Do what’s decent before it’s considered “normal” – because someday it will be.
“Progress is the law of God…”
– Mary Baker Eddy
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Tag Archives: progress
Mary Baker Eddy: A Voice for Progress
In preparing for the Women’s March today, I’ve found myself drawn to the writings of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Christian Science church. Her words are as timely today as they were when she first began her exploration of Christian Science 150 years ago. She talks of women’s rights, oppression, social injustice, and the need to protect freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. She writes that “Progress is the law of God…” and writes, “… there is never a retrograde step, never a return to positions outgrown.” Her words bring me hope and help prepare my heart for the journey that lies ahead for us – not just today, but in the coming months.
Here are some of the thoughts from Mary Baker Eddy that have inspired me this morning:
“The conclusion cannot now be pushed, that women have no rights that man is bound to respect. This is woman’s hour, in all the good tendencies, charities, and reforms of to-day.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p 245[
“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, Science and Health, p 393
“The weapons of bigotry, ignorance, envy, fall before an honest heart.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 464
“The inaudible voice of Truth is, to the human mind, ‘as when a lion roareth.’ It is heard in the desert and in dark places of fear.” – Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 559
“It requires courage to utter truth; for the higher Truth lifts her voice, the louder will error scream, until its inarticulate sound is forever silenced in oblivion.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 97
“Love for mankind is the elevator of the human race; it demonstrates Truth and reflects divine Love…” –
Mary Baker Eddy
“Covering iniquity will prevent prosperity and the ultimate triumph of any cause.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 446
“Bloodshed, war, and oppression belong to the darker ages, and shall be relegated to oblivion.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“To my sense, the most imminent dangers confronting the coming century are: the robbing of people of life and liberty under the warrant of the Scriptures; the claims of politics and of human power, industrial slavery, and insufficient freedom of honest competition; ritual, creed, and trusts in place of the Golden Rule, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.'”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“It is the pulpit and press, clerical robes and the prohibiting of free speech, that cradles and covers the sins of the world, – all unmitigated systems of crime; and it requires the enlightenment of these worthies, through civil and religious reform, to blot out all inhuman codes. It was the Southern pulpit and press that influenced the people to wrench from man both human and divine rights, in order to subserve the interests of wealth, religious caste, civil and political power.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“When the press is gagged, liberty is besieged; but when the press assumes the liberty to lie, it discounts clemency, mocks morality, outrages humanity, breaks common law, gives impulse to violence, envy, and hate, and prolongs the reign of inordinate, unprincipled clans. At this period, 1888, those quill-drivers whose consciences are in their pockets hold high carnival. When news-dealers shout for class legislation, and decapitated reputations, headless trunks, and quivering hearts are held up before the rabble in exchange for money, place, and power, the vox populi is suffocated, individual rights are trodden under foot, and the car of the modern Inquisition rolls along the streets besmeared with blood.” – Mary Baker Eddy
“Error giveth no light, and it closes the door on itself.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“The time for thinkers has come. Truth, independent of doctrines and time-honored systems, knocks at the portal of humanity. Contentment with the past and the cold conventionality of materialism are crumbling away.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p vi
“Who is telling mankind of the foe in ambush? Is the informer one who sees the foe? If so, listen and be wise. Escape from evil, and designate those as unfaithful stewards who have seen the danger and yet have given no warning.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 571
“If you launch your bark upon the ever-agitated but healthful waters of truth, you will encounter storms. Your good will be evil spoken of. This is the cross. Take it up and bear it, for through it you win and wear the crown.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 254
“It is a wise saying that ‘men are known by their enemies.’ To sympathize in any degree with error, is not to rectify it; but error always strives to unite, in a definition of purpose, with Truth, to give it buoyancy. What is under the mask, but error in borrowed plumes?”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Divine Love is our hope, strength, and shield. We have nothing to fear when Love is at the helm of thought, but everything to enjoy on earth and in heaven.”
– 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, Science and Health, p 223
“Philanthropy is loving, ameliorative, revolutionary; it wakens lofty desires, new possibilities, achievements, and energies; it lays the axe at the root of the tree that bringeth not forth good fruit; it touches thought to spiritual issues, systematizes action, and insures success; it starts the wheels of right reason, revelation, justice, and mercy; it unselfs men and pushes on the ages. Love unfolds marvellous good and uncovers hidden evil. The philanthropist or reformer gives little thought to self-defence; his life’s incentive and sacrifice need no apology. The good done and the good to do are his ever-present reward.”
