Mary Elyn Bahlert

Monk in the world guest post

March 16, 2025March 22, 2025 Mary Elyn Bahlert

The world was always there for me – gurgling with joy, shining like the brightest sun, fragrance-full, slippery and hard-edged, colorful beyond belief – and there I was, walking around with my head in the clouds, my eyes toward the ground.

I have a good mind, but living from that linear place didn’t work for me forever, thank God. My best thinking brought me straight into a long and deep depression almost 20 years ago. Life has not been the same, since. Today, I am grateful to be alive, and every day offers new delicacies for my delight. The gift of being a Monk in the World is that I get to enjoy what has been there all along, and I get to enjoy it as if it is new, as if it has never been witnessed before.

Many years ago, I learned to pray after reading The Christian’s Secret to a Happy Life, by Hannah Whitall Smith (of the American Holiness Movement). That was the beginning of a long, rich, and growing walk as a Monk in the World. I studied theology and became a preacher, a way to offer to others the gift of knowing we are not separate, we are not alone. I found strength and power and growing self acceptance through prayer. After all this time, I still believe we can change the world by praying, by praying for ourselves, which grows us in Love.

I’m as inter-faith as I am Christian, knowing that the Light, the Universe, the Christ, the Mother, the Holy One, El, is in us all. Or maybe we are swimming in this Holy One. I struggle to find words for this life, this living.

I learned to meditate over 4 years ago, and this practice has deepened me. My greatest joy in meditation is that I find myself more present in the moment, moment by moment, day by day. I see things I did not see before. I delight in the branches of the birch tree outside my city window; I watch the seasons and winds bring change to that tree. I say: “I love that tree, and that tree loves me.” It’s true.

When I meditate, I find the boundaries between myself and the world dissolving. I feel the sound of a neighbor’s voice, the boom of a truck on the street, the harsh call of a jay, the wind in the eucalyptus trees, as much as I hear them. I suppose this is being one with all of creation. For me, it is not as clear as that, but I am beginning to understand, to know.

As a preacher, I also served a community of faith. My work as a Monk in the world was very extraverted for this introvert! I had the privilege of being called to be with others in their times of deepest need – learning a diagnosis that would take a beloved woman’s life, baptizing an infant who would not go home from the hospital, as she lay in the arms of her teenage mother, rushing into a hospital emergency room only minutes before the death of a vibrant woman in her 50’s, as her partner lay sobbing on top of her; I’ve sat in silence and watched the minutes tick away, waiting for surgery to end, with a frightened wife. I’ve answered the door to find a man who has not slept in days, smelling of the street, who tells me his long and convoluted story, only to ask me for a few dollars for food. I’ve heard many of those stories, and even though I do not understand, I have prayed with each one, knowing I have not have ever known that particular desperation. I’ve witnessed the suffering of the mentally ill who come to Church, hoping for something; I am blessed by my own illness to be able to see the suffering person, trapped by their mind, underneath what we call “stigma.”

After 30 years of serving as “Pastor,” I am only grateful. For whatever service I have been able to give, I am grateful. The gift has been mine, truly, truly.

All of this is to say that I am still looking to see the light Thomas Merton, one of my spiritual mentors, must surely have seen. The light is so ordinary, I’m sure. I know with a keen knowing that we are all light, that we are swimming in this light. I’ve felt it for a moment when I meditate, I’ve seen it shimmer – just a glimpse! – in the green, heart-shaped leaves of my beloved birch tree.

I am a mendicant now, begging for alms. I am a mendicant, raising my eyes to look into the eyes of whoever crosses my path. I am a mendicant, wanting to trust each day’s needs and gifts to the Holy One. I am a mendicant, looking for Light.

Published as “Monk in the World Guest Post,” on abbeyofthearts.com, 2014

memories, nostalgia, remembering, Uncategorized

John

March 9, 2025March 11, 2025 Mary Elyn Bahlert

Judy and I were in love with the same guy. We were fifteen, and we’d been friends since we were in kindergarten together at La Follette Elementary School on the north side of Milwaukee. Judy’s family had moved to West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee, which put them closer to her dad’s work at Allis-Chalmers Company. We’d come from the same kind of people: hard-working, working-class people.

Judy was sitting across from me the day I returned after getting a vaccine shot by the school nurse, and she saw me throw up what was in my stomach – as it happened. But she was my friend, anyway.

And we were living on the other side of Milwaukee in 1964, when the Beatles “invaded” the United States, and the world. Of course, all the young girls had watched the debut on the Ed Sullivan Show – a favorite of mine for many years – and had decided, at once, who was their favorite Beatle, as we watched the girls our age in the studio shouting, crying, screaming.

