Painting: The Good Samaritan by Asian Artist He Qi
“Good energy,” as my sister-in-law would say, has a life of its own, and last night it kept nine members of the spirituality group laughing and talking even after we had left the dinner table. Having moved into the living room, we presented a challenge to Noreen, the one who was charged with leading the unruly bunch in prayer and reflection.

I looked around the room and silently gave thanks for each person. We have been gathering once a month for seven years, committed to companioning one another as we move through life’s joys and sorrows. Years ago we christened our gathering place “Sabbath House” because it provided a safe place of rest, renewal, and prayer, things I crave these days as I scrabble through a particularly thorny patch.

Noreen had copied the gospel from her devotional magazine “Living With Christ.” Fr. George Smiga’s reflection on Last Sunday’s gospel of the Good Samaritan moved her, and she thought it would be meaningful to us as well. We began with an oral reading of parable.

“How many of us can identify with the priest in the story, walking sway from a difficult situation?” she asked. Everyone’s hand went up. “What about the Levite…the Samaritan?” The response was the same.

She looked down at the magazine, but I didn’t want her to continue, not yet.

“What about the man who was beaten?” I asked. “I identify with the man who was robbed.” As I said, this is a thorny patch.

That was where she was taking us. She read from the article and asked us to consider sharing some time, past or present, when we experienced God’s rescuing grace from an unexpected person or event, like the man in the story saved not by church leaders or those he assumed would help, but rather by a member of an outcast group he hated.

Stories flowed out of our hurts and times that challenged our faith and broadened our vision of who or what could bear God’s grace to us. Karl Rahner says all grace is mediated, coming to us through the world, but sometimes WHERE it comes from is surprising enough that we miss it all together.

As I drove home after the meeting, the image of lying in a ditch lingered; lying in a ditch, as Fr. Smiga had written, waiting for God’s rescuing grace. I am in a ditch much of the time, and even though someone or something eventually helps me out, I roll back in, or as was the case with the man in the parable, life beats me up, robs me, and throws me back down. One would think that after many years of being rescued, I would trust God’s Grace no matter who or what delivers it, but I don’t always. Instead I become angry at life’s unfairness, angry with the ones who “beat me up,” and angry with God who seems to stand by in silence. I become a dishrag that doesn’t want to get up off the couch or out of bed in the morning.

I also miss the lesson to be learned while I am laying there, eloquently voiced by a man suffering with aids who was offering a bit of Grace to a young man dying of the disease: On the other side of anger and suffering I will find peace and a more compassionate heart better able to reach out and offer God’s grace to another who is waiting in a ditch.
© 2010 Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen
The wedding stirred my emotional pot causing a variety of feelings to rise to the surface. Predictably, joy came first and remained dominant; how could it not in the face of the couples’ glorious happiness and love for each other? It spilled out of their eyes and faces, out of their gently touching hands, out of their smiles, and the rest of us, most seasoned veterans of the sacrament, soaked it up.

Hope filled my heart as well as I sat with the guests in rows of white folding chairs set up in the sun. The thought that the bride and groom are a good match pulled sadness along and “What ifs” threatened to ruin the moment. With practice I am becoming more adept dismissing those spoilers, and that is what I did.
Blessings bestowed by the bride and groom’s fathers were filled with words like “commitment” and “faithfulness,” and “long tradition” that drove straight into my heart, reminding me that my marriage was in the process of being dissolved. Not that we hadn’t been faithful. We had. Or committed. We had been that, too.

“We are being faithful,” I told myself, “faithful to who we are and where God is calling us now.” It is not easy, being honest with one’s self and with God. It can seem like lack of commitment to those looking on, but many who walk this path know differently.

I let go the grieving and sorrow and immersed myself in Love instead: Love who filled that happy space tucked into a maze of cornfields. Love shared through family and friends, old and new; Love who brought the young couple together and will walk with them through their lives; Love who is the main guest at celebrations like this, and who renews the spirits of all who allow themselves the Grace of being present to the moment.
© 2010 Mary van Balen

ALL PHOTOS: Mary van Balen
Shortly after an interview with a journalist from The Catholic Times about blogging, I fought the urge to call him back with another comment about the advantages to blogging: It took me out for a walk in a summer rain.

