Holding Crime in Check

By John D. Clague, Christian Science Committee on Publication for Oregon

This piece was originally published on OregonLive last December not long after the shooting at Newtown, CT.  Emotions surrounding the shooting are still raw.  I thought it would be helpful to post my comments here, with a few changes to make it current.

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It’s never easy to see tragedies that undo lives and families and communities. In my 30 years of law enforcement I encountered plenty of this sort of thing. Our hearts go out to the community of Newtown, Connecticut, and to all parents and teachers across the country. It’s been over three months since the shooting and we are still challenged to find a way to address the unexplainable. Without some view of the nature of life that transcends all the shortcomings of the human experience I’m certain that I would be adrift in despair.

I have found, though, that in holding onto and affirming what, for me, are fundamental truths, I can find peace.

This is what I feel:

I don’t know why this happened in a cosmic sense, and it’s futile to try and figure it out. My heart says that God did not cause this tragedy, nor turn His back on us.

To me, God is the essence of goodness. And God is complete love. As such, I feel that God loves each one of us as His own creation, including all involved at Sandy Hook School. That love is still with those dear children and staff, embracing them and holding them close. They are with God. More importantly for those trying to cope with the aftermath, divine Love is closer than ever to comfort and strengthen families and communities.

I believe we must be more persevering in our search for solutions to prevent future violence, whether it involves one person or thousands of people. For me, it means praying to know that a loving and good God will guide our desires and actions towards finding solutions.

I, and others, might find ourselves letting go of some cherished beliefs and ideologies in this search for solutions, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us initially feel. Motivated by love for our children and our communities, embracing each other with more patience and attentiveness, we must find a way to work together toward that end.

I believe that being willing to pray for real solutions will bring them to us. We can still feel the “peace that passes all understanding” during this season and beyond by insisting that we will not become cynical and afraid, and knowing that God has not turned away. And when we do that we will find a way to hold these crimes in check.

Holding Crime in Check

by John D. Clague, Christian Science Committee on Publication for Oregon

It’s never easy to see tragedies that undo lives and families and communities. In my 30 years of law enforcement I encountered  plenty of this sort of thing.  Our hearts go out to the community of Newtown, Connecticut, and to all parents and teachers across the country.  And yet, as we enter the season of good will and peace on earth, we are challenged to find a way to address the unexplainable. Without some view of the nature of life that transcends all the shortcomings of the human experience I’m certain that I would be adrift in despair.

©iStockphoto/adl21

I have found, though, that in holding onto and affirming what, for me, are fundamental truths, I can find peace.

This is what I feel:

I don’t know why this happened in a cosmic sense, and it’s futile to try and figure it out. My heart says that God did not cause this tragedy, nor turn His back on us.

To me, God is the essence of goodness. And God is complete love.   As such, I feel that God loves each one of us as His own creation, including all involved at Sandy Hook School. That love is still with those dear children and staff, embracing them and holding them close. They are with God.  More importantly for those trying to cope with the aftermath, divine Love is closer than ever to comfort and strengthen families and communities.

I believe we must be more persevering in our search for solutions to prevent future violence, whether it involves one person or thousands of people.  For me, it means praying to know that a loving and good God will guide our desires and actions towards finding solutions.

I, and others, might find ourselves letting go of some cherished beliefs and ideologies in this search for solutions, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us initially feel. Motivated by love for our children and our communities, embracing each other with more patience and attentiveness, we must find a way to work together toward that end.

I believe that being willing to pray for real solutions will bring them to us.   We can still feel the “peace that passes all understanding” during this season and beyond by insisting that we will not become cynical and afraid, and knowing that God has not turned away.  And when we do that we will find a way to hold these crimes in check.

First published on OregonLive

John Clague is a retired sheriff’s office captain, father of two grown sons, and husband. He now works with the media to ensure accurate representation of Christian Science.

Senior Moments

My colleague, Bob Clark from Florida, has written a thoughtful blog challenging the notion that with maturity comes debilitation. He shares a healing of Alzheimer’s disease achieved through spiritual means alone. Whether or not you are a “senior”, this is a blog worth reading. John D. Clague, Christian Science Committee on Publication for Oregon.

By Bob Clark, Christian Science Committee on Publication for Florida

I live in an area with a lot of wonderful older people, “seniors” as they’re often called. I love seeing seniors walking on the beach, fishing off the piers, driving convertibles, playing golf and generally enjoying life in their later years. These are the true “senior moments”.

So it bothers me deeply when I read about Alzheimer’s disease threatening to demote seniors from their well-earned place and status to a lower level where their “senior-hood” can become a curse rather than a blessing.

Here are some startling statistics from American Family Physician, “The financial and social costs of Alzheimer’s disease are staggering. In the United States, the disease accounts for about $100 billion per year in medical and custodial expenses, with the average patient requiring an expenditure of about $27,000 per year for medical and nursing care. In addition, 80 percent of caregivers report stress, and about 50 percent report depression.”

Is there an alternative to the unjust sentence this disease imposes on our seniors and their families? Is there a way to control or even avoid its collateral costs and damage? Yes. Fortunately for all of us, there is.

As health care reform lumbers forward and costs spiral upward we are seeing increased coverage of alternative approaches to health and healing. The number one alternative, according to NIH, the National Institutes of Health, is prayer. Surprised?

