I apologize that it’s only available on Amazon right now (and please do not order it on February 28th).
Here’s the opening to Cosmic Community:
December 6, 2023
This morning I felt impelled to get out of the house and go for a drive. I ended up at the mall in Bellingham with the vague idea that I might go Christmas shopping.
As I headed into Macy’s a young woman approached me – she looked scared. She said her baby was locked in the car with her keys and she asked me if I could let security know. I went into Macy’s and let the customer service people know the situation.
They needed to know the model of the car and where it was parked, so I went back out and asked the young mother if I could watch her car and baby while she went inside to talk to the customer service people. She thanked me and I took up my post by her car.
When I looked in the window I saw her baby was crying – so I said, “Hi Sweetie! I’m right here with you!” and she started giggling then and smiling at me. There was a little toy suction cupped to the window and the baby reached up and started playing with the toy – like she was playing with me – and we spent the next minute or so laughing at her toy together.
The baby’s mom came out then, and pretty soon folks in uniforms joined her at her car to help her.
And the thought occurred to me that maybe that was the whole reason I’d felt like I’d needed to drive and ended up at the mall – I hardly ever go there, and it was weird for me to decide to go there today.
I bought a red vest and a new pair of jeans and then started my drive home.
And the clouds and the rain and the gray evening light enveloped me in a peaceful bubble. I’d put in a CD of hymns sung by a pair of young brothers with a youthful energy, and as I listened to the hymns I thought of my mom and remembered all the times she’d sung those hymns to me. I could feel her love with me.
As I drove through the Chuckanut Hills, I thought of the hikes I’d taken with Dad and felt his love, too. And then I remembered driving this same route when I was bringing the sons home from swimming lessons when they were preschoolers, and I could almost hear them laughing with each other in the back seat. It seemed a lifetime ago, and just like yesterday.
The young men on the CD sang, “He leadeth me, O blessed thought! O words with heav’nly comfort fraught…” (words by Joseph H. Gilmore). And suddenly I felt myself connected to all the other people in the cars moving with me on I-5. And for a moment our kinship with each other was so clear to me. I felt us all moving together in a cosmic murmuration. Normally I try to exit onto the backroads, but I found myself passing the exit I might normally have taken and I realized I WANTED to be with the other folks on I-5.
I’ve been feeling a little off-kilter lately – maybe feeling the tension of the political season and the stress of the folks around me. I love autumn, but there are certain aspects of October in our country that can be… challenging for those of us who live here.
Anyway. I got a message from my friend, Emmy, daughter-in-law of the late great Pete Schoening, asking if I was available to meet at the Shambala Bakery in Mount Vernon, Washington, today – and I was! And we did! And it was so wonderful to chat with Emmy again – she’s one of those people I feel an instant kinship with – funny and kind and honest. We always laugh when we get together.
As we were eating our brunch, a customer in a baseball cap and a Grateful Dead shirt came through the door. There was something whacky with the door – we’d noticed this when we came in – and when the customer noticed it he started examining the hinges and the frame. Emmy and I realized he was going to try to fix it.
How cool is that?
Pretty soon the customer had borrowed tools from the server-cashier-cook, and retrieved some tools from his truck, and was working on the door.
I asked Justin, the customer-handyman, and Heidi, the server-cook, if I could take their picture, and they graciously agreed. Then Heidi went back to work, Emmy and I finished our brunch, and Justin finished fixing the door. I observed to Justin that he’d done a really nice thing there. He said that he couldn’t just let that door stay broken. He wanted to make it good for Shambala.
Laughing with Emmy, and watching the man in the Grateful Dead shirt fix the door, helped settle me this morning.
It has been a challenging week – both personally and globally, I guess – and I needed to get out and exchange smiles and meet new friends and see the good in the world.
As I was on my way to Fred Meyer’s yesterday I realized that it was “senior” day there and I’d get to buy things with a discount. So that was cool. I love “senior” day at Fred Meyer’s – not just because of the discount, but because it’s kind of fun to be with a store-full of other people who were alive when the Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan, and when man took his first steps on the moon. There’s a kinship there.
