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photo of cannon at Fort Ticonderoga by Karen Molenaar Terrell
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Tag Archives: love
A Power Available to All
There ain’t no midi-chlorians here… 🙂
photo of Mount McKinley by Karen Molenaar Terrell
Infinite Love
You mean…?! Whoah…!!!
photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell
One Last Song
Without any words you sat down at the piano one last time before heading off on your new adventure. You knew I would come and hear – pulled by that irresistible sound of your fingers on the keys – and all in a flash I saw you again as a toddler – the back of your round little downy-haired head as you sat on my lap at the piano, your tiny fingers pushing down on the keys, then your face turning up to me, a grin of pure glee there… is there anything more powerful than love?
Love
“The height, might, majesty and glory of infinite Love fill all space. That is enough!” – Mary Baker Eddy
(photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell)
…and none of that is any of my business.
But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters. – I Peter 4: 15
(photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell)
You ever want to just step out of life?
Yeah. Me, too, sometimes. Woke up at 4:00 in the morning and found Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures on my Kindle… opened it to a random place. Not sure now, exactly, what I read, but these are the thoughts that came to me afterwards…
I want to take a break, I said.
Can I step out of life for a moment,
or maybe stay in bed?
Can things go on without me awhile?
Can I just disappear?
Can you get on with your lives without me
and just pretend I’m not here?
For life is a messy business
and I’m tired and I am weary
I’ve made too many mistakes to count today
And I’d like to not make anymore, not any.
Will things get better?
Will life come out alright?
Will the hero find true love?
Will tomorrow be sparkly and bright?
Will there be a happy ending?
Will the ones I love know they’re loved?
Will I see any more rainbows?
Will sun’s rays beam through the clouds above?
And the still, small voice reached into my thought
– gentle, peaceable benediction –
“All the good you seek and all that you’ve sought,
you can claim right now – and that’ s no fiction –
for Love is yours to express, to feel and to be
you are wealthy beyond description.
Nothing else matters, there’s no other power
no warring opinions, no need to cower.
You are loved and you’re loving
and that’s all there is to it
Love’s loving child, and there’s nothing else,
simply nothing.”
– Karen Molenaar Terrell, schmaltz-monger extraordinaire
When does a person stop being a miracle?
Just saw a commercial on the TV. It showed a man carrying around a tiny infant while he did laundry. Not sure what the commercial was advertising, exactly – appliances maybe? or… laundry detergent? – but the line that caught my attention was something about making miracles – alluding, I guess, to the baby in the father’s arms.
And, of course, being a mother myself I thought about my own “miracles” – sons now fully-grown. And it occurred to me that they didn’t stop being miracles to me once they grew out of babyhood. And then I started wondering… well… a lot of things. Like, for instance, we all started out as babies, right? So to society we all started out as little miracles. And… at what age do most people in society stop thinking of each other as miracles? Two? Four? Eighteen? Ninety? Should we EVER stop thinking of each other as miracles?
And then my thoughts turned to those little girls kidnapped in Nigeria, and that pregnant woman in Sudan who’s been sentenced to death for her religious beliefs, and it’s obvious to me those little girls and that pregnant woman are miracles, too – and I’m wondering how anybody else can fail to recognize that? And THEN I realized that… well… the man who sentenced the woman to death, and the men who kidnapped those little girls… they were all babies once, too – taking their first breaths, opening their eyes and looking on the world for the first time, wrapping their little arms around their mammas’ necks, taking their first steps – and I tried to see them through the eyes of their mothers… and are not they miracles, too?
I am praying. I am praying to see the power of Love and Truth at work in our world, to see Love expressed, and Truth acknowledged. I am praying to know the powerlessness of hatred and cruelty – to see that hatred and ignorance can never, never overcome Good. Darkness vanishes with the light. Hatred disappears in the radiance of Love. Error dissolves before Truth.
And you -yes, YOU – you are still a miracle.
When the divine precepts are understood, they unfold the foundation of fellowship, in which one mind is not at war with another, but all have one Spirit, God, one intelligent source, in accordance with the Scriptural command: “Let this Mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Kinship with All Life”
I went out to my garden and the bunny was there again… I was really close to him… he sprang up and looked like he was ready to race away, but I started singing to him and after a moment or two he got himself comfortable and stayed until I was finished singing. I love that bunny…
I just finished reading Kinship with All Life, by J. Allen Boone, and I so enjoyed it….
