there are 15 informal Christian Science groups in the northern region of the country, in addition to the church in Baguio City. There are so many young people in the Philippines, and the Christian Science Sunday Schools are full. The church members really encourage them to work in the branch churches. Many of the young people also support these Christian Science groups, traveling around and teaching informal Sunday School classes. The lecture I gave in Manila was also very well attended. There are two churches in this great metropolis, Manila and Pateros. They are all so unselfish and dedicated.

What language do you speak when you lecture there?

English. There are several different languages spoken in the Philippines, and the country is working toward unifying the language into Filipino, but for the time being English is the means of communication among the different regions.

You weren’t raised in Christian Science—tell us how you found it and made it your own?

I loved Christian Science because of its logic.

I learned about Christian Science in Brazil from my boyfriend, who later became my husband. He first heard about Christian Science from a friend of his. At the time, my boyfriend had a problem at work that seemed to affect his health and resulted in a serious physical difficulty. So he started to study Christian Science and was healed of the difficulty. And so I started studying Christian Science. I loved it because of its logic—the logic in the reasoning that I found in the textbook of Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. That really hooked me. And also the spiritual lessons that I got from the Bible by reading Science and Health. I loved the Bible very much, and I was a student of the Bible by then, so when I found out that the lessons it contained could be used in a very practical way today … well, I fell in love with that.

Did you understand Science and Health when you first read the book?

I was used to intellectual study, and that’s the way I approached Science and Health at first. So, no, I didn’t understand the book right away, but I kept reading. What made the difference for me and finally helped me understand it was reading O Arauto da Ciência Cristã [The Herald of Christian Science—Portuguese edition]. One day I read an article in the magazine about family. I was going through a difficult period at the time because I had come to São Paulo for college, and my family was in another city. I felt very sad and lonely and out of place. But after reading this article, I understood that Christian Science was a metaphysical system of thinking. You see, I got from the article the difference between reasoning from material sense—with the intellect—and reasoning from spiritual sense. I saw that I could understand Science and Health only by reasoning from this spiritual standpoint.

How would you describe spiritual reasoning?

Spiritual reasoning starts with God.

Spiritual reasoning starts with God—who God is and what God knows about us—not with human evidence. We begin to reason spiritually by first getting a better understanding of God as Love, Spirit, Mind, Soul, Principle, Life, and Truth. These seven synonyms for God that Mrs. Eddy provided in Science and Health helped me a lot in this reasoning process. For instance, as we start to recognize God as omnipresent and omnipotent Love, we will be able to love others who might seem unlovable. Love, being God, is the power that enables us to love no matter what. We can love because we reflect Love, not because others do what we want them to do.

So how did this line of thinking heal your loneliness?

It gave me a more spiritual concept of home. I saw that my family was God’s family. God was my Father-Mother—always present, always with me. And that my real family was all of God’s children. Not only some of God’s children. But all children of God. I was living in a guest house with other girls, and so I could see that these other girls were my family, too. And I could get along with them, like sisters. I could feel at home because I was always in the presence of my Father-Mother, and I could have the help of my Father-Mother whenever I needed it. This made a big difference to me. It changed my whole life.

You mentioned that you had always loved the Bible. Did you grow up in a religious home?

Not particularly. When I learned about Christian Science, I was going to a Baptist church. I had been brought up in Rome as a Catholic and had gone to a Catholic elementary school. But in Brazil I went to public school. And when I was twelve, I began going with a neighbor friend to the Baptist church. My family eventually followed me there, and I attended that church until I began to study Christian Science.

What attracted you to the Baptist church?

It was the Bible. When I was only seven years old and still living in Italy, my uncle gave me a book called La Bibbia per i bambini [The Bible for Children]. I didn’t have the actual Bible—I had only this book. But I loved it. It was very complete. Reading this book, I found the story of Joseph, and learned how Joseph was victorious over so many difficulties and injustices. That made a great impression on me.

After the Second World War, the mental atmosphere in Italy was very bad. It was scary to a child, and I was very unhappy. Everyone was complaining and rebellious. Every family we knew had lost someone in the war. But when I read Joseph’s story, I got a glimpse that I did not have to comply with the atmosphere of disgrace that hung over the country because of the war. I could overcome feeling disgraced simply because I was poor, the same way Joseph overcame everything he faced. I could use the spiritual resources within me to do so. I could do well in school, be happy rather than sad, and do good things for people. I had a very keen sense of God and that He was helping me. From then on, I always thought about the Bible stories from this book, and I brought it with me to Brazil. I still have the book.

