There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear…
– I John 4:18
“Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‘yours,’ are not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.”
– Eckart Tolle
Fear never stopped being and its action.
– Mary Baker Eddy
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Be glad! Rejoice! 🙂
“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Years ago, when I was a teenager maybe, I remember seeing a Star Trek episode that showed a man who was half-black and half-white in a struggle with another man who was half-black and half-white – they were enemies because of their color – and I remember looking at them, thinking, “But… they’re BOTH half-black and half-white… what’s the issue here?” And at the end of the episode we finally see that the reason they’re enemies is because one of them is white on the right side of his body, and the other is white on the left side of his body, and… yeah… I remember thinking how absolutely ridiculous it all was for them to hate each other just because they were colored differently on different sides. But it is, of course, no more ridiculous than hating someone just because they’re all ONE color, and that color is different than ours.
The summer after I graduated from high school – which was about ten years after the Watts Riots – I traveled with my dad to California. Dad had grown up in Los Angeles, and he wanted to revisit his old neighborhood and see his childhood home once again. As we drove the streets to his old home, I noticed that we were the only white faces in a several-mile radius.
Dad pulled up in front of a little house, and his face lit up – “This was my home!” he said, getting out of the car. I followed him to the front door, where an African-American woman wearing a house-dress and a really surprised look on her face, appeared. Dad explained that he’d grown up in this house and asked if he could come in and take a look around and go out into the backyard where he’d played as a child. The woman smiled graciously and opened her door for us and allowed us into her home. I followed Dad through the house and out into the backyard where there was still the avocado tree he remembered from his childhood. He looked around, said it seemed smaller than he’d remembered it, and started talking about the happy years he’d spent in this yard as a child. Then he went back through the house, shook the woman’s hand, and thanked her for letting him re-visit his old home. Still looking kind of surprised to find these friendly white people traipsing through her house, she smiled back at dad, and told him he was welcome and it was no problem at all.
A block or so later Dad pulled into a gas station to fill the tank up, and a black attendant came out to help us (this was in the days before people filled up their own cars with gas). He had that same surprised look on his face as the woman in Dad’s old house. He smiled, and filled up our tank for us, and, as we were ready to leave, said in a friendly way, a big smile on his face, “Come back again!”
Every time I think of this trip through that neighborhood in Los Angeles I start grinning. I’m pretty sure we were the only white people in years who’d come nonchalantly driving through that section of Los Angeles. I remember the surprised hospitality of the gas station attendant and the woman living in Dad’s old house, and it fills me up with a kind of joy. I remember my dad – totally oblivious to the fact that he was in a part of Los Angeles that most white people might find threatening – happily traveling down “Memory Lane”, shaking hands with the woman in his old house, greeting the gas station attendant with an open, natural smile – and it makes me really proud to be his daughter.
I am, likewise, proud to be my mother’s daughter. When I was a little girl – maybe eight or so – Mom took my little brothers and me shopping at the local mall. As we were looking at clothes a young African-American family walked by, also shopping. A large middle-aged white man standing near us turned to Mom and said something like, “Those people should stay in their own part of town.” My mom looked up at him, puzzled – she didn’t know what he was talking about at first. He pointed to the African-American family and repeated what he’d said. When my mom finally understood what he was talking about her face turned red with indignation. She looked up at him from her height of 5’2″ and, her voice shaking with emotion, said, “That family has as much right to be here as you or me! We are all God’s children!” The white man realized then that he’d picked the wrong person to share his racism with, and sort of stepped back and disappeared from the store.
I’m really grateful to have been raised by parents for whom the color of peoples’ skin was a non-issue, and kindness towards everyone was considered natural and normal.
Thou to whose power our hope we give,
Free us from human strife.
Fed by Thy love divine we live,
For Love alone is Life;
And life most sweet, as heart to heart
speaks kindly when we meet and part.
