Descended from Basque Reptile Aliens and Illegal Immigrants

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The rich in spirit help the poor in one grand brotherhood, all having the same         Principle, or Father; and blessed is that man who seeth his brother’s need and supplieth it, seeking his own in another’s good.

– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

– Emma Lazarus

***

Have I ever mentioned that I am the descendant of illegal immigrants? Yup. When my grandfather and his brother immigrated here from The Netherlands they were supposed to each have $20 in their pockets to get into the country. They only had one $20 bill between them – so when they passed through the line at Ellis Island the first one held up the $20 bill and then under-passed it to the one behind him who, in turn, held up the same bill. Those two hooligans should never have been allowed in this country. And, I shouldn’t really be here, either, I guess. Or half of me shouldn’t. Half of me should probably be shipped back to Amsterdam, home of my hooligan grampa.

That might be kind of messy, though. And I’m not sure how, exactly, they’d decide which half of me to send back.

My other half is descended from people who immigrated from a German colony along the Volga River in Russia. And also Basque reptile aliens. I’m pretty sure. (My mom has rh negative blood which – according to highly scientific research I googled 🙂 – seems to indicate she has a Basque reptile alien somewhere in her background. Yeah. As you can imagine, I’m pretty excited about this.)

We are all immigrants in the United States, aren’t we?  I mean, human life did not start here – everyone immigrated from somewhere else.  It’s believed the first immigrants crossed the Bering land bridge from Asia to Alaska and then worked their way down through North and South America. Then came the Vikings, Columbus, the Mayflower, the Dutch, Spanish, and French, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, slaves from Africa, the Irish and Chinese, the Japanese, immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, refugees from southeast Asia, immigrants from India and the Middle East… and all of these immigrants – with the exception of those who were forced here on slave ships from Africa – have one very important thing in common: They came here in search of a better life.

Are the newest immigrants to our country really so much different than the first immigrants? The newest immigrants, too, are looking for a better life for themselves and their families – looking for work, education, religious and political freedom.

Why would any of us – descendants of immigrants ourselves – want to deny others the same opportunities we and our ancestors had?

***

In my state – the state of Washington – there’s currently a bill working its way through our legislature that would allow the children of undocumented immigrants to receive financial aid to further their education. It is my belief that the children of undocumented immigrants are no less worthy of help than any other young person in this country. I can’t think of any better way to spend my tax dollars than to help people who want to improve their lives,and their communities, by furthering their education. Bills like this have already been passed in Texas, California, Illinois, and New Mexico. I’d love to see Washington State pass its version.

If you live in Washington, and want to support this bill, please contact Sen. Barbara Bailey at barbarbara.bailey@leg.wa.gov, and let her know how you feel about The Dream Act.

.https://www.weareoneamerica.org/sites/weareoneamerica.org/files/2013_ONEPAGER-WAdreamact.pdf

“In a new friend we start life anew…”

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“In a new friend we start life anew, for we create a new edition of ourselves and so become, for the time being, a new creature. Barbara had never done this interesting thing before. She had lived all her life in Silverstream and her neighbors were people who had known her from childhood, and therefore had a preconceived idea of her, so engrained, that they never saw her at all, any more than they saw the sponge which accompanied them daily into their baths. In creating a new Barbara for Jerry Cobbe, Barbara created a new facet of herself and was enlarged by it.” – D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle Married

***

I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately – the power and joy that can be found in friendship, as well as the challenges.  What, I’ve been asking myself, IS friendship? And how can I be a better friend?

You know the lyrics to that old song – “Make new friends, but keep the old, one is silver and the other’s gold”? Yeah. I’ve always had a problem with those words. They’ve never felt quite right to me. The implication there is that the friends we’ve had the longest are the golden ones, and our new friends are just silver. i don’t like that. It doesn’t seem fair somehow.

Sometimes, I think, we stop “seeing” our old friends – they just sort of freeze in our thought of them – we don’t see the changes and evolution and unfoldment – we don’t see them becoming something new. We stop listening to them because we think we’ve heard everything they have to say. And that’s a shame. There’s this great line in the movie Waitress that I think captures really well that feeling we get when we discover a new friend: “I was addicted to saying things and having them matter to someone.”