My family’s stereo system was on a large cart on wheels, and for some reason, Mom allowed me to have the stereo system in my bedroom, the already-cramped room that I shared with my little sister, Suzie. And so I played the few records – 45’s and albums – that I had, over and over – and over again.

Every few weeks, I’d take the money I’d earned from baby-sitting the three little kids next door, and I’d walk down Medford Avenue to the Sears-Roebuck Store on 24 and Fond du Lac, passing my friend Nancy’s house on the way. As I walked, I had in mind what I intended to buy that day: another single to add to the box I kept on the floor next to the hi-fi setup in my room. All week, I’d listened to WOKY – a Milwaukee radio station that played the kind of music kids like me listened to – so I knew what I wanted to bring home. Sometimes, I had enough money to buy an album, and so I started a small collection, which I propped up against the wall. I listened and I sang along with the records I played (my husband, Jeff, is still surprised when I burst into another song – complete verses – from the 50’s and 60’s – some of which he has never heard before). I can sing through whole albums of the Beatles, The Animals, the Dave Clark Five. Yes, I can!

Later, my taste turned to Motown Records, out of Detroit, and I can sing all the words to those songs, too.

And of course, we knew the birthday of our favorite Beatle. Judy and I talked every few days on the phone, sharing our latest news about John, what we’d read about the Beatles in the paper that week. We knew for sure that John’s birthday was October 9. In those days, this kind of information was common knowledge to Beatle-lovers.

We hatched a plan. Whose idea was it? We hatched a plan: We would bake a cake for John on his birthday. And we’d deliver the cake to the person we knew that was as close to John Lennon as we’d ever get: Bob Barry of WOKY radio in Milwaukee!

And so, on the morning of October 9, 1965, Judy and I met in the kitchen of my family’s flat on Medford Avenue to bake a birthday cake for John Lennon. We were careful as we cut the cake into the shape of a guitar (!) and decorated it with chocolate frosting, and as we added yellow frosting highlights. We were proud of our concoction! My Mom even took a picture of us together, holding the birthday cake for John Lennon!

And we delivered it to WOKY radio on Fond du Lac Avenue in Milwaukee, to be given to Bob Barry.

We had to go to school on Monday, so we didn’t hear whether Bob Barry mentioned our cake or not. And we are fairly sure the cake never made it to our favorite Beatle. But it came as a shock, years later, when John would be killed. The world was changing. And Judy and my worlds were changing, too, as we outgrew our favorite Beatle and each moved into our different lives.

Uncategorized

Mr. Fischer

March 2, 2025March 2, 2025 Mary Elyn Bahlert

November 22, 1963. I was in my 9th grade German class, Mr. Fischer at the front of the room, when his teaching was interrupted by the distinctive ringing of the public address system, the large speaker in the right hand corner of the room, almost directly across from my desk.

I don’t remember what words came drifting down to us in our desks, bolted to the floor in even rows. What I remember, as the announcement of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as he rode in the presidential motorcade in Dallas, Texas was reported to us from the intercom, was the face of Mr. Fischer, tears streaming down his cheeks. He made no attempt to cover his face. His eyes were not looking at all of us, the young people whose various motives had brought them to be enrolled in his second-year German class. His eyes were somewhere else in their sorrow.

Now, I remember that moment in detail, the detail of his face, larger than life, in front of the desks filled with young people who would not, could not understand the enormity of what had happened to the President, and to all of us. I had seen my father cry – never my mother – and so it must not have struck me as strange to see the kind man cry.

Now, I also – in my considering that moment in our lives over the years – believe that Mr. Fischer, so many years older than all of us sitting before him – had witnessed in his own life and history such happenings in Europe. And so he was living again in his new country a repeat of history. A sordid history.

And for the first time in my life, I came to know that not everyone saw the state of the country, the state of the world, as we did. I mentioned something about the assassination to my friend Carlene, to be met with her cryptic response: “we didn’t like him.” That was jarring, but I said nothing, taking it in, and maybe seeing for the first time the great difference between Carlene and me, between our families: her father an engineer in an engineering firm, my father a union steel worker with an 8th grade education. I saw something clearly, then, in her response. I saw something clearly about her, something that would never leave me. And I understood that we were different, and that other people saw the world differently. I understood, and for the first time.

And I knew I would stand with my people.

Now, as the nation struggles with the sharply drawn political/ideological differences of the people, those lines are drawn more clearly than those first decades following World War II. Vietnam and what it would bring to all of us, in particular to all of us in my generation, did not hold an important place in our minds at that moment. That would come later, and the years of unrest – brought to a head in my generation – were before us.

I remember that moment, Mr. Fischer – as a teacher, always larger than life in my own memory – standing, tears on his cheeks. And always, I’m grateful to him and to the others who influenced me, who formed the shape of my youthful world, whose influence would never leave me.