Morning Prayer at the Café
August 15, 2022 By 16 Comments

Morning Prayer at the Café

I’m spending more time outside this summer than I have in years, mostly walking but sometimes reading poetry and sipping tea on the porch.  Or, as now, enjoying time at a small French Bakery and Bistro before the afternoon heat arrives.

I arrived early to meet a friend and spent twenty minutes walking around the neighborhood then returned to La Chatelaine and waited. When my friend didn’t appear, I texted: “What a beautiful morning for coffee and a chat! I’m here.” He responded: “Oh no! Not this Wednesday. Next Wednesday. So sorry for the misunderstanding.” He was right. His text had clearly stated next week as a good time to meet.

Not to squander the opportunity to sit outside at the lovely café, I bought a coffee and pastry, borrowed a pen from the young woman at the counter (Couldn’t believe I didn’t have a pen along with the notebook in my cavernous purse!), and returned outside to the cool morning.

Traffic picked up, and several people went into the Bistro and emerged carrying coffees or breakfasts to go. An ambulance sped by; its sirens blaring. A quiet Hail Mary sprang to my lips, an enduring practice ingrained by the nuns in Catholic elementary school. A siren meant someone was in trouble, unexpectedly sick, or had been in an accident. They were in need, and when we heard one, we stopped our work and prayed for them.

Sixty years later I still do, though not always a Hail Mary. More often I utter something simple like “Help them. Love, be with them.” Or maybe I hold them silently in my heart as I am mindful of the Holy One, the healer and comforter, present to them in the moment.

I don’t hesitate to whisper into the Sacred ear a reminder to hold the suffering person a bit closer and to fill the hearts of those caring for them with compassion. I figure even the Holy One can use a reminder. “Don’t forget this one,” I say. It’s the mom in me. I know she’ll understand.

Luxembourg Gardens, Paris

The ambulance passed, and I turned to my notebook. I love coming to this place. Perhaps because it’s not the inside of my modest apartment or because it reminds me of time spent in Parisian cafes. Or maybe because it is what it is: A charming space on a busy American street that offers amazing French pastries and an outside area to sit around tables under big canvas umbrellas, a shady canopy so like the green ones in Parisian parks.

I savored the last bit of flaky palmier that tasted like the creme horns I devoured as a child when mom gave us a few quarters to spend at the bakery as she shopped at the grocery next door.

Palmiers have no filling nor the cloying sweetness of the thick, sticky cream that filled my childhood treats, but the flavor is similar enough to bring back memories with each bite. I push the empty plate away, an offering for the sparrows that scavenge on the patio and tables to feast on crumbs patrons leave behind.

“How lucky to be able to do this,” I thought. “To sit. Feel cool air. Watch traffic. Sip coffee and write in my notebook.” It’s the life I imagine that I want and then am sometimes surprised to discover I already have. While not near the ocean, the perennial pull for me, it is in a place of relative peace. There are no bombs dropping. No war at my doorstep. I can enjoy the sounds of friends meeting for breakfast or indulge in conversation with a guy who walked from his office to work outside.

Following the sparrows, my eyes moved to their perches on gnarly branches that spread from two, low-growing trees bordering the patio. The twisted lines, the mottled bark of browns and greys begged to be sketched or painted. They reminded me of trees in some of van Gogh’s work or Monet’s. I took a few photos, thinking I might give it a try.  

Overwhelmed by the moment, I moved into quiet prayer, filled with wonder and gratitude for Divine Life stirring within, swirling without. Freely given. The simple but transforming experience that pulls us all into the circle of mystics: experiencing communion with Holy Mystery right where we are. Eventually I opened my notebook, clicked my borrowed pen, and guided it over the pages. Words and more words. They helped me unpack the morning’s glory. They are my prayer of thanksgiving.

Watercolor sketch Mary van Balen 10.2021
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Icons from the James Webb
July 28, 2022 By 8 Comments

Icons from the James Webb

As far back as I can remember, the night sky has captured my imagination, though early memories are fuzzy. My parents showed me the dusty band of light that was the Milky Way and how to find the Big Dipper. Following an imaginary line through two stars in its bowl, someone said, led to the North Star. I had limited success. The first vivid sky-gazing memory I have is of standing with our small girl scout troop in front of the science museum at night in downtown Columbus. Downtown was darker then, and we watched as the man who had led us through a journey of the “sky over Columbus” projected onto the museum’s planetarium dome set up his telescope at the top of the steps.

“We’re going to look at Saturn,” he said, bending over the telescope and peering through the eyepiece to find the planet. We took turns looking. The view took my breath away: a smooth, rounded shape rising from a thick, flat ring, The planet’s angle provided a view with little space between the rings and the planet itself. Together, they looked a bit like a white, glowing fried egg. I’ve never forgotten it. My heart opened wider and wonder flooded in. Seeing with my own eyes something that had previously existed for me only in textbooks or magazines, shining in the dark over my own city was exhilarating.

I couldn’t get enough of looking.

Over the years I’ve traveled – sometimes by myself, sometimes with family or friends – to see eclipses, meteor showers, blue moons and supermoons, or planets and stars in various configurations. At some point along my journey, I grew particularly fond of the constellation Orion, my protector. He became an icon, a door into an experience of Holy Presence that surrounds me, no matter how alone I feel.  

Once, I spent a night by myself in a friend’s small cabin. I walked along the creek and a pipeline that slashed through the wooded hills. Far from the city, the black, star-splattered sky fed my soul. Before leaving the next day, I wrote in the guest log simply, “Tonight I lived on the stars.”

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous / to be understood. 

Mary Oliver from poem “Mysteries, Yes“

James Webb Space Telescope

With people around the globe, I followed the recent release of the first images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (Webb). I was in a doctor’s office when the broadcast began and pulled out my phone to stream NASA’s presentation. Preliminary interviews and commentary gave me time to drive home and watch most of the broadcast on a big screen. The images were stunning. Commentary explained how the infrared signals were painstakingly rendered into color images, each hue representing a different wavelength.1 As usual when witnessing such events, I cried.

Icons

You may be familiar with classic icons, the stylized paintings familiar in the Orthodox Church and often referred to as “windows into heaven.” I wrote an article2 using the word icon in a much broader sense, referring to ordinary objects, physical representations or metaphors that have become windows drawing us into communion with Holy Mystery.

