Look at Me. Just Me.
August 11, 2016 By 2 Comments

Look at Me. Just Me.

Dome of Pantheon, with light streaming in.

PHOTO: Mary van Balen
Dome of Pantheon, Rome, Italy.

Originally published in The Catholic Times August 14, 2016 issue

While preparing to write this column, I read through the Mass readings for the week as I often do. Actually, I had a topic in mind, but the Spirit had another tucked into Sunday’s second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. “Brothers and sisters:” it begins, “Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us rid ourselves of every burden and sin that clings to us and persevere in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith.”

It was the phrase “keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus” that let me know clearly, this was the column. Here’s the back story. Last month, I sent an email to a good friend in Boston asking for prayers. We’d met during our first gathering for members of Shalem Institute’s Spiritual Guidance Program a couple of years ago and have stayed in touch ever since, continuing to share our journeys through letters, emails, and an occasional phone conversation.

When I wrote that email, life was feeling particularly overwhelming. Changes in family routine and a world where violence seemed more random and sinister than ever—though of course it’s always sinister and often random—were getting the best of me. My “worry gene” had kicked in, and I couldn’t quiet my mind or spirit for long. Falling asleep at night was difficult.

The email request for prayer wasn’t about this sense of turmoil, but as the Spirit would have it, my friend’s answer was.

It turned out he was on a challenging retreat. With the change of venue from a lovely new retreat house on the ocean (the building had fallen behind schedule and wasn’t ready) to a gloomy, old institutional building that once housed a seminary, and the discovery that the retreat was for spiritual directors giving the Ignatian Exercises (which he was not), the first few days were tough going.

He felt distant and agitated. Then, as he wrote: “I heard Christ telling me: ‘Look at me.  Just at me.’  Finally, last night, I was able to settle a bit in prayer.”

I couldn’t get those words out of my mind. “Look at me. Just at me.” That night, I tried to do that, to keep my focus on Christ. Not on events swirling around me and pulling me with them into dis-ease and anxiety. I fixed the gaze of my heart on Jesus. The one who loves. The one who holds. The one who is always “with.”

It wasn’t easy. Nagging fears and a sense that the world was somehow careening out of control kept calling for my attention. Not being sucked into the chaos required a conscious choice again and again, to heed Christ’s words: “Look at me.”

Slowly, that choice to look at Love made a difference. The grip of events that were tempting me with illusions of the ability control them loosened. Instead of imagining control, I felt moved to surrender to trust instead. Not a trust that everything was going to go as I wanted it to or that evil didn’t exist, but a trust that everything didn’t depend on me and my constant attempts to figure it out. The chatter that filled my head started to fade until finally there was blessed quiet. Churning and turmoil was being replaced by stillness and calm.

I slept well that night, and many nights after. Whenever I felt worry taking hold or fear seeping in to my center, I repeated the Christ’s injunction: “Look at me. Just at me,” and turned the eyes of my heart to Love.

So today, when I came across the admonition in Hebrews to embrace the wisdom of the “cloud of witnesses” and let go of burdens and sin that cling to us, to go forward and meet whatever is ahead while keeping our eyes on Jesus, I remembered my friend’s words that have become a powerful prayer for me.

It’s not magic. Sleep sometimes eludes. Deep openness is still gift. I wake up knowing I have work to do. Transforming the world is everyone’s work. But we don’t do it ourselves. We do it by letting Love fill us until we can bring that Holy Mystery to every place and every person we meet. Somehow, we face the evil and craziness and unknown with the steadiness of Love. I’m not sure how it works. It has something to do with being present. It has something to do with trust. It has everything to do with Love.

©2016 Mary van Balen

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Lessons from Paris: Befriending Holy Leisure
June 22, 2016 By 3 Comments

Lessons from Paris: Befriending Holy Leisure

Woman on a bench in a park writing in her journal

Photo: Mary van Balen
Writing in Jardin du Luxembourg

Originally published in The Catholic Times   June 16, 2016

I’ve recently returned from a wonderful vacation of almost a month in Paris with two of my daughters, one of whom is doing research at the National Natural History Museum there—a perfect reason to visit. Spending so much time with adult daughters is a gift itself. Doing it in Paris? Well, that made it extraordinary.

