|
In the 1870s, when Nona Brooks was a little girl growing up
in the countryside outside Louisville, Kentucky, she had an amazing
experience. Alone in
the garden one afternoon, she became aware that everything around
her was bathed in a radiant light, glowing much brighter than the
afternoon sun, and yet in some way, comforting. The experience seemed to
last forever, though in fact it was somewhat less than half an hour,
and even then was over too soon.
A few years after, the family fortunes had a
downward turn, and they found themselves starting over with friends
in the frontier town of Pueblo, Colorado. Life was much harder, there,
but the family was together, and Nona and her sister managed to keep
up with the work that the new house required and still be active
members of the local Presbyterian church.
When she was in her late teens, Nona began
having difficulty swallowing.
By eighteen, her throat was so scarred and swollen that she
could barely eat or drink.
The local doctors had no hope for her. Her pastor was
sympathetic but equally unhelpful.
Slowly starving to death, Nona was persuaded by
a neighbor, Mrs. Bingham, to attend a class that might help
her. Mrs. Bingham had
also suffered from an “incurable” illness, had gone to Chicago and
studied under Emma Hopkins, was freed of her symptoms, and now was
teaching everyone she knew all that she had learned.
Nona and her sister Alethea were finally
persuaded to attend when they understood that nothing being taught
was contrary to their own Presbyterian doctrine. They went to classes once a
week for three weeks.
In between times, they did their “homework” faithfully,
reciting affirmations of wholeness and praises to God as they went
about caring for their home and its inhabitants. Unable to feel “God
is my health, I cannot be sick,” Nona chose to repeat “God is
everywhere, God is all, God is here.”
On their way to the third class, Nona and her
sister stopped at the physician’s to get a new prescription for
Nona’s throat. Her
condition had not improved, and the doctor was losing hope.
They went on to the class, and, as they sat
listening to Mrs. Bingham and repeating what she told them to, Nona
felt the room fill with light.
Looking around her, everything glowed—and she knew her throat
was healed. Of course,
when she told her sister and classmates, they thought she was just
affirming health. But
that night, for the first time in months, she ate everything that
the family ate.
Coming home from class one day, the sisters
found Alethea's daughter, a hemophiliac, bleeding. “Nona, you treat
the child,” Alethea said, “and I’ll treat you.” Nona was unwilling, at
first, believing she didn’t know how. But she followed Mrs.
Bingham’s directions and the child stopped bleeding—never to do so
again.
Nona had difficulty accepting what was
happening. It took
several more such incidents—of her own and Mrs. Bingham’s—to
convince her. Then, she
was concerned about how all this fit with the Presbyterian doctrine
in which she had been raised.
The sisters called on their pastor to tell him of their
experiences. He
immediately invited them to share with the Wednesday prayer
meeting—only to rescind the invitation at the request of his more
conservative board of elders, who went on to remove Nona and Alethea
from their posts as Sunday School teachers.
Rejected by her church, Nona nonetheless
participated in several more healings in Pueblo, as she prepared for
a career as a primary school teacher. After a few years, she
accepted a post in Denver, where her other sister, Fannie James, was
teaching to classes in her home what they had learned from Mrs.
Bingham.
Fannie was also corresponding with a woman in
San Francisco, Malinda Cramer, who was teaching similar ideas and
publishing a magazine called Harmony. Mrs. Cramer visited Denver
in 1889-90, teaching well-attended classes and deepening their
friendship. She called her teachings Divine Science, which Fannie
appreciated and adopted as the title for her own classes.
Alethea came to Denver and taught these ideas,
as well. Soon, the
sisters’ classes outgrew Fannie’s home and they were offered rooms
in a downtown building by a grateful client. Nona was, again,
hesitant, but she spent one summer vacation teaching there with her
sisters and knew it was time to change jobs. She devoted the rest of her
life to teaching and healing.
The practitioner
withdraws his thought from outward things and gives his full
attention to what he knows to be the Truth, that God’s Presence is
about and within the one he is asked to help, as Life and Light
and Love. He affirms this until he himself becomes so conscious of
the truth of his statement that to him there is no other presence but
the One. This ends the treatment for that time. Treatments are
given usually twice a day until there is perfect recovery.
Sometimes the healing is instantaneous.
