Seeking the Sun
August 20, 2021 By 10 Comments

Seeking the Sun

During the day, I’ve been moving a large pot of flowers from one location to another, seeking out the sun. Why lug around a pot of flowers just so they can soak up a few more rays? First, the pot isn’t that heavy. Second, here’s the back story.

Five years ago, I spent a month in Paris with two of my daughters. One was working in a museum there. The youngest, like me, went to spend time with her sister and to enjoy the adventure of exploring the city. With an Airbnb apartment across from the Jardin des plantes as our base, we ventured out to museums, parks, markets, and other landmarks or wandered the streets, ready to be surprised. We spent time cooking, drawing, painting, and writing in journals. One excursion was particularly exciting: a day trip to Monet’s Garden in Giverny.

View from Monet’s home
Painting in Monet’s Garden

Boats in Monet’s Garden

After reading about Monet and falling in love with his paintings when she was eight, my youngest daughter began saving for her dream trip to his garden. With her first set of oils, she began painting and she invited me out of my warm bed to wrap up in a blanket, sit on the cold concrete porch, and watch the sunrise, like Monet. Finally, decades later, we were on a train heading to Giverny. And that is the beginning of the pot of flowers I move about, following the sun’s path across the sky.

I bought seed packets at the Monet’s Garden gift shop and gave many away as presents. Two packets remained tucked away in the back of a dresser drawer: bachelor buttons and nasturtiums. This spring the seeds were well past the recommended date for planting, but I decided to give them a try anyway.

To my delight, some of them germinated. More bachelor buttons than nasturtiums, but some of each. The tall, leggy bachelor buttons grew faster and bloomed sooner. Then the first bright yellow-orange nasturtiums opened, stunning against their round, green leaves. But nasturtiums love sunlight. You’ve likely seen photos or paintings of them spilling over the trellised walkway leading to Monet’s large pink house.

My little kitchen porch doesn’t get much sun, and I want to nurture those flowers. So sometimes they are on my side porch. Sometimes on the front. Sometimes on the driveway. Soaking up sun and being their amazing, beautiful selves. They transport me back to that month in Paris and visit to Monet’s Garden and flood my heart with blessing and gratitude.

Grace, I’ve found, isn’t limited by time or place. The joy and grace of those Parisian spring days remain and are “freshened” in my soul through memory. Remembering isn’t passive, simply recalling something that is gone. Remembering brings a time or person or experience into the moment, and Grace flows bright and strong again.

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready to break my heart / as the sun rises, / as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers // and they open— …

Mary Oliver from poem “Peonies” in New and Selected Poems: Volume One

Isn’t that what many prayer rituals are about? Why believers from the world’s religious traditions read their holy books? Isn’t that why sharing our stories is transformational for both teller and listener?

I’m currently rereading my friend Neal Loving’s autobiography, Loving’s Love: A Black American’s Experiences in Aviation. He was a pioneer in aviation during times when people of color were not encouraged to enter the world of flight. One of the planes he designed and built has recently been acquired by the Smithsonian. As his stories did when he shared them in person with students and audiences here and abroad, they continue to provide hope and grace to readers today.

I love reading poetry for the same reason. It shares a moment or an insight that touched the poet’s life and now touches mine. Mary Oliver is a master of this, painting vivid pictures of her observations that nudge her readers to connect with their own experiences, allowing them to enrich their lives all over again.

So, besides simply wanting to help these striking flowers grow and flourish and be what they are made to be – glorious bits of beauty that brighten the world – I reposition their pot day after day to savor the memories and drink in the Grace they bring.

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Hope in Quiet Places
July 29, 2021 By 8 Comments

Hope in Quiet Places

Jesus went across the Sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him, because they saw the signs he was performing on the sick. John 6: 1-1-2

Before the hungry crowd followed Jesus up the mountain, he’d been busy walking with his disciples back and forth from Jerusalem to Judea to Galilee. Teaching. Surprising a Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. He preached the kingdom of God, but stories of healings and other signs often took center stage.

People are attracted to the spectacular. The crowds wanted to see Jesus and if they were lucky, maybe something wondrous. Despite the long walk and needing to eat, they were excited. Who knew what this man might do or say?

Even today, people often look for hope outside themselves. They look for it in miracles, in charismatic leaders. They listen for what someone can do for them personally or for the community. They want someone with power to fix the big things. But hope is elusive.

Today natural and human-made realities threaten the well-being not only of individuals, groups, cities, and nations, but of the planet itself. Information – false as well as true – travels at lightning speed around the globe while genuine connection between people, parties, or factions, becomes more and more difficult.

Watching testimony given by four Capitol police about their harrowing experiences during the January 6 insurrection is illustrative. With emotion and passion, these men shared the horror that unfolded as they were trying to protect those within the Capitol. While they were addressing the select committee, six Republican House members gathered in front of the Department of Justice. One, Rep. Paul Gosar (AZ), referred to the insurgents as mistreated political prisoners. “These are not unruly or dangerous, violent criminals.”

