It’s dark and still when I wake I feel wrapped in soft velvet No hurt feelings or rejection, no pain, discouragement, disappointment, or dismay Before I let the news or messenger or FB Determine my day I let myself bask in the love of Love For a moment – feel the peace and joy And all-encompassing beauty, Of the one Mind, Life, Love. I have no opinions of my own, No personal beliefs or feelings – No fear, indignation, or dejection- All I can feel is what Love feels – I am Her reflection.
Imagine a world without labels Imagine a world unboxed Imagine a world where people Don’t assume to know you Before you’ve had a chance to talk Karen Molenaar Terrell
Googling Hamas, Israel, Gaza, Harris, Trump, polls, politics, war, peace, causes, Ukraine, Russia, death tolls, species endangered, glaciers receding, earth’s poles melting, I’m adrift and seeking, googling for inspiration, googling for help, googling for answers, googling myself.
But none of what I’m looking for is housed in this computer – not peace, not hope, and not myself – nor the guarantee of a future.
To find those things I’ll need to stop and get off of my whirring laptop.
I breathe in deep, and close my eyes, and feel Love pulsing around me. Right here. Right now. As near as my thoughts – the Good I seek is right here with me.
The rain is back – my familiar old friend – and I settle into my comfy chair with a mug of cocoa and a cinnamon roll and watch the raindrops hit the deck making tiny splashes and tickling my soul with their happy pattering. This is peace. This is joy. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
We had our last military draft in the United States in 1973 – the year before I graduated from high school. The young men in the classes ahead of me in high school all had to think about the draft when they were looking at their futures. It might be hard for young people today to imagine what that must have been like.
Memorial Day is a somber day. I think about all the young lives lost in wars. As a mother, I think about all the other mothers whose children didn’t return from wars, and my heart breaks.
Memorial Day is a day to remember the lives lost in war. And, for me, it’s a day to reaffirm my commitment to peace.
“Bloodshed, war, and oppression belong to the darker ages, and shall be relegated to oblivion.” – Mary Baker Eddy(The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 285)
I hope for a world where no one dies in war – where wars are a distant memory of a primitive long-ago time when humans thought they had to kill each other to “win”
T’was the day after Christmas and all o’er the earth people were waking to find there still seemed a dearth of peace on our earth and to all good will – we wondered if the promises would ever be fulfilled.
And then a someone shouted, “Hey! I have a thought! Let’s celebrate Christmas every day – let’s celebrate a lot! Let’s keep kindness and sharing alive in our hearts – not just at Christmas, but in all the year’s parts!”
And we thought this was wise, and we thought this was good, so we celebrated kindness all over our earth’s ‘hood. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
I’m deep in sleep and suddenly there’s a voice right outside my window, insistent. “Hello? Hellooo?!”
And I wake. But I’m on the second floor and, unless someone’s on a ladder, no one is right outside my window. Someone was calling for help in my dreams.
I’m groggy, but waking now. The world is calling for help. “Hello? Hellooo?!”
Head, foot, and elbow shoulder, hand, and big toe, right, left, and center, every race, nationality, and gender – all part of the same Body, the same planet, the same universe – there’s no last and no first, no best and no worst. We are One in One. -Karen Molenaar Terrell
“One infinite God, good, unifies men and nations; constitutes the brotherhood of man; ends wars; fulfils the Scripture, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself;’ annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, — whatever is wrong in social, civil, criminal, political, and religious codes; equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man, and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer, be punished or destroyed.“ -Mary Baker Eddy
“For the body is not one member, but many. If the foot shall say, Because I am not the hand, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear shall say, Because I am not the eye, I am not of the body; is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where were the smelling? But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him. And if they were all one member, where were the body? But now are they many members, yet but one body. And the eye cannot say unto the hand, I have no need of thee: nor again the head to the feet, I have no need of you.” – I Corinthians 12
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 