Author Archives: Karen Molenaar Terrell

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About Karen Molenaar Terrell

Karen's stories have appeared in *Newsweek*, *The Christian Science Monitor*, and *Pack and Paddle Magazine* and she's the author of *Are You Taking Me Home Now?: Adventures with Dad*, *The Second Hundred Years: Further Adventures with Dad*, *The Brush of Angel Wings*, *The Madcap Christian Scientist* series, *A Poem Sits on my Windowsill*, *Finding the Rainbows: Lessons from Dad and Mom*, and co-author of *The Humoristian Chronicles: A Most Unusual Fellowship*. Her photos are featured in the spring 2014 edition of the *Bellingham Review*, and the "Photos from the Field" page of the April/May 2017, December/January 2018-2019, April/May 2019, and June/July 2020 issues of of *Mother Earth News*. Her photos can be found here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/60803140@N06/ Her books can be found here: http://www.amazon.com/Karen-Molenaar-Terrell/e/B0044P90RQ/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1312060042&sr=8-

On “Faith Healing”

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We went to the local university to watch Gleason the other night. It was a pretty intense movie. Uplifting in parts. Depressing in others. There were three scenes, in particular, that were really uncomfortable for me to watch – two of them because it felt like I was intruding on very private, very personal, moments in another person’s life; and one because it involved a scene of faith healing that made me want to get out of my chair and scream, “Stop it!” to the church people who were making a spectacle of a man with ALS – using him in a way that seemed cruel to me.

People often mistake Christian Science for faith healing. It is not.

Christian Science healing doesn’t involve spectacle or miracle. It’s not showmanship. It’s not a public display. It’s private – sometimes the only person involved is the person who experiences the healing. There’s no begging or pleading with some anthropomorphic god who might choose to heal you, or might choose to not. Although sometimes it’s dramatic, other times it’s just a gentle unfolding – a quiet change of thought – a recognition of Love’s perfect creation. In Christian Science, healing isn’t some supernatural event, but a natural manifestation of Love, Truth, God. In the textbook for Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science wrote: “Now, as then, these mighty works are not supernatural, but supremely natural.”

Sometimes I’ve known I was healed before the healing was made apparent, physically. This happened once when I was dealing with a puffed-up hand – there came a moment when the fear completely lifted from me and I knew I was fine – even though my hand still appeared ballooned to twice its size. The next day the hand was back to its normal appearance. (Later, blood tests that had been done on the first day of the puffed-up hand came back from the doctor’s office that indicated rheumatoid arthritis. The doctor’s office wanted me to see an RA specialist – but I told them my hand was completely fine now. The nurse said she guessed I didn’t need to do anything more then – but to let them know if things changed. That was six years ago, and there hasn’t been a return of the condition.)

Other times the physical manifestation of healing has been immediately obvious – the time my little brother was diagnosed by a doctor with mastoiditus, for instance – one moment he was screaming in pain, the next moment he was snoring in peaceful slumber, completely healed. He never had to return to the doctor for treatment, and there was none of the surgery the doctor had predicted he’d need.

There’s no pleading or begging or “in Jesus’ name”-ing in Christian Science healing. Christian Scientists aren’t asking God to do something She isn’t already doing. Mary Baker Eddy wrote in the Christian Science textbook: “The mere habit of pleading with the divine Mind, as one pleads with a human being, perpetuates the belief in God as humanly circumscribed, – an error which impedes spiritual growth… God is Love. Can we ask Him to be more? God is intelligence. Can we inform the infinite Mind of anything He does not already comprehend? Do we expect to change perfection?” A little later she wrote: “Asking God to be God is a vain repetition. God is ‘the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever;’ and He who is immutably right will do right without being reminded of His province… Who would stand before a blackboard, and pray the principle of mathematics to solve the problem? The rule is already established, and it is our task to work out the solution.”

