Staying Sane While Staying Informed

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“Isn’t it great that we don’t need to give up our joy to overcome evil?”

Karen Molenaar Terrell's avatarAdventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist

…those who discern Christian Science will hold crime in check. They will aid in the ejection of error. They will maintain law and order, and cheerfully await the certainty of ultimate perfection. – Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p. 97

***

A friend posted a great cartoon (by David Sippress) on Facebook the other day. It shows a man and woman walking down the street, and the woman is saying: “My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”

I can really relate to this cartoon.

The desire to be a responsible and contributing citizen means that I want to be aware of, and informed about, the challenges my nation faces. But how does one stay informed about these challenges, without feeling overwhelmed by them? Sometimes the fear and hate that seem to permeate our atmosphere can seem impossible to overcome, and…

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We Shall Overcome

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The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway. –                                                                                        from the Paradoxical Commandments by Dr. Kent M. Keith http://www.paradoxicalcommandments.com/

Consciousness of right-doing brings its own reward; but not amid the smoke of battle is merit seen and appreciated by lookers-on… If your endeavors are beset by fearful odds, and you receive no present reward, go not back to error, nor become a sluggard in the race. When the smoke of battle clears away, you will discern the good you have done, and receive according to your deserving. – Mary Baker Eddy

***

It sure appears sometimes that injustice, bigotry, hatred, and inequality are winning the battle, doesn’t it? We crave justice. We yearn for equity and fair play. But we don’t always seem to find those things in the here and now. We might be tempted to feel discouraged and frustrated about the state of our world. We might be tempted to lose hope. We might even be tempted to just give up. But… well, if we just give up – what’s the alternative? To STOP trying to do good? To choose to be  unkind? To choose to be dishonest? To deliberately and consciously choose to feel no joy? Those do not feel like healthy options to me.

The other day I decided to conduct a little experiment: I decided to make a bad day for myself.  I had no idea how to go about this, really. I figured that making a bad day for myself would probably start with a bad attitude, though, right? About half an hour into my experiment I made the mistake of calling my mom. Within a minute she had me cracking up.  So. Yeah.  So much for my little experiment.  After my inauspicious beginning, it didn’t get much worse, either. My experiment was a spectacular failure. I learned something from it, though. I learned that I’d have to work really hard to make a bad day for myself.  And I faced the fact that I’m simply too lazy to have much success with that kind of thing.

Call me a naïve idealist, but I believe that good overcomes evil. I believe Love overcomes hate. I believe that wisdom overcomes ignorance. I believe Truth overcomes dishonesty. Always.  I believe what Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures: “Though error hides behind a lie and excuses guilt, error cannot forever be concealed. Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error.”

I believe that we SHALL overcome someday.

We shall overcome,

 We shall overcome,

We shall overcome, someday.

 Oh, deep in my heart,

 I do believe.

 we shall overcome,  someday.

We’ll walk hand in hand,

We’ll walk hand in hand,

We’ll walk hand-in-hand, someday. – Zilphia Hart, Frank Hamilton, Guy Carawan, and Pete Seeger

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yId_ABmtw-w

We won’t forget Trayvon. He is important to us – the verdict this week doesn’t change the truth of  that. God bless his family.

  … Want of uniform justice is a crying evil caused by the selfishness and inhumanity of man. Our forefathers exercised their faith in the direction taught by the Apostle James, when he said: “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted  from the world.”… The wicked man is not the ruler of his upright neighbor. Let it be understood that success in error is defeat in Truth… – Mary Baker Eddy

Humoristianity

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In the summer of 2007, as a response to what I saw as an over-abundance of people who took themselves WAAAY too seriously,  I started a new “religion” on a discussion board about religion…

* I’ve decided to create a new religion. People belonging to this religion will call themselves “Humoristians.” Here are the 5 tenets: 
1) You must be able to laugh at yourself. 
2) You must be able to recognize how ludicrous your beliefs might appear to others. 
3) You must want nothing but good for everyone, everywhere in the universe. 
4) You must have a natural aversion to meetings, committees, and scheduled events (as we will be having none of those). 
5) You must enjoy the humor of Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, Tom Lehrer, and Jerry Seinfeld (if you’re a Jerry Lewis kind of guy, you might want to think about starting your own religion – although we wish you nothing but good).

The “one true fallacious faith” (as our “Grand Inquisitor”  the Right Ribald Reverend JL soon dubbed it) immediately took off and had an almost instant following.  Our ragtag little congregation of hooligans covered the globe – including people as far away as Australia and Europe and an army base in Afghanistan – and was comprised of atheists, a couple Mormons, an hilarious evangelical preacher’s wife, a Methodist , a Buddhist, a Catholic-Methodist-Celtic language aficionado, a nuclear physicist Trinitarian, a couple of agnostics, a pagan, an atheist Jew, and at least one Christian Scientist (moi).  We seemed a kind of unlikely little fellowship, I guess.  But we all had one really important thing in common – we  knew how to laugh at ourselves.

And soon we came to identify our church’s purpose on the discussion board: We made it our mission to battle busybody bullying bigotry wherever we found it, to bring laughter to those athirst in a dry desert of stodginess and pomposity,  and to transform the humoristically-challenged with our good-natured joie de vivre.

