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.
I am part of a small group of fellow spiritual directors that have met faithfully since the beginning of 2014. Of course, the presence of COVID in all our lives beginning in 2020 prevented us from meeting for many months, but for the past year, we have come together again as regularly as we can.
Our lives have changed over time, of course. One member is full time caregiver now for his spouse; another member is slowly moving toward being caregiver for her spouse. One of our friends has just completed a “Swim Across the Bay” as a way to support cancer research; she shares her disenchantment with “church” as she has known it, disenchantment heightened by having the forced break of COVID as time to reflect. Another shares honestly with us all his changes as he grows older. I remind the group, often as we meet, that they are my “church.”
The group’s purpose has evolved since our journey with COVID. Sometimes now, we do not have a presentation for our listening and wisdom. Sometimes, now, one person will bring a reading or a topic to us for us to think about and to consider aloud what it means to us.
At the beginning of 2023, a member of the group suggested that we choose a Word for the Year. When we met in January, we spoke aloud our word to the group. My word, however, didn’t resonate deeply and well with me. I did not take it with me as the days and weeks lengthened into this year. But as we met this past week, a quiet, simple statement arose from the group, and I had it! I had chosen my word – two words, really – to be my guide as the days and weeks now flow gently to the end of 2023.
And so I ask: “What now?” I ask, “what now?” of God, of the Holy, of my Deeper Self, of the gathering dusk of each day, of the quiet moments I cherish early each morning. I have written on each page of my calendar until the end of the year those words: “what now?”
At dusk you fly over our place, coasting on the graying sky - your number rising from the shadow of the trees, a strong battle-front: a murder of crows squawking your firm presence on the wind: a soaring chant. You ride your voices and your wings into the sun as it dips into the Bay.
Each evening at dusk, I wait for you.
Each evening at dusk, a murder of crows. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 10/2023
From the time I was small, I knew that I had family – uncles, aunts, cousins – in California. They were the people who peopled my world, although they lived far from us. From time to time, one of my mother’s brothers would visit, and I would hear about my cousins, those strangers who were yet part of the community that made up my life.
Michelle has been in my life forever. When I was five, Uncle Pete and Aunt Athalie and Michelle came to Milwaukee, and now I look again at the photo of Aunt Athalie and Michelle and me on the front lawn of our flat at 1115 West —- Street in Milwaukee. Michelle has her hair covered in a scarf, tied under the chin in the style of teenage girls of the day. I’m happy. I was thrilled, to be in the presence of my cousin Michelle. She was a hero to me.
When I was a teenager, Michelle was already married. For a few years, we were penpals, and I read with interest each letter about her life, so different from mine, in California. In one letter, she told me about the ending of her marriage. She wrote about her life, and I had to conjure up what her life might look like, in that place so far away, a place I had never been.
Now, I’ve lived most of my life in California, and I’ve lived most of my life not far from where Michelle grew up. By a strange turn of events, I was called to be a pastor in the neighborhood in South San Francisco where Michelle had grown up, and at the time when her father, my Uncle Pete, was already suffering from Alzheimer’s. Then, I visited my aunt and uncle from time to time, and for the first time, developed a relationship with Aunt Athalie. She was the aunt who never forgot a birthday, she was the aunt that had sent a care package of Michelle’s well worn clothes to our family from time. As I spent time with Aunt Athalie, I learned about her and her life, separate from my uncle and cousin. One day, she told me the story of where she was on Sunday, December 7, 1941. A young woman, she was getting payroll ready for the Navy Fleet, working alone – in Pearl Harbor. My blustery, extraverted Uncle Pete – who’d fought in three wars – had always commanded the attention of the room when he told stories. Her own story – more dramatic than his – had stayed, quietly, within her.
As the years passed, Michelle settled into her life in Riverside, California, and our connection became birthday cards and Christmas cards with a short note: “Love, Michelle.” Her hand-writing was dramatic, flourishing.
A few years ago, I was at home in the afternoon when the mail arrived. When I opened the box, I found a hand written note from Michelle. On her latest trip to Hawaii – always her home – she and her beloved, Tony, had been married! As soon as I read the letter, I called her. She’d been surprised – and disappointed – that she had not heard from me, that I had not reacted to learning her news. But the mail had been slow, and now, we were connected again. I was happy for her, as I watched and imagined her life from afar.
