The last person alive on the planet
wasn’t a dictator, prime minister, or president –
no, it was a cleaning woman
who carefully tidied up the earth,
tucked in the corners, smoothed the wrinkles,
hid the plastic, glitter, and mess
to try to give a good first impression
to whoever lands here next
– Karen Molenaar Terrell
(NASA photo.)
NIGHTLY NEWS: …death of…the city’s destruction …earthquake hit… wildfire out of control… missiles attacked…civilians killed… indicted on… newest COVID variant (commercial break – cool new drug name… disease you’ve never heard of before that needs to be treated with the cool new drug name… people smiling and laughing because they took this drug with the cool new drug name…side effects may include diarrhea, dizziness, cancer, death)… Trump ordered to pay… Biden orders strikes on… refugees starving…today the house majority refused to pass a bill that will keep our economy going…(commercial break – another cool new drug name…another disease you’ve never heard of before… tell your doctor about this cool new drug name… more people smiling and laughing…side effects may include dry mouth, drowsiness, depression, may lead to thoughts of suicide)… we’ll end our news tonight with a tribute to a good person who died yesterday.
OR
Alternatively, we could conduct our OWN end-of-the-day nightly news, I guess. Today four people exchanged smiles with me me in the supermarket and we made room for each other as we passed in the produce aisles. I saw a field of daffodils about to spring into bloom. My cat jumped up on the arm of my chair and purred and rubbed her head against me. I got a card in the mail from a dear friend. Scott had a warm fire going for me in the woodstove when I came downstairs this morning. I have a solid roof over my head. My belly was filled with granola and pizza today. My oven works. My washer and dryer work. My toilet works. My hot water heater works. I found another well-crafted British television series to watch by the fire while it snowed outside. The swans are still here, arching their backs and spreading alabaster wings across the local fields. I saw a flock of snow geese, too – fluttering around each other and honking in a beautiful cacophony of geese sounds. I don’t have any aches or pains. My eldest son and his wife and our grandbaby are coming from Australia soon. My youngest son and his wife live near, and I know they are safe and secure, and I will see them soon. I have a new great-grand niece! I felt love today.
“Do you not hear from all mankind of the imperfect model? The world is holding it before your gaze continually… We must form perfect models in thought and look at them continually, or we shall never carve them out in grand and noble lives. Let unselfishness, goodness, mercy, justice, health, holiness, love – the kingdom of heaven – reign within us, and sin, disease, and death will diminish until they finally disappear.“
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scripturesp. 248
“The press unwittingly sends forth many sorrows and diseases among the human family. It does this by giving names to diseases and by printing long descriptions which mirror images of disease distinctly in thought. A new name for an ailment affects people like a Parisian name for a novel garment. Every one hastens to get it… We should master fear instead of cultivating it.”
-Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p 196-197
My dear Humoristian hooligans –
Your mission (should you decide to take it – and, really, what’s the alternative?) is to keep hope alive in yourself so that you can bring it to those lost and weary in a valley of despair. May your irrepressible joy and never-ending good will to all bring light to the desolate, discouraged, and disheartened. May your generosity and open hearts transform the stingy, stodgy, and stuffy. May the bigots, bullies, and busybodies be transformed by your relentless kindness and unfailing patience. May you bring laughter to those in sorry need of a good laugh.
Go out there and work your magic, my friends!
Karen
I’ve deleted my Spotify account and no longer have any podcasts through the Madcap Christian Scientist blog. I do have some other podcasts out there, though.
Here’s one through the local Unitarian Universalist fellowship: https://suuf.podbean.com/e/the-healing-power-of-love/
Here’s one through Repod-It!:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/featured-author-karen-molenaar-terrell-children-of/id1540661725?i=1000557722651
And here’s the audible version of my first Madcap Christian Scientist book, Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist:
https://www.amazon.com/Blessings-Adventures-Madcap-Christian-Scientist/dp/B00DP8CWQO
Karen Molenaar Terrell
Head, foot, and elbow
shoulder, hand, and big toe,
right, left, and center,
every race, nationality, and gender –
all part of the same Body,
the same planet, the same universe –
there’s no last and no first,
no best and no worst.