Hope is difficult to hold on to.

While cases of the Covid-19 Delta variant are soaring, many people still question the reality of the virus and its threat, refusing to be vaccinated or to wear masks. Attempts by governments, businesses, or schools to require one or both of those preventative measures are assailed as “overreaching.” “Individual rights” is the battle cry.

Hope is difficult to hold on to.

The world continues to warm. Fires, floods, and violent storms wreak havoc and intensify in number, strength, and destructiveness. Systemic racism and violence against people of color continue. Yet some rail against teaching children the truth of this country’s history that would facilitate acknowledgement of the past and strengthen the resolve to move forward together.

Laws marginalizing LGBTQ people are proposed and passed. Refugees are turned away. The list goes on. The nation and the world are at a tipping point. Who wouldn’t want a miracle worker to fix it all?

Almost everything and everyone changing the world now is what we’ve forever referred to as “under the radar.” The radar is broken.

Krista Tippett in Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

But Jesus wasn’t about quick fixes then, or now. His life and wonders pointed toward something else. They were signs, not solutions.

When events pleased the crowd, they wanted to make him king. When his message was about loving your enemy, serving others, living with humility and compassion, the crowds thinned. Eventually, the power brokers set him up and murdered him, and crowds shouted their approval.

Hope isn’t found in flash or miracles. So, where is it?

In her book, Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living, Krista Tippet devotes the final chapter to hope. She writes about the healing power of seemingly insignificant acts done by people who will never make the headlines. Small acts come together in ways not visible.

In Jesus’s day nameless women and men carried his message and made it the most transformational message in history not only by what they said or wrote but by how they lived. Early followers pooled their goods and gave it away, making sure their neighbors had what they needed. Ordinary people doing good things made a difference. The world is slowly transformed the same way today.

Look for hope in quiet places.

When I do, I find it. There’s a small group not far from me reimagining church, gathering people together to share stories, to grow and cook healthy food, to worship around a table. They come to know and care about one another and hope to transform their struggling community.

Every day, a retired teacher takes food, clothing, and children’s books when he can get them, to those in need but without the means to get to a food pantry.  

Electronic neighborhood “bulletin boards” connect people with things they no longer want with people who can use them. The free exchange keeps “stuff” out of landfills and people from shopping for new, breaking the consumeristic cycle.

It’s not that we can’t find hope in bigger movements begun by people of privilege or money or power. It can happen. It must happen. In some arenas, like government, leaders must step up. But hope rises mostly in quiet places, a response to struggle and need.

It’s tempting to look to others for solutions. But we must also look within and around and together. Hope is in connections. It’s a choice. An orientation. A practice. It grows when we notice the good not just the bad and don’t slip into an easy cynicism that recognizes only failures and saps energy and the will to do something.

This week someone sent me her video of ants moving a dead wasp across a sidewalk and up a steep step, impressed by their strength. I watched and agreed. Ants can lift and carry 50 times their own weight – the smaller the ant, the more it can carry. (A physicist friend called this the “square-cube law” in case you want to look it up.)

While watching, I suddenly realized the obvious: no one ant was moving that wasp. A swarm was. They were working together to do what none of them, no matter how strong, could do alone.

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Seeing with Eyes of the Heart
May 23, 2021 By 4 Comments

Seeing with Eyes of the Heart

Sometimes life delivers a reminder of the Glory it holds, like this week while I meandered through a small park running along the west bank of the Scioto River. The park was empty except for a few walkers and two knots of birders gazing up into the trees. They carried a variety of cameras and binoculars, some with lenses long and heavy enough to require extra support. It was migration season. Non-resident birds and ducks were traveling through. I’m a casual bird watcher with a life-list begun decades ago where, if I remember, I check off a bird when I see it for the first time. My list is a record of what I’ve been graced to see, not a guide for what I have left to find.

“Hi. What are you looking at?” I asked good-naturedly, observing six feet of social distance.

“Nothing!” an irritated woman spat out. “Nothing! There is nothing to see here.”

I looked around at the surroundings, brimming with spring flowers and trees in various stages of leafing out. The river reflected the sun, and an occasional heron sailed by the white clouds.

“Really? Nothing? My sister and her husband saw a black -billed and a yellow-billed cuckoo here yesterday,” I said, trying to sound like I knew a little about the hobby. I was thinking “you just never know what will show up,” and thought I delivered the comment in a hopeful kind of way.

“Yesterday. Figures. The thing is, they were here yesterday. I wasn’t!”

No, she wasn’t. The problem, as I saw it, was that likely she wasn’t present in the morning’s moment either. Not really. Her experience was constricted by an agenda, and the park wasn’t delivering. I continued my walk, and despite the disgruntled woman’s claim that there was nothing worth seeing, I found plenty. Actually, her outburst, uncharacteristic of birders in general, heightened my openness to the surroundings.

