Grace in the Moment

December 5, 2024 By Mary van Balen 12 Comments

Holding Both Grief and Hope

This column is more political than my usual offerings. I can’t talk about spirituality as if it exists in a vacuum. Many of my readers will resonate with my thoughts and feelings. Others may not. But I must do what is mine to do.

I began writing this column in September, when I woke up thinking “hope.” Feeling hope. While that may not seem surprising, it was for me. In the middle of election season, I had been living with dread and fear about the future. No matter how deep it’s pushed down or how purposely ignored, fear sucks hope right out of a person. That was me.

What allowed me to throw fear out and embrace hope instead? The Democratic National Convention. Instead of the vengeful rhetoric espoused by some Republican candidates aimed at stirring up fear and keeping us down and apart, there was hope. There was a positive view of the future that included everyone. No hateful misinformation about the transgender community. No disparaging remarks about immigrants or calling for mass deportation. No whitewashing the part race and slavery played (and plays) in U.S. history.

When the cameras scanned the crowd, diversity was everywhere. It was celebrated by those who spoke and in what they said. It seemed possible that this country could embrace compassion and love of neighbor. It seemed possible that we could, together, move in a more positive way through the challenges and tragedies of our world. Perhaps we could believe that we are, indeed, more alike than we are different.

When I woke up on November 6, fear and anger again had replaced my hope, and dread for the future was taking over. The vision of inclusion, respect and moving forward together was replaced by one of negativity, revenge, and disrespect of “other.” The highjacking of “Christianity,” putting it into service of an approach that seems anything but Christian, continues to sweep the country. Efforts to enshrine Evangelical White Christian Nationalism as the official religion of the U.S. is grossly un-American.

I wasn’t alone in my “morning after” despair. Many concerned with climate change heard “Drill, baby drill,” with disbelief. Many concerned with women’s rights heard “Your body, my choice,” with dismay. And basic human rights? Democratic institutions?

Struggling with all this, I listen to many wisdom voices, past and present: my faith and spiritual/wisdom teachers of many traditions; civil rights leaders; psychologists and counselors; poets; good friends. In addition to eating well and incorporating exercise into the day, here are thoughts on getting through these difficult times:

Grieve Alone and Together

Recognize feelings and emotions. Experience them. Feel sorrow, anger, fear, and despair. Weep. Rant. Vent. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with friends who can hold your tears and love you when you’re a mess. Find communities where you can share your grief. When one member has no hope, someone there will. Remember, grief isn’t once and done.

Who are the people, the communities that can hold you, support you, love you? Who are those who share your sorrow? Who are those with whom you can both grieve and find hope?

Find a Place Where Grace Flows

The week after the election found me on Chincoteague Island with my daughter. The ocean draws me into a contemplative space, opening my soul to release emotions – joy, gratitude, grief, sorrow – as well as to receive grace of healing, wonder, and gratitude.

My salty tears mingled with salty air. I rejoiced at the birds’ antics and wondered at shells at my feet. I laughed, prayed, and sang into to the pounding of wave after wave on the sand. Sometimes alone. Sometimes with my daughter. Together we watched the Supermoon rise, the king tide flood the marshlands, and herons wait patiently along the banks until the water receded and they could resume their mindful-walking fishing practice.

My ocean visits are few and precious. I have other Grace places: a small, neighborhood woods; a local café where I go to write; art museums; a friend’s kitchen table; my favorite chair flanked with a handmade table that holds a mug of tea and a stack of books.

What are your ordinary as well as extraordinary places where Grace flows? As Robert Lax would advise, go there often.

Establish a Grounding Practice

page of nature journal painting of shell litter people walking beach wrirtint

Take time for spirit-nourishing practices.

At the beach condo, my daughter set up a long table filled with art and journaling supplies. Every day we showed up there, like pilgrims to a holy place. She painted. I created page after page in my nature journal: mosaics of small drawings, paintings, and words.