As I was checking out, I had to keep asking the cashier to repeat herself, and we both started laughing. I commended her for her patience with me, and with the other seniors there. I told her my dad lived to be 101 and I was his POA at the end and, maybe because of this, I can recognize in other people the ones who care for, and know HOW to care for, our society’s oldest members. The cashier laughed and said that she’s told her older relations that they don’t need to worry, she’s got their backs.
I also met some way cool “youngsters” at Fred’s yesterday – and by youngsters I mean young people around my sons’ ages – late twenties and early thirties.
I’d stopped in the photo department to buy photo paper and ink and there was a young man in the aisle, looking for computer stuff, I think – and he had this amazing hair – curly and long and red and tied up in a pony tail. I turned to him and said, “It has to be said: You have amazing hair.” He started laughing and thanked me, and told me that he’s the only one in his family who ended up with curly hair – and he didn’t get his until he was twelve or so. I told him the same was true for my eldest son.
Later, as I was waiting in line at the in-store Starbucks, I got into conversation with two young families with babies in carts ahead of me in the line. The mother of one of the babies said that the babies were cousins and were only a few months apart in age – and I learned the youngest was only two weeks older than my granddaughter. So that was pretty cool. I got into conversation with the father of one of the babies and learned he was my oldest son’s age. And, as we stood in line at the Starbucks in Fred’s, he talked to me about his recent spiritual journey, and the importance of the sun, and the connection he feels with nature and he asked me if I saw the face in his picture of the sun and I know this is all one sentence, but that’s the only way I can convey the energy coming from him as he talked to me. It’s amazing the conversations one can have waiting in line at Fred Meyer’s.
I went out to my car, and there was another young man feeding his jeep some kind of fuel enhancer (?) in a bottle that I at first took for a soda can. He’d noticed my sticker for the Wake ‘n Bakery in Glacier – and said he liked all my other stickers, too – and soon he was telling me about his youtube snow reports and his horses and farm, and how he’d grown up in Michigan, but had lived in Marblemount for twenty years, and the difference between x-country skiing in the topography of Michigan and x-country skiing in the topography of the North Cascades and, again, I know that’s a lot to put into one sentence, but that’s the only way I can convey the energy I felt coming from this young man, too. It’s amazing the conversations one can have in a parking lot at Fred Meyer’s.
By the time I’d left Fred’s I’d exchanged smiles, and made new friends, seen the good in the world, and seen the face of the sun.
A few months after my fifty-first birthday, I no longer knew who I was. I don’t mean I had amnesia or anything, but the person I’d always thought I was didn’t seem to exist any longer. As my sons had become self-sufficient and independent young men, my role as their mother was different, and, as the only female in my family, I sometimes struggled with trying to figure out how I “fit in”; my profession had changed so much I no longer felt I belonged in it; and two close 20-year friendships, that had once defined who I was as a friend, had ended abruptly, leaving me feeling unworthy of friendship and unlovable. There were all at once a lot of holes in my life, and I felt like a loser.
Who the heck WAS I?
During the Year of Insanity I put a lot of thought into that question. Just when I’d start feeling like I was hopelessly lost in the wilderness, and would never find my way back to my real self, one of my fellow classmates in “Earth’s preparatory school” (as Mary Baker Eddy described our time here) would drop a crumb on the forest floor that would help lead me the right direction. I don’t think many of these classmates had any idea how important those crumbs were to me. So, to those of you who dropped the crumbs, I want to take a moment and tell you that you saved my life, and I whole-heartedly thank you for that.
Henry Drummond writes (in The Greatest Thing in the World): “The people who influence you are people who believe in you… 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 withholding of love is the negation of the Spirit of Christ.”
I have discovered, as I’ve lived my Middle Book, that I am over-the-top wealthy with friends. There have been times when I’ve felt my friends’ expressions of Love towards me lifting me up and supporting me – giving me the buoyancy I need to stay afloat – and when I write “lifting me up” I mean that in a literal sense – I have felt myself – not my body, but my thoughts – literally rising.
I’d like to share a couple of instances with you of times when this happened for me – and I’d like to ask that as you read through these examples, you insert yourself into them – insert yourself as the person who is being shown love, and then insert yourself as the person who is showing love. Because, dear reader, the love that was expressed towards me is yours, too. You are the loved, and you are the loving.