It was fun. 🙂

I made some wonderful new friends on that discussion thread – people who entered my life at a time when I was dealing with some major challenges and changes in my life,  and showed genuine care and friendship towards me.   We talked about stuff with each other that you don’t usually talk about in off-line life – shared our beliefs about God, Nogod, heaven, hell, nature, dogma, karma, the after life, politics – stuff you don’t often talk about even with your closest friends – and, in some ways, came to know each other better than friends and family who had been in our lives for decades.  Maybe BECAUSE we were all new to each other – we actually saw each other, and listened to each other, and didn’t take each other for granted. We didn’t assume we knew what our fellow Humoristians thought, felt, and believed, or who they were. There’s a line in Waitress that sort of sums up what I was feeling about my new friends: “I was addicted to saying things and having them matter to someone.”

On the discussion board where we established our Humoristian temple, when a discussion thread reaches 10,000 posts it’s “locked” and no more posts can be added to it. Knowing this, we only posted on our thread sporadically – it held a lot of special memories for all of us and we wanted to stretch it out for as long as we could.  But last week we finally reached our 10,000th post and closed and locked the doors of the temple. On the one hand I felt a kind of relief, I guess – that thread had been going along  for six years, and I knew it was time to graduate now – but there was a kind of sadness about it, too – it marked the end of a really happy era for me.

The good news, though, is that my Humoristian friends are STILL my friends.  I’ve actually been able to meet, in the person, several of these hooligans in recent years.  My husband and sons traveled with me to Nova Scotia to meet  the Humoristian  “Grand Inquisitor” JL and his lovely wife, Kathi (who has become one of my bestest friends ever) back in 2009;  Sandy and her husband, Danny, from New York, met up with me at Seattle’s Pike Place Market in 2011; David”Runny Babbit”  and his wife, Sue, and their two daughters, traveling from their home in Michigan, spent a couple days with our family hiking and laughing, and listening to David play the Native American flute he’d made for me out of sassafras wood from his home state; and just this week Heather “DS Wallingsford” brought her lovely South Carolinian accent and met me for lunch in Olympia.  The really amazing and wonderful thing about meeting all these people is that there was no awkwardness. At all! It was like meeting up with old, dear friends. Hugs. Laughter. Conversation that just seemed to pick up where we’d left off on the Humoristian discussion thread. It was all kind of surreal. And very cool.

I do not know what I’d do without humor in my life. I do not know what I’d do if I was surrounded by people who couldn’t laugh at themselves.  I think I might go just a little insane.

I’m so grateful for my Humoristian friends, and I’m so grateful to God – the power of Love and Life – for never failing to bring me what I need to prosper and grow. “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need,” writes Mary Baker Eddy in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.  And, for me, that human need includes laughter.

*(the tenets for Humoristianity can be found in  http://www.amazon.com/Humoristian-Chronicles-James-Longmire/dp/1105093441/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373805117&sr=8-1&keywords=humoristian+chronicles)

 

A Healthy Environment and a Most Hospitable Tree

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Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, thou art very great… He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field: the wild asses quench their thirst. By them shall the fowls of the heaven have their habitation, which sing among the branches… He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man: that he may bring forth food out of the earth…  The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon, which he hath planted; Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies…  O Lord, how manifold are thy works! in wisdom hast thou made them all: the earth is full of thy riches…. thou openest thine hand, they are filled with good…  Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth. – Psalms 104

 Down the road about a quarter of a mile  there is rooted a most hospitable cedar tree.  A pair of garter snakes have made their home at its base, a happily buzzing community of busy honeybees have created a hive in its middle, and in a hole further up the tree’s trunk there is a bird’s nest.  The cedar tree has its own little ecosystem dwelling in it…

There are lessons to be learned from this tree. Note that it’s embracing the life living within it. The snakes, bees, and birds, and the tree are all living in harmony with one another. There’s no battle going on there – the bees aren’t taking up more space than they need for their hive, the snakes and bird aren’t fighting over trunk rights. There’s no evidence of greed here. Nothing trying to get more than its share of what it needs to survive.  It is A Peaceable Kingdom of a Tree.

And isn’t a peaceable kingdom what we want for our whole world? Don’t we want to see all of creation living in healthy harmony?

Our environment seems to be in real trouble right now. The Earth’s water, land, and air are polluted; our food has been genetically-altered from its natural state; we have rising seas and rising temperatures.  We appear to have gotten ourselves in a real mess.

How can we, as expressions of Life and Love, help heal our environment?

Working to help heal our environment has been an on-going demonstration for me. I’ve been involved in environmental causes since I was a youngster. I’ve written letters, signed petitions, marched with signs, boycotted corporations that seem to be working against a clean environment, written blog posts, taken photos, recycled, had No Car days, picked up trash, and tried to become conscious of the affect I have on the world around me.  These actions have all been the human footsteps I’ve felt led to take to help heal our environment.

But I’ve found the best place for me to START when I’m looking for healing is in my own thoughts – my internal environment.  As Jesus said  (Luke  17), “…the kingdom of God is within you.” I believe we carry around our own heaven, and our own hell in our thoughts. And to help heal myself and the world, I believe I need to be diligent about casting out the hell-thoughts of greed, selfishness, fear, ego, pride, cruelty, hopelessness, and guilt in my own consciousness – because those suckers are, for sure, not going to help me or anything around me.  And while I’m emptying my human consciousness of the hell-stuff, I’m filling my consciousness  with the heaven-thoughts of love, joy, kindness, generosity, hope, wisdom – these are the thoughts that bring me near to God, Love, and bring healing.

