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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Scientists Say Return for Efforts is Public Health, Not Profit
January 15, 2022 By 2 Comments

Scientists Say Return for Efforts is Public Health, Not Profit

My daughter forwarded an article from today’s Guardian that energized me. Think about it: people doing something to make the world a better place and not concerned with making a profit. Some Texas scientists are doing just that. One of the lead scientists, Dr. Maria Bottazzi, from Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine is quoted in the article, explaining why they are not seeking to patent the vaccine:  

“We want to do good in the world. This was the right thing to do, and this is what we morally had to do. We didn’t even blink. We didn’t think, ‘how can we take advantage of this?’ You see now that if more like us would have been more attuned to how the world is so inequitable and how we could have helped from the beginning so many places around the world without thinking ‘what’s going to be in it for me?’, we could have basically not even seen these variants arise.”

Amen.

Earlier this month, I was surprised that Kroger hiked their prices for the BinaxNOW rapid Covid test kits. “Why,” I wondered, “just when we are facing a surge in Covid Omicron cases and people need tests to help stop the spread?”

What I learned was that, in September, Kroger, Walmart, and Amazon had reached an agreement with the Biden administration to sell the tests at cost for 100 days to help curb the spread. Once the 100 days were up, the prices went up at least $5. In many cases more.

What retailer needs to make a profit from tests that can slow down the spread of a viral disease amid a pandemic? Surely, they make enough money from everything else they sell. I called the grocery store where I shop to see what they charge for the same tests (when they have them, which they don’t as I write). The pharmacy intern cheerfully said, “I think they usually sell for $30.” When sold at cost, they were around $14.

Where is the sense of common good? Where is the spirit of humanitarianism that guides the Texas scientists? It’s immoral to make a profit on something that is desperately needed around the world to combat Covid. Hospitals across the country are reeling under the surge of new cases. Many are filled and forced to turn away people with other illnesses. No beds available. Healthcare workers are stretched beyond their limits. And stores need to make money on Covid tests? No.

Read the Guardian article to restore a little faith in fellow human beings. Then write your U.S. Senators and Representatives. Write the President. Ask them to instate a “no profit” mandate for these tests. Write the stores where you shop and express your dismay.

As Dr. Bottazzi says in the article: “We need to break these paradigms that it’s only driven by economic impact factors or return of economic investment. We have to look at the return in public health.”

Read: Texas scientists’ new Covid-19 vaccine is cheaper, easier to make and patent-free

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James Webb Space Telescope and “Holy Curiosity”
January 2, 2022 By 4 Comments

James Webb Space Telescope and “Holy Curiosity”

Early Christmas morning, I shut off the alarm and lay in bed, still tired after a late night. My cell phone dinged. Ahh, a daughter checking to see if I were watching NASA’s coverage of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) launch. Events like this are a family thing, shared virtually, often with a toast to celebrate success. I texted back, “Just getting up. Turning on the computer.” Too early for wine, tea was my drink of choice.

What a Christmas gift! After three decades of imagination, development, and global teamwork, the deep space telescope designed to give humanity a glimpse back in time to the beginnings of the universe was ready to launch. The European spaceport is in Kourou, French Guiana, on the edge of the Amazon rainforest near the equator. NASA TV provided stunning images: The Arian 5 rocket towering above the trees. A fiery liftoff. And a final a view of the James Webb, separated from the final stage of the rocket and moving past the earth toward deep space.

Humanity’s Last Glimpse of the James Webb Space Telescope
 Credit: Arianespace, ESA, NASA, CSA, CNES

Watching broadcasts of space missions is always emotional for me. In 2017, twenty years after beginning its journey of discovery of around Saturn and its moons, the spacecraft Cassini sent its final images as it dove into the planet’s atmosphere. I stopped preparing dinner and gave full attention to my laptop perched on the microwave, streaming coverage. When the last image disappeared and Cassini burned up like a meteor, I cried.

Watching the JWST launch was no different. The scope and complexity of the mission. The passion to explore the universe. The cooperation of thousands of people and space agencies around the globe. The perseverance to work through setbacks. The vulnerability of broadcasting the event despite possible failure. These things stir the soul.

