Hello, dear ones! This Sunday I will be speaking at the Skagit UU Fellowship at 10:30. The topic is “Choose Love.” You are invited to attend in person or via zoom. The fellowship hall is located at 500 W Section Street in Mount Vernon, Washington (right behind the post office). Here’s the zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83222201810
It would be lovely to see you this Sunday and celebrate Love together!
Love, Karen
Let’s…
Choose Love over hate. Choose Love over fear. Choose Love over selfishness. Choose Love.
because…
Fear is not the boss of me. Hate is not the boss of me. Selfishness is not the boss of me. Love is my boss. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
About once a week I walk into town to buy a hummus roasted veggie sandwich and to see my friend, Frank, who works at the sandwich place. Frank is gay. We’ve never talked about his gayness or my not-gayness or anyone’s whatever-ness in conversation – I mean – it’s not like people usually approach a new friend, shake hands, and introduce themselves by their labels – “Hi, I’m Karen and I’m a progressive bleeding heart liberal heterosexual female Christian Scientist of mostly European ancestry (although there might be some Basque Reptile Alien in there, too) – and how about you? What are your labels?” – but, yeah, Frank is gay.
This week when Frank asked me how I was, I gave the usual, “I’m good. And how about you?” And he gave the usual, “I’m good.” But this time something made me stop and really look at Frank. And I asked, “Frank, how are you really?” Frank said it had been a rough week.
He said he’d been in a bar earlier in the week, and he’d heard people at the next table over saying – in deliberately loud voices so Frank could hear – “Yeah. Those people in Florida deserved it.” Frank had tried to remain civil to them – he and the bar-tender had had their own conversation – loud enough to be heard – about the terribleness of the tragedy. And the people at the next table spewed out some more hatred. And Frank wondered about them: Hadn’t they ever been targeted for being different in some way? Didn’t they know what that felt like?
I started tearing up. “Frank, where does that hate come from? I don’t understand it.” Frank shook his head sadly, and said he thought it came from ignorance – from people being afraid of what they don’t know. He said he leaves those people in the hands of the Lord – and he didn’t mean that in a vengeful way – but in a “God will help them” way.
I told Frank that I was with him. I told him that he wasn’t alone. And he thanked me and gave me a hug.
Later on I was thinking about what Frank had said – his wondering if those people had ever been targeted for being different – and it made me remember a time, years ago, when I’d been watching a local “town meeting” on television and I’d heard someone say that “All Christian Scientists should be lined up against a wall and shot.” It had been strange and disturbing to hear someone who didn’t know me wish me dead. It stuck with me. I learned something from that.
Anyone could become a target – hatred is a form of insanity, really, and it doesn’t have to make sense – maybe tomorrow it will be stubby people, or extra tall people, or people with green eyes, or left-handed people, who will become the targets.
I think when we take the time to get to know each other – to try to understand each other without judgment or condemnation – to listen to each other – when we take the time to get rid of our own ignorance – we are doing a lot to make the world a better place. It’s been said so many times, but I think it’s true: Love really IS the answer.
She was trying to understand the unfathomable – trying to find a reason and cause for the hate and insanity the greed and racism, willful ignorance and inanity. And finally she realized she was looking at it upside-down: Trying to find a source for a story that’s not true is like trying to find the reason fairies exist or hobbits live in her shoe; It’s like asking why Road Runner and Wiley Coyote are always in a fight; It’s like trying to find the source for darkness instead of turning on a light. – Karen Molenaar Terrell
The despicable, hateful, fear-inducing, violence-inciting things he says that target my friends in the LGBTQ community and the Haitian and Puerto Rican immigrant communities, and those who’ve served and died in the military, tell me everything I need to know about his “policies”
No, I was not better off under his presidency. And the economy is only going to get worse if he’s elected and his plans for the economy are implemented – his tariffs would bring up the cost of groceries and deporting millions of farm workers would, too.
I don’t want to hear even one more person say they don’t like him, but they like his policies. His policies are all based on hate and greed.
I’ve been debating with myself if I should put this out there – most of us have probably already voted by now, and I’m pretty sure nothing I write here is going to make any difference anyway. But… on the flip side, I think I’d have a hard time living with myself if I didn’t say something. So. Yeah. Here goes.
I’m pretty sure the swing states are getting bombarded with a lot of political ads that never reach us here in Washington State. But every now and then – usually when we’re watching some nationally-televised sports show – one will pop up. And there’s this one I’ve seen a couple of times now that triggers something in me every time – and I don’t think I’m triggered in the way the politician who sponsored the ad expects me to be triggered.
This ad shows this tall, masculine-looking athlete playing sports on a women’s team. And then the narrator says this: “Kamala’s for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
And that, right there, is just so…. just writing this I’m finding myself triggered again. “Us versus them.” This is the language of haters. This is the language that politicians use to divide us, and to incite violence in us. This is the language politicians use to bring the fearful and ignorant to their flag. This is bigotry, pure and simple. And it scares me for the safety of my LGBTQ friends.
