Mary van Balen

August 5, 2021 By Mary van Balen 12 Comments

The Gift of Being Here

Opening the kitchen door to gauge the morning’s suitability for an early walk, I inhaled quickly and held my breath in reverence and awe. Cool refreshing air slid over me after days of stifling heat. Huge puffy clouds rose in the bright blue sky. Even from my city view, obstructed by buildings, wires, and trees, the clouds’ soft shading of grays were stunning, perfect subjects for an artist’s paint and brush. I climbed the outdoor steps to my apartment neighbors’ landing for a better view.

“This morning might qualify for creating a celebration,” I thought. In her book I’m in Charge of Celebrations,¹ Byrd Baylor provides her requirements for such a designation (She’s picky.): It must be something that makes you catch your breath. Something that makes your heart pound. Check and check.

I took a walk. In the clear air, edges of everything – flowers, blades of grass, trees, houses, walls, and rocks – looked crisper. Colors were rich and saturated as they often are after a rain. The sights along my usual route seemed transformed, but more likely, grace had opened my eyes and heart wider.

I thought of Joanna Macy writing in her book, World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Planetary Awakening, that just to be alive in this universe, to participate in its unfolding, is an “inestimable gift.”² Even in dark times. Dark as they are, I am privileged to live where morning walks are safe, where air is, at least sometimes, clean and clear. Walking, I thought about those whose experiences of the world are drastically different than mine, where morning walks aren’t safe. People who are oppressed just for the color of their skin, their accents, their sexual orientation, or gender identity. Those struggling with poverty. They are here, in my city and around the world.

Some are experiencing drought or flood. Some endure wars or personal violence. And many desiring to find a safer place, have nowhere to go. No welcoming arms open to receive them.

Do those who struggle and suffer, who were born in a war-torn part of the planet, do they think being alive is an “inestimable gift,” no matter how hard or unfair their lives seem to be? If I were in their place, would I?

My monk friend would agree with Macy, crisis times or not, life is a treasured gift, and there are choices. At eighty plus years old, he is grateful to live in what he calls “this special time.” One can choose to live it with eyes open to the beauty and magnificent mystery of our universe while still seeing the shadow side. Or choose to live in ways that contribute to the transformation of this country into a more just place and to be part of global efforts toward building a better world.

Amazing mornings like yesterday jolt me into both: gratitude for the gift of being in this awe-inspiring cosmos and resolve to make a difference, however small, with the time I have been given to live in it.

Byrd Baylor, I’m in Charge of Celebrations
Joanna Macy, from her book, World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Planetary Awakening as quoted in Grounding in Gratitude

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: Bryd Baylor, choices, eyes wide open, gift of being here, gratitutde, Joanna Macy, making a difference, open heart, present to the moment, wide awake

July 29, 2021 By Mary van Balen 8 Comments

Hope in Quiet Places

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hope is difficult to hold on to.

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

Hope is difficult to hold on to.

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

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

Almost everything and everyone changing the world now is what we’ve forever referred to as “under the radar.” The radar is broken.
Krista Tippett in Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living

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

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

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

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

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

Look for hope in quiet places.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: being hope, genuine connection, hope, hope is a practice, Krista Tippett, working together

June 14, 2021 By Mary van Balen 4 Comments

Ocean’s Pull: A Place Where Grace Flows

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am no exception.

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

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

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

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

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

Sunset over the water, Cape Cod Massachusetts — Cape Cod

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

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

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: attentive, Cape Cod, creation, evolution, Henry Beston, ocean, present to the moment, The Outermost House, transformation

May 23, 2021 By Mary van Balen 4 Comments

Seeing with Eyes of the Heart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What’d you find?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: Jean-Francios Millet, Jean-Francios Millet "Dandelions", Jessica Powers, love, Oneness, Pentecost, prayer, present to the moment, Robert Frost, Spirit, Spirit-opened eyes

April 20, 2021 By Mary van Balen 4 Comments

Greening Nature and Spirits

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dormancy is important. For trees. For us.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: centered, growth, maple trees, natura naturans, Presence, quiet, Saint Hildegard of Bingen, sap run, spring, viriditas, Waiting, winter

April 5, 2021 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

Easter Liturgies: Beyond Memorial or Reenactment

Book of Mary Olive poetry, "Devotions," open to page showing poem "On Meditating, Sort Of." — from book *Devotions*
Photo: Mary van Balen

This year, the Thursday before Easter, Holy Thursday, began for me in quiet prayer with a Zoom group and continued with what became the deeper prayer of the day. I sat in my chair by the window, reading Mary Oliver and feeling my face warmed by the intense morning sun. Bright light flooding through the mini-blinds played across the book’s pages and my hands.

