This is an old blog post (September 14, 2013), but it came to my thought just now and I thought maybe Pride Month was a good time to repost it:
Okay, I just watched a youtube clip that still has me wiping the tears from my face. I was so moved by this clip – so completely inspired by it. It went waaaay beyond your typical proposal of young man on bended knee proposing to young woman – no, this proposal included a choreographed dance to Billy Who’s upbeat song, Somebody Loves You, and an ensemble cast of parents, friends, youngsters, oldsters – all there to support the handsome couple. This marriage proposal was testament to the power of community and the power of love. And part of what made the proposal so extraordinary, for me, was that the couple wasn’t a man and a woman at all – the couple was a man and a man… in Salt Lake City… Utah. And… did I mention that their mums and dads were there? Friends? Little girls in pinks tutus doing cartwheels? Babies? If you haven’t seen this clip, you gotta watch it – you just gotta!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HpWQmEXrM
This is the way it’s supposed to be. Acceptance. Support. Celebration. Love.
I look forward to that day when every citizen can share in the exact same rights as every other citizen of our land. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
It was a busy intersection in bustling mid-day traffic and I’d just pulled up to a right-turn yield sign, ready to slide myself into traffic when there was a break in the flow. I glanced to the right and saw a young Black man with a shopping cart full of belongings, waiting to cross to the island on the other side of me. He saw me look at him – I think I smiled – and he pointed to the island – he was asking if he could go ahead and cross in front of me. I smiled and pointed to the island, too, and raised my eyebrows and nodded my head – indicating that he was good to go. He nodded his head at me and crossed in front of me – trusting me – and we gave each other a “have a good day” wave.
And I know this seems like just a litte thing, but I can’t tell you what it meant to me that this young man trusted his life to me as he crossed in front of my car.
That’s how communities function, isn’t it? We’re all trusting each other with our very lives – every day of every month of every year that we’re out there, moving amongst each other.
So let’s say we knew, for instance, that our world was heading towards its doom. Let’s say, for instance, that a superpower had invaded, unprovoked, a neighboring country and was pulling other nations into a world war. Let’s say that a tyrant had somehow managed to build a following and get himself into power in our own country, and, after losing a legitimate election, was doing everything he could – criminal, illegal, dishonest things – to get himself back into power. Let’s say that there were more guns than people in this country (120.5 for every100 people, let’s say) and that it didn’t look like our country’s leaders were going to try to get control of that any time soon. Let’s say that more than 311,000 students had experienced gun violence in schools since Columbine. Let’s say that plastics, fossil fuel consumption, overuse, misuse, and abuse was destroying our oceans, land and air. Let’s say that even the basic right to have control over our own bodies was being threatened. Let’s say there was talk of Civil War. Let’s say things looked like complete crap here.
What then? Would we give up? Would we just resign ourselves to our collective fate and spend our time here shivering in fear, waiting for death, holed up in our hidey holes? Or… would we use our time here to try to find solutions? Would we view every new day as another chance to love and be kind and to make a new friend and make something beautiful?
Yesterday – before I knew – I felt this sudden deep sense of loss. It was like a shadow passed over me and I felt cold. And scared. And I found myself reaching out in my thoughts to the power and presence of Love that I’ve come to trust is always there for me – even in the darkest times. I asked a question that seemed odd and weirdly morose at the time: “Will you be there for me at the end? Will you help me through?” The answer was immediate – I felt enveloped in this warm blanket of love. “Yes. Always. Trust.”
I’m going to hang onto that – through the cries of “Civil War!” made by the brainwashed and misguided; through the shrieks of “More guns! More guns is the answer!” by the terrified and confused; through the schemes and screams of the financially entitled and politically powerful, of the bigots, busybodies, and bullies.
“Trust. Love wins. Always.” -Karen Molenaar Terrell
Yes, emotional and mental health is a huge problem in our society. People are feeling without hope, discouraged, unloved, disrespected, shamed and humiliated and bullied. We live in a culture that’s big into shaming each other – it’s not healthy. And we need to address all of that, for sure. But all of that is going to take time. You can’t just put a bandaid on that kind of hurt and call it “fixed.”
A more immediate thing we CAN do is put restrictions on guns. I can understand people owning guns for hunting or recreational target practice. But I see no reason why the type of rapid-fire weapon used by that high schooler should be on the market for anyone to buy. That just seems insane to me.
Because I’m a writer. That’s what writers do. Artists use brushes; I use a keyboard.
But what’s the point? Do you think you’re going to change anyone’s minds about stuff?