We did the usual tourist things, visiting museums and landmarks, enjoying Parisian baguettes smeared with butter or jam, and drinking lots of café. A highlight was making the short trip to spend a day at Giverny and Monet’s garden, a lifelong dream of my youngest.

Standing in the oval rooms of Musee de l’Orangerie surrounded by the giant water lily canvasses was breathtaking. I don’t think it makes any difference which you do first, visit the garden or feast on Monet’s paintings, the experiences enrich one another. Musee d’Orsay, a favorite, required two visits.

Art and music are everywhere, not only in museums but in shops, cathedrals, and along the streets. Beauty heals, whether in a painting or in the care taken with displays of pastries and breads for sale. Once, on our way to an evening concert, we were surprised by a woman singing an aria. Speakers provided the music, and her powerful voice poured through the small street. A trio on military patrol, heart-stirred by the song like the rest of us, paused, and one lifted his iPhone to record the sound.

We became accustomed to hearing a classical pianist playing Chopin on Pont Saint-Louis near Notre Dame, someone playing accordion along a strip of small restaurants, or jazz groups entertaining on street corners.  In every case, people stopped to listen, sometimes to dance. Always, music stirs the soul.

I was grateful for the length of our stay. A friend commented on one of my posts saying he was glad I had time to spend enjoying “holy leisure.” A sense of the importance of befriending “holy leisure” is wisdom that came home with me. The temptation, vacation or not, is to try to do too much. In Paris, there was always another amazing museum to visit or landmark to see. What would friends say when you returned if you told them you didn’t visit the Louvre?

We could pack every day, allowing vacation to become a check list. We chose otherwise. While our list of things to see and do was long enough, we gave ourselves days to do nothing special and simply be present to the gifts of the moment and each other.

My daughter made time to paint. Sometimes we walked to a park and she set up on a bench. Other days, the dining room table worked. I journaled, wrote blog posts, and finally figured out how to sketch the lovely green table umbrellas at Luxembourg Garden. We wended our way to our favorite street, Rue Mouffetard, sat in a café and enjoyed starting (or ending) a day slowly. Some of the best times were sitting or walking wherever, all three of us, enjoying each other’s company.

Back home, events and places are different, but schedules and expectations can be as demanding. There is work to do, family and friends to see, events to attend. But I returned determined to enjoy little things, listen to more music, and be attentive to Spirit movements in my heart.

One afternoon, after preparing dinners for the week to come and catching up on vacation laundry, I walked outside and tossed cans and jars into the recycling bin. The air was particularly clear after a rain, and as anyone in central Ohio with asthma knows, that is something to celebrate. Back in the kitchen, I started to wash up the dishes, then remembered Paris. “No,” I thought responding to the lift I had felt, “Enjoy.”

I poured a glass of iced tea and sat in the plastic lawn chair on my porch. That’s it. I sat and looked and breathed air that felt good in my lungs. A hummingbird buzzed in over my shoulders and headed toward a green patch of ground cover looking for blooms. A sparrow hopped out from underneath a bush with a huge piece of fuzzy fluff in its beak. The breeze picked up and leaves on the trees across the street danced.

A short prayer of thanksgiving. Some quiet moments of remembering that I live in God’s presence.

The truth that we meet God in the present is nothing new, but deceptively simple. In Paris, at home, anywhere.

© 2016 Mary van Balen

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A Mindful Day
May 8, 2015 By Leave a Comment

A Mindful Day

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like God is in hiding. Sometimes that sense of absence lasts a long time. One day, while thinking about that, I decided to take a “Mindful” day, borrowing the term from the Buddhist practice of “mindfulness.”

“Perhaps this disconnect has something to do with my lack of being present to the moment,” I thought. Ironic, since that is what I often write about in this column. “Easier said than done,” or “Easier written than done,” in my case.

I started the day with mass at St. Thomas. A little late, but rush hour traffic tied me up on the trip across town. Despite frustration with lanes of slow moving cars, I managed to take a deep breath and relax. I noticed the sky, battled the wind buffeting my little Civic, and sat through four turns of the traffic light at 5th and Cassady before walking into church.

