It is always interesting to know a little about the author of a book, so some detective work by Joyce Voysey has shed some light on Robert Peel, the author of our current study, Mary Baker Eddy: Years of Discovery.
Book Club followers will find the two images here of interest. They are from a much earlier book by Peel called Christian Science: Its Encounter with American Culture, published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1958 (7th printing 1969).
Some of Peel's own story is shared in his book Spiritual Healing in a Scientific Age (1987) under the title Personal Statement. Here he tells of the profound changes that occurred in his family as a result of some specific healings. He also pinpoints "prejudice, misunderstanding, sloppiness, and ...deliberate falsification of the facts" in much writing on the subject of Christian Science. Surely this was a major motivation for him as a historian and Christian Scientist to write the trilogy we have currently begun to investigate.
In a tender account of the healing of his ill father, Peel recalls: "I had never before seen such stark suffering, and my father's groans seemed to fill the house. But a few minutes later [after his mother had begun praying for him as she was learning to in her study of Christian Science, and because his father had specifically chosen this healing method] they [the groans] stopped, and a period of extraordinary quiet followed It was a quiet that seemed filled with perfect peace and assurance, a quiet within and without oneself, like nothing I had ever experienced before." His father soon fell asleep and "within an hour, he ... emerged free and fit, and called the hospital to cancel the [operation]. ... From that time on, the whole household atmosphere changed radically--greatly improved health ... a new spiritual strength and buoyancy, a new meaning to life" (p. 184).
This spiritual strength is significant. On pages 80-81 of Years of Discovery, Peel contrasts the "genteel ideal of womanhood" characterised by "watery self-effacement" prevalent in the nineteenth century when Mary Glover was newly widowed and a new mother, with "common sense and spiritual honesty", qualities which the young Mary put to use as she went forward to open a "infant school", described as "one of the first kindergartens in New England". Spiritual mettle was to sustain and forward the lives of both Anne Peel and Mary Baker Eddy, as well as Robert Peel himself.
Julie Swannell (research Joyce Voysey)
No comments:
Post a Comment