I used to walk in the rain often. Whether the drops were heavy, soaking through my thick hair to drip down my face or were more like a mist settling on the surface of my mane like shining drops caught in a spider’s web, I relished the openness to what nature had to offer.

This morning I used an umbrella not to protect me, but my camera. The original plan was to take a few photos to use in my blogs, but after just a few minutes I was splashing through deep puddles that filled the alley behind the house, much as I had done as a child.

A few dogs and neighbors backing out of their garages took note of my presence; otherwise, I was alone in a world transformed into a showplace of flowers, weeds, and water.

“Why don’t I do this more often?” I asked myself as I looked down at my Teva-ed feet covered in a muddy stream flowing from the center of the alley into the street. No wonder kids like to stomp into every inch of standing water they can find: The activity is delightful not to mention a relief after days of near 100˚ temperatures.

I took photos of sweet peas shooting above chain link fencing that gave it support and remembered splitting open pods and popping round, green seeds into my mouth. This summer is too young for good picking, but perhaps I will return to see if they still taste as sweet as they did to my ten-year-old self.

Hollyhocks reminded me of dolls my sisters and I made from upside-down blooms that became billowing skirts swirling beneath clothespin heads and pipe cleaner arms.

Like a giant mirror, the watery alley reflected cloudy skies back to the heavens. I wondered if the disturbance of ripples caused by my sploshing along was similar to atmospheric disturbances encountered by light traveling to earth from our sun and its sister stars, or by waves we cannot see.

I thought about Madeleine L’Engle’s wrinkles in time that enabled her young heroes to travel to distant places in the universe. Then I quit thinking, content to enjoy the present moment and the gifts it was handing to me. Plenty of time to reflect later.
© 2010 Mary van Balen

DIAGRAM: SKY & TELESCOPE
At 10:30pm, having closed our register, covered the display cases, and deposited our cash envelopes, three of us walked out of the store into fresh air. A brilliant spot of light hung on the night’s black sky, looking not unlike the large cubic zirconium stone in a necklace I sold to a young bride-to-be a few hours earlier. One woman waved goodbye and headed for her car. Diana and I stood for a moment, mesmerized by the sight.

“It’s Venus,” I said in hushed tones reserved for moments of overwhelming glory.

“Venus? Really? See you tomorrow.”

I stood a moment longer letting cool air wash over me and absorbing the planet’s grace. I whispered a prayer of appreciation, taking off my shoes as it were, since I was obviously on holy ground that happened to look like a sprawling mall parking lot.

A few weeks earlier I had pointed out the planet to my hostess as we returned to her home after a speaking engagement.

“Venus? Are you sure? How do you know?”

“Venus is in the western sky now, outshining everything else,” I offered. I am not sure she was convinced, but it is unmistakable.

“On nights like this,” a friend said years ago as he stood on a country road and gazed at the star splattered dome above us, “I could live on the sky.”

Yes. On nights like this one, with Venus hinting at wonders beyond my sight, my soul needs no church. My spirit needs no other nourishment. Gloria in excelsis Deo!
© 2010 Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Moon, Venus, Jupiter over the Collegeville Institute. Mary van Balen

PAINTING: RUTH GATHERING WHEAT by Lorie McCown

This morning I spent time listening to the Word in Lectio Divina on Ruth 2,2-3;7. Ruth, a Moabite, had returned to Judah with her mother-in-law, Naomi, after she had lost her husband and two sons, one of whom had been Ruth’s husband.

Two women with no men to care for or protect them,they returned impoverished.Ruth, undaunted, asked Naomi if she might glean in wheat fields behind someone whom she could trust. Naomi consented and off Ruth went, working from early morning til evening.

Perhaps you know the story. What touched my heart this morning was Ruth’s willingness to work among the poor at a simple and uncertain task: gleaning what grain was left by those who worked the fields for their owners. She found people to follow who would not mistreat her, and she put her trust in Naomi’s God.

“She gleaned in the field behind the reapers. As it happene, she came to the part of the field belonging to Boaz…” The result of this “happening” changed the lives of Ruth, Naomi, Boaz, the the Jewish people.

“As it happened…” Those words stayed with me for the day, reminding me of the importance of living in the moment, doing what one can when faced with uncertainty, and trusting in God’s Presence.

Eventually, if my heart is open and my spirit willing, something occurs that changes my life even before I am aware of its import. The unknown begins slowly to resolve into possibility, possibility into reality.