I’m a Boomer AND a former English teacher who, in the olden days, spent time correcting my students’ improper use of the words “they” and “them” – “they” is the plural I’d tell my students and “her” is the singular. I grew up in a generation of people in which society was divided into male and female – and, being a heterosexual female who’s always felt female-ish, I never really thought too much beyond society’s binary system for the sexes. I had friends and acquaintances in the olden days who I knew were gay, but it was never a big deal to me who other people were attracted to and it never occurred to me that I should hate anyone or judge them because of their sexual orientation.
Now, as time has gone on and my circle of friendships has grown, I also have had the opportunity to develop friendships with several transgender people – in the case of my friends, they were assigned the label of “female” when they were born, but have never FELT female, and self-identify as male. And, in recent years, I have witnessed my friends – good, caring, kind, brave people – become more urgent in their cries for help as they’re bullied, threatened, legislated against, and hated on.
And I’m scared for their safety.
So when I see that poltical ad from the Trump campaign, targeting transgender people, I’m triggered. Feeding the fear and hate – feeding the “feargnorance” in others – is shameful and low. It’s despicable. That ad validates, for me, that I voted for the right person by NOT voting for Trump.
Shouldn’t our president be for ALL of us?
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one and the same in Christ Jesus.“ – Galatians 3:28
(Reworked from a post originally published in 2014.) I’ve never seen The Exorcist, but I have seen that scene with the pea soup and the spinning head – and lately I’ve seemed to encounter a lot of what I would put in the “pea soup and spinning head” category. There have been times, recently, when personalities have seemed to spin themselves out of alignment with the individuals they really are, spewing out all kinds of hell – anger, frustration, jealousy, fear, revenge, hatred, finger-pointing. And I’m embarrassed to say that on at least a couple occasions recently I myself was the spewer – feeling really angry and hurt about someone I felt had treated me unfairly.
It none of it felt good.
But then I came across yet another spewing-spinner on a discussion board, and found myself just stepping back and kind of observing in interested fascination as the pea soup flew and the vitriol sprayed. The pea soup and vitriol had been intended for me, but they were so over-the-top and spewed so high in the air that it simply erupted above the spewer’s head and ended up landing back on her. It didn’t touch me at all. And, standing there on the outside of the mess, it became really clear to me that the spinning-spewing personality was not at all the real individuality of my fellow poster. It was obvious that what I had just witnessed was nothing but a spinning-spewing counterfeit of the real man and woman, made in God’s likeness – made in the likeness of Love. And it also became clear to me that I had no desire or need to spend my time engaged in conversation with a counterfeit. I was able to step back and move on and find other interesting dialogues that better served me. I didn’t give the counterfeit the power to push me OUT of a space where I belonged, and nor did I give the counterfeit the power to pull me INTO a space where I didn’t belong. I didn’t have to react or respond to the counterfeit at all.
This encounter with the counterfeit poster helped me come to terms with my feelings of anger and wish for vengeance towards the personality who had treated me so poorly in the past. I had to recognize that the real man is the child of God – that God loves him no less than he loves me – and that God is instructing him, and leading him down his own path in life, with its own lessons waiting for him. And none of that is any of my business.
My business is keeping watch on my own thoughts and actions. Mary Baker Eddy writes, “Christian Science commands man to master the propensities, – to hold hatred in abeyance with kindness, to conquer lust with chastity, revenge with charity, and to overcome deceit with honesty. Choke these errors in their early stages, if you would not cherish an army of conspirators against health, happiness, and success.”
As Paul says, we all must work out our “own salvation.” It’s rewarding work. It’s satisfying work. And it’s also enough work to fill my moments and my days for eternity. Who has time to worry about working out someone ELSE’s flaws and foibles, when I have enough of my own to worry about?
Trust. Feel the arms of Love enfolding us all in one universal cosmic hug. Feel the pull, the tug towards Truth, Life, Soul, Love gathering us together, breaking the fetters, cutting the tethers that keep us bound in hate and fear. We’re free in Love right now, right here. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
“I’m scared,” she said as she looked at the stars. “I’m scared of the war and the meanness, and the bigotry and the hate. Good seems so far and it seems too late.”
“But, child, I’ve never left you I’ve always been here,” came a voice to her thoughts, strong and clear. “You can’t lose Love – can’t lose what is real. You’re safe in this moment – just let yourself feel the Good all around you – precious and dear.”
And she let herself feel the Good with her then – brought her thoughts close to ever-where, ever-when. The Good hadn’t left her. Love was still there – wrapping gentle arms around her in the still evening air. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
Does it make sense to sacrifice the very things we’re battling to win? To give up our joy, and lose our love, would be to let hate and fear win in the end. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
The joy is always here, you know. War and famine, pestilence and pain, can’t stop joy from bubbling up, unrestrained.
Love is always with us, too – unhampered, irrepressible, strong – heedless of whether you’re the “wronged” or the “wrong.”
The thing about Love and joy is they don’t depend on circumstance, happenstance, or material substance. They are both cause and consequence. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 