Next was a drive down Route 33 for allergy shots. I resisted the temptation to use the drive as an opportunity to catch up with one of my daughters and instead, paid attention to the countryside stretching out on either side of the highway.

The morning light was spectacular. Spring’s greens included a wide spectrum of color. I thought of the debated claim that Inuit people of Northern Canada have fifty or more words to refer to snow (Anthropologist, Franz Boas’s study in the late 1800’s to early 1900’s has been debated ever since.)

“We should have more words for ‘green’,” I thought. I suppose we do if you count adjective descriptors like “sap green” (a favorite water color hue), “Kelly green,” “olive green,” and “forest green.”

What about the green that seems to have sucked up sunlight through the plant’s roots, appearing to glow green from inside out? Or the green that calls us to “watch this space,” with leaves shining with emerging life, changing from hour to hour?

The entire day was like that. I recognized courage and perseverance in the gait of an older man struggling up the slight incline from parking lot to sidewalk in front of a doctor’s office. Appreciation for his effort stirred in my heart, and I stood respectfully by, telling him not to hurry despite his blocking my car door. Like an honor guard for a returning soldier, I stood straight as he moved slowly by. Life is difficult and he was “keeping on,” as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie said.

One by one, experience by experience, the day nurtured my soul as I paid attention to where I was, turning away from the temptation to fret over the past, worry about the future, or multi-task while eating by reading email or New York Times headline articles. (To all the mothers out there who survive by multi-tasking at home and at work, mindfulness can be like a drink of cool water on a hot day.) I savored tastes and ate slowly, an accomplishment for one who chews a few times and then swallows.

By the end of the day, which I celebrated with a call from my youngest daughter then candles and Rumi at bedtime, I felt full, fuller in spirit than I had been for quite a while.

Mindfulness isn’t a miracle cure for spiritual emptiness or feeling distant from the One we long for. Still, being truly present to the moment helped me recognize the beauty of nature and of souls, and the wonder and Mystery bursting life at its seams. That’s the conventional wisdom, isn’t it? You don’t meet God in the past or future, but in the present. I was able to ponder the possibility that the Divine truly is reaching out from every direction, including from within, to connect with us. (This is much more difficult to do if one is watching reruns of The West Wing or Frazier on Netflix in order to distract from uncomfortable chatter in one’s mind.)

“You sound great,” my daughter observed during our phone conversation.

I shared my “mindful day” with her and heard myself saying, “ This day nourished me.” And when I finally closed my eyes, I had the smallest sense that God was right there with me.

© 2015 Mary van Balen

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When Spring Freezes
April 1, 2015 By 5 Comments

When Spring Freezes

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not only were the crocuses in my neighbor’s lawn blooming in early March, they were covered with bees! After months of sub-freezing temperatures, inches of ice, and more inches of snow, the earth had warmed enough to coax beautiful purple flowers out of their dark waiting place. Spring, it seemed, had arrived.

Passersby stopped to see what enticed me to stoop low and look closely. “Bees,” I said. “Bees are all over these flowers.”

Some stopped long enough to look themselves. After a frigid winter, we were ready for a change.

Spiritual life can be like that. Sometimes winters of the soul seem to last forever. Then, just when we’ve come to terms with the possibility of unending cold and emptiness, everything changes: Hope wakes up and shakes her feathers. Life erupts like the crocuses. Intoxicated, we nuzzle down into the golden centers and rise up heavy with life-giving pollen sticking all over. Unable to contain our joy, we move from hope to hope, from beauty to beauty. Like bees, we’re called by Mystery to an ancient dance, and we join in, spreading the sticky grace and picking up more everywhere we go.

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

Then, as quickly as it left, the cold returns. The crocuses across the street are suddenly bowed under a fresh fall of snow. Bees have disappeared to wherever it is they go to escape the freeze. A collective sigh rises from the earth. People bundle up in winter coats again. The few days of warmth make the cold bite deeper, and we shiver in temperatures we would have welcomed a month ago.

Spiritual spring can be just as fickle. Fear or worry blow in from somewhere and hope retreats. Sticky grace feels more like goo. We’re not flitting from  hope to hope. We’re not moving at all. A groan rises from deep inside. The emptiness seems larger after having danced with Joy.