– 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
“Truth and Love prevail against the dragon because the dragon cannot war with them.” – Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 567
“Success in sin is downright defeat. Hatred bites the heel of love that is treading on its head….Conflict and persecution are the truest signs that can be given of the greatness of a cause or of an individual, provided this warfare is honest and a world-imposed struggle. Such conflict never ends till unconquerable right is begun anew, and hath gained fresh energy and final victory….Certain elements in human nature would undermine the civic, social, and religious rights and laws of nations and peoples, striking at liberty, human rights, and self-government — and this, too, in the name of God, justice, and humanity! …History shows that error repeats itself until it is exterminated.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Love is not something put upon a shelf, to be taken down on rare occasions with sugar-tongs and laid on a rose-leaf. I make strong demands on love, call for active witnesses to prove it, and noble sacrifices and grand achievements as its results.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Follow that which is good… Peace is the promise and reward of rightness. Governments have no right to engraft into civilization the burlesque of uncivil economics. War is in itself an evil, barbarous, devilish. Victory in error is defeat in Truth. War is not in the domain of good; war weakens power and must finally fall, perced by it own sword… Whatever brings into human thought or action an element opposed to Love, is never requisite, never a necessity, and is not sanctioned by… the law of Love.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“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, Science and Health, p 102
“Love fulfills the law of Christian Science…”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 572
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 572
“What has an individual gained by losing his own self- respect? or what has he lost when, retaining his own, he loses the homage of fools, or the pretentious praise of hypocrites, false to themselves as to others?”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“Ignorance, pride, or prejudice closes the door to whatever is not stereotyped.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 144
“Clad in the panoply of Love, human hatred cannot reach you. The cement of a higher humanity will unite all interests in the one divinity.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 571
“Innocence and Truth overcome guilt and error.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 568
“In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step, never a return to positions outgrown.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 74
“Progress is the law of God…”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Science and Health, p 233
This Scary Stuff Isn’t New
“Progress is the law of God…”
– Mary Baker Eddy
Come on, Karen. You majored in History. You know the struggles our world has endured, survived, overcome. You know the scary stuff we’re seeing now isn’t new. I mean… it’s not like all the political corruption and corporate greed and dishonesty you’re seeing in America is something that’s springing up for the first time here. Look back at just the last 100 years in the United States – :
- in 1918, when your 98 year-old father was born, women still didn’t have the right to vote in this country
- when your father and mother were living through the Great Depression, members of the nation’s Supreme Court continually over-turned laws and programs designed to provide relief to the poor, to help the nation recover, and to bring reform to the economy
- in 1942 Japanese-Americans had their homes and property taken from them and were sent to live in “internment camps”
- in the early part of the 1950s – just before you were born – government workers, and people involved in the Hollywood movie business, lost their jobs without recourse for being Communists – or just being accused of being Communists – by Sen. Joseph McCarthy and company
- up until 1954 – just two years before you were born – racially segregated schools were still legal in this country
- in 1961, when you were a pre-schooler, there were still African-Americans who were living as slaves – who’d never been told slavery had ended in this country
- when you were seven years-old the President of the United States was assassinated
- when you were 11 years-old, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated and, two months later, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated
- when you were an eighth grader, four students protesting the Vietnam War at Kent State University were shot and killed by members of the National Guard
- when you were in high school the President of the United States resigned before he could be impeached for trying to cover-up a break-in of his political opponent’s campaign headquarters
But recognize that for every step backwards – for every reaction against progress – we’ve seen humongo strides forwards. Look at the progress in the last 100 years:
- in 1920 women were given the right to vote
- in the 1930’s – in spite of the Supreme Court’s resistance to social reform – social security and other programs were established to ensure a safety net for our nation’s citizens
- in 1954 the Supreme Court ended racial segregation in public schools
- in 1963 the Equal Pay Act was passed – making it illegal to pay a woman less for doing the same work as a man
- in 1964 the Civil Rights Act was passed, prohibiting discrimination in employment, and in 1965 the Voting Rights Act was passed, making discriminatory voting practices illegal
- in 1967 the Supreme Court ruled that laws forbidding inter-racial marriage were illegal
- in 2015 same-sex marriage was recognized as a right protected by the Constitution
Karen, you now live in a country full of people who’ve never known legal segregation between the races. You live in a country full of young people who take it for granted that women can participate in politics – can vote, run for office, and serve on the Supreme Court. Americans are not going to allow this country to slide backwards. The gains we’ve made won’t be lost. Have trust in your fellow man and woman.
