Category Archives: spirituality

These Moments

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I know these moments don’t sound like big deals in the whole scheme of things – but – they mean something to me.

Today I went into the Safeway in Anacortes to get a mocha at the Starbucks there. After I got in the store I thought I should get some flour for pie-making. On the way to the flour I thought this might be a good time to get the cranberry sauce, too. Also dinner rolls. And sweet potatoes. Of course I hadn’t picked up a basket on my way in, because I thought I was just going to get a mocha, right? – so now I’m standing in a long Thanksgiving grocery-shopping line with my arms full. My arms are starting to get tired. Suddenly this young man appears – he doesn’t work at Safeway, he’s just another customer like myself – and he says, “I thought maybe you could use a basket” and hands me a basket to put all my stuff in. And I thank him profusely and take the basket and he smiles and goes on his way. People going out of their way to be kind to other people just tickles me. 🙂 And, maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems like people have been making more of an effort to show kindness in the last couple weeks.

So when I’d come into Safeway there was a musician playing a banjo out front and I’d planned on giving him a tip – but now I saw him packing up – so before I bought my mocha I went out to put a buck in his banjo case – and he smiled and thanked me and I asked him if he’d like a coffee – and he said no, he was fine, but thanked me for the offer, and wished me a happy Thanksgiving.

I went back in the store to get my mocha – the original reason I’d come to Safeway in the first place – and the coffee machine wasn’t working. But it didn’t matter! I was meant to go in there today. 🙂

On the way back from Anacortes I suddenly got it in my noggin to stop off at the dike for a quick walk. There was only one other car there – a man and his corgi were about ten yards ahead of me on the trail. As soon as I stepped onto the path the corgi turned around and started running back to me – a big friendly grin on his face – like I was an old friend and he was just so happy to see me! So I reached out and petted him and his human called him back and he took one last look at me and then went back to his human and they went around a bend in the path. I walked along a little longer, and suddenly the dog came racing around the bend and ran back to me again – just had to give me one more greeting. I love happy dogs who see a new friend in every person they encounter.

And then that song came into my head – “My life flows on in endless song, above earth’s lamentation…” and I was just filled with such joy to be alive.

That is all. Carry on then…
Karen

Padilla Bay Dike (photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell)
Padilla Bay Dike (photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell)

 

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“O weary pilgrim, lift your head: for joy cometh in the morning!”
– Mary M. Weinland

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The Just Right Messages

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What I am finding so heartening right now is how people of all religions and non-religions and races and ethnic backgrounds and genders and sexual orientations are coming together to help each other through these challenging times.

This morning I found the message I exactly needed (and isn’t it amazing how we always seem to get the message we most need when we need it?) waiting for me from a dear Methodist friend: “I am rereading the gospel of Matthew in The Message for some new perspective on some familiar texts and I found a description of your life as Jesus is sending out the disciples. (Matthew 10:16-35) Isn’t that delightful? ‘There is great irony here: proclaiming so much love, experiencing so much hate! But don’t quit. Don’t cave in. It is all well worth it in the end. It is not success you are after in such times but survival. Be survivors! Before you’ve run out of options, the Son of Man will have arrived. . . . Don’t be bluffed into silence by the threats of bullies. There’s nothing they can do to your soul, your core being. Save your fear for God, who holds your entire life–body and soul–in his hands.'”

I love that! All of it. Don’t quit. Don’t give up. Don’t be afraid. Christ, Truth, will arrive – has always been with us, I believe – to show us the way out of the darkness. Don’t be scared into silence by the bullies. Stand up to them. They can’t touch or harm what’s essential about us – who we really are – the children of God.

And today when I got home – feeling discouraged and alone and surrounded by dark and cold – I clicked onto Facebook to find this message waiting for me from my dear friend, Patricia – a fellow Christian Scientist: “Let us smash this bowl of delusion and rejoice!!! with this clip attached of a little girl exuberantly smashing a bowl . It’s a teensy clip – only five seconds – but I found myself… well, I teared up, actually. Teared up with courage and hope. I really, really needed that clip of the little girl and her happy exuberance.

I believe that if we listen – if we’re open to them – Love is continually sending us the thoughts we need to move us from moment to moment.

“…the angels of His presence – the spiritual  intuitions that tell us when ‘the night is far spent, the day is at hand’ – are our guardians in the gloom.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

“Angels are pure thoughts from God, winged with Truth and Love… My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door of some sepulchre, in which human belief has buried its fondest earthly hopes. With white fingers they point upward to a new and glorified trust, to higher ideals of life and its joys. Angels are God’s representatives. These upward-soaring beings never lead towards self, sin, or materiality, but guide to the divine Principle of all good, whither every real individuality, image, or likeness of God, gathers. By giving earnest heed to these spiritual guides they tarry with us, and we entertain ‘angels unawares.'”
– Mary Baker Eddy

“These angels deliver us from the depths.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

 

 

What’s the alternative?

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stubborn-hope

Dang! This is really good!

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Last week when I had my ridiculous scare with the health exam (see the post dated 10/4) I turned – as I often do when I’m ascared or troubled – to my Christian Science literature for inspiration, and… well… I ended up reading my own Madcap Christian Science triology.  I hadn’t read these books for a really long time. In fact, I don’t think I’d ever read them one after the other before. There have been books I’ve written that, when I re-read them again later, I did not like so much – but last week when I finished reading the first book in the trilogy, Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist, I found myself saying out loud – with some surprise – “Dang! This is really good!”