A “golden” friendship, in my mind, is any friendship that brings out the best in us – makes us less selfish, braver, kinder, wiser – helps us discover more of who we are as expressions of Love and Truth. There are those friends who see the good in us, and help us see it, too, through their eyes. They trust us. As Henry Drummond writes in his sermon, The Greatest Thing in the World, “To be trusted is to be saved. And if we try to influence or elevate others, we shall soon see that success is in proportion to their belief of our belief in them. The respect of another is the first restoration of the self-respect a man has lost; our ideal of what he is becomes to him the hope and pattern of what he may become.” Drummond asks,“Why do we want to live to-morrow? Is it because there is some one who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, and love back? There is no other reason why we should live on than that we love and are beloved.” To be valued, acknowledged, recognized – to have someone who believes in you – that is a powerful and wonderful thing. And to be able to return those things – to value, acknowledge, and recognize the good in your friends – that is “golden.”

There is another type of friendship – one that’s maybe not so “golden” and not so healthy for us.  Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, describes this unhealthy kind of friendship in her book Miscellaneous Writings: “Whom we call friends seem to sweeten life’s cup and to fill it with the nectar of the gods… Perchance, having tasted its tempting wine, we become intoxicated; become lethargic, dreamy objects of self-satisfaction….”  I think what Eddy is describing here is that kind of friendship that feeds our egos – the kind of friendship that leads to an addiction to praise. Instead of bringing out the best in us – making us less selfish – that kind of friendship makes us MORE selfish – more greedy for praise, more insecure when the praise isn’t constant and continual – in that kind of friendship we’re never satisfied and we’re never secure – we always want more. We want all our friend’s attention, time, and energy. That kind of friendship doesn’t bring us a whole lot of real joy.

I have an innate desire to want to fix things for my friends. I want to make all their problems go away. But I’m learning that I need to let my friends have their own life experiences – I’m learning that  the times that might seem the most challenging for my friends, are the times that are going to end up bringing them into the most amazing places in their lives. If I’m a true friend, would I want to deny someone that opportunity for growth and unfoldmen? I like what Octavia Butler has to say about this: “Sometimes being a friend means mastering the art of timing. There is a time for silence. A time to let go and allow people to hurl themselves into their own destiny.”

I think we all are drawn to people who don’t judge us, who accept us for who we are, and love us unconditionally – people who have the ability to understand our feelings and thoughts and share in them with us. As Lucius Annaeus Seneca says, “One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and be understood.” And as The Doors‘ Jim Morrison says, “A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.”

***

Here are some more quotes about friendship that I think are worth sharing –

“Love is the divine element in life, because ‘God is love.’ ‘He that loveth is born of God,’ therefore, as some one has said, let us ‘keep our friendships in repair.’ Let us cultivate the spirit of friendship, and let the love of Christ develop it into a great love, not only for our friends, but for all humanity. Wherever you go and whatever you do, your work will be a failure unless you have this element in your life.” – Henry Drummond

“In everyone’s life, at some time,  our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” – Albert Schweitzer

“Friends… they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.” – Henry David Thoreau

“You can always tell a real friend: when you’ve made a fool of yourself, he doesn’t think you’ve done a permanent job.” – Laurence J. Peter

“A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” – Walter Winchell

“No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” – Alice Walker

The Wisdom of Miss Buncle

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No, she was not like other people. Other people took grown-up things as a matter of course— things like late dinner, and wine, driving cars and going to the theater; things like marriage and housekeeping and ordering commodities from the shops; whereas she was just playing at it all the time, pretending to be grown up, when, really and truly all the time, she was just Barbara— a plain, gawky child… but not least, she still enjoyed the same things— ice cream, and sweet cakes, and crumpets with the butter oozing out of them— and she still loved being out at night when the stars were shining… Someday, she was convinced, somebody would find out that she was an imposter in the adult world. –  D.E. Stevenson, Miss Buncle Marries

***

I know, right?! I can so relate to this! There have been times when I’ve sort of stood back and looked at my life – at my children, my marriage, my home, my job, the responsibilities of being an adult – and had to chuckle that I’ve managed to pull it all off without anyone suspecting I’m actually just a tree-climbing ten year-old in a grown-up body.