First to catch my eye were dandelions, some sunny yellow and others holding delicate silver globes of parachuted seeds, waiting for a breeze to send them flying. They mingled with fuzzy, thick- stemmed plants sending up shoots topped with a clenched cluster of buds. I leaned in for a closer look. The spotted early earth-hugging leaves gave it way: waterleaf.

The scene reminded me of a pastel drawing at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston: “Dandelions,” by Jean-François Millet. His detailed drawings highlighted the flowers’ beauty and caught my attention immediately upon my entering the exhibit. “A kindred spirit,” I’d thought. I’m not an accomplished artist, but when I draw, I work small and focus on common treasures.

"Dandelions" a pastel on tan wove paper byJean-François Millet, French artist. Drawing of dandelions, yellow as well as gone to seed,
Dandelions, 1867-68
Pastel on tan wove paper
Jean-François Millet
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

There were lots of other things to see in the park. Oak, sycamore, maple, locust, and hickory trees. White honeysuckle blooms wet with nectar. The small stream, last week singing with water splashing over its rocky bed, diminished by hot, dry days.

I followed the lichen covered stone wall reminiscent of those crisscrossing fields in New England and the Robert Frost poem that made them famous. In a patch of wildflowers and grasses left to grow wild, bluebells were fading and ground-hugging violets stole the show.

The path stopped at the river. Mallards were gliding past, and farther out, a ruddy duck disappeared under the water again and again. I stood a while, soaking in the scene and then turned to walk back to my car.

The birdwatchers were still gathered in the same place, but this time cameras were clicking.

“What’d you find?” I asked.

“A Blackburnian warbler,” a gentleman replied and guided my eyes upward to a small silhouette perched on slender tree-top branches. Lifting my binoculars, I found the bird, stunning with black, white, and orange markings. Closer to my car, a Baltimore oriole flamed bright on a tree branch. An embarrassment of riches.

I was reminded of my morning walk a few days later while reflecting on the feast of Pentecost by reading poetry of Jessica Powers (1905-1998) an American Carmelite nun. In “Ruah-Elohim,” she writes that “Spirit” in Hebrew is feminine and that the Holy Spirt is tender Love, come to mother us. In “To Live with the Spirit'” she reminds us that the one who walks as the Spirit-wind blows “turns like a wandering weather-vane toward love.”

But it was her description of the Apostles in “The First Pentecost” that caught my breath. They looked at one another. “…words curled in fire through the returning gloom. / Something had changed and colored all the room. / The beauty of the Galilean mother/ took the breath from them for a little space. / Even a cup, a chair or a brown dress/ could draw their tears with the great loveliness/ that wrote tremendous secrets every place….”

I ache to see with such Spirit-opened eyes, our world and one another. Could wars and hatred, violence and earth-abuse continue among human beings with eyes so wide and seeing? Would eyes of the heart see past the false constructs of “them” and “us” to the “we” that shared Spirit makes us? Ah, for such eyes!

Along with this tired planet, with the weary, war-torn beings that live on it, I join my voice to the urgent prayer:

Come, Spirit come! We need the sight you bring.

© 2021 Mary van Balen

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Greening Nature and Spirits
April 20, 2021 By 4 Comments

Greening Nature and Spirits

One spring morning, sitting at the table sipping tea, I saw green buds on tree branches hanging over the yard just outside the picture window. The small fists of summer, clenched tight, must have been there for a while, but I hadn’t noticed. Seemingly overnight, the greening buds had swelled and stretched up and out, ready to burst open.

“Tomorrow,” I thought, “maybe the branches will be covered with tiny, new leaves. Or do the green cases hold flowers?” After more than seventy springs, I’m embarrassed to admit, I didn’t know, not having watched trees closely enough. Either way, nature, frozen in place by winter’s cold and long darkness, was moving again in the warmth of spring sun. What other explanation is there for the sudden appearance of green buds?

Perhaps this one: There is no “sudden” in nature. As the Latin phrase goes, natura naturans —”nature naturing,” or to put it another way, nature doing what nature does. Buds don’t pop into existence overnight. They begin forming in the summer or early autumn when temperatures are still warm. Focused on trees’ lush green crowns or their glorious fall colors, we just don’t notice buds, but they are there. By the time we see them in winter, the buds are cloaked with heavy scales or fuzzy cases drawn tightly around them, like your warm woolen coat, pulled close to keep out the cold. And they wait.

So, what was my maple doing all winter? “When cold weather hits, sap descends into roots, and when warm weather arrives, sap rises and feeds the tree,” I thought. Right?

