I originally started this blog at the end of 2011 – at a time when I was in a kind of scary, and weirdly exhilarating transition between one gig and the next – I’d just left a career of twenty years and launched myself into the Great Unknown. I was feeling sort of adrift… aimless… I felt the need to get a routine in my life, bring some kind of structure and discipline to my days. I cleaned out the garage, organized the pantry, began writing a couple books, edited another one, and I started blogging.  I created photo blogs where I could share with others the visual beauty of my part of the world ( https://bellinghambayblog.wordpress.com/ – and, in 2016, https://opentothemagic.wordpress.com/ ), started a humor blog where I could share the stuff in my life that cracks me up ( https://humoristianity.wordpress.com/ ), and began the blog you’re reading right now to share… well… everything else. It has become a sort of journal for me – a record of my adventures (and misadventures), my foibles and progress, and the evolution of my thought over the last several years. This blog has brought me much good –  I have come to meet some really amazing fellow bloggers, made some new friends, and had the opportunity to learn new perspectives and ways of looking at the world. And it is all good.

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Karen Molenaar Terrell is the author of the Cosmic Celebrations series; the Madcap Christian Scientist series; the Adventures with Dad books; four books of poetry; and a book chronicling her experiences with 2020: Scrapbook of a Year and a Day: January 19, 2020 to January 20, 2021. Her stories have appeared in Newsweek, The Christian Science Monitor, and Pack and Paddle Magazine; and her photos are frequently used in the “Photos from the Field” page of Mother Earth News, and are featured in the spring 2014 edition of the Bellingham Review.

Karen enjoys tromping around in the mountains (she’s made it to the summits of Rainier, Baker, Adams, and Hood in the Pacific Northwest), singing, gardening, writing, reading, and photography. She has two grown sons, a wonderful daughter-in-law and an amazing granddaughter, and lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest.

Her photos can be found on flickr at this link: https://www.flickr.com/photos/60803140@N06/

Her books can be purchased online
– at Magers and Quinn Booksellers (based in Minneapolis) here.
– at Barnes and Noble here.
– and at Amazon here.

Here’s a link to the podcast of the sermon at the Skagit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (SUUF) in November 2025. Topic: “Choosing Love.”

Here’s a link to the pdf of the November 2025 issue of Renewal, where I was interviewed by my friend, Constance Mears. Constance’s magazine.

And here’s a link to a previous talk I gave at the Skagit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship (on April 21 2024) on The Healing Power of Love.