Baptism

Baptism

In honor of National Poetry Month, I offer this poem.

Baptism

It happens sometimes
in early spring or fall 
or any bright day
when the air is chill
despite our star’s faithful burning.
I’m walking outside
and everything is shining.
Suddenly the sky –
- flowing around every bit of matter in its path -
transforms, and
I now walk through water
that yields just enough to let me enter.
With every step
I’m encased in a glorious glove of cool, liquid shine.
I can’t see the stuff sky has become,
but my heart quickens
and I must make an effort
not to fall on my knees.
I glance at other walkers and wonder
if they feel the same
or if this is a private miracle,
a baptism that opens my soul to morning’s glory,
that refuses to let me move on ungrateful.
I can’t remember the first time
I knew sky could turn into water
and back to breath again in an instant.
It doesn't matter.
Nor does how.
Content with mystery
being mystery,
when the moment passes
I emerge into air-breath,
changed as surely as if I’d been walking the beach
and waded into the water
and crouched beneath a wave as it washed over me
and rose up
renewed, awake,
in love with the world again.
© 2024 Mary van Balen

Photos: Mary van Balen

Ocean’s Pull: A Place Where Grace Flows

Ocean’s Pull: A Place Where Grace Flows

I long to be near the ocean. It stole my heart on our first encounter. A teenager, I was camping with my family through Massachusetts, the birthplace of my mother’s parents. She wanted to see where her family roots had been before they were pulled up and transplanted to Ohio.

My grandmother Becky lived with us and was my first introduction to Massachusetts. Bits of New England accent colored her speech until she died. I loved hearing her say “mirrah,” “drawah,” or “idear” and asked questions requiring an answer that included words ending in “er” or “ah” just to hear her say them.

Growing up in southwestern Massachusetts, she hadn’t lived by the sea, but earlier generations had, arriving on the northeastern shore before the Revolutionary War, joining the battles at Concord and Lexington. In my young mind, the east coast was a magical place, and photos of the Kennedys sailing or walking the beach on Cape Cod just added to the mystique.

Cape Ann, MA 1969

So I was thrilled when, one summer, our family contingent wended its way through western Massachusetts to Boston and places further north along the coast. It didn’t disappoint. From the moment I stepped over large rocks and experienced the presence of the ocean, I was smitten. “Why,” I wondered, “would anyone move from such a place to the Midwest?” They must have had their reasons, but at the moment, for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine what they might have been.

Over the years, I’ve made numerous trips up east and spent countless hours walking beaches on the Cape as well as up and down the coast. The pandemic put an end to a long string of birthday celebrations shared with my youngest daughter on a beach. How I miss walking the thin strip that’s neither ocean nor land but water and sand swirling together in some “both/and” space. Looking for sea glass. Listening to the rhythmic sounds of the water’s ebb and flow. Watching shore birds. Drawing in deep draughts of salty air that cleans and soothes lungs irritated by pollen and pollution at home.

A friend who appreciated my soul-ache for the sea sent me a book: The Outermost House: A Year of Life on the Great Beach of Cape Cod, by Henry Beston. I finished it last week. First published in 1928, it chronicles Beston’s year-long stay in a two-room cottage he had built on his dune-land property just south of the Eastham Life Saving Station on what is now called Coast Guard Beach.

Though not a trained scientist, he was a keen observer of nature, calling himself a “writer-naturalist.” In his book, Beston meticulously describes the sights, sounds, wildlife, weather, and events from walks along the beach to shipwrecks in a foaming sea, to the bravery of the coast guards from the Nauset lighthouse who patrolled the beach, ready to help anyone in need, to deliver a letter, or to stop in Beston’s cottage to warm up with a steaming cup of coffee.

From the first pages, I was hooked. Beston was a writer first, and as Robert Finch notes in the 1988 introduction, Beston “… preferred poetic impressions to scientific accuracy.” Perhaps that’s why I could close my eyes and “be there,” hearing the distinctive sounds made by waves in their various stages: the “great spilling crash” when they arrived, the “wild seething cataract roar” as the wave dissolved, “the rush of its foaming waters up the beach,” and the “foam-bubble hissing” as the wave dissolves and slides back toward the sea.

His description of the origin of waves was equally transporting. It’s not scientific, but who isn’t enchanted by thinking of the birth of waves somewhere far out in the middle of the ocean when “… the pulse beat of earth liberates a vibration, an ocean wave.” “Pulse beat of earth” reminds me of the captivating phrase, “heartbeat tones,” NASA used to describe the simple signals sent from Perseverance during its landing on Mars when more complicated communication was impossible—it just let them know “Percy” was “alive” and functioning.

The ancient values of dignity, beauty, and poetry which sustain it are of Nature’s inspiration; the are born of the mystery and beauty of the world.

Henry Beston, The Outermost House

Beston didn’t include as many personal reflections as some authors do when writing memoir. Many of his detailed descriptions stand alone, allowing the reader to experience the ocean in their own way and to reflect on deeper meanings stirred by the literary encounter.

I am no exception.  

He responded directly to friends wondering if he didn’t grow tired or “haunted” by the constant sound of the ocean’s roar, saying simply that he had “grown unconscious” of it, noticing only when he first woke or climbed into bed at night. Or made a conscious choice to stop and listen. Or “when some change in the nature of the sound breaks through my acceptance of it to my curiosity.”