Imagine, a telescope so big that it was folded like intricate origami to fit into the faring that protected it as it punctured a hole in the atmosphere. Imagine, a giant mirror over 21 feet across and a multi-layered sunshield unfolding like butterflies emerging from their chrysalises.

NASA: Animation by Adriana Manrique Gutierrez

Imagine. Someone did. Lots of people did. Their curiosity, skill, and determination led to the launch of the telescope that won’t stop until it reaches a spot along the sun-earth axis over a million miles away.

Images of the launch and NASA’s informative videos have stayed with me, feeding my sense of wonder. During the past week it drew me to poetry, books, and podcasts that explore in different ways the secrets of the universe, our place in it, and the mystery of faith.

After the launch, I pulled out an old coffee table book, The Home Planet, a collection of magnificent photos and reflections of space explorers who have orbited the Earth. Many wrote of a heightened appreciation of the interconnectedness of all things on earth and the overwhelming beauty of our planet after viewing it against the black emptiness of space. Looking through its pages, I marveled at the evolution of space exploration, culminating in JWST’s million-mile journey. Will its revelations move humanity closer to acknowledging the interdependence of all creation? Will it move those on earth to take better care of the planet? Will this encounter with the inconceivable immensity and complexity of the universe foster humility as well as expand knowledge?

Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, said after the launch, “The promise of Webb is not what we know we will discover; it’s what we don’t yet understand or can’t yet fathom about our universe. I can’t wait to see what it uncovers!”

I wondered, in my own life, how willing I am to admit that I don’t understand? Not only the workings of the universe, but closer to home, realities at work in everyday life. There is much I don’t know or can’t even imagine. For instance, the history and effects of systemic racism and oppression of the marginalized in this country. Am I delving deeper? Educating myself? How willing am I to listen to the truth spoken by those kept on the edges of society? Do I have the humility to hear, to listen with the ear of the heart? To be transformed by it?

Poetry was my next reading stop. Mary Oliver’s “Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?” speaks of looking long and deep:

There are things you can’t reach. But

you can reach out to them, and all day long…

… I look; morning to night I am never done with looking.

Looking, I mean not just standing around, but standing around

     as though with your arms open…

I imagined the arms of the JWST open wide, gathering energy of the sun. The giant golden eye of a mirror, looking out, slowly gathering in light from billions of years ago. And I thought of my standing with open arms and open heart, ready to receive the Grace of Divine Presence. It’s often not visible or obvious to me, but God is no less present for my inability to perceive. The important thing is to develop a practice of openness “all day long,” never being done with looking.

When it arrives at its destination almost a month after launch, JWST will be carefully positioned in the second Lagrange point that allows it to orbit the sun while remaining in the shadow of the earth. In this place, JWTS’s sunshield will protect it from heat and light from the sun, earth, moon, and even from itself! This is critical for the collection of faint infrared light, a process easily disrupted by other sources of light or heat.

I often think of a comment made by Michael McGregor, author of Pure Act: The Uncommon Life of Robert Lax. When asked if Lax would want others to emulate his life, McGregor was quick to respond. No. What was important to Lax was that people find a place where grace flows for them and put themselves there often.

Grace flows in different places for everyone. Even in different places at different times in a single individual’s life. Putting oneself there is important. The “place” could be simply silence or meditation. Time in the woods, along a beach, taking long walks, or gazing at the night sky. It could be working at a food pantry or homeless shelter, or having conversation with a good friend. Journaling. Painting. We need to spend time in places that shield us from too much “interference” of all types—even from ourselves. To be free of things that hinder the reception of Love, constantly shared, drenching creation.

Sometimes finding that place is not going somewhere. It’s just a matter of turning the heart.

In a conversation with Krista Tippett, Jeff Chu shared some wisdom from the new book he worked on with Rachel Held Evans and which he finished after her death in 2019. Wholehearted Faith was published last month.  Speaking about the need for more love, tenderness, and fierce advocacy for justice, he said, “… And so many of us just need a little reminder from time to time that love is there. Love is there if you pay attention. Love is there if you turn your hearts just a little bit.”