J. Allen Boone relates how he was able to open communication with all manner of creatures – starting with Strongheart, the great movie star dog, and then moving on to ants, a family of skunks, and Freddie the fly. In essence, what he tells us is that he had to learn to get rid of his stereotypes and prejudice about his fellow creatures, stop looking on them as inferior beings, and start talking to them “horizontally” rather than down.
Boone writes: “I had to discard my eyeballs as reliable reporting factors… and to begin using my thinking to see with… our five organs of sense give us a kind of ‘feel’ of the universe and the various things that it contains, but they do not help us to experience things as they really are… The great spiritual explorers who have searched for the real facts behind all appearances have told us that the universe is faultless in its conceptions, faultless in its purpose, and faultless in its operation.” Boone continues…”… behind every object which the senses can identify, whether the object be human, animal, tree, plant or anything else, and right where the object seems to be, is the mental and spiritual fact functioning in all its completeness and perfection.”
Boone talks about the difference between an animal trainer and an animal educator. A trainer uses the “make ’em or break ’em technique” – employing a reward-and-punishment process with the animal. But the educator is entirely different. Boone writes:”The animal educator does just the reverse of all this. Moving into the situation with insight and intuition, he places full emphasis on the mental rather than on the physical part of the animal. He treats it as an intelligent fellow being whose capacity for development and expression he refuses to limit in any direction.” Writing about Larry Timble’s technique in transforming Strongheart into the star he became, Boone writes: “Trimble discovered that deep within the big combat dog, but solidly imprisoned there, was a wealth of magnificent character qualities. Those talents and graces, buried beneath the dog’s tough physical exterior, did not need to be developed but liberated. That is what Trimble proceeded to do.”
Boone talks about the important lesson he learned from a fly he named Freddie: “Before Freddie the Fly came to live with me, my decreeing about flies had been supplying me with a continuous harvest of disagreeable and troublesome results. I expected flies to be unfriendly, and they were. I expected them to annoy me, and they did. I expected them to bite me, and they accommodated me in that manner too. With the accuracy and precision of an echo, I had been getting back in ourward experience just what I had been mentally and vocally decreeing and expecting… Freddie was nothing more or less than the state of my own consciousness about him being made manifest in an outward experience”
There are some really valuable lessons there, I think.
I had an epiphany one morning. I think it’s something that a lot of people recognize on some level and it’s nothing new I’m going to say, but I am going to say it anyway. 🙂
You know how when you look up at the stars at night you get the feeling that you’re a part of something really amazing and awesome? And, for me, it feels like I’m part of some big purpose, too.
So when I had my epiphany I was sitting on a boulder on a beach on the Puget Sound – I had the beach entirely to myself – and as I looked out at the water, and watched the little sea creatures in the tidal pool next to me, I got that same feeling – that I’m part of something awesome, and that I’m part of some universal purpose. And it came to me that the purpose of everything, the purpose of the universe, is to love. And everything else – the mistakes we make, and the struggles we have – if those things lead us to understand love better, and lead us to love more – then that’s all that matters, really.
And right after my epiphany, this family came around the corner, and their dog came barreling straight for me and leaped on me and licked my face and just showered his slobbery love on me… it was great!
Those times when I’ve encountered and connected with expressions of life on its own turf, beach, and limb have been magic for me – as cool as meeting and communing with aliens from another planet…
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- Right after I got a new camera I spotted this eagle posing in a tree for me…
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- Came across this marmot on a hike up Sauk Mountain – he gave me a few minutes to just enjoy him before he went back into the rocks.
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- This bird settled on my hand while I was tromping around Mount Baker, and let me snap his picture…
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- In Bellingham, WA, an otter swam up to the rocks right below me and played around in the boulders for 15 or 20 minutes….
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- I came around a rock at Lincoln City, OR, and found this rainbow of sea creatures…
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- A heron near Padilla Bay, WA, stretches out his neck and ruffles his feathers…
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- A butterfly in the Seattle Butterfly Exhibit poses on a leaf ….
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- An owl at Lake Padden, WA, spent five or ten minutes in silent communion with me.
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- A cormorant spreads his wings and eyes me while I take his photo.