Journaling/Art

For some, journaling and creative arts are prayerful, centering activities. While on Chincoteague I didn’t work on my current book project. I didn’t write this long overdue column. Now, back home, those projects call for my attention along with piles of laundry, dishes, and routine chores. While I can’t give hours every day to nature journaling, I’ll try for one day a week. And I can be faithful to my regular journaling practice.

Quiet Time/Prayer

During information overload, refrain from too much news consumption and social media scrolling. Make time for quiet. I’m reestablishing a morning routine of sipping tea, twenty minutes of quiet prayer, and reading.Throughout the day I take a few moments, breathe deeply and remember that I live and move in the Presence of the Sacred, no matter what I’m doing.

Quiet walks around the neighborhood or in a park can provide mental and spiritual spaciousness.

Give yourself the gift of time to engage in practices that help ground you and sink deep into your center. Encounter the Sacred that dwells there. The Goodness that cannot be overcome.

Move Forward

In a New York Times opinion piece “How Not to Fall Into Despair,” Brad Stulberg quotes Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl and uses his term “tragic optimism.” It involves acknowledging pain and hardship and in the face of it, moving forward in a positive way.

It’s the “both/and” stance central to many religions, including Christianity. Jesus lived acknowledging and confronting the evils of his day while still finding room in his heart to hold love, forgiveness, and hope.

He lived compassionate engagement, hanging out with the marginalized and calling his followers to care for the poor, widows, and orphans. Love God and your neighbor as yourself, he said. He didn’t list exclusions. He didn’t ignore the oppressors in power but didn’t let fear paralyze him.

What is mine to do?

One friend said she was taking the “left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot” approach. Not looking into the future but being present to the moment and to what she could do where she was, to put kindness and compassion into the world. Another is concentrating on volunteering for organizations that serve others in her city. Both are claiming agency rather than helplessness.

It involves what Stulberg calls “wise hope and wise action.” Not hope born of denial, thinking that if we just wait long enough, things will get better, but seeing things for what they are and still taking action.

In his final written message published in the New York Times after his death, the great civil rights activist John Lewis charged us to do that. To stand up and speak out when we see something that isn’t right. “Democracy is not a state.” He said. “It is an act.”

I am overwhelmed by what is happening. I feel helpless. But I’m not. I can do what I can do where I am. I can write. I can be kind to strangers and the marginalized. I can donate to organizations that support causes I believe in, especially those that serve targeted populations threatened by the wave of “othering” spreading across the country. I can stay informed, write to Congressional representatives. I can speak up to representatives in my state government when they propose and pass legislation that demonizes and oppresses monitories.

Darkness doesn’t have to win in the long run. Not when enough people inject the light of love and compassion into the night.

What is yours to do? How can you claim agency and move forward?

The Long View

looking out over ocean. Dark cloudy day with sun peeking through

Recently I stood with a woman on the beach, both of us looking across the ocean. “Stay connected to nature,” she said. “It will help with the long view. It will give you strength. It endures.”

Sitting in the National Gallery of Art in front of two van Gogh masterpieces I remembered that people suffering in all kinds of ways throughout history have been able to see beauty and hope through their grief and found ways to share it with the world.

In dark times, I find it difficult to believe that the moral arch indeed bends toward justice. But Viktor Frankl, John Lewis, and countless others, known and unknown, did. And they knew the truth of that saying depends on individual action. They lived holding both grief and hope in their hearts and found courage to move on.

Jesus did. Those who strive to imitate his life, to follow his Way, will too. It’s not a “Christianity” that storms the Capitol with violence when things don’t go your way. It’s not a “Christianity” that sees some people as expendable and deserving of disrespect. It strives to serve the common good. It’s a both/and faith. It’s a grief/hope faith. It doesn’t deny pain, oppression, and suffering. Jesus wept over Jerusalem. But he kept on going, living with compassion.

May it be so.

