Right motives for skiing

It was the middle of my competitive skiing career, late January in 1965, when I left where I was stationed in the United States Army at Fort Carson, Colorado, and arrived in Germany to begin 18 days of training to represent the Army in the World Military Ski Championships, organized by the Conseil International du Sport Militaire (CISM). The competition was to be held that February in Switzerland.

The previous winter, I’d competed as a member of the US Olympic Nordic Combined Team (a combination of cross-country skiing and ski jumping), but my participation in the CISM would be a little different. I would be competing in a cross-country ski race, which also included carrying a rifle and shooting at stationary targets along the way (now called the biathlon).

Right away, it was clear to me that prayer was going to be a significant part of my training and performing, especially because I had never before skiied while carrying a rifle. Most concerning at the time, however, was the fact that my military assignments during the previous nine months had afforded me no opportunity for ski training of any kind—I was way out of shape! And 18 days seemed too short a time to get back in form to compete with athletes who had been training all year.

Neither time nor circumstance could separate me from God and the spiritual qualities we express by reflection.

In those weeks before the competition, I was grateful to be able to train and spend time alone, and really focus on prayer. My first step in prayer was to establish right motives for skiing. As Mary Baker Eddy says in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “Right motives give pinions to thought and strength and freedom to speech and action” (p. 454). I realized my motivation had to be to glorify God by expressing His qualities of strength, endurance, accuracy, and control. Neither time nor circumstance could separate me from God and the spiritual qualities we express by reflection. These qualities are not dependent on muscles, lungs, or a physical body for expression, but originate in divine Mind, God, and are therefore spiritual.

I’d learned through my study of Christian Science that when we turn our thought to God to better understand our connection to Him, this spiritualization of thought results in health and natural activity of the body. Mary Baker Eddy explains, “Mind is the source of all movement, and there is no inertia to retard or check its perpetual and harmonious action” (Science and Health, p. 283). I used this statement to direct my prayer as I mentally prepared for the challenge ahead.

It occurred to me to look up the definitions of strength and endurance. In the dictionary I used, strength was defined, in part, as “the power to resist force,” and endurance as “the power to persist.” I recognized that I could more fully express these spiritual qualities in my cross-country ski race if I could resist the physical and mental suggestions of fatigue by acknowledging God’s ever-presence as divine Mind and Spirit, and persisting in that affirmation throughout the event.

For the next two weeks, I practiced doing just that while I trained on a circular ski track at a nearby soccer field. Each day, I felt able to ski just a little longer and faster. Even though I was able to have only one day to practice with the rifle, I knew that accuracy and control were qualities of divine Mind, and that I naturally express these qualities as well. By the time the rest of the team arrived and we departed for the event, I felt truly prepared. I felt complete trust that the race was entirely in God’s care.

I completed the race with the second-best time and score of our team members, and at a level consistent with my peak results as a cross-country skier the previous year.

Mrs. Eddy wrote, “Desire is prayer; and no loss can occur from trusting God with our desires, that they may be moulded and exalted before they take form in words and in deeds” (Science and Health, p. 1). I am so grateful for the truth of this statement. Trusting God in this way became the basis of my training and success for the rest of my competitive skiing career. I began to understand that my most important focus was not so much what I physically did as part of my training regimen, but how I translated those “things into thoughts,” by exchanging “the objects of sense for the ideas of Soul” (Science and Health, p. 269) and maintaining that consciousness throughout the training session or competition. Rather than about lungs and muscle, it was more about enthusiasm, joy, love, and gratitude.

This change in focus served me well over the next three years in skiing, including qualifying for the 1968 Olympic Nordic Combined Team, and following that, becoming the first American to win a World Cup event in my sport (http://sentinel.christianscience.com/champion-skier). This experience has also deepened my understanding of Christian Science, and inspired me to focus on “right motives,” no matter what situations arise.