I’m not going to ignore the erroneous actions that come from greed and cruelty, or try to appease the greedy and corrupt in any way.  Mohatma Gandhi said, “A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.” And  I refuse to let the greed and selfishness that seem to be in the world have any power over me – I’m not going to let someone else’s greed make me afraid, or take away my hope, or have any control over me whatsoever.  I’m not going to allow some corporation’s dishonest engineering or thoughtless polluting have any effect on my health or well-being. I refuse to let the corruption in politics stop me from doing my job of expressing God – of being kind, wise, and loving.  I refuse to be led astray from my job of working out my “own salvation.”

Are we without hope? Is it too late to heal our environment? Are we already experiencing “the end of the world”?

Nope. I believe that “nothing is impossible to God” – that it’s never too late for a victory over evil. Mary Baker Eddy writes: “Human hate has no legitimate mandate and no kingdom. Love is enthroned. That evil or matter has neither intelligence nor power, is the doctrine of absolute Christian Science, and this is the great truth which strips all disguise from error.”

I believe that as we transform and purify our thoughts – our outward environment will be transformed and purified, too.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth…And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. – Genesis 1

Waiting for Approval

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I’m on the patch right now. Where it releases small dosages of approval until I no longer need it, and then I’m gonna rip it off. – Ellen DeGeneres

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. – II Timothy 2: 15

In the textbook for Christian Science, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy points out that “Jesus’  system of healing received no aid nor approval from other sanitary or religious systems, from doctrines  of physics or of divinity…”  Did this lack of approval stop Jesus from fulfilling his mission, from healing, and accomplishing what he was sent here to accomplish? Did he wait around for permission to heal and do his life’s work? Nope.  He had the approval of God, Love, and that’s the only approval that concerned him.

Okay, listen, if you want to paint your neighbor’s house or rearrange his furniture or drive his car to work – it might be a good thing to wait for his approval before doing these things.  His house, furniture, and car do not belong to you, and it is not your business to take it upon yourself to paint, rearrange, or drive what doesn’t belong to you, without permission.

However, if you are waiting for someone else’s approval to be who YOU are and to live YOUR life – well, that’s just silly. We who live in the U.S. of A. live in a time of wonderful freedom and incredible invention, and it behooves us to take advantage of this. If you want to move or travel – you don’t need to wait for the government’s approval. Just do it. If you want to leave your job, or switch schools , or switch majors – that is your choice, not anyone else’s.  You need no one else’s approval to attend the church of your choice, or to choose not to attend a church at all.  If consenting adults of whatever gender, sexual orientation, race, or religion choose to build a life together – they don’t need anyone else’s permission or approval. And we live at a time when we no longer have to wait for someone else to decide if our writing is book-worthy or our voice is worth recording – the technology to put our words and voices out there is available to anyone with access to a computer – and no one else’s approval is necessary.

You need not wait for approval, my friend

You need not wait to practice zen

You need not wait to sing and soar

You need not wait –  not one second more!

You need no one’s permission to be who you are,

to express and reflect and travel far.

If you want to write and publish a book

or cook up the recipes of a cordon bleu cook

If you want to dance or hop or run

don’t wait for permission – just get ‘er done.

You don’t need permission to love one another –

to be a partner, or friend, or sister or brother.

No, you need no approval to your life live.

You were MADE to express your you-ness,

and your talents to give.

(All photos by Karen Molenaar Terrell.)

“…a solitary place…”

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And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. – Mark 1: 35

Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! – Isaiah 5: 8

 ***

 Ah! Solitude!  Space to breath. Room to think.  Time to complete a thought, and resolve a life-problem, without interruption.   Privacy to let the face  relax, and the body slump.  Freedom, for a moment, to just be –  without expectation or responsibility or obligation or compromise.  Freedom from someone else’s schedule, and someone else’s judgment. Freedom from another’s needs or wants – there will be time and space for that, too – later. But for now – there is this sacred time alone.  Just God (Life, Love, Truth) and me.

From as far back as I can remember I’ve enjoyed my time alone. When I was a youngster I really enjoyed wandering around the backyard on my own, climbing trees, swinging at the tetherball on its pole, and talking to myself – telling myself stories of wild horses, and war heroes who carried important messages over the mountains, and Indian princesses who lived in the forest and healed the wild creatures.  And if the neighbor kids happened to come over to play with me when I was in the middle of one of my stories, I had to work really hard to hide my disappointment.

Yeah, I was a weird kid.

And I’m probably an even weirder adult. 🙂

Somewhere in the teen years – that time in life when it seems the most important thing in the world is for everyone to see that you’re popular and liked and have a lot of friends – it became kind of embarrassing for me for people to ever see me alone.  I didn’t stop having my alone time, of course – but I didn’t want people to SEE that. I mean, they might think that I was alone because I didn’t have any friends – and – heaven forbid anyone should think I didn’t have friends!

And then there came a day when I realized – whoah! I can go sit out there on the brick wall in the sunshine and look at the Olympic Mountains – all clear and clean on the horizon – and eat my sandwich… all by myself!! And… I can drive myself up to the mountains and go skiing and hiking… all by myself!!!  And… I can go see that movie I’ve been wanting to see!!! And I don’t need to wait for other people to be ready, or available, or to have time in their schedule – I can do this ALL BY MYSELF!!!

Freedom. 🙂

I should probably make clear here that It’s not that I didn’t , or don’t, like people. I LOVE people – I love meeting new friends, laughing and hanging out with old friends, I love my neighbors, and I love my family – every single quirky one of ‘em  (the fruit really DOESN’T fall far from the tree).  But I really need my solitary time, too, and I don’t know how I would survive in a society where my solitary walks were taken from me, where I needed to be accompanied by someone else at all times, and where I couldn’t find a place of privacy for myself.  I’m not sure I’d be able to function.