Buck up. There may be battles ahead – every generation has them – but progress always wins in the end.
“In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step, never a return to positions outgrown.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
Work in Progress
There were a couple things that came across my Facebook page this morning that really inspired me, and helped me deal with our current situation in the US of A. The first one was a clip of an interview Jon Stewart had on CBS (“I don’t believe we’re a fundamentally different country today than we were two weeks ago… The same country that elected Donald Trump elected Barack Obama…. America is not natural – natural is tribal – we’re fighting against thousands of years of human behavior and history to create something… that’s what’s exceptional about America and that’s what’s… this ain’t easy. It’s an incredible thing.”); the second was a story about what Pres. Obama told his daughters after the election (“You don’t get into a fetal position about it. You don’t start worrying about apocalypse. You say, O.K., where are the places where I can push to keep it moving forward.”).
The United States of America is a work in progress, ain’t it? And I love that. We can only go forward. In Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy says: “In Christian Science there is never a retrograde step, never a return to positions outgrown.” I believe that’s true for my country, too.
Throughout All Time and Space
“The divine Spirit, which identified Jesus thus centuries ago, has spoken through the inspired Word and will speak through it in every age and clime. It is revealed to the receptive heart, and is again seen casting out evil and healing the sick.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
“This healing power of Truth must have been far anterior to the period in which Jesus lived. It is as ancient as ‘the Ancient of days.’ It lives through all Life, and extends throughout all space.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
I love looking out at the stars on a clear night, knowing that the starlight that’s reaching me now may have started out from some of those stars thousands of years ago. My new favorite star is Sirius – the light from Sirius takes eight years to reach Earth. That means the light I’m seeing from Sirius started eight years ago – when I was in the midst of a personal crisis I thought might never end. I find comfort somehow in knowing that, even then, Sirius was shining its light on me. When I look up at the stars I feel myself connected to something – a presence and power – far bigger than the little speck of the universe known as Earth. I feel myself connected to Life that’s infinite and fills all space.
Okay, at the risk of being placed in the “tinfoil hat” category, I’m going to go ahead and say it: I do not believe Life is confined to this planet, or the three and half to four billion years that scientists believe life has been on Earth. I believe Life to be eternal and infinite – without beginning or end, or boundaries. “God forms and peoples the universe,” Mary Baker Eddy writes in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures – and my thoughts about the universe coincide with her thoughts there.
There are some who believe, I guess, that the healings – what they would call “miracles” – that happened in Jesus’ time were only for that time and place in the universe, and can’t be repeated. But Eddy writes: “Jesus’ promise is perpetual…The purpose of his great life-work extends through time and includes universal humanity. Its Principle is infinite, reaching beyond the pale of a single period or of a limited following.” She writes: “The time for the reappearing of the divine healing is throughout all time…”
I like the idea that we’re not separated from the rest of the universe – that we’re not separated by time or space from the healing power of God – Love and Truth and Life. I like the idea that this healing power of Love is perpetual, on-going, ever-present, without limits or bounds, and ever available to us. And I REALLY like the idea that there are other expressions of life peopling the universe. When I look up at the stars, I send out my love to the other expressions of life that might be out there, with the hope that my love will carry through time and space.
It is my belief that the healing power of Love and Truth will, as mankind progresses onward, eventually be seen as the only real power.
“The periods of spiritual ascension are the days and seasons of Mind’s creation, in which beauty, sublimity, purity, and holiness – yea, the divine nature – appear in man and the universe never to disappear.”
– Mary Baker Eddy
NASA image of Sirius:
What New Adventure Awaits?
Willingness to become as a little child and to leave the old for the new, renders thought receptive of the advanced idea. Gladness to leave the false landmarks and joy to see them disappear, – this disposition helps to precipitate the ultimate harmony.
– Mary Baker Eddy
Little children are expert at leaving the old for the new. They progress from crawling to walking to running to leaping without making any conscious choice to do so. They lay down their toddler toys and graduate to new fun without agonizing over the decision: Does a ten year-old remember the last time she played with her Thomas the Tank Engine, or the last time she she laid down her dolly? Nope. I’m pretty sure not. It wasn’t an event. There weren’t balloons and fireworks and parades for her when she laid down her toddler toys. She just laid them down and cheerfully moved on to something else.