No, I know that’s not likely. And that’s not even my purpose. I don’t have a need for people to believe and feel and think exactly what I believe and feel and think about everything. People can believe whatever they want to believe, as long as their beliefs don’t cause harm to others.
You know why I share my thoughts and feelings in writing? Because I know there are other people out there who share similar feelings and I want them to know I understand what they’re feeling. I want them to know they’re not alone. I want to understand the perspectives of other people, too, and I want to give them the chance to understand mine – whether we agree with each other or not, I think it’s cool when we can understand each other.
Writing is how I connect to others. Writing – and reading what others have written – helps keep us from feeling isolated from one another.
I always knew I wanted to be a mom. I wanted the full experience – a big belly, labor, nursing, holding my baby close in my arms – the whole shebang. When I found out I was pregnant it was one of the best moments of my life. For me, that little zygote was a miracle. For me, that little zygote was my baby from the moment of conception. And when I saw his little heart beating, felt that first faint movement inside me, felt him pushing against me with his feet – it was magic! Labor wasn’t easy – but as soon as he was born and I got that rush of oxytocin – I told my husband I was ready to do this again!
I’m telling you this because I want you to underestand where I’m coming from when I tell you I am pro-choice. When it came to my own pregnancies, I never would have considered an abortion. But my prenancies were planned with happy anticipation. My babies were seen to be healthy in my womb. I was healthy as they grew inside me. I had the support of a wonderful husband and we were financially stable.
Not every woman feels the way I felt when I learned I was pregnant. Pregnancy is not “magic” in every situation and for every woman. Some females lose their lives because they’re pregant. Some females lose their lives in labor. Some females are still children themselves – with their whole lives in front of them and in no place – mentally, emotionally, socially, or financially – to become mothers responsible for other children. To some females, the idea of growing another human being inside of them is simply unfathomable and terrifying. Some females are pregnant because they’re the victims of rape and incest. Some females learn their babies are suffering from severe deformities that will cause them to have short pain-filled lives – and they want to spare their babies from that. For some women pregnancy is not the most magical thing they’ll ever experience, it is the most traumatic.
Every woman is unique – with her own needs and wants and fears – and every woman should have the freedom to choose for herself how her body should be used.
So those of you familiar with me know that I believe every citizen of this country should have the same rights as every other citizen – regardless of race, ethnicity, religion, non-religion, gender, or sexual orientation – and that includes the right to an education; the right to gainful employment; the right to serve your country; the right to live in a decent home in a decent neighborhood; and the right for consenting adults to marry and create lives together with the people they love.
I have never understood why allowing others to share in the same rights they have should be such a problem for some people.
Anyway.
So as I was reading the Christian Science Bible Lesson Sermon this morning I came upon a passage in the Christian Science textbook (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy) that I don’t remember reading before – although I’m sure I must have (I’ve read Science and Health three or four times from cover-to-cover). Get this:
Mary Baker Eddy writes: “God determines the gender of His own ideas. Gender is mental, not material… Gender means simply kind or sort, and does not necessarily refer either to masculinity or femininity. ” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 508)
Eddy writes: “Man is idea, the image, of Love; he is not physique.” (Science and Health, p 475)
And boom. Right there. As I was reading those passages I felt like I was having a conversation with Eddy about God and the nature of man, male and female. For me, what she had to write about gender clarified, and reinforced, my own thoughts about our gender identities. “God determines… Gender is mental… does not necessarily refer either to masculinity or feminity…”
I think we need to keep things in proportion, and I think sometimes we get so focused on the “sex” part of gender that we lose sight of the bigger, more important, part of peoples’ identities and lives – men and women as the expressions of Love. Eddy writes: “The ideal man corresponds to creation, to intelligence, and to Truth. The ideal woman corresponds to Life and to Love. In divine Science, we have not as much authority for considering God masculine, as we have for considering Him feminine, for Love imparts the clearest idea of Deity. ” (Science and Health, p 517)
Union of the masculine and feminine qualities constitutes completeness. The masculine mind reaches a higher tone through certain elements of the feminine, while the feminine mind gains courage and strength through masculine qualities. These different elements conjoin naturally with each other, and their true harmony is in spiritual oneness. Both sexes should be loving, pure, tender, and strong. – Mary Baker Eddy
I have never had an abortion myself. (And at my age, that’s not something I need to worry about anymore.) But I have dear friends who have had abortions – it wasn’t something any of them had ever WANTED to do – for all of them it was something they felt they needed to do, given the circumstances of their pregnancies. If you’re not a woman’s physician, her medical situation is none of your business. Her body doesn’t belong to you. Worry about making yourself a better human being and leave her alone.