I am so very grateful for places and times of solitude.

…when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. – Matthew 6: 6

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Second-Generation Geologist Here :)

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Christianity as Jesus taught it was not a creed, nor a system of ceremonies, nor a special gift from a ritualistic Jehovah; but it was the demonstration  of divine Love casting out error and healing the sick,  not merely in the name of Christ, or Truth, but in demonstration of Truth, as must be the case in the cycles of divine light. – Mary Baker Eddy

        Our Master taught no mere theory, doctrine, or belief. It was the divine Principle of all real being which he taught and practised. His proof of Christianity was no form or system of religion and worship, but Christian  Science, working out the harmony of Life and Love. – Mary Baker Eddy

***

My dad’s a geologist. Does this make me an expert in geology? Did I somehow inherit his geological expertise? Was I born with the knowledge to discriminate the difference between igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary? Would it make sense for me to make the claim that I am a “second-generation geologist”?

Umm… nope.  A person can’t just inherit an expertise in geology – you have to do your own work, and put in your own study of it to be able to make the claim that you’re a geologist.

This holds true for any science, really –  including Christian Science.  Just because one’s grandparents or great-grandparents called themselves Christian Scientists doesn’t make one an expert in Christian Science, or the best practitioner of it.  I mean… well… calling yourself a “third generation Christian Scientist”  makes about as much sense, really, as calling yourself a “third generation geologist” –  right?

Lately I’ve found myself making a distinction between the religion of Christian Science and the science of Christian Science, and this has led me to some interesting musings about the nature of my way of life.

For instance, it’s led me to think about how and why we identify ourselves as we do. I’m guessing most people who call themselves Lutherans were raised Lutheran, and most people who call themselves Catholic were raised Catholic – and I’m guessing most people who call themselves Christian Scientists were raised in Christian Science.  And I suppose if you think of Christian Science as a religion – as a set of beliefs – then it would be natural for people who were raised in the religion of Christian Science to identify themselves as “Christian Scientists.”

But if you think of Christian Science as an actual science, rather than a religion, this opens up a whole ‘nother way of looking at Christian Science, doesn’t it? I know there are people who have found the Science of Christianity for themselves – who’ve never stepped foot in an actual Christian Science church, and are not particularly interested in the human organization of the Christian Science religion – but are practicing and proving the Science of Christianity daily in their lives.  And wouldn’t we call them “Christian Scientists”, too?

Is it possible to be a non-Scientific Christian Scientist? And – contrariwise – is it possible to be a non-religious Christian Scientist?  I’ve come to believe the answer to the first question is no. And I’ve come to believe the answer to the second question is yes.

I myself am not what you would call a very “religious” person, I guess.  I enjoy going to church for the like-minded fellowship I find there, and the inspiration and uplift I get from my fellow Christian Scientists – I’m  blest to be part of  a Christian Science branch church that’s very loving and compassionate in its support for its members and its loving outreach to the community.

But, to be honest, I’ve never felt comfortable surrounding myself  exclusively with other people who call themselves “Christian Scientists” or isolating myself from the rest of humanity to hang out with people who only speak Christian Science-ese. That just has never felt healthy to me. There’s a sort of group-think about it that makes me a little wary. And – as far as religion in general goes –  I’ve never been big into tradition or dogma, and the  “exclusivity” often found in  religion has never much appealed to me.

When Mary Baker Eddy first re-discovered the Science of Christ-healing that Jesus practiced more than 2000 years ago she hoped she could introduce it to humanity through the religious institutions that were already in place. She soon realized that the religious institutions of that time weren’t ready to open their doors to Christian Science. And so she established her own religion to spread the word of her discovery. But I don’t believe she ever meant for the religious institution to be the most important part of her legacy to us.  I believe she viewed the human organization as the necessary tool for sharing her discovery – but I don’t think she thought the religion of Christian Science was as important as the Science of Christian Science.

I know I don’t.

***

The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent  of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the  portal of humanity. – Mary Baker Eddy

        Divine metaphysics is now reduced to a system, to a form comprehensible by and adapted to the thought of  the age in which we live. This system enables the learner to demonstrate the divine Principle, upon which Jesus’ healing was based, and the sacred rules for its present application to the cure of disease. – Mary Baker Eddy

        It is essential to understand, instead of believe, what relates most nearly to the happiness of being. To seek  Truth through belief in a human doctrine is not to understand the infinite. We must not seek the immutable  and immortal through the finite, mutable, and mortal,  and so depend upon belief instead of demonstration, for  this is fatal to a knowledge of Science. – Mary Baker Eddy

 Question. – Are doctrines and creeds a benefit to man?        

 Answer. – The author subscribed to an orthodox creed in early youth, and tried to adhere to it until she  caught the first gleam of that which interprets God as above mortal sense. This  view rebuked human beliefs, and gave the spiritual import, expressed through Science, of all that proceeds  from the divine Mind. Since then her highest creed has been divine Science, which, reduced to human apprehension, she has named Christian Science. This Science teaches man that God is the only Life, and that this Life  is Truth and Love; that God is to be understood, adored, and demonstrated; that divine Truth casts out suppositional error and heals the sick.  – Mary Baker Eddy

Kindness Science

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Whatever furnishes the semblance of an idea governed  by its Principle, furnishes food for thought. Through astronomy, natural history, chemistry, music, mathematics,  thought passes naturally from effect back to cause.  Academics of the right sort are requisite. Observation, invention, study, and original thought are expansive  and should promote the growth of mortal mind out of itself, out of all that is mortal. – from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy

Science of healing, divine Science, Science of Creation, Christian Science, Science of Mind, Science of being, Science of Genesis – these are all terms one can find in the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.

