Taking stock of prayers and healing

OregonLive.com

Ryder Stevens is what's known in the Christian Science church as a "practitioner" of prayer-based healing.

When he speaks next week at Lake Oswego High School, perhaps he'll share the story he told me of his own miraculously fast recovery from a high school football injury just days after a doctor told him the injury would take weeks to heal.

A story he's less likely to tell is the long, painful death of 2-year-old Robyn Twitchell, whose screams of pain from a fatal bowel obstruction forced his Boston neighbors to shut their windows but never persuaded his Christian Science parents to call a doctor.