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 (bellinghambayblog.wordpress.com – and, in 2016, opentothemagic.wordpress.com), started a humor blog where I could share the stuff in my life that cracks me up (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 Cosmic Connections: Sharing the Joy, the Madcap Christian Scientist series (here’s a link to the first book in the series, Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist); the Adventures with Dad books (here’s a link to the first one – Are You Taking Me Home Now?: Adventures with Dad); a couple 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 (December 2022-January 2023, August/September 2022, April/May 2021, June/July 2020; April/May 2019, December/January 2018-19, April/May 2017), 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 (she’s one of those wedding singers – stop laughing!), gardening, writing, reading, and photography. She has two grown sons (and two new daughters-in-law!) and lives with her husband in the Pacific Northwest.
Karen’s photos can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/60803140@N06/
marinaterrell@gmail.com
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 
Yea! I love that you have expanded into a blog. I loved your book and look forward to eharimg more from you!
Thank you, Kim! This whole blogging thing is a new world for me, but I think I’m starting to get the hang of it. 🙂 It was a nice surprise for me to find your message waiting for me, and I even figured out how to retrieve it! Yeah. I’m cool.
Karen,
I was in contact with you a year or so ago after I read your book and adored it. Having been raised Christian Scientist, it meant sooooooooo much. Can you send me your email so I can send you a couple of songs I wrote? I once opened for Annual Meeting in Boston and I want to run an idea by you because I think you have moved forward so brilliantly with yourself and life..
I remember you! How wonderful to see your name pop up here, Caroline! Certainly you may have my email address: marinaterrell@gmail.com
I look forward to hearing from you!
Karen
So you decided to follow Uncle Spike. Oh I’m a happy blogger now – thanks for that special mouse click.
Have a great old day…
UNCLE SPIKE
What a lovely surprise! I just posted a blog under books and found your latest blog post beneath mine in the reader. I was raised in Christian Science, still study it, love it, but also study Zen and other texts that inspire and deepen my experience. Very interested now in reading your books. As an avid blogger and writer, I love meeting others online who share common interests. You are the first Christian Scientist I’ve discovered here. There must be more. Now I’m eager to meet them too.
Hi, deborahbrasket!
Any lover of books is a friend of mine! 🙂 And how lovely to meet you! Yes, I was raised in Christian Science and still try to practice my understanding of it. I am actually not a very religious person – but, for me, CS isn’t so much a religion as a way of looking at the world and a way of living. (Whenever I take that belief-o-matic quiz I always come out 100% Unitarian Universalist. 🙂 ) I think that whatever we find that inspires us, touches us, and leads us to be more loving and kind and honest is awesome! – “be it song, sermon, or Science.” (MBE)
Great. Deborah.I am also a CS but have many other interests. CS nurse for 30 years. Wonderful journey in God.
Oh! I forgot to mention how much I love your banner photo too! Is it yours? As someone who lived many years on a sailboat, I find the photo vividly exciting.
Yup, that is mine.With one or two exceptions – I’ve tried to use only my photos on my blogs – it would kind of feel like I was cheating if I used other peoples’ work. The photo in the banner was taken of a boat on Bellingham Bay, Bellingham, Washington. When I was playing around I flipped it upside down – et voila! I thought it looked pretty cool that way. 🙂
Hi Karen, my name is Martha Lentz (previously Sabol) and I worked with your dad at USGS in the 80’s. I’ve had one of his paintings of Mt. St. Helens on our living room wall for ages (we’re remodeling, and was just now looking at it, and thought I’d look up Dee and see if he was still around). I’m so glad to see that he and your mom are still here. I don’t remember why, but one day he invited my husband and I over to his house to look at his paintings, and I ended up buying one of them.. I had worked on Mt. St. Helens for years and I think he wanted me to have one I liked. I loved his art! I just wanted to write you and let you know that I’m someone that has one of his St. Helen’s paintings, if you ever want to try and reach people who have them. I’m in Lakewood. Feel free to email me if you like.
I’m so glad to meet you, Martha! I don’t know if you read my most recent blog post (titled “Home!”), but it’s all about the big changes in Mom and Dad’s lives in the last few months. They are both really amazing people. I’ll let Dad know that I heard from you. 🙂
HI Karen, you have a great blog! I’m looking forward to exploring more of it and thank you for the follow 🙂 – Faye
You are so welcome! I enjoyed looking through your pictures! There’s a lot of energy there! 🙂
Thank you so much 🙂
Ms Karen … your blogs are a breath of fresh air … thank you …
g
Oh gosh. Thank you, Mr. Geezer! And thank you for taking the time to comment! 🙂
You’re so beautiful through your writings. Hoping to read your book soon 🙂
Thank you so much, Muthuvel!
Thank you. I would love to repost the whole page you have created in preparation for the Woman’s March. So very timely. And–I can look them up myself, but it would be a great service to me and others if you indicated book and page sources for the quotes attributed to Mary Baker Eddy you have posted. Thanks for your good thinking and work.
Oh! Gosh, I just now found this comment! Sorry it’s taken so long to respond… I will try to do better with quotes. I know it would be helpful to people if I gave the page number and so forth. Thank you, Deborah!
Dear Karen,
why don’t you come to the Amazon-co-uk Forum? It is still working but, without you, it’s sinking into the abyss of seriousness!
Dear Alex – I’m sitting here on a bench in a park, laughing out loud. People are glancing my way. It is all your fault. Mayhap I shall check out this forum of which you speak… 🙂
awwww sorry!!! it goes the same way as amazon-com, only a week later… just announced. Well, still i try to have some fun.
Well, that is a bummer about the UK forums. You are always welcome here, though. 🙂
Yes, Karen. Also try going on TED (technology,entertainment,design.) Talks. I am emailing you on your email address. Best, Gita
Dear Karen,
What do you think of the wtf.com forum? Is it worth participating?
I have not heard of the wtf.com forum. I’m a little ascared to check it out.
Hi, Karen
I was just looking at the very old, four foot long alpenstock that your Dad signed for me, and wondered if he was still with us. I found your blog and was so happy to see that as of September 18, he still is. How are you and your family?
I’ve never figured out why I feel so connected to Dee, but I really do. Please tell him hello from me, and that I think of him often.
Thank you, Rob. Yes, Dad is still with us. He’s 101 now and looks to be with us for a long time, yet.
Hi Karen:
It was serendipity (or the wisdom of the Universe) that I just found you. I am a huge lover of J. Allen Boone and all his writings and found yours about Kinship with All Life. He’s kind of my guru (truly, if he were still alive, I’d find him and sit at his feet!)
I feel a sense of kindred spirits with you…after reading about you, and the focus of your writing.
Just started a blog, Blossum The Divine Dog, at the begininng of the pandemic, and it has changed my life. The gateway for my writing is my basset hound, Blossum, and my musings lead me into all kinds of dimensions.
I loved your bunny story. I feel a profound connection to creatures and feel lessons and communications sent to me in their presence.
May I be so bold as to send you a link for one of my blogs I’d love to share?? If you have the time to read it, I’d love to hear what you think…..
https://www.blossumthedivinedog.com/https/wwwblossumthedivinedogcom/blog/pfeiffers-lovenbsp/amazing-grace
All the best to you,
Ilene Starr
Thank you so much, Ilene! I loved your story! ❤