And I’d like to humbly suggest  another term for a study that I have found to be  demonstrable and practical: Kindness Science.

Recently I was involved in a dialogue about the nature of science.  Actually, “dialogue” might be the wrong word to use here – a dialogue usually involves an exchange of ideas, a sharing, an exploration. This was more of a monologue, I guess, or a lecture – with me as the student, expected to sit quietly and listen, while others threw their great wisdom and knowledge at me.  I get this kind of thing a lot.  I’m genuinely interested in learning what others think, believe, and feel about things, and so I ask people questions, and invite them to share. But, weirdly, I’ve found that people aren’t always so eager to find out what I think, feel, and believe about things. And so I end up becoming the recipient of a one-sided conversation – often with the other person telling me what I think, feel, and believe and judging me based on his own assumptions regarding my thoughts, feelings, and beliefs.  It can all be a little odd.

Anyway.  So in this particular “dialogue”  my lecturers let me know how impossible it would be to prove Christian Science to them – that all the evidences and proofs – the physical healings and other demonstrations of Christian Science I shared with them – were just personal anecdotes and proved nothing (in spite of the fact that several of these demonstrations were witnessed by medical scientists), and that I’d have to have at least a level six “sigma” (don’t ask, I’m still trying to figure that one out) if I wanted anyone else to believe what I’d shared.

And I know. Personal anecdotes really aren’t proof of anything to anyone but the person who’s actually experienced them, I guess.

But there were things in what my lecturers were telling me that didn’t quite add up, either. There was some bias. There seemed to be an inability to separate fact from opinion. And – here’s the thing that really exasperated me – there was a pompous bossiness, too – there seemed to be an expectation that if I were a rational person I would, of course, have the same perspective and beliefs my lecturers have about the world.  So. Ahem. I sort of stopped being a good listener at one point. And all hell broke loose.

I took a break from the dialogue.  Took a nice long walk in the sunshine, weeded the garden, and went to the memorial service of one of my mom’s cousins.  Roger had lived a really wonderful life and had a positive impact on the lives of a lot of people. As I listened to all the good that Roger had done for his community – his peace activism, his work on behalf of a clean environment, his scholarly attainments, and the kindness and patience he’d shown to others throughout his life – I felt a little ashamed of myself for my recent impatience and exasperation in the dialogue in which I’d been participating.

Memorial services always help me remember what’s really important in life. And what’s not all that important.

I realized I hadn’t been practicing my own Science with the dedication and devotion to it that was needed to demonstrate its truth.  I decided it was time to practice kindness Science on those very people who would say they don’t believe in kindness Science. I made them a part of my experiment, and a part of my demonstration.  I consciously made the decision to respond with nothing but kindness, and with genuine love in my heart towards those with whom I was engaged in The Dialogue.  And, as I predicted from my previous experience with kindness Science, those with whom I was engaged in the dialogue responded back to me with kindness, too. And we moved on.  “Love is reflected in love,” writes Mary Baker Eddy in the textbook for Christian Science.  Through my use of kindness Science, I was, once again, able to prove the truth of this statement for myself.

Kindness Science is effectual, demonstrable, provable, practical Science – and it has, I believe, a far more direct and important impact on our lives than, say, the study of the movement of the stars in the sky, or the layers of sediment in a rock wall.

***

Because the Science of Mind seems to bring into dishonor the ordinary scientific schools, which wrestle with material observations alone, this Science has  met with opposition… In divine Science, the supposed laws of matter yield to the  law of Mind. What are termed natural science and material laws are the objective  states of mortal mind… the physical universe expresses the conscious and unconscious thoughts of mortals.

God is Mind, and God is  infinite; hence all is Mind. On this statement rests the Science of being, and the Principle of this Science is divine, demonstrating harmony and immortality.

You will learn  that in Christian Science the first duty is to obey  God, to have one Mind, and to love another as yourself.

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

***

There are several posters in the aforementioned Dialogue with whom I always enjoy exchanging ideas. They’re smart, curious, and genuinely interested in what others have to say.  For anyone who’d like to read some of our exchange, I’ll post an excerpt from The Dialogue here:

Nova:  Just curious and mean no ill-will, just finding out! I’m curious to go into that CS psyche of yours! I know you mentioned one example, that of human fear, but I’m interested in the following. How does this sound:

“Well, when I go see a human doctor, or even when I begin to contemplate needing medical assistance in my healing, then I begin to listen to medical science’s answers. They are ok, to a point. But, then, I feel thoughts arising in me that feel like I’m turning away from healing from divine Mind and trusting in something other than the divine Mind.”

Does that register anything?

