Category: reflecting

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

memories, reflecting

Walking Through Covid

Mary Elyn Bahlert

It’s hard to remember what we thought about COVID-19 when we first heard about the virus in early 2020, and even when we ourselves were subject to a “sheltering in place” order, an order that changed our lives dramatically and for a long time.

How did we do it? A vivid memory of mine is listening to the new on NPR Radio at 3 pm, day after day. And I listened as each Friday, after recounting the news of the day, Judy Woodruff spent a few moments remembering in a few sentences the lives of five people who had lost their lives early in the pandemic, which swept across New York City before it reached across the rest of the country. We listened carefully to the wisdom and knowledge of Anthony Fauci as he gave us simple but extreme guidelines that would shape our lives for many months.

Jeff and I live in the Bay Area, which has a Mediterranean climate, and for that, we could be very grateful. We took to walking together early in the morning after rising and drinking our first cups of coffee even earlier – 5:30 am – in one of the two cemeteries that stretch for acres into the hills of the East Bay, just a block away from our house. We made new friends from the neighborhood as we saw some folks each day and others once or twice a week. We hosted gatherings with our friends as we sat huddled together in a circle in our yard in our down jackets. We ate our meals with friends on paper plates. For several months, I had our groceries delivered to our door by the brave and kind folks who did that work on our behalf, until I began to shop at the local supermarket early in the morning; I still like to shop early in the day, a habit formed during that time. Jeff was serving a church in downtown Oakland as interim pastor, and he preached each week as he sat in our yard and as I taped his sermon on his phone to be sent to the church secretary who put worship together for everyone in the parish.

Even so, the days and weeks and then months stretched on and on before us. Ugh. How did we do it?

Early in the evenings, Jeff and I would get into one of our cars and drive along Broadway in Oakland, through downtown, and to the Bay, where the ferries to Alameda and San Francisco left the dock, still on schedule, during the day. We would park along the narrow streets at Brooklyn Basin, a new development in Oakland, and walk along the shore of the Bay. Young people roller-skated on the pavement along the shore and loud music formed the background for all of us.

These memories came to mind – I’m certain there will be other memories – when Jeff and I drove into San Francisco – the City – on Saturday to attend a fall gathering at California College of the Arts. We parked our car a few blocks away and walked up some steep hills before we attended a luncheon on the campus. We remembered how we hiked in many places in the Bay Area, on Mount Diablo, at Martinez – and how we walked in San Francisco before the months of sheltering gave way to our getting vaccines. We sat outside on folding chairs carefully spaced safely apart at Kaiser in San Francisco as we waited to receive our first shot. We haven’t counted, but we’re sure we walked up and down those hills in at least 15 neighborhoods in the City over the months that stretched into years. Early on, traffic was light; as the months went on and as each one of us stretched our limits, tested our limits – traffic increased. Things were returning to normal.

Mary greets us each morning as we walk – up hills and down – in St. Mary’s cemetery, Oakland, 2020.

beauty, poetry, reflecting, Uncategorized

“I think that I shall never see

Mary Elyn Bahlert

a poem lovely as a tree…” – Joyce Kilmer

One of the pleasures in my life is the pleasure of having lived in one place for many years. In 1995, Jeff and I moved to Oakland and we have stayed in Oakland, and moved into our 1915 Craftsman Home about 2005. Over those years, Jeff has worked hard to steward a beautiful garden – a garden which we enjoy every day. We have hosted many gatherings and dinners with friends here in the house – often in the garden. I expect those times of hosting have attached us even more to this place. And having lived in one place for so many years, and having seen the seasons – slow and sacred in the Bay Area – pass to us and away again all those years since 2005, I have come to know very well the passage of time in one place.

In the yard of our home are several trees that I see from one of the windows: the listing birch outside the living room, the apple tree whose trunk and branches seem to greet us – bowing – when we sit at the dining room table, the maple that shines into our bedroom window in the autumn.

I have a refrain that I say to myself often about the birch: “I love that tree and that tree loves me”. And if saying it often makes it so, then it is true: that tree loves me. Silently and with grace the tree stands and waits for me as I lounge facing the window with my morning coffee. Silently and with grace the tree has sparked my mind as I sit on the couch, writing a sermon, reading a book from the local library, chatting with Jeff. The tree is a steady and beautiful companion to my life. I’m grateful for the tree.

And if gratitude is a poem, then that tree has sparked whatever poems are resting inside me, waiting for the right time to come out.

And it’s autumn again. The slender maple outside our bedroom window is shining with the light of autumn. And the slender maple is so beautiful: a beautiful, silent, stalwart companion.

My stalwart companion in autumn. photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2024

beauty, poetry, reflecting

The sky in autumn

Mary Elyn Bahlert

The sky, deep, in autumn
rests deeper in the heavens,
deeper as if it has reached a peak,
the peak of color, of light,
deeper as if creator’s brush
has found the darkest color
and presented it to us for our delight.
If we are watching,
if our eyes are open, waiting with great patience,
if we are watching, waiting –
we disappear into the deepness,
we are set free from the troubles of earth,
we fly into the freedom.

Mary Elyn Bahlert, 09/15/2025

Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 11/11/2020

beauty, reflecting

My tree

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I grew up with the streets of Milwaukee’s North Side lined with elm trees and an occasional maple tree. In the autumn, the branches that hung over the road, over the passing cars, were bright with color, and fallen leaves covered the sidewalks, making crunchy piles that children would love to march on all the way to school. Dutch Elm disease, which had killed the trees in Europe as early as the 1920’s, took most of the beautiful trees in the 60’s and 70’s.

Although I loved the changing colors and I loved watching for the first buds to sprout into leaves in the spring, I did not know a tree personally until I fell in love with the listing birch tree that stands in front window of our living room on View Place in Oakland.

I like to say, “I love that tree, and that tree loves me.” For as long as we’ve lived on View Place, the listing tree has filled my front window – and my imagination. I wait eagerly for the leaves to sprout, to show just a little, in early spring. I look out at the tree whenever I walk into the living room; we’ve left our front windows – which rise high above the sidewalk so that passersby cannot see us in the house – without coverings. Every early morning, as I sip coffee with milk, sitting on the couch, I look out at my tree. I’m familiar with that tree, with its changing moods, with its beauty and its starkness. And I like to think the tree is familiar with me.

For many years, when I was a pastor in downtown Oakland, I wrote a weekly column for the newsletter that went out to the congregation. I wasn’t aware of my mention of the tree, but from time to time, someone from the church would remind me that they’d read what I’d written, and that I had talked about the tree – again.

“I love that tree, and that tree loves me.” Or, as Joyce Kilmer wrote: “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree…”

As I grow older, I’m grateful to count among my acquaintances the “listing birch” that stands, has stood, outside my window, now for a large portion of my life. To me, something is wonderful about loving a tree – a particular tree.

It’s the middle of summer, the lushest (!) time of the year, even in the dry climate of the Bay Area. And even now, the tree – my tree – accompanies me. I expect that someday, some time in the coming years, I’ll sit in front of that tree for long days, grateful for the companionship.

My tree, in all its glory! Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 10/2024, View Place