Tag: reflections

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Always learning

Mary Elyn Bahlert

 

IMG_0685Mom used to say: “You learn something new every day.”

Like a mantra, I have lived those words.

My mother did not graduate from high school, although she received her GED while I was in university.  I know for certain she did that so that I would graduate with a degree, since I was wavering, and had taken a semester off during my senior year at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.  She didn’t tell me her purposes, but I knew.  When she received her certificate, I sent her a spring bouquet.

Mom quit school early to work.  She married young, also, and had a son within a year – Ronn, my brother.  Mom was bright.  Now, when Mom comes up in conversation, I tell folks that she should have been a teacher – a kindergarten or first-grade teacher.  The daughter of Ukrainian immigrants who lived in flats in neighborhoods of poor folks, it was enough that she learned to read and write.  She taught her father to read English when she was a girl.  In my mind’s eye, I can see her, bright and determined, her feet wrapped around the rungs of a wooden chair in a cramped Milwaukee flat, as her father, Vlas, concentrated and paced, determined, also.  He was smart, although uneducated in his native language.  He made that long trip across the ocean, left the familiar village of his homeland so that his children could learn to read and to write.

So Mom knew the value of education, although she could not see to get a degree herself.  Life, the life of a working class woman, intervened.  She was married and divorced by the age of 22.  She worked hard at Cutler-Hammer in Milwaukee, where her employers noticed the bright, hard-working young woman.  She quit her job when she married my father.  That’s what working class women did in the 1940’s.  The truth is, she had greater earning potential than my father.  But that’s how things were done.  A woman married, a woman quit working in the outside world, a woman kept house and raised the children.

When I was girl, I walked 3 blocks to the Center Street Library – on 27th and Center – with Mom, every week.  She must have read all of the books  in the “mystery” section of that library.  It was in those days that I learned to love the smell of libraries.  In a library, it seems we can smell the riches of what is carried in the aisles.  Twice in my life I have worked in a library – in high school, and again in seminary.  For awhile as an undergraduate, I even flirted with the idea of becoming a librarian. Books would save me, many times, during my life.

When Mom and I left the Center Street Library  to walk home, we each carried two or three books to read for the week ahead.  I see now that Mom was living her mantra:  “you learn something new every day.”  She modeled that for me in concrete ways.  I was not able to see that for many years, but now, in my own learning, I understand.

Mom taught me how a woman washes clothes, too.  During the summers when I was a young girl, my babushka-d Mom would take me down three flights of stairs to the shared basement of our flat to show me how to wash clothes.  I remember the smell there, too, the damp and soapy smell of the basement, the hot, steaming water of the wringer washer.  Into the first load went whites – sheets, pillow cases, underwear.  Into the second load of the same water went towels and colored clothing.  Into the last load went Dad’s work clothes.  See, Mom?  – I have not forgotten!  I know the smell,  I can see the beautiful wooden stick Mom used to lift the clothes from the washer into the first rinse water, and then into the final rinse before the clothes were taken in the large wooden basket into the yard to dry in the humid air.  As I write, I can smell the air, too.

If I could have one item of Mom’s, it would be that wooden stick, smooth, smelling of soapy water, imprinted with Mom’s hands, her weeping and her worries.  Where did that stick go?

I see Mom’s broad, strong peasant hands, hands that in later years would be crooked with arthritis.  She was a worker, teaching a little girl whose work is ideas and books and the fabric of words.   “You learn something new every day.”  I took those words into myself, and I made them my own.

The path I have taken through life has been the path of learning, too, not always from books.  But I am keeping your mantra, Mom:  I keep it, still.

 

 

 

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What Work Is…

Mary Elyn Bahlert

One thing I have learned on this journey of life is what work is – and what work is not.

I come from a family of hard workers. My father worked long and hard hours in the gritty, noisy, dangerous land of a steel mill. On weekends, he had a second job as the security guard in an apartment building that was home to professionals. My grandfather worked in a foundry. Uncles grew crops, picked in orchards, and raised pigs. I loved them all, as different as I am from them.

I grew up in a different time – the generation after World War II, those privileged years, and even though I come from working class, hard-working roots, my work has been of a different sort. I have been privileged enough, and smart enough, to get an education and to land a professional job right after college.  I almost did not make it through college; I dropped out in my senior year, uncertain about what I really wanted to do as I entered the adult world.  When I graduated, I carried with me a BA in English, that “jack of all trades” degree.  Still, I was the first generation in my family to go to college.  My parents helped that happen by giving me room and board – at home – while I commuted to university.

By temperament, I didn’t fit into my working class family.  From the time I was young, I was a dreamer, and I loved words.  Mom couldn’t understand why I didn’t “go outside” during the summer, why instead I spent  hours melted  into a chair, a book in my lap, my eyes in the pages, my imagination immersed in the worlds I found there.  She understood my reading, and encouraged it.  She didn’t understand my introvert’s ability to lose myself in what I read, although she was an introvert herself.  Sometimes, though, we read the same books and talked about the characters as if they were real, pointing someone out on the street, the character we knew so well!

I grew up in a different time, when the values of the 50’s, of the nuclear family and what that meant were being questioned and even discarded.  In the spring of my first year of college, universities were closed during the spring semester after demonstrations against Vietnam grew violent across the country.  I loved university much more than high school.  In a way, my life began then, when my books gave way to intellectual thinking and exploration.  I was made for that world!  I was a free-thinker, and I was also careful and uncertain about my own life, and so I did not explore much of the world outside my intellect.

