Catherine Ponder is an American author who is best known for her books on prosperity and spirituality.

As of the time of writing, she is in her 90s and living in Palm Desert California.

I have a special love for her work, and wrote about her in "50 Prosperity Classics"

Ponder's story first, then in the second part, her teachings...

She was born in Hartsville, South Carolina, on February 14, 1927, and grew up in relative poverty.

As a child she would give away her lunches and clothes to other children.

As Ponder grew up, she wanted to wage a ‘war on poverty’.

In time (as she relates in “Open Your Mind to Prosperity” - 1971) she would come to the view that it was better to understand the sources of prosperity.

After graduating from school she enrolled at Worth business college.

She married (her husband taught at University of Texas) but after his unexpected death she found herself with a child to support.

Working as a secretary, Ponder was thinking how to reconcile her Christian faith with the need to make money.

She loved reading the biographies of successful people, and was also immersed in “New Thought” teachings by thinkers such as Emilie Cady.

She began to “ferret out” formulas of prosperity from these sources.

This was the beginning of her career as a teacher of the prosperity mindset.

Ponder enrolled at the Unity Ministerial School in Kansas City, Missouri, where she received her BS in Education in 1958. In the same year was ordained as a Unity Church minister.

The year 1958 saw the deepest recession in America since World War Two.

At this time she was far from rich herself. Living in a one room apartment, she was embarrassed about teaching the subject.

Yet at the same time she felt that opening her mind to the universe’s abundance would be her ticket to something better.

Many of Ponder’s early pupils felt guilty about even studying the subject of money, believing that seeking it was sinful.

But Ponder told them that prosperity was “spiritually right”, and proved it via many quotes and stories from the Bible.

Ponder describes the Bible as “the greatest prosperity textbook ever written”.

Among the Hebrew leaders, she notes, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob were each well off men, even millionaires. Genesis tells us that Abraham, for instance, “was very rich in cattle, in silver, and gold"