I wrote the first book back in 2005, as a response to other books I’d read about being raised in Christian Science. I’ve never discounted other people’s experiences with Christian Science – but I felt impelled to share my own story – which seemed to be much different from the stories other people had shared. My experience being raised by a Christian Scientist mother wasn’t scary or gloomy or depressing. I wasn’t neglected. Sickness wasn’t ignored. My childhood was full of joy and light and love and happy adventures. My mountain-climbing father got me into the Great Outdoors, and my Christian Scientist mom introduced me to the healing power of Love. I was blessed, and my book was a means of expressing gratitude for those blessings.

The second book, The Madcap Christian Scientist’s Middle Book, was about my experience dealing with massive depression during My Year of Insanity. I included messages from my friends, David Allen and Kathi Petersen, that inspired me then, and inspired me again when I read them last week. As I read the book anew, I gave thanks once again for the wonderful community of friends and neighbors who helped me survive that year.

The final book in the trilogy, The Madcap Christian Scientist: All Things New, chronicles my adventures as I transitioned out of my work as a public school teacher into work teaching at a non-profit alternative high school. As I read it last week, I remembered, again, that year of change and all that I learned, and all the wonderful new students and colleagues I met.

It was cool to be able to go back to those books – to remember the things I’ve learned and the progress I’ve made – and then use all that to help me through the challenges of last week. When I wrote those books I was hoping that they might help others get through challenging times. It never occurred to me that someday they might help ME get through a challenging time. 🙂

 

 

The Best Prayer of All

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best prayer

The Middle Book

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Yeah, I think what we’ve got here is a case of “middle child syndrome.” My middle child of books, The Madcap Christian Scientist’s Middle Book, has been a little over-looked lately. So maybe it’s time to give her some attention. 🙂 Here are some excerpts…

“But this is one of his clouded times and
He’ll out of ‘em enough to shake the tree
Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard of…”
– Edwin Arlington Robinson

***

My son and I recently talked about my previous book, Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist. I told him that book was true for the person I was then, and I’m glad I wrote it, but I couldn’t write the same book now. Andrew told me I should write another book then, for this time in my life. I told him that my recent life experience has been kind of dark. He said I should write about that then, and he started talking about trilogies – how almost every life story has three parts – the first book is usually happy and innocent, the second one is dark and challenging, and the last book is the triumph book. Andrew said it was time for me to write “the middle book.” He assures me the book about the golden years will come, but he says that book can’t come until the middle book gets written.

So what you see here is me sucking it up and writing The Middle Book…

***

At the age of 51 I went insane. I did not like it so much. But I learned a lot from it.

Eckhart Tolle tells us: “Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness.” He asks, “How do you know this is the experience you need? Because,” he says, “this is the experience you are having at this moment.” I really like how he puts that. My thought is that something is only a challenge to us when there’s a lesson to learn from it. Two people, in other words, might find themselves in identical situations – and one of those people might coast through the situation, and the other might stumble through it – depending on where each individual is in her spiritual progress.

If somebody had tried to talk to me about mental illness before I’d had this experience, I wouldn’t have had a clue what they were going on about. Mental illness was something that happened to “other” people.  Mental illness was not something a madcap Christian Scientist would ever know anything about, right?

Yeesh.

Here’s some of what I gained during this time: a new understanding and appreciation of love; a greater sense of gratitude for the power of a moment, and of a good, deep breath; a greater appreciation for choice; renewed gratitude for all the beauty in Nature and mankind; greater humility, empathy and compassion; and a greater commitment to my own spiritual journey.  I’d entered The Year of Insanity an untested “youth” – gliding through life’s challenges on a kind of cavalier, simple joy, without really having to put much work or effort into my mental frame of mind. By the time I exited that year I had a much deeper understanding of God, and who I am, as God’s expression.

The_Madcap_Christian_Cover_for_Kindle (2)

One Mind, One Love

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spiritual power

“…with one Mind and that God, or good, the brotherhood of man would consist of Love and Truth,  and have unity of Principle and spiritual power which constitute divine Science.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

 

Peace.

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In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below…
– John McRae
(Originally published on this blog on October 18, 2014)

Saw the movie Fury last night. Really powerful film. Great acting. Beyond gritty. If ever a war movie was an anti-war movie, this one is it.

I woke up this morning with scenes from the movie playing through my head – scenes of death and destruction, blood and cruelty, courage and war-honor. And, as I processed it all, two trains of thought emerged from the smoke.

One of the trains took me to a place of compassion and empathy for the soldiers in every time and every nation who have felt voluntarily compelled, or been drafted, to take up weapons and march to war. It occurred to me that if I had been a soldier watching that movie I might feel a kind of relief in the knowledge that I wasn’t alone – that the “reality” of war is a shared burden of responsibility, memories, and pain by all who’ve lived it.

The other train of thought took me to this place:War has become antiquated. There are no more lessons to be learned from it. It is time for civilization to move on.

Some may say that the cycle of War is never-ending and unstoppable, but I do not agree. Cycles DO stop. I believe there is a natural law – a law of God (Love, Truth, Life) – that pushes mankind towards progress. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (the textbook for Christian Science) Mary Baker Eddy writes: “…progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil.”

We’re surrounded by signs of progress, aren’t we? For all that we are bombarded with news of bigotry, sexism, racism, carelessness, greed, thievery, and murder – there is good going on all around us, too – signs of a mental stirring, or what Mary Baker Eddy would call a “chemicalization of thought” that is moving mankind towards decency. When we hear about slavery, racism, sexism, and bigotry – most of us in the United States no longer find these things acceptable – huge progress from just 150 years ago when slavery was still a part of our nation’s culture, or just 96 years ago (in my dad’s lifetime!) when women didn’t have the right to vote or run for public office. .

And I believe that progress will bring an end to the cycle of War, too. I believe that our world will find peace. I hope it will be soon.

“…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
– Isaiah 2:4

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Time for Thinkers

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time for thinkers