Christian Science healing doesn’t come from a blind, emotional faith in Jesus or a man-god. For me, healing comes hand-in-hand with a growing understanding of the power of universal divine Love, and of myself as a perfect reflection of Love. And you don’t have to belong to any particular religion to have access to this healing power of Love, either – it’s available to everyone, regardless of religion or non-religion. Mary Baker Eddy wrote: “In divine Science, where prayers are mental, all may avail themselves of God as ‘a very present help in trouble.'”

Anyway. After watching Gleason the other night, I just felt the need to share my thoughts about all of this today. I have huge respect and admiration for the manner in which Steve Gleason and his wife have faced the challenges they’ve faced in the last five years, and for the decisions they’ve made during this time. Their decisions have come from their love for each other and their families. And Love, in Christian Science, is God.

“…I did not feel God as most people see Him. I did feel something larger than myself, something in the mountains and the glaciers and the glowing sky that, in rare moments, reassured me, and made me feel that the world was orderly and loving and good… It was simply a silence, a wholeness, an awe-inspiring simplicity. It seemed to reach me through my own feelings of love, and I have often thought that when we feel what we call love, we are really feeling our connection to this awesome presence… It wasn’t cleverness or courage or any kind of competence or savvy that saved us, it was nothing more than love, our love for each other, for our families, for the lives we wanted so desperately to live.”
– Nando Parrado, Miracle in the Andes

healing

Coming Together for America

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So we have hunters uniting to save public lands, people coming together at airports to show their support for Muslim refugees, women marching in the streets for equality and justice, teachers calling their legislators to insist on being represented by a Secretary of Education who actually respects public education, National Park Service employees and EPA employees going around a gag order and using their First Amendment rights to keep the public informed, veterans rallying with the Native Americans to protect our water, scientists planning a march for the environment, Evangelical Christians picketing outside the National Prayer Breakfast on behalf of the refugees – and today I passed some folks on the street corner who were holding signs in favor of the Affordable Care Act… I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime – this is what democracy looks like – this is America!

AND we’re talking non-violent resistance here. There was no violence and there were no arrests during the women’s march – and that’s now estimated at more than 4 million people in the U.S. alone. No violence has been used by the National Park Service and Environmental Protection Agency to go around the presidential gag order – just wiles and wit. The Native Americans and veterans have had violence shown against them – but they have not resorted to violence themselves. The hunters didn’t resort to violence to protect public lands…

“… oppression neither went down in blood, nor did the breath of freedom come from the cannon’s mouth. Love is the liberator.” – Mary Baker Eddy

“I have discovered in the earliest stages that pursuit of truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent but that he must be weaned from error by patience and compassion. For what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent, but on oneself.”
– Mahatma Gandhi

“What if instead of resistance…we call it THE INSISTENCE? You all are clever enough to know what I mean. That is what I’m calling it now: The Insistence on protecting the vulnerable, teaching our children properly, standing up for justice, eliminating hate, bigotry , and greed….”
– Sharon Strong

Something happened this weekend…

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Something happened this weekend that really touched me. The eldest son and his girlfriend came over to watch the first Harry Potter movie with us. And when it got to the part where the students were being divided into their different houses, I asked the son about this – did the different houses each represent a different trait or characteristic or something? He said that one house valued intelligence, another courage, a third valued kindness, and the fourth valued ambition. I asked him which house he thought he’d fit in and he said the one that values kindness probably (which was cool to me because the eldest son is brilliant – but he chose kindness over that). He asked me where I’d go, and I said maybe the scholarly one – or the kind one.

And then we sort of mulled over the idea of any of us going to the house that values courage and we decided that, yeah – we’d probably all be okay with that one, too. “I’ve climbed mountains…” I said – trying to blow my own horn  – “and traveled and had adventures…” and then – and this is the part that really touched my heart – the son said, “And you’ve gotten in the middle of a fight and stood up to bullies before.” And his girlfriend asked, “Really?!” – trying to picture me doing that.  And the son said yeah, he’d seen me walk into a ring of gang members before and seen me try to yank one guy off another one.