Our journeys are constantly changing, presenting challenges and unknowns. At times, the very ground beneath us turns into sea with no mooring in sight. Yet, as Ruth knew in her heart, something remains solid, something remains a still-point when all else is falling apart. It is beyond our vision, but we are not required to see, only to trust, to do what must be done in the moment and then for us, as for Ruth, what is Good will be. Remembering, we, too will say: “As it happened…”
© 2010 Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen
After nine hours of selling bras and underwear and cleaning out dressing rooms, I looked forward to getting off my feet. Hot humid air blew across the parking lot as I looked for the little Civic with an Obama/Biden sticker on the bumper. I collapsed into the driver’s seat, turned the air conditioner on “high” and started the long drive home.

Traffic wasn’t bad. I popped a voice therapy CD into the player, started taking deep breaths, and progressed through the four exercises that are helping combat chronic hoarseness. Eleven minutes and miles later I was cooling off and feeling less like a dishrag and more like a person.Energy seeped back into my bones and I decided to stop by a friend’s apartment instead of driving straight home.

Unbelievably, she was home! Despite trying to meet for the past three months, we had been unsuccessful unless you count the one time we ran into each other at a shopping strip and exchanged promises not to give up on finding a day we were both free.

Pat and I met when I was taking elementary education classes. Principal of the school where I was placed for a quarter or two plus student teaching, she was impressive not only because of her six foot frame and booming voice, but also because she was passionate about helping kids learn. She remained fearless in the face of critical state inspectors who shook their heads in disbelief when her teachers’ lesson plans did not follow instructions to divide school days into minutes required for every subject, and knew nothing about “child-centered, informal education” or why it was a better way to teach her young charges.

She traveled with some of her teachers and a couple lucky student teachers (myself included) to New York City where we observed Lillian Weber’s “Open Corridor” concept. In crowded public schools, classrooms spilled out into the wide hallways, creating areas for all kinds of learning: art centers, reading nooks, woodworking benches or dramatic play.

After a day in the schools we sat up late into the night talking about how we might do something similar once we returned home, and then, hungry, we walked through Harlem to find a place where we could buy something to eat. Fearless.

That was years ago. Yesterday, sitting in her small living room at the retirement center, I took off my shoes, curled up in a recliner and enjoyed a glass of ice water along with her candor and sense of humor. Our conversation wound around a variety of topics: books she is reading, my loose-ends life, her twenty-year-old cat, Taz, and aging.

A few hours with Pat always leaves me affirmed, ready to dive back into life with more energy and faith than I brought with me. My women friends are like that: No pretense, no tension, and communication that flows like a spring, dispensing wisdom, humor, and hope.

Defying social convention of the time, Jesus hung around with women as well as men and didn’t hesitate to strike up conversations with them when he met them on his journey. Women numbered among his closest friends and disciples.

Another friend of mine, a contemplative nun, told me a story: A man had been coming to talk with her for months, seeking her counsel. During one meeting he said, “A pity you were not born a man. I imagine you regret that. You could have done so much.”

I don’t know how my friend kept from laughing out loud. “A woman,” she told me, “maintains the center, has tremendous capacity for relationship and love, and being with.” She laughed. No regrets.
© 2010 Mary van Balen

Photo: Mary van Balen
Thirty minutes of sitting quietly in God’s Presence doesn’t sound difficult, but when I am out of spiritual shape, I can’t do it. Signs of spiritual laxity have been evident for a while: lack of energy and focus, interior turmoil, and dwindling hope. Yesterday I decided to do something about it.

First, I decided to let myself sleep until I was rested, a simple thing I have consistently neglected. After a wonderful Father’s Day lunch with Dad, my sisters, brothers, spouses, a nephew and his fiance, I drove home to a quiet house. Resisting the list of “to-dos” that shouted at me, I lay down on the couch and slept for a couple of hours. When I woke up I managed to fix an egg salad sandwich for dinner and take out the trash for pick-up on Monday.

“Catch up on laundry! Run the sweeper! Straighten your office!”

I turned the TV to news, thinking I should listen to updates on the Gulf clean up. My brother-in-law and I had had a spirited discussion about the $20 billion fund required of BP and the way Obama secured it. I had made a mental note to do a little research on precedents and options, but after ten minutes of trying to focus on news, I gave up, changed the channel to a crime solving drama, and fell back to sleep. At 11pm I woke up, climbed the steps to the second floor, and crawled into bed.