Standing under the night sky allows me to “turn my heart,” to open to Love.

In his comments after the launch, Bill Nelson recalled the words of Psalm 19: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the firmament shows his handiwork.”

Indeed, God’s splendor is on display in the stars and galaxies and mysterious beauty of the cosmos. The incarnation celebrated during the Christmas season, this embodied Presence, has inspirited creation from the moment the universe began and continues in every person, creature, and bit of matter here or millions of miles in space.

Just as we cannot imagine how the discoveries of the JWST will affect humanity’s science, spirits, or way of living, we cannot imagine the transforming power of the ongoing incarnation.

The human drive to explore the galaxies, using every bit of human knowledge, skill, and talents is fueled by curiosity and wonder.

Searching our hearts and all that is around us. Paying attention. Looking for the Sacred in our midst. This passion is driven by the longing for meaning, for God, and by the desire to know that we are part of a story far bigger than ourselves. One we can never fully comprehend.

As expressed in Wholehearted Faith, “… many of us have found a renewed sense of possibility when we’ve realized how much of God’s beauty remains to be explored — and that the life of faith is also a life of holy curiosity.”

Thank you NASA and its global partners for an extraordinary Christmas gift, one that reminds us to wonder, to search, and to expect the unexpected. Not only in our universe, but also in our experience of God-with-us.

SOURCES AND RESOURCES

Books

The Home Planet: Conceived and edited by Kevin W. Kelley for the Association of Space Explorers

“Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does It End?” in Why I Wake Early by Mary Oliver

Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans and Jeff Chu

Online

OnBeing with Krista Tippet 12/23/21 Jeff Chu: A Life of Holy Curiosity

NASA JWST Sites – Follow links for more information, images, and videos of the JWST

James Webb Space Telescope Homepage

NASA’s Webb Blog where you can keep up with new information

JWST launch:  Official NASA Broadcast on YouTube

James Webb Space Telescope: Goddard Space Flight Center

Where is Webb

About Webb Orbit

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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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Wisdom and Hope: Saving an Ancient Olive Tree and Each Other
October 27, 2021 By 8 Comments

Wisdom and Hope: Saving an Ancient Olive Tree and Each Other

In Cuglieri, a small town in western Sardinia, people have come together to save “the Patriarch,” their cherished olive tree ravaged by wildfires that engulfed the region in July. Estimated to be 1,800 – 2,000 years old, it has been a symbol of a way of life.  

In a New York Times article,1 Maria Franca Curcu, the councilor with responsibility for social policies and culture for the municipality, was quoted as saying “the Patriarch is our identity.” Saving him, she says, would be a message of hope to those who have lost so much in this fire. Farmers lost 90% of their olive trees and their livelihood. Of the 2,600 inhabitants, 1,000 were forced to evacuate.

What struck me about this story was the way people came together with hope of reviving the tree. A professor and director of the botanical garden at the University of Cagliari offered his expertise. Despite the 11-foot-wide trunk having burned for two days, efforts were being made to nurture what life remains deep within. The team cooled the soil and covered it with straw. They wrapped the trunk with jute tarps. A local plumber created an irrigation system to keep the soil moist and to deliver an organic fertilizer every 10 days. A construction company built a structure to do what the now non-existent crown of leaves would have done: provide shade.

The hope is not that the tree will return to its former glory, but that peripheral roots will rejuvenate, provide nutrients to the stump, and enable new shoots to appear in the fall. The result would be something new, growing from the original.

The plight of the Patriarch is a metaphor for our times: The status quo is no longer viable. The pandemic has exposed diseased parts of political and economic systems that should not be sustained. Inequalities that exist around the world are impossible to ignore. The gap between the ability of rich countries and poor ones to obtain vaccines is one example. In day-to-day life, Covid has affected how people shop, work (or not), gather, communicate, pray, and support one another. The murder of George Floyd pushed awareness of racial bigotry and police abuse beyond the tipping point. Effects of climate change are manifesting faster than expected, resulting in, among other things, an increase in severe weather and the scope and severity of wildfires like the one that burned through Cuglieri.