– Mary Baker Eddy
“The time is always right to do what is right.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Do you know that there are people who will, literally, die if the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is repealed? Literally. Die. I know of at least one friend – a young person, beautiful, intelligent, amazing – who has been told by her medical team that if the ACA is repealed she has four options: 1) move to another state 2) move away from her home and family, and into a nursing home 3) pay for everything out-of-pocket – which would bankrupt her family (it would cost more than a million dollars a year) or 4) go into a hospice and wait to die. Basically, people like my friend – who want desperately to live – are being forced to face the fact that their political representatives don’t give a rip if they live or die, so long as their rich corporate buddies can make a profit.
The United States is the only industrialized nation that has for-profit health insurance. It is shameful. It is murder.
I myself rarely use the health care insurance that I’m enrolled in. But, as a member of a community, and as a responsible citizen, I have no problem contributing to a pot of money that will help others who find themselves in the same circumstances as my friend. There are ways we can provide for each other as a community that we can’t provide as single individuals. I can’t give my beautiful young friend the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year she needs to survive – but I can share my part of a collective health insurance pot with her, and I’m happy to do so.
My dear Humoristian hooligans-
If ever the world needed your kind-hearted sass and your good-natured love of humanity it is now. We are living in interesting times, for sure – but you were made for these times – and the world needs what you have to offer. May your love and courage touch and uplift all you meet today. May your sense of humor lighten the burden of those who are athirst for joy in a desert of responsibility and solemnity. May your smile be contagious, and your joy transforming.
Go out there and work your magic!
Karen
I was looking through old drafts in my wordpress file, and came upon this quote:”I care not what you believe; not one atom do I care; the one important thing for me to know is this – that you are entitled to my compassionate consideration; you are entitled to my respect; you are entitled to my applause for all that you do that is in the right direction. You are entitled to my kindest wishes, to my deepest encouragement; and you are entitled to nothing from me but that which means love and charity and loving kindness, and you must not get anything else from me.” – Edward A. Kimball
And I can’t think of anything else I need to add to that.
If we would open their prison doors for the sick, we must first learn to bind up the broken-hearted. If we would heal by the Spirit, we must not hide the talent of spiritual healing under the napkin of its form, nor bury the morale of Christian Science in the grave-clothes of its letter. The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love. – from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy
My dear Christian Science friends,
I humbly suggest that there are things we should consider NOT doing – because… well… we ALREADY look weird enough.
1) Instead of saying “I’m feeling ill” we sometimes tell people “I am working on the problem of a belief of sickness…” By the time we finish telling people we’re not feeling well, their toddlers are graduating high school. This is weird.
2) We wonder why we haven’t seen Ed in church for a year, and then finally someone tells us he is “no longer with us.” In other words – he died a year ago, but let’s not talk about it. This is weird.
3) We can no longer read up-close, but refuse to get glasses because that would be “giving into error.” This is ego and vanity, and it’s also very weird.
4) If we visit an optometrist, dentist, or other medical doctor we feel terrible pangs of guilt and remorse and feel unworthy of Christian Science, and a disappointment to God. Okay. Listen. God doesn’t give a hoot about that stuff, one way or the other. When we try to attribute human emotions and feelings and judgment to God we are anthropomorphizing God – trying to make God man-like. God is unchanging Love, Truth, and Life, and nothing we do or say or think or believe is going to change the nature of God, or Her love for us. So please, friends, stop doing that guilt thing! It is really weird.
5) When we catch someone using improper Christian Science-ese in conversation (refer back to #1), we sometimes seem to feel it is our duty to lob an earnest, lengthy, preachy lecture upon them “correcting” their thought and setting them back on the right path. We sometimes do this to non-Christian Scientists, too. Heck, I’ve seen Christian Scientists doing this to people they’ve never even met before. This is a little off-putting. It’s also totally weird.