Three years ago, Michelle called to say she’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. For three years, she bravely battled the disease, working with her excellent doctors to discern the next steps forward. Then, early in September, she was sent home to her little house on Larchwood Place, on hospice. I did not talk to her again. I noticed one day that her Facebook posts had stopped, and a few friends offered sad messages instead. She had posted a photo of the mantle of her home, and on the mantle I can see the birthday card I sent to her this year, her birthday one week before my own.
Last weekend, as Jeff and I were preparing for a short trip to the mountains, and on to Sparks, Nevada, Jeff and Michelle’s beloved, Tony, called. The days were coming to a close now, and Michelle drifted in and out of consciousness. He was tired. Tony had been a stalwart, fierce companion and protector of Michelle in these last days. As I prepared to meet a friend for lunch on September 26, Jeff’s cell phone rang, and Tony spoke the words we all knew would be coming soon: Michelle had died. I went to lunch with my friend, mentioned Michelle’s passing. And that was that.
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.
Like a person at the table, Steelworkers Union 19806 was always in my life when I was growing up. From time to time, my father would come home from work with rumors that a strike was in the works, that there might be a day when the local Steelworkers would strike, and he’d be on the picket line, proudly holding a sign, doing his part for himself and the rest of the union members.
I grew up with the language of labor unions spoken at the table, words like “strike” and “collective bargaining,” and “walk out.” My father, Frank Bahlert, was a hard working inspector at A.O. Smith Corporation in Milwaukee. He spent his days crawling over steel frames, measuring – showing up to work, to work hard. Being part of the Union was part of showing up.
My uncles, although they did not always understand my father, respected him. They respected that he was a hard-working laborer. He’d been grateful to get a job at all after the Depression years which dragged into the 1940’s, and he didn’t look for a wife until after he’d landed that Union job with good wages. He was already 38 years old when he married my mother; after the wedding, Mom quit her job. Now, I think her earning power was greater than my father’s, but they worked out their life as a married couple – a working class married couple of the 1950’s.
My father was proud of me when I graduated college and started working for the Federal Government. He was proud of what I earned – my beginning salary for the year higher than his hourly wage at A.O.Smith brought him at the end of his working days. He retired at 65, still strong after recovering from a heart attack. For years afterward, he would dream about work.
The men who worked with my father saw his work ethic, and they trusted his work. When he suffered the heart attack, a man who’d worked on the floor with my father came to the house to use the big clippers to trim the hedges that lined the walk up to the porch, part of my father’s work as a renter in a Milwaukee flat. Another showed up another day to cut the lawn. Dad watched his fellow union workers from the upstairs front window, hoping he’d be back to doing the job some day. And he was.
In the years before he retired, Dad’s union colleagues made sure he had a job and a title in the union; he checked to see that all the members were in the union hall and seated before he gave the nod for the sergeant at arms to call the meeting to order. I remember his face the day he went off to the first meeting in his new role, his hands shaking as he walked out the door in a clean shirt, his union badge pinned to the front pocket. He was nervous, and he was eager, also, to do what he could as a member. His fellow union men had shown their respect for his work ethic by giving him a role in union proceedings.
Once a year, the union would sponsor a picnic, and so the families of these hard working steel workers met one another. When I was in Junior High, I bowled each Saturday morning with the young sons and daughters of other members of Steelworkers Union 19806.
After I graduated college and before I took my first job that required a degree, I worked for a few months at A.O. Smith Corporation. Assigned to an office, I started that job by learning the file systems – and by doing the filing for the large office staff. In the morning, as I walked from the street into the building, I stood in line with the rest of my co-workers, clocking in at the machine on the wall. The steps from the street to the door that led to the corporation offices led through that steel mill, and I saw for the first time that loud and dirty place where Dad spent his days.
He loved his work. Every day, he came home with stories, telling mom, recounting in his animated way what the men had talked about at morning break. In front of the television in the evenings, sometimes he’d show us a steel sliver in his hand, and Suzie, my younger sister, would kneel in front of his chair, working the sliver out. Some days, Dad would tell us in a low voice that a man had been killed that day in the steel mill. At the door of the factory stood a large sign announcing the number of days since there’d been an accident.
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I like to drive past what used to be the A.O. Smith Corporation in Milwaukee, when I’m able to return. The streets around the plant are empty now, deserted, the building that once buzzed with hard working life 24 hours a day, quiet. I think about Dad. I remember his face. I remember how he loved his work, how he loved being able to work at a steady job that allowed him to start a family. I remember the pride in his voice when he reminded us of how many years he’d been at that work as an inspector. I see his eyes, shining.
And when I read in the news that the United Auto workers are striking across the country, I quietly agree. They are my people.