“It won’t last,” we tell ourselves but struggle to believe it.

It’s a good time to listen to music or to sit in the dark and gaze at stars, or a candle, or nothing.  We might curl up with a good book of poetry, or linger with scripture. Story reminds us that this dance with winter and spring is nothing new. If we can settle in with the cold and dark, we discover they  have gifts of their own. And it doesn’t last forever.

Eventually, sun will melt the snow. Flowers will straighten their stems and lift their heads. The bees will come back, and we’ll feast on sticky Grace.

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

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No Place is “Nowhere”
January 20, 2015 By 4 Comments

No Place is “Nowhere”

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

“When he looked, although the bush was on fire, it was not being consumed. So Moses decided, “I must turn aside to look at this remarkable sight. Why does the bush not burn up?” When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to look, God called out from the  bush: “Moses! Moses!” He answered, “Here I am.”  EX 3, 2b-4

I read Sunday’s morning prayer from my “Give Us This Day” book and, though the story was familiar, something about it seemed fresh. I guess it was Moses, talking to himself, wondering out loud why the bush wasn’t consumed by the fire and telling himself he should take a minute and check it out.

It was the words, “turn aside to look” that caught my attention. God wasn’t calling out all along…just after Moses stopped to look. Or was the Divine call constant and Moses just heard it when he quit going about his business of tending the flock and got quiet enough to listen?

I’m having trouble listening these days. Weeks of being in bed or on the couch, sick, coughing, and nursing an ear infection haven’t helped. At first, I thought they would. While home from work I would catch up on some reading, do a bit of writing, and you know, just be better at all the stuff I’m usually too busy to do. Sickness doesn’t  work that way. My eyes hurt and trying to read made me dizzy. Writing was out of the question. Mostly, I put on Netflix and fell asleep watching reruns of old TV shows. Then of course, came the attack of unwanted thoughts and recriminations.

“Why haven’t I gotten more done?” “I’ll never finish readings for this course. I’m probably no good at it anyway. Maybe I should quit.” It didn’t take long before the worth of my entire life was in question and the future looked particularly dim. Didn’t help to learn a week into antibiotics and cough syrup, that the store where I work was closing in March. The job I’m not crazy about looked much better from the vantage point of not having one at all. Life. Not all it’s cracked up to be.

Then comes Moses. He meets God in a bush out in the middle of nowhere. “That’s me,” I think, “out in the middle of nowhere.” But can a place be nowhere if God hangs out there? I mean, what puts a place on the map if the possibility of running into the Big Kahuna doesn’t?

That’s hopeful. No place is “nowhere” if  what is most Sacred dwells there. That includes places like work, a dirty kitchen, or a tissue cluttered couch. Even a sick, tired heart.  The problem is the Holy Mystery is exactly that, a mystery, and doesn’t seem inclined to catch my attention with lights or voices. At least not that I notice. And there’s where Moses comes in. He told himself he ought to take a closer look. While I’d be better at noticing if the people or objects holding this Divine Presence were marked with roaring flames, I’m giving attentiveness a shot, again.

Quiet time in the morning before life gets rolling too fast to stop. Noticing the sun painting warm orange colors on the clay pot that holds a fledgling peace plant. Accepting the graciousness of co-workers who worked extra hours while I was languishing at home. Finding a container of homemade soup placed in my refrigerator so I would have something easy and healthy to eat after my first day back to work. Calls from my kids, just making sure their mom was getting better. The smile of a customer.

There are challenges, too. Trusting I’ll find a job with health benefits. Hoping in the face of a country that seems run by big money and a world torn by racism and violence. Believing when prayer doesn’t seem to make a difference. Expecting to find Presence and Grace when I take time to be still and take a closer look at the ordinary stuff that fills my day.

 

 

 

 

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A Nun’s Ministry to the Transgender Community
January 20, 2015 By Leave a Comment

A Nun’s Ministry to the Transgender Community

people-paintingA friend of mine, “Sr. Monica,” has had a long and graced ministry to the transgender community. Her presence with the people she knows speaks of God’s love and care for all of us, including those most of the fringes of society, the “invisible people,” as she called them.

Read her recent HuffPost blog post .