The Webb images can be new icons that break open our hearts and let mystery in. Like my view of Saturn through a telescope on the museum steps.

NASA Webbs First Deep Field image shows a cluster of galaxies
Webbs First Deep Field
All Webb Images Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

The first image released was Webb’s First Deep Field, a look at thousands of galaxies sparkling across the black field in just a sliver of the universe. Peering back to within a billion years after the big bang, I was reminded of Wisdom in the Hebrew Scriptures, dancing with delight, the feminine spirit creating along with God at the very beginnings of the cosmos.2

NASA Webb image Stephan's Quintet shows an Interacting Galaxy Group
Stephan’s Quintet

NASA Webb image Southern Rim Nebula
Southern Rim Nebula
NASA Webb Photo Cosmic Cliffs Carina Nebula
“Cosmic Cliffs” in Carina Nebula

Image after image filled the television screen: Stephan’s Quintet (you might remember an earlier image of this at the beginning of the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life.), Southern Rim Nebula (clouds of gas and dust from a dying star); the Carina Nebula (a “star nursery). Everything in the universe is made of elements created in the birth and death of stars. You, me, the people you love and the ones you don’t. The insects in the soil, birds overhead, rivers, oceans. Everything. Star dust was (and is) destined to evolve into solar systems, new stars, planets, and life that may live on some of them. Might there be other creatures observing the cosmos from their place in it, contemplating the meaning of it all?

Spending time with these new icons may expand our sense of connection not only with the Creative Force that set all this in motion, but also with one another. How have we evolved into a race that finds diversity threatening rather than an opportunity to learn and wonder at the reflections of the Sacred in every bit of stardust?

Hope

Since those first images have been released, I’ve looked at them again and again, marveled at the Southern Rim Nebula, used it in meditation, and painted it to make my own icon. The images stir joy, amazement, and appreciation of the people who’ve given them to us.

But along with these emotions and thoughts, sadder ones emerge. As incredible as these images are, they aren’t enough to change the patterns of human behaviors that push us apart and despoil the creation that has taken billions of years to evolve.

My hope is that these new icons can open minds as well as hearts, inspire people to be still before such magnificence. Can we be receptive to the truth they reveal: That we are an infinitesimal bit of something beyond our most expansive imagination? That we know and understand so little of it? That humility is the proper response?

As we sit before these images and let them open a window into the beginnings of creation, can we be filled with gratitude for the love and graciousness that fills it? Can we find a way to put fear and hatred aside and recognize our kinship with the Holy One, with one another, and with all that is?

Different way of seeing

Decades ago, I backpacked across Western Europe with a good friend. We spent the summer traveling from country to country with no itinerary, meeting people from all over the world as we slept in youth hostels, the occasional hotel, and homes of friends and family. But besides meeting people from different countries, we also ran into folks from back home.

At any other time, coming from the Midwest, meeting someone from the west coast wouldn’t seem like meeting a neighbor. But across the Atlantic, when we ran into someone from Oregon, we were excited. We’d say, “I know someone in Oregon!”, or they’d say, “We have friends in Ohio!” As if we might know them. People we would have considered strangers had we met at a restaurant back home seemed like neighbors when we met in a small German town.

So, I wonder. Perhaps Webb’s images will provide a new context for us, for our vision of who is our neighbor. Seeing the immensity of the universe as we peer into deep space may provide a perspective that encourages human beings to become more aware of their connections, of their responsibility for this tiny little bit of a planet we call home. Perhaps humanity will be more willing to work together, to stop demonizing one another, and to look for ways to live and love together instead.

It’s a dream. I know. A hope. Greed, fear, the desire to “be right,” to view the world and others as either/or, them/us, the need to put others down to elevate oneself, seem to be the human default.

Seeing with new eyes, with a non-dualistic “both/and” mindset, is a journey. Placing ourselves before Webb’s images, quietly gazing at their intricate beauty, may refine our spiritual vision to better comprehend the grace they reveal. Contemplating these windows into creation with openness begins to transform us little at a time. Thank you, team James Webb!

Watercolor by Mary van Balen of NASA Webb image Southern Rim Nebula
Watercolor: Mary van Balen

Sources:

  1. How the James Webb Space Telescope’s images are made  Axios
  2. Icons: Windows into God – Finding glimpses of God in unexpected places:Mary van Balen
  3. Proverbs 8: 22-31
  4. “Mysteries, Yes” by Mary Oliver Take the time to read it. You’ll be grateful you did. I read it in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver published by Penguin Books, New York, 2017, p. 84. It was originally published in Evidence by Beacon Press in 2009.

Images:

Follow this link to NASA’s page, First Images from the James Webb Space Telescope, to examine the images and read information about each one.

If you missed the July 12 broadcast, you can view it here.

Comparison of images of same area taken by Hubble and by Webb” can be found here: Science Friday: Stunning JWST Images Show New Details Of The Universe

James Webb Space Telescope info:

About: Webb Key Facts

James Webb Space Telescope Home: Goddard Space Flight Center

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Gardening and Other Ways to Heal the World
June 6, 2022 By 10 Comments

Gardening and Other Ways to Heal the World

I walked earlier than usual today, aware that the temperature would rise and that the sun would be unfiltered by clouds later in the day. Approaching the buttery yellow house two blocks from my apartment, I scanned the large flower garden that borders the sidewalk and wends its way along the property line on one side and the driveway on the other, framing the green lawn. I’m not a lawn enthusiast (that could be another column), but I always enjoy flowers.

In the stretch close to the driveway, someone was on their knees, earnestly working at putting something into the ground or perhaps cleaning out a space for a new plant.

“So much time to spend on flowers,” I thought to myself. “To keep such a garden must take hours almost daily.” I didn’t think “wasted” exactly, but the notion that time could be spent on more significant endeavors did, for a second, flit around the edges of consciousness. Embarrassing to admit. A one-time flower gardener myself, I know better.

In years before divorce moved me from a home with lots of outdoor space to an apartment with little, I tended flower beds. Well, “tended” may be misleading. My gardens were on the wild side. Dark red poppies were the showstoppers, but bachelor buttons, coreopsis, larkspur, pinks, snapdragons, marigolds, zinnias – Not my favorite; their leaves always molded, but they were reliable germinators – grew big and wild.  Anything I could enjoy outside and cut for bouquets inside was welcome. The lavender plant had grown into a hedge; herbs grew among flowers near the kitchen door, and of course, there were weeds.