My cobalt glass vases glimmered on the buffet, painting the shells around them with bits of luminous blue – an altar bathed in glory of Creator and creation. As Oliver writes in her poem “On Meditating, Sort Of,” while some find times of meditation in prescribed practices and postures, she often found hers lounging against a tree.

Surely, Mary Oliver had her practices – writing itself can be a demanding spiritual practice! – Attentiveness was one. Notebook in hand, she greeted each day, noticing the world around her. Being present. That’s how the day began for me.

Holy Thursday, or Maundy Thursday as it is known in some religious traditions, has always been my favorite of the Triduum: Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. It’s the intimacy of a meal shared with family and friends. (Can you doubt that his mother and others in addition to the twelve apostles, including women, were there?) It’s the hope and prayer for unity and the example of self-sacrificing love.

John’s gospel doesn’t put the sharing of bread and wine center stage but rather Jesus’s washing his followers’ feet and the long discourse and prayer that follow. “I give you a new commandment,” he says. “Love one another as I have loved you.” And he showed them how it looked in real life that evening and the following day.

Close-up of cobalt blue vase, filtering bright sunlight and casting blue hue on sea shells and fabric runner on top of buffet

Small, crusty, round roll of white bread, broken, sitting on blue plate

Years ago, a dear friend invited me and a few other women into her home to celebrate Holy Thursday with a simple meal before the parish services would begin. Unknown to us, she invited her guests to acknowledge their service to the community, to God’s people – what Jesus modeled at the Last Supper. When her intention became clear, I was a bit embarrassed. What had I done to be recognized by this amazing woman who has personified service her entire life?

She went around the table: one had been a lifelong educator, the first Black principal in the diocesan school system. One, volunteer director of religious education for her poor parish for close to twenty years, had just returned from leading a diverse group of teenagers to a youth convention out of state. When she got to me, our friend pointed out my decades of writing books, columns, and articles.

We enjoyed a meal and conversation. We broke bread and shared a cup of wine. We passed a pitcher of water and a bowl around the table, washing one another’s hands. We prayed. A community of women, following as best we could Jesus’s new commandments: to love and to serve.

People must not only hear about the kingdom of God but must see it in actual operation, on a small scale perhaps, but a real demonstration nevertheless.
Pandita Ramabai

This past celebration came to mind when I virtually attended a simple Holy Thursday liturgy with members of a nearby Episcopalian church. Mike Gecan, friend of the rector, longtime community organizer, and author joined us from New York to offer a meditation.

As I often do – whether pre-pandemic, physically in a church, or currently in Zoom services – when moved by a phrase or thought, I pulled out my notebook and jotted down a few things:

Beyond reenactment
Not simply a memorial
A call to action
How do we imagine what comes next, after the reenactment, after the memorial, after one action is completed?

As the night ended, these questions lingered along with images of Jesus on his knees, towel in hand, washing dirty feet, or standing on his own, imploring those gathered with him to serve others with humility. To love one another as he loves them. To become one as he and the One who sent him were one. And praying for the Grace he knew they would need – that we need today – to follow his lead.

These words, these images, follow me into Easter Week – these days of celebrating the Resurrection and the promise that Love, not death, will have the last word.

I remember the Servant-God who makes this promise and invites us to participate the transformation of death into life, here and now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And God wept.

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

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

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

Sculptor: Paul Granlund

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: crucifixion, Incarnation, John Duns Scotus, Love not atonement, Paschal mystery, radical love

March 4, 2021 By Mary van Balen 6 Comments

Thank You, NASA Mars 2020!

Watching the Mars landing was a family affair, though virtual. I wore my NASA hoodie (a gift from my NASA-engineer son-in-law), poured a glass of wine to toast the landing (and a bowl of peanuts, a NASA tradition ¹), and texted with my daughters and their partners for over an hour. The amount of knowledge, work, precision, imagination, and commitment that makes a mission like the Perseverance landing a reality is overwhelming.