And this is true. I did do that. I saw a young man sitting on top of another young man, pounding his head into the parking lot pavement when I came out of a movie theater once – and, without thinking, I walked into the ring of spectators watching this happen, and tried to pull the attacker off his victim. I yelled, “Stop it! You’re killing him!” And one of the spectators said, “Lady, you better be careful. This guy could have a knife!” And I turned on him and asked him why he was just watching, why he wasn’t trying to help. And then I put my hands on my hips and announced, “I am a teacher!” – like that was going to make them all stop. And the guy who was smashing the other guy’s head into the pavement sort of paused, and looked up at me for a minute, and then went back to doing what he was doing. Pretty soon the police came out and took care of it all.

But… I didn’t know my son had appreciated me doing that, or had admired it. He’d been watching me from a distance with his friends and their parents – he was only nine or so at the time – and I always kind of wondered what he’d thought about it all. Had he thought I was crazy stupid to get in there and try to break that fight up (which I probably was, in retrospect)? Had he been embarrassed by me?

And last weekend he told me I had made him proud that night.

Isn’t that cool?

Historian Heather Cox Richardson on Trump’s Muslim Ban: “It’s a Shock Event”

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Insightful post by Heather Richardson…

John Fea's avatarThe Way of Improvement Leads Home

bannonHeather Cox Richardson of Boston College is one of my favorite historians.  I highly recommend her most recent book To Make Men Free: A History of the Republican Party. 

Today Richardson gave me permission to publish a piece she recently posted to her Facebook page.

Richardson is probably right in assuming that Steve Bannon is behind Trump’s recent Executive Order on Muslim refugees.  She describes what Bannon is doing as a “shock event.” This is an attempt to throw the country into confusion and chaos so that the administration can present itself as the only entity capable of restoring order.

Richardson explains:

What Bannon is doing, most dramatically with last night’s ban on immigration from seven predominantly Muslim countries– is creating what is known as a “shock event.” Such an event is unexpected and confusing and throws a society into chaos. People scramble to react to the event, usually…

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To My Superhero Friends

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My dear Humoristian hooligan heroes,

I am inspired by you. Your humor, your courage, you ability to “lol” in the face of threats and intimidation, your willingness to stand up to bullies and bigots without a second’s thought – you are the stuff of Superhero legend. Maybe your arms can’t stretch like rubber, and you can’t burn through metal with your steely gaze – but you’ve got better gifts than those – unstoppable courage, irrepressible joy, pugnacious good humor, and hearts full of love for humanity. Bless you, dear friends. I’m so glad to know each and every precious one of you.

Let’s go out there and save the world!  
Karen

Is this appropriate?

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My study of Christian Science has informed every aspect of who I am – it’s had an influence on my family relationships, friendships, career, art, adventures, and politics. I can’t separate Christian Science from any part of me – I can’t compartmentalize it into some box called “religion” and only bring it out on Sundays and occasional holidays, and those times when I might be in need of healing..

When I share my blog posts, I am only speaking for myself and my own experience with Christian Science – I am not speaking for any other Christian Scientists. Christian Scientists are not a monolithic group. We don’t all think, feel, and believe the exactly same way about things. We don’t all share the same political views. Some Christian Scientists identify as Democrats, and some as Republicans, and some as something else altogether. And I think that’s awesome.

In the past year a lot of my posts have been political in nature. Again, I’m only expressing my own views – as this particular Christian Scientist. I am living Christian Science as I feel God is directing me to live it – and I make no apologies for this, nor do I expect any other Christian Scientist to live their lives as I feel God is directing me to live mine. We are individual expressions of Love, each fulfilling our own “niche in time and eternity” (Mary Baker Eddy) and I believe we need to allow each other to have these life experiences and expressions without condemnation or judgment. Where God is leading you is none of my business. Where God is leading me is none of your business.

I will never use my blog to tell anyone how to vote. I will never use my blog to try to convince everyone to be Democrats, or Republicans, or any other political party. I will, however, use my blog to address issues that I feel need to be addressed.