Over the past eleven years, how much joy I have taken in countless walks by the yellow-house garden, mentally thanking the couple who lives there for their work. Early spring into fall, even with winter’s interesting plant “skeletons,” it draws the eye and lightens the spirit. Already this year, I have stopped, struck still by the extravagant, peachy peony blooms and clusters of Virginia bluebells.

Flowers are pleasing in the moment and can be memory whisperers: The garden’s peonies carried me back to my childhood home where I watched big, black ants clambering over peony buds that would open and explode into stunning masses of fragrant pink, white, and magenta blooms along the side of our house. The bluebells transported me back to a spring day at a Trappist monastery along the Shenandoah River where my family was visiting a long-time friend, Father Maurice. A wide swath of bluebells ran along both sides of the river, edging it with a tumble of deep blue and spring green, Hildegard’s viriditas, both an expression and an agent of Holy Presence.

peony bush covered in large pink blooms

My neighborhood gardeners’ work is a gift to me and all who walk by.

It reminds me of a friend who is, among many other things, an accomplished writer, publisher, photographer, presently a seminary student, and a dedicated gardener. On her newly launched website, Urban Gaia, she describes herself as a person sempre in restauro, always under restoration, and helps people find healing and experience the divine through gardening.

Know it or not, we human beings, along with the rest of creation, are interconnected parts of one reality. As Paul writes in his letter to the folks at Corinth, unity springs from variety working together, one Source, many gifts. That’s a good thing. Gardens are wonderful, but we aren’t all gardeners.

Last month, my daughter delighted in the sale of two of her paintings exhibited in a student art show. A first for her, but not the reason she paints. Like the gardener who plants and tends out of an interior stirring or call, she paints because that is part of who she is. She began around 5 or 6 when she fell in love with Monet, set up an easel in the basement, and used a new set of oils to try her hand at waterlilies. Always an artist, she now relishes the thought that her work hangs somewhere in two homes and brings joy to those who see them.

And me? I write. Like my daughter, I started writing as a child and never stopped. Books. Articles. Columns. Songs. Poetry. Published some. Nothing on the best sellers list. Still, I keep going. People may look at me and wonder why I spend so much time writing words that few will read. (I confess to wondering this myself sometimes!) What can I say?

I’m a writer. The couple down the street are gardeners. My daughter is a painter. The list of “gifts,” of interior “callings,” is endless. At our best, we listen to what stirs in our hearts and follow its direction. We do our work, becoming more and more who we are made to be.  We put it out there. We trust it will do what it needs do. Sometimes that’s simply attuning the ear of our hearts more keenly to the interior Presence that guides us.

Still, it’s easy to feel like we are not enough. Not talented enough, smart enough, creative enough, (you fill in the blank) enough to make a difference.

No wonder. The world is overwhelming. Weekly mass shootings in the U.S. continue with legislators beholden to the fear-mongering NRA unable to pass meaningful gun control legislation. Our fragile democracy is threatened from within. Violence is disproportionately perpetrated against Black Americans, people of color, women, LGBTQ+ folks, immigrants, and anyone who can be labeled “other.” Wars ravage the earth as unscrupulous autocrats and dictators grab for power and wealth. Ukraine, presently the most visible, is one of many. The planet itself groans beneath the weight of human abuse. Numerous commentators spew fear and hate on popular media, and disinformation abounds. What can one person do?

Nothing? The culture of celebrity, power, and consumerism feeds that lie. Media sources hold up people of wealth, possessions, and fame as paragons of success. They, the news outlets tell us, are the “influencers,” “thought leaders,” and “game changers.” The important ones.

Don’t you believe it. Let me retell a story I heard last weekend on Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast. It was told by Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D., whose focus on healing not just curing, sharing stories, and being genuinely present to the patient challenged and influenced the medical profession.

Her rabbi grandfather, whom she described as a “flaming mystic,” was a profound influence in her life. On her fourth birthday, he made a gift to her of this ancient story. (While much of this language is her’s, I paraphrase. You can click the link below to hear Dr. Remen tell the story herself in the interview.)

In the beginning, he said, all was holy darkness, the source of life. At some point, the world came bursting out of the center of that holy darkness as a great ray of light. Later, the result of an accident, the vessels that held the grand light, the wholeness of the world, shattered into thousands of pieces. They fell into all people and events where they remain hidden even today.

Credit: ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium

Her grandfather told her that humanity is a response to this accident, We are created with the ability to see those bits of light in people and things and to bring them to the surface, making the world whole again.

Of course, accomplishing this great task will take every person – past, present, and to come – working together. In this story, everyone has a part to play. Everyone is enough. Everyone has just what they need. Everyone makes a difference.

” … we heal the world one heart at a time,” Dr. Remen continued. “And this task is called tikkun olam, in Hebrew – ‘restoring the world.'”

Fred Rogers used those words in a public service spot when he addressed parents about how to be with their children after the attack of 9/11: “No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be tikkun olam, repairers of creation.” 

So, next time you are tempted to think that what you are doing when you follow your heart—whether it puts a roof over your head and food on your table or is something you do part-time as you’re able—when you think you’re not making a difference or that you are “not enough” to matter, remember the wisdom of this ancient story. It is echoed in other wisdom teachings.

Do what is yours to do. Take care of who or what comes across your path. Love, connection, kindness, listening. These things always matter. They always make a difference.

 Like drops that feed the lake or seeds that sprout and flourish, our contributions, however small, become light that pushes through cracks and gives hope. This healing takes time. It won’t be as swift as we’d like. We won’t see its completion in our lifetimes, much as we long for it.

This is where trust comes in, trust that being our true selves, responding the the stirrings of Divine Presence within, heals the world and those who live in it, one heart at a time. In the end, Love will prevail.