A month or so ago I was introduced to the writings of D.E. Stevenson – the author quoted at the top of the page – and have very much enjoyed reading her books. Her stories, which take place in her native Britain, were written in the 1930’s and 1940’s and capture really well the cozy, quirky charm of life in a small English village. They have the same feeling to them as an Agatha Christie story – only without the murder. They are wise.  They are thought-provoking. And there were times – as in the passage below – where I found myself laughing out loud:

“I was wondering what we should write in the Bible,” said Dorcas, looking at Jerry inquiringly.

“I know what to write,” Simon declared. “I’ve seen it written in a book before. It’s the proper thing to write in a book. Daddy has a book with that written in it and he said it made the book more valuable— that’s what Daddy said.”

“What is it?” asked Jerry and Dorcas with one accord.

“With the author’s compliments,” said Simon proudly.

– from The Two Mrs. Abbots by D.E. Stevenson

***

The passage below captures the essence of a character named Helen really well – and haven’t we all known people like Helen? In fact, maybe we’ve ALL been Helen now and then… 🙂  –

She was a born meddler. In the garden, for instance, everything was directed by Helen. The raspberry canes, the sweet peas— even the ramblers were obliged to grow in the direction Helen thought best. She bent them to her will, tying them firmly to stake or trellis with pieces of green bass she carried in her pocket for the purpose.  – from The Two Mrs. Abbots by D.E. Stevenson

***

I even found mention of Christian Science in one of Stevenson’s books! And she didn’t write us off as completely loony! I really appreciated that. 🙂

“You are interested in Christian Science,” said Markie, handing her a duster… she had found a book upon Christian Science in Jane’s room when she went in to make the bed.

“Yes,” said Jane. “At least I don’t know much about it. I just thought it might help to— to clear up something in my mind.”

“Perhaps it may,” agreed Markie. “There was a mistress at Wheatfield House who practiced Christian Science and she had an extremely lucid mind…” Here Markie knelt down upon the hearth rug and began to lay the fire in the empty grate. “She was agreeable and cultured,” continued Markie. “I liked her very much and I was much interested in her conversation.”

“Did she convert you?” Jane asked.

“No, dear. If I have a pain I just take an aspirin in a little water. There is no need to bother God about it.” 

– D.E. Stevenson from The Two Mrs. Abbots

***

I love how Stevenson describes a child’s take on “grown-ups” and how they spend their time:

Trivvie listened with growing pity to the stumbling narrative— grown-ups were odd, she thought (not for the first time). Here was a perfectly strong and healthy grown-up with the whole day to do what she liked with, and nobody to say she mustn’t do this or that or the other, and look at what she did— it was really pitiable. “How dull!” she said at last, sadly shaking her untidy head. “Doesn’t it sound dull, Amby?” – Miss Buncle Marries

***

I do not believe in ghosties or supernatural hokum pokum, but I have felt an “atmosphere” when I’ve walked into old buildings. Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (the textbook for Christian Science):  “Though individuals have passed away, their mental environment remains to be discerned, described, and transmitted. Though bodies are leagues apart and their associations forgotten,  their associations float in the general atmosphere of human mind… Do not suppose that any mental concept is gone because you do not think of it. The true concept is never lost. The strong impressions produced on mortal mind by friendship or by any intense feeling are lasting…”

In Miss Buncle Marries, Stevenson addresses this feeling when she writes: “Slowly she became aware of Unseen Presences in the empty rooms— the aura of those who had lived in the house and loved it. And these Unseen Presences were friendly toward her, they welcomed her coming— she was sure of it— they would do her no harm. There was nothing ghostly about this aura, nothing supernatural, nothing frightening, it was more a sort of warm atmosphere, comfortable to the spirit as the warmth of a good fire is comfortable to the body.”