Karen: Nope. Honestly, no. My pointy little head doesn’t work in that way. Maybe there are Christian Scientists who do look at it that way, though. I’m not sure. But I’m never motivated by feelings of guilt or a “turning away from healing from divine Mind” feeling or worry about not being loyal to divine Mind or anything. For me, it’s more like…

Well, for instance, when I woke up to find my hand inflated to twice its normal size, and really painful – I couldn’t bend my fingers or anything – I think at first I was kind of… “well, this is interesting”… I wasn’t sure what was going on there. But I got myself dressed and drove to my workplace and I think my thought was that I’d just work around it until it went away or something. But when I showed my hand to my co-workers to see if they’d had any experience with something like this, they were all really scared for me. One of them told me about an allergic reaction that had nearly killed her son. I think three or four other people mentioned that flesh-eating disease or serious infections that had nearly killed them or their loved ones. Everyone advised me to see a doctor post haste. So – I really like my hand, you know – it’s useful and quick and good at sports and kind of attractive, too – although it’s rarely manicured or anything… but I digress… anyway… the thought of losing my hand was pretty scary to me. So I called our family doctor right away and left work to see him. Normally he laughs with me about stuff, but this time he was not laughing. He was pretty serious, actually. He said he thought it was either a serious infection or rheumatoid arthritis – although my case wasn’t typical of either one of those because I didn’t have any open wounds and my joints weren’t inflamed. He wanted to start me on drugs right away – some to address the one thing, and some to address the other – and he wanted to run blood tests on me. I agreed to the blood tests, but I told him I didn’t want to start taking any drugs until I knew better what was going on with me.

So I guess the question here would be why I chose not to take the drugs?

I can’t recall exactly now the course my thoughts took. This was several years ago. But my thoughts might have run something like this:

1) The one or two times I’ve ever actually taken pharmaceuticals, I’ve always had a bad side effect from them. I might have thought, too, about the time my son had gotten a really bad reaction from one of the ‘cillin drugs. When we went to the doctor to see what we could do about it, he’d said he could give my son drugs to counteract the side effects of the first drug. My son asked him if this new drug might have side effects, too, and the doctor admitted this was the case – all drugs have side effects, he pointed out. I could see the wheels turning in my son’s head – “And then I’d need to take another drug to undo the side effects of the drug I’d be taking to undo the side effects of the first drug?” he asked. The doctor nodded. My son has a pretty-evolved sense of humor. “No, thanks,” he’d said, grinning. We’d gone home and called a CS practitioner, and the side effects had quickly been removed. With no side effects. 🙂 Anyway. So yeah, I guess I’ve become really skeptical about the whole drug-thing from personal experience with it.

2) The other thing that probably came into play, though, is that when I’m working out a problem through my understanding of Christian Science, part of the process for me is real-izing the “reality” of Spirit, and the nothingness of matter – and, in taking drugs, I’d, in essence, be giving power to matter, and working contrary to what I needed to do for a healing in Christian Science. I probably wanted to give myself the opportunity to work this out in Christian Science first. My husband, who’s not a Christian Scientist, has, from the beginning of our marriage, sort of sets thing before me like this: “If you don’t get your healing by (and he’ll give me some time frame) you’re going to the doctor.” In the first years of our marriage he meant this as an ultimatum – now it’s more of an… he expects me to get healed now… and he seems to know it helps me when he gives me a challenge. (A couple years after we were married, he said: “You know with other Christian churches when someone gets healed it’s a miracle – a really big deal – in Christian Science it’s just an every day thing.”)

So I didn’t take the drugs, I went in for the blood tests, and came home and called for prayerful support from a Christian Science practitioner.

Although there’s no format or template or anything for CS healing – sometimes healing can come so quickly – instantly – with just a quick change of thought – that there’s really no process involved. But usually I start with an affirmation of God, Good, Love, as the only power, the only reality. Then… well, I’ll do a copy and paste here of a post I wrote somewhere else – imagine me talking to myself here –

You are the idea of Love and Truth and Life – eternally perfect and whole, healthy and active, unchanged, undimmed, loved, loving, intelligent, alert, aware of all good. The belief that you can ever be less than your perfect, ideal self, is a lie. The belief that you can ever be separated from Love, Good, God, is a lie. As an idea, you dwell forever within the consciousness of Love. You are the image and likeness of Love. You are the perfect child of perfect Love. You reflect nothing but Love, Spirit, Life, Truth, Principle, Mind, Soul. There’s nothing about you that is imperfect, for there’s nothing in your Father-Mother out of which imperfection could come.

And, for the treatment of my hand, I definitely handled the fear in my thought: “Fear, which is an element of all disease, must be cast out to readjust the balance for God… Take possession of your body, and govern its feeling and action. Rise in the strength of Spirit to resist all that is unlike good. God has made man capable of this, and nothing can vitiate the ability and power divinely bestowed on man… ” (from the CS textbook by Mary Baker Eddy)

The next morning my hand was even MORE puffed-up. But the fear in my thought was completely gone, and I felt that my thought had been healed…

And by the second morning my hand was completely back to normal. 🙂

When I called the doctor’s office to find out what the results of the blood test were, the receptionist said that one of the markers in the blood test indicated rheumatoid arthritis, and they wanted me to set up an appt with a rheumatoid arthritis specialist. I told her my hand was completely fine now. She was really surprised by this, and called a nurse to the phone to talk to me. I told the nurse the hand was deflated, and there was nothing wrong with me at all. She was… I could imagine her trying to process what I was telling her… she finally said that if anything changed to let them know, but she guessed they wouldn’t “go any further” with it right then.

That was, as I said, several years ago, and there’s been no return of the condition. 🙂

Nova: So, we are talking about a very personal choice, that may appear to be in opposition to something (say, medical science) at some level, but really isn’t against it, per se, but is simply you choosing something else.

