quiet

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

April 7, 2023 By Mary van Balen 8 Comments

Befriending Good Friday Darkness

While staying alone at a friend’s woodland cabin one Good Friday night, I turned off the lights and stepped outside for a walk. My eyes needed a few minutes to adjust until silhouettes of bushes, trees, and clumps of weeds emerged from the blackness. Darkness changes even the familiar, and while I knew where the little creek spilled past the end of the driveway and how the area beyond it opened to a path up a hill and along the ridge, I chose my steps carefully, listening to animal sounds and feeling the earth give way beneath my feet. Night heightened my senses, alert for danger as well as beauty.

I stepped on the end of a weathered, grey board, part of some long-gone fence or building, and the other end sprung up from the ground, startling me. It seemed alive, expectant as I was, aware that we both were in the midst of some unknown something that was coming or perhaps was already there. The board settled back onto the ground once I continued on my way. I imagined it returned to quiet attention. All creation seemed to be waiting through the night for what, I didn’t know.

The dark hours of Good Friday invite us to settle into a time of not knowing, of finally sitting peacefully, if not comfortably, with emptiness. It offers a time of deepening faith that something transformative is always happening under the surface, at the heart of things. It moves, but we cannot see. Like seeds buried in cold winter soil or a caterpillar dissolving and recreating in the shroud of its chrysalis. Like Jesus laying in the tomb. Life is at work even in what looks like death.

That truth reveals itself in the “little deaths” that everyone encounters: illness, loss, struggle, depression, uncertainty. At some point we learn that, as much as society tells us we are in control of our lives, we really are not. Some things are beyond our choosing or our making. These opportunities to let go of control and embrace our own powerlessness and uncertainty invite us to grow in trust. Trust that in the end, as Jesus said, Love cannot be overcome.

He showed us in his life and in his death, what trusting God’s Presence looks like. He lived knowing he was not alone in his journey and assured us that we aren’t either. In his lifetime, those in power tried to put him to death, to snuff out Love that made them uncomfortable and that threatened their position of privilege and their way of life. But Love that is the source of all being would not be destroyed.

Instead, by embracing his own death, Jesus transformed it from an “end” into a “beginning.” We are invited to do the same. To befriend darkness and let it in. To let it open us to surrender and receptivity. The dark times, the Good Fridays, are necessary steps into a new place. Their emptiness provides space for Love to grow deeper and to emerge transformed as Jesus did from the tomb.

At a time when the world is filled with darkness, with violence and hatred and divisions, somewhere, good is happening. Love is growing and changing us and our world. Jesus showed us that it is human to be afraid and angry, but also to trust. Trust that deep down, in places we cannot see or know in the moment, Love is alive and Eastering in us, getting ready to rise and reveal itself again and again.

Good Friday gifts us with the time to sink into quiet, into darkness. To allow ourselves to recognize emptiness and infirmity, mortality and powerlessness, and yet, eventually, find hope.

Psalm 31, prayed in the Good Friday liturgy, contains the words of surrender and trust Jesus spoke from the cross as he died: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” But as I read further, the image that stirred my soul was this: “I am like a dish that is broken.” In dark times of unknowing, I feel like a broken bowl, my life, my spirit, in pieces. Good Friday tells me Jesus knew that feeling too. In the end, he trusted that God was holding the pieces. Like kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending them with gold, Love puts us back together, more beautiful, and stronger than before. Able to hold more Love and to give it away.

That night at the cabin, I rested with creation in this Mystery. Unaware of “how,” we were opening to the Eastering always transforming us from within. May this Good Friday be such a gift for you.

Eastering    
      (Unless in silence
      where sings the song?
      What means the morning
      unless first the night?
      Unless into stillness
      where comes the dance?
      Unless into darkness
      where breaks the light?)
Woven warp and weft of things.

- Mary van Balen 1977

Kintsugi bowl painting and weaving photo: Mary van Balen; Feature watercolor and photo: Kathryn Holt

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: "little deaths", creation, darkness, Eastering, embracing darkness, gifts of darkenss, Good Friday, hope, Mystery, Paschal mystery, quiet, surrender, transforming love, trust

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

June 21, 2015 By Mary van Balen 2 Comments

Decluttering Closets and Lives

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

Originally published in The Catholic Times, June 6, 2015

I spent the last couple of days cleaning out my closet and getting rid of “things.” The impetus for this activity is a new job. During the past five years, I have worked as a retail sales associate at a large department store where black clothing was the rule. A splash of color on top was ok as long as a black jacket or sweater covered our shoulders and back. My closet, as you might imagine, reflected the dress code. I hadn’t minded too much. After all, I was a Catholic schoolgirl used to uniforms.

At my daughter’s suggestion, before going shopping to add color to my wardrobe, I tired on every piece of clothing I owned. The “donate” pile grew until it filled over four trash bags! I was amazed by the amount of stuff. Some clothing I haven’t worn for years. How had my closet become so full?

Letting go of “stuff” is often difficult, even if we don’t use it. “Maybe it will come in handy later.” “I might wear that next summer.” “I remember when I bought that. It came from…” Fill in the bank with the name of a place you visited, a special person, or an event that holds a special place in your heart. Accumulation is easy.

I must say that cleaning out my closet felt great. I’m ready to tackle the basement and boxes that have been stored unopened since I moved into my present home. Divesting. Feeling lighter. It’s good. Friends who had downsized from larger homes to smaller ones or condos tell the same story. I think that’s because things do more than fill up our homes. They clutter our spirits.

