Mary van Balen — Page 20

April 23, 2014 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

Canonization Unease

Next Sunday, Pope Francis will canonize two very different popes, John XXII and John Paul II. It is a politically astute move since elevating one or the other could have been seen as “victory” for the followers of one over the other. The two popes were very different men who left behind vastly different legacies.

Those who know me know, of the two camps, I fall in behind John XXIII. He was the pope who called the Second Vatican Council to open the windows of the Church letting fresh air swirl around as I was coming of age in a Catholic family and elementary school. The changes begun by VCII went beyond moving from Latin into vernacular in the Mass or increased lay participation in the same. The council engaged the Roman Catholic Church with the modern world and produced documents that influenced the course of the Roman Catholic Church for decades. Still do. But could do more…

John XXIII is remembered as the “good pope,” the one who walked the streets of Rome to meet the people, who was the pastor rather than theologian. (His studies were in Church History.)

John Paul II was also a man of great influenced not only on the Church but also on the world once he moved onto its stage. He is often credited with playing a large part in bringing down the Communist regime in Eastern Europe. He reached out to people of other faiths, praying in a mosque and at the West Wall in Jerusalem. He called together leaders of many faiths to pray for peace at Assisi. And he reached out to the young Catholics with his charismatic ways.

On the home front, however, he was, as John L. Allen Jr. said on the occasion of JPII’s death, a pope who “leaves behind the irony of a world more united because of his life and legacy, and a church more divided.” (See NCR editorial “New Papal saints have flaws as well as greatness.”) Some will say the divisions began with VCII.

Naming these two different men “saints” does not make them so, but simply expresses the Church’s conviction that indeed they are enjoying eternal life with the God they gave their lives to serve. It also holds them up as role models for those of us still on our way. This is where my unease enters. Holy people are not required to hold the same political beliefs. They do not have to share the same vision for the direction the Church should go. They are people with histories and experiences that shaped them. They are not perfect. It is not JPII’s vision of the Church, more conservative than my own, that gives me pause. It is his handling the sexual abuse of children and the protection of hierarchy who shielded pedophiles in their dioceses. His calling Cardinal Law to be archpriest of a major basilica in Rome after he resigned in disgrace as archbishop of Boston was devastating. At least to me and to many others outraged by the ability of bishops to transfer known pedophiles from parish to parish or across the country.

We all have faults and need God’s Grace and mercy. I’m not saying I don’t think JPII is a saint as Maureen Dowd says in today’s New York Times op-ed. I am saying the time isn’t right. I’m not comfortable with holding him up as a role model when the RCC has yet to deal with the role of hierarchy in the sex abuse scandal in a way that holds them accountable. I hope Pope Francis will address this issue. Until someone does, the healing cannot be complete.

Many if not most will disagree with me, I suppose, and the canonization will go forward, and life will go on. So will the Church’s struggle to come to grips with the scope of the abuse and the depth of anguish left in its wake. And with the clericalism that allowed it to continue for decades.

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: clericalism, John Paul II, John XXIII, mercy, Pope Francis, sainthood, sex abuse scandal

April 19, 2014 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

A Quiet Priest

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

As is her custom, a friend of mine invited some women friends to her home for a Holy Thursday prayer and dinner. This year, four of us gathered around her table, sang, read a reflection, and shared food. During the evening, she told us each was invited because of the ministries we have been living for years. One woman was the first (and surprising to me) the only Black American principal in her diocesan school system. She remembered flaming crosses lit along the street the day she was appointed. She continues to work with young people and is active in the Ladies of Peter Claver association. Another woman has been organizing her parish’s religious education for years. Our hostess particularly noted her work with the teens and how she has been able to encourage and inspire them, not easy task as anyone who works with young people know.

Our friend chose to focus on my ministry of writing columns, articles, and books, which has spanned decades. At the moment, waiting is a big part of my “work,” waiting for an agent to find a home for my latest book. And our hostess is well-known in the area for her work with women, often poor and marginalized. The list of her work would take a post of its own, but her prophetic voice has always spoken clearly for the truth she knows, no matter how her message is received.

