Author: Mary Elyn Bahlert

I am a spiritual seeker, a seeker who has "taken a drink from many cups." I love to accompany others on the deeper journey to witness to their True Self. Now a writer, photographer and poet, I have retired from full-time ministry as a pastor in downtown Oakland, CA.
reflecting, Uncategorized, wisdom

Forever 17

Mary Elyn Bahlert

When I was a young teenager, I began to long for the days when I would be 17. I had a “calling” to 17. Of course, 17 came and went, and my life went on and on until I am writing to you now, from the wisdom years, the elder years.

When I walk down the street now – and I walk often in my “walkable” neighborhood in Oakland – I know that I am a senior citizen: one young woman, pushing to get past me in a parking lot walkway, called me: “granny.” OK. I’m old now, or elderly, or “getting on in years,” as my Dad used to say. Jeff once heard the couple next door – overheard them over the tall fence that separates our yards – tell a friend that there was a “nice older couple” next door.

But I know that I’m stuck at 17 – inside. I’ve done the work: years of therapy, growing pains, coming to terms with my family of origin, self-help groups, classes in personal growth. I’ve done all that; maybe I’ve done too much of “that.” So I’ve done the work I needed to do to become an adult. I’m grateful for the work I had in life that required me to grow, to always grow, to look deeper into myself to find who I am. I’m truly grateful.

And I’m still 17.

Many years ago, I gathered a group of women to a meeting room in the church where I was Pastor, to see our way forward to begin a new women’s ministry. I started the group by asking everyone to think about how old they were inside. Around the table we went, listening to one another’s answers, nodding at what we heard. An “older” woman – probably about the age I am today – said: “I’m 18.” She looked at me. I looked at her. Yes, I thought, she is 18. I’d found a friend!

Sometimes now when I’m with friends, I wonder how old they think they are – inside. Through the years, I’ve asked. And the answers they have given resonate with who they are to me.

I haven’t asked him, but my husband is older than I am, by a few years. I know he thinks, probably even knows, that he isn’t, but he is. He’s in his late twenties. And I’m 17 – although I might not look it!

How old are you – inside?

Jeff and Me at the Alabama Hills, Lone Pine, California, April, 2024

beauty, reflecting

Holy places

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I am surrounded by holy places: shelves that hold cards, small enough to carry in my wallet, a picture of a saint on one side, the prayer of the saint on the other. On the window sill next to my bed is a rosary, gifted to me by a friend, a found rosary she discovered in a second hand store. On the walls of my little study are holy pictures: Mother Mary, holding a child, a copy of a painting created by a dear friend. A favorite: Mary, the Untier of Knots. I keep several of her in my kitchen drawer these days, to send them as gifts: to a friend who is undergoing treatment for cancer, to my cousin Rudy and his wife, Mary, who say the rosary together every day. On a ledge close to the ceiling of my living room, Guadalupe looks down on me and Jeff as we sit together in the morning, sipping our first cups of coffee. Sometimes as I empty out my desk, I find other saints; I find a stone given to me by a friend, I find a few words on a worn, ragged piece of paper – words of a poem: “I love Jesus, who said…” On my shelf above the bathroom sink lies a small cross, decorated with red glass, a gift from a friend who I see so seldom now. Like my rows of books of poetry, each of these items, some I have carried with me for many, many years, is a prayer said for me, spoken silently or not at all, a prayer on my behalf.

For each prayer, I am grateful.

Altar, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert

Uncategorized

Little, little, little, little,

Mary Elyn Bahlert

little Anali.

In the fall of 1990, Jeff and I traveled to Guatemala to meet for the first time a baby girl, Anali, whose mother had given her up for adoption, unable to care for her baby girl herself. Many women living in poverty in Guatemala had taken the same path with and for their children.

We returned home and waited until the proper paperwork was complete. Every day in our home in Tracy, I worked along with Jeff in the church we pastored together, and I told the story again and again of our meeting little Anali to curious folks in the congregation. They were waiting, it seemed, along with us.

And so we met the attorney who would facilitate the adoption of Anali – and many, many other children. We spent Thanksgiving that year around the dining table with other prospective parents – mothers-to-be from the United States, also in the country to meet their adoptive children

And every morning, as soon as I arose, I carried with me in my mind the baby girl we had met. We prepared a room for her in the big parsonage, and we told our friends the story of our meeting.