I hope, perhaps naively, that during the current Pope’s tenure, the church will finally recognize and remedy its failure to “be there” for these people who want simply to be who they have been made to be.

 

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January 6, 2015 By Leave a Comment

Epiphany Thoughts

A Star Appeared in the Sky

A Star Appeared in the Sky

It was Christmas Eve day and, since my work schedule didn’t begin until the afternoon, I was enjoying a hot, leisurely bath. My upstairs neighbor walked down the metal steps outside our building, taking loads of Christmas goodies to her car as she prepared for a trip south. Bells jingled with each step.

“Holidays,” I thought, “are important markers for the human spirit.” The day’s morning prayer included a reading that declared the covenant between God and God’s people would be broken if the sun and moon didn’t follow one another, if night didn’t follow day. Unthinkable. As the Psalmist says, God made the sun and moon to mark the seasons.

Holidays provide a framework for our years. Working in retail has shown me how disorienting lack of markers can be. Weekends used to be two days in a row when paid labor took a break and the hiatus could be filled however one chose or needed. For Christians, Sundays were a day of prayer and rest. Well, the best we could muster in our busy 24/7 world. But in retail, weekends are One Day Sales and time to offer services to shoppers. Days off vary week to week. As a result, many times I wake up and think: “What day is this?” and it might take me a minute or two to come up with the answer.

Holidays, however observed, help us focus on what is important and beyond our routine. The Sacred in our midst. The sacrifices of others. The blessings that grace us. My neighbor, jingling down the steps, was preparing to spend time with family and friends and to remember with them the mystery of God come to earth. She’d take a few days before plunging back into her usual work schedule.

Soaking in the tub, my thoughts turned to the morning’s Old Testament reading from 2 Samuel. David was snug in his palace when an idea struck: “Hmm. I’m sitting in a comfortable house of cedar while the Ark of the Covenant sits outside in a tent! Maybe I should build God a house!”

Sounded good to him so he mentioned it to the prophet Nathan who took up the matter with the Deity. God’s response? No so much. Couldn’t David see the irony? The creature building a house to hold the Creator?

“It was I who took you from the pasture

and from the care of the flock

to be commander of my people Israel.

I have been with you wherever you went,

and I have destroyed all your enemies before you.”

No, God didn’t need a house. Doesn’t sound like God wanted one. The Creator didn’t dwell only in the tent that housed the ark, either. Perhaps David missed it, but God was with him wherever he went. God dwells with the people. No one could say, “God lives here, in this place” rather than “there in your place.” (A notion that gets the world into lots of trouble.) God seems to prefer freedom to roam and turns up in places we’d never expect.

Heating up the bath water, I pondered Epiphany, the feast that asks us to consider God’s coming close so we could get a good look at Divinity. Maybe we’d become better at finding God in a lineup of day-to-day encounters. So when the holidays are over and when I can’t remember what day it is, and when work and life are a busy, messy jumble, God reminds us that the Holy One doesn’t need a special holiday or house or anything else. God is with us always, wherever we are. Always was. Always will be.

That’s worth celebrating! Happy Epiphany!

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Creation Gives Voice to Presence
November 7, 2014 By Leave a Comment

Creation Gives Voice to Presence

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

Originally published in The Catholic Times, November 9, 2014 

Volume 64:6

 

Emily Dickinson’s poem, Exultation is the going of an inland soul to sea, comes to mind each time I have the opportunity to head to the beach. Someday, I tell myself, perhaps I will live near the east coast, close enough that a trip to the ocean could be measured in minutes rather than hours. As it is, I’m grateful for the times when the long trip is possible.

One of my daughters lives a few hours from a national seashore, and we’ve made a tradition of spending at least a couple of days at the beach when I visit. In October the air is cool. We don’t swim but walk for hours along the sand. This year we wore scarves and sweaters as we sat in beach chairs and enjoyed looking far and gulping the salty air deep into our lungs.

As we watched, gulls and sanderlings entertained, and dolphins moved slowly out beyond the breakers. Pelicans dove for fish, and crabs disappeared down their sandy tunnels. The planet seemed to breathe with the ancient rhythm of the surf moving in and out. We talked about death and life, remembered beach vacations with my parents, and wondered how life would continue to unfold. Then, two pilgrims, we simply sat in silence.

