Category: Uncategorized

Uncategorized

The Star

Mary Elyn Bahlert

magiufolight650

I started to follow in my sleep,
touched by the star itself.
The star paraded over my head
night after night.

One night I sat on a hill and watched the star
until the morning.
Then I knew it would lead me,
if I chose to follow.

I did.

The route: circuitous.
The country: rugged.
The ruler: vicious.
The companions: odd, and wise.
The nights: cold, colder than in my land.

I followed.
I did.

Stories say the star led us to a Child, the Child.
This I know now:

It led to Light.

—meb, Epiphany, 2015

***

I choose to see the story for its mystical vividness, realness, and depth.

There are many traditions associated with the Magi, and traditions have broadened and deepened the story, through the years.  Many of the traditions have arrived via art through the ages.

***

“The three Magi developed distinct characteristics in Christian tradition, so that between them they represented the three ages of (adult) man, three geographical and cultural areas, and sometimes other things. In the normal Western account, 14th century (for  Caspar is old, normally with a white beard, and gives the gold;  Melchior is middle-aged, giving frankincense from his native Arabia, and Balthazar is a young man, very often and increasingly black-skinned, with myrrh from Saba (modern south Yemen).”   from Wikipedia

 

Uncategorized

How Time Passes

Mary Elyn Bahlert

 

time-passing

“Time passes much too quickly,
when we’re together laughing…” Robert Lamm, “Beginnings,” recorded by Chicago

In December of 2000 my mother was diagnosed with an inoperable tumor. Together, she, my husband and I made the decision to place her under hospice care. At the time, I was already tired  from being her caregiver and caring for a parish full-time. I was grateful for the hospice staff and how they worked with the staff at Mom’s assisted living home to make her last days comfortable – for her, and for me. I was grateful that Mom could stay in the home she loved so well, safe in her room, big enough for a single bed, a television set, and a desk in the nook by the window that looked over a parking lot and the school yard of Tech High School.

A few days before she died, Mom sat on the edge of her bed facing the window with its city scene: “I wish it would snow once, just for me,” she said simply, the Milwaukee Girl who had been transplanted just two years before to this strange climate. Had I known that it was snowing in the hills that surround the Bay Area of California for the first time in many years, I’d have packed her into my car and driven to see the snow, only a few miles away.

Instead, I was focused on her, my Mom,  the last precious days and hours and moments that we would be together. Moments flash through my mind, many times since those precious days and now, in these precious days and hours and moments.

In the years since her death the following February, 2001, I have often returned in memory to singular, stark, and lovely exchanges in that little room. I see her growing smaller and smaller, her eyes becoming larger and larger, until I looked deeply into reflections of my own eyes in hers. I rub her back as she talks to me of ordinary things, as if we were in another time in our lives together. On Valentine’s Day, I bring her a large chocolate heart from See’s Candy; chocolate was forbidden her because of type 2 diabetes, but as the days of her life grew shorter, I set those rules aside to bring her what she loved. She didn’t eat the chocolate heart, but I think she understood the gift: “Thank you,” she said, looking into my eyes.

Three days later she would die in that little room, with me as her companion on this side of that journey, whatever it may be.

***
Time stretches out – forever – to the young. That’s how it was for me. For every dream, there was a possibility. For every hope, a stab of feeling that announced it had not yet been fulfilled, but could be fulfilled. For every ambition, there was a way, although not yet discovered.

In my fifties I would sometimes awake early in the morning and see in my inward eye my life floating away behind me, like calendar pages drifting off into the wind. The
feeling: panic. Was there enough time? Enough time, for what?

As I grow older, life becomes more and more a parade of moments. Some of the moments I have captured in memory, like those precious last days with my mother. Some of the moments have been lost, never quite noticed at the time, never quite snapped in the conscious mind’s Polaroid lens.

I understand that the very old retrieve memories they had not known they had, memories that float into awareness as if they’d been behind the curtain on some stage. I’m not in that place. I hope to be, some day.

Now, I am grateful and often saddened by the moments that do come to mind. So many of the characters in memory are no longer here; so many I have loved I will not see again. Some of the places are places to which I will not return. Some moments were painful then, and are painful now,  in the remembering. Some moments are  funny… I laugh again, just as I did the first time.