True for most trees, but not for maples. These trees actually suck up the sap when temperatures drop, drawing liquid from the roots, and storing it in branches. A slow freeze with cold nights and warmer days sends sap up and down, up and down, storing more in the sapwood and preparing for a bountiful sap run. When winter hits in earnest, sap waits, frozen, before descending in spring and flowing out of holes if the tree has been tapped. (How this happens and why trees react differently to freeze and thaw is too complicated to explain here. Besides, I wouldn’t do a good job of it. But it’s fascinating and worth an internet search if you’re interested.)

In addition to affecting sap flow, cold winter temperatures send trees into a dormancy period allowing them to survive the harsh season and “wake up” in spring with the energy needed to blossom, resist pests, and develop fruit. When temperatures fluctuate too much from cold to warm during winter, tree buds may open prematurely; the tree may not be able to re-enter dormancy and might not have energy needed for growth.

Dormancy is important. For trees. For us.

The Word is living, being, spirit, all verdant greening, all creativity. This Word manifests itself in every creature.

Hildegard von Bingen

Sometimes our spirits need to rest. We can’t always be pushing forward, reading more books, attending more workshops, thinking, thinking, thinking. Greedily pulling in information like sap, to feed our hungry souls. Sometimes, what we need is rest. Holding what we already have in quiet. Openness – with no expectations.

Growth is a long process, so slow it often goes unnoticed, in trees and in our souls. Maple buds start forming sometime in the summer but need winter stillness before opening the following year. When warmth tells them it’s safe, they do what they are made to do: They break open. Leaves unfurl to feed the tree and flowers bloom and mature, producing fruit and seeds.

For us, the slow process is growing into who God made us to be. Saint Hildegard of Bingen (1098 – 1179) often used the word viriditas in her writings. It has been translated variously including “vitality,” “growth,” or “freshness.”  She used it when writing about plants, healing, and also theologically as a metaphor for the Divine life of Christ that flows through all creation, including us, bringing healing and fruition. Viriditas knows no season; it’s a constant Presence within us. Whether in the quiet of winter or the exuberance of spring, God’s life is at work in our deepest center.

Hasn’t my soul known the same miracle as the buds? Suddenly feeling full of grace after a long winter? Hasn’t yours?

Further reading on St. Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church

Medieval depiction of a spherical earth with different seasons at the same time (illuminated manuscript of Hildegard of Bingen's book "Liber Divinorum Operum").
Medieval depiction of a spherical earth with different seasons at the same time (illuminated manuscript of Hildegard of Bingen’s book “Liber Divinorum Operum”).
Public Domain Wikimedia Commons

The Life and Works of Hildegard von Bingen (1098-1179) Fordham University

St. Hildegard gives us a recipe for joy—even during a pandemic by Sonja Livingston in America

Hildegard of Bingen: no ordinary saint by Robdet McClory in the National Catholic Reporter

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Love, Not Atonement: Reflections on the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery
March 25, 2021 By 10 Comments

Love, Not Atonement: Reflections on the Incarnation and Paschal Mystery

This year, the feast of the Annunciation falls just a few days before Palm Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week. The proximity of the two feasts brings to mind the connection between the Incarnation and the Paschal mystery, and these questions: Why did Jesus come into the world and what is the meaning of his death on the cross? Big Questions. Impossible to answer but not to ponder.

Growing up, I couldn’t believe God, who created everything and who loved us all, needed Jesus to be tortured and crucified to make up for the sin of Adam and Eve and the rest of us. I attended Catholic schools and my share of Lenten services, including the Stations of the Cross. Church rituals and liturgies spoke to me, but the Stations of the Cross left me sad and confused.

God loved us and made the earth and everything on it, my teachers said. The stars. The planets. Whatever else was out there. And God was born to be with us always. That’s what Emanuel meant: God-with-us. That image of God didn’t fit with a vengeful Deity who demanded Jesus suffer and die because people sinned.

As I grew, thought the disconnect remained unresolved, it didn’t claim my time or attention. Let theologians hash it out if they must. I ignored the claims of a vindictive God and trusted my experience of a merciful one. I knew there were consequences for sin and that my own contributed to the corruption of the world and to the suffering of the Christ who dwells in all. I knew it affected the planet I live on and that I needed forgiveness and a deep transformation of heart.

But I never believed that God demanded a horrible death to put things right.

Later I learned there were names for theories like this: substitutionary atonement, for example, and that it was not the only theory. There had been and are other ways of understanding what Scripture has to say about the Incarnation, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Of course, God is God with wisdom beyond human imagining. Being “right” isn’t the goal. Yet, human beings look for meaning.

During my studies for an MA in theology, a professor introduced me to the medieval, Franciscan theologian, John Duns Scotus (c. 1266-1308), who did not agree with interpretations that held the Incarnation was necessary because of human sin or that Jesus’s crucifixion was the sacrifice required to pay a debt. The incarnation wasn’t a rescue plan. It was always the plan. Jesus came to reveal the face of Divine Love and to show how it looked to live that out as a human being. Then he asked us to do the same.

