midst clash fight death
their hopes build peace
sunny faced bloom
grows above ashes
Wordle Poem #2: Hope
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Monthly Archives: April 2022
A Perfect Moment
a perfect moment
I sit in the warm sunshine
with nothing to do
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
An Easter Poem with Wordle Words
human risen
stone rolls
fresh draft blows
light fills tombs
inner holes
inner gloom
inner heart
tears apart
olden ideas
adore happy
child laugh
tulip bloom
sunny
newly borne
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
(Photo of tulips by Karen Molenaar Terrell.)
“The Children of the Belay” Podcast
In 1953 Pete Schoening saved my dad’s life, and the lives of four other men, with his belay (known as “The Belay” in mountaineering circles) on the slopes of K2, the world’s second highest mountain. If not for Pete’s belay, a lot of us would never have been born. Pete’s grandson, Brian Schoening, recently invited me to chat with him about “The Children of the Belay” on his podcast. To listen to the podcast, click here.
Here’s a photo of The Children of the Belay taken when the descendents of the 1953 K2 climbers were able to get together in Leavenworth, Washington, in 2006.
The Stone That Love Has Been Rolling Away
I’m thinking about the stone that Love has been rolling away from my heart over the years – the ego, blame, self-will, guilt, fear, anger, selfishness, sense of being “put upon” and treated unfairly – and I’m so very grateful for the progress so far – so grateful for the light that’s reached me – so very glad to be alive – to be able to experience the birdsong and blossoms and sunshine of an Easter morning.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
“Miss Jackson”
Every summer, the week before school started, my friends and I would ride our bikes out to our local school to look at the class lists taped to the front door that told us what room we’d be in the next year. I was so excited when I learned I was going to get the “new teacher,” Peravena Jackson, for my fifth grade teacher.
Miss Jackson was fresh out of college, and I still remember her clearly – she loved to laugh and explore, and help her students find their super powers, and she had a beautiful smile. When Miss Jackson learned my dad was a well-known mountaineer she asked him if he would help chaperone a ski trip for her class – I still remember her enthusiasm and energy as she went skiing for the first time, and I remember she wore that beautiful smile the entire day. I remember snow flakes in her hair.
Miss Jackson nurtured the good in her students. She gave us opportunities for success. She was the first person to call me a writer – she told the entire class that I was a good writer. That meant something to me. And she knew how to tap into my desire to be the best I could be – she had daily timed quizzes on the multiplication tables and I made it my goal to be quicker each day than I was the day before. By the end of the year I was crowned the “Multiplication Queen” and could do those multiplication sheets in less than a minute. Learning those multiplication tables is something that has helped me my entire life. Miss Jackson built me up and never failed to acknowledge when I did well at something. She was my biggest advocate.
But it wasn’t just ME she nurtured. Miss Jackson – like every great teacher – brought out the best in ALL of her students. She found every student’s gifts and set about helping her students develop those gifts. All the students in her first class – each and every one of them – were blessed to have Miss Jackson for their teacher.
In sixth grade my family moved to a new home two hours away and I lost touch with my old friends and with Miss Jackson for a while. But I never forgot her. And the confidence she’d helped nurture in me stayed with me and got me through some challenging times in my new community. She’d taught me I could trust myself and my own abilities – one of the most valuable gifts anybody can give to another.
I got married when I was 27. It had been 17 years since I’d had Miss Jackson as my teacher – so when she suddenly appeared at the door to the room where I was getting put together for my wedding ceremony, it felt like magic! She gave me a big hug and I could feel her positive, joyful energy wrapping me all up in love on my special day.
For another thirty years we chiefly kept in touch with Christmas cards, but then – fifty years after I’d had “Miss Jackson” for my fifth grade teacher – I found her and two of my old elementary school classmates on Facebook. We messaged each other back and forth and in 2018 my old classmates and Peravena and I were all able to come together and be in the same room for the first time in more than five decades! It was kind of surreal, actually, and very cool!
And now here we are 55 years later. These days I find myself in an age group labeled “elderly” by some folks (which I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around – I still FEEL like I’m a “kid,” you know?). How blessed am I that my “elderly” self still has her fifth grade teacher mentoring her through the ups and downs of life? Peravena Jackson Wilson continues to inspire me and nurture the good in me. She has this uncanny ability to know just when I need an encouraging word – just when I’m starting to doubt myself and what I’m doing here, she’ll pop onto my FB wall and leave a comment that lifts me back up. Yesterday “Miss Jackson” popped onto my wall to leave me this message: “I think of you and your written thoughts when I need a positive outlook on a negative situation. Thanks again for your thoughtful written words!!” And see? Right there. My fifth grade teacher can STILL make me feel like my life has meaning and purpose, and that I matter to her. That is what great teachers do.
