Category Archives: Christian Science

In Honor of Moz

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Something kind of wonderful happened this morning. I was waiting for my friend, Teresa, at the Fred Meyer eating area – Teresa was going to help me figure out what I needed to buy for the memorial celebration today – and this little family came in and sat down next to me – Mom with a baby, her daughter who’d just turned eight, other family members – and I started chatting with them – really neat people.

Pretty soon this man came in with a backpack and all kinds of bags hanging out of his pockets and out of his pack. I saw him trying to organize all his bags and was kind of intrigued by him.

Then Teresa comes in – and brings all that wonderful energy with her – and I introduce her to my new friends sitting next to me. They start chatting, and I leave them to go talk to the man with all the bags. I ask him if I can buy him a coffee at the Starbucks – and he asks me if I could maybe buy him a couple gift cards so he can buy food later. So I find the gift card rack and he picks out a Kroger’s card for food, and a Starbucks card, and I go back to the cashier to buy it for him, and also to buy some drinks for Teresa and me. (Teresa doesn’t want me to buy her anything, until my new friend tells her that I’m the boss today, and she has to do what I say.)

So we all get our drinks – the backpack man thanks me for the cards – he said he’d been having a really negative attitude about people up until then, and I’m making him feel better about life. Teresa turns to him and says, “Do you want to know why she bought you those cards today? Her mom died and today is the celebration for her mom, and she’s buying you those cards in honor of her mom who was the most loving person in the world.” And as Teresa tells him this, I realize that it’s true. Moz taught me to watch out for people, and to do what I could to help. And the idea of that brings sweet tears to my eyes.

So the man thanks me and we part ways, and Teresa and I go back to our table, and my new friend, Ella, thanks me for taking care of the man with the backpack. Just the fact that she noticed the exchange with the backpack-man really touches my heart.

And THEN we find out we are both of the same political persuasion.  And now I have a new FB friend. ❤

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Moz’s celebration was wonderful. There was music and laughter and more music and laughter and sweet friendship. I brought her shoes to the celebration and put them in the front with all the flowers. It made me smile to see them up there…

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Choosing to Live

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Mourning Mom, grieving with Dad,
responsible for another person’s
health and finances and life,
and a target for gossip and fabrication
by a pillar of my community –
I am battle-weary and sick –
at maybe the lowest point in my life.
And I’m thinking that maybe
I could just slide down deep into
sickness, slip into sleep forever, fade
out and die, and that wouldn’t be so bad.

And from some somewhere there comes
a moment of clarity – a question
at the crossroads: You can consent
to death, or decide to live.
It’s your choice.
Life won’t always be fun and easy.
Choosing life will mean complications,
responsibilities, and battles. It will mean
a commitment. It will take some courage.
That path is not going to be all rainbows
and butterflies and starry nights.

And I nod my head. I understand
what I’m taking on if I choose life.
I will encounter mean people. I will
have to balance checking accounts. I will
have to deal with grief and mourning
and loss and heartache and pain and lies
and disappointment and failure. But there are
people depending on me to choose life.
I am needed here. And there are people
that I need, too. And people here I love.
And sometimes there will be rainbows. And
butterflies. And starry nights.

And so I choose life.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell

“Daddy, Mom passed on peacefully…”

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Update on Dad:
I stopped in to see Dad this morning and he asked how Mom was. (Yesterday he’d asked if she was back east. He’d said he hoped she didn’t think he’d abandoned her.) I told him fine. He looked at me, skeptically, and said, “It feels like people aren’t giving me a straight answer to this question.” He is very sharp. At that point it was impossible to lie to him, so I got close to his ear and told him Mom had passed. He asked me what I’d said. I told him I loved him and hugged him and left.

I came back later with a new pair of pants for him. Mary from The Mountaineers was there and Dad was busy at the dining room table drawing a picture of Rainier on some watercolor paper she’d brought him. He asked how Mom was. I told him fine. I asked him how he was and he said he’d be happier if he knew how Mom was. I asked him if he’d like me to write him a note about Mom and he nodded his head yes. I wrote something like this:

“Daddy, Mom passed on peacefully in her sleep at my house last week. She loved you very much. She still loves you. She knows you love her, too. We all love you, Daddy. You’re not alone. We’re all here for you.”

He asked how “the boys” were doing. I said the boys were doing fine and wanted him to be happy.

I wrote to him that he had been able to see Mom before they brought her to my house. I told him an attendant had wheeled him up to Mom’s room so he could say good-bye. The attendant said it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen.

Mary and I were hugging him and he was holding my hand. I found a paper napkin and dabbed tears off the end of his nose. He asked if Mom had died in pain, and I said no, she’d died peacefully at my house. I’d been sleeping next to her. He wanted to know what she’d died of, and I told him her heart had gotten tired and stopped.

I told him about the memorial celebration for her, and he nodded his head that he wanted to come.

I asked him what I could do to help, what he wanted to do. He said he wanted to go to bed. So Mary and I helped him get back to his room. He told me he loved me before I left.

I think he might ask again – and I think we’re going to have to continue to be truthful with him, and help him get through this. He won’t let us not tell him the truth. He is very brave.

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If it doesn’t come from Truth…

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What are you waiting for?

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This thought came to me this morning – and I think there actually might be something profound in it – but I ain’t sure. I guess I’ll post it and then think about it some more. If any of you has any thoughts you’d care to share about “waiting” – I’d be most appreciative.

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Talking About God…

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“When the heart speaks…”

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Another Moment to Love

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Another moment of life –
another moment to love.

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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

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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