“You are the one you have been waiting for…”
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When the Heart Speaks
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When We See the Bullies and the Saints
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Immortal Corporeality or Immortal Consciousness?
Life, Love, Truth, is the only proof of immortality. Man in the likeness of God as revealed in Science cannot help being immortal.
– Mary Baker Eddy
A young friend was conversing with me about the strides science has made towards giving humans immortality. My friend told me that one path science is taking to find immortality is one that would keep the body alive and un-aging. The other path, he told me, is one that would somehow keep our consciousness alive.
A quick google search led me to this story:”At the recent Global Future 2045 International Congress held in Moscow, 31-year-old media mogul Dmitry Itskov told attendees how he plans to create exactly that kind of immortality, first by creating a robot controlled by the human brain, then by actually transplanting a human brain into a humanoid robot, and then by replacing the surgical transplant with a method for simply uploading a person’s consciousness into a surrogate ‘bot.He thinks he can get beyond the first phase–to transplanting a working brain into a robot–in just ten years, putting him on course to achieve his ultimate goal–human consciousness completely disembodied and placed within a holographic host–within 30 years time.”
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-03/achieving-immortality-russian-mogul-wants-begin-putting-human-brains-robots-and-soon
Another google search took me here: “”The discovery of Turritopsis, along with many other recent observations of longevity, suggests that science may help us find the fountain of youth. With a host of new biological techniques and the rigor of the scientific method, investigators at UC Berkeley and around the world are poised to take the human race closer to everlasting life than we’ve ever been before…”
http://berkeleysciencereview.com/artic…/chasing-immortality/
So I’ve been thinking about all this – about the scientific search for an immortal body and an immortal consciousness – thinking about which of these two scientific methods I’d prefer, if I had to choose, and thinking about immortality as it’s referenced in the textbook for Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.
If I had to make a choice between an immortal body and the disembodied immortal consciousness that is Itskov’s goal, I’d opt for Door Number Two. I don’t want to be carrying this corporeality around for eternity. It’s a lot of responsibility. It has to be hydrated, fed, clothed, cleaned – and society has certain aesthetic standards that we are expected to maintain. This body is a lot of work.
Door Number Two sounds kind of cool – but, again, our consciousness would be inside a holograph, and that sounds limiting. I kind of like the idea of not being contained in ANY form – of blending my consciousness in with a collective universal consciousness maybe. I’ve sometimes toyed with the idea that maybe that’s what “God” is – a collective consciousness of Good that we all maintain together.
I really like what Mary Baker Eddy has to say about immortality. She writes that, as ideas and expressions of God, we already ARE immortal. Love and Truth and Spirit are immortal – and she tells us that we are the reflections of Love and Truth and Spirit. Christian Science teaches that our immortality is based on a spiritual foundation, rather than a material one.
If we call the Christian Science idea of immortality Door Number Three, I’ll pick that one over the other two. The other two sound kind of complicated and convoluted and iffy. Both of them are depending on matter. I say let’s forego matter altogether – let’s just skip that part and claim the immortality we already possess and express – the immortality of Love and Truth.
Immortality, exempt from age or decay, has a glory of its own, – the radiance of Soul. Immortal men and women are models of spiritual sense, drawn by perfect Mind and reflecting those higher conceptions of loveliness which transcend all material sense.
– Mary Baker Eddy
Animal Kingdom Discussion Forum
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I suspect…
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Settle Into the Peace
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photo of sunrise by Karen Molenaar Terrell
No Endings
Sitting here with the calico cat on my lap – watching her ears twitch, feeling the breath going in and out of her warm body. She is 16. I’ve had her since she was a four-week old feral kitty – hissing and scratching and scared. I’ve shared almost all her life with her – from the beginning to today. She trusts me now – trusts me enough to jump into my lap and curl up there, and let herself be petted.
Now that she’s older I sometimes find myself thinking about that moment when my calico cat will no longer be with me. I think about death.