Resources

Hildegard von Bingen Viriditas

Missy Greenleaf Finn’s new website:    Urban Gaia

On Being with Krista Tippett  Rachel Naomi Remen: How We Live With Loss

Rachel Naomi Remen has written a children’s book that will be published in September, 2022: The Birthday of the World: A Story About Finding Light in Everyone and Everything

YouTube Mr. Rogers: Tikkun olma

Response to gun violence

Write and call your Senators and House Representatives. Let them know you want sensible gun legislation passed now (e.g., universal background checks, assault weapons ban, red flag laws, increased funding for mental health)

Senators’ contact info: Find your Senator

House Representatives’ info: Find your Representative

Donate:

Moms Demand Action

Everytown for Gun Safety

Photos: Unless otherwise indicated, by Mary van Balen

Feature photo: A local gardener who has cultivated his patch in the community gardens for 43 years.

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An Eclipse Unobserved
May 21, 2022 By 10 Comments

An Eclipse Unobserved

Sunday night, May 15, I slept through a total lunar eclipse. Usually, I send email reminders to family and friends a day or two before the event. When the night arrives, I set my alarm and stand on my driveway or in the backyard at any hour, no matter how late, to witness the cosmic display. Eclipses, lunar and solar, have inspired several posts on this blog in the past. (See here, here,  here and here.) How’d I miss this one?

I didn’t notice the date on my wall calendar or date book. (Yes, I still use the paper ones.) I passed over the EarthSkyNews1 email alert. I even missed the second text sent that night on our family thread. I saw the first, at 10:02. Uncharacteristically, I was already in bed. “Don’t forget to check out the Blood Moon tonight,” it read. I pulled off the sheet and walked outside to look. It’s edges and light were softened by misty, wispy clouds, but the full moon was just clearing the apartments across the street, headed for open sky above. The text reference to “Blood Moon” was lost on me. The pale orb looked lovely, but nothing red about it. After five minutes or so, I headed back to bed and to a long night of much needed sleep.

When I awoke late Monday morning, I reached over to the bedside bookcase, pulled off my phone and reading glasses and checked for messages. (I’m way too tied to that phone!) Ah. There was another from Sunday night. It arrived at 10:04 pm while I was out in my PJs and bare feet looking at the moon. “The partial eclipse begins at 10:30.” There it was.

A matter of two minutes made the difference between my watching a stunning total lunar eclipse and my sleeping peacefully away for ten hours! “I needed the sleep,” I rationalized, but didn’t feel any better about missing the experience.

The dance of planet, moon, and sun governed by laws of physics never disappoints. Sunday night, the full moon blushed a deep red as it moved into the earth’s shadow. With feet planted on the ground, anyone with a clear sky above could have looked up in wonder at the spectacle that played out nearly 240,000 miles away. It was glorious—whether or not celebrated by human beings.

Creation continues to do what it has been doing for eons, regardless of our attention—evolving, expanding, birthing new stars, galaxies, and realities we can’t imagine. It’s a work in progress. Occasionally the veil of distance, time, and space is drawn back just a bit, and we catch a glimpse. (Did you see the first photo of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy2?

Image Credit: X-ray – NASA/CXC/SAO, IR – NASA/HST/STScI; Inset: Radio – Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration

As I lamented my missed opportunity, I thought of Psalm 27 that reminds us that God’s grace comes even as we sleep and took some comfort in the knowledge that beauty released into the universe blesses even when unnoticed. The splendor of the Blood Moon, the incredible workings of our solar system that produced it, the ongoing evolution of the cosmos in which we live, are all expressions of Love constantly given away.

A child asleep in her mother’s arms is no less loved than when the little one is awake and aware of the affection. My sleeping through the eclipse didn’t diminish its wonder. As I slept those ten hours away, I rested, cradled in the arms of the universe and the creative arms of the Mother-God in whom it unfolds.

Awareness doesn’t change the reality of Love-shared, but it can enlarge the hearts of those who notice with appreciation and openness to receive.

In Mary Oliver’s long poem “From the Book of Time,”3 she writes of beginning a spring day at her desk but being drawn by birdsong into the outdoors where she noticed the grass and butterflies moving above the field.

“ … And I am thinking: maybe just looking and listening / is the real work. // Maybe the world, without us, / is the real poem…”

Surely, the cosmos doesn’t need us to be what it is, to be the “real poem.” Yet since we are here, we are invited to help with the composition: a word, a phrase, a comma or full-stop. We contribute, knowingly or not. How and what depends on each of us. A bit of glory here, a bit of sorrow there. Love. Hate. Compassion. Fear.

While I trust in Holy Presence, whether cognizant of it or not, I will pay more attention to special events that can open my heart and the eyes of my soul. November 8, the next total lunar eclipse of this year, is already circled on my paper calendars. I might even add an alert on my phone.

Meanwhile, no need to wait for an eclipse. The universe is always spilling over with unfathomable creativity. The jots we are privileged to witness point our minds and hearts toward the Holy Mystery that is far beyond comprehension but is the life force in all that is. This Mystery showers us with goodness and love, even if we, unaware, sleep right through it.

Sources:

1 Subscribe to EarthSkyNews newsletter

2 The Milky Way’s Black Hole

3 “From the Book of Time” in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver, p. 234

More info on the Black Hole: Sagittarius A

The Milky Ways supermassive black hole

Here’s How Scientists Turned the World Into a Telescope (to See a Black Hole)

Black Hole Image Makes History

Feature image by Ulrike Bohr from Pixabay

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Simply Enough
April 30, 2022 By 10 Comments

Simply Enough

At last, after two-and-a-half years, this weary pilgrim again headed to the coast, putting myself in a place where grace flows. Always. Every breath of salty air pulled into my lungs; every shock of cold water closed around my ankles draws me into the rhythms of the place. The infinite horizon. The boom of crashing waves. The gull cries. All of it. Grace sinks deep and soaks my spirit’s tired, depleted spaces with life. On this trip, gentle tears greeted my first steps through the dunes. The place spoke: “Welcome home.” My soul sighed with gratitude.

Bundled in a winter coat, hat, gloves, and scarf, I happily walked the ocean’s edge with my daughters, strong wind making the air feel much colder than its 38-40-something degrees. Following along the frothy seam that joins water and sand didn’t disappoint. The vista changed by the day, or by the hour, from blue skies and sun-sparkled water to dark, low-hanging clouds threatening rain. From smooth, glassy sea to turbulent waves. Birds covered the dunes and beach some days and were barely present on others.

