Category: wisdom

reflecting, wisdom

be here now

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I had been meditating for several years. I had learned to meditate – been given a particular mantra by my teacher, a healer I’d studied with over the course of those years. She required that her students practice meditation, twice a day. I was faithful to my practice. In the morning, I’d meditate for the first time as I sat up in bed each day. In the afternoon, I’d often close the door of my office and sit in silence, repeating the mantra to myself, for 20 minutes.

At the time, I’d heard stories of the healer’s other students when we gathered. It seemed that out-of-this world, even strange experiences were common to them. I listened with interest. And I knew that I had not experienced any of those things. Was I doing something wrong? I didn’t think so. And I continued the practice, twice a day, morning and afternoon.

Jeff and I were traveling. We were staying in his mother’s house in Brookfield, in the room that Jeff and Randy had shared as boys. I woke up and lay in bed for a few moments. I sat up in the bed. Then – I sat in complete, utter silence. I didn’t hear the sounds of Jeff’s mother moving around in the house. I didn’t hear the distant sound of traffic along Capitol Drive – a major traffic artery that held bumper to bumper traffic each morning. I sat in a complete and total silence.

And then – my busy mind began its constant chatter – again. Monkey mind, it’s been called. I knew that mind well. By any name, it’s the way of minds, it seems.

*

As I continued to meditate faithfully, twice a day, another, more subtle movement of my mind became clear to me. I realized – a surprise to me that simply arrived – that I was fully present in my life. When I sat with someone, I was present to them. My mind was not planning what I needed to do next. I was not constantly worrying about the day’s events. I was present to the person I sat with.

Now that I’m retired, I no longer practice meditation – although I still know my mantra. From time to time, Jeff asks me to tell him my mantra – he knows that a rule I was given by my teacher was to never share my mantra with anyone else. EVER. And I haven’t.

But my busy mind – some have called it “monkey mind” – no longer rules my life, as it did for so many years. I’m sorry I acted on its foolishness when I was younger. I hope that some of the decisions I made were good!

A few years after I had retired from full time ministry, I was serving a small congregation alongside another pastor. We were each 1/4 time (figure that out! ). I preached every other week and kept in touch with parishioners and visited in hospitals when needed. It was an easy gig, and the particular people at the little church made it easy. They were a kind group of folks, and together with them and the other pastor, I negotiated a move to another congregation, and gave up the church building to a large group of Korean language people who still call the place their home.

Early one Sunday morning, I woke early, long before the alarm clock was set to go off. My busy mind – my “monkey” mind – was busy, turning over and over again some unfinished business of the last week. Then – I wish I’d known this was possible, long before this moment – I told myself I wasn’t going to do that anymore. My mind stopped. The thoughts that had seemed in control a few moments before were quiet.

And I have never done that again. Ever.

BE HERE NOW

What a joy to be present to life’s precious moments… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert

memories, reflecting, remembering, wisdom

From I to we

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Jeff and I weren’t kids when we married. We were both over 30, well on to our adult lives, when we were married in that spring snow storm – March 21 – in Milwaukee. People in Wisconsin are not deterred by the snow; the church was full on that evening, regardless of the weather.

But like most couples (I suspect), we had to make our way slowly from being two headstrong, smart and heady individuals, to being a couple. Oh! the places we will go – and the emotions we will go through!
Or maybe it’s easier for other couples.

Both Jeff and I remember the first time we knew for sure we “two had become one.” It took awhile. Well, it took several years. We had moved into the beautiful Craftsman home in Oakland that we have called home since. We were proud of our home then, and we’re even more proud of our home now. We’d moved most of our furniture into the house, and everything was beautiful – to us. But we wanted a Craftsman style sofa to match the rest of the wood in the house – wood which (we are proud to say) no one has ever painted over. We discovered a business in Berkeley that sells Craftsman furniture exclusively, and we’d picked out the right sofa for our space. It was time to choose the fabric.

At the time, Oakland had a wonderful – wonderful – fabric store that has since closed. Many years later, folks who live in Oakland still remember Poppy Fabrics. So Jeff and I went off to Poppy Fabrics one afternoon to pick out the perfect fabric for our new sofa. We were methodical. We found the upholstery fabric and began at the left side of the aisle to look at one fabric after another. Then, we started up the aisle again.

And that’s when we knew. I stood to Jeff’s right as he moved the fabric rolls from side to side. And as he touched each fabric, and we looked at each fabric together for a few seconds, Jeff said: “Do we like it?“

“Do we like it?” That must have been a new experience, because we both noticed. I laughed when I heard him say it. Jeff looked around, surprised (but happy – he loves to make me laugh). We were a couple!