Close up of two hands clasped in support. One hand is dark. The other light.
Photo: Mary van Balen

Citing John Duns Scotus and the Franciscan “alternative orthodoxy” that he espoused, Richard Rohr, OFM, connects Christmas and Easter: “… Christmas is already Easter because in becoming a human being, God already shows that it’s good to be human, to be flesh. The problem is already somehow solved. Flesh does not need to be redeemed by any sacrificial atonement theory.”

The incarnation led to crucifixion because of the state of the world, not because of God’s demands. Jesus stretched his arms out on the cross because a sinful world could not deal with his radical Love. He stood with the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. His life and teaching were threatening to those in power, both political and religious, who kept these people on the fringes. The requirements of Love to forgive, to serve, to embrace the other, to reverence the Divine within every person and treat them with the respect and care all deserve, to love enemies – it was too much to ask. And so, the broken world executed the one who was Love.

And God wept.

This Holy Week, I will remember the Incarnation and the call to participate in Love. I will ponder how my living contributes to it and how it undermines it. I will ask forgiveness. But more than that, I will pray for courage to open my heart and change my ways, to contribute to Love and not to intolerance, hatred, fear, or violence.

The Incarnation says I am with you. The crucifixion says accepting the invitation to follow Jesus’s example of being Love has consequences. The Resurrection says that in the end, Love is what lasts. Always.  

Featured image: Photo taken by author in Saint Johns University Alcuin Library, Collegeville, MN, 2009.

Sculptor: Paul Granlund

©2021 Mary  van Balen

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A Contemplative Lent
February 25, 2021 By 14 Comments

A Contemplative Lent

While Lent is sometimes thought of as a season to give up something, this Lent comes after a year of pandemic and unrest that has many feeling like they’ve already given up a lot. For some it has meant no in-person visits with family or friends for close to a year. Some have lost jobs. Some suffered from serious cases of COVID-19 while others lost loved ones to the virus. Life has changed for just about everyone. The sense of loss is real.

While Zooming with a group of friends shortly before Ash Wednesday, one said she thought she’d have a “passive” Lent. Further conversation revealed she didn’t mean she would do nothing, but that she wasn’t going to pile on extra activities or give up anything particular. She simply was going to try to be open to receive grace offered in her ordinary routines.

That requires paying attention. “I know I’ve missed God’s Presence with me in the past,” she said, and thought she might make a list or keep a journal, reflecting on places and times in her life, recognizing God’s presence while looking back.

“Contemplative” might be a more accurate word to describe her approach to the season.

In his book The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth, Gerald May wondered if John of the Cross’s much quoted sentence Contemplacion pura consite en recibir (often translated “Pure contemplation consists of receiving” – which sounds pretty passive) might be better understood if translated with what May considered a more accurate rendering of recibir – “Pure contemplation consists of welcoming with open arms!” (p 78).

I remember my Grandma Van Balen, who waited at the top of the steps, arms outstretched, when we arrived at her home for a visit. We scrambled up the staircase, wanting to be the first one she gathered up in her embrace and pulled onto her welcoming lap.

When someone showed up at my parents’ house, they stopped whatever they were doing and welcomed the visitor. After offering tea, coffee, or something to eat, they’d sit and visit, enjoying their company and listening to their stories.

Mr. Rogers was said to have been good at that. When he engaged with someone, he was so attentive that they felt as if they were the only person in the world. That’s deep listening. That’s receptivity. That’s openness at its best.  

Practicing such deep listening to the Holy Presence in our lives could be a fruitful way to observe Lent. We could ask ourselves “What gets in the way?” The tendency to multi-task through the day? Worry about the future? Regrets over the past? A hectic schedule? Pressing family responsibilities?

Sometimes much of what fills the day is beyond our control. Welcoming God “with arms open wide” might mean focusing on the person or task in front of us and trusting, with a lift in the heart, that God is in us and around us as we work as well as when we take some quiet, reflective time.

We can also remember that such openness to receive isn’t a one-way street. God is always welcoming us to share in Divine Life. But we forget. Then something – a moment, words, a song, a sight or sound or feeling reminds us that we indeed exist in God’s embrace.

Poet George Herbert (1593-1633) provides an image of this Divine hospitality in his poem, “Love (III).” In the first two stanzas the speaker, aware of his sin, draws back from the space into which Love invites him. He lists what makes him unworthy to be Love’s guest, but Love persists, wanting only to welcome and to serve. The poem ends:  You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat./So I did sit and eat.

This Lent, instead of “giving up” or “adding on,” how about doing whatever it takes to open our heart-arms wide? Sit down at Love’s table and enjoy what is offered every moment of every day.  