What is happening in the world calls for a response similar to that of those dealing with the aftermath of the wildfire: communal efforts and hope:

  • Listen to experts – follow scientists and those trained in dealing with trauma and growth.
  • Practice self-care – seek out what you need to heal.
  • Engage in service – care for those in your “village” or donate to groups equipped to respond when you can’t.
  • Be open to change – accept that the future will look different as we let go of old ways that don’t serve the common good.

For me, the story of the Patriarch highlighted the power of symbols. Seeing that tree gave many people hope, a sense of who they are and of well-being. I began to think about the symbols in my life that are a source of hope. I have scallop shells scattered around my house. I hadn’t thought of them as symbols of hope but of pilgrimage. However, people don’t pilgrimage without hope in the process. Now, when I see the shells, I will remember the Holy Presence that is both the call and the destination, and of the promise that God is with us.

What are your symbols of hope? What can you look at each day to remind you that you are not traveling in the world alone? That Goodness remains in the world. That in the end, Love prevails. Maybe photos of loved ones or of places where you felt Sacred Presence will stir hope in your heart. Perhaps a Cross or holy book. A candle. A painting. A poem or a prayer written out and posted on your refrigerator or sitting on your table.

Surround yourselves with symbols of hope. And like the villagers of Cuglieri, don’t expect what will rise from the suffering to look the same as what has been lost. If new shoots don’t grow from the old stump, the villagers may plant a young tree that will grow into a Patriarch for new generations. Like them, we are called to have faith in community. And in hope.

© 2021 Mary van Balen

  1. Sardinian Village Tries to Save an Ancient Tree Scorched by Fire 

Photos: Mary van Balen

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“Breath-Praise” – The Simple Prayer of Being
October 5, 2021 By 10 Comments

“Breath-Praise” – The Simple Prayer of Being

I am slowly reading my way through Mary Oliver’s Devotions, a thick book of her poems that she selected for publication in 2017, just two years before her death. I think of Devotions as a parting gift. I’m less than halfway through the 442 pages of brilliance, unveiling life’s glory and grace.

Balckburnian Warbler perched in shrub
Blackburnian Warbler
Photo: Michael Delphia

And so, I found myself, a week after the arrival of Autumn, reading a poem celebrating summer! No matter. Each season has its own gifts as well as those it shares with the other three. In this case, that gift is birdsong. A Meadowlark’s to be specific. The sound broke in to Oliver’s consciousness while she worked on a summer poem. As I read the finished piece,1 a few lines captured my attenition:

“…the faint-pink roses / that have never been improved, but come to bud // open like little soft sighs / under the meadowlark’s whistle, its breath-praise, // its thrill-song, its anthem, its thanks, its // alleluia. Alleluia, oh Lord.”

“… its breath-praise …”

“Breath-praise.”  In.

 “Breath-praise.” Out.

The meadowlark. Me. We both have “breath-praise.” Most often unconscious, its participation in Grace. Immersion in Presence, Breath, Life. A simple prayer of being. When done with awareness, breath-praise is the recognition of a reality larger than oneself, reverencing the creator, the force, of which one is a part.

The time of business is no different from the time of prayer.

Brother Lawrence

Breathing it in. Breathing it out. Brother Lawrence, the 17th century Carmelite, knew this truth. A lowly lay brother in a Parisian monastery, he is best known for his uncomplicated prayer of becoming aware of being in God’s presence throughout the day and carrying on a conversation with God in those moments. Lifting his heart in praise and recognizing the enveloping Sacred Presence in which he moved, Brother Lawrence, like the meadowlark, practiced “breath-praise.” He knew he had work to do (for years, it was in the monastery kitchen, which he did not like) and went about it simply. He didn’t need to be in a chapel or at Mass to pray.

One of his quotes adorned my refrigerator during my childrearing years: “The time of business is no different from the time of prayer. In the noise and clatter of my kitchen, I possess God as tranquilly as if I were upon my knees before the Blessed Sacrament. 2

I sometimes had trouble with the “tranquilly” part, but all in all, his sentiment was a great reminder of the holiness of life’s quotidian tasks.