We are One
in One.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
podcast link: https://madcapchristianscientist.com/2023/11/25/we-are-one-body/
“One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself;’ annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, — whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.“
-Mary Baker Eddy
“For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.”
– I Corinthians 12
When I first woke up this morning I was feeling scared and beyond hope for our world. Doomed, you know? And then something happened – something changed in my thoughts. I’m sitting here, trying to trace back what caused the change, and I’m not sure, exactly.
Maybe it was learning in the first post I saw on Facebook this morning that a friend who’s been trying for years to get pregnant just learned she was expecting. Or maybe I started thinking about how my friend, Janie, and her husband, showed up at my doorstep last night with cookies. Or maybe I was thinking about my little granddaughter in Australia. But I suddenly felt Love touching my shoulder and smiling at me, and the hymn “Tender Mercies” came into my thoughts.
I found Lisa Redfern’s version of the song on Youtube, and I’ve been listening to it. So beautiful. So pure.
I feel like the sun is rising in my thoughts – like light is rising over the hills and filling the dark places in my inner landscape. I’m feeling hope.
As long as we can feel love, there’s hope. I know this maybe sounds naive and simplistic – but I know there’s power in Love. I know Love is the only real thing. And as long as we can hang onto it, and live in it, we have everything that really matters. Without love, we have nothing. We can “win wars” and have gazillions of dollars – but without Love, we have nothing.
Actually – that sounds a lot like I Corinthians 13, doesn’t it? “If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
And “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
“Love never fails.”
“And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
Let’s keep hope. Let’s keep faith. But let’s especially keep love.
***
I awake each morn to a brand new day,
Singing Hallelujah! as I go on my way,
For my heart is fixed on this one guarantee,
The Love that is All holds me tenderly.
Tender mercies, oh, tender mercies,
Tender mercies are holding me.
Tender mercies, oh, tender mercies,
Tender mercies are holding me.
I can walk in Love through the valley of fear,
Singing Hallelujah! when hope is deferred,
The desert of my longings can’t fulfill,
But Love fills all need and bids want be still.
So no matter the need and no matter the threat,
I’m secure in Your love, no fear, no regret.
Can there be a sweeter comfort, a grace more secure,
Than the thought that your Love is lovingly here?
– Susan Mack
I went to a movie today at the local theater. Saw the same movie previews I saw a couple weeks ago at the same theater. And I realized something had changed in me in the last two weeks. Two weeks ago when I saw the trailer for Napoleon I was thinking this looked like a movie I wanted to see – great acting, interesting time in history, yada yada.
But today when I saw the same preview, I found myself reacting differently. As cannons were booming and bloody body parts were flying and a tyrant was crowning himself monarch, I found myself feeling… I guess “repulsed” would be the best word. I found myself asking, “Aren’t we beyond this now? Aren’t we done with this, yet? Why are we still making these movies about these egomaniacal men and glorifying the wars they mongered?”
I’m so done with it.
I think at some point in the last couple of weeks I reached some kind of mental and emotional tipping point. Our world cannot go on as it’s been going on. Things are going to have to change if humanity is going to survive.
War is not the answer.
“Bloodshed, war, and oppression belong to the darker ages, and shall be relegated to oblivion.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
podcast link: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/karen-molenaar-terrell/episodes/Im-Siding-with-Love-e2fofg1
I’m siding with peace
not just the kind where wars cease
but the kind where we work together
to make the world a BETTER
place
I’m siding with compassion
I’m not just siding with whatever faction is in fashion
but I’m siding with the Source of kindness
that underlies what blesses
ALL of humanity
I’m siding with Love –
below, around, above –
the only lasting power, always here,
bigger than hate, bigger than fear.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
(Photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell.)
(Originally published in 2019.)