I’ve become wiser over the years, happy with any weather and grateful for whatever the ocean offers up for my attention: The sun glinting on a broken shell. An interesting piece of driftwood. Sandpipers speeding along the tide’s edge, their short legs a blur of motion. Willets standing on one leg to preserve warmth on a cold day.

It might be sighting a dolphin’s fin in the distance while walking with my daughter or a windstorm that left its fingerprint on the sand.

Photo: Emily Holt

Despite gleaning some wisdom on my beach walks, I don’t always heed their lessons.

Arriving home, I wondered how to share the experience with my readers. I searched for a topic, but found no over-arching theme. Instead, thoughts that emerged were of small movements of grace offered in every moment. Simple. Not requiring connection to something bigger for significance. Enough in themselves:

Looking for beach treasures to fill a lamp. Examining feathers on the sand. Learning that what looked like gray, rubber litter was actually a moon snail’s egg collar. Deciding that the walk to an old Coast Guard station was too long to complete before the park gates closed and enjoying the sunset instead.

Photo: Kathryn Holt

There were many small pleasures found off-beach: A morning of shared painting and writing. The delight of sipping our first Vietnamese egg coffee: dark espresso topped with egg yolk and sweetened condensed milk whipped into a thick cream and sprinkled with cinnamon. A walk to the small downtown area and chatting with a local artist at the indie bookstore.

I bought honey from the beekeeper around the corner, and as always when on the coast, I relished freshly made crab cakes.

Wild ponies foraged along the road and a young, great blue heron seemed to preen for the camera. We marveled at a lighthouse and the engineering and skill required to build it in the 1800s. I savored the sweet smell of marshlands, so different from salty ocean air. We laughed together at Ted Lasso episodes while binging on Island Creamery homemade ice cream or white-cheddar “cheesy-poof” balls.

Each moment complete. Lovely. Overflowingly enough.

In her poem “Snow Geese,” Mary Oliver offers the wisdom of loving what does not last, calling it our task “…and not by the century or the year, but by the hours.” Being present to those fleeting moments open us to their gift. They might find their way into memory or stir hope or joy, but only if we are attentive. As Oliver’s poem continues, “…What matters / is that, when I saw them, / I saw them /as through the veil, secretly, joyfully, clearly.”

Returning from the ocean is always difficult for me. While I love family, friends, and familiar routines, I am a reluctant inlander. Once home, my challenge is to be as attentive to moments here as I was to moments on the island. Not with expectations, but with openness. Not looking for something that completes a larger picture, but simply moments that are, in themselves, grace enough.

It takes three things to attain a sense of significant being: God, a Soul, and a moment. And the three are always here.

Abraham Heschel

Photos: Mary van Balen unless otherwise indicated

© 2022 Mary van Balen

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A Friend’s Gift
March 24, 2022 By 28 Comments

A Friend’s Gift

Deep friendships add light to one’s soul even in difficult and dark times. Those special people with whom we share our journey offer a safe place to rest, finding a space in their hearts for our struggles and sorrow as well as our dreams and joy. They celebrate with us. (Something I suggest we do as often as possible and for every little thing.) They accompany us as we grieve. As we process what life is handing us. Or ponder big questions along with the mundane: weather, books read, or what to cook for dinner. They share hard-won wisdom. No topic is taboo. These friends may cry with us or tap laughter hiding beneath our tears. They may simply “be with” us when there are no words to say or when neither of us can see a path opening ahead.

Such companions have blessed me. I hope the same for you. The pandemic may have complicated personal connections, but bonds with deep friends are resilient and remain. 

Mike was such a friend. He passed away in February of this year. Our final in-person visit was last year in late June. We shared lunch, and appropriately, guitar playing and song.

Mike Wood playing guitar and singing
Mike

Music and desire for community brought us together when I was around 17. A small group of people, most in their late 20s and early 30s, were gathering to explore their faith and how to live it out during the years that saw the Vietnam war, the growing civil rights movement, and social upheaval. The friends came together to support one another and celebrate life with singalongs, potlucks, and conversations that lasted late into the night. Invited by a mutual friend, I brought my guitar and joined Mike and others providing music.

We gathered in homes and in a member’s shoe store – after hours. Eventually the folks pooled money and purchased a small property nestled along the fringes of the Hocking Hills. It was named Koinia and became their gathering place and a refuge for those of us seeking solitude and nature’s balm.

My life and Mike’s intertwined beyond the small group. We sang in coffee houses, at weddings, and liturgical celebrations. We saw one another at holiday parties and birthday bashes for mutual friends. Years flipped by like pages of a riveting novel.

Life took us in different directions, and opportunities to connect became fewer though we offered support as we could, especially during difficult times. Hearing Mike’s voice and music and meeting his compassionate gaze was a great comfort when he sang at the funerals of both of my parents. No matter how much time passed between our visits, when we did reconnect, conversation flowed as easily as ever.

Four years ago, Mike inspired me with a story of struggle and forgiveness. I had been working alone in a small cabin near Mike and Patty’s home. Preparing to co-direct a retreat, I needed the quiet, away-from-everything space. A few days before, a longtime mutual friend, Mario, had died. On the funeral day, I drove into town, picked up Mike and his wife, Patty, and took them with me to the funeral. People gathered afterwards to share memories and food. When things quieted down, I returned Mike and Patty back to their home then stopped at a nearby convenience store to buy drinking water for the cabin.

Mario and Mike

On my way out of town, grief settled in as profound loneliness, and I wasn’t ready to return to the empty cabin. I sat in my car on the edge of a park. And sat. Finally, I called Mike and invited myself to dinner. He and Patty warmly welcomed me and shared more food, laughter, and stories. Their company bolstered my spirits, and as night approached, I headed back to the cabin. Providence had other ideas. A fallen tree blocked the final stretch of road, and unfamiliar with an alternative route through the hills to the cabin, I called Mike again.

Patty had the guest room ready when I arrived, complete with an extra nightgown laying on the bed. We visited until 11 when she said goodnight. Mike and I stayed up for a couple more hours and sang a song or two. Then just talked. As conversations go, ours meandered from Mario to grief at his passing to times at Koinia. Perhaps led by our sorrow, we eventually talked of struggles with past hurtful experiences. Mike shared a particularly difficult episode. Then matter-of-factly said, “I forgave them.”