Well, prayer, as it turns out, actually works, even for incurable, degenerative diseases that baffle medical experts. Below is an outstanding and inspiring example of how prayer was used to completely overcome Alzheimer’s. In this case, after a medical diagnosis, every conceivable remedy was applied: Chinese herbalism, homeopathy, ayurvedic medicine, and yoga, all in addition to the most up to date pharmaceutical remedies. After all else failed, this woman found prayer to be the only effective and permanent alternative. Hers is a must read story.

Alzheimer’s Disease Reversed

Her prayer-based triumph over Alzheimer’s is just one example of thousands, offering proof that medical diagnoses are not always final and that there is a practical spiritual alternative to forfeiting the joys of senior-hood.

Consciousness and health – more evidence

By John D. Clague, Christian Science Committee on Publication for Oregon

This month Baylor University published the results of their religion survey taken in 2009, “The Values and Beliefs of The American Public”.  Two previous surveys were taken in 2005 and 2007.  Most of the findings of the survey were interesting.  Two in particular, however, resonate with me and my relationship with God.

They report that those who have a “warm relationship with God” report the fewest “mental health issues”.  These are self reports, so it’s impossible to concisely determine what a mental health issue is.  For me it doesn’t matter.  The point is that I’m happy and feel that my life is enriched because I have a very personal and warm relationship with God.  God expresses Himself through His creation. God is love, and I am an expression of God.  Thus, Love is part of my being. I can’t think of a more intimate relationship than being an expression of my creator which is Love.

The other noteworthy point of the survey is that those who believe in an “engaged God” report far less anxiety in the areas of generalized anxiety, social anxiety, paranoia, obsession, and compulsion. God is very engaged in my life and I don’t experience anxiety, just like many of the participants in the survey.

This data begs the question “how is God engaged in my life”?  As God’s expression, every moment of my day is a prayer or mental communion with my maker. I hold in thought the perfection that I know to be God and identify my highest qualities as an expression of that perfection.  This requires a great deal of effort on my part, to keep my thought focused on the Love that is God, and to put this into practice every day, but the benefits are clearly described in the survey.

There are other benefits I derive from my relationship with God not described in the survey, which is really an experience in consciousness that plays itself out in my human life.  My relationship with God directly affects the health of my body.

Dr. Herbert Benson, MD, a renowned researcher and writer on the effects of consciousness on the body, has written several books on this subject (1). His research adds to a growing list of physical conditions which can be improved or healed through the use of mental techniques.  The value of Benson’s research is not that he has found the ultimate consciousness-based solution to our physical and mental problems, but rather it provides further evidence that consciousness is an indisputable factor in one’s mental and physical health. Beyond the mind-body relationship, spirituality embraced in consciousness is the next level of establishing and maintaining our well-being.

A hundred years ago, Mary Baker Eddy explored this new/old understanding of the power of Spirit to heal the body, at the same time Freud was delving into the human psyche and Einstein into the nature of matter. As she described it, she was looking into the unsearchable realm of the divine Mind, while Freud plumbed the depths of the human mind, and Einstein the very nature of energy, mass, and time.Today’s researchers build on the work of all three of these pioneers, but for me, the greatest of these is the one that links well being to divine Love.

(1)  This is not an exhaustive list:
* Timeless Healing, 1997, Simon & Schuster
* The Relaxation Response, 2000, Harper Paperbacks (with Miriam Z. Klipper)
* Relaxation Revolution, 2010, Scribner (with William Proctor, JD)
* Beyond the Relaxation Response, 1985, Berkley (with William Proctor)
* The mind/body effect: How behavioral medicine can show you the way to better health by Herbert Benson, 1979, Simon and Schuster

Prayer That Heals – A Reason for Blogging

Today I have the pleasure of sharing this post from the blog of Shannon Horst, Christian Science Committee on Publication for New Mexico.  Her story is a clear and compelling example of why people, such as Shannon and I, choose Christian Science as their health care system.  It works!  John D. Clague, Christian Science Committee on Publication for Oregon.

For readers who follow this blog, you know that I generally post an original piece on Monday every week. Well, yesterday, I had every intention of doing just that. But, let me share with you what happened because it is the very reason I am blogging.

Sunday night, after a lovely evening spent with my family and my brother, his wife and kids, I planned to head to my office and write my blog so that it could be posted very early Monday. But, after returning home from dinner out, I was hit with a sudden illness. I cannot tell you what it was but I can tell you that in the space of about 90 minutes I went from being fine to feeling so unwell that I could barely hold my head up or think straight. I could not find any comfortable position except to pace back and forth across one room.

As I always do, I turned to God in prayer. The prayer I engaged in is considered a scientific “treatment” in Christian Science and it is specific and designed to heal one of any illness. Sunday night, my prayer included affirmation of God’s allness and goodness and the fact that God is all cause and effect. It included my refusal to accept that I was anything less than God’s child – His actual outcome and reflection. It included my refusal to accept that I was subject to a virus or germs, because I have come to understand through studying Christian Science that I am actually a spiritual idea and not a material object. Lastly, I fully expected healing and gave gratitude to God in anticipation of a return to normalcy.

When, after about an hour, I still did not feel well, I called my mother and asked for her to pray with me. In about 20 minutes, the symptoms began to abate. In an hour they were entirely gone. I lay down and slept soundly through the night.

I did not get my blog written Sunday night. But, I experienced a clear and, for me, undeniable example of healing through prayer in Christian Science. It was quick, effective and affordable. My own experiences give me my reasons for wanting to be sure that scientific prayer is part of our nation’s search for solutions to its so-called “healthcare crisis.”

By Shannon Horst, Christian Science Committee on Publication for New Mexico