The fabric that proved that we had moved from “I” to “we”. Just the right colors. Photo by meb, 3/2/2026

memories, reflecting, Uncategorized, wisdom

Curiosity

Mary Elyn Bahlert

“Curiosity killed the cat…” hmmm… that may be true. And although it may be true, it is also true that curiosity is a curious and important quality. Some people are curious, others are not. Maybe that’s one way the world is divided into “us” and “them.” For some, each day holds some curiosity… a new view of an old street, or seeing something one has not seen before. When we are curious, the world opens itself to us, shining full of curious things – and happenings.

As I reflect on my life in my elder years, I often return in memory to my Junior High years. I walked from our rented flat in a working class neighborhood of Milwaukee – I actually passed the Master Lock Company – on Fond du Lac Avenue, into the middle class neighborhood that surrounded Peckham Junior High School. At Robert M. LaFollette School and later at Clarke Street School on Milwaukee’s North Side, my classmates were also the children of factory workers and stay at home moms. But Peckham Junior High was in a lovely north side neighborhood with single family homes and carefully kept lawns. My world grew as I walked under the viaduct at 35th Street. I was a young person with open eyes and a keen interest in the world, a quality shared by my family. Right away, I noticed the differences in the neighborhood where Peckham J.H. stood, comparing what I saw in some deep, unspoken part of myself.

I was curious and I was smart, both qualities that have served me well in life. I had role models. At home, my parents listened to the news each morning from the radio that sat on top of the refrigerator in the kitchen. And they stayed up at night to watch the news at 10 o’clock, before they went to bed to get enough sleep before the alarm in their bedroom went off at 6 am. They read the daily newspaper – The Milwaukee Journal. Many years later, on the cold February day in 2001 that my mother was buried alongside my dad at their gravesite on the south side of Milwaukee, I walked away from the grave as my good friend Vickie walked alongside me in the cold. “You had neat parents,” she said.

I think curiosity is one quality that my parents had that made them “neat parents.” They were interested, not only in the world, but in my friends. And when Vicki lost her mother at a young age, they were particularly welcoming to her whenever she came to spend time with me.

The world can be a difficult place – often. We are assured of that by staying in touch with the news every day, as my parents did. As adults, they knew the pitfalls of life along with the kindness and goodness. The world can be a difficult place. But the world is endlessly interesting.

I was thinking about curiosity today when I was preaching about Nicodemus. Nicodemus, best known for visiting Jesus at night to discuss spiritual rebirth and later assisting with Jesus’ burial, had a journey from hidden curiosity to becoming a follower of Jesus. Nicodemus came at night to talk to Jesus, apparently curious himself about this man who was causing a stir as crowds followed him from place to place, eager to hear a good word, or eager to be healed.

I told the story of a time my big brother Ronn, who married in his early 20’s, came to me after his marriage and made a comment I have not forgotten. In a way, Ronn had always treated me as an equal, although he was 9 years older than me. And I’ve never forgotten what he said: “did you know that not everyone is interested in things, like our family is?” I understood then that he was reflecting on a difference he had noticed in his new wife’s family. He didn’t say more. I always loved Sue – love her still now that she’s been gone many years – but it is true, she did not have the interest in life that Ronn carried, as if he was carrying a gene that gave him a keen interest in learning, in new things. Later, he’d turn that interest to computers, and when I called him from across the country with a problem using my first computer at home, he’d patiently walk me through the steps I needed to get back on track.

And I suppose, like Nicodemus, curiosity might lead us into unknown, uncharted places. Maybe curiosity is responsible for whatever risks we take, a companion to the risk.

The world is endlessly interesting… even the small places are beautiful… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2/2026

reflecting, The Holy, Uncategorized, wisdom

a few steps on a long journey

Mary Elyn Bahlert

At my retirement gathering, to honor my retirement from active ministry, a woman I went to seminary with and who had retired several years before I retired, told me that after she retired, she felt as if she had lost God for a while.  I was surprised at her comment.  I didn’t think I would experience the same thing.  At the time, I “prayed at all times” by having an on-going conversation with Jesus.  

But I was wrong.  For a couple of years after I retired in 2014, I felt as if I was adrift in my spiritual life/journey.  As time has unfolded, I have returned to my relationship to the Holy, in a new/different way than before.  

Now, I have the sense of my being “in” God, as part of God, not separate.  I am immersed in God’s presence, as I am immersed in the air, say.  The relationship I have now – as I compare my “before” and “after” – is to be part of the Whole.  And ‘the Whole” is abundantly huge, “the Whole” is all that is.  “The Whole” is loving all of creation and all that is beyond within itself.  What that means, I can’t say/explain to myself.   I don’t try.  My time of prayer now is simply being with awareness, when I have that awareness.  Often, my time spent walking is a time for me to be in that presence – 

“You will wonder and in the depths of wonder
you will discover a simpler way:   
you will walk, feet planted firmly on the earth,
head up.
You will walk into that sighing Presence.”         – from the Collection, “Moments,”
Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2026.
                                                                                      

“You will walk into that sighing Presence…” – photo, Mary Elyn Bahlert, 1/2026

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