Early morning, day light hangs loosely on our shoulders, in our hair as we walk, silent, sniffing like the deer who crosses our path, who stops – still as a statue – sees us, darts away.
We make a narrow path in the darker places, walking in a line. We are One then: with the path, with the eager birds, with the sky, with the silence that holds us, carries us.
***
“Early morning, day light,” poem by Mary Elyn Bahlert, May, 2025, at the Ridges, Baileys Harbor
“At the Ridges,” photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, May, 2025
In sadness the lively tree is shed of color, gleaming ornaments carefully, safely wrapped in soft paper, paper that wrapped them safely when I was young. With each one wrapped, a memory: a smile, a tick of sadness arrives as I lay them to rest for another year.
These days, I lay them in their boxes with a wave of grief at how many Christmases have passed, how few festivals of Light there are to come.
Mary Elyn Bahlert, 1/2025
Beautiful Christmas companion, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 12/2024
Sometimes, a word is needed to describe something ordinary, something that is recognizable, something wonderful. A word is needed to describe a feeling that is ordinary, recognizable – and wonderful. Or a couple of words.
Jeff and I understand completely what a “warm fuzzy” is. We have both had moments when a sensation of happiness and contentment arrives in our solar plexus – for a moment. And then, it passes. As quickly as the sensation arrives, it passes. Unless we notice it, it will pass without our knowing. That would be sad.
And so, Jeff and I honor the arrival of a warm fuzzy, usually by noticing its arrival on the face of our partner, or maybe even a stranger. Having felt that warm and comforting sensation ourselves, we can see its presence in someone else. “He has a warm fuzzy,” Jeff might say to me as we pass a gentleman on the street who is chatting with someone on his cell phone. Alone in his world, the man has received a compliment, or something else that is good, and it shows on his face. Alone in his world, he might not even notice the sensation that has arrived, and that the sensation has as quickly left him. But we noticed!
It would be good spiritual practice to take note of the warm fuzzies that come into your life – into your solar plexus. “Ah – there it is again: a warm fuzzy!” Or maybe a journal entry could be made: “10/6/2024 – on this cloudy day, a warm fuzzy.” As life with its people and events and days and weeks and months passes so quickly, we could honor that life by noting the warm fuzzies that accompany those people, events, days, weeks, and months.
When we meet with friends, so often our conversation turns to the more difficult things: the coming election, the illness of a good friend, a sudden change or loss of health. And so it’s up to us to make room for the other things: the warm fuzzies.
We hold them in our awareness for a moment, like a prayer.
Autumn branches, Niles Canyon, California, 10/6/2024; photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert
For a moment the city is still, the rush of cars silent, the air full of silence, holding as we hold this second, we stop this second. A towee stops, too, on the back stoop and the cat, stealthy, climbs the steps to watch, careful. Then the feathered one flies past the cat.
We are waiting for the appearance - the Blue Moon - to show itself above the houses, the lush summer trees, to hold still for a moment as we hold our breath.
As the months and then years of the COVID-19 pandemic entered our lives – and then stayed – and stayed – and stayed, we all found ways to deal with the time of social isolation and the range of activities we had come to take for granted: visits to museums, concert venues, movie theaters. And we all survived – for years. As I look back now, it seems a dream. I wonder: how did we do it? how did we journey for those long months that stretched behind and ahead of us?
Jeff and I began a tradition that we did not know would become a tradition, early in 2020, after the quarantine – “sheltering in place” – began in March of 2020. Every Sunday morning – we felt so free of our long years of pastoral ministry, when every Sunday was filled, with worship, with meetings, with visits. Sunday mornings rose quiet and free of schedules. We woke and got our first cups of coffee at 5:30 AM for most of the pandemic, a habit we hold today. On Sundays, though, we thought about where we could go for a walk, a change of scenery, a gift to us as we looked to the long days ahead of us that week.
We walked in San Francisco. We drove to the shore of San Francisco Bay at Brooklyn Basin and walked amid the growing development of apartment buildings there. We walked on the beach at Half Moon Bay. And we discovered the Martinez Slough.
The tide comes into the slough, which is something still new and strange, something note-worthy, to this Midwestern raised couple. When we first drove the 30+ miles to park at the ranger station at the slough, we discovered paths, some along the water, some further in toward the City of Martinez, whose downtown was less than a mile from the shoreline. Some times, we’d watch the water lapping along the beach, the tide in, the tributaries filled to the brim. Sometimes, we’d see the wetlands with the muddy shores and the sea flowing outward toward the Bay. Some days, we’d catch sight of a ship coming through the passage from San Francisco Bay and into the inlet, on the way to Stockton seaport. A train often roared past us after we’d crossed the tracks to the edge of Martinez and parked in the small lot near the water.
One Sunday in May, the sky was filled with kites and the voices of children and happy adults accompanied the floating delights, the holders of the kites’ strings on the shore nearer the Martinez Strait. Every time we walked, we were delighted again, as we passed early morning dog-walkers who greeted us, happy, as we were, to see others out during this difficult time. And every time we walked, we noted the tide – in or out – and called out to one another as we watched the sea birds, the geese.
We talked about going to the slough again today, and we left our home early to drive on the quiet highways, east out of Oakland and north to Martinez. We talked the whole way there, and we talked as we walked. Today we stood on a walker’s bridge and saw the pussy willows; we were reminded of Wisconsin, then.
So this time, when the world seemed to stand still for a time – did that really happen? we wonder now – is behind us. But we continue to go out early some Sunday mornings to that place, where walking and talking comes easily, where the sea breeze accompanies us as we walk.
Martinez Slough, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, May 27, 2024.
