Category: reflecting

beauty, reflecting, Uncategorized

Martinez Slough

Mary Elyn Bahlert

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.

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

memories, reflecting, Uncategorized

Mother’s Day at the slough

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Our mothers have passed, many years ago, now, but we remember that for many others, this day of honoring mothers is being celebrated. For Jeff and for me, though, it’s another Sunday when neither of us has the work of the Church on our minds, a Sunday all to ourselves, a Sunday to fill with moments that belong to us alone.

And so we get up early – as we do every day – and our early morning is filled with getting ready for the day, like any other morning. And then, we drive to Martinez, to walk along the Carquinez Strait, a series of walking paths along the Strait, with its view of the hills and the water. Other faithful folks walk on Sunday mornings, also, and most are friendly, passing with a smile and a few kind words.

The paths are level, the hills are in the distance, green, turning now to brown again after a winter with a lot of rain. As we walk, we see a ship, returning from the Pacific, coming through the strait. When I see a ship, I’m reminded that I’m not in Wisconsin anymore, haven’t been, for over half my life.

We pass the ruins of a shipwreck from the last century, and read again the plaque with its story, its history of how it ended up deserted, sometimes hidden by the tide when we walk past. Today was lovely, a wind gliding past us, making the air a bit cool until the sunlight got the best of the temperature and we were warm.

The remains of a shipwreck, stranded here for the last century, Martinez, California

Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 5/2024

We’ve walked at the Slough many times over the past four years. In the early months of Covid-Time (a season of its own in our lives), we felt strongly the freedom of Sunday mornings – mornings without churches to go to, mornings without sermons to deliver – and we set out to walk in some place outside our own very walkable neighborhood in Oakland. We walked through almost twenty neighborhoods in San Francisco over the course of many months. We walked along the Bay in Oakland, where we discovered a new development right on the water – Brooklyn Basin. We walked at the sea shore in Half Moon Bay, looking down on the Pacific from a high path. Usually, when the walk had ended, we’d find a cafe to sit outside, to continue our luxurious Sunday morning, to have a cup of coffee, before getting back into the car to return home.

When our friend Joanne arrived from Wisconsin to stay with us for a few days last winter, I took her to the Martinez Strait to enjoy the paths there.

We loved the paths and the breeze we discovered at Martinez, and we have returned there again and again, now that life is back to a “new normal” after the ravages of Covid-Time. Often after our walk, we drive closer to downtown where the main street is bustling with a Sunday morning Farmers’ Market. We leave with a couple of bags of fresh vegetables to enjoy the rest of the week.

Along the path, along the slough…

Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Martinez Slough, 5/12/2024

community, reflecting

Little Free Library

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I was walking in my neighborhood late last year when I discovered a Little Free Library a few blocks from home. I stopped and looked through the books, enchanted. When I arrived home, I looked for the website that I’d seen on a little plaque attached at the top of the library: littlefreelibrary.org

I was ready to go! Jeff and I have a friend who can build anything, our friend Jim. So we asked Jim to build the library for us, and within a couple of weeks, we had our library, perched on a cement post on the strip of land we call “the panhandle,” that’s part of our property.

From the very first days of our hosting the Little Free Library, books began to appear. Jeff and I supplied a couple of books to get started. One day soon after, as I watched from the kitchen window, a car stopped, a woman I did not know got out, and she walked over to the Little Free Library to deposit some books. We were live!

I had followed up on my research, too, and so I went to littlefreelibrary.org and ordered a plaque that would put my library on the map. The Little Free Library that we are hosting is #125791. Little Free Library #125791 appears on a map on the website, and now we’re connected to other folks who host a Little Free Library in their neighborhood. I’m happy to be present to my community in this way, in a way that is important to me, and to Jeff: we’re both avid readers, mostly of nonfiction.

A few days later, I posted a picture of our Little Free Library on the Facebook page for Little Free Libraries, and I was set to go! I’m still receiving notes of welcome from other Little Free Librarians!

The story doesn’t end there, however. I was all set to go into a ZOOM meeting last week, when the doorbell to our house rang. I had to hurry clear to the other end of the house to answer, and I checked out the window before I opened the door, to make sure the door-ringer was still there. A young man I didn’t recognize was waiting for me to answer. When I did, he asked me if I was the person who was hosting the Little Free Library on the street. I told him that yes, I was.

He wanted to let me know that he’d found a book, The Freedom to Be, by A. H. Almaas, in the Little Free Library on our street. He had read the book. And – he said, looking into my eyes: “it changed my life.” He told me that he was on his way to meet with a teacher, an adherent of Almaas, right after his stop at my house. I had read a bit of Almaas over the years, and I told him that. We exchanged names. Before he turned to go, I suggested he stop over to see me again some time, when we could talk more. Smiling at me before he walked back down the stairs, he said yes.

Our Little Free Library! photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 4/2024