The changes and progress don’t stop with childhood, do they? I mean… we don’t stop learning new things or exploring new ideas or laying down old toys when we hit twenty. Or thirty. Or forty. Or fifty… right?
Every decade holds something new. Heck, every DAY holds something new. None of us have ever lived this day before – none of us have ever lived this MOMENT before – it’s all of it new territory. A new adventure.
What will we do with this new moment? What new adventures will we find in this new year? What new paintings will we paint or songs will we sing? What new books will we read or write? What new places will we see? What new friendships will we make? What new things will we learn?
What new adventure awaits? 🙂
“Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before…” – Philippians 3:13
“…progress is the law of God…” – Mary Baker Eddy
Easter Gladness: Love Has Rolled the Stone Away
Let us sing of Easter gladness that rejoices every day,
Sing of hope and faith uplifted; Love has rolled the stone away.
– Frances Thompson HIll
Photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell
No Endings
Sitting here with the calico cat on my lap – watching her ears twitch, feeling the breath going in and out of her warm body. She is 16. I’ve had her since she was a four-week old feral kitty – hissing and scratching and scared. I’ve shared almost all her life with her – from the beginning to today. She trusts me now – trusts me enough to jump into my lap and curl up there, and let herself be petted.
Now that she’s older I sometimes find myself thinking about that moment when my calico cat will no longer be with me. I think about death.
This year a lot of people I’ve known and cared for have died. November was especially challenging – a former student, a man who became my friend after he and his wife read one of my books, and a friend of mine from my walks in Bellingham all passed on. Last week a dear woman in her 90’s with a kind heart, a stalwart faith, and a twinkle in her eyes – a woman who had been a member of our church most of her life – passed on. It’s all gotten me to thinking about the nature of death – what it is and what it isn’t.
The thought came to me the other day that death isn’t really an “event” – that there really aren’t any seams or borders or divisions separating one part of life from another – but that it’s forever flowing in an endless stream. It’s true that I can’t see the friends that have passed on, but I can tell you there are times when I feel their love. Death can’t end the love we have for one another.
It probably seems weird to connect the insights I’ve had about death to the Superbowl – but that’s where my pointy little noggin went when I contemplated the end of the Seahawks season this morning. If only the game could have gone on a little longer, I thought, the Seahawks might still have been able to pull it off. “But it’s done. Over. Ended. It is what it is. And the magnificent catch by Kearse, the receptions by Matthews, the runs that Lynch made, the colossal efforts of Russell Wilson and his teammates – none of that matters now because they lost.” Those were my initial thoughts. But when I stopped thinking about the Superbowl as an “Event” – when I started thinking of the game as just a step in an endless progression – a step towards progress – a character-builder – another life-lesson – my feeling about it changed.
I would like to think that all the lessons we’re learning here – the lessons about honesty, compassion, integrity, friendship, courage, perseverance, honor, selflessness, generosity, love – are lessons we can build on and carry with us as we ride the current down the stream. It doesn’t make sense to me that all of that learning can abruptly come to an end at the close of a Superbowl, or a life.
My calico cat is with me in this moment – alive and breathing – and this moment is forever.
Karen’s calico cat
The continual contemplation of existence as material and corporeal – as beginning and ending, and with birth, decay, and dissolution as its component stages – hides the true and spiritual Life, and causes our standard to trail in the dust.
– Mary Baker Eddy
This Photo Is Not By Me (or how I messed-up big time and made two new friends)
At some point last spring I got into my pictures file on my laptop and searched for “tulips”. A lovely picture of a yellow tulip with a perfect red stripe down its middle came up amongst all my other tulip photos. I wondered how I could have missed this one before. I titled it “Tulip with Red Stripe”, worked with it a little bit to bring out the colors, and posted it on fineartamerica.com. Yeah. So… yesterday I was walking by a colleague’s desk and the red-striped tulip picture came up on her screen saver. How, I wondered, did my photo end up on her screen saver? I searched around on my computer and found a file of sample pictures provided by microsoft – and the tulip picture was in there! After a little investigating I discovered the photo was actually taken by a photographer named David Nadalin. I know – yikes, right? I immediately took the picture off my fineartamerica.com page, and then found David’s phone number and email address, and left him messages explaining what I’d done with his photo, and how I was trying to rectify my boo boo.