Thank you for taking the time to read my posts, and to being open to what I have to share. It takes epic kindness and generosity to listen to others, and try to understand their perspective, and I thank you for that!

(This blog post is in response to a comment from a reader: “I don’t think your comments are appropriate under the heading of Christian Science writings!”)

God loves

 

 

Let’s put this another way…

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Okay, let’s put this another way: How much chance do you give the fox in the chicken coop? A week? Two years? Four? Do you let it take over the coop, hoping that it will somehow turn into another animal maybe? Maybe it’ll become a hummingbird or something? Just give it another month and it will become a gold finch?

Is the fox suddenly going to become this really cool upstanding dude who believes in climate change, wants to help protect the environment, wants to allow the press to do its job unhampered, wants to support public education and not privatize it, wants to protect peoples’ health care and give everyone access to the care they need to live, going to help people retire in dignity, going to get off Twitter and actually try to serve the people who elected him…?

 

Something Bigger than Personalities

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Whoah. I was just thinking about a conversation I’d had with a friend – we’d been talking about the marches we were both in last Saturday – mostly how epic and inspiring it was to be part of that – but we also got into a debate about the hate signs and hate speech that some people brought with them to the marches. My friend felt one way about that, and I felt another. And as I was thinking about that conversation this morning I had a kind of epiphany for myself – and I know this is something that a lot of you probably realized long ago – but, for me, it was, like, whoah. Here’s what came to me: I’m against hate – whichever direction it comes from, whether it’s from the left, right, or upside down; I’m against hate and mean-spiritedness.

And the corollary – I’m FOR loving kindness. No matter which direction it comes from – left, right, or in-between.

When I brought my “Love rules!” sign into the march it wasn’t to show support for everyone who voted against Donald Trump – in my mind, the marches were about something bigger than personalities. In my mind, this wasn’t an “us” versus “them” kind of thing. When I joined the march it was to stand in solidarity with folks who are working and praying for justice and equality for ALL people – not just people who voted against Donald Trump.

Not sure I explained this at all well. But when have I ever let that stop me from posting stuff? 🙂

“Human hate has no legitimate mandate and no kingdom. Love is enthroned.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

“Your influence for good depends upon the weight you throw into the right scale. The good you do and embody gives you the only power obtainable.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

good you do and embody

“The dam bursts…”

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“You always had the power, my dear.” – Glinda the Good Witch

My friend, Randy, has given me permission to share his poem. It perfectly captures what I felt yesterday at the Bellingham Women’s March:

The hard and steady tread of feet
on the sidewalk, in the street,
always forward, no retreat,
The dam bursts,
its flood o’ertakes,
leaving miracles in its wake…
– Randy Kercher

I arrived at the Bellingham Women’s March a little earlier than most people. I’d gone by myself and wasn’t sure I’d be able to find anybody I knew there – but no sooner had I parked than a couple of retired teachers from my old school district walked past my car. We all grinned when we saw each other and gave each other hugs, and walked together to the city courthouse, where the march would start. I ended up running into a lot familiar faces there – former students; teaching colleagues; neighbors – some of my all-time favorite people…

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John

I met some wonderful new friends there, too, and saw some great signs…

Jayda
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I stood near the front of the crowd when I first arrived. There weren’t a lot of people then. About a half hour later I started working my way towards the back to get a group photo – and I went back and back and back and still didn’t come to the end. By the time we started on the march they’d had to make the walk longer to accommodate all the people – we were looping ourselves – the people in front were finishing their march and there were still people in the back who hadn’t even started, yet. The estimates are 6,000 people – and that was just in Bellingham!

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I so appreciated the police officers who were at the march. They were friendly and smiling and supportive. At the end of the march, I said to one of the officers, “We did good today, didn’t we?” And he smiled back and said, “Yes, you did!”

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It was awesome to be in the midst of thousands of people all working together for a better world. There was an amazing power in that. I left the march feeling grateful and hopeful for humanity.