Having attended the Christian Science Sunday School from the earliest possible age, I learned to love the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:3–17). One Sunday School teacher gave us the assignment of memorizing those rather daunting words. Daunting, because the English language was new to me. But I enjoyed the work of committing the Commandments to memory and took each one to heart, even though their deep meaning eluded me at first.
While the Commandments are often thought of as a list of prohibitions, a poet once called them “the rules of happiness” (Neil Millar, Ideas on Wings, “Ballade for the Commandments,” p. 7).
Through the years, as spiritual understanding grew and climbed beyond the literal meaning of these rules, I grasped something of Mary Baker Eddy’s first tenet of the Church of Christ, Scientist: “As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 497). I was satisfied that I was holding to the inspired Word of the Scriptures and obeying the Commandments to the best of my understanding.
Recently, however, it came as a shock to realize that I was breaking the Tenth Commandment. I was tenaciously coveting my “neighbor’s” garden. Not necessarily the garden of my neighbor next door, but any garden that was flourishing, blooming, neat, colorful, established. I tried for a while to push that startling realization aside, but finally had to come to terms with it. I honestly wanted to be obedient to every one of the Commandments. And my failure to obey the last one of these rules of happiness—“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house … nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s” (Exodus 20:17)—was definitely taking away my joy in my own small garden, making me feel discontented, dissatisfied, envious, thereby hiding from me the glorious beauty of God’s creation all around.
My prayer—the desire to obey the Commandments—became much stronger to me than the desire to have a beautiful garden.
The recognition that I had been entertaining envious thoughts for a long time finally jolted me! Now I had to pray about it. I turn to God for everything. It’s natural for me to ask God for help. There are so many ways to pray. Often my prayer begins simply with a quiet, unspoken, “God, I need Your help” from my heart.
My prayer—the desire to obey the Commandments—became much stronger to me than the desire to have a beautiful garden. Gradually, I found that spiritual sense—the activity of the Christ in human consciousness—was winning over human will. I reasoned first that God, who is Life and infinite good, created man (and that means me) in His likeness, and that likeness cannot be discontented, dissatisfied, incomplete, envious. I continued to reason that all of Life’s beautiful, colorful, radiant expression is everywhere and at hand for everyone to see. I reasoned that yearning for something that my neighbor (near or far) has, is disloyalty to God since it implies that He is partial, changeable, limited—which is impossible! I reasoned then that man does not own or possess anything but has all by reflection, as the heir of God.
A gentle and warm feeling of gratitude began to fill my consciousness. I continued to reason that as God’s child I had all that was good and beautiful and enduring. And so did my neighbor, and his neighbor, and her neighbor. Not one of God’s ideas can lack any good.
Spiritual reasoning leads thought away from self, and up to the joy of understanding our oneness with divine Mind. Spiritual reasoning develops spiritual sense, which is “a conscious, constant capacity to understand God” (Science and Health, p. 209). Willingness to obey the rules stated in the Ten Commandments was guiding my thought to the understanding of all of God’s goodness, here, now.
Not surprisingly, I opened the Christian Science Hymnal one day and found these words:
“A grateful heart a garden is,
Where there is always room
For every lovely, Godlike grace
To come to perfect bloom.” (Ethel Wasgatt Dennis, No. 3, © CSBD)
Here was my answer. It was so clear. This was the garden I was to cultivate and tend and love and rejoice in. As gratitude fills the heart, we see more and more of God’s infinite goodness, beauty, symmetry, order, right at hand, never far off.
For me, this learning process, this purifying of thought, was no longer about a garden, but about my inherent ability to obey “the rules of happiness” and find my God-ordained spiritual selfhood as complete, happy, and fully satisfied.
A few days ago a friend told me that her daffodils had been lovely this spring, her lilac bushes were in full bloom, and her apple tree was a wonder of color. It was so gratifying to be able to rejoice with her in all that beauty and to know that she would be sitting in her beautiful garden and praising God (her words).
This experience has made me especially thankful for the many years I had the privilege of attending a Christian Science Sunday School, in three countries. It was a happy and growing time for me. And years later, Sunday School was a happy time for my daughter, as well. Knowing by heart the Ten Commandments that Moses was given by God, as well as the Beatitudes Jesus taught his followers, meant they were always at hand to inspire me and guide me, and to bring healing.
In the words of the poet mentioned early in this article: “The Ten Commandments speak to bless, And echo in a storm of cheering—They are the rules of happiness.”
Margarita Sandelmann Thatcher is a Christian Science practitioner and teacher in Aurora, Colorado.