Great teachers never stop teaching and nurturing the good in their students – and “Miss Jackson” is one of the world’s great teachers. I’m so grateful I got to be in her fifth grade class all those years ago. And I’m so grateful I’m still connected to her today.
Life Is Bigger Than These Forms We See
“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
– I Corinthians 15
There was some police action on the beach the day we arrived. We walked by the crime tape, the team of investigators, the canopy over the scene. I stopped to ask another woman walking on the beach if she knew what was going on. Valerie said she’d seen a couple in the parking lot earlier who’d looked shaken and she wondered if they’d found something. She was pretty sure there was a body under the canopy. She noted that the crime tape had already been up a few hours so it had to be something pretty serious. The winds had been high the night before and she wondered if maybe a body had come in on the surf. A man named Billy stopped to chat with Valerie and my husband and me. He wondered what was going on, too.
My husband and I continued on our walk, looking for agates, watching the antics of the seagulls as they chased each other around for food, enjoying the sunshine and the salty air. Every now and then, though, I’d look back at the crime canopy and wonder.
Billy rejoined me a while later to tell me that a friend had confirmed a body had been found in the sand. Billy said that the night before he’d passed a man on the beach who looked distressed and lost – the man seemed a little “off” to him – but he’d shrugged it off and continued on his walk. He wondered now if this body belonged to the man he’d seen the night before, and if it had been a suicide. For a moment neither of us spoke, each thinking our own thoughts. Then we wished each other well – told each other to stay safe – and parted ways.
Later the local news confirmed that the body of a man in his thirties had been found partially buried in the sand. I went into my mother-of-sons place then. I grieved for the man and his family. I prayed and tried to reach my thoughts out to the man – letting him know he was loved, whoever he was – that he wasn’t alone. I wished him peace. And, eventually, with the help of the ocean and the seagulls and the kites and the ever-tumbling waves, I found my own peace.
A few days later, as we got ready to leave, a rainbow arched across the sky. There’d been a rainbow after my mom’s passing, and a rainbow after my dad’s passing, too. I idly wondered who might be manifesting THIS rainbow. And then I thought of the man whose body had been found the day we arrived. And I knew he was alright.
Life is so much bigger than these forms we see –
so much bigger than body-hieroglyphs of “you” and “me.”
Death has no power to end our Life – Life fills all space –
exists beyond form and time and place.
I feel my loved ones ever-near –
both those who have “passed” and those who are still “here.”
Death can’t destroy the love we feel,
and nothing can stop the healing of what needs to be healed.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
(Photo of rainbow by Karen Molenaar Terrell.)
What If I Just Pulled Myself Out of the Game?
Whoah. Now here’s a thought:
What if I just pulled myself out of the game?
No one’s forcing me to play, after all.
I have a choice to participate in the shame and blame,
or let that ball fall, and not get pulled into the brawl.
Remember what Jesus said to those
who wanted to stone that woman?
“He that is without sin among you,
let him first cast a stone at her.”
And then he stooped down
and wrote on the ground
as the shamers went away one by one
until there were none.
They had wanted him to play in their game,
but he had more important things to do
with his time here – heal the deaf, blind, the lame,
and establish a new way of living – a true
way of caring for each other and our world.
He showed us how to love.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
Better Things to Do Than Mock
To paraphrase the very first Psalm:
“Blessed is the man that sitteth not
in the seat of those that mock.
But his delight
is in doing what is right;
and on Love’s law doth
he meditate day and night.”
We have better things to do
than engage in talk
with those who mock.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
Reconnecting With an Old Friend
I reconnected with my old friend this week.
I ran out to greet her
and she leaped and raced towards me
and splashed around my ankles
in a playful game of tag.
She offered me agates and rain clouds
and sunsets and new friends.
And the last morning she gifted me
a rainbow – a gentle and beautiful parting.
“Good bye, dear friend. Until we meet again.”
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
(Photos by Karen Molenaar Terrell. Lincoln City, Oregon.)
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 