Christian Science made that connection between religion and my day-to-day life again.

When I found out that Baptists read the Bible and used it without an intermediary, and that I could have my own Bible, I loved the church. But by the time I got to college, I needed something more. I no longer felt that the stories and teachings in the Bible had that practical application I had sensed as a child. Religion and my day-to-day life were two separate worlds. Christian Science made that connection between the two for me again. That healing of loneliness while I was in college was my first healing in Christian Science, which brought that practical aspect of the Bible’s teachings back to life to me.

How would you describe the role of faith among people in Brazil today?

In general, Brazilians are very religious. They are spiritual searchers. Despite the materialistic pull of modern life, they feel the need for recourse to a higher power in order to overcome the great challenges we face in our changing country. Therefore the evangelical churches, which continue to grow and have a large presence in Brazil, are full nowadays. Their services are very emotionally oriented. Whereas, in Christian Science churches the atmosphere at the services is much quieter.

Why do you think someone would feel attracted to Christian Science services, which, as you say, are quieter in comparison with church services of many other denominations? Frankly, our church services have little of the emotional appeal that people often equate with spirituality.

Just think how lively our services are when every church member prays for his or her respective congregation in the spirit of our Master.

Genuine spirituality is always good and leads to peace, while emotions are not always good and many times are downright negative. So we should not be worried about comparing our services to an emotional kind of worship. In our branch church in São Paulo, I’ve often heard newcomers praise the quiet and peace they’ve felt at our services. This does not mean that our services are flat and boring. Quite the contrary! If we bring to our services the spiritual inspiration we feel, they’ll be very lively. I like to think of the Lesson-Sermons read at each service as weekly spiritual “treatments,” with specific ideas for healing every ill we face individually, as well as in the community and in the world. Just think how lively our services are when every church member—not only the Readers—prays for his or her respective congregation in the spirit of our Master, as Mary Baker Eddy stated we should in the Manual of The Mother Church [see p. 42]. How forceful this collective prayer is to make the service interesting and healing! It has the potential to inspire everyone to follow Christ, and to join in joyful fellowship with our fellow church members and extend the Christly love we feel to visitors and newcomers.

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with worshiping God through artistic expression, whether it’s singing or dancing. This expression of divine Soul is normal and right, but as the expression of God, whatever form of worship we choose should appeal to spiritual sense. If it elicits only an emotional response or sensation, it has nothing to do with genuine spirituality. And it wouldn’t be truthful to use emotion or sensation as a means to attract people to church. A person may come to our church looking for a connection to God and for spirituality, and he or she is not going to find that through material sensation. Christian Science does not appeal to the material senses—it appeals to spiritual sense. And when there is genuine spirituality in our services, that’s what will attract thinkers.

What do you mean by “thinkers?” And what does their thinking involve?

Jesus didn’t try to attract people by spectacular rites and practices. He healed first.

We have the example of Jesus. He didn’t try to attract people by spectacular rites and practices. He healed first, and then taught. He attracted people who needed healing, and then those who were willing to learn how and why he healed remained with him. He did not heal by shouting or by providing an emotional atmosphere of sight and sound. His spiritual consciousness was the healing power at work. This applies to each of us as healers.

A thinker is a person who is willing to learn and is willing to reach that spiritual consciousness that heals. I’ve noticed that in general people are willing to think and learn when they are really in a bad situation. They start asking questions, and they’re willing to go deeper, because they find out that the mere sensation of connecting with God is not enough for them anymore. It doesn’t lead to spiritual satisfaction. And as I said, when those of us attending Christian Science services have that Christly consciousness that Jesus demonstrated, there will be nothing lacking in that service.

Yet we hear that mainstream churches in many countries are facing similar difficulties. Low membership, church closings, and so on. Do you think Christian Scientists need to do anything different to stay vibrant and relevant—to change with the times?