I could imagine that. And it made me wonder what sounds or sights in my life are so constant that I don’t often notice them. What miracles do I take for granted every day? What can help me remember to “stop again to listen,” or to lift my heart to God in gratitude for the gift?

Beston commented that birds in flight look completely different than birds at rest and suggested that after observing birds on the ground, we clap our hands and send them flying. Again, his provocative prose had me wondering. What people, places, or activities make me feel more alive, more myself? What pulls from me the gifts that makes me more who I am made to be?

In describing mystic/poet Robert Lax, his biographer, Michael McGregor, said that Lax would encourage people to find a place where grace flowed and put themselves there often. Flight is what birds are made for. It’s where observers see them in their magnificence. Where is the place Grace flows most naturally for me? Can I put myself there? Often?

Again, responding to friends’ questions, Beston shared what he had learned of Nature from his Cape Cod year: “… one’s first appreciation is a sense that the creation is still going on, that the creative forces are as great and as active to-day as they ever have been … Creation is here and now.”

Sunset over the water, Cape Cod Massachusetts
Cape Cod

When I read those words, I slipped into quiet and wonder at the evolution of creation, of creatures, of humanity, of faith, of God. What does it mean that creation is ongoing, here and now? How comfortable am I with the lack of permanence and the transformation that is Incarnation?

I am longing for the sea. Its pull is always on my heart. Yet, with Beston’s book, I feel that in some way I have been there. And received Grace as if I had walked the thin space of earth/sea in my bare feet, wondered at the birds, breathed salty air, and huddled against the wind.

Creation Gives Voice to Presence

Creation Gives Voice to Presence

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

Originally published in The Catholic Times, November 9, 2014 

Volume 64:6

 

Emily Dickinson’s poem, Exultation is the going of an inland soul to sea, comes to mind each time I have the opportunity to head to the beach. Someday, I tell myself, perhaps I will live near the east coast, close enough that a trip to the ocean could be measured in minutes rather than hours. As it is, I’m grateful for the times when the long trip is possible.

One of my daughters lives a few hours from a national seashore, and we’ve made a tradition of spending at least a couple of days at the beach when I visit. In October the air is cool. We don’t swim but walk for hours along the sand. This year we wore scarves and sweaters as we sat in beach chairs and enjoyed looking far and gulping the salty air deep into our lungs.

As we watched, gulls and sanderlings entertained, and dolphins moved slowly out beyond the breakers. Pelicans dove for fish, and crabs disappeared down their sandy tunnels. The planet seemed to breathe with the ancient rhythm of the surf moving in and out. We talked about death and life, remembered beach vacations with my parents, and wondered how life would continue to unfold. Then, two pilgrims, we simply sat in silence.

The numinous place where land and sea meet is always a place of prayer for me. Power. Beauty. Mystery. Waters of immense depth, churning and filled with life, speak of the One Who is the Beginning. This day there were no revelations. No new understandings or answers to questions that move in my heart like the waves at me feet, but Presence simply inviting me to enjoy and to trust.

We headed back to my daughter’s apartment carrying a few shells, a small piece of driftwood for her mantel, and two pieces of seaglass that eventually would sit on my prayer table. The next day I drove home through mountains glowing with fall colors. In one more day, with sand still clinging to my pant legs, I was walking a road winding through wooded hills and watching birds landing on feeders outside a cabin’s windows.

PHOTO:Mary van Balen

PHOTO:Mary van Balen

I lit a candle and wrote in my journal, making sketches of shells and a list of birds at the feeders: woodpeckers, nuthatches, and tufted titmice. Looking up, I was amazed at the variety of colors and textures outside the window: Huge yellow, brown, and deep red oak leaves, smooth barked and deeply ridged tree trunks, green shrubs dotted with red berries, all against a backdrop of blue sky and grey leaf-covered ground.

Unlike my days at ocean when my eyes looked out across the water at the horizon, the day at the cabin offered obstructed views, but they were rich. Leaving the chill of the cabin, I moved outside to the sun-warmed deck, and still the pilgrim, sat silently on the weathered bench.

Wind rustling leaves filled the woods with a sound similar to the ocean’s surf, not rhythmic, but constant.

Creation psalms came to mind with their images of a God who made the sun and moon to mark time and confined the oceans so life could flourish on the land. ‘How varied are your works, Lord! In wisdom you have made them all” (Ps 104, 24). Like Job reminded by God, I have no idea how all this came to be. The “Big Bang” is likely, as Pope Francis recently affirmed. The how and the why remain a mystery, engaging professional scientists and theologians and expanding the minds and spirits of the rest of us who think about it.

But, deep down, I’m pondering Presence in the moment, in the now of sitting on the beach, walking through the woods, or working at Macy’s. In doing laundry and cooking dinner. In reading poetry and scripture, in drinking tea, and falling asleep. It’s the grace to be alive and open to the wonder of each bit of life that I’m looking for.

Being still in the midst of creation nurtures that prayer in us. It’s always been so, as the psalmist says: The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world (Psalm 19, 1-4).

PHOTO: Jennifer Stephens

PHOTO: Jennifer Stephens

© 2014 Mary van Balen

“…the inland soul to sea…”

“…the inland soul to sea…”

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the houses—past the headlands—
Into deep Eternity—

Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?

-Emily Dickinson

With the surf pounding beside us, my daughter and I walked the beach this afternoon. My lungs appreciate deep breaths of salty sea air. My heart and soul appreciate the gift of the sea. Emily Dickinson had it right. For this inland soul anyway, going to the ocean is cause for deep joy.

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