All of God’s creatures, moving in the harmony of Science, are harmless, useful, indestructible. – Mary Baker Eddy
“Radical reliance on Truth”
The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love. – Mary Baker Eddy
Recently a fellow Christian Scientist made a comment on one of my blog posts that got me to thinking (which is always a good thing, right?) 🙂
Don wrote: “Mrs. Eddy pushes us to have ‘radical reliance’ on God–an impossible order if one wishes to be ‘fat and happy’ in matter, too. Consequently, some individuals find ourselves taking a ‘halting and halfway position’ in our religion and at that point begin accepting all sorts of logic that veers away from true Christian Science. Loving our fellowman who has opposing views doesn’t mean ‘getting in bed with him.’ …Medicine is a mind-science. Christian Science is Mind (God) Science. There is a dramatic and opposite difference between the two, and we must be careful to keep both feet solidly grounded in that ‘Science’ which does bless us and the world–in spite of how illogical it seems to the materialist or to those of us who want to ‘play nice’ with the world. It all boils down to our responsibility, and it can’t be shirked forever by any one of us. We must take a stand for Truth (God) if we wish to grow out of mortality using the same conviction as is recorded in Psalms ‘Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God.” (Ps 20:7)’ “
Don’s post got me to thinking about just what “radical reliance on Truth” actually means. Is “radical reliance on Truth” simply a euphemism for “avoiding the use of traditional medical science”? Or does “radical reliance on Truth” mean something else entirely – something bigger, something more?
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Only through radical reliance on Truth can scientific healing power be realized. – Mary Baker Eddy
If we would open their prison doors for the sick, we must first learn to bind up the broken-hearted. If we would heal by the Spirit, we must not hide the talent of spiritual healing under the napkin of its form, nor bury the morale of Christian Science in the grave-clothes of its letter. – Mary Baker Eddy
I’m thinking that we need to be careful not to bury the talent of spiritual healing under the “napkin of its form.” Whatever means a person chooses to use for healing – whether it’s naturopathy, traditional medical science, Christian Science treatment, or something else – that’s the form, the means, the method. The morale, or essence, of spiritual healing is Love – Love is the power that heals and transforms us. The God I follow – Love, Truth, Life, Principle, Mind, Soul, Spirit (synonyms Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, gave for “God”) – isn’t concerned with what kind of treatment we choose to use – Love is going to remain unchanging Love, and Truth is going to remain unchanging Truth, no matter what form or method we use for physical healing. Truth doesn’t have an opinion on which form of treatment is best for treating disease – because Truth doesn’t know anything about disease, to begin with. Truth knows only perfection. And Truth and Love are synonyms, so doesn’t “radical reliance on Truth” also mean “radical reliance on Love”?
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Material methods are temporary, and are not adapted to elevate mankind. – Mary Baker Eddy
If Christian Scientists ever fail to receive aid from other Scientists, – their brethren upon whom they may call, – God will still guide them into the right use of temporary and eternal means. Step by step will those who trust Him find that “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.” – Mary Baker Eddy
Christ, Truth, gives mortals temporary food and clothing until the material, transformed with the ideal, disappears, and man is clothed and fed spiritually.- Mary Baker Eddy
Emerge gently from matter into Spirit. Think not to thwart the spiritual ultimate of all things, but come naturally into Spirit through better health and morals and as the result of spiritual growth. – Mary Baker Eddy
When I choose to use Christian Science for healing I know my thought is going to be “elevated” by the experience, I know I’m going to gain a greater understanding of God and of who I am as her child, and I know I will be transformed – not merely healed physically – but transformed.
I choose to turn to Christian Science for healing because it’s simple, natural, uncomplicated – it’s always available to me no matter where I am, or who I’m with, or what scrape I’ve gotten myself into “this time”. I choose to use my understanding of Christian Science to bring me healing because it has been proven to work for me.
My motives for choosing Christian Science treatment for healing have nothing to do with a fear of what other Christian Scientists are going to think of me, or because I’m concerned God’s going to be angry at me, or because I’m worried about being ex-communicated, or because I’m opposed to something else, or because I’m scared of medical science, or feeling angry, self-righteous, or smug. My motive for turning to Christian Science for healing isn’t because I feel the need to take a “stand for Truth” – Truth doesn’t need me to take a stand for it – it’s not in some battle it might lose – Truth was Truth yesterday, and will remain Truth tomorrow – and nothing I do is going to change that. Truth doesn’t need me to side with it to continue to be Truth.
I use Christian Science because it’s natural for me to do so – it’s natural for me to draw my thoughts close to Love, to wrap myself up in the power of Truth, to free my thoughts to dance in the celebration of LIfe. And it’s natural for me to experience healing by doing so.
And THAT is radical. man! 🙂
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Students are advised by the author to be charitable and kind, not only towards differing forms of religion and medicine, but to those who hold these differing opinions. Let us be faithful in pointing the way through Christ, as we understand it, but let us also be careful always to “judge righteous judgment,” and never to condemn rashly. – Mary Baker Eddy
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 