Deborah Gordon's life changed when her six-year-old daughter told her she wanted to learn about God. Gordon, and her husband Kenn, weren't religious, but Gordon knew her co-leader in Brownies was a Sunday school teacher and asked whether her daughter could attend. She was told it wasn't a traditional church. "She said, 'You might be interested. Maybe the first Sunday, take her to Sunday school and then come in.'" They did.
"I was never on a personal search for spirituality. But at the church I heard how important our thinking is, how our thoughts create our reality, how each person has the potential for whatever they can imagine their life to be. I was just, 'huh!' These are all the things that I had always been interested in. I never knew that there was a teaching that addressed these things.
"I said, 'This is it. I've got to hear more of it.'" "It"
was Science of Mind, based on the teachings of Ernest Holmes, who has studied
the great religions and philosophies and distilled them into a method of
teaching, which says there is a power for good in the universe greater than we
are - and we can use it; that we are the master of our destiny, and we can
change our life by changing our thinking. Gordon did just that.
She was born in Winnipeg, but her family came to Kelowna when she was in Grade 8. She attended the University of British Columbia and got a degree in Psychology. "I was very quiet, introverted, with low self-esteem, and didn't think I had any gifts to offer. I had this psych degree, but never had the courage or self-confidence to pursue going out and doing that." She became an office administrator, while Kenn, the Kelowna man she had married after graduating, developed restaurants, but then both reached a point where they wanted a change, so he parents invited them to California.
"We went on an extended vacation, which lasted about 12 years. I had a daughter by that time and a son who was born in California." They had been in the Coachella Valley south of Palm Desert for about three years when their daughter asked that fateful question.
"Once we had started attending the church, we found everything that I didn't know we were missing. We made friends, we enrolled in classes, we had a burgeoning social life and connection with higher self. It woke us up. Our lives were improving in every way imaginable."
After four years of weekly classes, "we had ministers' licences and wondered, 'Now what the heck are we going to do?'"
They decided to open a Science of Mind church, and Kenn started looking for a good place to start one. "They went to Lake Tahoe, and he said to his friends, 'This is a lot like Kelowna except Kelowna is better because it has a bigger lake and is more beautiful.' So his friends said, 'Why don't you go back there?'" While Kelowna already had a Science of Mind Minister, fate would intervene.
"A couple of weeks later, we got a phone call from that minister and he said, 'I'm getting burnt out, and I just can't do the classes anymore and would you have any interest in coming to the Okanagan?'"
Gordon had known from the first time she came to Kelowna that it would always be home, and they had visited Kenn's parents often while they were in California. They didn't have any luck selling the farm, so they packed up their two cars and their motorhome, "the kids and the dog and all that we could fit in and left. We just walked away."
Their home church in California had three Sunday services of 400 people each, but when the Gordons arrived in Kelowna, there hadn't been any services or classes for a year. All they had was a mailing list of people who might be interested, $450, a Visa card - and faith.
"We came on Oct. 3, 1993, and our first service was Oct. 17. We had a grand total of 14 people, and eight were Kenn's relatives." They started the Kelowna Centre for Positive Living in the Kinsmen fieldhouse, but they now hold Sunday services at the Kelowna Community Theatre.
"Kenn had the faith and I had the butterflies. He knew we were doing the right thing at the right time at the right place and reminded me that this was our passion, that this is what we wanted to do."
She knew she was right because it had changed her life. "It woke me up to the truth within me that was slumbering for so many years. To have the honour and the ability to bring this teaching that had made such a transformative difference in our lives to an ever greater number of people was a gift we had to share."
Like most people, one of Gordon's biggest fears was public speaking, one that, as a minister, she had to overcome. "The first time I spoke in public, I just saw black with little sparkly red things. I don't know what I said. I don't think I breathed."
She was recently reminded of how far she has come when she volunteered to be co-chair of the annual Religious Science International conference in Monterrey, California, which draws more than 1,000 people. The co-chair is a featured speaker, but the first time she said she couldn't speak to all those people.
"I re-upped the next year. They said you have to take on the mantle of being the guest speaker. So I did, and I told my story."
This article appeared in the Okanagan Daily Courier. Ross Freake is a freelance writer living on the Westside.