Category: reflecting

community, reflecting

Friends

Mary Elyn Bahlert

“You’ve always had good friends,” my mother once told me. She was right. I’ve always had good friends, friends I find interesting, friends who listen to me as much as I listen to them, friends who are readers and travelers, friends who have a keen interest in life.

As I get older, I think I value my friendships even more than I ever did. Or maybe I realize now that our lives are short – we don’t know when we will lose another friend, or when we might face our own demise – and so each moment, each encounter, becomes more important as the years pass.

A few years ago, I received an email from a former student at Clarke Street School in Milwaukee, where I’d gone to 5 and 6 grades. She had written as part of the outreach to let me know about an event honoring Washington High School in Milwaukee. “Did you go to Clarke Street School?” she had written. When I looked at the name, the signature said Fran xxxxx. I knew her as Frances, and I sent my email response right away. “Are you Frances xxxxx?” I asked. I’d found her, my best friend in the few years before we entered Junior High, before I entered the Pilot Program for “smart” kids, and she skipped a grade, instead. I’d often wondered about Frances, how her life had unfolded. A few months later, Jeff and I were privileged to have a meal with Frances – now she’s Fran – and her husband, Jakov, in Milwaukee. And our staying in touch has been important to me in this season of my life.

Some friendships seem to last a long time, other friendships seem to last for a season, a short time in life. My husband, Jeff, makes friends with everyone he meets. He’s an extravert, and there are times I’ve teased him about the easy and comfortable way he makes friends. He’s got good friends, as I do. I’m grateful to be married a man who values male friendships as much as I value my female friends. I like to tease him that he’s the world’s “most extraverted man.” That’s not an exaggeration! And I have to say that Jeff and I are good friends as well as life partners. That’s a gift in my life, to be sure.

I’m grateful now to be making new friends as the years unfold. I’ve connected with a woman pastor I’ve known for many years, and at our yearly clergy gathering, we make time to spend with each other. Another colleague – we went to seminary together – and I have decided to make sure to have lunch once a month. A woman I’ve known since the 1980’s and with whom I share an August birthday, have dinner together at least two times a year – before Christmas and during our birthday month. Just as we have for a long time, we each come with a small gift for our long time friend. One of my good friends is making end-of-life plans for herself as a single woman, carefully laying out what she wants and intends as she lives in her 80’s. I’m just one of the people she is bringing into her planning. Even though she is single, her friendships reassure her that she is not alone. Some of my friends are friends I share with Jeff – couples – and others are solo friends.

For a few years, I led a group at a local Senior Center in Oakland, which I called “Life’s Reflections.” Although the group has ended, the faithful members met for a Christmas sing-fest at my house during the holidays. And I count them among my friends.

Over the past few years, since a former parishioner and new friend to me, Margret, died suddenly, her widower Jim has been a good friend to both Jeff and me. Jim likes to cook, and he has Jeff and me for breakfast at his house once a week. We’ve never had a repeat breakfast in two years!

I can still see Joanne’s face as she sat at my desk in Green Bay, Wisconsin, for the first time, in 1973, and asked me: “Do you golf?” I hadn’t golfed – still haven’t golfed – I told her I’d try to golf! – but Joanne and I have been friends ever since.

I have lunch dates a couple of times a week, even in my elder years. Lunch together is a good way for me to connect with my friends. I learn which friends text, and who likes to communicate via email. Or a phone call.

One or two of my friends are women I’ve met through taking part in spiritual retreats overseas. Sometimes we plan for a phone call or a zoom call to connect, since we live a long distance from one another.

I’m grateful for them all. As I reflect on my friendships, I see I could add others. I’m grateful to each one. And yes, I have always had good friends. Mom was right.

Jeff, Thanksgiving Day at the Bahlerts’ in San Francisco, 11/2025

memories, reflecting, Uncategorized, wisdom

Curiosity

Mary Elyn Bahlert

“Curiosity killed the cat…” hmmm… that may be true. And although it may be true, it is also true that curiosity is a curious and important quality. Some people are curious, others are not. Maybe that’s one way the world is divided into “us” and “them.” For some, each day holds some curiosity… a new view of an old street, or seeing something one has not seen before. When we are curious, the world opens itself to us, shining full of curious things – and happenings.

As I reflect on my life in my elder years, I often return in memory to my Junior High years. I walked from our rented flat in a working class neighborhood of Milwaukee – I actually passed the Master Lock Company – on Fond du Lac Avenue, into the middle class neighborhood that surrounded Peckham Junior High School. At Robert M. LaFollette School and later at Clarke Street School on Milwaukee’s North Side, my classmates were also the children of factory workers and stay at home moms. But Peckham Junior High was in a lovely north side neighborhood with single family homes and carefully kept lawns. My world grew as I walked under the viaduct at 35th Street. I was a young person with open eyes and a keen interest in the world, a quality shared by my family. Right away, I noticed the differences in the neighborhood where Peckham J.H. stood, comparing what I saw in some deep, unspoken part of myself.