©2021 Mary van Balen

Unless credited otherwise, photos by Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Kathryn Holt
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We Can’t Wait ‘Til We’re Ready
January 27, 2021 By 14 Comments

We Can’t Wait ‘Til We’re Ready

I’ve always known the call to write. Mom supported my efforts, placing a small table in the dormitory-style room that held beds for me, my siblings, and our grandmother. The writing space didn’t last long; getting into closets on either side required sliding the desk one way or the other. But the message was clear: Mom knew I was a writer.

I wrote away, crafting stories in class instead of doing assignments, sending articles and poetry to magazines and contests. When I became a young mother, working around loads of laundry and late-night feedings, I filled journals and wrote what was in my heart.

“Someday I’d like to have a column,” I confided to a friend. His response was that I didn’t have the credentials or enough published work. Undeterred, I continued submitting work.

Persistence paid off. A few articles were published. One led to a book contract. Eventually, the editor of this paper offered the opportunity to write a column. I said “yes” then spent the next few weeks worrying how to find topics for a year’s worth of column inches.

I thought about my writer’s journey recently – small steps taken without courses or credentials, just trust in a knowing that stirred within – after reading a line in Mark’s gospel. Having finished speaking from a boat to a crowd on shore, Jesus asked his friends to take him to the other side of the lake. He needed some downtime, and they obliged: Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them, just as he was.

What did that mean – just as he was? What was the alternative? Giving him time to go home, pack some food and grab another tunic?  Wasn’t Jesus always ready, just as he was? Aren’t we all?

It’s tempting to think we can move forward only after becoming better prepared, but despite feelings to the contrary, deep down, we are ready to take next steps in our lives. Jesus knew that. He didn’t look for perfect people to join in his work. He didn’t wait until they had studied up on their scripture or understood everything he was saying. He called them, just as they were, trusting they’d learn and grow as they walked with him.

We will, too. We’re called to contribute to the holy work of building the beloved community, just as we are.

We might be full of fear and anxiety. Maybe we’re burdened by the weight of injustice or buoyed by unrecognized privilege. Maybe anger saps our energy or optimism gives it a boost. Whatever we carry, wherever we stand, when we give ourselves to it, the journey will change us. One way or another, it offers what we need to take another step, no matter how small. It may require a change of direction or going places we’d rather not go. (In Mark’s story, Jesus and his buddies were unknowingly headed into a storm.)

I write this after a momentous two weeks. White supremacy, hate, division, and violence were on display during the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol Building. U.S. deaths from Covid-19 topped 400,000. The inauguration of the new president and vice president proceeded without incident, but in a city fortified with thousands of troops. In his speech, President Biden called for healing and unity in meeting “these cascading crises.” Amanda Gorman called us to be brave enough not only to see the light but to be the light in her poem The Hill We Climb.

These times call for action. From everyone. These times pose questions: How to bend the moral arc towards justice? How to root out systemic racism? How to combat the coronavirus? How to restore respect and commitment to the common good? I can’t wait until I’m “ready.” None of us can.

We have to go, just as we are. Now. And trust in a few things: Love dwells within each of us. Sinking into to quiet, connecting to that Presence, we are empowered to share that Divine spark. When we do, we help transform the world, bit by bit. We are enough. We are a work in progress. Together, we are The Work in progress.

When life is overwhelming, I remember: I don’t go alone. None of us do.

© 2021 Mary van Balen

 Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.

attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. by Marian Wright Edelman in Mother Jones 1991
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Annunciations – Mary’s and Ours
December 18, 2020 By 14 Comments

Annunciations – Mary’s and Ours

What image comes to mind when you think of the annunciation? A painting by Bellini or Da Vinci? A woman kneeling on ornate pillows? My friend and poet, Fr. Kilian McDonnell, O.S.B., wrote a poem, “In the Kitchen,” that offers a different view. “Bellini has it wrong,” it begins, as Mary gives her account. She wasn’t kneeling on a satin pillow. She was bent down, wiping up water spilled on the kitchen floor when she noticed a light on the wall “as though someone had opened/the door to the sun.”

Kilian’s Mary is down-to-earth. A young Jewish girl living in an occupied country, she would not have been surrounded by luxury when the angel came. She’d have been busy with everyday chores like drawing water from the well and getting food on the table.

Dorothy Day knew the danger in naming someone a saint. The title separates, making those great witnesses too easy to dismiss. They’re not like us. They’ re different. Their circumstances are far removed from our own. But as Kilian reminds us, neither is true: Saints aren’t a different breed, and all people are called to holiness.

Photo: Mary van Balen

It does take practice. Mary needed to be awake, tuned in to God’s Presence in ordinary life. For many on this planet, everyday life is a harsh battle to survive. For others, daily chores and choices are not matters of life-and-death but are so repetitive they can be done without thinking. How does one stay attentive to grace in the moment – to annunciations – when the moments are so fraught? Or so predictable?

