There are four books in the Madcap Christian Scientist series now – and a fifth one that’s related. I have 64 reviews for the five “madcap” books. (51 five star ones!) 🙂
VoIP – Dragon User writes about the first book in the series, Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist: “OK, after reading the reviews, I thought this might make a nice Christmas present for a friend. When it arrived I decided to ‘peek’ at a few pages, but couldn’t put it down. I finished reading it in one sitting. But how to review the book is a challenge. It leaves you with such a joyful uplifted feeling and one of appreciation and relevance. At first I found myself saying, ‘I want to know this woman’ and after I finished the book I felt I did.
“Karen brings very positive reinforcement into the reader’s experience and the easy flowing style just melts in your mouth like comfort food. I found dozens of instances where I saw a parallel in my own life, that were entertaining and inspirational in a down to earth sort of way.
“I’m wearing a smile having read this and can’t think of a better way to pass an evening than this quick roller-coaster ride through another’s eyes of refreshing gratitude.
“It touched my heart and soul. Highly recommended.”
Feel the strength and power of God, Truth. Feel the nurturing and comforting of God, Love. Father-Mother Soul fills all space. God is limitless, infinite Good. God is the only Mind – the infinite intelligence and wisdom directing all the expressions of Life.
God’s children are reflections, expressions, manifestations, ideas of the one Mind. God’s children were made by Love, exist for Love, reflect only Love. There isn’t the teensiest tiniest part of God’s creation that is unlike the Creator. All we can be is what Love made us to be.
God’s children are never outside of Love, Truth, Life, Mind, Soul. God’s children don’t have minds of their own that can cause harm or act out of greed, fear, ignorance, hate, anger, revenge. A mortal mind is no part of our real identity and no part of the reality of creation. Don’t claim any mind but the one Mind as your own.
The belief that we can ever lack anything, or have less than we need, or be dependent on any mind but God for our supply is a lie. Good is never-ending and without limits. Life supplies everything we need, always and in all places.
Nothing has the power to usurp God’s governing of Her own creation.
In 2016 we moved Mom and Dad from the apartment in Tacoma to an assisted living place in the artsy little town of La Conner, about twenty minutes away from Scott and me. It had become clear that Mom was evolving into Dad’s caretaker – actually, maybe she had been his caretaker for years and we just hadn’t realized. We recognized that both Mom and Dad could use some support in this new, and last, adventure in their lives on this planet.
A couple weeks after Mom and Dad moved to La Conner, I had the great good privilege to return to the local Unitarian Universalist church as their guest speaker. Oh, but I love that little congregation!
My husband and I brought Mom and Dad with us this time – we wanted them to meet their new neighbors at the Skagit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship – I knew they’d be made to feel welcome and at home. And sure enough! – as soon as we entered the doors to the hall we were met by friendly hand-shaking people and surrounded by cheery laughter and smiles. In fact, one of the members was the widow of one of Dad’s old mountaineering friends and they immediately got in conversation about old times and mutual friends.
This was no hushed, sanctimonious, dignified fellowship. There was no one standing at the doors trying to usher people to seats, or bid them be quiet. There was no one trying to maintain any kind of decorum. Everywhere was laughter and old friends greeting each other, and new friends meeting for the first time, and love expressed. Everywhere was joy.
Mom and Dad sat in the front row of the church with Scott and me. There was a big smile on Mom’s face as she looked around the hall. In the front of the auditorium there are three beautiful, quilted panels of tapestry, depicting a scene in the Cascade Mountains – and I could see Mom’s eyes resting on the mountain scene, and appreciating its beauty. “My memorial service could be here,” she said. I smiled and told her that wasn’t something we needed to think about for a long time.
Dad, meantime, was perusing the agenda for the service and saw my name in it. He pointed to my name and asked me why my name was there. “Because I am a big deal,” I told him, grinning. He grinned, too, and nodded his head in acceptance – like, of course I am a big deal.
About ten minutes after the service was supposed to begin, the celebrant finally saw an opportunity to close the doors to the room and chime the service into being. Songs were sung, announcements were made, there was the sharing of griefs and joys – and laughter throughout. Attending a Skagit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship service is like being at a comedy club. I always feel at home there.
By the time it was my turn to speak, any nervousness I might have felt had disappeared in the laughter.
