My horse has had healings using the ideas from the Christian Science Textbook
Polo, my lively 8 year-old cob, was a horse that loved going over jumps so I lent her to a teenage girl, a trainee shepherdess, who exercised her gleefully! She rode Polo in jump competitions each weekend and eventually she looked after her full-time!
She and her sister just loved her beautiful field. It all seemed ideal until she got another horse and Polo was ridden mainly by the sister and I was eventually told that a vet had had to put a poultice on one of her hocks saying Polo would never be able to be ridden again! She needed to be kept in her shelter; from eating too much grass.
Even though I now lived in the city it was obviously time for me to take more care of Polo. The girls consented to go on doing the stable work for me as they were still going to the field as they had a taken on another horse as well.
I was devastated as I knew how much Polo loved her freedom galloping around her huge field and being alongside the other horses. So I decided to fence off a small part of the field. I made a point of stopping the veterinary treatment, knowing that with the help of thoughts aligned to Christian Science she would be OK from now on.
I knew Polo loved this sort of care and that with her own love of Life harmony would be restored as everything would be in better balance. She’s had healings in Christian Science before. She had a right to living a healthy life, so I kept on thinking of her as included in “the land of Christian Science where fetters fall and right rights of man (and of horses too) are fully known and acknowledged. [*1]
I had always seen Polo’s innate goodness and love of fun and I knew, unquestionably, that “all of God’s creatures are harmless useful and indestructible” as Science and Health points out; Polo’s lovely spiritual qualities could never deteriorate and neither could her everyday experience and that harmony is always inevitable when we turn to God. There are never any dead-end situations when we look for answers in God’s kingdom of heaven which is where we all really live right now despite material evidence to the contrary.
Mrs Eddy who wrote her enabling book, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, loved horses too and had a healing empathy with all animals as she saw them as being perfect ideas of God, part of Life’s perfect structure. So I knew that Polo was part of this system. Goodness was part of her nature and that therefore I could treat her as a healthy animal.
Feeing this I felt empowered to walk Polo out for an hour or two, into the countryside, every other day! I loved every minute of it and knew Polo did too. These thoughts were enabling and confirmed to me on each visit that we were both part of God’s active energised kingdom where all of God’s “infinite ideas run and disport themselves”! [*2]
I had always sung hymns to her! Once with this feeling of God’s ever-present love had brought about a quick healing, when lying down in her open stable with a hugely rumbling tummy I realised she had colic! She’d been unwilling to come out for her feed. I had sung Mrs Eddy’s hymn, (Mother’s Evening Prayer), “Oh Gentle Presence [*4], and sang it to her snuggling up close to her on her clean straw bed we had some God orientated time together. It had not been long before she got up perfectly well and went outside for the rest of the day. Later she ate all of her hay and that had been the end of that problem. That had been a very quick healing.
So this time, while she appeared lame, I waited till she stopped limping and waited the open wound the poulticing had caused, before walking her out on the bridle paths. And then I waited until she was sound enough to take my weight. This did not take long and soon I was able to saddle her up and walk her out and later cantered her through the lovely trees in the hills nearby! She was so happy!
She always loved sharing people’s company, being appreciated and I eventually found a riding school, who tested her out, and took her under their wing. Then after nearly a year I had to go away on a long sailing trip so I knew it was time to sell her on! She went to a new location to a family who adored her!
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These are the passages in Science and Health which helped me:
[*1]
I saw before me the awful conflict, the Red Sea and the wilderness; but I pressed on through faith in God, trusting Truth, the strong deliverer, to guide me into the land of Christian Science, where fetters fall and the rights of man are fully known and acknowledged.
I saw that the law of mortal belief included all error, and that, even as oppressive laws are disputed and mortals are taught their right to freedom, so the claims of the enslaving senses must be denied and superseded. The law of the divine Mind must end human bondage, or mortals will continue unaware of man's inalienable rights and in subjection to hopeless slavery, because some public teachers permit an ignorance of divine power, — an ignorance that is the foundation of continued bondage and of human suffering.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, pp. 226:29–13)
[*2]
God creates all forms of reality. His thoughts are spiritual realities. So-called mortal mind — being non-existent and consequently not within the range of immortal existence — could not by simulating deific power invert the divine creation, and afterwards recreate persons or things upon its own plane, since nothing exists beyond the range of all-inclusive infinity, in which and of which God is the sole creator. Mind, joyous in strength, dwells in the realm of Mind. Mind's infinite ideas run and disport themselves. In humility they climb the heights of holiness
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 513:26)
[*3]
The indestructible faculties of Spirit exist without the conditions of matter and also without the false beliefs of a so-called material existence. Working out the rules of Science in practice, the author has restored health in cases of both acute and chronic disease in their severest forms. Secretions have been changed, the structure has been renewed, shortened limbs have been elongated, ankylosed joints have been made supple, and carious bones have been restored to healthy conditions.
(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 162:13–22)
[*4]
O gentle presence, peace and joy and power;
O Life divine, that owns each waiting hour;
Thou Love that guards the nestling's faltering flight!
Keep Thou my child on upward wing to-night.
(Miscellaneous Writings 1883–1896, Mary Baker Eddy, p. 331:18)