After dinner and before dessert, we prayed together and blessed one another, poured water over hands that have worked hard over the years to be priest to God’s people. Of course, all are called to holiness, as Vatican II documents proclaim. All share in the common priesthood of Christ through their baptism. Still, as I sat in the presence of these women, I wondered again about the Catholic Church’s refusal to admit women to the order of priesthood.

I thought about women around the world who know the call from God, they know themselves to be “priest,” and yet they must do their work quietly. Often, their efforts meet resistance. I read that Pope Francis is open to the idea of married men being ordained. He doesn’t seem so open to ordaining women.

As I sat with these women and prayed, I gave thanks for those women who, called to priest God’s people in a special way, do so as best as they are able, faithful to their call, even if the Roman Catholic institution has yet to recognize what is being lived before their eyes.

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: catholic, equality, faith, grace, Holy Thursday, hope, humility, lent, Pope Francis, priesthood, women

April 16, 2014 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

Spring Snow

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

A friend of mine observed that, while most were complaining about snow on April 15, she reveled in it. I share her feelings. Not a hot weather person, I don’t look forward to hot, humid summer days. (Of course, if I am near a beach, that is a different story!) Cold, crisp days are welcome, anytime. There is something special about a spring snow. It dusts early flowers and budding shrubs with a reminder of the season that provides time and rest necessary for some of spring flowers to bloom, like tulips and daffodils. No cold weather, no blooms.

Other plants have a variety of mechanisms that help them survive winter. All involve using less nourishment. The plants slow down or become dormant. Water can be a problem if it freezes in plant cells, like water in pipes: it expands and bursts the cells. Amazingly, some plants move the water out of the cells and store it in spaces between them.

Like bulbs and plants that live through winter’s harsh conditions, I periodically need time to rest, regroup, and prepare to resume a busy life. I can’t go full bore all the time. Luckily, I don’t have to wait for weather to change. My “winters” can be self-generated by retreating into quiet, not filling up my calendar, and saying “no” more often. Not selfish. Self preserving.

Sometimes life provides the winter season when I don’t want it: Illness, dying relationships, loss of a job, death of someone close. Events I cannot control can bring life as I know it to a screeching halt. It can be uncomfortable. It can lead me to drawing a hard shell around me wounded self, like plants that develop sturdy seed coats to protect potential life until conditions are favorable.

Yesterdays snow, lying lighting on pansies on my porch and more destructively on magnolia blooms across the street, remind me that life has many seasons, all of them good. All of them with purpose and gifts. I will try to remember this while sweating and miserable in late July.

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: creation, hope, retreat, snow, spring, winter

April 10, 2014 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

Being an Appreciator

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

Originally published in The Catholic Times, April 13, 2014, Volume 63:27

A good friend, Rita, once said years ago that she knew herself to be an appreciator: an appreciator of God revealed in the world of creation, of people, of life. I thought of her when I read a reflection by Carole Crumley, Episcopal priest and Shalem Institute’s Senior Program Director. Carole’s morning prayer practice is gazing at the world outside in her backyard, enjoying watching the day wake up as she does. In the reflection she mentions poet Mary Oliver, one of my favorites, whose poetry celebrates the glorious sacred in every day. Oliver, like Crumley, and my friend Rita, is an appreciator.

I’ve often told classes of aspiring journalers and writers that writing helps me stay “wide awake” as I move through life. It helps me notice and appreciate. As spring arrives after a particularly relentless winter, many of us notice the first crocuses and daffodils, the forsythia blooming, the feel of soft earth that just weeks ago was hard and unmoving beneath our feet. Winter makes us into appreciators, at least for a while.

We quickly become accustomed to green crowned trees, warm air, and colorful blooms. Before long many of us will be complaining of the heat and finding refuge in air-conditioned spaces, alert for cool breezes and cooler temperatures. So goes the cycle. The sense of wonder and joy seems greatest at boundary times: winter into spring; Lent into Easter; sickness into health; danger into safety. Then it fades.

The call to be an appreciator or “pray-er” requires one to find the extraordinary cloaked in the ordinary, to marvel at our planet circling the sun even when the sun’s heat is oppressive, to see the Divine Mystery even when it is lodged in someone we don’t like.

