Wishing You and Yours…
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Tag Archives: hope
This Is the Day that Joy Hath made
My dear Humoristian hooligans –
This is the day that joy hath made. Look for it. Spread it. May it over-flow from your hooligan hearts and fill up the dark, empty places in the streets and alleys, homes and work places, legislative and executive and judicial bodies of our world. May your integrity and honesty transform the scammers, schemers, scrooges, and skullduggerers. May your kindness and patience be a balm to those caught up in the frantic, frenetic, frenzied fabrications of the seasonal festivities. May you leave a smile, an unburdened heart, and hope in your wake. Go out there and work your magic!
This is the day that Love hath made. 
Amen.
Karen
“I won’t give up…”
“I don’t wanna be someone who walks away so easily
I’m here to stay and make the difference that I can make
Our differences they do a lot to teach us how to use
The tools and gifts we got, yeah, we got a lot at stake
And in the end, you’re still my friend at least we did intend
For us to work we didn’t break, we didn’t burn
We had to learn how to bend without the world caving in
I had to learn what I’ve got, and what I’m not, and who I am
I won’t give up on us
Even if the skies get rough
I’m giving you all my love
I’m still looking up, I’m still looking up.”
– Jason Mraz
One birthday, my dear friend, Teresa, gave me a Jason Mraz CD as a gift. I’d never heard of Jason Mraz before Teresa gave me his CD, but as soon as I heard his music I knew I was listening to a kindred spirit. I especially liked his song “I Won’t Give Up.” I later recorded my my own version of his song on singsnap – you can listen to my rendition here.
This is what I’m feeling for my country right now. I’m not ready to give up on us.
October 2, 2017
October 2nd –
It’s already been said – over and over, again and again, by people much wiser and more eloquent than me. Not much I can add, I guess. But I do want to share a couple things that happened to me today…
I stopped at Sisters Espresso for my morning mocha on my way to work. Courtney was at the window. I can’t remember what she said now – something from her heart – and I came around to the door and she opened it for me and we hugged. And she gave me a mocha on the house. And that little mocha meant so much to me.
At lunch I decided to get out into the sunshine and walk down to the co-op. As I was walking down the overpass I felt my face start to crumple a little – thinking about all the sadness in the world. And then I heard someone honk and I turned and this older gentleman wearing a veteran’s cap and driving a little econo-car smiled and gave me a friendly wave. I waved back. Later, as I was walking back up from the co-op the same man drove by – and again he honked and waved – I looked over and waved back, and he asked me if I needed a lift somewhere. And it was so sweet – his effort to help me – it really warmed my heart. I thanked him, and told him no I was fine. And he wished me a good day – not just a flippant good day – but a genuine good day. I felt like I’d connected with a good Samaritan, you know?
Later, my co-worker, Melanie, came up to my office to chat. We talked a little about what was going on in the world, and she said something really simple and profound and true: “Remember that there’s a lot more good in the world than bad.”
And so that’s where I am right now. Remembering all the good in the world – and that includes you – yes, you who are reading this. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for the humor you share on here, and the inspiration, and the cool things that happen in your life. Thank you for caring.
Sunrise on the way to work. October 2, 2017. Photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell.
Love’s Day
Good morning, sunshine!
Green pastures are before me,
Which yet I have not seen;
Bright skies will soon be o’er me,
Where darkest clouds have been.
My hope I cannot measure,
My path in life is free;
My Father has my treasure,
And He will walk with me.
– Anna L. Waring (Hymn #148, Christian Science Hymnal)
Let’s Stand Defiant
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“You never know what the tide will bring in…”
One night during the depression, I got an encouraging call from my youngest brother, David, who had heard I was struggling. Near the end of our conversation, he said something that has stayed with me in the years since then. “Karen, did you ever see that movie with Tom Hanks where he gets stuck on the island?” Yes, I told him, I’d seen that movie. “For four years he was trying to get off that island,” my brother said, ”and then one day the tide brought in that piece of metal that he could use for a sail. He wasn’t expecting it. He couldn’t have known it was going to come in with the tide. But it saved him. You never know what the tide will bring in that will save you.”
And, man, ain’t that the truth? Just as I have found that there’s no way I can predict what form help and “salvation” will take for me, I have found that, if I just keep my thought open to all the good that God offers us, every moment, I’ll find everything I need to get me off my mental “island.”
