Heaven and hell are ways of thinking. Death is the false belief that anything could ever end. For Christian Scientists, there is only the next phase, which as far as I can tell is the same as this one, only maybe you see it differently. This much I got from the church service I went to one Wednesday night that spring. I went not long after Ms. Lundgren’s call, on an evening after a happy hour that involved two vodka tonics and a couple of scummy warm beers. I paced the sidewalk outside the big church doors for a few minutes—pretty drunk, pretending I was going somewhere else—before I finally pushed through the doors and went in. I walked as straight as possible to the nearest pew, sat down like I was in school again, looked around without moving my head. Whatever I’d been expecting to find inside, whatever I’d been avoiding for more than a dozen years, it wasn’t what I saw that night. There were maybe eight people in a cream-colored sanctuary, which smelled like Pine-Sol, and whose white carpet was raked with deep vacuum lines between the pews. Everything was painted white and cream, white and beige, white and pink—the plaster walls and wooden pews and simple lectern in front.
The sermon, or whatever it was called, began. A smoothfaced elderly man leaned over the lectern and read from the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Occasionally, he stopped to take sips of water from a glass that caught tiny panels of light and disco-balled them around the room. I must have dozed off because the next thing I knew someone two pews in front of me was speaking into a cordless mike. She was an old lady with a silver bun, and she held that big mike in her tiny hand like an ice-cream cone. Mumming it with her lips, fuzzing the room with static. She explained she had been healed of a toothache by being nicer to a neighbor who’d complained about her yard. Her toothache had been a false belief in mortal mind that had tricked her into feeling pain. But Mary Baker Eddy taught us, through Jesus, to love thy neighbor. She said she’d left a pot of tulips on her neighbor’s driveway and the toothache disappeared.
A teenage kid went next. He wore polished leather shoes and a crisp white shirt rolled up to the elbows. He reminded me of the forensics boys from high school at first, except he had powerful tendons in his forearms and faint stubble, like someone who worked outside. He knew exactly how far to hold the microphone from his lips. When he paused, he smoothed a wrinkle in his pants very close to his crotch. He told a long, winding story about a test in school he hadn’t been able to study for, an AP exam, and then, thanking Our Beloved Founder, Mary Baker Eddy, he explained how he’d done well anyhow.
After that it was quiet for a long time. The pews creaked like branches and my head began to ache. The night birds started to trill outside and I longed to slouch down in my seat, lay my head against the cool wood of the pew. But I didn’t. I made myself sit straighter, pay attention. The last person to stand and take the microphone was another old woman. She said she’d been healed of the belief that her husband had died when she’d read this week’s lesson. She smiled brightly and touched her snow-white hair with one hand as she spoke. She said she had given in to the false assumption that her husband was matter, and for months she’d been unable to part with any of his things, his shoes or books or soap. But she finally poured the last of his Old Spice shampoo down the toilet when it came to her that we are reflections of Life, Harold too. There was no death for any of us, ever. I remember exactly how she put the next part, because my palms started to sweat. “Harold’s fine. Harold’s fine always. It’s not what you do but what you think that matters. Mary Baker Eddy tells us heaven and hell are ways of thinking. We need to know the truth of that, pray to understand that death is just the false belief that anything could ever end. There’s no going anywhere for any of us, not in reality. There’s only changing how you see things.”
I was on my way out afterward when the woman with the snowy hair stopped me at the door. Up close, her eyes were a filmy, glistening blue. She was wearing a beige linen dress and a diamond on her ring finger. “Would you like to sign in as a guest? We’re so happy to have you.” She’d gotten a clipboard and a flyer from somewhere and was handing them to me.
“Excuse me—” I said.
As I moved around her, I could smell the peppermint on her breath, the lilac perfume on her wrists, the chemical detergent on her dress. She smelled elaborately and intimately produced, scented with a whole life’s worth of good intentions. She must have been eighty years old at least, but there was something youthful in her face, enviably untroubled. I paused to study her more closely, despite myself. I wanted to hear more about the husband, Harold, and his shampoo. She must have seen my hesitation. “Are you new to the church?” She lifted the pen attached by a balled chain to her clipboard.
“Yes,” I said. Then I instantly regretted it. She looked so avid. “I mean this church,” I clarified, before stepping into the night. “I’m not—I mean, I’m not from around here.”
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