Routine may be the greatest challenge to those who desire a poet’s heart or a saint’s prayer. How quickly we look past what surrounds us everyday, longing for something to lift our spirits or inspire us, when we tromp over miracles piled underfoot.

Artists of all types help us see these wonders more clearly. Hasn’t your heart moved at the beauty of a close-up photograph of something very plain: a tea cup, blue paint peeling off an old door, weeds pushing up through cracks in sidewalks? Haven’t you become lost in the light of a van Gogh painting? It’s by looking closely at what we all walk past everyday and wondering at it enough to celebrate it in words, music, or form, that artists awaken the poet and saint in us all.

Mary Oliver writes in her poem, “When Death Comes,” “When it’s over, I want to say: all my life/ I was a bride married to amazement… I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.”

I think that the Incarnation and the love that impelled the Creator to walk this earth with us, to eventually die for love of it and us rather than resort to grasping at power and control, invites us to live as poet and saint. Night imparts an appreciation of day, as does day of night. Winter gives us a heart for spring. Lent, a desire for Easter. Routine hides singularity.

Jesus was an appreciator. He saw the Glory of the Divine in poor fishermen and women spurned by society or the men in their lives. He saw majesty in lilies and grace in the poor widow’s gift of pennies. His celebration of all life challenged those who would cherish life only on their own terms. He accepted death at the hands of the extraordinary and powerful only to witness to the victory of what, at first glace, seemed ordinary and weak. An itinerant preacher of love and service, easily dismissed by most, conquered death and invites us to do the same: to see with him the Glory of God infused into every moment, even the darkest, to expect to find wonder and Presence, and to celebrate it by the way we live our lives.

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: appreciator, creation, Grace in the Moment, Mary Oliver, Shalem, spirituality

March 24, 2014 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

Ordinary Grace

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

I had a marvelous friend who was a great artist, Marvin Triguba. Once, when I marveled at the way he captured light in his paintings, he said, “That’s how I see, and I paint what I see.” He wondered aloud, “doesn’t everyone see light that way?”

No, I would have to say. Not in such a conscious way. Of course, light creates shadows and bright spaces. It gives form and definition to what we see. It entered Marvin’s eyes as it did mine, but what his brain did with that raw material was astounding. Me? Sometimes I recognize the ordinary grace that comes with light.

I thought of Marvin a couple of days ago when I looked into the dining room and was stunned by the beauty of morning light playing across the hardwood floors. Some of the boards seemed all light. Others, darker in hue, glowed. I allowed the beauty of that moment to enter not only my eyes and brain, but also my soul.

This morning, when I turned into the living room from the hall, my eyes were bathed in bright light filtering through half-opened mini-blinds and green leaves in a variety of shapes and shades. I drew a quick breath and moved toward the window, putting myself in a place where the light would bathe me, too. Grace.

Isn’t that prayer? Intentionally putting ourselves into a soul space that is open to receive the Holy pouring into it? Longing for Presence as my plants, and my soul, longed for light this morning?

Artist God, who floods the world in Glory, enter my heart. Flood my soul with light that shows not only bright places there, but also shadow places. Open my inner eye to see the beauty of myself as you have made me. The beauty of creation. I give thanks for the artists, like Marvin, that you have given to the world. Their vision and work remind us of the Grace of light.

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: creation, grace, Grace in the Moment, light, Marvin Triguba, prayer, Presence

March 19, 2014 By Mary van Balen 1 Comment

Snowdrops

I saw snowdrops today, spread with abandon across a friend’s yard. Flowers! Spring, rumored to be coming soon, is on the way. After this relentless winter, flowers atop green stems are a welcome sight. Forsythia has not yet bloomed, so, according to my grandmother, we have at least three more snows to go, but I don’t mind. Today’s snowdrops were a seal on the promise of warmer days ahead. “Have a little faith,” they seemed to say. “Remember other years. Spring always comes.”

Of course it has. Millennium after millennium spring has followed winter. We all know that. But sometimes, in the midst of cold and biting winds, we allow ourselves to wonder, perhaps not if spring will come, but when. We grow tired of waiting. A warm day here and there in the past few weeks has been a tease and makes the cold even colder.

