Truth is the only power and presence – the Creator of all that is real. Love fills all space, reaching to infinity. Life is infinite and universal and eternal. All that Love creates expresses Love. All that Life creates manifests infinite Life. All that Truth creates is the reflection of Truth. All that is good comes from God, and God is all. All is good.
We are the image and likeness of Love; the reflection of Truth; the manifestation of Life; the children of the one Mind. We are the expressions of Good, God.
The belief that we can feel fear, anger, hate, or confusion is a lie for we are made by divine Mind and all we can feel is what divine Mind feels. There isn’t the teensiest, tiniest part of us that can feel fear or anger or hate because we are made wholly in the image and likeness of divine Mind. The belief that we have our own little mortal mind is a lie. Mortal mind is no part of our real identities as God’s children. Fear is no part of us. Hate is no part of us. We were made by Love and for Love, and anything that’s not of Love is a lie and has nothing to do with us.
God – Life, Truth, Love – governs the universe in perfect, indestructible harmony. God governs Her creation with the unfailing, unceasing, irrepressible, unstoppable, insurmountable power of Love. The belief that God’s government can be usurped is a lie for nothing can usurp Love’s governing of Her own creation. Nothing has the power to usurp Truth’s government.
Feel the presence and power of Love enfolding you in Her loving embrace. You are safe. You are loved. You are Her precious child, never separated from all that is good. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
The despicable, hateful, fear-inducing, violence-inciting things he says that target my friends in the LGBTQ community and the Haitian and Puerto Rican immigrant communities, and those who’ve served and died in the military, tell me everything I need to know about his “policies”
No, I was not better off under his presidency. And the economy is only going to get worse if he’s elected and his plans for the economy are implemented – his tariffs would bring up the cost of groceries and deporting millions of farm workers would, too.
I don’t want to hear even one more person say they don’t like him, but they like his policies. His policies are all based on hate and greed.
I’ve been debating with myself if I should put this out there – most of us have probably already voted by now, and I’m pretty sure nothing I write here is going to make any difference anyway. But… on the flip side, I think I’d have a hard time living with myself if I didn’t say something. So. Yeah. Here goes.
I’m pretty sure the swing states are getting bombarded with a lot of political ads that never reach us here in Washington State. But every now and then – usually when we’re watching some nationally-televised sports show – one will pop up. And there’s this one I’ve seen a couple of times now that triggers something in me every time – and I don’t think I’m triggered in the way the politician who sponsored the ad expects me to be triggered.
This ad shows this tall, masculine-looking athlete playing sports on a women’s team. And then the narrator says this: “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
And that, right there, is just so…. just writing this I’m finding myself triggered again. “Us versus them.” This is the language of haters. This is the language that politicians use to divide us, and to incite violence in us. This is the language politicians use to bring the fearful and ignorant to their flag. This is bigotry, pure and simple. And it scares me for the safety of my LGBTQ friends.
I’m a Boomer AND a former English teacher who, in the olden days, spent time correcting my students’ improper use of the words “they” and “them” – “they” is the plural I’d tell my students and “her” is the singular. I grew up in a generation of people in which society was divided into male and female – and, being a heterosexual female who’s always felt female-ish, I never really thought too much beyond society’s binary system for the sexes. I had friends and acquaintances in the olden days who I knew were gay, but it was never a big deal to me who other people were attracted to and it never occurred to me that I should hate anyone or judge them because of their sexual orientation.
Now, as time has gone on and my circle of friendships has grown, I also have had the opportunity to develop friendships with several transgender people – in the case of my friends, they were assigned the label of “female” when they were born, but have never FELT female, and self-identify as male. And, in recent years, I have witnessed my friends – good, caring, kind, brave people – become more urgent in their cries for help as they’re bullied, threatened, legislated against, and hated on.
And I’m scared for their safety.
So when I see that poltical ad from the Trump campaign, targeting transgender people, I’m triggered. Feeding the fear and hate – feeding the “feargnorance” in others – is shameful and low. It’s despicable. That ad validates, for me, that I voted for the right person by NOT voting for Trump.