Photos: Mary van Balen
red and yellow autum leaves against the sky
trees in yellow wood

In New Seeds of Contemplation,3 the great monk, mystic, and author, Thomas Merton wrote:

A tree gives glory to God by being a tree. For in being what God means it to be it is obeying God. It “consents,” so to speak, to God’s creative love … Therefore each particular being, in its individuality … gives glory to God by being precisely what God wants it to be here and now … Their inscape is their sanctity. It is the imprint of God’s wisdom and God’s reality in them.

Human beings, on the other hand, complicate things, including simply being the self God created each one to be. It’s difficult when voices from all kinds of places – the past, the media, culture, significant people in our lives – have their say and cloud the perception of just what “being oneself” means.

I often confuse what I have (or, more often, have not) accomplished with who I am. For example, the books I haven’t written overshadow the self that is given through countless meals prepared, laundry done, letters written, and the simple ways of living and loving that, as Merton wrote, are the “imprint of God” in me.

Writing is part of who I am (thus years and years of columns, posts, articles, and books), but not the whole of it. The temptation in our culture is to focus on major things. On “doing” not “being.”  One of these approaches cannot exist without the other. Life is a both/and endeavor. Br. Lawrence spent his monastic career doing his chores and in the simplicity of his tasks, he was being his true self. His prayer practice contributed to his sanctity, and sharing it provided inspiration for countless others across centuries.

Their inscape is their sanctity. It is the imprint of God’s wisdom and God’s reality in them.

Thomas Merton

Merton knew that being faithful to the God-spark within was all we need do. That looks different for each of person. For him, it included lots of writing: books, poetry, correspondence, articles. Also being a novice master. And, later, living alone in his hermitage.

Mary Oliver is a saint of attentiveness and gratitude. She noticed. She wandered and wondered through the natural world.  She loved. And she wrote.

What imago Dei resides in your center? What bit of the Sacred do you bring to every task you do and to every moment you are at rest? What song of gratitude might you add to the universe as you stand at the kitchen sink or the washing machine? When you weep for the world or rejoice with a child or friend? When you work? When you play? When you have no idea where you are going or when you are filled with enthusiasm for the next step?

October is a beautiful month to notice and be inspired by the unconscious praise that rises from the natural world. Opening our eyes, ears, and hearts to the wordless chant of praise that arises every day from every created thing, we can join in their prayer. Recognizing their holiness may stir our hearts with the desire to grow in willingness to be, like them, exactly as God has made us to be. Then our “Amen” will rise with theirs, not from our lips, but like the meadowlark, from our being.

Sources:

  1. Mary Oliver, “While I Am Writing a Poem to Celebrate Summer, the Meadowlark Begins to Sing,” Devotions (2017):203.
  2. Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God, (1985): 145.
  3. Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, (1972): 29-30.
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“Green” Wisdom from Hildegard
September 17, 2021 By 12 Comments

“Green” Wisdom from Hildegard

Hildegard of Bingen receiving a vision, dictating to her scribe and sketching on wax tablet. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Waking in the early morning hours and unable to return to sleep, I toasted whole wheat bread and brewed chamomile tea: comfort food. I read a little, but eventually focused on the lovely, golden liquid in a favorite mug. I cradled the cup in my hands, the heat relieving aching joints in my fingers. Every sip warming my body.

I thought of Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval mystic, who counted among her long list of creative accomplishments authoring a book, Physica, that outlined the healing properties of natural elements, including plants.

While drinking my tea, I imagined Hildegard in her monastery’s garden harvesting herbs and making an infusion to ease someone’s pain. “Did she drink chamomile tea?” I wondered. Likely. If not, something similar.

Hildegard has been on my mind. For the past couple of weeks, thanks to a small book club, I’ve been immersed in her music and writings, reading both some of her original work and books written about her. She was a medieval Benedictine nun and mystic, canonized a saint and named a Doctor of the Roman Catholic Church in 2012 (one of only four women recognized with that title). The list of her accomplishments would be amazing for a modern woman but is staggering considering the times in which she lived: visionary, prophet, poet, theologian, author, artist, composer, dramatist, preacher, healer, and an inexhaustible correspondent.

