Head Injury Healed

Getting over the idea that falling is bad

I loved last Sunday’s Roundtable discussion, which brought up the gift of facing challenges and welcoming any necessary rebukes that keep us focused on the Allness of God. It reminded me of something that happened on a three-day road trip I took the week before.

I had been praying before and throughout the road trip never to waiver from seeing everything and everyone I encountered as God’s ideas and opportunities. To listen to God instead of human will and to turn the whole experience over to God.

Early one morning, as I was leaving the place I was staying in the dark, I smacked my head hard into a low beam. I immediately fell to the ground and began to pray, as we are taught: There is no pain in Truth. After a few moments of prayer, I got up, finished packing up my car, and got on the road. But as I drove off into a beautiful sunrise, I felt bombarded by fearful thoughts that I couldn’t seem to shake.

So I began doing what we are taught here at Plainfield: I demanded the blessing from this experience. What was it I needed to learn?

Two things came to me: 1) That when I am reading the news in order to pray for the world, I need to be sure not to let all the focus on medical and material solutions become in any way real to me. 2) That I had to take a stand against the belief of aging. I knew that when I was younger I would have bounced right up and laughed at the lie of a bump on the head instead of being afraid that it could have dangerous consequences.

Both of these insights pointed out areas where I was not vehemently claiming the Allness of God in my life and the world. So I began listening to the previous night’s testimony meeting for inspiration. I was literally moved to tears by the powerful expressions of the power of God’s Love for us all!

Somehow this brought back a memory of something that had happened twenty-five years earlier when I decided to learn how to snowboard. Initially, I took a group lesson with a young instructor and five seven-year-old boys. Well, the boys took to it immediately. They fell down and bounced up and laughed and soon were snowboarding away. Whereas when I fell down, I literally saw stars. I didn’t bounce up, laugh and snowboard away.

But I wasn’t about to give up. So I decided to take a private class the next time. My instructor was about 18 years old. We took a run and once again, I kept falling. On the lift ride up together, I complained about how much I hated falling, and how it wasn’t any fun to fall when you get older.

Well, this guy looked at me like I had somehow missed the class where they taught the meaning of life. And then he said, “Duuuuude, you have to get over the idea that falling is bad.”

My jaw literally dropped. I looked at him and burst out laughing. Because of course, he had just given me the Cliffs Notes for that class on the meaning of life.

Immediately, as we continued up the lift, I looked down and saw that, whereas all the skiers were upright and making beautiful turns down the mountains, the snowboarders often fell or where sitting down. I could see that they were having a completely different experience of the mountain than the skiers and loved it.

After that, I loved snowboarding — and I often use that instructor’s insight whenever I feel like I’ve needed a shift in perspective or a good spiritual wake-up call.

That memory made me realize that before coming to Plainfield, I hoped Christian Science would be like skiing — schussing down mountains, making gorgeous S-turns in my lovely ski outfit, heading straight for some convivial apres-ski experience in front of a roaring fire.

But here at Plainfield, I really am getting over the idea that falling is bad — and instead learning that a well-place rebuke, a challenge that gets me to demand the blessing, finding joy and gratitude in the difficult days, and always always holding to the Allness of God is the only thing we are all here to do.

Suddenly I was filled with joy and all the fear dissipated. That’s when I heard God say, “Well, you do always tell your practitioner how much you enjoy a good spiritual kick upside the head.”

With that I burst out laughing, and I spent the rest of the road trip filled with gratitude for Plainfield, my practitioner, all the resources and opportunities offered here for those of us willing to jettison our old ideas of Christian Science and instead recognize that the more we are willing to let the old human ideas of God or religion or life fall away, the more we know the Truth of the Allness of God’s Love that really does set us free!