By 8:30 this morning I was up and ready to go. I had a mental list: quiet prayer, Lectio, bake the overripe banana into bread, post a blog, finish laundry, buy groceries, and attend a scientific conference to hear my daughter deliver her first academic presentation on her research.

Quiet prayer sounded easy. First, I had to decide where to sit. Before moving into Dad’s house, I had a regular prayer place at home; just moving into it signaled my brain to slow down. So far, I haven’t found one here.

I settled on the living room and a blue chair that was not soft enough to lull me to sleep (a problem with trying quiet prayer when I am exhausted) but was still comfortable. I looked at the clock: 9am. Take slow deep breaths. Relax neck and shoulder muscles that are usually tight. Empty my mind of thoughts…

Try as I might, I could not banish the cacophony. More deep breaths. A glance at the clock: Only 9:05? OK. Close my eyes and try again. And again. And again.

Once, at 9:15, I realized that I was actually gripping the arms of the chair and leaning forward, like I was poised at the starting line for a race, waiting for the gun to go off…or in this case, for the big hand to land on the “6.”

I smiled. My life has become a race of sorts lately but if quiet prayer was any indication, I was not going to finish well.

Thirty minutes never seemed to pass so slowly, and when the half hour was up, I had managed but a moment or two of quiet inside my head. I trust God was pleased with the fact that each time I was ready to move on to something else, I forced myself to sit down and try again.
© 2010 Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen
Some days when life seems overwhelming, I am drawn to the bane of healthy eating and common sense: Comfort Food! We all have this unique food group that spans those recommended by nutrition czars who devise pyramids and pie charts to keep us on the straight and narrow.

One of my all time favorites is grilled cheese with bread & butter pickles. Grilled cheese sandwiches come in many varieties. Last week, while staying with a family in Delaware, I was treated to a delicious, homemade grilled cheese with Mozzarella, pesto, and sun-dried tomatoes on generous slices of multi-grain bread. Delicious and packed with lots of healthy ingredients, it kept me going until my arrival back home.

My comfort food grilled-cheese boasts only of white bread and, yes, American cheese. (Is that phrase an oxymoron? I mean is “American Cheese” cheese at all?) The secret ingredient that makes my grilled cheese special is, as in all comfort food, memories.

My mother used to make these sandwiches in a griddle that smooshed the margarine slathered soft white bread until melted American cheese began to ooze out around the edges. The elementary school I attended was four or five blocks from home, so I often walked home from school for lunch, and grilled cheese was a favorite. I did not like school, and an hour at home was a welcome break. Growing up Catholic gave our family weekly opportunities for meatless meals and grilled cheese along with a bowl of tomato soup was often on the menu.

I don’t use the griddle or margarine for my sandwiches, but every bite takes me back to the kitchen of my childhood where mom and my grandmother, Becky, fixed meals, and baked cookies, pies, and cakes. They taught us how to mix flaky pie crusts (which mom insisted was one of the easiest things to make), cutout cookies, and anything else we wanted to learn.

I have other comfort food favorites: Buttered toast and tea when I am hungry before going to bed, chicken noodle soup and saltine crackers when I am recuperating from the flu, and sliced tomatoes sprinkled with sugar. No matter how I try to reduce my consumption of red meat, a regal rump roast with mashed potatoes and gravy remains a treat. I loved sopping up the drippings left on the meat platter with white bread.

Whatever the food, calories, or cholesterol, the most important nutrient delivered by comfort food is the love and the people who wrapped me in it. It is the smile of my mother, her hugs, and her cool hand on my fevered forehead. It is my grandmother sitting with me late at night when I was sick, telling me stories of growing up. It is the family gathered around the dinner table, sharing a chip-chopped ham sandwich with my father.

When I eat comfort food, I don’t count calories; I savor memories.
© 2010 Mary van Balen

Watching dark plumes of oil and gas rise like dirty clouds from the broken pipe at the BP oil site makes me sick. My stomach turns over when I think of millions of gallons of oil fouling the earth every day. The thought that this will happen day after day for months is unfathomable.