***

Yes, I am enjoying D.E. Stevenson very much. Every now and then I read a book and think – “Wow! This author would have been my friend if we’d ever met!” And that is precisely how I feel about the author of the Miss Buncle books.

***

It was a great relief to find that somebody wanted her, that she was not utterly and completely useless. – from the Two Mrs. Abbots by D.E. Stevenson

Trying to change the moment…

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“Trying to change the moment into something more comfortable instead of just accepting it for what it is… is really a waste of energy, ain’t it?… Of course, if you’re sitting on a tack or something, you might want to remove it, but still…” – Karen Molenaar Terrell, Great 21st Century Philosopher 

Beholding the infinite tasks of truth, we pause, – wait on God. Then we push onward, until boundless thought walks enraptured, and conception unconfined is winged to reach the divine glory. – Mary Baker Eddy

***

I had one of those days today. I got out of work a little late, and as I was driving home I started thinking about all the stuff that I still had to do before I could finally lay me down to sleep – there were things to feed and walk and tend – and I was really not looking forward to any of it.  In fact, the more I thought about what lay ahead, the more burdened and overwhelmed I felt by it all.  It was cold. It was dark. I just wanted a hot bath and bed and a good book.

When I walked into the house I found I’d walked into a sort of mini-crisis. I realized, then, that I was going to need to go back out on the road, drive back into the town I’d just come from, spend a lot of money, and use up a couple more hours of my night before I’d ever see that hot bath or my bed.

And this is when I had an epiphany: I wasn’t going to be able to change the circumstances, but I could change my response to them. Instead of focusing my energies on trying to find comfort for myself, I could just accept what was – not make any judgment on the moment as good or bad – not wish it away or wish it was something different –  and just live it.

Long ago I discovered that if I was biking or hiking or running uphill, and I was fighting the hill, it made it harder for me. But if I just let myself relax into it, everything came easier.  So that’s what I did with this “mental uphill” tonight.  I just sort of let myself lay back on the waters and let the currents take me where I needed to go.

I still needed to go back out on the road, still needed to drive into town, still needed to spend money – but I actually enjoyed myself, met some really helpful people, and even had the opportunity for some laughs I wouldn’t have had if I’d stayed home.

        One moment of divine consciousness, or the spiritual understanding of Life and Love, is a foretaste of eternity. – Mary Baker Eddy

Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts. – Mary Baker Eddy

 

“…the Year that for you waits…”

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A Flower unblown: a Book unread:
A Tree with fruit unharvested :
A Path untrod : a House whose rooms
Lack yet the heart s divine perfumes:
This is the Year that for you waits
Beyond Tomorrow s mystic gates.

– Horatio Nelson Power

Flowers and books and harvests, new paths and new friends – 2013 brought me an abundance of all of those things…  my Secret Garden gave me flowers like never before; my work  brought me wonderful new students and colleagues and adventures; and Goodreads tells me I recorded reading 20 new books – amongst them Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Navigation of the Globe, The  Boys in the Boat, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Born to Run, Biocentrism, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, Hiroshima, The Aviator’s Wife, Miss Buncle’s Book, and this was the year when I finally discovered Kurt Vonnegut and read his Breakfast of Champions, Sirens of Titan, Slaughterhouse-Five, and Cat’s Cradle. 

And now we stand at the threshold of 2014. What new friends await us on the other side of the door? What new paths will we discover? What new adventures? And what new books?  I’m looking forward to the discovering… 🙂

Time is a mortal thought, the divisor of which  is the solar year. Eternity is God’s measurement of Soul- filled years.  – from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

 

Pure Schmaltz…

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Tonight’s Christmas carol. Worry not – there’s more where this came from 🙂  … have yourself a merry little Christmas.

(With thanks to the singsnap.com karaoke site.)

http://www.singsnap.com/karaoke/watchandlisten/play/b9b53ca58Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

 

“Drop thy still dews of quietness…”

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Drop thy still dews of quietness,

Till all our strivings cease;

Take from us now the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace.