Consider just a few details:

Over the eight years, NASA teams around the world designed, built, and tested a rover that would travel 292.5 million miles before reaching its destination on a moving target – a small area in a lakebed on Mars.

Perseverance and the small drone helicopter (Ingenuity) launched atop an Atlas V-541 rocket from Cape Canaveral on July 30,2020.

Because of the time lag between the transmission of signals from the space craft and their reception back on earth, Perseverance landed herself. Perseverance executed the entry, descent, and landing sequence—over 500,000 lines of code—without human assistance.

Perseverance is looking for evidence of past life and is equipped with, intelligent cameras, a weather station, a robotic arm, a drill to collect and then store rock core samples (amazingly, to be picked up later and returned to earth during future missions), and a radar imager that can look beneath the surface for geologic features².

The science and engineering involved in this mission are staggering³. But for NASA folks, I suppose, they are a given, simply a part of the quotidian routine.

Watching events unfold in Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) and listening to commentary provided by several of those involved in the mission, particularly Dr. Swati Mohan, the guidance, navigation, and control operations lead, and Rob Manning, JPL Chief Engineer, my family and I were filled with the excitement, hope, and nervousness evident in the scientists at Mission Control. We had a personal resource in my son-in-law, who provided insight into procedures and answered questions peppered throughout our texted conversations. I love these hangouts with my crew!

Wisdom from the Mars 2020 mission

Humility

A couple of thoughts shared by Manning, resonated deeply with me. First, as he described preparing for the mission and then watching it live, he talked about the possibly of failure:

“We’re human beings. We’re not perfect. Mistakes can be made. We each count on each other to find our own mistakes, and we work very hard to learn from mistakes from the pat. We’ve had many failures…We remind people that roughly over half the missions to Mars over history have failed. And that could happen today, too. Even though we’ve had a wonderful stream of successes in the United States, it’s still a bit of a gamble…But if we do fail, and something bad happens today, I can tell you, we are going to learn. We’ll have the data to tell us what happened. We’ll know why. We’ll figure it out. And if we are allowed, we will pick ourselves up and get us back on the horse. And if Congress and NASA allow, we we’ll try again. As we always do. We will learn from our mistakes…”^⁴

It takes humility to acknowledge past mistakes and the possibility of failure in the present endeavor. And, by live streaming the event with the whole world watching as it unfolds, NASA bravely embraced that vulnerability.

Certainly, there are things that best remain private. But not all. As tempting as it might be to exclude others from a journey as it unfolds and instead, wait until the outcome is known – sharing successes, hiding failures – sometimes inviting others as companions on the way provides opportunities for support and growth for everyone, no matter what happens.

Members of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover team study data on monitors in mission control, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Photo Credit:NASA/Bill Ingalls — Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

When people work together

NASA photo of Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover team in Mission Control, cheering when they heard the news that Perseverance had landed safely on Mars. — Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

Cheers and applause greeted Perseverance’s safe landing on Mars. Not only had it found a good place to land in a terrain full of hazards the rover had to avoid, but it also landed in the area NASA scientists believe is likely to hold evidence of ancient life: a lakebed near a river delta. It was a triumph for the team.

Images streaming from Mission Control showed the team’s jubilation. The pandemic ruled out handshakes, but there were plenty of fist and elbow bumps and eyes shining with smiles above the double masks. I teared up, as usual when witnessing such events.

My family and I raised our glasses.

Manning was exuberant.

“NASA works,” he said. “When we put our arms together and our hands together and our brains together we can succeed. This is what NASA does. This is what we can do as a country on all other problems we have. We need to work together to do these kinds of things and make success happen.”

Yes. Work together to meet the problems we have. And we have plenty, including and going beyond the pandemic and vaccination rollout: climate change, systemic racism, White supremacy, division, and hatred of “the other.” There are organized attacks on voting rights that are threatening our democracy and targeting the poor and people of color. Some people have no problem denying basic human rights to many, including women and LGBT people. For many American citizens, access to healthcare and housing is unavailable. The list is long.