“The weapons of bigotry, ignorance, envy, fall before an honest heart.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
I didn’t usually tell people right away – and certainly not the men I dated. I always thought it was better if they got to know me first as a human being. Sometimes it took months for me to tell my friends. Sometimes years. Sometimes the moment never came. I have friends who maybe STILL don’t know. After a number of early experiences, I’d come to the realization that some people would see me differently as soon as they found out. In the past I’d had all kinds of labels attached to me that weren’t really me – I’d been instantly lumped in with fundamentalists and creationists; with people who speak in tongues and handle snakes; with dominionists and faith healers and fire-and-brimstone folks. When one friend – who’d known me for years – finally found out, she’d asked me if I would just leave her bleeding and injured on a sidewalk if she was hit by a car. Which. What…?!
So I guess it says something about Scott that I told him on our first date. I no longer remember how the subject came up, but I found myself saying, “I’m a Christian Scientist.” I guess I half-expected an awkward pause after my reveal, but Scott quickly responded with, “Oh! That’s cool.” Then he glanced over at me, and asked, “What’s that?” 🙂
Turns out he’d never heard of Christian Science! And that was AWESOME – it meant I could explain what it was all about from my own perspective, without any preconceived ideas on his part. I can’t remember now exactly what I said – I probably talked about the Christian Science idea of God as the power and presence of Love; I probably talked about how I had experienced healings in my life by drawing my thoughts close to this power of Love. And as I talked he listened and nodded and accepted me. He shared some of his own thoughts about God – he’d been raised in the United Methodist tradition of New England and he, too, had been raised to believe in a loving God who cared for His children. He understood the beliefs I was describing, and accepted me as “me” right away.
Scott and I have never had a need to “convert” each other – to try to make each other hold the exact same religious beliefs. If asked, he’d probably still say he was a Methodist. If asked, I’d probably still say I was a Christian Scientist. But beyond religion, we share the same values – we both believe in the power of kindness. We both believe we should be generous to those in need; fair and honest in our dealings with others; and protective of our natural environment. We both believe we shouldn’t be quick to make judgments about others.
It’s been thirty-six years now since I had that first conversation with Scott. Through all that time he’s continued to be supportive of me and my practice of Christian Science. I am so grateful for him, and for people like him – people who approach others with open minds and hearts – ready to listen and share and learn from each other – people able to go past stereotypes and see the individuals behind the labels.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
Looking Forward: More Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist has its first review on Goodreads! I’m sitting here, all teary-eyed and grateful for the kindness in this review.
Maryjmetz writes:
“Karen Molenaar Terrell’s latest, Looking Forward, is another pretty darned inspiring and comforting book. It covers the period between 2014 and 2023 so, as she herself notes, an eventful period in every way: the death of both her parents, a world-wide pandemic, a certain President and his followers. The individual pieces were written as events happened so Karen doesn’t necessarily know how things are going to turn out any more than the reader does, but she generally manages to convey her expectation that things will be okay. More to the point, she acts in such a way as to somehow make things turn out okay. Without being preachy in any way, she shares her belief – no, models her belief—that Love is in ultimate control, while her own day-to-day actions make the world better: buying shoes for someone in need, teaching at an alternative high school, treating the other candidates with respect when running for her local school board, or just appreciating the beauty that exists everywhere.
“What I love about Karen’s writing is how genuine and truthful she always is; she isn’t some starry-eyed innocent who believes everything she is told nor is she ever full of herself for being so clever (but when you read about all the stuff she teaches at that alternative high school you recognize there’s not much she doesn’t know or can’t do). She acknowledges her own doubts and her own failings, but seemingly never lets that stop her from doing what she thinks is right. Her positive outlook, a result in part of her Christian Scientist beliefs, never feels forced and so she somehow manages to make me feel more positive and hopeful when I read her, though I don’t share her faith and, in general, tend towards pessimism.
“I wish I. could do the spirit of the book justice with this write-up, but I’m not the writer that Karen is.”
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 