***
On New Year’s Eve, 2007, I was hit particularly hard by the belief of depression – caught up in weird and intense feelings of hopelessness and worthlessness. I don’t know what led me to check out my book on Amazon that night, but when I clicked on Blessings: Adventures of a Madcap Christian Scientist I found that just that day someone had added a new review for my book. The review read, in part: “Karen becomes your friend, someone you know and love and you know if she knew you, she would love you the way you want to be loved.” I read those words and was so touched by them I began to cry. This was exactly the message I needed at that moment. If I could love others, I had worth. If others could love me, there was hope. I’ve always felt that the man who wrote that review had been listening to the voice of Love that day. He’d been guided by Love’s direction to take the time to write a review for my book – and, because he did that for me, he helped to bring me out of a place of deep despair.
We all have access to an incredible power to bring good to other peoples’ lives. That day my book’s reviewer had tapped into that power.
***
I emailed my wise friend, David Allen, to get his thoughts on “identity” – he always has good stuff to share with me. I told him that I’d reached a point where I didn’t know who I was, anymore – it felt like all my anchors were gone – my job wasn’t the same job, my role as a mom wasn’t the same role, I wasn’t really a mountain-climber, anymore – who was I?! His response was one of the most profound pieces of writing I have ever read, and I’d like to share it with you:
“Karen, I know this feeling. A few years back, before I met you, I went through a similar experience. Up until that time I had identified as a completely self-reliant runner and professional designer who could succeed at anything I wanted to. That was me, or at least, that was who I thought was me. Suddenly, all that was gone…I felt like I had lost my entire identity…Then, one day it hit me. I am not any of those things. Those are things I do, not things that I am. Here is what I am: I am creative, curious, and kind. I like children and I like teaching. I enjoy physical activity. I am a storyteller and I like to make people laugh. I like to do things. I like to make things. I love to learn new things. And I love my family. Whether I am working or running, I am still all of those things. No matter what others may say or think, I am still all of those things. These are the things that never change. These are the things that make me, me. Sometimes I make mistakes and screw up, but that doesn’t change any of those things, either. I am not always happy, but I am always grateful for the things that I am. And I don’t worry anymore about the things I am not.”
***
I’d met David on a religion discussion forum – he was a self-avowed atheist – but other than our difference in belief about God, we’d found we had a huge amount in common with each other. There were several other people I’d met on the forum – most of them atheists, like David – who had become valued friends to me. One of these valued friends was a brilliant wit named Jamie Longmire, who lived in Nova Scotia with his talented artist-wife, Kathi Petersen. Not long after I met Jamie, he “brought me home” via email to introduce me to Kathi.
Before too long Kathi and I were email buddies – emailing each other regularly twice a day. Kathi had been through some pretty major challenges in her life, and could relate to a lot of what I was going through. She understood my thoughts about not wanting to use medication to get relief from the depression – understood that I felt there was something I needed to learn from my experience. She understood, too, when I told her that I’d found I could be happy even when I was depressed. Kathi wrote:
“…something… that occurs to me … is that we all have to live our own lives, and grow from our own hardships.
“I was in a Jungian dream group once and one of the women was saying something about how she could be just as conscious and psychologically grown without having had a dark night of the soul, and you could tell people were thinking ‘yeah right’ … I hear peoples’ stories sometimes, maybe some television interview, and they end up talking about their really pivotal growth ‘dark night moment,’ and it is something that seems so insignificant …but you have to have the whole context of peoples’ lives. I think it is hugely important for people to grow from their own experiences…
“I actually think in a way that it is very important not to tell someone, when they are upset about the bad time they are going through, ‘Well look at that guy, he has no arms or legs and he is a professional motivational speaker and has written two bestseller books’ … I’m saying this because I think in a way, the hardships (while all different) have a BIG sameness about them, and that the answers have a HUGE sameness about them. It is… about people who are suffering, and people finding out that the suffering isn’t a necessary part of life. The hardships may be … but the suffering not necessarily. I have thought that having bigger challenges can sometimes allow people to learn this more easily (trial by fire?) – to learn that life can be full of joy regardless …”
***
I remember clearly the moment when I began to wake up from the depression: I was talking with my husband, Scott, about how the people around me were telling me these wonderful things about myself, but I just felt detached from their words – like the words had nothing to do with who I really am. I told him I felt like a fraud. He looked at me and started laughing. “Karen,” he said, “everyone else knows who you are, you’re the only one who can’t see it!”