Karen: Exactement!!! 🙂
Yes!
Thank you, Nova, for staying with me as I worked my way through this one and just letting me share with you. I know I’m probably the only one on here who sees things the way I do – in fact, if another CSist joined me on here, I’m not even sure he’d have the same perspective as me – but it’s just such a relief to be able to share, and not be blasted at the get-go. 🙂

Nova: ” If this same outcome (jumping to the healing of the hand without medical science intervention) happens to a non CS person, what do you say is the source of healing?”

Karen: Love. Truth. Good.

I don’t believe Christian Scientists have any monopoly on the power of God or anything, any more than those who study geology have some kind of monopoly on the beauty of rocks, or those who study physics somehow own gravity. 🙂

Scoby: Why do you suppose God would have any preference at all for having his people be healed by means other than these things (vaccinations and antibiotics)?

Karen: I don’t think God – the one I believe in, anyway – has any preference one way or the other. I don’t think God has any thought about that stuff at all. And I think when we try to attribute human opinions and preferences to God then we’re anthropomorphizing God. Trying to put God inside some kind of human framework, and limiting God. Love just keeps on being Love, and Truth just keeps on being Truth – and unchanging Love and Truth (God) aren’t affected one way or the other by what humans do or think or opine or prefer.

Lincoln City, Oregon: 1984-2013

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The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. – Robert Ingersoll, The Great Agnostic

Ocean is more ancient than the mountains, and freighted with the memories and dreams of Time. –  H.P. Lovecraft

I think it would be interesting if old people got anti-Alzheimer’s disease where they slowly began to recover other peoples’ memories. – George Carlin

My husband and I just returned from our most recent trip to Lincoln City, Oregon. We’ve been going there since 1984 – when we discovered the magic of Lincoln City  on our honeymoon.  We were trying to figure out how many times we’ve been there in the last 29 years, and we figured we’ve made a pilgrimage to Lincoln City probably 27 times – every year, with one or two exceptions.

You know how photographers do time lapse photography to show Nature unfolding in quick time? Yeah, I’m thinking if we took the days my family has spent in Lincoln City and sort of condensed them into a time lapse photography kind of deal, we’d see something like this…

There we are in 1984 – young, confident, and hopeful – starting our life together – unaware of the challenges ahead, and unaware of the blessings, either – running on the beach – limbs strong and quick and joints well-oiled. My aunt Junie showed me the art of agate-hunting when I was a youngster, and now I’m teaching my new husband how to pick up the glow of an agate on the beach – how to discern the difference between a bona fide agate and a rough piece of quartz…

1992:  Introducing our firstborn to the ocean for the first time. His baby body rests on my knee, facing out to the sea. His eyes have locked onto the ocean and taken note of it – he’s chewing his lower lip, eyes moving back and forth along the sea’s horizon, taking in the sights and sounds and smells. It’s becoming a part of him.

1994: We have come to Lincoln City as parents of childREN. We are old hands at parenthood now. Today it is our youngest son’s turn to meet the ocean. We take off his booties and lower his toes into the water. It is a sort of ritual baptism of baby feet – a bonding with the Pacific.

1999: The sons are playing with the surf – letting the waves chase them up the beach. The ocean is their comfortable old friend now.

Jump to April, 2008: I am in crisis.   Struggling with severe depression. I am desperate to escape from myself and my constantly-churning thoughts. Oldest son knows I need to get away and asks me if I’d like him to go to Lincoln City with me for Spring Break. How many 16 year-old sons do you know who’d be willing to accompany their moms on a 14-hour (round trip) road trip? I am blest beyond words. On the way to Lincoln City we stop and visit my Aunt Junie, who shares our kinship with the ocean and lives in Depoe Bay, an hour north of Lincoln City.  I confide my struggles to Junie, and the feelings of guilt and unworthiness that seem to be a symptom of my illness. Junie is appalled at my feelings of worthlessness. “All her instincts” tell her that I am a good person, she says.  “There are no unrightable wrongs, no unforgiveable sins, no fatal mistakes, no fatal diseases, only the eternal now.” She is like Yoda.

July, 2008: Still struggling with the  depression. Lincoln City is my respite. I sit on the balcony in the sun and look down on the beach and watch the sons running and cavorting on the sand below.  There have been times lately when I’ve wished myself not born. But, watching my sons, it hits me that if I hadn’t been born, they wouldn’t have been born, either. They give me purpose. And the ocean gives me comfort. We stop in Tilamook on the way home and I am drawn to a garden plaque that quotes The Great Agnostic, Robert Ingersoll: “The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here.” On impulse, I buy it. It will sit in a place of honor on our mantel when we return home.

2009:  The family meets on the Oregon coast to celebrate Aunt Junie’s life, and spread her ashes on the ocean.  We will not get as far as Lincoln City this time, but the ocean that she is now a part of will touch the beaches that have provided such solace to me over the years.  And every time I’m near the ocean, I’ll think of Junie – her humor and wisdom and kindness to me.

