Category: reflecting

memories, reflecting, remembering, Uncategorized, wisdom

Blessing

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Uncle Johnny wasn’t very tall, but he was a god to us. He could stand at attention in a doorway for hours, talking about the workers, about union wages and strikes, about strikes and collective bargaining. He was an Atheist. He greatly respected my father, who had gone through 8th grade in rural schools, because my father was a good, strong, honest worker, a union man, a steelworker.

Johnny was a Communist, giving his own life, his smarts, to make life better for the workers.

Uncle Johnny was almost ten years older than my mother, who adored her brother. He had “been born on the boat,” we were told, coming with his father and mother – my grandparents – from Ukraine, about 1914. Years later, I discovered that his date of birth was in the year 1910; given that date, he had been born in Ukraine. To this day, I hold firmly to the understanding that people who leave their homeland for life in a distant land do what they must to keep their families together. I know mine did. My people were poor and uneducated, the grandchildren of freed serfs. My grandfather died when I was almost 2, falling to the curb on a Milwaukee street, drunk again. Still, he’d made it, made it to America to give his kids a life different from his own. My mother taught him to read English when she was in grade school.

When my mother, her two brothers and younger sister, Anne, were small, Johnny was already a worker. With great homage to Johnny, my mother told me that he had made Christmas happen for his siblings one year when my grandparents could not. There was no Christmas tree in that Milwaukee flat, now a boarding house for other men who’d arrived from Ukraine, most without their families. And there was lots of drinking in that house, a fact that has shaded the family ever since. Johnny knew there’d be no Christmas for his brothers and sisters, so he bought a tree and brought it home. Together, the kids decorated it, together, they made Christmas happen, thanks to Johnny. And under the decorated tree lay the gifts big brother had also brought. That made him a hero, forever.

My sister tells me that she was home sick from school the day two men in suits came to the door. That would have been about 1960. Two men in suits – an anomaly in that working-class neighborhood! What Suzie remembers is that Mom lied when the men asked her if she knew where her brother Johnny was. Mom said no. Didn’t Mom always tell us not to lie? A rumor in the family is that Pete, the youngest brother, who fought in three wars in the Army, never rose above the rank of SFC because of Uncle Johnny’s politics.

The family was proud of its politics, proud of its atheism. We were smart people, smart and uneducated, smart people who worked hard, union workers.

*

Sometime around the time I turned 20, I started thinking that the life of a minister might be a good call for me. I don’t know where the idea came from, because, like the rest of my family, I was not a “church person.” Now, I think a lot of people answer the call they receive by choosing a vocation that suits their temperament. The Call is not particular to the Church, although the Church likes to think it is. The year I was confirmed in the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, I stopped going to church, because what I heard in that fundamentalist denomination did not jive with what I was already learning from my European-educated school teachers. Besides, I had never heard of a woman minister. And I wouldn’t, for almost a decade. But there it was, the seed of a different life.

I was over 30 when I enrolled in seminary, almost 35 when I was ordained and sent to serve as Associate Pastor at a Church in San Jose, CA. My uncle Johnny and aunt Dani lived in Campbell, West of San Jose, where they had raised their family, my cousins. The autumn after I started work, my parents wanted to visit me, to see Uncle Johnny, and they wanted to see my church, to hear me preach.

You’ve heard it: “he would never darken the door of a church.” That was certainly true for Johnny. But there he was, along with Aunt Dani, my Uncle Pete and Aunt Athalie from South San Francisco, and my proud parents. It would take me several years after that time to get the hang of being a pastor, of whatever that all meant.

When the service was over, the congregation – full of many well-educated and highly regarded members of the community – filed out through the ornate doors, each person stopping to have a moment to tell the pastors a health concern, or about a death in the family. When my parents came through, followed by the uncles and aunts, I expect pride shone on their faces. I don’t remember.

What I remember is what Uncle Johnny said to me that day. “I can see you want to help people.”

With a touch of kindness and a few words, Uncle Johnny delivered the blessing. From people who had nothing came a love for their children, a pride in the young people who followed them. As a pastor, I’ve given blessings, and I’ve received blessings. I’m grateful. Mostly, I’m grateful for the quiet blessing I received from Uncle Johnny that day.