I was curious and I was smart, both qualities that have served me well in life. I had role models. At home, my parents listened to the news each morning from the radio that sat on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen. And they stayed up at night to watch the news at 10 o’clock, before they went to bed to get enough sleep before the alarm in their bedroom went off at 6 am. They read the daily newspaper – The Milwaukee Journal. Many years later, on the cold February day in 2001 that my mother was buried alongside my dad at their gravesite on the south side of Milwaukee, I walked away from the grave as my good friend Vickie walked alongside me in the cold. “You had neat parents,” she said.

I think curiosity is one quality that my parents had that made them “neat parents.” They were interested, not only in the world, but in my friends. And when Vicki lost her mother at a young age, they were particularly welcoming to her whenever she came to spend time with me.

The world can be a difficult place – often. We are assured of that by staying in touch with the news every day, as my parents did. As adults, they knew the pitfalls of life along with the kindness and goodness. The world can be a difficult place. But the world is endlessly interesting.

I was thinking about curiosity today when I was preaching about Nicodemus. Nicodemus, best known for visiting Jesus at night to discuss spiritual rebirth and later assisting with Jesus’ burial, had a journey from hidden curiosity to becoming a follower of Jesus. Nicodemus came at night to talk to Jesus, apparently curious himself about this man who was causing a stir as crowds followed him from place to place, eager to hear a good word, or eager to be healed.

I told the story of a time my big brother Ronn, who married in his early 20’s, came to me after his marriage and made a comment I have not forgotten. In a way, Ronn had always treated me as an equal, although he was 9 years older than me. And I’ve never forgotten what he said: “did you know that not everyone is interested in things, like our family is?” I understood then that he was reflecting on a difference he had noticed in his new wife’s family. He didn’t say more. I always loved Sue – love her still now that she’s been gone many years – but it is true, she did not have the interest in life that Ronn carried, as if he was carrying a gene that gave him a keen interest in learning, in new things. Later, he’d turn that interest to computers, and when I called him from across the country with a problem using my first computer at home, he’d patiently walk me through the steps I needed to get back on track.

And I suppose, like Nicodemus, curiosity might lead us into unknown, uncharted places. Maybe curiosity is responsible for whatever risks we take, a companion to the risk.

The world is endlessly interesting… even the small places are beautiful… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2/2026

reflecting, The Holy, Uncategorized, wisdom

a few steps on a long journey

Mary Elyn Bahlert

At my retirement gathering, to honor my retirement from active ministry, a woman I went to seminary with and who had retired several years before I retired, told me that after she retired, she felt as if she had lost God for a while.  I was surprised at her comment.  I didn’t think I would experience the same thing.  At the time, I “prayed at all times” by having an on-going conversation with Jesus.  

But I was wrong.  For a couple of years after I retired in 2014, I felt as if I was adrift in my spiritual life/journey.  As time has unfolded, I have returned to my relationship to the Holy, in a new/different way than before.  

Now, I have the sense of my being “in” God, as part of God, not separate.  I am immersed in God’s presence, as I am immersed in the air, say.  The relationship I have now – as I compare my “before” and “after” – is to be part of the Whole.  And ‘the Whole” is abundantly huge, “the Whole” is all that is.  “The Whole” is loving all of creation and all that is beyond within itself.  What that means, I can’t say/explain to myself.   I don’t try.  My time of prayer now is simply being with awareness, when I have that awareness.  Often, my time spent walking is a time for me to be in that presence – 

“You will wonder and in the depths of wonder
you will discover a simpler way:   
you will walk, feet planted firmly on the earth,
head up.
You will walk into that sighing Presence.”         – from the Collection, “Moments,”
Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2026.
                                                                                      

“You will walk into that sighing Presence…” – photo, Mary Elyn Bahlert, 1/2026

memories, reflecting

Cities

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I grew up in the city – Milwaukee, Wisconsin, specifically, the North Side of Milwaukee. I expect my love of cities began there. I have many memories of riding city busses in Milwaukee, beginning when I was little, in the company of my mother. I thought all cities were like Milwaukee, its streets set out on a grid, making it easy to follow house numbers. That made it easy to figure out where friends lived, from the time I was little and walked those three city blocks from my house – we always lived in rented upper flats, a family in the flat below us, a full basement even further down, and a full attic. And I expect my love of that place has shaped my love as an adult, as my world has grown – and grown – and I’ve been privileged to travel, both in the United States and in cities around the world – I expect my love of the place I am from has shaped my love of cities in other places.

“You learn something new every day,” was a maxim my mother lived by, and that she bequeathed to me. Cities are a only one way to learn something new every day, of course, but cities provide strong evidence of cultures beyond the one in which I grew to adulthood.

I prefer large cities. I proved that to myself when, after receiving training as a Claims Representative for Social Security in Minneapolis for three months in early 1973, I was sent to work at the Social Security Office in Green Bay, Wisconsin. I lived in Green Bay for almost three years before I transferred back to Milwaukee in my government position.

As a United Methodist pastor, I was sent as a pastor to places I might not have chosen on my own, but which I came to love. And I was grateful to have spent most of my ministry in large cities. “A city girl in a city church,” Jeff said in his remarks at my retirement from a church in downtown Oakland where I had pastored for 16 years.