“The Healing Power of Love” was the subject of my talk. I talked a bit about my upbringing – raised by a non-religious father and a Christian Science mother – and how my parents had raised me to be a really happy skeptic: My dad taught me to question political and religious dogma; my mom taught me to question everything I saw, heard, and felt with the material senses. “My parents might not have shared the same religious beliefs, but they shared the same values,” I observed, “and they taught my brothers and me to keep an open mind, to not be hasty to judge others, to appreciate the beauty of nature, and to look for the good in people.” My UU friends nodded their heads at this – open mindedness and looking for the good in others is probably one of the cornerstones of the Unitarian Universalist church. Now and then I would bring my mom (who was sitting in the front row with my dad) into my talk – at those times I felt like George Burns feeding lines to Gracie Allen. Mom could have been a stand-up comedian.
I explained that I don’t speak for any other Christian Scientists when I speak about Christian Science – I’m only speaking for myself and my own experiences with this way of life.
I talked about how “God” is defined in the Christian Science church and gave the seven synonyms the discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, gives for God: Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Life, Truth, and Love. Lately I’ve been practicing substituting the word “Love” for “God” in my favorite Bible verses, and I shared some of those verses with the UU congregation: “Fear not, for Love is with thee… Be still, and know that God is Love… All things work together for good to those who love…” and here the congregation filled in the blank with me, “Love.”
I’ve come to a place in my life, I told the congregants, that if something doesn’t come from love or lead to love, I don’t want to waste my time with it. And they nodded their heads in agreement. I love these people.
Then I shared a healing I had experienced by drawing my thoughts close to Love: When I was in labor with my second son, I was told I would need to be given a cesarean – my son was in distress. As I was being wheeled down to the operating room, I asked my mom to call a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful support. When I got to the OR they hooked me up to a machine to monitor the baby. I prayed – and in Christian Science prayer doesn’t mean to plead with some anthropomorphic god to come down from the clouds and help us – praying, for me, just means to draw my thoughts close to the presence and power of Love.
I could feel the love from the doctors and nurses – I knew they wanted to help my baby and me. I knew that everything was unfolding as it should – under the direction of Mind. I found a place of peace. And suddenly the medical staff was looking at the monitor, looking at me, looking back at the monitor – and then they were all yelling, “Push! Push!” and my baby was born the old-fashioned way. One of the nurses was crying – she said she’d never been able to witness a vaginal birth before, and it was so beautiful. When I asked the midwife what had happened to allow my baby to be born naturally, she said, “We don’t know.” And when I asked my mom what the practitioner had told her when she called her, Mom said the practitioner had said, “Life loves that baby!”
It tells you something about the UU congregants that I felt completely comfortable sharing that healing with them. I knew they would understand the feeling of love that lay behind it. (After the service one of the congregants whose father was in the hospital thanked me and told me how helpful my thoughts had been to her – that meant so much to me.)
Maybe the thing I enjoy most about the Skagit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship is that they let me have fun with them. They know how to laugh. They are natural Humoristians.
And they know how to love.
It brought me such joy to have Mom and Dad with me at that service.
Quilt panels at the Skagit Unitarian Universalist Fellowship Hall
When I’d heard that my friend, John “Peace Wizard” Bromet, had passed, I immediately thought of the Friday noon vigils in front of the Skagit County Courthouse. John had been a faithful force at these vigils for decades. His passing was going to leave a huge hole there. Almost as soon as the thought came to me, I knew how I could honor John: I would go to the courthouse at noon and hold my “TRUTH JUSTICE KINDNESS” sign, and every time a car honked I would give a “high kick” like John had done.
When Friday came, it was rainy and gray outside. I wasn’t sure anyone else would show up at the courthouse, but I knew I needed to do this for John – even if I was the only one.
Of course, I should have known better. A little rain wasn’t going to stop John’s peacenik companions from showing up with their signs, as they’d been doing for years.
Trust. Feel the arms of Love enfolding us all in one universal cosmic hug. Feel the pull, the tug towards Truth, Life, Soul, Love gathering us together, breaking the fetters, cutting the tethers that keep us bound in hate and fear. We’re free in Love right now, right here. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
Others talk of an admonishing god – a lecturing god, an angry and exasperated god – a strict father who gives eternal time-outs to his children in hell.