After a quiet pause he continued. “I had to let it go. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.” I watched him. One of the kindest, gentlest, loving souls I have ever known. “I had to move on. And you know, it hasn’t been a once-and-done thing. As time went by, memories came back. Occasionally still do. I felt hurt and betrayed all over again. And angry. Each time, I forgave. It got easier.”

We sat in silence for a while. I watched him and tried to imagine him different. Bitter. Cold. Nursing a wound that wouldn’t heal. I was grateful Mike had chosen forgiveness all these years. That his life, like his songs, was full of kindness and hope.

I shared something with Mike that night. Something I hadn’t forgiven. Not completely. Not every time it resurfaced. Not easily.

What is it about old wounds that make hanging on to them feel deceptively comforting? Is it that dwelling on someone else’s shortcomings shields one from their own? Is it self-doubt? Does pulling someone else down make one feel better about themself? Oddly attractive, hanging on to hurts gives power to those who hurt us. Power that can affect one’s life long after the event. Lack of forgiveness can poison a personality. Mike knew that and refused to let it happen.

I took a deep breath. I forgave. I knew I’d have to make that choice again and again. But I could. I would. Remembering Mike will help.

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Dreams, Hope, and “Making Do”
February 27, 2022 By 6 Comments

Dreams, Hope, and “Making Do”

During February, Black History month, I read work by Black authors, poets, and theologians. As the month ends and world events take an even darker turn with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, a section of book Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times keeps surfacing in my thoughts. According to its author, Bishop Michael Curry, his grandmother and aunts knew how to hold on to hope despite “… the titanic power of death, hatred, violence, bigotry, injustice, cruelty, and indifference.” They sank their roots into ancestral wisdom accumulated through centuries of unspeakable horrors. They not only survived, he would say, but they thrived. They found joy.

My heart thirsts for such wisdom. For hope when the world seems to be falling apart. It’s not only the latest flagrant violation of human rights and international law instigated by Russia’s strongman president that anguishes my heart, though that’s top of mind now. It’s also the lack of collective will to deal with climate change. It’s the eagerness of many lawmakers in this country to legislate ignorance of its history and obfuscation of the truth because the dark chapters cause discomfort (as they should). Requiring teachers to wear microphones to monitor what they teach has been proposed in Florida’s state legislature. Remember “Big Brother” anyone? Republican legislators speaking at White nationalist gatherings. Attacks on transgender youth and their parents. Evil seems to be winning.

So, what did Curry’s grandma know that might help me hold on to hope? She knew how to “make do.” In the kitchen, that meant taking cheap cuts of meat and vegetable scraps, whatever they could afford, and turning them into delicious feasts of soul food for family and friends. “Making do” extended beyond the kitchen.

It meant taking the reality of the present, imagining possibilities, and making something new. Curry cites St. Paul, “Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.” That’s “making do.” It sounds pie-in-the-sky. Naïve. Impossible. But the way of love is the only way to combat hate.

Painting by Gaye Reissland of diverse group of people with hands held high forming a heart shape with their fingers while approaching the Statue of Liberty.
Gaye Reissland acrylic on canvas 26″ x 12″ Painted for the Columbus Crossing Borders Project

Curry highlights three ingredients of “making do.”

Ancestral Wisdom

The first is a deep dive into one’s tradition that’s more than rituals or surface observances. Delve into the wisdom of your ancestors and find the truths that enabled them to contend with the evils and challenges they encountered. He writes from the perspective of a Black man in America, looking to those who faced slavery, violence, and oppression yet still had hope for the future.

Besides finding inspiration from his stories, this call to draw from ancestral wisdom pulled me to stories of my Dutch relatives who participated in resistance movements during World War II. Of my father and so many of his generation who joined the battle against Hitler and Nazism. Of my grandmother, Becky, who made soup with a beet tossed to my mother by a vegetable vendor during the depression. Becky welcomed into her home a young woman who needed refuge from an unhealthy family situation. She lived with my grandmother and mom until she married.

Painting of heart with a green plant sinking its roots into the center
Watercolor: Mary van Balen

I find wisdom and support in the faith tradition of my roots: incarnational theology, social justice teachings, spiritual mentors like saints Benedict and Francis, like Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.

Heroes like John Lewis, who never lost hope, left us his hard-won wisdom and a call to embrace the path of non-violence and love in the face of evil. It’s a long road requiring deep faith and immense courage, but it’s the only way that eventually brings true reconciliation and peace.

Imagination

Imagination is the second ingredient of “making do.”  While faced with grim realities, some people imagine possibilities. They hang on to dreams of what the world could be; dreams that often are considered unrealistic. But think of movements and people who have changed the world. They all imagined something better, held on to their dreams, and worked courageously to make them happen. As Curry pointed out in his book, after his “bush-side” chat with God, Moses dreamed of a world without slavery.

Civil Rights leaders from Gandhi to Mandela to Martin Luther King Jr. all had dreams that ordinary people standing up to corruption and evil could change the world. The dream of Paul Farmer, the doctor, humanitarian, and medical anthropologist who died unexpectedly on February 21, was to bring state-of-the-art healthcare to the world’s poor. To most in that field, his vision seemed impossible. But along with a few friends and colleagues, he co-founded Partners in Health and changed the trajectory of global health efforts. Movements like “Black Lives Matter” and “MeToo” were begun by people who imagined a world without systemic racism or socially accepted abuse of women.

Today, Ukraine’s president Zelensky and the Ukrainian people clutch the dream that they can stand together, overcome ruthless Russian aggression, and remain a democracy. With support from the rest of the world, I pray they do.

It’s not foolish to hold on to a dream of a better world. It’s essential. Harlem Renaissance writer and poet Langston Hughes expressed their importance in his poem, “Dreams.” He called his readers to “Hold fast to dreams,” and wrote that when dreams die, “Life is a broken-winged bird/That cannot fly.”

God

The third ingredient Curry lists is God. Just as altering or adding a variable in an equation changes the outcome, Curry says, “When God—that loving benevolence behind creation, whose judgement supersedes all else—is factored into the reality of life and living, something changes for the good…Another possibility emerges.”

I don’t pretend to know how that works, how prayer makes a difference, but I believe it does. Perhaps when one is open to sacred Presence of Love and Goodness, that transforming Love flows through them freely into the world. Even a little bit. I believe Love let loose in the universe changes things for the better.