“It’s not below zero,” my daughter said a couple of days ago. “We’ve had days much colder than this. Why does it feel SO bitterly cold today?”

Perhaps it has to do with expectation. With having had a taste. A glimpse. The sun is out. The day before saw the temperature reach 50, and we mistook the moment for an announcement that winter was over.

I think of the three who went with Jesus up the high mountain and saw him transfigured before their eyes. There was their friend, their teacher, in all his glory. Peter was ready to build tents, ready to stay. “The wait is over,” he may have said to himself. “No more parables and hardships, and mystery or trying to figure out what Jesus is saying.” The struggles and dilemmas were coming to an end. The good times had arrived and he, for one, would be happy to settle in and enjoy.

Alas, not so. It was a glimpse, and then it was gone. There were more roads to walk. More mystery to embrace. More suffering. I wonder if, during those long days between Jesus’ death and resurrection, if Peter remembered how Jesus looked that day. If he had, would it have given him hope? Or maybe the days were so dark that he could not remember the glory he saw or trust that it could not be snuffed out even by death. Maybe having seen Jesus’ glorified self made the experience of those three days more bitter. Peter had seen what could have been but was no longer.

Like experiencing spring following winter year after year, we have the advantage of knowing that resurrection followed Jesus’ death. Yet, in the midst of our own spiritual winters or the groaning of our world struggling with countless injustice and atrocities, we can forget. “Where is God?” we wonder and perhaps doubt the Holy One is still around.

Our lives seem impossible, too difficult, too complicated, too messed up, to be good again.

Today’s snowdrops remind me that the glimpse of glory does not lie. God is present. Resurrection follows death. The wind will not always feel so bitterly cold.

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: death, grace, hope, promise, resurrection, snowdrops, spring

March 6, 2014 By Mary van Balen 2 Comments

Lent: Winter, Flowers, and Pete Seeger

retreat bouquet from daughters Originally published in The Catholic Times, March 9, 2014 issue

A lover of winter, even I am ready for spring this year. Snow, ice, and frigid temperatures just keep coming. And coming. As I arranged a small “prayer table” in my dining area, I decided to add flowers. Some years I have placed small branches in a vase or a container of stones and bulbs, forcing them to sprout and bloom by the end of Lent. This year, I am starting with blooms. I’m not feeling particularly “spiritual.” I need a reminder that even in the midst of winter, spiritual as well as physical, God’s love is present.

Besides flowers, the space holds a book of Scripture readings, a Tibetan singing bowl to call me to prayer, a small, bronze cross, and some bits of nature gathered or given by friends. A candle sits atop a tall wrought iron stand fashioned for me by my daughter many years ago. For some reason, this year I think I will need all these sacramental objects to keep me focused and hopeful.

It’s not just winter weather that has made my spirit weary. Life has been busy with writing projects, healing, and work. News of world conflicts, genocide, drought and famine, while not unique to this moment, weighs particularly heavy on my heart. Closer to home, political rancor and intolerance continue to grab headlines. Our world needs hope. It needs Easter.

Winter has not been without moments of beauty and grace. One was a sing-along gathering people from around the city to remember and honor Pete Seeger who died at the end of January, ninety-four years young. Parking a few blocks away from the Mennonite church where it was held, I joined others walking in the street to avoid icy, unshoveled sidewalks. The space was packed. Led by a trio on guitar, banjo, and bass, we raised our voices (in harmony, no less), singing the old songs. It felt good. The day Pete Seeger died, I took my guitar out from under my bed and played for a couple of hours, wondering why I didn’t do that much anymore. Singing and playing are prayer for me, much like writing.

“This Lent, I’ll sing more,” I told myself.

Pete Seeger used to say that we shouldn’t wish for a great leader. Instead, we should hope for lots and lots of good leaders who work hard right where they are. Think globally. Act locally. It will be participation that saves the world, he’d say.