This year a lot of people I’ve known and cared for have died. November was especially challenging – a former student, a man who became my friend after he and his wife read one of my books, and a friend of mine from my walks in Bellingham all passed on. Last week a dear woman in her 90’s with a kind heart, a stalwart faith, and a twinkle in her eyes – a woman who had been a member of our church most of her life – passed on. It’s all gotten me to thinking about the nature of death – what it is and what it isn’t.
The thought came to me the other day that death isn’t really an “event” – that there really aren’t any seams or borders or divisions separating one part of life from another – but that it’s forever flowing in an endless stream. It’s true that I can’t see the friends that have passed on, but I can tell you there are times when I feel their love. Death can’t end the love we have for one another.
It probably seems weird to connect the insights I’ve had about death to the Superbowl – but that’s where my pointy little noggin went when I contemplated the end of the Seahawks season this morning. If only the game could have gone on a little longer, I thought, the Seahawks might still have been able to pull it off. “But it’s done. Over. Ended. It is what it is. And the magnificent catch by Kearse, the receptions by Matthews, the runs that Lynch made, the colossal efforts of Russell Wilson and his teammates – none of that matters now because they lost.” Those were my initial thoughts. But when I stopped thinking about the Superbowl as an “Event” – when I started thinking of the game as just a step in an endless progression – a step towards progress – a character-builder – another life-lesson – my feeling about it changed.
I would like to think that all the lessons we’re learning here – the lessons about honesty, compassion, integrity, friendship, courage, perseverance, honor, selflessness, generosity, love – are lessons we can build on and carry with us as we ride the current down the stream. It doesn’t make sense to me that all of that learning can abruptly come to an end at the close of a Superbowl, or a life.
My calico cat is with me in this moment – alive and breathing – and this moment is forever.
Karen’s calico cat
The continual contemplation of existence as material and corporeal – as beginning and ending, and with birth, decay, and dissolution as its component stages – hides the true and spiritual Life, and causes our standard to trail in the dust.
– Mary Baker Eddy
Leadership After Defeat
The greatest glory lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.
– JK Rowling
Our beloved Seahawks lost last night and in the most heart-breaking way. I stood there, mouth open, looking in disbelief at my TV screen. “What the…? Did that really just happen?!”
As anyone knows who was watching the game last night, the Seahawks last offensive play was a doozy. Who the heck called THAT one, we all wondered.
Pete Carroll, the head coach, took responsibility for it. And then Russell Wilson, the Seahawks quarterback said HE was to blame. And… it’s kind of refreshing to see the blame game being played out in this way – with two people competing to TAKE the blame, rather than rushing to find someone else to pin it on. That is leadership, isn’t it?
Far too often in my experience the “guys at the top” – the politicians, managers, bigwigs, and Grand Poobahs – are the first ones to try to find someone else to blame when things head south. That whole “buck stops here” thing seems to rarely happen anymore. So it warmed the cockles of my heart when I read this on profootballtalk.nbcsports.com:
“Wilson credited Patriots cornerback Malcolm Butler for making a good play and said the (sic) he didn’t question the play call while also pointing the finger at himself for the way things played out.
“’I put the blame on me — I’m the one who threw it,’ Wilson said. ‘It’s something you learn from, it’s something you grow from. I’m proud of our guys about the way that we got down the field there in that situation. We had so many great plays, and we’re right there. We’ll just keep learning and keep growing.’”
Maybe losing the Superbowl when they were so close to winning it is the best thing, in the long-term, that could have happened to the Seahawks as a team last night. I mean, it would have been awesome if they’d won – duh! But the big thing that the Seahawks have always had going for them is their collective character, as a team. They are family. And when family members go through hard times together – support each other, take responsibility for each, encourage and inspire each other – they come out even stronger in the end.
(And we all know that neither Pete Carroll nor Russell Wilson was to blame for that doozy of a call. But aren’t we proud of them for being willing to “take the rap”?)
Winning is great, sure. but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.
– Wilma Rudolph
When I Missed My Turn
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Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 