(Excerpt from The Madcap Christian Scientist’s Middle Book.)
Do Not Despair
“My child, do not despair. Do you think we would have brought you here if there were no hope? We are asking you to do a difficult thing, but we are confident that you can do it.”
– Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
– Madeleine L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Not Giving Up
So there’s this site called singsnap that’s a karaoke site – let’s you record yourself singing songs to the site’s backup music. My friend, Kathi, introduced me to this site back in 2013, and I made some recordings on there over that summer and then pretty much forgot about it and moved on to other diversions. 🙂 But this morning I was thinking about a Jason Mraz song, I won’t Give Up, and went back to my recording of it on singsnap. It was the first song I recorded on there and I didn’t really know what I was doing – this is not a professional recording or anything. But I feel impelled to share it today. It’s a song for my country and my world. Here’s the link to it: Karen’s recording of I Won’t Give Up.
I won’t give up on us
Even if the skies get rough
I’m giving you all my love
I’m still looking up, I’m still looking up.
– Jason Mraz
“Rise in the strength of Spirit…”
“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.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Casting out evil and fear enables truth to outweigh error. The only course is to take antagonist grounds against all that is opposed to the health, holiness, and harmony of man, God’s image.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
On Sunday morning my United Methodist husband agreed to read the week’s Christian Science Lesson-Sermon with me – he took on the role of First Reader and I was Second Reader – and it was just… it was just very dear. The Lesson-Sermon on Sunday was really powerful and brought me healing and hope. I’m going to post excerpts from it below, so’s I can return to it when I need it.
“And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world…”
– Revelation 12
“Truth and Love prevail against the dragon because the dragon cannot war with them.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“God being everywhere and all-inclusive, how can He be absent or suggest the absence of omnipresence and omnipotence? How can there be more than all?”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“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.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour…”
– I Peter 5
“Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep; So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man.”
– Proverbs 6
“The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light.”
– Romans 13:12
“So secret are the present methods of animal magnetism that they ensnare the age into indolence, and produce the very apathy on the subject which the criminal desires.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Peals that should startle the slumbering thought from its erroneous dreams are partially unheeded; but the last trump has not sounded, or this would not be so. Marvels, calamities, and sin will much more abound as truth urges upon mortals its resisted claims; but the awful daring of sin destroys sin, and foreshadows the triumph of truth.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Evil thoughts and aims reach no farther and do no more harm than one’s belief permits. Evil thoughts, lusts, and malicious purposes cannot go forth, like wandering pollen, from one human mind to another, finding unsuspected lodgment, if virtue and truth build a strong defence.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“The Christian Scientst has enlisted to lessen evil, disease, and death; and he will overcome them by understanding their nothingness and the allness of God, or good.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Expose and denounce the claims of evil and disease in all their forms, but realize no reality in them.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“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.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“We should follow our divine Exemplar, and seek the destruction of all evil works, error and disease included.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Casting out evil and fear enables truth to outweigh error. The only course is to take antagonist grounds against all that is opposed to the health, holiness, and harmony of man, God’s image.” – Mary Baker Eddy
“No hypotheses as to the existence of another power should interpose a doubt or fear to hinder the demonstration of Christian Science.” –
Mary Baker Eddy
“Christian Science silences human will, quiets fear with Truth and Love, and illustrates the unlabored motion of the divine energy in healing the sick.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“The Lord bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect.”
– Psalms 33
“Let the lying lips be put to silence…”
– Psalms 31
“Greater is he than is in you, than he that is in the world.”
– I John 4
“In a world of sin and sensuality hastening to a greater development of power, it is wise earnestly to consider whether it is the human mind or the divine Mind which is influencing one.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“The exterminator of error is the great truth that God, good, is the ONLY Mind, and that the supposititious opposite of infinite Mind – called devil or evil – is not MInd, is not Truth, but error, without intelligence or reality.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“All must sooner or later plant themselves in Christ, the true idea of God”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing.”
– Zephaniah 3
“The Scripture, ‘Thou has been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over man,’ is literally fulfilled, when we are conscious of the supremacy of Truth, by which the nothingness of error is seen; and we know that the nothingness of error is in proportion to its wickedness. He that touches the hem of Christ’s robe and masters his mortal beliefs, animality, and hate, rejoices in the proof of healing, – in a sweet and certain sense that God is Love.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 