Not a technical problem

If we can successfully land a rover on Mars, we certainly have the knowledge and technology to develop alternative energies and address climate change, an imminent danger to this country and to the world. As one of my daughters observed soon after watching the Mars landing, it’s not a technical problem we face. It’s a social problem. The country must have the collective will to do it, and that can emerge only when honest reporting and facts are presented to the population.

Photo of members of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover team, a young white woman and a young Black man, study data on monitors in mission control, Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021, at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. — Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

In addition to stalling massive action on climate change, misinformation also feeds fear, hatred, and violence against minorities and people deemed “other.” America has enough wealth and resources to feed its people. It has the means to provide healthcare to all. Again, what is missing is the collective will to do so. Raising up those in need does not mean tearing others down. But is does require a mindset that values the common good.

Diversity is a strength. It is critical to understand that the talents contributed by all people are necessary for a healthy, thriving society. Everyone’s gifts are needed. As Manning pointed out, the team that put Perseverance on Mars was a diverse one. That was obvious in the images from Mission control: women and men, a variety of races and ethnicities, of ages, of backgrounds. And the group at the JPL were just part of the thousands involved in the mission:

Manning said, “We haven’t done this before with this vehicle, ever. This is its first attempt to actually land. We can’t try this on earth… We don’t have test pilots to try this out on this planet before the big show… We’ve done our best testing we can do in bits and pieces. But, you know, it’s the best we can do but I think our team is up to it. This team is the best. It’s diverse. Intelligent. Amazing group of people. These are people from all over the world who have worked on this…”

Thousands of people put their arms, hands, and brains together to make Mars 2020 a success. Thousands and even millions of people across this country and around the world can transcend self-interest, fear, and hatred to put their hands and brains and hearts together. If greed and power are no longer prime motivators of policy and those who make it, but instead Common Good and universal human rights⁵ become the guiding principles, success can be achieved.

Thank you NASA, for the stunning reminder of what is possible when people work together. Congratulations to you all!

It’s up to the rest of the country to come together, to join hands, brains, hearts, and efforts, to focus on the common good and work to address the challenges that face the United States and the world.

A team of engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, install the legs and wheels — otherwise known as the mobility suspension — on the Mars 2020 rover. — Photo Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Feature Image Credit

Photo Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls

First post image of the Mars 2020 logo being installed on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V payload fairing

Photo Credit: NASA/Christian Mangano

Sources

NASA’s lucky charm for a success mission? Peanuts
Learn more about instruments on board
Learn more about the Mars 2020 Mission on NASA Mars 2020 Mission Perseverance Rover website
Manning’s quotes were transcribed from the over two hours recorded NASA’s live stream of the event found on NASA’s YouTube Channel
Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: collective will, Common Good, diversity, Dr. Swati Mohan, humility, NASA, NASA Mars 2020, Perseverance rover, Rob Manning, universal human rights

February 25, 2021 By Mary van Balen 14 Comments

A Contemplative Lent

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unless credited otherwise, photos by Mary van Balen

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: attentive, contemplative prayer, Dark Night of the Soul, George Herbert, Gerald May, Holy Presence, lent, Love III, present to the moment

February 12, 2021 By Mary van Balen 16 Comments

Light in Darkness

I’m embarrassed to say I don’t know the people who live in the apartment across the street from mine. (There are six two-story flats, three on each side of the street, mirror images of each other.) I can’t completely blame pandemic restrictions for my ignorance. While one tenant moved in during the lockdown, the other has been there for years. I suspect the newer occupants and I share some convictions. Once they moved in, a Biden for President sign appeared. So did the rainbow colored one that states, among other things, “Black Lives Matter,” “Science Is Real,” and “Love is Love” in descending stripes of color.

We share something else: Christmas lights glowing out into the darkness. Theirs are brightly colored and encircle the small front porch, winding up one wrought iron support, across the front of the little roof, and down the other. Bigger lights frame the picture window in their living room.

My white, mini-lights shine through the picture window from the small artificial tree that stands on the buffet. This would not be unusual except that it is January 31. We’re the last holdouts on the street.

Each evening I go over to the buffet and switch on the lights. They are the only thing left on the tree. Ornaments from family and friends have long returned to storage, but I just can’t bring myself to banish the lights to the basement.