Miss Brooks quickly became well known
throughout the region as a competent healer and teacher. For the most part, people
would come to her only after traditional medical treatments had
failed them, and, if at all possible, she would sit with them until
they were free of symptoms—though her full schedule often required
breaking the process up into several sessions.
Once or twice, someone would come in at the end
of a series of sessions, and she would simply look at them or touch
them and their pain, boil, or whatever, would be gone. On the few
occasions when a patient died in spite of her treatment, she was
very upset—until she realized that she treated for Life, and a full
life for the soul included moving on from material bodies into
immortal, everlasting life.
By 1895, all three sisters were teaching and
healing regularly in the Monroe Street building, and in 1898 they
incorporated as the Divine Science College, with Nona (the only one
who had been to college) as the President.
Initially, Nona was overwhelmed by the idea of
supporting the building and the people, but she started treating for
money and other resources when they were needed—for herself and for
the school—and the supply invariably came to meet each request. After several years of this
“just in time” process, she realized she could simply treat for full
support and supply—and did so, relieving herself of any further
concern for any kind of resource.
Several of the students and alumni met
regularly Sunday evenings and during the week, and wanted to meet
Sunday mornings in a regular church service. As usual, Nona was hesitant:
they would be in competition with orthodox churches; she would have
to be ordained—which required a trip to California for Mrs. Cramer
to do—and (in those early days) there was no money. But all such reasons melted
away, and the Church of Divine Science of Denver, Colorado, held its
first services on January 1, 1899, with Nona Brooks serving as
minister.
Her sermons were original, and evolved with her
own understanding.
I am asked over and
over again. “How can we accomplish without planning?” …
Plans come to me,
but I never decide on my movements until I have let the matter
rest without argument. I take it into the silence and lay my plan
before Infinite Intelligence. The inner conviction will come.
Follow it. Do not argue. Trust. Maintain the quiet, trustful
attitude. Eliminate the personal wish. Do not be afraid to follow
the inner conviction. There is the guiding Voice in every
experience. …
“How shall I know
when I am led?” … You will hear the guiding Voice, if your motive
is … for the good of the Whole, not for the good of the self, you
will know that the Spirit is leading your choice. Go ahead with
the utmost confidence.
She continued to teach and preach and heal in
Denver until her retirement in the mid-1930s. In 1917 she
substituted for John Murray at the large Church of the Healing
Christ, which met at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City, and
incorporated it into the Divine Science association. By 1925, there
were also Divine Science churches in Boston, Portland, California,
Seattle, Spokane, Topeka, Ohio, Oklahoma, Illinois, District of
Columbia, Maryland, and in other Colorado cities. In 1922 a new
church had been built and dedicated in Denver, and it was paid off
in 1925.
In 1927 Nona was given a trip abroad by her
friends. A few years
later, she decided to resign as minister of the church (they would
only agree to a leave) and she took off for Australia for a
year. She also spoke at
centers in Illinois and Minnesota. In 1938 she returned to the
presidency of the college, which post she held until 1943. She died in her sleep a few
days before her 84th birthday, in March, 1945.
Throughout all her work and teaching, Nona held
to the idea of Omnipresence as a core understanding.
Divine Science
healing is based upon the Omnipresence of God. Divine Scientists
understand Omnipresence to be just what it implies, the full
Presence of God in all places at all times. …
What God is must be present
everywhere. God is
Life, and Love, and Strength and Power; God is in each soul, and
will be called into fullest expression as the soul recognizes this truth and
lives by it. …
Man has not known
this truth, and has believed himself to be mentally, spiritually,
and bodily weak, subject to many ills and inharmonies.
…
As soon as one
becomes conscious of
this Life and Strength within him, he is healed. It is the part of
the practitioner to affirm the truth of this Presence, this Light
within the one seeking healing, until the consciousness of
Wholeness, Health, comes to the patient. All true healing begins
within, and brings a double blessing—spiritual upliftment and
bodily harmony.
This commitment to the idea of Omnipresence
energized and guided all of Nona’s work, all her life. In 1918 a
young student named Ernest Holmes approached her at a New Thought
conference and said “I want to discover where you get your power,”
and later, understanding, he said, “You continually hark back to
Omnipresence.”
|