The numinous place where land and sea meet is always a place of prayer for me. Power. Beauty. Mystery. Waters of immense depth, churning and filled with life, speak of the One Who is the Beginning. This day there were no revelations. No new understandings or answers to questions that move in my heart like the waves at me feet, but Presence simply inviting me to enjoy and to trust.

We headed back to my daughter’s apartment carrying a few shells, a small piece of driftwood for her mantel, and two pieces of seaglass that eventually would sit on my prayer table. The next day I drove home through mountains glowing with fall colors. In one more day, with sand still clinging to my pant legs, I was walking a road winding through wooded hills and watching birds landing on feeders outside a cabin’s windows.

PHOTO:Mary van Balen

PHOTO:Mary van Balen

I lit a candle and wrote in my journal, making sketches of shells and a list of birds at the feeders: woodpeckers, nuthatches, and tufted titmice. Looking up, I was amazed at the variety of colors and textures outside the window: Huge yellow, brown, and deep red oak leaves, smooth barked and deeply ridged tree trunks, green shrubs dotted with red berries, all against a backdrop of blue sky and grey leaf-covered ground.

Unlike my days at ocean when my eyes looked out across the water at the horizon, the day at the cabin offered obstructed views, but they were rich. Leaving the chill of the cabin, I moved outside to the sun-warmed deck, and still the pilgrim, sat silently on the weathered bench.

Wind rustling leaves filled the woods with a sound similar to the ocean’s surf, not rhythmic, but constant.

Creation psalms came to mind with their images of a God who made the sun and moon to mark time and confined the oceans so life could flourish on the land. ‘How varied are your works, Lord! In wisdom you have made them all” (Ps 104, 24). Like Job reminded by God, I have no idea how all this came to be. The “Big Bang” is likely, as Pope Francis recently affirmed. The how and the why remain a mystery, engaging professional scientists and theologians and expanding the minds and spirits of the rest of us who think about it.

But, deep down, I’m pondering Presence in the moment, in the now of sitting on the beach, walking through the woods, or working at Macy’s. In doing laundry and cooking dinner. In reading poetry and scripture, in drinking tea, and falling asleep. It’s the grace to be alive and open to the wonder of each bit of life that I’m looking for.

Being still in the midst of creation nurtures that prayer in us. It’s always been so, as the psalmist says: The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world (Psalm 19, 1-4).

PHOTO: Jennifer Stephens

PHOTO: Jennifer Stephens

© 2014 Mary van Balen

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Lesson from the Leaves
October 23, 2014 By 1 Comment

Lesson from the Leaves

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

I’m in Virginia visiting my daughter and to get here I had to drive through West Virginia’s mountains. My friends know that driving through West Virginia is the part of the trip I dread. Mom, born in West Virgina and a resident for a while (while I was five and six) could never understand my feelings. The mountains are beautiful, she’d say. They are. But so is the ocean and the more open vistas of Virginia. Trucks don’t whiz by on one side of their highways while the mountain drops away on the other side.

Granted, the highways through West Virginia have improved immensely since I began driving them each summer on the way to the beach with my family. Still, I don’t relish the thought of winding through them to arrive at the east coast. I thought about using the Pennsylvania turnpike this time. Google Maps showed it passing through fewer mountainous regions, but the substantial toll caused  me to reconsider.

Parisian hot chocolate at the Blue Talon

Parisian hot chocolate at the Blue Talon

So, Tuesday, a rainy grey day (Rain is right up there with semis and fog in my list of things that make mountain driving worse.) I set off in time to make it to Virginia before darkness fell. As I sat at the Blue Talon restaurant, sharing amazingly rich, creamy hot chocolate with a brick of homemade marshmallow floating in the silver cup, I shared the mountain drive with my daughter and her friend. I had to admit that the leaves were stunning, even without the benefit of bright sun.

“The colors were breathtaking. I could only imagine how they would’ve looked if rain wasn’t falling and clouds weren’t obscuring more direct light. I would’ve  had to stop to gaze at them. As it was, keeping my eyes on the road was work.” My mother appreciated mountain beauty year round, and even if I were a begrudging seasonal admirer, she would’ve approved of my admission.