– John Greenleaf Whitter

***

I woke up a few days ago with a really weird harmonic ringing in one of my ears. Whenever I’d talk or sing or hum,  a sort of odd echo – not quite on the same note as my voice – would start ringing and clanging through my head.  It was driving me nuts – comparable to having a bee stuck inside a helmet on one’s head.

It’s Christmas time and –  like all of you – there is a lot going on in my life right now – there are students to teach, church services to conduct, a Christmas caroling party to host, family and friends I want to spend time with – and I began to worry that, with this ringing in my head, I wouldn’t be able to do all I wanted and needed to do in the coming week.  I wondered, too, if this might not be a permanent condition – and how I would be able to function if this ringing never left me.

The first part of the day was really busy for me – there was a pile of Christmas gifts to wrap, and cards and letters to send – and I really was in need of a long walk on the bay, too. By the time afternoon arrived my kiester was dragging.  I made myself a nice cup of herbal tea and sat down at my computer to check up on my online life. And this is when I discovered that I had somehow managed to become one of the targets for a rumor and gossip festival. (I know, right? Seriously?! But the mortal counterfeit of man – not the perfect man of God’s creating, but the bogus one  – does choose to spend his time in some really peculiar ways now and then. )  Ahhh…. no wonder my ears had been ringing! 🙂

I saw what I needed to handle in my thoughts.

The topic of last week’s lesson sermon in Christian Science churches was “God the Preserver of Man” – and it was really helpful to me. In the Responsive Reading we read, “O you afflicted one, Tossed with tempest, and not comforted… You shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear; And from terror, for it shall not come near you. No weapon formed against you shall prosper…” (Isaiah 54)  Later in the lesson-sermon we find this passage from Psalms: “Great peace have they which love thy law: and nothing shall offend them.” And from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy: “All that really exists is the divine Mind and its idea, and in this Mind the entire being is found harmonious and eternal… Look away from the body into Truth and Love, the Principle of all happiness, harmony, and immortality. Hold thought steadfastly to the enduring, the good, and the true, and you will bring these into your experience proportionably to their occupancy of your thoughts… Universal Love is the divine way in Christian Science.”  As I read these passages, I found myself filled with a feeling of complete and total love towards all of God’s creation – towards all my brothers and sisters. A feeling of peace settled over me.

One of my favorite passages from Science and Health was included near the end of the lesson-sermon:  “It should be thoroughly understood that all men have one Mind, one God and Father, one Life, Truth, and Love. Mankind will become perfect in proportion as this fact becomes apparent, war will cease and the true brotherhood of man will be established.”

As God’s child, I realized I am invincible and safe – nothing can harm me. I have nothing to fear. Love never leaves me. Truth never abandons me.  And there is never a moment when the clamor and clanging and clashing of human personalities can intrude or separate me – or anyone else – from the peace and joy of God, Love.

By the time I went to bed the ringing in my ear had stopped. I was healed.

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men. – Luke 2: 14

The Christmas Cat

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“Once I was holding her, she stopped hissing and fidgeting, and when I sat down in the car with her, she relaxed against me, laid her head on my arm and began to purr as I petted her head and ears. As the son drove us to the vet’s I sang the song I’d once sung, years ago, to the Christmas Dog. “Everlasting arms of Love, are beneath, around, above…” (words by John R. MacDuff) and the kitty looked up at me with the same look of trust and love that the Christmas Dog had once shown me…”

Karen Molenaar Terrell's avatarAdventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist

(Originally published on December 19th, 2011)

Yesterday I told you about the Christmas Dog. Today I have a Christmas CAT story to share… 🙂

A few days ago my son came home from his walk with Sam the Dog, to tell me that they’d found a bloodied little calico cat on the side of the road.  She seemed to be injured, wasn’t moving much, had just enough energy to hiss at the dog, but not much energy beyond that. I grabbed a towel (the yellow Pittsburgh Steelers towel my dear in-laws from Pennsylvania sent us several years ago when the Seahaws and the Steelers were duking it out in some bowl game – I figured if any of my towels was going to end up bloody, it might as well be that one) and followed the son to the kitty.

She was curled up on the side of the road…

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