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.
Posted this on my Facebook wall this morning. Thought I’d share it here, too:
I’ve made an effort to keep politics off of my wall the last year or so. I haven’t always been successful with this, but I’ve tried. And why? Because I guess I’ve wanted to move past the divisions in our country – try to focus on the things that unite us all: family, pets, loss, grief, birth, rejoicing, humor, the beauty in sunsets and sunrises and humanity.
But this morning – when I’m reminded again that there are so many places in the world where people are, literally, dying for the right to speak and write freely – I’ve decided to use my “wall” and my freedom as an American citizen to express my thoughts about the state of our democracy.
January 6th, 2021, is still with me. What happened that day in our capitol was terrifying to me. It was a BIG DEAL. And I have a hard time wrapping my head around the words and thoughts of anyone who tries to make that day sound like it was just another day in America – or worse, like the attempted insurrection that day was somehow noble and patriotic. WE ALMOST LOST OUR DEMOCRACY THAT DAY. I saw it happen in real time in front of my television – this wasn’t some slanted propaganda being fed to me by the “left-wing” media – the violence and insanity of that day was not some made-up “fake news” – it was there for all of us to see.
And I guess I hoped that everyone would recognize what they were seeing that day was over-the-top insanity. Afterwards, I was bewildered when I found there were people who thought the attempted insurrection was great. A year later and I am bewildered to discover there are STILL people who thought what happened that day was great. Capitol police officers were violently attacked that day, defending our democracy. The lives of our vice president and our legislators were seriously threatened. Thugs and bullies stormed their way into our capitol building and tried to force their will on our democratic process. This is not noble or “great.”
Joe Biden won the election – he got 7 million more votes than the other candidate. SEVEN MILLION! This tally was certified (over and over and over again) by judges and state officials of BOTH parties. If you think it’s alright to disenfranchise the 81,282,903 American citizens who voted for Biden by storming the capitol building to overthrow a legitimate election, you are not a patriot. If you think YOUR vote somehow matters more than my vote and the 81,282,902 other people who voted for Biden, you might want to consider moving to a country where elections just don’t take place at all.
Our system is flawed – there’s no doubt about that. How we ended up with the candidates we ended up with in 2020 is beyond me. But those were the candidates we were given. We all voted for the one we thought would do the best job (or cause the least harm), and Biden won. Why – after all that happened on January 6th and since then – there are still people proudly flying Trump flags in their yards is mind-boggling to me. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
(The audio podcast for this post can be found at this link.)
Recent events in the world have made me think about my irrepressible, intrepid little sunflower of two years ago. I’m thinking it might be time to retell that story…
(Originally published on July 13, 2020.) One happy story has emerged from the Slug Battles this summer: The Story of the Intrepid Little Sunflower.
The slugs and snails have been voracious this year. When my little sunflowers first sprouted I covered them every night with jars. When they outgrew the jars I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and go on Slug Patrol – looking for any snails or slugs that might be chowing down on my sunflower youngsters (in the morning I would take the slugs and snails out to our wetland – what I’ve dubbed my “Snail and Slug Refuge” – and ask them to please stay down there). Eventually I started wrapping copper tape around the bottom of the sunflowers’ stems and that seemed to work pretty well – UNTIL one morning I found a slug or snail had chomped through the stem of one of the sunflower youngsters and the top three inches were hanging from the bottom three inches by mere threads. I tried to tape it together, but that didn’t work well. Finally, I pulled the top part off and – finding I didn’t have it in me to toss it in the compost – I put it in a little bottle filled with water and put it on top of a book case, and waited for nature to take its course.
But the little sunflower did not die. In fact, it appeared to me that it even grew a few inches.
A couple weeks went by and the leaves started turning yellow. It was obvious to me my little sunflower teenager needed nutrients. On impulse, I put about half an inch of soil in the bottom of the bottle and made sure the bottom of the sunflower stem touched the soil – I hoped the plant would somehow suck up the nutrients it needed – maybe it would grow roots? I wasn’t sure how that worked – but it seemed possible to me.
And today when I looked over at the sunflower teenager he seemed to have grown six inches overnight! I looked at the bottom of the bottle and there were roots in there!
I planted him in a planter out on the deck. Right now he is out there, straight and getting taller, and waving happily in the breeze at me.
(Originally published on September 13, 2020.) You may remember the story about the intrepid little sunflower who was sawed in half by a slug earlier in the summer and grew new roots in a bottle. I transplanted her to a pot and put her out on the side of the house by her sister – where she’d originally been when she was attacked in the infamous Slug Wars. She thrived and grew out there and now she’s blooming!
Because she’s in a pot I was able to move her away from the dark background of the house for a photo of her in the sunlight. Check it out…
(Here’s a photo history of the Intrepid Little Sunflower.) -Karen Molenaar Terrell
Whoah. Now here’s a thought: What if I just pulled myself out of the game? No one’s forcing me to play, after all. I have a choice to participate in the shame and blame, or let that ball fall, and not get pulled into the brawl.
Remember what Jesus said to those who wanted to stone that woman? “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” And then he stooped down and wrote on the ground as the shamers went away one by one until there were none.
They had wanted him to play in their game, but he had more important things to do with his time here – heal the deaf, blind, the lame, and establish a new way of living – a true way of caring for each other and our world.
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 