We just need to practice Christian Science more consistently. The real—or shall I say, unreal [laughter]—roadblock to progress in our Church is not that we have three rather than four hymns in our church services, or that we don’t have a choir. Or to worry whether or not the Order of Services in the Church Manual is outdated. It’s that, in many cases, we are not practicing Christian Science.

Can you explain?

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. There’s a passage on page 248 in Science and Health that illustrates what I mean: “What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have you accepted the mortal model? Are you reproducing it? Then you are haunted in your work by vicious sculptors and hideous forms. Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding it before your gaze continually. The result is that you are liable to follow those lower patterns, limit your lifework, and adopt into your experience the angular outline and deformity of matter models.” This is what we’re doing in many cases. We have accepted the mortal model and whatever is included in this model (and we can make a long list of things—sickness, fear, limitation, and so on), and we are reproducing it. We hear about this imperfect model today much more than in Mrs. Eddy’s time. Why? Because we have mass communication via the Internet, television, and mass media. I have found in my Christian Science practice that we are not always vigilant enough about turning away from these false models and instead keeping the spiritual model in thought.

What is a specific example of a “false model” that you’ve noticed in the media?

It is an important step forward to see that thought influences health, but Christian Scientists have to go a lot deeper.

I got an e-mail recently linking me to an interview on a physician’s Internet site about the influence of thought on our health. The physician said in the interview that we must be careful about hate, about negative feelings, because they have a negative influence on our health. In this interview, the physician linked diabetes and other physical aliments with thought and described the influence of thoughts on other physical ailments. So, yes, this idea that the human mind influences health is common now. But this reasoning is based on the notion that mortal mind has power and that we have to work through mortal mind to eliminate or lessen fear or stress—or whatever it is in mortal thought that seems to be affecting our health. What starts as sounding very much like Christian Science ends up being totally contrary to it. Christian Scientists pray from the standpoint that God is the only Mind. God has the power, and we overcome sickness not through mortal mind, or merely changing mortal thoughts to better thoughts, but by giving up mortal thoughts and holding spiritual thoughts. It is an important step forward to see that thought influences health, but Christian Scientists have to go a lot deeper and reason from a purely metaphysical basis.

You’re saying that the model we need to begin with is God and His goodness and allness, and then reason from that standpoint in order to be successful healers.

You’re right. There’s a statement in Science and Health that I try to keep in mind always: “It is our ignorance of God, the divine Principle, which produces apparent discord, and the right understanding of Him restores harmony” (Science and Health, p. 390).

Whenever we accept a reason for any evil, we accept its reality.

Among the many false models the world holds before our gaze continually are extensive analyses of the “reasons” for each problem humanity is facing today—a reason for each sickness, each disaster, each economic crisis. These reasons are so well put and seemingly justified that we tend to accept them as truth. Whenever we accept a reason for any evil, we accept its reality, and then we are no longer able to pray about it by applying Christian Science, because our prayer must first of all begin by recognizing the unreality of evil. Mrs. Eddy wrote that it is our ignorance of God that produces discord, and when we correct this ignorance, this does away with all the “reasons” the world presents for humanity’s problems.

There is the well-intentioned assumption that by knowing the reason for a problem we can then solve it or prevent it. This seems to be correct human reasoning, but from the spiritual standpoint it leaves us stuck in human limitations, and we can easily see the poor results of humanity’s best efforts. We certainly appreciate all the good being done by the many organizations and people dealing directly with sickness, humanitarian relief, and world diplomacy. But as Christian Scientists, we have to go even further. We have to eliminate that ignorance of God in ourselves, strive to get that “right understanding of Him” that “restores harmony.” And then we need to help as many of our brothers and sisters as possible to overcome this ignorance. And for me, that seems to be the true purpose of each activity in our churches.

As always, we can look to the Master Christian, Jesus, for our guidance. When people came to him for healing, he didn’t try to analyze the reason for someone’s blindness or leprosy or paralysis (see John 9, Mark 1:40–42, John 5:2–9). Nor did he get into debates and look for reasons for the accident at Siloam’s tower or Herod’s killing of some Galileans (see Luke 13:1–5). He refused to see anyone as a sinner; therefore, he attributed no cause to these evils. Wasn’t this his way of seeing the unreality of these evils? And as usual, when he did need guidance, help, support, or strength, he simply went to his heavenly Father. And we can do the same.

Suzanne Smedley is a Journal senior staff editor.