Lent is like that for me, this year. I’m trying to nurture the awareness of being part of something much bigger than myself, bigger than my little world of home and work, family and friends. Jesus gave us the big picture, the call the help in bringing the kingdom. But he calls us to
“act locally.” He didn’t ask his followers to become national figures or world leaders. He called them to love one another. To respect and to serve, right where they were.

When those he healed wanted to go with him, he often told them to stay put and tell their story to those with whom they lived and worked. It’s harder to do that. Leaving one’s routine behind sounds exciting. It’s easier to love people we don’t know that well.

It’s easier to think about big events and projects than about calling our political representatives, taking time to visit with a grumpy neighbor, or becoming aware of how we might live more consciously of our effect on the planet. Following Jesus is more little steps than giant leaps. It’s more nitty-gritty than glitz.

Lent’s about embracing death, sure of life to come. It’s also about enjoying flowers in the wintertime. It’s about giving ourselves down time to remember that even when we don’t feel God with us or in our world, the Holy One lives in us all. Lent reminds me of this winter that prepares the earth for spring.

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: Easter, grace, lent, love, Pete Seeger, Presence, spring, winter

March 5, 2014 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

Lent: “Good Enough”

Painting by Richard Duarte Brown

I was talking with a Buddhist friend about Lent the other day. She asked if I were giving up chocolate. Her mother gives that up every year. I did when I was growing up. No wonder a big chocolate rabbit looked great in my Easter basket! “No,” I said. I hadn’t decided what I would do yet, but it would have more to do with helping me open up to God’s Grace and Presence in me and in the world that in banishing a particular food from my Lenten menu.

Not that altering my eating habits might not be on my list. Sometimes when I am tired or stressed, I resort to food to help me through. No food in particular, but at those times I usually clean out “sweet” before I go for “healthy.” Perhaps I could turn to reading a good book, or having a conversation with God before heading to the pantry. I could do something that feeds my spirit, that nurtures hope, that helps me see beauty and Presence. Those practices could bring peace and rest to a restless soul.

“My mom could give up negative ‘self-talk’,” my friend said. “She is always putting herself down.”

True. Recognizing God’s Presence in ourselves, God’s love for us, is difficult if what we see in the mirror of our mind is never good enough. Before we can experience God in the world, before we can serve and love others, we must love and appreciate ourselves. For some, the focus on “giving something up” reinforces their sense of always falling short. Of never being “enough.”

The events Lent/Easter call to mind for reflection tell us just the opposite: We are already enough. We are so “enough” that the Holy Mystery wants to dwell within us. Wants to walk our difficult paths through life as a companion and support. Walking the earth, Jesus showed us just how “enough” every person is. “Enough” to love. “Enough” to die for rather than betray.

I’m not saying giving up chocolate is off the table. Self-discipline starts in little ways. It should lead to other things. To being able to look at ourselves, at those in our lives, at those suffering in our country and around the world…To be able to look at those who are different than we are and to see everyone of us as God does: Gloriously enough. And then, somehow through how we live our lives, letting them know.

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: grace, hope, inclusion, lent, self acceptance

February 6, 2014 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

Ah! Ordinary Time

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

First published in The Catholic Times, February 9, 2014

Having grown up in a Catholic family, I’m steeped in ritual and the liturgical calendar. I love Advent, its wreath and candles and anticipation, Christmas with its joy and light in the dark winter. Lent with its weeks of refocusing and preparing to embrace the paschal mystery that ends in the glory of Easter is a part of moving into spring each year. Still, I have to admit to having a particular fondness for ordinary time, the liturgical “season” we are presently observing.

It provides a different type of spiritual journey that requires no particular practices, no gifts to buy, no rituals. Some years, when Lent comes quickly on the heels of Epiphany, I feel uneasy. Last year, two weeks of February hadn’t passed before Ash Wednesday arrived, too soon for me. I prefer a longer stretch of time between putting away Christmas ornaments and getting out the purple cloth that drapes over a small prayer table in the dining room.

It’s not that there’s nothing special about daily routines and happenings. It’s just the opposite. When focus is not on an upcoming holiday or celebration, we can celebrate the ordinary and simple things and discover anew just how full of grace they are. That’s often difficult since the familiar or unassuming can go unnoticed.