Shouldn’t our president be for ALL of us?
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one and the same in Christ Jesus.“ – Galatians 3:28
I pull into the Fred Meyer parking lot and park off to the side near the gardening center. As I’m getting my shopping bag and backpack-purse out of my car a tall man – probably a little younger than me, with the build of a retired quarterback – returns to his truck. His truck is parked near my car. He is wearing a red hat and I’m pretty sure I know what it says on it.
I feel suddenly impelled to exchange a greeting with him, but I let the Cosmos decide what’s going to happen here, and finish getting out my stuff. When I go to get a shopping cart in the little cart corral, he’s pushing in a small cart. His red hat does, indeed, say what I thought it would say.
“It’s getting colder!” I observe – weather is always a good place to start, right? He smiles and agrees with me. I notice him glance at my little Fiesta hatchback and I’m sure he’s taking in the bumperstickers there: “GOD BLESS THE WHOLE WORLD. NO EXCEPTIONS.” “MAKE AMERICA GREEN AGAIN.” And whatnot. He glances back at me and smiles. I’m pretty sure he knows we’re from different tribes.
“Do you need a cart?” he asks, offering me the one he just put back, and I smile back at him and thank him, and take the cart from him into the supermarket. I’m still smiling as I enter the store. There is kindness in every tribe.
I pick up the items I need to pick up and check out, then head to the Starbucks counter. The barista – tall, Black, with a longish goatee dyed flamingo-pink – steps up to take my order. I love this guy. He never fails to make me smile. He asks what I’d like and I tell him this will be my first coffee in a month. He gasps. “Honey!” he exclaims in horror, “We need to fix that for you!” While he’s making my pumpkin spice latte he regales me with tales of his dogs and his husband and his grocery-shopping experiences. By the time he hands me my latte I have had a whole day’s worth of laugh out louds. He is like a one-man comedy show. As I leave, I tell a couple of the workers who are sitting at the exit that “I love that guy!” And they nod their heads and laugh. They get it.
I go to the Target parking lot to take pictures of the autumnal trees and then go in the store to explore what they’ve got in there. As I’m browsing I wander down the coffee aisle and see there are a lot of coffee options for Keurig owners, but we are not Keurig owners – so that’s not going to work. There are also, though, bags of ground coffe, and I think, “Oh! I should get one of those French presses and press my own coffee!” So I ask a man stocking shelves if he knows where I might find French presses. He’s really helpful – tells me his wife uses a French press every morning to make her own coffee – and then clicks into his Target device and tells me what aisle I can find French presses in.
I proudly bring my French press home…
The next morning I’m back in Target to return the French press. I tell the customer service lady what happened: “I came home and showed my husband the French press and he said, ‘Karen. We already have two of those.'” The customer service woman starts cracking up and, as she’s efficiently taking care of my return for me, suggests maybe I should buy one for every day of the week. I love people who make me laugh.
On the way home I decide to turn onto Allen West Road just to see what magic I can find there. And there’s that amazing pumpkin display I remember seeing last October! Darla, the owner of Eagle View Farms, comes out to greet me, a big smile on her face. “Karen!” she calls – she remembers my name! It’s so good to see Darla again. It’s our annual reunion, I guess. We talk about her son, Adam, who was in my eighth grade class a couple decades ago – a very cool person – and laugh and chat and laugh some more. She’s covered in mud. She says she’s been cleaning out the gutters while her husband went shopping. I say, dreamily, “Sounds like a Hallmark movie,” and she laughs out loud.
I snap some pictures of her display, and then buy a big yellow pumpkin from her. I ask her how much – there are no signs indicating the price – and she says, “Seven dollars.”
“How much REALLY?” I ask. And she insists it’s seven dollars. Right. So I write her a check for ten, she calls me a stinker, and I ask her how much it really is. She admits it’s ten dollars.
We hug one more time – mud and all – and I drive home with a big yellow pumpkin and my heart full of humanity’s goodness. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
Request for those who join me for conversation on my political posts: Please refrain from name-calling, condescension, and personal attacks. The people you encounter in the comments are all my friends. I love it when my friends come on to my threads to bounce ideas off each other, debate, and learn from each other. I expect all my friends who join in the conversation to treat each other with kindness and respect.