But I have the God I need – Father and Mother, smiling on me laughing with me protecting and guiding me through Life’s playground, taking my hands and swinging me and spinning me over the bumps until I’m laughing so hard with my Father-Mother-Friend that I have tears on my face.
Love is All. Love is all presence – fills all space. The only Power and Presence. Eternal. Infinite. The Only. “There is no spot where Love is not.”
We are the reflections, expressions, manifestations, creations, ideas, children of Love. Love is our Source. Love is our Cause and we are Love’s effects. We belong wholly to Love. There isn’t the teeniest, tiniest part of us that is unlike our Source, our Father-Mother. All we can be is what Love made us to be.
The belief that we can be diseased is a lie, for disease is no part of Love, our Source. The belief that we are fragile and weak is a lie, for we are the image and likeness of All-Power. The belief that there was EVER a moment when we were outside Love – unprotected, vulnerable – is a lie, for we are never, have never been, will never be, separated from Love – not in the past, present, or future. The belief that we can be separated from Life, Love, Truth is a lie, for we were created by Life, Love, and Truth. God is our Life – never-ending and eternal.
Joy! Peace! Unfaltering hope, fearless and confident, strong and invincible be-ing is ours to claim right now.
Yes, our country needs to unite – but not behind the KKK, the Nazis, or anyone who uses hate groups as a tool.
And yes, Love is the answer. But Love shouldn’t be confused with that fear-based thing where we stop ourselves from doing and saying what we know needs to be done and said because we’re afraid of “making waves” or we’re afraid of confrontation. Sometimes evil needs to be confronted and called out. We need to love. We don’t need to appease. We don’t need to placate, mollify, or pacify. If someone’s feelings are hurt because we happen to disagree with them – that shouldn’t stop us from saying and doing what we know is right. We shouldn’t let ourselves be controlled by others like that. That’s not Love. That’s being a scaredy cat. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
“Neither sympathy nor society should ever tempt us to cherish error in any form, and certainly we should not be error’s advocate…Attempts to conciliate society and so gain dominion over mankind, arise from worldly weakness….If you venture upon the quiet surface of error and are in sympathy with error, what is there to disturb the waters? What is there to strip off error’s disguise?” – Mary Baker Eddy
I can’t tell you the number of times, in the last decade, that I’ve been told to not talk about things that matter, to shut up, to stop commenting and posting (on my own wall and in my own groups!). Times that I’ve been expected to tip-toe around evil and ignore it like it’s not there. Times when I’ve been told the way to keep harmony and peace is to ignore disharmony and hate. I’m not going to even pretend to play that game anymore. The violent insurrection of January 6th, and the hatred, extremism, and “Big Lie” that led up to it, are evil. Racism is evil. Sexism is evil. Bigotry is evil. Greed and dishonesty and corruption are evil. And to pretend otherwise is evil.
We aren’t going to heal our world until we recognize the evil, strip off its mask, and expose it for what it is. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
“A sinner is not reformed merely by assuring him that he cannot be a sinner because there is no sin. To put down the claim of sin, you must detect it, remove the mask, point out the illusion, and thus get the victory over sin and so prove its unreality.”…(Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p 447)
“If you venture upon the quiet surface of error and are in sympathy with error, what is there to disturb the waters? What is there to strip off error’s disguise?” (Science and Health, p. 254)
“Though error hides behind a lie, and excuses guilt, error cannot forever be concealed. Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error. Truth causes sin to betray itself, and sets upon error the mark of the beast. Even the disposition to excuse guilt or to conceal it is punished. The avoidance of justice and the denial of truth tend to perpetuate sin, invoke crime, jeopardize self-control, and mock divine mercy.”
-Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health p 542
“Many are willing to open the eyes of the people to the power of good resident in divine Mind, but they are not so willing to point out the evil in human thought, and expose evil’s hidden mental ways of accomplishing iniquity. Why this backwardness, since exposure is necessary to ensure the avoidance of evil? Because people like you better when you tell them their virtues than when you tell them their vices.”
-Mary Baker Eddy, Pulpit and Press, p. 15
“Many are willing to open the eyes of the people to the power of good resident in divine Mind, but they are not so willing to point out the evil in human thought, and expose evil’s hidden mental ways of accomplishing iniquity. Why this backwardness, since exposure is necessary to ensure the avoidance of evil? Because people like you better when you tell them their virtues than when you tell them their vices.” -Mary Baker Eddy, Pulpit and Press, p. 15
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 