You can’t argue with Love.
There’s nothing in Love to insult, offend or attack.
There’s nothing in Love to be hurt or to hit back.
Love doesn’t see skin color – not white or black.
Love fills all space – and that’s a fact.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
Enclosed in man’s fences
ears numbered and tagged
their bodies may be owned
by humans (as some humans
might brag) –
but the fences and tags
can’t heed the flow
of Soul, put boundaries
on Love. Still they know
Love, still they show
Love.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
(Cow photos by Karen Molenaar Terrell.)
Unfed, shred, and shed
every humbling shrinking
the ego until it loses all
hold, all importance, all
power and perspective
shifts and what’s true
emerges from the tatters.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
And maybe someday I will say more about that. 🙂
We have just a tiny scrap of existence here
– a miniscule piece of our eternity –
to love and learn and live
and leave something good behind.
Let’s not waste it on nothings.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
As I was scrolling through Facebook I saw a post by a friend, sharing that she’d just lost her mother. Her mother had gone into the hospital on a Wednesday and was dead on Sunday. Her death was a surprise to everyone. As I looked through my friend’s pictures of her mom, I realized that her mom was probably about my age. That realization brought me up short. Whoah. And then I thought of the loved ones I’ve lost in the last several years – some of them my age, and some of them younger – and it gave me pause.
I am not afraid of death. I’m maybe afraid of the pain involved in death, but I’m not afraid of death itself. If, as I believe, my consciousness will continue on and continue to learn and unfold – that would be fine. And if death is really the end – that would be fine, too – I mean, I won’t be around to feel one way or the other about it, right? No, I’m not afraid of death – but I hope that what I do here, during my time here, will make a difference for the people who come after me. I hope my time here will mean something, you know? I don’t want to waste even a minute of it on ridiculous rivalries, and empty quests for fame and wealth. I don’t want to waste my life on nothings. Life is too short. We only have one shot at this.
“John says of the world, not that it is wrong, but simply that it ‘passeth away.’ There is a great deal in the world that is delightful and beautiful, there is a great deal that is great and engrossing, but it will not last. All that is in the world, the lust of the eye, the lust of the flesh, and the pride of life, are but for a little while…Nothing that it contains is worth the life and consecration of an immortal soul…You will give yourself to many things; give yourself first to love. Hold things in their proportion.”
– Henry Drummond
(Photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell, taken on a hike in the North Cascades.)
Butterflies on My Shoe
I’ve been looking at polls
looking at graphs
trying to determine
if our world’s going to last.
This poll says this
and this graph says that.
Does it look like the curve
is starting to go flat?
And which of our leaders
is gaining support?
What type of leader?
What flavor? What sort?
I guess I could spend a lot
of time looking at graphs –
looking for hope there
looking for laughs.
But maybe instead I should
go right to the Source –
go to Life, Love, and Truth
and feel the Force.
Everything can change
in a moment, you see.
But I don’t need a poll
to know Love is the key.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
For all the brave parents out there who are helping their children with high school math:
After a Day Spent Teaching Math
Function notation of a linear equation
Integer, whole, irrational, and real –
What would it cost to buy this meal?
Multiplying this, and factoring that –
How many cats would fit on that mat?
Parallel and perpendicular lines in a plane
When you subtract you lessen,
When you add you gain.
Exponents and polynomials and parabolas and lines
Angles and triangles, tangents and sines
Distributive, reflexive, transitive props
Substitution really just means doing a swap.
Slope intercept form and Pythagorean theorem
how many people would fill the museum?
The minimum’s the low point, the maximum’s the high
Mathematical equations are as easy as pi.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell, twitchy-eyed sometime math teacher
From my place of privilege in the spring green
farmland – a place made for long, quiet solo bike
rides that begin right outside my doorstep – a place
where self-isolating has become a time of sweet
retirement for me – is it my role to judge what is
“essential travel” for that young mother enclosed
in a small apartment with rambunctious toddlers
from morning until night? Maybe that drive through
the countryside with her little ones IS essential to
her well-being. Maybe the woman in the grips of a
dark debilitating depression desperately needs to
leave her home and go for a drive so she can see
children laughing in front yards and folks mowing
their lawns, and be assured that life is still being lived.
Maybe that person we see driving on the roads hasn’t
been to the supermarket for two weeks and needs to
get groceries for another two. I can’t know what goes
on in everyone else’s life. I can only make sure that I
make the best choices I can make in my own life –
choices that come from a place of Love.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
(Photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell – a photo from a solo bike ride through the Skagit flats.)
Enfolded in a sense of perfect well-being
a pure peace and stillness and quiet
surrounds me as I glide on my bike past
green fields and red barns and little yellow
flowers framing the craggly snow-topped
volcano in the background. I can smell
the briny bay and the sweet new buds
on the alders and the earthy scent of the
dairy farm – familiar and comforting.
One or two cars pass me, but I am mostly
alone on this road on the flats. Is it selfish
to say that this quiet time of quarantine
has been a blessing for me? I have thirsted
for a break from the angst and agitation,
the buzzing busyness and frantic, frenetic
frightful panicked pace of politics and ego.
I am enjoying this simple time of just be-ing.
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
“Peace, be still.”
– Mark 4:39
I went to bed fretting and frightened
imagining all kinds of doom
I read a little to settle my thoughts
and finally closed my eyes and slept
I awoke in the dark quiet early hours
surrounded by an all-knowing, loving
presence bigger than the sky – assuring
me of endless, eternal, infinite good
I started to get up – wanting to share this
moment with my FB friends – but then I
stopped, holding on to that moment for
myself, resting in Love a little longer
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
Cleaning During a Time of Quarantine
The cleaning started with the bedroom – I vacuumed, dusted,
filled five bags full of clothes to take to the thrift shop
when it opens again someday, and washed the curtains
so they glowed golden in the sunshine from bottom to top.
Next it was the cupboard in the family room – sorting
electronics, gizmos and gadgets, a springy door stop,
a weird stretchy thing for exercising, the sons’ old toys,
and treasure! – an old card with love from Moz and Pop.
Then the closet under the stairs – a file full of paperwork
that was important once, costumes, Thomas the Tank Engine
train set, baskets full of old magazines, and board games,
an old slide projector and carousel, winter clothing in bins.
And today I awoke slowly from a lovely afternoon nap
to see curtains glowing golden in the afternoon sunlight.
Who could have guessed to find such beauty and peace
in clean light-filled curtains – in that simple sight?
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 