My travels outside of Milwaukee had started during my college years. One spring break, my mother gave me the $200.00 for a week trip to New York City. I was in love! And what you can find in New York City! Vicki, who had traveled with me and was my roommate, and I had second row tickets to see “Hair” on Broadway when “Hair” was all the rage. We found our way to out of the way delis for lunch, We walked and we looked at everything with all the joy of young women whose world was opening up – even if we didn’t know it then. We made mistakes; one evening, as dark was coming on, we hailed a cab whose driver told us that “you girls shouldn’t be walking in this neighborhood” as he delivered us safely to the street outside our hotel.

*
Many years later, in 1988, I traveled to the then USSR – during the times of Gorbachev, when the country was beginning to open up. Communism was still in full effect, and our large group of faith leaders from the U.S. who were traveling to honor the 1,000th anniversary of the Orthodox Church, were divided into smaller groups upon arrival in the USSR, for the duration of our journey. Itineraries in each group were different. As often as I could during our stay, I walked with my roommate: in the streets of Leningrad, Moscow, Kiev, and Odessa. I took the subway – the same system as BART in the Bay Area – in Moscow. I looked at the people as I passed them on the streets. In Kiev I carefully looked at the people who passed me as I walked, looking for the eyes, the bearing, the faces of my people. I found them there. I experienced some of the government control of the people when a citizen of the USSR who sat in the seat beside me on a plane, told me that the people were not allowed to travel outside the USSR, and when a small group of fellow travelers and I met to talk about our next outing in the hall of a hotel, we were told to disband our group by an employee of the hotel.

*

Over the years, I’ve traveled to many of the great cities of the world. I have not ever forgotten the privilege my life has been, how I’ve seen places that even my mother could not dream of seeing. Part of my travels is the simple joy of walking and watching, and I’ve done so in Paris, London, Washington, D.C., Seoul, Berlin, Dublin, Minneapolis, Chicago,Istanbul, San Francisco. There are many others. Each city has its particular feel, its own personality. Each city is beautiful, in its own way. Like the stamps on the pages of my passport, each city has left its own mark in my heart. I hope to be a guest in other cities in the next few years.

I’m grateful for the privilege that has brought me to this place, and to this reflection, to this time of easy days and remembering. And to the ancestors who traveled from their own places to bring me to this life, to this place.

From the kitchen window of our home in Oakland, I can see through the trees in our yard, I can see across the Bay, the sky and the skyline of San Francisco, as if it is framed by the trees. Each evening at sunset, the colors over the City are different. Sometimes the City sits beneath a pink sky, sometimes it is invisible through the fog that falls over San Francisco Bay, sometimes white clouds float over a blue and gray sky. From my own city – Oakland – I see that other great City. This place suits me. The sky, the sunset, the view through the trees, they all seem to agree.

Coming into Oakland from San Francisco on the Bay Ferry, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 1/2026


reflecting, remembering, Uncategorized

At year’s end

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Together, Jeff and I share several traditions. Many years ago – before we were married, I worked as a Camp Counselor at a camp led by the Rev. Lincoln Hartford, who had been my pastor at Kenwood United Methodist Church in Milwaukee. At the end of the week at camp together, Lincoln invited the young people at share a memory – good or bad – of their week together. He asked that each one of the campers share the memory by saying, “I remember,” and then sharing a memory of the time we’d all been together. Whatever the memory – good or bad, happy, sad, confused, upsetting – the response to the memory by all who were gathered was: “and God was with you.” Since then, Jeff and I begin our meal times with the “I remember” prayer, as we invite any guests to participate. I always go first, to demonstrate (!).

This past year, Jeff and started a new tradition. Each night, before we go to sleep, we share with one another something we appreciated about the other one that day. Over the months, Jeff has reminded me – sometimes – that my appreciation was about a meal he’d prepared. (I’m trying to do better when I offer my appreciation each day!)

As long as we’ve been married, another tradition has been part of our ritual as a couple. At year’s end, we name the experiences that stand out to each one of us in the past year. I think Jeff prepares more carefully than I do for the time we sit together in front of the Christmas tree, after Christmas has passed, and share with one another our list of the past year’s events. It’s a good practice, as we recall moments – some good, some not so good – that the last year has held, and as we recall moments that have stayed in memory to be mentioned.

Sometimes the memories are times of travel, and sometimes of particular places we’ve seen. Sometimes the memories are memories of tiny moments that might be unnoticed by the other.

And this year, I want to be more prepared than I sometimes have been, to come to the sharing time in front of the tree, still lit with the lights of Christmas, as the year comes to a close. I’ll have to start early. I’ll use my trusty hand-written calendar, set aside a special page, and make my list. There’s a touch of sadness in me as I think about the closing of this year, as I remember that so many years have passed, so many loved ones have been gone from us for a long time, and as I remember that some things are changing and some things never change – not even as the calendar moves along into another year.

Happy New Year!

Even the neighborhood trees seem to know it’s the end of the year… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 12/2025