Sources

Together, You Can Redeem the Soul of Our Nation by John Lewis

How Not to Fall Into Despair by Brad Stulberg

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: art, Both/And, compassion, creation, Election 2024, Grief, grounding practices, hope, incarnational faith, inclusion, long arc of justice, long view, Practice the Presence, prayer, quiet, small acts of love, what is mine to do, where grace flows, working together

September 19, 2024 By Mary van Balen 6 Comments

With Gratitude for Mary Oliver

September 10 was Mary Oliver’s birthday. It would have been her 89^th. I thought of her that morning as I walked into my living room. The sun poured through the window over the buffet, flooding the plants, shells, and other treasures that live there with light.

Hello, sun in my face
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crochety—...

I recited her poem “Why I Wake Early.” It has become my morning prayer whenever the sun greets me by spreading its light over the chair and couch, painting the hardwood floor with yellow stripes reaching to the dining table at the other end of the room.

Mary Oliver is part of my morning reading, and in her honor, I treated myself with a few favorites. Years ago, when I first read it, “At the River Clarion” won my heart with the opening line: I don’t know who God is exactly. Yes. After years of listening, searching, and studying, I still say the same thing. Attention to creation provided hints to the poet. The river splashing across the stone where she sat. The stone itself. The mosses under the water. They spoke to her of holiness and the part of it all things are. Not a message quickly heard, she said, but one understood by being present to the moment, day by day by day.

In the poem, she wonders how one gets “to suspect such an idea,” being a tiny piece of God. Perhaps it’s as 20^th century theologian Karl Rahner articulated: God’s enlivening presence within all from the start creates a desire for something beyond ourselves and enables a response to the Divine.

I remember in my high school years, corresponding with a friend’s cousin who was a lay brother at the Dominical House of Prayer in Washington, D.C. I treasured our letters and wrote that we are all part of the wholeness of God. All holding some bit of God, like a puzzle piece, deep within. And when all things finally gathered together, God would be wholly present. What planted that sense in my teenage heart? If Rahner was right, it was there from the start, calling for openness to Mystery and attention.

As Mary Oliver so clearly understood, we are called to notice. Seeking is unnecessary since God is already here. But attentiveness and quiet have something to do with deepening the relationship with the Holy within and without.

Recently, I spent a day with two friends I have known since we were in our late teens. Like beautiful threads, we weave in and out of one another’s life tapestries. Sharing our spiritual journeys is always part of the conversation. Nestled in the woods on the edge of the Hocking Hills, their home is simple yet adorned with beautiful bits of nature and art (many pieces made by friends). Chairs and couches are arranged in a cozy circle good for talking, and the kitchen, complete with a long table, welcomes family and friends.

We shared memories of past gatherings and coming adventures, titles of books we’re currently reading as well as ones that are staples of our lives. We read poetry, caught up on our families, and ate delicious homemade soup and bread while sipping iced tea.

On our walk, light filtered by trees on our right made beautiful patterns across the road and the tree trunks on our left. Nuthatches and chickadees had their lunch at the large feeder and woodpeckers’ drumming announced they were finding theirs elsewhere.

And while I spoke of my soul’s longing to spend days with the ocean, the woody beauty called out for attention. When given to the place where I was at that moment, attention revealed Mystery and Love waiting there.

Oliver’s poem “Praying” begins by pointing out that an encounter with Holy Presence need not be occasioned by something particularly stunning. She says it doesn’t have to be a blue iris. I’d say it doesn’t have to be the ocean.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be 
the blue iris, it could be 
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few 
small stones;
just pay attention, then patch 

a few words together and don’t try 
to make them elaborate, this isn’t 
 a contest but the doorway

 into thanks and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver generously shared the fruit of her attention and journey with us in volumes of poetry. I give thanks. And while I’m still hoping for a week or two at a beach before the year is out, I will try to heed her admonition in “Messenger,” that “My work is loving the world…” and that despite having old boots, a torn coat, and arriving at mid-seventies “…still not half perfect …” I will focus on what is mine to do. She sums it up in her poem “Sometimes”:

“Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it… “

Thank you, Mary Oliver.

