Three issues of the Sentinel. That’s all it took to set my sights on the spiritual truths revealed by Mary Baker Eddy in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.

On a lovely sunny summer day, a friend from high school stopped by, bringing her preschoolers to play with my preschoolers. As they were leaving, she casually mentioned that she recently had been to a Christian Science lecture and how very good it was. I replied that I was interested in Christian Science but knew little about it. She pulled three copies of the Sentinel from her car and handed them to me with no comment, and off she went.

I read all three of them over and over because I was slow to grasp the meaning of what I was reading. Another language was being presented to me—the language of Spirit—and I had to think about it to understand it. I knew I liked what the articles in these magazines were saying, but making the ideas they contained my own would take some doing.