Anger rising from my heart is as dark and dirty as the oily clouds. I don’t trust BP or its statements, and I want them to pay, BIG. I want lawmakers voted out of office who take big oil money and don’t insist on stringent requirements to protect the environment. Why didn’t organizations charged with oversight of the drilling for oil in deep water insist on numerous back-up plans to deal with a collapse of the oil rig and subsequent catastrophe?

A sizable chunk of the earth is being polluted to death. People who live and work on that coast are watching their way of life disappear. Oil-covered sea turtles struggle to the beach to lay their eggs. That probably won’t happen. Thick sludge is washing into salt-water marshes, called “nurseries” for fish and shrimp.

Along with millions of others, I am outraged by the largest environmental disaster in the history of our country, and I want to see those responsible for it identified and held accountable.

Continuing to follow the story, I become uncomfortable. I realize that I am among those who share culpability for this outrage. I consume plenty of petroleum products and am part of the demand for them that necessitates drilling offshore or in Alaska, as well as importing oil from the Middle East.

I use my car to travel to work, grocery stores, and the bank. I drive hundreds of miles to visit my children and friends. I don’t walk or ride a bike to run my errands; I hop into my car and drive the couple of miles instead. True, it is a Honda Civic, purchased with environment in mind: the car gets great gas mileage. Still, my lifestyle is far from “green.”

Being angry with BP feels better than facing my part in creating excessive demand for their product, but if I am honest, I must accept my immersion in an oil-driven economy and standard of living. We all must.

That is not to let BP and other businesses and government oversight agencies off the hook for cutting corners and looking the other way. Investigations and charges should be pursued where appropriate, but I must look for ways to be faithful to God’s trust in me to care for the earth.

Will this event make US citizens more supportive of research into alternative fuels and to accept taxes to fund it? Will we move away from SUV’s and other gas-guzzling vehicles? Will we walk more or ride bikes for errands? Will we take our responsibility seriously and make sacrifices for the greater good, for the survival of the earth that sustains us?

Easier to be angry at BP. Jesus never said being faithful would be easy.

PHOTO: A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Employee

Waiting for Dad to don pajamas and prepare for bed, I sat on a couch tucked away in a nook off the nursing home’s wide hallway. I checked voicemail, made a few calls, and then looked out the window beside me and watched a spider working on her web. She was large, her bulbous abdomen marked underneath with an orangey hourglass shape, and her long legs were darker at each joint. She waved them about until they detected a strand of silk, then she hurried along it to the end. Once there, she dropped quickly to another point along the window frame where she attached the new thread, then began waving her legs around again.

I looked at the web from a variety of angles but could see no pattern let alone the familiar radiating design I expected. Three messy spots looked like a tangle of threads spun around a hapless victim, but other than those bits, nothing hinted at purpose or method.

Curious, once back home, I Goggled “dark jointed brown spider” and tentatively identified her as a brown widow and learned the web she wove was typical of her kind. A reader had posted a blog about the brown widow spider and observed that while the web was a mess, it got the job done.

I empathized with that busy spider, thinking my life, with its unexpected twists and turns, could look messy to an observer. My eight-legged friend reminds me of Wilbur, even though the spider in question is female. She is definitely not a Charlotte. Charlotte was organized, knew what she wanted, and planned ahead. In the book, “Charlotte’s Web,” Wilbur eventually prevailed not because of great foresight and planning but rather because of his great heart and determination. His path to a secure long life was full of unpredictable events. He bumbled along, doing the best he could at each juncture, and with Charlotte’s help, avoided ending up on someone’s breakfast plate.

My spider friend approaches life similarly, plummeting to whatever place gravity takes her once she reaches the end of a silken thread, and begins again. The blog writer was correct: In the end, the spider caught her prey and lived to spin another day.

I sympathize with those who feel lost and unsure of their next step. Paths usually do not continue as planned, and they challenge us to embrace our new situation and move forward from that place. That happens to all of us in one way or another. Some people may have lives that appear elegantly designed, but we never know what lies beneath the surface: Spinning is difficult no matter the outcome. The brown widow fashions the web she is made to spin, following the instinct born within her. We are inspirited with Divine life, and each of us walk the roads we are given, listening for and trusting the Spirit born within. In the end, difficult as the journey may be, we each will arrive at the place we are made to be: the all encompassing embrace of God.
© 2010 Mary van Balen