We might think that ignoring an angel or bright light or voice from heaven would be impossible, no matter how one lived their life. But maybe not. In her poem “In the World I Live In,” Mary Oliver says that “… only if there are angels in your head will you/ever, possibly, see one.”

Throughout her young life, Mary of Nazareth was listening, expecting God to be present. God had a long history of working in the lives of her people and in hers as well. So, when the message arrived, she was ready to hear it.

Sometimes, Presence breaking into life is spectacular. Perhaps not an angel, brilliant light, or vision (though it could be – it’s happened before). But inbreaking can be jolting: a dreaded medical diagnosis, the loss of job, or an unexpected opportunity, all life changing. Inbreaking can be the realization that a wonderful relationship is blossoming or that one is dying and beyond repair.

Photo: Mary van Balen

Whether annunciations come through the ordinary or spectacular, one must be awake to recognize them. Once perceived, they present a choice: to let them in or not. Mary had a choice. The Creator of all that is waited for her answer. She could have said “no.”

Besides being awake to God’s presence, Mary was open and empty, like a monk’s begging bowl. She wasn’t full of herself and her plans but had room to receive what was offered. She could have thought, “Joseph and I are going to be married. No thanks. I’m happy with how things are going.”

Mary was humble. She had plans, but was willing to consider that God had others. She listened. When she was puzzled about the when’s and how’s, she accepted that reality is sometimes beyond understanding.  

Mary had courage. She didn’t know what lay ahead if she embraced God’s call. But if she was needed, she’d give herself to something bigger.

We are all meant to be mothers of God…for God is always needing to be born.

Meister Eckhart

Mary had hope. Not knowing what her “yes” would bring, she trusted it would be good: not easy, neat, or predictable, but good because she knew God was good. She knew God’s track record in her life and the lives of her people. Even in their suffering, God was present.

Her birthing of Jesus introduced the world to God as it had never known God before. We, too, are called to birth Christ into the world.

When annunciations come, opening new ways to birth Love into the world, we will be better able to say “yes” if we’ve practiced. If we’ve been awake and listening. If we’ve worked to open our hearts and empty them to receive. We will be better able to do our part if we are humble and recognize that we can’t see the big picture, that there is something much bigger than what we can imagine. To trust God will not leave us stranded to face suffering and struggle alone.

 And to have hope. Because God is good. And God is coming. Has always been coming. And indeed, is already here.

©2020 Mary van Balen

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Jesus, Servant-King
November 29, 2020 By 2 Comments

Jesus, Servant-King

Even with my usual activity restricted by an ever-worsening pandemic, time has passed quickly for me. The liturgical year is drawing to a close this Sunday with the Feast of Christ the King. Then the new year begins with Advent.  

I’ve never warmed up to the image of Christ the King. “King” has too many political overtones. Images of a stern king enthroned and bedecked in robes and a gleaming crown, maybe with one hand grasping a scepter, a symbol of power, have put me off. It seems an odd segue into the celebration of the ongoing Incarnation and the remembrance of Jesus’s birth in poverty.

Kings and kingship have a long history, including the Judeo/Christian tradition. Samuel resisted the people’s desire to have a king. Their reasoning – because everyone else has one – seemed shaky. But a king they got, for a while.

I suppose there have been genuinely good kings (and queens) over the centuries, but the associated trappings of power and wealth are hard to overlook. And they do tend to corrupt.

In his lifetime, Jesus resisted the title of king, and when people clamored to make him one, he made himself scarce. Of course, the “kingdom of God” is central to his message. But it is a kingdom unlike any earthly kingdom: there is room for all. It isn’t observable. It’s a work in progress, and the progress depends on the people.

It isn’t about exteriority but what’s in the heart, for that is where the kingdom resides, where the Word is spoken and takes root and grows. The signs of the kingdom are love, service, joy, peace, willingness to suffer for the good of others. God sows this Word-seed in human hearts. It has power to grow and transform every person and, through them, works to transform the world.

In our particular time and place in a world ravaged by pandemic and political turmoil, the call is to follow this Servant-King. The power to be wielded is that of Love, prayer, and service.

The kingdom is both/and. Already here and yet to come. “Already here” because the Holy One has placed a bit of Divinity in everyone. “Yet to come” because it must grow with cooperation and surrender.

The kingdom is Presence and Possibility. All creation exists in the embrace of the Christ – “The soul is in God and God in the soul, just as the fish is in the sea and the sea in the fish.” (St. Catherine of Siena) All creation, including human beings, is becoming – “Above all, trust in the slow work of God.” (Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)

It is a servant-king that Jesus modeled. He didn’t sit on a throne or live in opulence or control with commands or hang out with those in power. He didn’t have a place to rest his head. He led by example. The poor and marginalized where his companions.

Jesus was a man of both action and prayer. He preached, healed, fed, walked, and sat with others. And when he prayed, he didn’t sit in a privileged place but more likely on a rock in the wilderness.