Sources:

“Why I Wake Early” by Mary Oliver Published in Why I Wake Early (2004) p. 3

“At the River Clarion” by Mary Oliver Published in Evidence (2000)

“Praying” by Mary Oliver Published in Thirst ( 2006) p. 37

“Messenger” by Mary Oliver Published in Thirst (2006) p. 1

“Sometimes” by Mary Oliver Published in Red Bird (2008) p. 35-38

All these poems and many more, have been published in Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver (2019). She arranged these poems herself from her books published from 1963 to 2015! If you love Mary Oliver, this is a book to own!

You can purchase it online from Bookshop.org and support independent bookstores across the country. if you have a favorite, you can even choose the bookstore you would like to support. Mine is Gramercy Books in Bexley, Ohio

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: "At the River Clarion" by Mary Oliver, "Messenger" by Mary Oliver, "Praying" by Mary Oliver, "Sometimes"by Mary Oliver, "Why I Wake Early" by Mary Oliver, attention, creation, encounter with God, God in creation, Karl Rahner, Mary Oliver, Mystery, noticing, prayer, Presence, present to the moment, silence, wonder

September 5, 2024 By Mary van Balen 2 Comments

Entanglement

While the concept of “entanglement” is not new, it is increasingly encountered today.

Suzanne Simard’s work and book, Finding the Mother Tree, reveal the entanglement of tree roots, fungus, and mycelium that connects individual trees, creating a community. This intricate, underground network allows trees to communicate with each other, warning of impending danger and responding to one another’s distress. Through it, mature trees share nutrients with young ones growing beneath their canopy.

The word “entanglement” appears in current spiritual writing, referencing its use in quantum physics. Care must be taken in appropriation of a term from one discipline to another. “Entanglement” in a physicist’s work has a different meaning than it does in a theologian’s. Still, it provides an apt metaphor.

Quantum physics offers an extraordinary look at how matter, at an elemental level, can be connected even when separated by vast distances. True not only between individual particles, but also among thousands of atoms and molecules within the animate and inanimate. Entangled particles act as one thing.

And there is the metaphor: All creation is entangled, made one by the shared, enlivening force called by many names: God, Ground of Being, Presence, Holy One, Spirit.

Entangled creation includes human beings. Despite the “othering” that happens – especially during the current political climate – dividing humanity into groups of “them” and “us”, we are profoundly connected. What is done to one affects all.

Suffering and violence around the world affect those far from it. Joy, enthusiasm, and kindness reach across the globe, making it a better place.

That human beings continue to war against one another and to destroy this planet, ignoring the warnings of extreme weather, vanishing species and habitats, and poisoned waters, are indicators that the reality of entanglement often goes unrecognized.

Yet it calls for a response: Respect. Respect entails reverencing all people, all things. Respect is the appropriate response to the Presence residing deep within each of us, within all creation, from the smallest particle to the vast cosmos. All is holy ground.

We are called, like Moses, to take off our shoes.

watercolor painting of Hebrew woman taking off her sandal — *Mosetta* ©2018 Molly Weiland watercolor

slightly different version originally published in Awakenings the newsletter of The Spirituality Network, September 2024

Photo: Mary vay Balen

Source:

“What is Entanglement and Why Is It Important?” on Caltech Science Exchange

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: climate change, connection, creation, Entanglement, Finding the Mother Tree, God in creation, holy ground, Holy One, interconnetion, mycelium, othering, physics, Presence, Presence within, Respect, Suzanne Simard

July 22, 2024 By Mary van Balen 8 Comments

Dona Nobis Pacem: A Morning Prayer on Whidbey Island

Dona nobis pacem. Give us peace. I offer this simple sharing of yesterday’s morning prayer that began with attentiveness to the overwhelming beauty and variety of the natural setting. I moved into singing the traditional round Dona nobis pacem, then spontaneously sang words from my heart, and finally slipped into silence. A prayer for peace in our troubled world. You might find it helpful to listen to the song using the links below to become familiar with its rhythms before continuing to read.