I thought of my drive as I read this blog  by Omid Safi on Krista Tippet’s “On Being.” The magnificent colors of autumn forests have a message for us: Welcome the little deaths that come. They unmask the Divine that is already present in us. Today’s first reading at Mass also speaks of the Presence that is already within us:

Ephesians 3:14-20
This is what I pray, kneeling before the Father, from whom every family, whether spiritual or natural, takes its name:
Out of his infinite glory, may he give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, you will with all the saints have strength to grasp the breadth and the length, the height and the depth; until, knowing the love of Christ, which is beyond all knowledge, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.

I can’t wait for the short trip to the beach my daughter and I will enjoy beginning tomorrow. I am an ocean person at heart. Still, after reading the blog, I’m hoping for a sunny day to drive back home. The thought of glorious color and prayer breathing out of those mountains may ease my dread of the West Virginia trek.

 

 

 

 

 

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Living in Black & White
September 24, 2014 By 1 Comment

Living in Black & White

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

We sat across from each other studying the wine list. The middle eastern restaurant had moved to a more spacious location since I had last eaten there and the menu layouts had changed too. That wasn’t the reason why we didn’t have any idea what to order when the waitress stopped by our booth. We had been discussing the movie we had just seen: The Giver.

“Can I get you ladies something to drink?”

“Merlot.”

“Pino Noir,” and waters with dinner.”

The waitress nodded and disappeared.

“Do you think we live our lives in black and white?” my friend asked.

If you haven’t seen the movie, the parts that deal with the people in the community living n the present are in black and white.By the end of the movie that had changed. Not as dramatic as “The Wizard of Oz,” but you get the idea.

Her question forced me to think. Despite writing and writing and writing about living in the moment and the importance of being present to grace in the moment (the name of my column), I fessed up to running around as hurried as most, muti-tasking, and indulging in other behaviors that distract from the present.

“Thich Nhat Hanh says when you wash dishes, washing dishes in the most important thing in the world, and when you drink tea, drinking tea is the most important thing in the world,” I offered. Then admited to slurping a mouthful of tea from a mug on my table while preparing to present a retreat on journaling into prayer a couple of weeks ago, moving from room to room gathering materials, jotting notes, and checking lists. “I guess that’s living my life in black and white.”

“You ladies ready to order?”

No, not even close. We had barely looked at the menu. My friend made our apologies.

“I’ll be back.”

“I know,” my friend said.  “I’m usually doing so many things at once. I mean I walk the dog thinking I’ll get outside and appreciate the season, but end up on the phone touching base with the kids, figuring out schedules, just keeping on top of things, so when I get back home I realize I didn’t see a thing,”

After a couple more attempts, the waitress quit asking. She just made eye contact and moved on.

In the movie, so much was controlled to avoid conflict and suffering. But at what cost? What would it mean for us to break out of black and white living?

“You know, the other night I came home after work and grocery shopping and stepped out of the car. The air was cool and clear. Night was a hour or so away, and the sky still showed some color: blues and a bit of orange. The brighter stars were visible overhead. I stood still for a few moments and threw my arms out wide. “Glorious!,” I whispered. “Glorious!” I called out loud, stretching my arms as wide a possible as if I could pull it all inside of me, living in color.

van Gogh Cafe Terrace Place du Forum Arles 1888

van Gogh Cafe Terrace Place du Forum Arles 1888

Living in color doesn’t always feel so good or look so pretty. When I cried out of hurt and frustration the other day, that was living in color. I allowed myself to feel, facing what I’d rather not.  Perhaps it would’ve been more pleasant to ignore the feelings, to live in black and white. What about reading the headlines, or listening to a hurting child. Technicolor. I thought of van Gogh. Such suffering. Such color.

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

The ancient questions about suffering and death and ‘Where is God in that?’ thoughts came to mind. God invited Job to trust, and to live in wild, uncontrollable color. Jesus did too. Even when the color was blood red.

Back to the moment. We decided to split a dinner platter and eat our way around colorful plate of humus, baba ghanoush, bean salad, slaw, rice, falafel, and stuffed grape leaves.

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