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
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.
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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.
If you’d like, google “choosing a word for the year.” It’s a thing! And when Google comes through – which it always does – you’ll be directed to 529,000,000 results! I hope that you are closer to knowing what word you’d like than one out of 529,000,00! If not, you might want to wait until next year.
I’m not ready to wait. I took part in an hour long time of reflection during Advent, the liturgical season that leads to Christmas. The spiritual director that led the time of reflection – attended by participants from many countries – suggested we choose a word for the year. I’d known about this practice – a centering practice, to return us to ourselves when the activities of life seem overwhelming – for many years, but I expect that I was not ready to choose a word for the year – until now.
Finding the word was not difficult for me, but I recall a story – a scene from a movie – that relates to my word. Cher stars in the 1987 movie, “Moonstruck.” It’s a good movie. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth an evening of your time! I can recall the story line, and the faces of the characters, although not always their names. What I do recall, the scene that has stayed with me for all the years since I saw “Moonstruck” for the first time (it had to be in a movie theater then, not on my computer, like now), is the scene when Cher goes to Confession. She’s a good Catholic girl from an Italian family, and she and the priest know one another well, although they are hid from one another in the confessional booth. So she begins her confession, and she quickly rattles off a series of “sins” – and quickly drops into the middle of her list of sins: “I slept with the brother of my fiancé.” The priest stops her; what was that??? She repeats her sin: “I slept with the brother of my fiancé.”
The priest responds: “Reflect on your life.”
Choose your word for the year. Write it down. Keep it with you – in your mind and heart.
Happy New Year!
City Street in Autumn, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 11/17/2022, Piedmont Avenue
One of the luxuries of getting older – inhabiting the wisdom years – is to be able to enjoy – there’s that word! – the simple, stunning beauty of light. Enjoy!
Sometimes, a few words fill a void that has been within for a long, long time. Sometimes, I have heard those few words in a story, real or imagined.
“The Island” is a Russian language movie that tells the story of the sailor Anatoly and his captain, captured by a German vessel during World War 11. To save his own life, the Russians instruct him to kill his captain, Tikhon; afraid of death, Anatoly complies.
The next day Anatoly, who has survived, is saved by monks on the shore. Filled with guilt over his choice to kill his captain, Anatoly becomes the stoker – the keeper of the fire – for the monastery, and as the years pass, he also provides wisdom and healing to people who come to the monastery.
Many years later, an Admiral brings his daughter, possessed by a demon, to the monastery for healing. Anatoly exorcises the demon. Anatoly learns that the father of the girl is Tikhon, the man he thought he had killed to save his own life. Tikhon forgives Anatoly.
Within days, Anatoly prepares for his death. The monks bring him a coffin, and he lies in the coffin, apparently awaiting his death. A monk – a man who has frequently had difficulties with Anatoly, leans into the coffin and asks Anatoly for some words of wisdom, words that he might now have, as he faces imminent death.
Anatoly speaks: “Just live your life, and try not to sin too much.”
photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 10/26/2021, Bahlert Lake, Beaver, WI