For some nomadic peoples, their way of life precludes “collecting” stuff. Once, while reading “The Mystic Warriors of the Plains,” I was struck by the Lakota’s practice of decorating everyday utensils and teepees with images and symbols, with color and beauty. As they were handled, they must have drawn the users hearts and minds to remember, to pray, to be present. The wisdom born of a nomadic culture impressed me then and now.

How easy, in our culture, to accumulate. We are consumers, and our economic system encourages that. Media bombards us with new gadgets, fashions, and other possessions that we just shouldn’t live without. We can have so much stuff that we rent units to hold what can’t fit into our homes.

Things require care as well as places to be. Our minds, our schedules, our money, even our spirits in some ways, respond to our possessions. “Just keep what brings you joy,” my daughter counseled. Often, things weigh us down rather than lift our hearts. Too many things can make our spaces feel oppressive rather than peaceful. Precious time is used to clean, maintain, and organize stuff that isn’t used. Where’s the joy in that?

Our culture encourages consumption of nonmaterial things as well, encouraging us to accumulate experiences, to spend hours engaged with the time-sink of social media, computer games, and television. These activities can be good, but they also can lure us into addiction. Who has begun scrolling down the computer screen meaning to simply check their facebook page or to play a game of Spider Solitaire and discover, when they check the time, that a couple of hours have passed?

Worthy activities can be overdone, too. Good hearts easily become involved with too many committees and organizations. Even children may have schedules that leave little room for imagination and drawing on inner resources when boredom sets in.

Human beings need quiet. We need silence to hear the whispers in our hearts and souls. We nurture ourselves when we take time to sit with God, to be alone, to notice the moon drifting behind clouds, or to take a close look at flowers and plants growing in our yards and parks. When we aren’t preoccupied, we can be present to the moment.

Emptying my closet helped me recognize the grace of decluttering other parts of my life, too. I’m looking forward to it!

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: clutter, consumerism, consumers, decluttering, grace, joy, media, present to the moment, quiet, stuff

December 15, 2014 By Mary van Balen Leave a Comment

Quieting Down to Listen

PHOTO: Mary van Balen

Originally published in The Catholic Times, December 14, 2014

The gospel from the first Sunday of Advent showed Jesus instructing his followers to be alert. Warning against the possibility of dozing and being asleep when the lord of the house arrives, Jesus had one word for them: “Watch.”

When I taught writing to elementary students and later to adults, my advice was to “be wide awake.” They kept a writer’s notebook, a place to hold thoughts, interesting articles, and favorite poems, anything that spoke to their hearts or passed through their lives. Sometimes what they jotted down ended up in an essay or launched them into a theme that developed into something longer. Most didn’t. The process of noticing and of being present to the moment was the important result. They developed “writerly habits.”

Prayer and writing have a lot in common. Jesus wasn’t instructing his followers to be writers, but to be “wide awake” for God’s presence. Jesus wants us to develop a “pray-ers habit.” “I am with you always,” Jesus says at the end of Matthew’s gospel, “even to the end of time.” The struggle for us is being still enough, inside and out, to become aware of and respond to that presence. Some people in Mark’s gospel audience were preoccupied with the future. They wanted to know when the end was coming, when Jesus would return. Jesus told them that wasn’t for them to know. Instead, they were to live in the present, alert to the “now.”

That’s what Advent is saying to me this year: Don’t spend the time I have in one place while my mind and heart are somewhere else. Don’t fill my mind with mental “chatter” that drowns out what the moment is saying. Easier said than done. I can’t tell you how many mornings I get up with the intention of spending twenty minutes in quiet prayer, simply trying to be present to God-with-Us, but instead end up rushing out of the house on my way to work without having sat still for a moment.

Stuff happens. I’ve thrown in a load of laundry, fretted over finding some other job, responded to emails, and perused the New York Times headlines. I gulp down my cup of tea and can’t remember if I had Constant Comment or Lady Grey. A pity since the aroma and taste of each is worth appreciating.

Even while driving to work I’m thinking about what I’ll do when I finish my shift. Never mind that the sky is clear and bright or that a friendly driver slowed down so I could make my turn. No matter that I have been given another day to live and breathe and love.

Yesterday, I read through Advent’s mass readings. Lots of them are concerned with justice and compassion, God’s and ours. God hears the cry of the poor, promises rest to those who are tired, takes care of sending rain and sun for crops, cares about the lost sheep, the littlest one, cures blindness, lameness, and broken hearts. God wants to love us all, but I’m afraid I’m often too busy to notice.

I think when Zechariah was stuck dumb it was to make him be quiet long enough to become a better listener…to pay attention and to see God at work in ways he didn’t expect.

Mary said “Yes,” after hearing the angel’s invitation. Joseph heard Wisdom in his dreams and took his pregnant fiancé into his home despite appearances.

You have to be listening to hear the “angels” of the moment or God talking in your dreams. You have to be paying attention to recognize God in the poor and suffering in this world. You have to be still to hear Divine Love and share it with others.

Advent’s a time to recall that the God who created us, who came to us in Jesus, and who will come again is, most importantly, here in each and every one of us this very moment. God’s concerned about the least among us. About justice and compassion. About what’s in our heart. Advent’s a call to be still and to be amazed that the most Holy Mystery wants to spend gracious time with us.

Filed Under: Grace in the Moment Tagged With: Advent, attentive, compassion, grace, justice, quiet, quiet prayer, silence, wide awake