The way he said it – with such conviction and so kind of matter-of-factly – I felt something lifting from me, some burden that had been weighing me down. I went out for a walk, and everything around me looked lighter and brighter. I felt stirrings of joy. For some reason I’d been feeling like I had to “steal” happiness – as if I didn’t deserve it. But I think that it was at this moment when I began to accept that I had every right to be happy.
***
“Be happy at all times and in all places; for remember it is right and a duty you owe to yourself and to your God to retain the right, no matter how loudly the senses scream.” – Edward A. Kimball
Honestly, I was feeling pretty down today – dismayed at the direction the world seems to be headed; and disappointed in myself, too – feeling like I could have been a better mother, wife, daughter, teacher, friend, in my life.
The thought came to me to get out of the house and find a quiet corner somewhere where I could do some self-reflection and have an internal conversation with the Cosmos.
When I started out I wasn’t sure where I was going to end up, exactly – but as I followed the nudgings of the Cosmos I found myself at Pacioni’s in Mount Vernon. I sat in a booth in the back and ordered a half a veggie panini, listened to the soft background music and the sounds of friends talking and laughing. Watched the rain drizzling outside the front window.
I realized I missed Mom. I thought about how I could always tell her what was in my heart – and she never judged me or my words. She always saw the best in me. I missed that.
When I was done with my panini and had paid, I tidied up my table, put on my coat, and started for the door.
And this is when I saw that two of my favorite people – a couple in my local community – had been sitting in there, eating their lunch, too! We all gave each other hugs and talked about children and granchildren and the state of the world, and how we maybe can’t change the big things in the world, but we can be kind to the people in our community, the people we come in contact with – and I told them they are two of the people that do this really well – and then they said *I* did this! They said I was the perfect example of this! They said they’d been talking to one of my former students a while ago and my name had come up in the conversation and my former student had said that EVERYone should have a Karen Terrell for a teacher.
I teared up. I stood there, in front of my friends, and I teared up. They had no idea the gift they’d just given me – it was the exactly right thing I needed to hear just then. To know that someone thought I’d made a difference – to know that someone thought I’d done something right in my life – this was huge for me.
And I realized that the mother-love I’d been missing was right there with me – being expressed to me by my beautiful friends.
The Cosmos led me exactly where I needed to be today.
T’was the day they call Valentine’s and o’er all the land folks were giving out cards from hand-to-hand. There were cards with lace and cards with big hearts cards with words that rhyme and cards with moveable parts. There were funny cards and romantic cards, friendship cards and more. But what they all had in common was the love at their core. I love you! -Karen Molenaar Terrell
I have a new book on the market. It’s the second book in my Cosmic Celebrations series and I had such fun putting this one together – so many good memories of meeting new friends and reconnecting with old friends. Cosmic Kinship: Celebrating Community can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and most bookstores. If you click on the “Look Inside” link or “Read sample” on this link, you can read a free sample.
Karen’s message is one of LOVE’s ability to carry us through the ups and downs of daily life as well as support us and provide hope in these crazy times when the world seems to have gone mad.
I’ve had the pleasure of reading 3 of Karen Molenaar Terrell’s books, the most recent being “Looking Forward,” which I’ve read twice in the past couple of months. It provides solace to the soul as you read of the kindness, love, humor, and compassion that infuses Karen’s life and daily activities with aging parents, husband, adult sons, extended family, pets, and community. She shares about her life with such openness and vulnerability that when you’ve finished reading, you feel like you’ve thoroughly enjoyed catching up with your best friend and you’re looking forward to your next get-together.
All teachers should read Karen’s chapter on education. The country and the world would be a far better place if teachers shared Karen’s perspective on students and incorporated her creative ways of sharing academic lessons and life’s wisdom with students.
