Safe horseback ride home
When my family and I were staying in a hacienda on vacation, we decided to go horseback riding. While we were riding, it started raining and thundering, and the horses were frisky. I don’t horseback ride a lot, and I was getting scared. The guide came over to help me with my rain poncho. As I was trying to put it on, my horse was trying to run away. I couldn’t hold on to the reins and put on my poncho. The guide held on to my leg and the horse’s reins while I struggled with the poncho. I was praying silently, “Father-Mother, God, help me know this is Your pony.” I finally got the poncho on, and we started to head back to the hacienda.
As we were going, a second thought tried to come to me, “I hate this pony!” But I stopped myself at “I ha…,” and an angel thought said, “No, this pony is created by God, too, and since we’re both ideas of God, we are perfect.” I understood that both of us were governed by God.
Then, we rode back and my pony was quieter.
As we got closer to the hacienda, my pony started to gallop until he was next to the guide and his horse. I started to get afraid again. I remembered, again, “This pony is God’s idea, and I can’t be hurt.” I felt calm, and we got to the hacienda.
Once we arrived, I felt better, and I also had a better understanding of God.
Just before breakfast that same day, my mom and I had taken a walk and I’d been asking questions about God. I feel like that horse ride let me use the answers I got from my mom. I loved it!
Louisa, fifth grade
Quito, Ecuador
A note from Louisa’s mother
In the mountainous region where we were, storms can appear suddenly and be forceful. As we were riding and the rain, thunder, and flashes of lightning were surrounding us, I was praying, too. My prayer was simply: “God is All: cause and effect.” It was tempting to see the situation as: big storm = uncertain situation. Instead, I claimed: God, cause = peace, effect. All is one and at peace under God.
With the noise of the storm, Louisa and I couldn’t hear each other to talk. As I watched Louisa, I was touched by her calm, steady manner. She seemed focused and at peace. It could have been tempting to react, cry, and not want to ride on. The guide was trying to get us safely home as calmly and quickly as possible. Louisa stayed the course. A phrase from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy came to me: “The truths of immortal Mind sustain man ...” (p. 103 ).
After we dismounted, we hugged and appreciated how good it is to be in God’s control, anywhere and everywhere!
My simple prayer on that ride was connected to the idea of “a priori reasoning,” which I’d been working with that morning. In Science and Health, in the chapter “Recapitulation,” it says: “We reason imperfectly from effect to cause, when we conclude that matter is the effect of Spirit; but a priori reasoning shows material existence to be enigmatical. Spirit gives the true mental idea. We cannot interpret Spirit, Mind, through matter. Matter neither sees, hears, nor feels.
“Reasoning from cause to effect in the Science of Mind, we begin with Mind, which must be understood through the idea which expresses it and cannot be learned from its opposite, matter. Thus we arrive at Truth, or intelligence, which evolves its own unerring idea and never can be coordinate with human illusions” (pp. 467–468 ).
This spiritual logic sustained me during that experience. A material situation, such as a storm, cannot determine our reality. The one, good God is the source of all. Love is the only cause, and it is from this that all being flows.
I later looked up the thought that I’d had during the ride. It is in Science and Health, in the chapter “Animal Magnetism Unmasked,” and continues as follows: “The truths of immortal Mind sustain man, and they annihilate the fables of mortal mind, whose flimsy and gaudy pretensions, like silly moths, singe their own wings and fall into dust.”
The entire image of a scary situation is just a fable, an illusion, with no power. We are always safe, in the atmosphere of divine Love, as the expression of divine Mind.
Marjie
