Tag: connection

community, memories, remembering

Meeting the Bishop

Mary Elyn Bahlert

The year was 1981. That was the year I declared my intention to be ordained as a minister in the United Methodist Church at my local congregation, Kenwood United Methodist Church in Milwaukee. I had plans to attend the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. Marjorie Matthews, the first woman to be consecrated a Bishop in the Church – the whole Church, across the world, across history – was Bishop of the United Methodist Church, Wisconsin Annual Conference.

At the time, I was still working as a Public Affairs Officer for the Food and Drug Administration, a position I’d taken the year before, after an early career with the Social Security Administration. Through my Sunday attendance and activity at Kenwood UMC I had learned about a trip to England, the “birthplace of Methodism,” where John Wesley, known as the founder of Methodism, had been born, in autumn. I signed up for the trip. I hadn’t been part of the United Methodist Church for very long, and I knew little of the history of the denomination (having been confirmed in the Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod, I knew a lot about Luther and I had even memorized Luther’s Small Catechism) and I thought the timing of the trip was perfect for me as I prepared to leave my career to go to seminary. I signed up for the trip to visit Wesley’s England after securing a passport. I’d never traveled outside of the United States before.

And so the thought of the trip was exciting and well-timed for me. I would be traveling alone, and I hoped to meet a few folks who were also part of the tour. I had learned that Majorie Matthews, the Bishop, would be traveling on the first leg of the trip to London. Knowing this, I’d teased several friends that I’d be traveling with the Bishop, as if she and I were friends.

Apparently, Bishop Matthews was on my flight from Chicago to London Heathrow. When the flight landed, I made my way to the bus that waited for the group to take us to our hotel. As I stepped into the bus, I saw Bishop Matthews standing at her seat. I nodded to her, and she reached out to touch my arm. “Sit with me,” she said. She explained that she’d be in London overnight, as I would, and she asked if I would be interested in being her roommate for the night, to spend some time seeing London. After that night, her obligations would begin, and she would no longer be traveling with my group.

Bishop Matthews loved beautiful clothes. In our free hours that first day, we shopped together in London. I purchased a beautiful black skirt and matching blouse with a floral print that was more elegant than anything else I owned. Bishop Matthews served as my encourager. I was learning by being with her that as an ordained woman, who I was now would be part of who I would become. I could still enjoy the beautiful clothes I loved. I owned that outfit for many years.

And – I had a story to tell my friends when I returned home. Yes – I had traveled with Bishop Marjorie Matthews, the first woman Bishop – ever in history – in the world. I had an outfit to prove it!

*

The following Spring, when I was in Berkeley as a student at PSR, I received a note from Bishop Matthews that she’d be attending a meeting of the Council of Bishops in the Bay Area. She invited me to come to see her. When I did, she introduced me to the Bishop of the Northern California-Nevada Annual Conference, a kind and politic action. I was beginning to learn about the importance of community and how we can be generous to one another.

Uncategorized

If the world hadn’t stopped

Mary Elyn Bahlert

If the world hadn’t stopped 
its incessant orbit, 
its frantic motion – one day to the next –
if all the people hadn’t halted their wars, 
their value counted in barrels of oil, 
I expect I wouldn’t have seen the sun brightening, blue by blue, 
or known the smell of the morning air, fresh, 
as I go sniffing like a cat 
to catch a whiff of what has gone before. 
I would not have opened my window, grateful, 
or wondered at the sound of humans calling into the night to give thanks.

I expect I wouldn’t have stopped midday to pray,
my arms lifted beside the lonely tree, 
its branches lifted, also, in gratitude 
for the magic of the sun, the sky, the dusk and dawn. 
We would not have murmured together at the light 
of the lilies at dusk, 
at the quiet that hangs over the morning air, 
at the call of the crow hoarding its bounty: 
all of us inhabitants of this magnificent earth.






Mary Elyn Bahlert, 2020










Photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, View Place, 2020

		


			
		
	






	
	

		Uncategorized
Gingko Trees
	


	

							

			 Mary Elyn Bahlert		
		
		

			

I’m always delighted to walk under the Gingko trees in Mountain View Cemetery near our house in Oakland.  The branches are full and leaf out over the sidewalk as we pass under them, the shade protecting us from the afternoon sun here in Oakland.  And gingko trees hold special memories for me.





When I was a student at Washington High School in Milwaukee, an English teacher gave us the assignment of finding the gingko trees in Sherman Park, a few blocks to the north of the high school, along Burleigh Street.  And so I took a walk through the park, looking upward into the trees and finding the ginkgo trees, collecting a few leaves to take with me to complete the assignment.  