I also know that when facing fear and difficulties in my life, experiencing that Presence within provided the courage I needed to move forward. Courage to make decisions that brought love into the small part of the world I inhabit. I am not alone in the mess of life. No one is. The Holy One is within and is shared through those around us and through creation.

If evil and hate, spewed into life by a few or many, changes reality (the situation in Ukraine, for example), then infusion of goodness and love must also make a difference.

Photo of beach at dawn
Dawn at the beach PHOTO: Kathryn Holt

Finding hope

I’m still not awash in hope but I have dipped the fingers of my soul in it. I feel it in the courage and resolve of those around the world holding on to dreams in these days of crisis and anguish. I see evidence of it in lives of those who endured such times and worse in days gone by. People who have persevered in hope and who have made a difference. And I have experienced the Holy One within and seen that Love in others.

Hope, like prayer, is a communal thing. When I have none, I can draw on the hope of others. And when others find their hope buried beneath the days’ anguish and somehow, that day, if hope lives in my soul, they can draw on mine. It is through each of us that God is present. Individual acts of love seem small and ineffective in the face of overwhelming evil, but, in the end, they can and will, transform the world into what it was created to be: a place of life and light for all, for the Beloved Community.

The new dawn balloons as we free it. / For there is always light, / if only we’re brave enough to see it, /if only we’re brave enough to be it.

Amanda Gorman : “The Hill We Climb”

© 2022 Mary van Balen

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Open-Hearted Presence
January 27, 2022 By 10 Comments

Open-Hearted Presence

And I always say, if there’s one thing you want to do as an adult to become a better listener, take a preschooler — someone who hasn’t gone to school and been taught how to listen by focusing attention, which is actually controlled impairment, but a preschooler who’s still taking in the whole world — hoist them onto your shoulders, and go for a night walk. They’ll tell you everything you need to know about becoming a better listener.

And if you have the good fortune of going for a walk up a nature trail with a child, the younger they are, the more pointless it seems to go any further, because the miracles are right here. Let’s just sit down, don’t worry about the exercise or the goals … Gordon Hempton*

Being the mother of three, now adult children as well as being an educator, listening to Hempton’s description of encountering the world with very young children elicited many wonderful memories of similar experiences. Days after hearing the podcast, I participated in a small Zoom book club meeting with friends who have been exploring topics of contemplative prayer and mysticism. During the conversation about what being a contemplative means, how one might “pray always,” and how to nurture the desire for God above all else, some offered images of hermits and cloistered nuns. Of Buddhists who can sit for hours at a time in meditation. Some expressed the impossibility of letting go “all things earthly” or emptying themselves completely.

These images made me restless. Not that there was no truth in them, but that they seemed to suggest contemplative prayer involved compete withdrawal from the world. The contemplative souls I have known, read, or studied did not fit those descriptions. Gordon Hempton’s description of a young child experiencing the world did.

Just as a child is schooled in listening by “focusing attention,” many of us have been “schooled” in praying by adopting prescribed practices, following rituals, or learning particular prayers. In elementary school, teachers told me that prayers came in three main varieties: petitionary prayers (help), intercessory prayers (help someone else or some larger cause), and prayers of praise (adoring God for being God). Of course, the church has a rich tradition of contemplative prayer, but other than the true but rather nebulous (to a nine-year-old anyway ) definition offered by the old Baltimore Catechism—prayer is lifting the mind and heart to God—what I remember being taught is the list.

Why didn’t I hear “God’s your friend who cares about you. Talk to God about anything you want.” Thich Naht Hanh wrote that the heart of Buddhist teaching is “I am here for you.” That’s the kind of God I experienced as a child. It’s where I was then. And by some grace, that’s where I’ve stayed. Of course, one’s prayer deepens and matures as one grows, but the basic truth remains: Prayer is relationship with God who cares. It is connection with the Holy One. With Love manifest in others and in all creation.

Being taught to narrowly focus attention, whether in experiencing nature or in prayer, is important at some point, but not at the expense of the wide, open-hearted approach to both. That’s what I loved about Hempton’s description of the young child in nature. Complete openness. Forgetting self and letting it all in. Drowning in the glory of it all.

The only moment in which you can be truly alive is the present moment.

Thich Nhat Hanh in You Are Here

Hempton’s observation that once on a walk, a very young child needn’t take another step “… because the miracles are right here” is another way of expressing the truth of the ever-presence of the Sacred in our lives. Grace is in the moment. Not tomorrow. Not even 15 minutes ago. Now.

And while I often imagine that God is more easily met on a slow walk along the ocean’s coast than in my apartment or neighborhood, the truth is that God is met not somewhere else, but HERE, wherever “here” is at the moment.  

Mystics and contemplatives of all ages and faiths know this. As Thornton Wilder reminds his readers, poets and saints recognize the beauty and mystery of every ordinary moment. I made a vow to myself in high school English class, the first time I read Our Town, that one way or another, I would be a saint or a poet. I would not let the glory of the moment slip by.

Decades later, I confess to not living up to that promise every day. But I do remember it, honor it as best I can, and when I fall short, remember that besides being a sacrament of encounter, life is also a journey. Step at a time.

May we learn from the youngest among us and not make it more complicated than it is!

PHOTOS: Mary van Balen

SOURCE: Gordon Hempton in conversation with Krista Tippett on OnBeing podcast: Silence and the Presence of Everything.

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Christmas: Within and Without
December 25, 2021 By 14 Comments

Christmas: Within and Without

Like my wreath, this year’s Advent rituals have been non-traditional.

The Advent wreath sits on the dining room table tonight with four candles burning, one for each week of this season, their flames speaking into the darkness that the wait for Christmas and its twelve-day celebration is soon over. 

The wreath reminds me of things liturgical that had long been part of my life: communal services and prayers, singing hymns and carols in churches decked with candles and poinsettias, and enjoying coffee, cookies, and conversation after Mass. One year our young family made a wreath and took it to Mass on the first Sunday of Advent where the priest put it on the altar and blessed it. (Full disclosure: He also blessed a lantern battery and two glow-in-the-dark rosaries that my daughters brought along after our impromptu exchange – moments before we had to leave the house – about why Fr. Mario would bless our wreath. But that’s another story.)