**

community, memories, reflecting, Uncategorized

A good friend

Mary Elyn Bahlert

This past year, I have emailed my friend David every few months to see if he has time to have lunch with me. He always has time. We like to meet at a restaurant in Berkeley or Oakland.

In 1995, I suffered a major depression. At the time, it seemed as if life was collapsing in on me, loose ends fraying, so many things uncertain. After I’d been diagnosed and was placed on anti-depressants, I was granted three months leave with pay from the part time position I held in a little church on the Peninsula South of San Francisco. So now, the days that had once been filled with so many things – important to me – were quiet, empty. I sat often in a comfortable chair in the little room at the back of our flat on Sunnyslope Avenue in Oakland, looking out the window, drawing, reading.

And when they were able, friends would join me, for a walk, for a talk. I will always remember those who were so faithful in their friendship, whose kindness helped me get through.

Even when I was young, I had good friends. One time, Mom mentioned that to me: “you’ve always had good friends, Mary Elyn.”

David was one of those friends. He was still working at the time, as a therapist and as a writer. Every week, I walked from our house down Grand Avenue toward Lake Merritt, and over to Lakeshore Avenue, to a little greasy spoon. David and I would have lunch. The time we spent together was a gift to me, and I have not forgotten. I remember his kindness. I remember his friendship.

Over the course of COVID, I made sure to connect with David once again, and now we’ve been seeing one another for lunch – every few months now – in the same neighborhood as before, the old place gone. The last time we had lunch, as David and I stood on the street, before returning to our cars, he looked down at me (David is tall!) and said: “you’re a good friend.”

He’s the good friend, the good, solid, long time friend, of infinite value.

beauty, memories, reflecting

the cat

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I married a man and a cat. Schatzi had been in Jeff’s life for several years when he and I were married in 1984. Part Maine Coone, she was a beautiful creature with long gray fur. After we were married, she took to sleeping at our feet, making room for me. Schatzi will always be my favorite cat (sorry, LiLi).

Schatzi was my first cat, and she became my introduction to cats. She was a good role model. I’ve discovered since that not all cats have the same people-loving, generous disposition that Schatzi had. If I pushed her too far, she warned me gently, stretching one leg, claws showing, in my direction. I always paid attention! I studied her closely. One day I announced to Jeff: “this cat doesn’t have any eye-lids!” Welcome to cat-hood!

When I took long naps on the green couch in our living room, Schatzi would lie next to me, her back stretched out along my body, an extra layer of warmth. When we had visitors, Schatzi made sure to find her way to the center of the action. While she was a house cat, she was allowed outside if she chose, and being female, she didn’t ever go far from home.

In December of 2000, I recall a Sunday during the liturgical season of Advent when I recounted three things in my sermon that had happened to me during the prior week: I’d received a phone call that my friend and colleague Bruce had died of a heart attack, a doctor’s appointment with my mother had revealed that she had terminal cancer, and the cat had spent the week sick, lying close to the heat register in the dining room of our flat off Grand Avenue in Oakland. As she passed me after church, Phyllis turned to me and said: “I can’t get that cat out of my mind.”

A few months later, Mom passed, in February of 2001, at her beloved home at Mathilda Brown Women’s Residence in Oakland.

Schatzi stayed awhile longer that year. She seemed to know that I was grieving, that I needed her cozy and comforting presence. In the autumn of 2001, Schatzi spent her last night with us on the floor of the kitchen, not able to move, not able to eat. Jeff lay on the floor next to her, all night long.

LiLi, our current feline housemate. Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert.
memories, reflecting

Nancy’s Grandma

Mary Elyn Bahlert

So many of the stories from my grade school years seem to include Nancy, who grew up in the same neighborhood as I did in Milwaukee. Nancy and I are still connected, all these years later. And I always remember that Nancy and her sister, Diane, did not have parents, but that they lived with their Grandma and Grandpa in a lovely house on Medford Avenue, two blocks from our rented flat.