Karen’s political campaign gives the reader a taste of how our country’s leaders could and should be: intelligent, passionate, respectful, articulate and kind. How we sorely need that in this world!
The quotations and book references with which Karen begins each chapter have been added to my reading list. If they inspired Karen, they are sure to inspire me.
This “Madcap Christian Scientist” has a heartfelt and hopeful message for all of us: LOVE and a sense of humor are the keys to a fulfilling life.
I pass her first in the pet food aisle. Her expression is serious – like she is considering important things – and my expression is probably serious, too. Pet food is serious business. Next I pass her by the milk. I think we smile at each other that time. Then I come upon her in produce – and this time we full-on grin at each other.
I have to choose between two checkout lines and finally settled on lane #3 – behind a fellow boomer wearing a friendly smile and a baseball cap with the name of a golf course emblazoned on it. He grins and quips that any line behind him is going to end up being the slow one – and I assure him that if this line ends up being slow, it’s entirely me to blame. I am a slow-lane magnet. But, I tell him, I am retired, so I’m in no hurry. It’s all good.
Just as he gets to the front of the line, he turns to me and says – his face totally serious – “Oh! I forgot something in the farthest corner of the store! Is it okay if I go back and get it?”
I start laughing. I know what he’s up to. “Go for it!” I say. And he starts laughing, too, then. Then he says he has a good one-liner for me. He says, “What do a flat tire and a bad attitude have in common? They both have to be changed if you want to get anywhere.”
“That’s a good one!” I say.
The cashier rings him up and he turns to me and wishes me a good day before he leaves. He has already given me a good day.
After I pay for my groceries, I go to the in-store Starbucks to get myself a mocha. And, after paying for my mocha, when I turn around to go wait in the pick-up line, who should I see standing behind me but the woman I’ve been running into all over the store? We both start laughing like we’re old friends – and maybe we are by this point – and I say, “I’ve been following you all over this store!” And she nods her head, in happy acknowlegement.
Yesterday I got together with a group of friends I hadn’t seen since the start of the pandemic – former colleagues at an alternative high school – women who’d been shoulder-to-shoulder with me in the trenches as our school went through some challenging times. Our commitment to the well-being of our students, our shared sense of humor, and our trust in each other, had drawn us together and bonded us for life.
And here we sat at the local Starbuck’s – together again – a group of women ranging in age from 30 to 70 – two of us retired now, two of us still in the trenches of an educational landscape that has changed drastically in the last couple years. We hugged and we laughed. We got caught up – talked about families and skirmishes with COVID and what strategies we’re using to stay sane in an insane time, and how education changed during the pandemic. We talked about adventures and aging and the adventure of aging, and how older women are viewed by society – the bad AND the good of that – the tendency to dismiss older women and the freedom that comes with aging. We shared and listened. We took turns and gave each other time to talk – and it was a natural thing to do this – it always amazes me how naturally the conversation flows with these women. There are no prima donnas here. We are genuinely interested in each other.
After we’d been there a couple hours – completely enveloped in our bubble of friendship and mostly unaware of what was going on around us – a woman in her sixties rose from a table near us and headed for the exit. As she passed our table she stopped and smiled and said, “I miss my friends! I’ve enjoyed listening to your laughter!” She was very cool – I knew she would have fit right in with this group – and we thanked her and wished her a good day.
Not long after that, a couple of men in their sixties – they looked like men who might have just gotten back from a hike together- rose from THEIR table and passed us for the exit. One of them looked over at me as he passed and I smiled and he smiled back one of those genuine full-faced smiles and, in that instant, I just KNEW that he’d been listening into our conversation, too. And, for a moment, I was embarrassed, remembering all the things we’d been talking about at our table. But then I realized that his smile had been kind, and more of a “we’re-all-in-this-together” type of smile than a “you-guys-are-batshit-crazy” type of smile, and that felt good.
Two and a half hours later my friends and I hugged each other good bye – promised each other we’d get together again soon – and each of us headed home to our families. But those two and a half hours together were like an oasis in the desert for me. I felt my soul soaking up the love and inspiration and fellowship, and left feeling rejuvenated.
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 