In our particular time and place in a world ravaged by pandemic and political turmoil, the call is to follow this Servant-King. The power to be wielded is that of Love, prayer, and service. Jesus provides the job description in Sunday’s gospel. When he does “sit on his glorious throne,” the criteria for judgement is love in service. Did you feed the hungry and give drink to the thirsty? Did you clothe the naked and visit the prisoners? What did you do to open yourself to Love and then give it away?

If I were asked to create an image of Christ the King, it would be of a person busy taking care of others. Ordinary attire would replace robes and crowns. The scepter would be gone, and if a hand was free at all, it would hold a shepherd’s staff or maybe food to be given away, a stethoscope, a cooking pot, seeds, a pen, a book, a brush. Whatever one needs to be who they are created to be. To do their work in bringing the kingdom.

Papier-mache mask
Artist: Laurie VanBalen

©2020 Mary van Balen

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To Live Justly, To Love
October 27, 2020 By 3 Comments

To Live Justly, To Love

Painting by Laurie VanBalen, Project Director and Producer of Columbus Crossing Borders Project

The Scripture readings for Sunday, November 25, and Pope Francis’s new encyclical, Fratelli Tutti, share major themes that speak to current global and national issues. The texts clearly place this call front and center: Love and care for our neighbors (that’s everyone) and the common good, and turn from “idols” that hinder us from doing so.

Exodus reminds us that the poor, marginalized, and vulnerable among us deserve special respect and care. This is not an option. This is not charity. It is justice required by a compassionate God. When they are mistreated, God hears their cries.

The pandemic has highlighted the inability of the global community to work together to address the crisis. It has revealed failures and fissures in this country’s polices, institutions, and lack of will when it comes to justice and providing for those living on the edges.

Pope Francis introduces the social encyclical’s first chapter, “Dark Clouds Over a Closed World,” saying he intends “…simply to consider certain trends in our world that hinder the development of universal fraternity” (9). [Numbers after Fratelli Tutti quotes indicate the paragraph in the document where they are found.]

His list of concerns includes a throwaway world where “Some parts of our human family, it appears, can be readily sacrificed for the sake of others considered worthy of a carefree existence. Ultimately, persons are no longer seen as a paramount value to be cared for and respected, especially when they are poor and disabled, ‘not yet useful’ – like the unborn, or ‘no longer needed’ – like the elderly” (18).

Among other topics addressed in this section are the pandemic (32), loss of a sense of history that leads to “new forms of cultural colonization” (14), the spreading of despair and discouragement and using extremism and polarization as political tools (15), unequal respect of universal human rights (22), the fading sense of being part of a “single human family” (30), and poor treatment of migrants crossing borders around the world (37).

In Sunday’s gospel from Luke, Jesus elevates the call to love and care for our neighbors. When asked what the greatest command was, he had two, not one: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Everything, he said, depends on these two.

Chapter Two of Fratelli Tutti reflects on perhaps the most well-known parable in the New Testament: The Good Samaritan. Francis warns against the danger of hypocrisy evidenced by the priest and Levite, who passed the injured man without stopping to help: “It shows that belief in God and the worship of God are not enough to ensure that we are actually living in a way pleasing to God (74).” He encourages readers to start small, acting at local levels and then moving out to needs in their countries and in the world. “Difficulties that seem overwhelming are opportunities for growth, not excuses for a glum resignation that can lead only to acquiescence” (78).

Detail from The Good Samaritan by Vincent van Gogh

He writes forceful words about the Samaritan caring for the injured man and what that example means for us:

 “… it leaves no room for ideological manipulation and challenges us to expand our frontiers. It gives a universal dimension to our call to love, one that transcends all prejudices, all historical and cultural barriers, all petty interests” (83).

In Sunday’s second reading, St. Paul praises the Thessalonians in part for turning away from idols to serve the true God. When reading about idols in Scripture, I don’t always make the connection to the idols in my life. It’s tempting to relegate them to earlier eras and the worship of statues or images.

But certainly, this age has its idols that get in the way of serving God and joining in the work of bringing God’s kingdom.

Everything, then, depends on our ability to see the need for a change of heart, attitudes and lifestyles.

Pope Francis Fratelli Tutti

Fratelli Tutti makes numerous references throughout to what I would call “idols” today: aggressive nationalism, limitless consumption, individualism, wealth, control, and self-interest to name a few.

Francis sees hope in the midst of the gloom – in willingness to dialogue and engage in genuine encounter, in the desire to love. God has placed goodness in the human heart, and many go about their ordinary days trying to be true neighbors, remembering no one is saved alone; we share the same hope; we sail in the same boat.

These readings and this encyclical are deeply challenging, if we take them seriously. In these times, how can we not? As Pope Francis writes, “Everything, then, depends on our ability to see the need for a change of heart, attitudes and lifestyles” (166).

©2020 Mary van Balen

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