One day, we received a phone call from Guatemala with the news that little Anali’s birth mother – her mother – had decided to not give her baby up for adoption, that she had reclaimed her child. At the time, Jeff and I didn’t seem to have time to process the grief we felt. We set about completing forms again to receive a child. This time, we didn’t travel to meet the baby again. We waited at home for the news that our baby was ready to come with us to the United States.

A second time, the baby’s birth mother reclaimed her child, and so we took new adoption papers to the courthouse in Stockton. The day I drove to Stockton to deliver the papers, I felt as if I held a heavy weight in my arms. A woman from the congregation – whose adult son had disappeared many years before – kindly rode with me as I traveled to complete the transfer of papers – again.

After we received news that the third baby girl was not coming, I did not carry another heavy load of papers to the Courthouse in Stockton, and when Jeff and I announced to the congregation that we would be leaving that spring, the woman who had ridden with me to Stockton – came up to me, grief in her eyes, and said: “I can understand wanting to leave a place where something bad has happened to you.”

*

I remember distinctly the morning after we had received the news that little Analie’s mother had reclaimed her child. As soon as I rose from bed, and as I prepared for the day, a thought came to my mind, a thought I’d held for the months since we’d met the beautiful baby girl we’d awaited. “Little, little, little, little, little Analie,” I repeated to myself. And on that morning, when I began to recite the lovely refrain, I stopped, noticing my thoughts. Usually, I followed the refrain with images of the two of us as we grew together. I reminded myself that little Analie would not be coming to live with us. That was that.

Little Anali and me, 1990, Guatemala City, Guatemala

Uncategorized

In the Stacks

Mary Elyn Bahlert

At the Center Street Library
Larry Bartis and I
Strained our necks
To read the titles on the row of books
At the top.

“A Man’s Journey,” Larry said.
“Rising to the Moment,” I read.
“At the End,” he whispered.

As each book introduced itself to us
We giggled, louder and louder:
Gleeful, happy,
Shoulder to shoulder –
I felt joy in my whole body
And shyly looked at the laughing boy:

“A boy,” I thought.
“I like him.”

Like the books stacked high in the row,
I grew.
beauty, community, Uncategorized

Living with diversity

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I love the diversity of the Bay Area, where I’ve lived for over half my life. As I walk on the busy shopping street in my neighborhood, I’m happy when I hear languages spoken by the people who pass me on the street. As I walk past the store fronts that line the street, most of the languages I hear I can’t identify. All the better!

For many years, I said, from time to time, that in the Midwest, the weather was more interesting – and more rugged, of course! – than the Bay Area of California. But the people were more interesting in the Bay Area. They still are, to me.

As a pastor in downtown Oakland, I was enlivened by the diversity of folks who arrived to worship with us – folks who brought their diverse backgrounds, languages, music, dress, and all the gifts of another culture – to the mostly white congregation that had chosen to stay in Oakland when there were other choices they could have made. I loved the heart of that place, where in years past the people had decided to cast their lot in the city, a city with its share of problems, of poverty, of violence. I loved them for choosing to stay in Oakland.

Today was Pentecost Sunday, and I had the honor of preaching for an anniversary celebration at Oakland Chinese Community United Methodist Church in Chinatown, Oakland. I read my sermon in English, paragraph by paragraph, and the Pastor of the congregation followed each paragraph with a Cantonese translation. The two of us, each speaking our own language, brought to mind the myriad of languages that were spoken when the disciples left the Upper Room and became apostles who went out to tell others about what they knew of God, and of Jesus.  “Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard their own language being spoken. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Aren’t all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in our native language?” (Acts 2:1-8).

Jeff accompanied me to the celebration, and we were the only white people in worship. Many times here in the Bay Area, we are minorities – seldom in other places, or in Wisconsin, our birthplace. As we said the Lord’s Prayer in English, I listened for the voices of most of the others, praying in Cantonese, at the same time. A young man who had been raised in China read his statement of faith to the congregation, recounting how he had found his way to the Church, followed by the Pastor translating into English; then, he was baptized. A holy moment.

Diversity has its problems, to be sure. But it’s good to be in a place where people who are different are not afraid, where folks can speak in their own language as they shop or as they walk down the street, and be safe. That’s not true in many places in the United States now, or in so many other places.

As we walked to our car after worship and after receiving the generous meal we all shared together in the fellowship hall, Jeff and I stopped to wait at a corner for the light to change, across from a Buddhist Temple that brings the Holy to those others who do not worship as we do. I’m grateful that they are here.

We crossed the street and drove home to our little house on a quiet street in another part of the city.

In St. Mary’s Cemetery, Oakland. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 4/2024