My son, Dustin, was 8 years old when the heavy steel front door of our apartment smashed his finger.  He was leaving for school, and sometimes when the terrace door is open up here on the 38th floor, there is a wicked compression that happens and doors slam all through the place – especially the front door.

His scream had me running through the living room immediately.  The finger was still caught in the door when I arrived and Dust stood in shock just looking back and forth between me and where his finger disappeared between the steel door and the door jam. I quickly reopened the door and let his finger out.

It didn’t look good. The finger from the first joint to the tip was already bright red and turning a wicked purple and swelling immediately to twice its size. He was horrified and began to scream again. The thought immediately struck me, “How could his finger have possibly fit between door and jam?” There was only 1/8 to 1/4 inch of space between.  The picture in my imagination of his finger caught in that narrow space was not pretty.

I remembered my mother’s advice to me many years ago. Don’t look at the injury. Look away from matter into the realm of Spirit. I ordered Dustin to do the same.

He was totally freaking out. The pain was now extremely intense and shooting up his arm and the finger seemed to be going through its negative changes by the second.

I rushed him into the bathroom, turned the cold water on in the sink, thrust his hand and finger into the pouring water and again ordered him, “Keep your hand in the water.  Don’t take it out. Don’t look at it. Turn away!” At 8 years old he was still young enough to pay total attention to Dad and he did everything I told him to do and stuck mightily to it.

Then I said, “OK, we’re going to repeat the Scientific Statement of Being from Sunday School. I want you to say it over and over and don’t stop until the pain goes away.” We repeated these words of Mary Baker Eddy’s over and over for the next hour.

“There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter. All is infinite Mind and its infinite manifestation, for God is All-in-all.”

That’s all he could remember. That’s all he needed to remember. At first he could only get out one word at a time between sobs. I sat down and worked with him as he stood at the sink. We repeated it over and over, shutting out all else except these words and their meanings.

At one point, he began to faint. We focused harder on the words. He centered and we continued fiercely focusing. We spoke those two sentences a hundred different ways emphasizing different words and different meanings each repetition. Sometimes it was just repetition, just sound coming out of our mouths, but most of the time it was a deep search by both of us for the truths of matter and Mind.

He was 8 years old, but in that hour he was of no age, of no limited intelligence.  He held steadfast to the truths of those words. We were both fierce in our determination to rule out all else but the truth of the moment.

And that truth was that his finger was not substantial in matter. That matter did not rule the moment. That Mind did. And that Mind, or God, was all there was – allness in all – leaving no room for anything else. That his entire being, including his finger, was a reflection only of Spirit, of God. He was not made of matter, but, in fact, was the manifestation of Mind, God.

I certainly got all this in this concentrated hour. I clung to these truths like never before.  Not once did we check out the finger to see how it was doing. We followed my orders, the original orders of my mom.

His tears subsided, his fears slipped away, his voice steadied as we worked and prayed on. We never left these words. We said these two sentences hundreds of times in that hour. I was not aware of time. I was not aware of bathroom. I was not aware of injury. I was only aware of the presence of God and the truths of these words.

Dustin stuck with me the whole time. Finally he said, “Can I take my finger out, Daddy?”  I, matter of fact, said, “Sure.” He did. For the first time in over an hour we looked at his finger. No swelling, no discoloration, perfectly normal except that it was a little wet. He had had a complete healing. He flexed his hand and fingers a few times and went off to school.

For Dustin, it was simply normal. He did what Daddy said to do and it worked. He repeated his prayer and, of course, that worked too. After all, that’s why you prayed. No big deal. Being late for school was a much bigger deal.

For me, it was pretty mind-blowing. This one was a whopper. The material picture in the beginning was extremely frightening and momentous. What transpired in about an hour’s time was what many would call a miracle – what an innocent 8 year old would call normal, what a father would call amazing.

What was the power of the cold water? You gotta ask that question. Did it play a part in the healing? Sure it did, but it wasn’t the healing agent. It just numbed the pain in its coldness. It just helped take away his fear. It was just a temporary placebo to divert his attention.

Doctors will talk about the red corpuscles and the white corpuscles, but I know that our stand at the door of thought and refusal to admit the conclusion that door and finger collide and produce injury was the true healing agent. Why? Because any doctor would tell you that in the science of matter, it takes time for the cold water to do its matter thing, and that the body heals by time and alteration of molecules. Any doctor would tell you that an hour was not enough time to totally heal that extent of an injury.

So did it take an hour for mind to heal the finger? I don’t believe so. I believe that was done in an instant – the instant we got over the fear, the instant that we saw that God was All-in-all, the instant that we saw Dustin as the perfect manifestation of that Mind.

Jesus did the same thing over and over again. He saw the perfect hand and so the material picture of the withered hand simply was no more. The power of thought. Jesus raised the dead and the principle of that we simply applied to the healing of Dustin’s finger.

So was it the words? Was it the repetition? Sure, they all played their parts in the adventure, but there’s no magic in the assembly of those words. Was it the chant? No.  The chant helped the concentration; it kept us alert at the door of thought, it kept us focused on the right ideas, but it was not the healing agent.

The healing agent was simply the truth that matter is an illusion. Wanna change the matter? Change the mind. That’s what we did. We changed our minds – from the frightening material picture to the perfect spiritual picture of Dustin as the perfect reflection of a perfect idea. That was the healing agent – the power of the truth of being.

Looking back, I really think Dustin was the more centered of the two of us once I got him on track.  I had to battle my thoughts, my fears, practicality, material medica, world thought, my own sports injury history. He just did as he was told. I believe today that the power of his thought, which, of course, was God derived, is what healed him. I was just the guide.

There were no after effects to this injury, no stiffness, no swelling, never any discoloration. His finger, a half an inch wide was momentarily flattened to a piece of rearranged matter that was an eighth to a quarter inch wide – all for about 20 seconds.  That’s supposed to create a major trauma to the body, and at first it appeared to be doing just that. But then a more powerful thing took over. Mind replaced the laws of matter and the truer ideas of Spirit stepped in.

Spiritual healing took place.

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