After I left my messages for David I went into my Facebook account – both the author/photographer page and my personal page – to see if I’d posted the photo there, too – and, sure enough, I had. Feeling the need to set things straight there I posted David’s tulip picture on both pages, along with an explanation of the mistake I’d made.
In the meantime, David had graciously replied to my email message, and I was relieved to discover that 1) he is a good sport and 2) he has a well-developed sense of humor. He wrote, in part, “That photo of mine is in every copy of Windows 7. So anyone running that would figure out pretty quickly where it came from. 750 million people have a copy of that one already…” SEVEN HUNDRED AND FIFTY MILLION PEOPLE!!! That sort of puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? Yup. When I mess up, it is on a grand scale. No small little insignificant mess-ups for me. Nosiree, bub. I mess-up BIG.
So back to Facebook. I found David Nadalin’s page and sent out a friend request to him – after reading his email response it was obvious, to me, that he’d fit right in with my way cool and kind of eclectic community of FB friends – and he accepted my request! – and then his wife (whom I’ve discovered is a wonderful photographer in her own right) came onto my page, too, and – long story, short – David and his wife, Carol, are now both my Facebook friends!
Having the opportunity to laugh with my new friends, David and Carol, and my old friends, too (who, I’m pretty sure, are not at all surprised by anything I do at this point) about my 750-million-people-goof ended up being the highlight of my day. I love when stuff like that happens. 🙂
photo by David Nadalin
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No More Lessons to Learn from War
photo by Karen Molenaar Terrell
Saw the movie Fury last night. Really powerful film. Great acting. Beyond gritty. If ever a war movie was an anti-war movie, this one is it.
I woke up this morning with scenes from the movie playing through my head – scenes of death and destruction, blood and cruelty, courage and war-honor. And, as I processed it all, two trains of thought emerged from the smoke.
One of the trains took me to a place of compassion and empathy for the soldiers in every time and every nation who have felt voluntarily compelled, or been drafted, to take up weapons and kill their fellow human beings. It occurred to me that if I had been a soldier watching that movie I might feel a kind of relief in the knowledge that I wasn’t alone – that the “reality” of war is a shared burden of responsibility, memories, and pain by all who’ve lived it.
The other train of thought took me to this place: There are no more lessons to be learned from war. Mankind has been fighting wars for thousands of years, and I’m thinking we’ve learned everything we needed to learn from that course, and it’s time for us to be done with it now. It is time, my friends, to graduate and move on to more productive and constructive Life-courses.
Some may say that the cycle of War is never-ending and unstoppable, but I do not agree. Cycles DO stop. There’s no law that says cycles have to go on for eternity. I believe there IS a natural law, though – a law of God (Love, Truth, Life) – that pushes mankind towards progress. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (the textbook for Christian Science) Mary Baker Eddy writes: “Every day makes its demands upon us for higher proofs rather than professions of Christian power. These proofs consist solely in the destruction of sin, sickness, and death by the power of Spirit, as Jesus destroyed them. This is an element of progress, and progress is the law of God, whose law demands of us only what we can certainly fulfil.”
We’re surrounded by signs of progress, aren’t we? For all that we are bombarded with news of bigotry, sexism, racism, carelessness, greed, thievery, and murder – there is good going on all around us, signs of a mental stirring, or what Mary Baker Eddy would call a “chemicalization of thought” that is moving mankind towards decency. When we hear about slavery, racism, sexism, and bigotry – most of us in the United States no longer find these things acceptable – huge progress from just 150 years ago when slavery was still a part of our world, or just 94 years ago (in my dad’s lifetime!) when women didn’t have the right to vote or run for public office. This is progress, my friends, progress!
And I believe that progress will bring an end to the cycle of War, too. I believe that our world will find peace.
“What I term chemicalization is the upheaval produced when immortal Truth is destroying erroneous mortal belief. Mental chemicalization brings sin and sickness to the surface, forcing impurities to pass away, as is the case with a fermenting fluid… The muddy river-bed must be stirred in order to purify the stream. In moral chemicalization, when the symptoms of evil, illusion, are aggravated, we may think in our ignorance that the Lord hath wrought an evil; but we ought to know that God’s law uncovers so-called sin and its effects, only that Truth may annihilate all sense of evil and all power to sin.” – Mary Baker Eddy
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 