One day, as Nancy and I hung out together, we sat in the kitchen of that house with her Grandma. And although I don’t remember Grandma at all – was she talkative? Was she friendly to me, a friend of Nancy’s? Was she busy, always busy, or did she take time to sit down? That day, she told us about how she met her husband, Nancy’s Grandpa, who sat in the front room of the house. She had walked with a girlfriend to go roller skating, and there she met him, tall and handsome. Oh! he was so funny! Grandma recalled.

I looked toward the room where the old man sat. Handsome? Funny? How could that be? I tried to imagine him that way, but I couldn’t. And Grandma – how could I imagine her as a young woman, out with friends, having fun?

I guess all this means is that it’s a good time for me to be humble. Surely the young people who pass on the street next to our house here in Oakland must look at Jeff, look at me, and have a hard time thinking that we were young, once, too. One day, Jeff was walking to the house from his studio behind the garage, and he heard the young woman who lives next door to us describing her neighbors to a friend: “and there’s a nice retired couple next door.” We’re like Grandma, now, old and remembering when we were young. And grateful, grateful to be here, to “have our health,” as the old-timers used to say. Indeed, we do have our health and I suppose we’re old, now, too.

A nice old couple in Istanbul with a friend, May, 2023

community, reflecting, remembering

On the Journey

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I was searching, it felt as if I was always searching, had been searching for a long time. Searching implies an object – what was I searching for? I had the idea that I could go into the ministry – but I had no church experience of a community of faith. I had only a history that included a family distrust of “Church,” and three years of study in a fundamentalist denomination. After confirmation, I had abruptly left what I knew as “Church.” I thought the social movements of the 70’s were more about Jesus and what he taught than what I had known of Church. In particular, I had noticed and admired the work of Father James Groppi in Milwaukee, a Civil Rights leader in my hometown and adjoining ‘hood.

After college, I embarked on a career with the Social Security Administration, and after three months of intense training as a Claims Representative in Minneapolis, I was assigned to the District Office in Green Bay, Wisconsin. At the time, I was happy to have been assigned to Green Bay, which was a couple of hours north of Milwaukee. I didn’t know at the time how lonely I would be, how lost as I began my professional life as an adult.

And part of me was still searching. I was always searching. For what? For love? For meaning? For connection? For depth? For community? All of these were to be answered, although I didn’t know it when I was searching. And part of me is searching, even now, which has given my life and faith a depth and richness I would not have had otherwise. I’ve always been open to new understandings, to new learnings. I’m grateful for that.

After a couple of years, as the Social Security Administration took on the administration of SSI – Supplemental Security Income – the staff in the SSA office at Green Bay grew. From my first days, when I was the first woman CR, staff numbers grew. My first colleagues – who ruled the roost as only white men in power can do – were challenged to accept women who were at least as good at what they did than the men had been.

I was still searching. One of my colleagues was a woman named Joan, who was a bit overwhelmed by the work as a Claims Representative, but whose life I noticed. She was a white woman from Wisconsin, married to a disabled African American man from the South. Joan always wanted to go deeper, and I sensed a depth in how she wanted to relate to others. She didn’t engage in the politics of the office, often spending her breaks reading a Holy Book – the Holy Book of those people who are called Ba’hai, the teachings of their prophet. In a way, Joan was difficult to relate to, but I liked her depth, the way she looked at others as she spoke to them. Joan and Nat invited me to dinner at their house, and there, after the meal, we talked.

Joan and Nat were the first people I knew who took the faith they professed seriously. They allowed my questions. They didn’t expect rigid answers, the answers of a “right faith.” They wanted to talk, to learn where I was going with my questions. They took me seriously, as well as the faith they professed. When I asked about becoming a Bahai’, they didn’t surround me with evangelical fervor – they encouraged me to explore my journey, to see how my journey unfolded.

And my journey unfolded in another direction – in a way. I’ve written about returning to Milwaukee, still working for the Social Security Administration, and following my heart and questions to the people called Methodists, to my friend and guide Harvey Stower, and into the ministry.

I’m grateful for the journey, and for the questions, which still arise, will continue to arise. I’m grateful for all those whose path has lit my way. I’m grateful for the ongoing quest of faith, of trust in life as life offers itself. And I’m always grateful for the beacons of light who have lit my way – for Jesus, for Joan, for Nat, for Harvey – for all the others. 

The Blue Mosque, Istanbul - View by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 5/2023