2010:  Hoping, but not with high expectations, I ask my youngest son, who’s just turned 16, if he’d like to make the same road trip that I made with his older brother two years ago. To my surprise and delight, he says he would! We spend two days at the ocean – flying a kite, looking for agates, running (well, okay, he’s doing most of the running now) along the beach.  Before we leave on our trip I ask Xander if he’s remembered his swimsuit, long pants, shorts, sweatshirt, sneakers, toothbrush, and sandals. He assures me he has. When we arrive at Lincoln City, I realize that I am the one who’s left her clothes, laptop, and toothbrush back home. It is all very humbling. But there’s a certain freedom in the forgetting, too. I’m scraped down to the bare essentials. Having no laptop is a good thing.  I have become big into photography in the last couple years, and I have, at least, remembered my camera. Camera, son, ocean, and the clothes on my back – what else does a person really need? 🙂

2013: The sons are all grown-up now. They have jobs and things to do.  For the first time since we became parents, we will be making our Lincoln City pilgrimage alone.  We eat at our favorite eatery there – The Lighthouse Brew Pub – take long walks together, hunt for agates, and remember together who we were when we first found Lincoln City.  Young, strong, confident, hopeful. Our lives stretched out ahead of us.  And we think about all that’s happened in the 29 years since. And it’s all been good. All of it. Even the bad stuff has been good, really. Just like those blossoms unfolding in time lapse photography – our life together has unfolded most wonderfully.

Happy Mother’s Day to Nurturers and Reflections of Love Everywhere!

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Father-Mother is the name for Deity, which indicates His tender relationship to His spiritual creation. – Mary Baker Eddy

Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality,  the infinite Father-Mother God. – Mary Baker Eddy

I love this video of Mom – it totally captures the essence of who she is – warm, loving, joyful. Here’s Moz, at age 80, singing her unique version of  Mamma Mia:

I couldn’t have been more blest than I’ve been to have this beautiful reflection of motherhood for my mom.

Moz was wise: I remember coming home from school in the first grade, telling Moz about my day. My first grade teacher was not what most people envision when they think of a first grade teacher – she was not sweet-voiced, smiling, or nurturing. She was, to put it starkly, kind of cranky, and didn’t seem to like her students all that much. What I didn’t know at the time was that my first grade teacher had recently lost her son and husband. She was going through some pretty rough times in her life. Mom didn’t know about any of this, either. But when I came home from school, and told Moz that I didn’t think my first grade teacher liked me so much and that she was a crabby old lady, mom’s response was, “Well, Sweetie, we just need to love the hell right out of her then.” Moz didn’t commiserate with me, didn’t call up the school and complain about this teacher – nope – instead she used this opportunity to teach me a life-long lesson about the power of love. I started my Campaign of Love the very next day,  bringing in hand-picked flowers for my teacher, and leaving little notes of love on her desk. And by the time she met with my mom to conference about my progress in school she told my mom how very much she enjoyed me, and how much my kindness had meant to her.

Moz was our hero: When my little brother was a toddler he’d gotten ahold of some marbles from somewhere and swallowed them. My grandma was there as my little brother started turning blue. She said to Mom: “We’ve lost him!” Mom grabbed my little brother by his ankles, held him upside down and said, “No,” and wacked him on the back, “we,” wacked him on the back again, “HAVEN’T!!!” and four slimy marbles popped onto the floor. My brother took a big gasp of air and turned back to his normal shade of color.

Moz taught us the power that comes with understanding God, Good: When the same little brother was about seven years-old he became very sick. Dad and Mom took him to our family physician who told them that they had a very sick boy – he had mastoiditis. There was a good chance he’d lose his hearing, and he might lose his life.  Surgery would probably need to be scheduled for him. Dad and Mom brought my brother home from the doctor’s office and Mom asked Dad (who was not a Christian Scientist) if she could call a Christian Science practitioner for prayerful support and my dad agreed to this.  I remember lying in bed that night, listening to my little brother screaming in pain in the next room, and my mom comforting him, singing hymns to him. And then – I remember this very clearly – suddenly he was snoring. The healing was that instantaneous. “He’s healed! He’s healed!” my mom called out – the joy in her voice filling our home. And he was, too. The next day the doctor confirmed that my little brother was well. And he never lost his hearing, either.

Moz had been a Music Performance major in college – she had a fantastic voice. She’d been accepted into the Portland opera company when she graduated from college, but she realized that wasn’t the life for her. She wasn’t particularly ambitious when it came to a profession in music.  She wanted to be a mom.  And we got to have her for our mom.  The opera company’s loss was our gain. 🙂

Moz thinks of herself more as a hobbit than an elf – she likes being home, puttering around in the garden, taking care of her cats, llamas,and  goats, and keeping the bird-feeders full for her feathered friends. But make no mistake – if she’s a hobbit, she’s more a “Baggins” kind of hobbit than a regular hobbit. She has had her share of adventures in life. She’s climbed Mount Rainier twice, ran track in college, birthed three children – and all this after she was apparently told as a youngster, following a bout with rheumatic fever, that her heart had been damaged and she should lead a quiet, sheltered life. None of us knew anything about this until last year, when, 80 years after the rheumatic fever, she was told she needed to have open heart surgery.  I talked about that experience in this blog post: https://madcapchristianscientist.com/2012/05/28/the-world-outside-akkima-theresa-and-the-man-in-the-fairy-wings/ . I’m happy to say that now, one year later, Moz has completely recovered from the surgery. Once again she’s puttering around her garden, feeding the birds, singing her songs, sharing her sense of humor and her huge capacity for  love with everyone she meets.

I’m so blest – happy I can still pick up the phone and give her a call and hear her voice. Happy i can still see her and talk with her and be enriched by her wisdom and kindness and humor.

May all who have nurtured and loved and cared for others know how appreciated they are this Mother’s Day. God bless.

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A mother’s affection cannot be weaned from her  child, because the mother-love includes purity and constancy, both of which are immortal. – Mary Baker Eddy

Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man. – Mary Baker Eddy