Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood

This book is a fairly good memoir, despite long digressions into overly detailed memories. I skimmed some chapters, especially in the first half. However, as therapy for a recovering Christian Scientist, it was a wonderful experience that I would highly recommend. Particularly in the second half of the book, when Ms. Wilson gets into the meat of her family's troubles, her writing style hits its stride and the insights are especially clear and penetrating.It may be flogging a dead horse to critique Christian Science these days, as it fades away with the passing of the last generation to grow up without antibiotics. However, those of us who were raised in it need to critique it for our own benefit. The public image of CS has to do with shunning doctors and medicine. There's much more to it. In my family, as in Wilson's, the greatest pain was caused by the avoidance of relationship problems and mental disorders. An untreated infection may kill you quickly, but an abusive parent can affect your quality of life, and those of the rest of your family, over many years.My father was a third-generation Christian Scientist, First Reader of our church, and served on the board of a CS sanitorium. He went to church twice a week and served on countless church committees. I'm sure he never once tasted alcohol or tobacco, he never went to a doctor, and he always had one of us sitting by the TV (in the days before remote controls) to turn down the volume when ads for medicine came on. He was also an abuser with chronic untreated depression and suicidal impulses.Nobody could acknowledge that my father's abuse was happening because we had to pretend that life was Perfect. This made us all enablers. Society is full of abusers and people who enable them, but few have a basis for enabling that's as powerful as the belief that the abuse literally doesn't exist. In Christian Science, if you see abuse, this is a problem in your perception--an instance of Error. You need to work on your perception, not on the person who seems to be imperfect. Domestic abuse thrives in such a setting. There are statistics that show Christian Scientists live shorter lives. I don't know of any statistics on how common abuse or mental illness is in CS families. My guess: very common.Kudos to Barbara Wilson for talking about this in her own life, and helping the rest of us survivors of CS to confront and fix the problems in our families that medicine can't touch.

This book is the best I have read so far on the Christian Scientist religion. I have not finished the book yet. I find it painful to read about all the lives that were harmed, so I have to put it down for a while and then go back. There are many writings about Mary Baker Eddy and the beliefs that she influenced people to embrace. My mother's family members were Christian Scientists. My mother became seriously ill and went to a doctor. She could never have contact with her mother again and rarely mentioned the religion or her mother. Everything was always so secretive. I want to read more about the women who succombed to this religion -- about their personalities, marriages, and ways of raising children. I haven't found anything that focuses on just that or that answers my questions about the pain I know she endured.

Well constructed. I trust the narrator. A child’s faith. The loss of her mother. The shame that is the shadow of Christian Science.

I you grew up in Christian Science and left the church like I did, you'll like this book. If you are still a Christian Scientist then you'll hate it if you let yourself read it, which Mrs. said you probably shouldn't do. if you know nothing about Christian Science, don't read this until you read God's Perfect Child:Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church.

Grew up a CS but no longer involved. Book was very interesting. gs

This book is really the author's memoir of her childhood in the Midwest, which involved MUCH more than Christian Science, although CS was her parents' and grandparents' strong belief.

It's interesting that not one of these reviews mentions Christ Jesus and that he healed without medicine. Christian Science is often condemned because it's proponents don't go to doctors. This infers that using conventional medicine and doctors is the only right option. Other religions also practice spiritual healing. Jesus disciples did it and his adherents did it into the 3rd Century at which time Jesus was arbitrarily designated as God and healing through prayer for all intents and purposes ceased. That decision made healing prayer a miracle and not natural. Understanding man as the image and likeness of God (not an manlike/anthropomorphic God) is the key to seeing healing. The emphasis in the book and a few of the reviews is that Christian Scientists claim matter isn't real. Again that is like trying to state a truth by beginning with the falsehood. The truth is that God is all therefore the human existence has no substance - which physicists know is the truth. Mary Baker Eddy received her inspiration by reading the Bible and she kept reading it. She had struggles throughout her whole life with very human problems just like all of us do. She makes a clear distinction between the relative human experience and the absolute divine thought acknowledging that we have to grow into the understanding of God as all. She specifically states that we can't demonstrate what we don't know. This religion does not hypnotize, mesmerize or otherwise brain wash people. People make their own choices. I know many Christian Scientists who have had phenomenal healings of deadly diseases. And I know Christian Scientists who have used conventional medicine and I know Christian Scientists who have died under medical care as well as under Christian Science treatment. Don't be tempted to pillory the religion over the ability or lack thereof of it's adherents to heal. If you do so you are then like those who put Jesus on the cross out of fear of what they didn't understand.

What a story of her childhood, i was attracted the the subject of Christian Scientist, but feel for her poor mother, mental illness and the struggle of a child growing up in the strange world of uncertanity and illness.