The upper flat we lived in during my high school years was on North 49 Street, in the block south of Burleigh, and so those trees stood only a few blocks to the east of   where my family lived.  Many times, I walked through the streets from Center to Burleigh, stamping through the leaves on autumn days, or quickening my pace during the winter as I skirted around icy places on the cement.  





The streets were beautiful then, the branches of elm trees and a few maples meeting overhead and over the road, lush green in the summer and bright orange and red in the autumn.  





Sometimes, I like to walk along those streets in my memory.  They formed an audience to the person I was becoming.  And those streets marked the edges of what I knew, even in the years after I stood in a doorway of our flat, looked out into the street, and said aloud:  “I don’t belong here.”





I didn’t know it then, but my path would take me far away from those narrow streets, those crowded flats. I didn’t know it then, but I would live for many years in northern California, for many more years than I walked home from school under the trees whose branches covered me, followed me home.










Gingko leaf, from a tree in Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland   photo by meb, 9/2025

		


			
		
	






	
	

		Uncategorized
At Solitude Swale
	


	

							

			 Mary Elyn Bahlert		
		
		

			

We trek to a place of solitude,
this lonely place, to sit,
to listen to the water, to the wind, to the silence:
 the silence speaks to us as we walk, as we sit.





And in this lonely place the loneliness drains from us – 
 from our arms, our legs, our beating hearts –
richness fills us:
the voices of the pines, the balsam, and the birch
which call out to us in the wind.
Gentle, the breeze ruffles the needles, the leaves.

We have searched – endlessly –
for this place:
for the solitude that is in loneliness, 
for the depth that is boundless,
 without form.





Here, the emptiness fills us,
completes us.





              —Mary Elyn Bahlert, “At Solitude Swale,” Door County, Wisconsin, 5/2025  










At Solitude Swale, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, May 25, 2025

		


			
		
	






	
	

		Uncategorized
Healed
	


	

							

			 Mary Elyn Bahlert		
		
		

			

“So he said to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take your mat and go home.” 7 Then the man got up and went home.”   Matthew 9:6b-7





This really happened to me.  I swear (if I need to).





In the early 2000’s, I was happily working as a Pastor in downtown Oakland, a perfect place and a perfect, diverse community for me to serve. And then it hit. One day, a pain developed in my lower left jaw. Of course, I went to the dentist to have him take a look, to get the toothache taken care of. I arrived in the doctor’s office early one Saturday morning, and methodically, he numbed one tooth after another in my mouth, and methodically, we both waited for me to announce that the pain was gone. He was looking for the culprit, the one tooth that was causing me pain.





After several hours in the dentist’s chair (and have I mentioned that I cringe even now at the thought of needles?), we both ascertained that the pain in my jaw was not caused by a tooth.  There.





And so I was left to go about my life for almost a year and a half, living with the pain that had mysteriously arrived and mysteriously stayed.  





I tried massage – neck massage, back massage.  The pain persisted.  One day, I made an appointment with a Rosen Method therapist, a woman in Berkeley whose work I admired and trusted.  Miriam was working on me that day – she had her hands on me -and as she worked, I began silently to pray:  “please Jesus, help me!”  





Miriam stopped moving her hands and stepped back from the table.  “I don’t know why I haven’t thought of this before,” she said.  “but have you tried Feldenkreis work?”





Like most of you – I suspect – I had not heard of Feldenkreis work.  But I left Miriam’s office that day with the name and phone number of an acquaintance of hers who lived in another city in the Bay Area.  And that afternoon, I called and made an appointment with Iren.





I arrived in Iren’s office for my appointment, not knowing what to expect. First she had me walk through the short hall from her reception area to the room where she did her work as she watched. Then she had me – fully clothed – lay on the low massage table in a small room where she worked. She set to work on me as I lay quiet, not hoping, not expecting any particular result.





As she worked, Iren was silent. At one point, though, she stood up straight from her work position, bending over me to methodically move one part of my body, then another. As she stood: “I can help you,” she said.





I made another appointment.  I was looking forward to traveling to Paris with Jeff in a couple of weeks, and I made one appointment a week with Iren in the weeks coming up to the day of the trip.  





At the last session before my trip, as she worked on me, we were both silent.  And when the time for the session was ended, Iren said to me:  “Now, go and enjoy Paris!”





I did.  Jeff and I did enjoy Paris together.  And I was pain free for the first time in many months.  And the pain, the mysterious pain, has not returned.  Ever.  










 photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Art Museum of Estonia, Tallin, Estonia, 2024.