When my brother and I were preparing to launch our career as a dance team, Dad took us aside to give us some advice based on his own successful business practices. He used an example of horses and their riders in a race. He said that the horse and the rider that make a little extra effort come out on top and achieve success. He encouraged us to make the little extra effort that means all the difference between mediocrity and excellence.
For some time before going on stage, my brother and I would look at each other and smile and say, “Horses.” To us this meant to follow Dad’s advice. It paid off in many years of successful performances and in other careers that followed. Of these, the best and deepest of my careers, because of the unfathomable learning I’ve gained from the healing work, is my Christian Science practice.
How does one feel impelled to enter this career? It takes work, but you love the spiritual development that occurs. In her poem “Christ My Refuge,” Mary Baker Eddy writes, “I kiss the cross, and wake to know / A world more bright” (Poems, p. 12). So, if we really want to experience the “world more bright,” we’ll kiss the “cross” of challenging experiences. In this way we learn of Spirit, and are on the way to gaining the crown. That’s the road to salvation.