I enjoy exchanging thoughts and beliefs with my friends. This is how I was raised, I guess. My mom was the youngest of ten very opinionated, very intelligent children with a wide range of beliefs: Methodists (the church they were raised in), atheists, Unitarian Universalists, Christian Scientists, Republicans and Democrats. And when we’d meet up for Thanksgiving at Grandma’s house in Portland, the dialogue was lively, stimulating and raucous. It was also full of laughter and humor, respect and love. People could disagree with each other without putting each other down – without calling each other “stupid” or “deplorable” or “deluded.” I learned so much from these gatherings! It was so fun!
For many years, my mom and dad belonged to different political parties. On election day, they’d cheerfully get in the car together to drive to the polling booth, knowing that they were cancelling out each other’s votes and laughing about that. They loved and respected each other, regardless. (Around 1981 – when all the air traffic controllers were fired by Reagan – my mom joined Dad in the Democratic party and became more vocal about politics than any of us.)
I have friends and family from a wide-range of religons and non-religons, beliefs, and political parties, and I love them all.
I have friends who tell me that Donald Trump didn’t expect there to be violence on January 6th – that it was actually “leftists” who brought the violence to the capitol to make Donald Trump look bad. And I keep coming back to this one question: What did the people who showed up for Trump’s “rally” expect was going to happen on that day? Did they really think that they were going to stand peacefully outside the capitol, holding their signs and yelling “STOP THE STEAL!” or whatever other lies they’d been told and that the legislators were going to go, “Oh, okay. Let’s discount the votes of the more than 81 million people who voted for Biden, and the 306 electoral votes he got, and just give this to Trump”?
Did Donald Trump really think he was going to change the results of the election by sending his followers to the capitol building to peacefully protest? Seriously?!
I think it’s sad that our politicians have to beg us for money to “win” – the inference being that whoever has the most money wins the election. That just seems like a really dysfunctional way to choose who will run our government. I mean. That doesn’t seem like the way a democratic republic should work, right?
And wouldn’t it be cool if we stripped away labels of “right” and “left” and “Democrat” and “Republican” and actually talked about the issues, as individuals, rather than as members of a “side”? I think we’d find we have more in common than we think.
I mean, who doesn’t want fair pay? (And if you don’t want fair pay for all, then you wouldn’t be able to hide behind a party, you’d have to actually come out and say, “No, I don’t believe in fair pay for everyone.”)
And who doesn’t want equal rights for all, regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion? (And if you DON’T want equal rights, you couldn’t just say, “I’m a member of the _ party” and spout the party jingle, you’d have to admit, “Nah, I don’t really believe in equal rights. Some people should have more rights than others.”)
Who DOESN’T believe in honesty and truthfulness and being presented with the facts? (And if you don’t believe in honesty and truthfulness and being presented with the facts, you wouldn’t be able to hide behind some party-mob mentality, you’d have to actually come out, as an individual, and admit that you don’t believe in talking honestly, and with the facts.)
Who DOESN’T want a clean and safe environment for everyone?
Who DOESN’T want our children to be safe in our schools?
Who DOESN’T want those with handicaps to be treated with dignity?
Who DOESN’T want our younger generation to have the financial ability to buy homes, pay for childcare, afford training and higher education, without becoming financially bankrupt, or in life-long debt?
Who DOESN’T want a strong Federal Emergency Management Agency to care for victims of hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, floods? -Who DOESN’T want health care to be affordable for everyone?
No, I’m not voting for Harris because she’s a woman. If Trump was a woman, and Harris was a man, I’d still be voting for Harris.
No, I’m not freaked out by the flags that proclaim “WITCHES FOR KAMALA.” I am freaked out, though, by the Confederate and NAZI flags I’ve seen at Trump’s rallies.
And you can tap dance around it all you want, but the Trump-led insurrection of January 6th should have been a deal-breaker for every patriotic, stars-and-stripes-flying, law-abiding, Constitution-loving American.
