Many years ago when I was a boy growing up in our village on the slopes of Mt. Kenya, Africa's second highest mountain, I learned practical lessons from maintaining our family's water tanks. Their full meaning has only recently unfolded to me with the aid of a wonderful book.

At that time, there was no piped water in the villages, and all water for domestic use had to be drawn from the river or a well a long way off. My father, being a leader in education and development in our village, pioneered a method of capturing rainwater from our roof runoff and storing it in a tank, for use in the dry season.

He built a house quite unlike the usual round grass thatch huts of our neighbors, made of plastered walls with a roof of corrugated iron sheets on a rectangular plan. By traditional standards, this was a mansion consisting of six rooms, and included a kitchen, granary, pit latrine, bathroom, and cow shed, not to forget a small structure behind the kitchen where I kept my pet rabbits. The main house had a sitting room with a dining table and sofa sets. This is where my five sisters, three brothers, and I grew up.

The house was built on top of a ridge far from the river. But it was my mother's unique privilege that she never had to draw water from the river. They had built gutters all around the eaves of the main house, and these drained rainwater into a huge tank built with stones and concrete. There was also a metal tank near the kitchen, which served the kitchen's more intensive daily needs. The concrete tank served as storage for the dry season, which in Kenya usually lasts two to three months every year.

Every few years during the beginning of the rains, my father ordered that the big tank be cleaned so that new water might be allowed to enter. It was not until I was well past age 15 that I gathered enough courage to be lowered into the tank during the cleaning process. All the old water was drained to the last six inches, and this was used to clean the inside of the tank. It was amazing how dirty this remaining water was when it was disturbed. A thin layer of slimy mud lined the tank's bottom, and this was what had to be stirred up, scrubbed away, and drained off. Once the cleaning and draining were over, new water was allowed into the tank. When I asked my father why the smaller kitchen tank was never cleaned, he told me that it could never be dirty, because unlike the concrete tank, it was always in use—water was constantly flowing into and out of it.

A few years ago when I began to study Science and Health, I realized that the statements in the book illuminate the meaning of my daily and even past experiences. Such statements as, "We cannot fill vessels already full. They must first be emptied" (p. 201) began to reveal to me the significance of my childhood tank experience. Mary Baker Eddy is talking in this passage about God as divine Love and this Love's purifying effect on human consciousness. I saw that the fresh rainwater entering the tank is a wonderful metaphor for the love of God that we express.

Although we like to think of a water tank as a holding or storage vessel, its real utility is as a conduit for the water that rains from the heavens for our use. The more it withholds and retains, the dirtier it becomes. The more efficient it is as a conduit, the purer it becomes. A constant, daily inflow of ideas from spiritual study and prayer has similar effects in our lives.

The two tanks taught me another important lesson about getting and giving. Mrs. Eddy also wrote, "Giving does not impoverish us in the service of our Maker, neither does withholding enrich us" (ibid., p.79). If our big tank was full of water, and its tap closed for the better part of the year, we would never get a drop more into it until it was in use. It could gain nothing in that state, even with the greatest thunderstorm. On the other hand, the smaller tank, by having its tap open on a daily basis, actually gained by becoming repeatedly empty. It sustained the perfect cleanliness of its original state by allowing water to flow through.

I also saw that the larger tank has no water of its own but what rains bring it from the heavens. And what it receives, it must give, or perish. Though perfect himself, Jesus maintained his perfection by the love that flowed from him, and as he himself explained, he was not the source of that love but attributed everything to his Father, divine Love. Jesus said, "The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise" (John 5:19). And speaking of Christ in his letter to the Ephesians, the apostle said, "For through him we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father" (2:18).

As men and women created in God's image, each of us is pure and perfect. It is all the more necessary, then, to allow our purity and worth to be sustained, as Jesus did, by the flow of God's infinite goodness through us. There is no other way than opening the outflow and letting the old go out, and allowing in the new—or in the apostle's words, to "put on the new man" (Eph. 4:24). It is not a one-time thing. It is a daily walk, a workout.

A year or so ago, my willingness to walk the talk of Christian renewal was tested. A close friend I had trusted very much let me down in a business transaction, which left me very bitter. I continued to suffer from this bitterness, and I cut off all communication with him. I self-righteously consoled myself in the fact that I had done nothing wrong, so he should bear the full blame of our broken relationship.

It was then that I recalled the water tank, and saw all the accumulating filth at the bottom of my heart. I saw the slimy mud that was sticking to the bottom of my mental holding tank and realized that the only solution was to let go and give him my love.

I called my friend and reestablished communication by talking to him without any reference to the earlier deal. What so surprised me is that not only are we now on the best of terms, but he recently went out of his way to do me a big favor. Best of all, I feel such relief from letting go and allowing new things to engage us. It feels like a burden has been removed from my shoulders.

Recently when my friend paid me a visit, he showed so much interest in past issues of the Sentinel, which are always lying about in my house, that he went away with a bunch of them. I felt, Wow! It is a wonderful thing to forgive—that is, to give before we can receive anything from another.

The blessings I continue to receive through the daily study of Science and Health along with the Bible are so many. Science and Health continues to illumine the meaning behind passages in the Bible that before had seemed strange or obscure. My daily and even past experiences are becoming more and more comprehensible. I recommend the book to anyone and everyone. css