I look across the street to see if my neighbors’ lights are still up, wondering who will be the first to take them down. Passersby might shake their heads or think it’s laziness or just plain craziness that makes someone keep Christmas lights up into February.

It’s not. I have reasons. For starters, the past twelve months haven’t been the usual and for most people around the world, holiday celebrations were radically changed.

I’m a dyed-in-the-wool “nothing ‘Christmas’ up until close to Christmas Eve” person. I credit my Catholic upbringing that focused on Advent during the weeks before December 25. And my parents, who, by some miracle of stamina and determination, didn’t hang a single Christmas decoration until we all returned from the December 24 midnight vigil mass, had a snack to break the fast, and me and my four siblings were snug in our beds. No wonder mom had to pry dad out of bed at the crack of dawn so eager kids could descend the stairs into a magically transformed house complete with tree, candles, and piles of presents.

But this year I carried my tree up from the basement the first week of December. What possessed me? I longed for the comfort of Christmas lights. Making peace with my inner Catholic guilt, I added ornaments slowly, a couple a day. Actually, it was lovely. The carefully chosen few had strong connections to my daughters, family, good friends, and memories, and I had time to savor each one.

Every evening, after turning off ceiling lights and lamps, I switched on the Christmas tree and sat in darkness to enjoy the tiny points of light. Sometimes I looked at a few illuminated ornaments and thought about the person it brought to mind. Sometimes I just sat and stared and didn’t think much of anything.

The lights stayed on as I fixed dinner, read, watched a movie, or connected with someone on the phone or texting. Before heading to bed, I curled up on the couch and gazed at them again, then reluctantly switched them off while looking across the street. My neighbors’ lights were always on.

Red dragon and other Christmas ornaments on the tree

Epiphany, the feast that celebrates the arrival of the three wise men who came to honor Jesus, the newborn king, is the last of the 12 Days of Christmas. In past years, my family celebrated it with a little party and small presents. Then we’d take down the tree.

This year, Epiphany came and went, and while I removed the ornaments, the tree with its lights stayed put. “I’ll take it down next week,” I’d tell myself. But I didn’t. I still haven’t.

What is it about light in darkness? Throughout history, in religions, philosophies, literature, and language, light and darkness are often presented in conflict: darkness is something bad, something to be dispelled by its benevolent opposite, light. But such dualistic thinking doesn’t provide a true picture.

Darkness gets a bad rap. True, darkness can be threatening, hide dangers, or feel oppressive. But it also can hold grace and life. Seeds sprout in the darkness of soil; human beings develop in the darkness of the womb; soul-growth often happens beneath one’s consciousness, like during a classically described dark night of the soul. Darkness can provide a time of rest. There’s a reason people buy black-out blinds for their bedrooms and sleep experts advise the elimination of screen time as night approaches.

You can have too much light. When I bought the little Christmas tree, it was covered with lights. I didn’t notice just how many while looking at it in the garden store. The price tag boasted hundreds of lights in keeping with “the more lights the better” mindset. In that big, bright space, they looked fine. It wasn’t until I took the tree home, decorated it and plugged it in for the first time in the darkened living room that the problem become apparent.

Strings of lights overpowered the ornaments which disappeared beneath the glare. My new “burning bush” was too bright to enjoy. Looking at it hurt my eyes. The following year, the center string of lights burned out, the perfect excuse to remove them and replace with fewer strands. The ornaments, no longer lost in the white-out, shared their colors and memories. I could sit on the couch, sipping a cup of tea, and enjoy the sight.

It’s the balance. My tree with its mini-lights certainly will not dispel the darkness of my living room, of the troubled world that leaks into it, or the dark places in my soul. That’s not the point. It’s the both/and that brings comfort to me these dark winter nights.

We need the dark to see the light. And the tiny lights help me appreciate the shadows and restfulness of the dark. I can sit and absorb the healing graces of both.

My Christmas lights have done their work, soothing my spirit and reminding me that darkness as well as light can provide nurture, a place to grow, and a place to rest.

I’m ready to take the tree to the basement. Candles will take its place. I wonder if my neighbors will be able to see them.

Filed Under: The Scallop Tagged With: balance, gifts of darkenss, light, light in darkness, soul-growth