Here’s what I witnessed live in front of my television on January 6: I witnessed Trump urging his followers to march on the capitol and “fight like hell” – I watched his followers climb over barricades, clash with capitol police, stab the police with flagpoles, crash through windows, and enter the capitol building with Confederate battle flags. I watched legislators being rushed out of the building by security because their lives were in danger. I saw a gallows for Pence set up. And we were wondering where the National Guard was – why hadn’t they been called in? Surely Trump could have called them directly – he was the commander-in-chief, he didn’t need to go through official channels.
I had a friend who actually went to the rally – she was a Trump supporter and still is, I think – but she left after Trump spoke and got on a bus and went home and I don’t think – even though she was there for the speech – she’s ever actually realized what happened after the speech. I feel like I had a better view than she did at that point. What my friend did was practice her First Amendment rights – she came to peacefully protest the lie she’d been led to believe – that this was a “stolen election.”
What happened after my friend left, though, was criminal. Our Constitution guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” For me, the key qualifier there in regards to January 6th is “peaceably.”
I was, frankly, traumatized by what I saw that day. How could this happen in the USA?! -Karen Molenaar Terrell Link to footage from January 6th.
So there’s this meme popping up on some of my friends’ FB walls like those little animals in a Whac-a-Mole game. The meme goes something like this: “Why is our government spending all this money on illegal immigrants when it’s not doing anything for the hurricane victims?”
Which. What?!
If you do a little research, you’ll find that “As of Sunday, FEMA says it has provided more than $137 million in assistance to six states in the southeast, including 7,000 federal personnel, nearly 15 million meals, 14 million liters of water, 157 generators and more than half a million tarps. The agency also says more than 3,000 North Carolina residents have been rescued or supported by more than 1,200 urban search and rescue personnel, with recovery efforts aided by National Guard and active duty troops. North Carolina has also received $100 million in federal transportation funds to rebuild roads and bridges washed out by the storm.” (NPR)
In addressing Trump’s claim that the federal government is only offering $750 to “people whose homes have been washed away.” NPR explains: “The $750 Trump refers to is what’s called Serious Needs Assistance, an initial direct relief payment intended to help cover emergency supplies like food, water, baby formula and other basics. The serious needs assistance is one of many changes to FEMA’s individual assistance programs that took effect earlier this year, along with displacement assistance to cover immediate housing needs while residents sort out long-term options. FEMA assistance also covers storm-related damage to homes and personal property.” In other words, the $750 is simply the first immediate initial payment given to people to get the things they need right now to stay alive. It’s not the ONLY payment they’re going to get.
Regarding illegal immigrants costing the United States a lot of money: Just what kind of money are we spending on illegal immigrants? I mean. I don’t see undocumented immigrants living lazy lives of luxury, you know? So I wondered just how illegal immigrants affected our economy and googled that. Here’s the AI answer that popped up:
“The economic impact of illegal immigration on the United States is complex and controversial, but economists generally agree that the effects are positive: Economic growth Illegal immigrants contribute to economic growth and increase the size of the U.S. economy. Tax revenue Illegal immigrants pay more in taxes than they collect. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes, and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance Consumer benefits Illegal immigrants benefit consumers by reducing the prices of goods and services. Employer benefits Illegal immigration provides clear benefits for employers. Labor market dislocationsIllegal immigration may cause some short-term dislocations in labor markets. Low-skilled native workers Illegal immigration may slightly depress wages for low-skilled native workers. Economists estimate that legalizing the illegal immigrant population would increase U.S. gross domestic product. The New American Economy estimates that legalization would result in $68 billion in additional state and local tax revenue, $116 billion in additional federal tax revenues, and $1.4 trillion in estimated GDP growth.”
In the stillness of the night I commune with the Cosmos – feel the presence, power, might of Love enfolding me – and this is what I trust – my own experience with the Divine. I don’t need to be told what to believe, what to think, what to feel, when to stand and when to kneel. I know in my own heartt what’s genuine, what’s real.
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 