Thornton Wilder immortalized just how difficult recognizing the wonder of life is in his play, “Our Town,” when Emily asks the stage manager if anyone ever realizes life while they are living it. The stage manager answers, “No,” and then adds “Saints and poets maybe…they do some.”

Saints and poets. They both take time to be present to the glory of the moment, as simple as it may appear. They recognize the Sacred when the rest of us are hurrying by, preoccupied.

Jesus has a preference for the ordinary. He told stories full of seeds sprouting or not, of wedding feasts and wineskins. He wasn’t impressed by pretentious prayer practices and held up for our emulation the poor widow who gave her small coins rather than the wealthy who gave much more. He worked miracles with what was at hand: water and wine, loves and fishes, dirt and spit.

In Sunday’s gospel reading, Jesus compares his disciples to salt and light, two things so common that we often don’t give them much thought. Salt, a humble presence on the shelf that includes more exciting and exotic spices, adds zest and brings out flavors in food we eat every day. Light from a lamp is nothing spectacular. The lamp is small enough to fit under a basket! Jesus didn’t tell his followers that they should be like a blazing bonfire. A simple flame will do.

In fact, what we celebrate in the “big” liturgical seasons is really the infusion of Divine Presence into every aspect of life, no matter how simple. Each day we are called to “salt” life with the Love God has shared with us. We are called to shine the Light that dwells within us on those we meet each day. We are called to recognize the Holy Presence in the poor and oppressed and in those we encounter. We are called to embrace suffering as well as joy.

A young man takes a broom from the restaurant where he works and cleans snow from the car of an elderly couple he sees in the parking lot. A woman invites a homeless man in for lunch and coffee after paying him for weeding her garden. A retired teacher helps immigrants learn English. A poet rises early to write each day before heading into his “day job.” A daughter holds her elderly father’s hand as they sit, quietly in the nursing home, not saying a word. Someone does the grocery shopping. Someone cooks the meals. Someone notices the way the sun shines on the snow. Someone provides shelter for abused women. Someone listens. Someone holds. Someone visits prisons. Someone reads to a child.

The Holy One is recognized in the moment and in others. God is “born” into the world with every act of love and compassion. Jesus transforms the world with each “death” we embrace, and with every new step in life we are courageous enough to take. Ah. Ordinary Time.

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: Catholic liturgical, creation, Ordinary Time, Our Town, present to the moment, ritual ordinary, spirituality, Thornton Wilder

January 18, 2014 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

Faith and Science: What do they have to say to each other?

Global Cluster M15 from Hubble. Image Credit: ESA, Hubble, NASA

When she was about five, my daughter couldn’t sleep. When I checked in on her before turning in myself, I found her thoughtfully gazing at the glow-in-the-dark moon that looked back at her from the ceiling above her bed.

I asked what was on her mind she confided her conundrum: faith and science. Some people said people lived with dinosaurs and that the earth was not that old and that God created it in seven days. Science told her differently.

“I love God, but I love science, too. I don’t know which one to choose.”

Not “Good Night Moon” conversation. I assured her that she didn’t have to choose between them. That the Bible isn’t a science book. That it tells stories to help us understand that somehow, God started creation. That faith and science both search for truth and that they will both lead to God.

She slept, and I wondered what she might ask tomorrow.

Faith and Science. What do they have to say to each other? This question has been around for centuries. Are we better listeners now? I found this article, Conversations on the Intersections between Faith and Science, by Trent Gilliss on Bill Moyers.com. It is a selection of audio interviews from Krista Tippett’s NPR show, On Being. This collection provides links to her interviews with a variety of guests including two Jesuit astronomers from the Vatical Observatory and Freeman Dyson and Paul Davies who are both theoretical physicists discussing Einstein’s God. Bookmark this because the audio are fifty some minutes long, and you will want to return to listen to each of them. Unless, of course, you have a day to give to listening and pondering these questions and your own experiences of how faith and science can inform each other. Not a bad way to spend a Saturday!

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: Albert Einstein, Bill Moyers, creation, faith, Krista Tippett, physics, questions, science, Vatican Observatory