I just watched the Marilyn Monroe documentary, Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes, on Netflix. I’d never really known much about her – I’d just barely entered the world when Marilyn Monroe left it. And wow. This documentary was eye-opening for me.
There were politicians in this documentary whom I’d always thought were great men – social progressives and visionaries – who, it turns out, were total sexists – men who knew they had the power to get away with whatever they did to women. I’m thinking these are not men who would have donned pink pussy hats or marched with Gloria Steinem. The documentary also included interviews with people who had been a part of the Hollywood scene in the early days and who talked about what wannabe starlets were expected to do with studio executives (who were all men, of course) to get a shot at being in a movie. It turned my stomach.
Earlier, I’d watched another documentary on Netflix, A Futile and Stupid Gesture – about Doug Kenney, who co-founded The National Lampoon and had a huge influence on the humor of the 1970s and beyond. Many of the people he worked with went on to star on Saturday Night Live – Chevy Chase and Bill Murray, et al – I loved those guys. I remember laughing out loud at their humor. But there were very few women in that men’s club – Anne Beatts was the only woman on the staff of The National Lampoon. Men decided what was funny – and what they thought was funny was often sexist.
I’m still a big fan of Bill Murray today – he’s been in some of my all-time favorite movies: Zombieland, The Royal Tannenbaums and Groundhog Day, and more recently Rock the Kasbah and Saint Vincent. But the part in his 2015 Christmas movie, A Very Murray Christmas, where a 65-year-old Murray sings “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow” with a 23-year-old Miley Cyrus kind of creeps me out a little, and I’m not surprised to learn he’s gotten in some recent trouble over “inappropriate” behavior with a woman working with him on his latest movie. He comes from a time when he could get away with “inappropriate” behavior – and, in fact, got paid big bucks by Hollywood executives (another men’s club) for being inappropriate. According to CNN, Murray has said about the incident, “You know what I always thought was funny as a little kid isn’t necessarily the same as what’s funny now. Things change and the times change, so it’s important for me to figure it out.” That gives me hope for Murray, and it gives me hope for our society, too.
There were a couple of television shows when I was growing up that gave me hope, too. Thank goodness for Diana Riggs’s Emma Peel of the original The Avengers series. That’s who I wanted to be – brave and quick and smart and not to be messed with. And thank goodness for Mary Richards in The Mary Tyler Moore Showand Anne Marie in That Girl – women with careers, making their way in the world as intelligent, independent single women.
I was raised with two younger brothers (whom I love very much) in a family of mountaineers. It was not a very feminine environment, and feminine tastes (the Little House on the Prairie TV series, for instance) were considered by my brothers inferior to masculine tastes (the Combat series, for instance). Because there were more of “them” than me, my brothers usually won the television-viewing wars. When I went off to university I made sure I got in an all-female dorm my freshman year – in large part because I didn’t want to be outnumbered anymore. I wanted some sisters.
I was attracted to men, but I didn’t necessarily want men to be attracted to ME – I didn’t want to be seen as those women portrayed in “The National Lampoon” movies. I wanted to be seen as more than a body, you know? It was an awkward time to be an intelligent woman with goals beyond being someone’s wife. It was embarrassing to sprout breasts and find myself walking around in a woman’s body – which some men seemed to think was designed just for them.
I have flashbacks from my youth: My sixth grade teacher, a man in his fifties maybe, told me he would never vote for a woman president – even if she was much better than her political rival; A high school classmate I considered my friend grabbed my butt as I walked past him at lunch, and all his friends laughed; A TV Guide ad for a new show featured a picture of a woman from the neck down – just her womanly body – like the rest of her didn’t even count; my dear mother really wanted pink to be my favorite color, but I rebelled against “pink” because it was “too feminine” – which society had told me meant it was inferior and weak.
And now we’ve got this freakin’ Karen meme – another way to keep women muzzled – perpetuated by today’s late night talk show hosts who are still mostly – you guessed it – MEN!!! And if a woman named Karen speaks out against the Karen meme and tries to stand up for herself, she is told that this is exactly what a “Karen” would do. Which. What the hell…?!! I refuse to be muzzled anymore.
To paraphrase Helen Reddy’s song, “I am Karen, hear me roar!”
Karen (in the middle) with her friends, wearing her “pussy hat” at the Women’s March.