Her feast day is September 17 on both the Roman and Anglican calendars. To celebrate, I listened to a recording of clear voices singing songs she composed over 800 years ago and baked Hildegard’s “cookies of joy,” filling the kitchen with the aromas of nutmeg, cinnamon, and cloves. Hildegard provides a recipe of sorts and writes in Physica that these cookies, made with spelt flour, the spices above, and water, should be eaten often to lift the spirit and soothe the mind.

My kind of saint. She also liked beer and had recipes using wine infused with herbs to treat various maladies.

Eat them often. It will calm all bitterness of the heart and mind, open your heart and impaired senses, and make your mind cheerful. It purifies your senses and diminishes all harmful humors in you. It gives good liquid to your blood and makes you strong.

Hildegard of Bingen in Physica

But food isn’t what’s drawing me to her. It’s her experience of God in all things and all things in God. She had many names for God including Wisdom, Sapientia, the Word, the Holy Spirit. God’s life, viriditas, greenness flowing through everything that is. Like all mystics, she saw the wholeness of creation.

In The Windows of Faith: Prayers of Holy Hildegard, editor Walburga Storch, O.S.B. writes that for Hildegard, “The Spirit is the ‘life of life.’ For Hildegard life has a comprehensive meaning. Concretely and first of all it is creation. ‘Through you the clouds waft and the breezes blow, stones drip and brooks burst forth from their springs, making green things sprout from the earth.’ All creation in every one of its processes has to do with the life-giving Spirit of God. Wherever we encounter life we can experience the Spirit’s power and we are moved by God. ‘Life of the life of all created things, … you give life to every form” (17).

I have pulled Hildegard books off my office shelves to read her insights into the connectedness of all things – with one another and with God. Human beings are co-creators with God, she writes, and have responsibility to reverence and take care of the earth. Modern-day scientists reveal concrete evidence of nature’s interdependence. For example, Suzanne Simard, professor of Forest Ecology at the University of British Columbia, has shown through her research that trees communicate with each other and that the forest is not a collection of plants but rather a whole, a single organism. This is much like the wisdom and science of Aboriginal peoples-and mystics. (Her book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, was released earlier this year. You can listen to her interview with Krista Tippett on “On Being.”)

Whidbey Island
Photo: Mary van Balen
Whidbey Island
Photo: Mary van Balen

Not only scientists, but also poets, religious and world leaders, and concerned citizens are pleading for responsible care for creation.  But, in addition to people speaking out and working for meaningful responses to the climate crisis, there are others working to slow down or stop efforts to address climate change and unsustainable lifestyles. Some have ties to the fossil fuel industries (mining companies, lobbyists, corporations, politicians, etc.) and stand to profit personally from continued extraction and use of destructive energy sources.

On Hildegard’s feast, I am spending time with her music and writings. Pondering what I can do to live more responsibly. I’ll share dinner and my Hildegard cookies with friends and celebrate the Love that gives life and connects us all.

Scivias 1.6: The Choirs of Angels. From Rupertsberg manuscript, fol. 38r.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Quotes from Hildegard’s work that speak to the gift of creation, the challenges, and the opportunities of our times:

“All living creatures are sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance, emerging from God like the rays of the sun.”

“Every creature is a glittering, glistening mirror of Divinity.” 

“We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.

“Everything that is in the heavens, on the earth, and under the earth is penetrated with connectedness, penetrated with relatedness.” 

“Underneath all the texts, all the sacred psalms and canticles, these watery varieties of sounds and silences, terrifying, mysterious, whirling and sometimes gestating and gentle must somehow be felt in the pulse, ebb, and flow of the music that sings in me. My new song must float like a feather on the breath of God.”

“Praise of Wisdom

O power of Wisdom / you drew your circles, / encompassed the universe / on the one road / that leads to life. // You have three powers / like three wings: / The one carries you to the heights; / the second lifts itself from the earth; / but the third beats everywhere. // O Wisdom, to you all praise is due!”

Links to Hildegard’s Cookie recipes:

St. Hildegard Cookies

Saint Hildegard’s Cookies of Joy

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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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