6) When someone tells us they’re hurt, to state “there is no sensation in matter” and then ignore the person who’s come to us for human comfort does not seem to me very Christianly or Scientific . Please take whatever human steps you can take to help or comfort someone who’s come to you in need. Dismissing someone who’s hurt or sick with the words “there is no sensation in matter” is kind of lazy, not very loving, and really, really weird. Although we can, and should, see the truth – the perfection of God and Her creation – when confronted with a picture of injury or sickness – that is our job as Christian Scientists – Mary Baker Eddy tells us in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love.”
7) Long meetings about whether it’s okay for a reader to thank a soloist after her solo; whether we should be allowed to read from any bible but the King James Bible in church; whether we should call ourselves “Christian Scientists” or “students of Christian Science”; whether we should refer to Mary Baker Eddy as “Mrs. Eddy” or “Eddy”; whether we should exclude people from membership in our branch churches because of their sexual orientation, or because they use medication, or because they haven’t ascended, yet; whether we should allow any kind of accompaniment but an organ; what readers should wear on the platform; and etcetera, are all, in my opinion, a colossal waste of time and a distraction from the real mission of Christian Science, which, I believe is the transformation of our world through the power of God, Love. To expend a huge amount of time on human fussiness and opinion and narrow-minded nonsense, instead of on the healing work that Jesus demanded of his followers, is a terrible shame. It is also beyond weird.
8) We sometimes walk around with a kind of smugness about ourselves as Christian Scientists – like our religion owns the power of Love and Truth. We sometimes seem to be especially smug if generations in our family have been practicing Christian Science. Or if we’ve gone to private Christian Science schools. Or our parents or grand-parents held official positions in the Christian Science church – like CS is something we somehow inherited from our parents and grandparents. Umm…. no, the power found in Christian Science is not genetic – it’s not like the midi-chlorians that “run strong” in the family of Luke and Leia of the Star Wars movies. Christian Science is available, equally, to all of God’s children – no one has more access to the power of Love than anyone else. And to think that we do is just completely weird.
9) And if you’ve read this post, and none of the things I’ve mentioned that make us look weird seem weird to you… well… that is just…yeah, weird.
In his book, Rolling Away the Stone, Stephen Gottschalk writes: “…after the death of their founder, Christian Science became to a significant degree routinized… Eddy appears to have anticipated with great apprehension that the Christian Science church… would settle down into a kind of bland predictability when she was no longer on the scene. To her, being a Christian Scientist in any meaningful sense involved not only a strong commitment but, in a sense, a spirit of adventure.” And Gottschalk quotes William F. Hillman as writing: “The awakened Christian sees Christian Science as a means for coming into the full truth of being – the full awareness of God… It turns man away from system, dogmas, formal creeds, to God… Christian Science describes Mrs. Eddy’s experience of God. It is not a theory about God or speculation about Him… it is this experience we are after and not some understanding of a system. ” Gottschalk writes: “The readiness to plunge ahead, to leave behind what had been outgrown, to move in a new direction before it could be fully determined where it would lead – these traits were elements of Eddy’s sensibility… If there is a pattern to her life, it is the recurrence of new beginnings, and new departures.”
Do we see what we expect to see
when we look at one another?
Caricatures of the “them”
and caricatures of the”us.”
Exaggerated images of
villains and saints – of the
stupid, ignorant, ugly, scary,
evil, threatening, noble, kind,
beautiful, brave, and wise. Cardboard
cutouts of humanity.
We better get them before they
get us, right?
And we build up the hate, and
ignore any efforts at friendship
and cooperation and peace.
Because where’s the fun in that?
Maybe we like being angry. Self-
righteous. Offended. Frightened.
We better get “them” before they
get “us,” right?
The bad guys are the good guys
and the good guys are the bad guys,
depending on where you’re standing.
If A=B and B=C, then A=C
and the bad guys and the good guys are the same.
But we better get “them” before they
get “us,” right?
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
“Who is thine enemy that thou shouldst love him? Is it a creature or a thing outside thine own creation? Can you see an enemy, except you first formulate this enemy and then look upon the object of your own conception?… Simply count your enemy to be that which defiles, defaces, and dethrones the Christ-image that you should reflect.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 