This moment is already this moment, now. Yesterday’s moment is already past.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

The passage of moments cannot be marked by the ticking of some inner clock. They pass by too quickly to be marked at all.

Happy New Year, dear friends!

Uncategorized

Falling Into the Abyss

Mary Elyn Bahlert

th

The days are getting longer, and the moon falls these days into the Pacific Ocean, right over the Golden Gate Bridge, from the kitchen window of my house, in a place called View. From the vantage point of the Northern Hemisphere, we are facing into winter, that time of darkness, and already the days – one moment at a time – are longer and longer.

I have fallen into the Abyss, and I am grateful – yes!

We are conditioned to not fall into the Abyss, either the Abyss that is out there in the world, or the Abyss that is our-selves:

“Do not go gentle into that good night…

rage, rage against the dying of the light.”  Dylan Thomas, 1914-1953

 

To choose, to accept, even to welcome the falling into the Abyss is counter-cultural.  To choose to go deep, to go into the deep, the deepest and darkest place, is something we humans do anything to avoid.   Unless we have learned – through practice and experience – that it is in the deep, in the darkness within, that we find greatest light – Light! – we will use our precious energy on all things to avoid that darkness, and finally, that Light.

What are the things we choose?

Some of us choose drugs – alcohol, and other things.  They work, for awhile.  Some of us put a on cheerful face , like pancake makeup, before we leave our house.  After awhile, the cheerful face fools us, more than anyone else.  Some of us work way too hard, staying busy, to avoid the deep and the dark.  Some of us fill our calendars with more dates and more activities in order to stay away from the edge of our sadness and grief.  Some of us eat.  Some of us subtly – or not so subtly – control the people around us.  We tell them what to do, we manipulate the relationship, until the relationship is a web of unexpressed feelings, anger and rage.  Some of us worry, keeping our minds occupied so that we can focus on the worries and not the reality of the moment.  Some of us try to save the world, while we remain unsaved, ourselves.  Some of us are cheerful, maddeningly so, smiling and giggling through the worst of events so that no uncomfortable feeling can emerge.

As communities, we too avoid darkness.  In the days following 9/11, I remember vividly and with great sadness how talk soon turned to war and retaliation.  A loss of that magnitude requires a journey into the depths, the depths of grief and despair, before our minds and hearts are on solid enough footing to know the next best action.  Wisdom and true action, clear action, arise out of the ashes of despair, not out of the best clear thinking – and the best clear thinking is not even possible without a grimy journey through the ashes of despair.

***

I have taken this journey before, and mostly, I have gone “ungently.”  In other words, I have fought to stay positive, to remain as happy as possible, to stay busy, to not say the truth:  “I am lonely.  I am sad.  I am afraid.”

What my long and deep journey has taught me, however, is that it is the dance with despair itself that begins to have a rhythm.

Now, I fall.  Then, I will rise.

Now, all is dark.  Then, all is Light.

Now, I control.  Then, I am free.

Now, I am in chains.  Then, I dance!

***

In my reflections, I have written before that the only right action, the only possible action we can take, is the action of surrender.  Surrender to what-is.  Surrender to what presents itself.  Surrender, even if it doesn’t feel good.  Surrender, even if all is lost.  Surrender, even if this is not what I want.  Breathe, let go, allow, avoid a fight.  Breathe again.

In my experience, the only journey worth taking is the journey into the darkness. I have been to some very dark places, and in those places I have learned that I am not alone.  I have learned I am not alone only because I have been to those dark places.  Unless I had gone, I could not say “I am not alone.”  In those dark places, I have learned that there is hope, and hope is more powerful than you and I can ever, ever suspect.

Now, when grief arises, I fight to stay away from grief, just like you do.  I fight to stay happy, like everyone else.  That’s always the first way, the socially acceptable way, after all.  Then, I begin – slowly, like a toddler learning to stand, carefully and awkwardly but with determination – to accept. I fall.

Then, I  am grateful.

 

Happy, happy and blessed New Year, all!