This year there are no official liturgical rituals for me. No attending church. No prayers with an in-person community or belting out carols, though I’ll break out my guitar and do some singing. 

Virtual gatherings with a couple of groups have become my way of sharing communal prayer. But all in all, my spirit has been directed to more individual contemplative practices. And, when you think of it, rooted in ancient times across cultures and faiths, those practices certainly are traditional: quiet prayer, Lectio Divina, spiritual reading, writing, and most of all, trying to be awake to the Divine Presence that permeates all creation, including us. 

The ongoing incarnation—what we celebrate at Christmas—means that whatever we do, wherever we are can be a meaningful encounter with the Sacred.

This isn’t a time to dwell on missing former ways of observing the season that are not possible in pandemic times, but a time to recognize “holy rituals” embedded in the quotidian that can pass unnoticed, untapped for the grace they hold: baking cookies to share; chatting with a cashier, neighbor, or friend; thanking the one who is delivering mail during this stressful season. We can strive to reverence Emmanuel who dwells in all we meet as St. Benedict instructs in his rule: Welcome the stranger as Christ. 

The eyes of our hearts can be opened to see Christ among us not only by people we meet, but also by surprising events that break into our lives. That happened for me just as Advent was beginning. An unexpected health issue upended my routine and replaced it with tests and doctor appointments. Instead of Lectio or reading, my primary Advent practice became gratitude: Every morning appreciation for the gift of another day opened my heart. Gratitude for the healing hands and skills of medical staff, gratitude for family who cared for me and friends who supported me. 

Once begun, the gratitude practice heightened my attentiveness to the myriad of Good that pours over the world, troubled as it is. Gratitude opens the heart, tenders it. It focuses on good that is life-giving instead of what threatens to diminish it and encourages us to do our part of sharing God’s transforming Love.

No matter the state of the world, Christmas and its season proclaim that God dwells within our hearts and in creation. The universe is always singing praise. Christmas reminds us that our call is not only to draw hope and strength and courage from the incarnate God we encounter in the world, but also to participate in that ongoing incarnation by birthing God into the spaces around us. Into our circle of family and friends. Into our towns and cities. Birthing the healing and loving God into a world reeling from the lack of it. 

Tonight, as I sit with Advent wreath candlelight, I am grateful for a God who chooses to live intimately with us, in our hearts, in every bit of creation from atoms to galaxies. I’m grateful for those present and those who have gone before who have shone the bit of Divinity they knew into the world. And, inspired by Howard Thurman’s poem “The Work of Christmas,” I am grateful for being part of the never-ending Christmas story of God-with-us.

The Work of Christmas

By Howard Thurman

When the song of the angels is stilled

When the star in the sky is gone,

When the kings and the princes are home,

When the shepherds are back with their flock

The work of Christmas begins:

To find the lost,

To heal the broken,

To feed the hungry,

To release the prisoner,

To rebuild the nations,

To bring peace among brothers,

To make music in the heart. 

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Lunar Eclipse: Nudged Toward Faith
November 20, 2021 By 10 Comments

Lunar Eclipse: Nudged Toward Faith

… And my heart panics not to be, as I long to be, / the empty, waiting, pure, speechless receptacle.

Mary Oliver from poem “Blue Iris”

Today, I stood on the porch and drew draughts of cold air deep into my lungs, happy for it after two days spent mostly inside. Raindrops made linking circles, expanding and disappearing at the edges of driveway puddles. I remembered a column written years ago in which I named rain an icon of God’s ever-present Grace soaking our souls. Looking out at the morning, I prayed to be open to it. And I thought about yesterday’s gift – the lunar eclipse.

Unable to sleep, I had risen around 1 a. m., brewed a pot of Red Rose, and pulled a small panettone intended for the holidays from its hiding place in the pantry. The sweet bread, studded with raisins and candied orange bits, melted in my mouth. Enveloped in a fleecy robe and a wing-backed chair, I read poetry and sipped the tea.  

The longest partial lunar eclipse in a millennium was approaching. Off and on I put down my book and mug and walked out onto the driveway. The unusually crystal-clear sky was stunning. Orion’s shoulders angled toward the moon, still white and whole. Later it would begin to move into the earth’s shadow.

Returning to the kitchen, I decided to make cornbread for the morning. Soon the baking wholegrains filled the house with earthy aromas. I knew I wouldn’t wait till the morning to eat a slice. “It is morning,” I told myself as I buttered a bit. “Very early morning!”

More tea. More poetry. I watched the moon as darkness began to take a bite out of it around 2 a.m. At 3, I crawled back into bed, setting my alarm for 4, mid-eclipse, when the earth’s shadow would drape the moon with a reddish orange veil.

The hour passed in a blink, and I was back outside: a grey-haired woman in her robe and slippers, cradling a large mug in her hands. Standing with Orion and whatever other stars and creatures were witnessing the moment, I lifted my mug and sipped tea, a toast to the moon. Not quite a complete eclipse, but I think even more beautiful because of it. The tiny crescent of brilliance near the base held the rusty moon as if in a thin, silver cup.

Give praise, sun and moon, / give praise, all you shining stars! / Give praise all universes, / the whole cosmos of Creation!

Psalm 148 translation: Nan C. Merrill
NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio

“Receiving blessings with gratitude,” a friend said, “requires humility.”

Gazing out into our solar system, overwhelmed by the sight, I longed to be an ever-open receptacle of such beauty. It spilled out over me, the pavement, gnarled trees, and blades of grass. Grace opens one’s eyes to the extraordinary reality of everyday things and to the Presence that dwells in all.

The immensity of the cosmos in which our earth spins, humbled me, and I gave thanks, adding my small voice to the chorus of praise rising from all creation. Astronomical events always provide needed perspective. Disheartened as I felt that night about events in our country and world, I was reminded that I see only a snippet of what is happening. That life continues to evolve and change. That my moment is not the only moment. There is a long view that I do not have. I want to trust that it is bending toward justice. But some nights, I don’t.

That night Orion, the moon, and the magnificence of creation nudged me towards faith and courage.

Finishing my tea, I walked back inside and returned to bed. Hope cautiously emerging from the edges of my mind, and a prayer of gratitude stirring in my heart.

© 2021 Mary van Balen

Feature photo by Mary van Balen – Stained-glass dome of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome. Architect: Michelangelo

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