My world opened up, I think, when I began to explore the inner, rich world beyond my senses.  In my 30’s, uncertain about how to really live my life, how to engage in relationships, how to be happy, I began to explore my feelings and motives.  I discovered the spiritual world, a fit for me.  I made an adventure of going to 12 step meetings, retreats, healers, and therapy.  I was motivated by my pain, which is truly the door to inner exploration.  Something about life as others live it isn’t working, and so the inner world beckons.

To me, real work is inner exploration.  I call it growth.  I have come to see that as we grow outside the bounds of all the restrictions we were taught were “reality,” and “truth,” we actually grow, we expand, not only intellectually, but emotionally, and in power.  My journey has been a deep journey of inner exploration, and I join so many other spiritual and therapeutic teachers of the world – Merton, Helen Keller, Jung – in that regard.  My journey has not been easy for me, but I am grateful.  I know what it is to be grateful even when the times of my life are tough.

My real work has led me to one place, only.  My real work has led me, simply, profoundly, and beautifully, to myself.   I am grateful that I have companions on this journey, because to have no companions at all would be lonely, so lonely.  Some of my former companions, those who I love still, have not taken the journey, and so I find my ability to be with them limited not only in time but in content.  In a way, I miss them.   I love them, still.

My real work has led me to relate my life to God, whatever God is.  I surrender the ego, when I can, and when I reach the edge – again, and again, and again… >>>>…

long-journey-summer-season-22333227

For one thing I am eternally grateful.  I am grateful that I have found my call, and that although it is a lonely call in many ways, I am grateful that there is a community of fellow journeyers on my path.  Some I will never know personally, but I know they have taken the journey:  Dag Hammarskjold comes to mind; I know he is a fellow pilgrim.  And I am grateful that this journey has opened my heart to the world, to the suffering of all other human beings.  My journey has led me to understand that we are all the same, inside, and that we are perfect as we are.

You, too.

 

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Improvising life

Mary Elyn Bahlert

Products56523-1200x1200-82935Jazz great Miles Davis:

“There are no such things as mistakes in jazz. Every so-called mistake is an opportunity to create something different than you were intending.”

I suppose that, in a way, we all improvise our lives. No matter what we’ve planned for any day, life seems to have a mind of its own, and “the best laid plans” are often not the actually lived plans. That’s hard on some of us, and some of us seem to thrive on this reality. No matter what we’ve planned for any part of our life, life does seem to have a mind of its own, and the route we end up taking is never completely the route we set out to take. We have to find a way to improvise, to shift gears, to make changes in our schedules or in our plans. That’s the nature of things.

Many years ago, when I was in my 20’s, I clearly remember a friend of mine saying: “I have had a charmed life.” Being a thoughtful sort myself, I could not exactly relate to my friend’s perspective on her life. What did it mean to have a “charmed life?” Did that mean that there were no problems – ever? Did it mean that things always turned out the way she had planned? Did it mean that when she wanted something, it magically appeared? What did it mean?

Then, the next time I saw my friend was after her mother had died. The spark that had been in my friend was gone. She was depressed, for a long, long time. Did that mean her life was no longer charmed? I don’t know; I never asked. But I have wondered, from time to time, whether she thought differently about her life after that.

Deaths will happen, to those we love, and to us. We won’t always succeed, even at things we think we’re good at. We won’t get the promotion we think we deserve. Our children won’t be as perfect as we want them to be. Sometimes, our children will have problems, illnesses, difficulties we can’t imagine now. Our biggest dreams will never materialize. We won’t find the magic potion for life that will give us exactly what we want, when we want it. That just isn’t going to happen.

Take this on as a spiritual practice: begin to see your life as an improvisation. See what happens! Begin to watch your life “from the outside,” another perspective, another way of looking at it. Instead of things going wrong, see an opportunity for something new to enter. If the road doesn’t go where you thought it was going to go, enjoy the scenery you have in front of you now. Explore the opportunity you didn’t think was going to present itself, but does. Make music out of a few sour notes. Enjoy the people around you, even if you don’t like them. Or go looking for other folks, you like more. Make looking for them an adventure. See where the adventure leads.

We all know “the best laid plans” don’t always work out the way we thought they would. Stuff happens; the “stuff” that happens is the “stuff” of life. Make that “stuff” work, work in your favor, work for you. Be resourceful. Use whatever comes your way. Turn left instead of right.

And trust. That’s it. Improvise.

Make sweet, sweet music.

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rounding out life…

Mary Elyn Bahlert

question-mark-2-1409684289t9wI hope I’m a long way from dying.

We don’t know, do we? I am grateful to have lived this life that is mine, very grateful. I’m grateful not only for the “good” things, but even for the hard things. I count myself as privileged, in many, many, many… ways.

Now that I’m over 60, though, I am more and more aware that I am growing older. For the most part, my health has been good, all of my life. (I am grateful for this, also). Actually, I began to realize that I was growing older – like all of us! – when I turned 61. And so I can relate to those who are in denial.

That’s how I think of it. Sometimes, in an effort to sound positive and to not make that leap into a deep acceptance of growing older, I hear someone say: “I am in perfect health!” Well, maybe you are! But, like me at least, you are also growing older. You, too, will need the doctor more than you did in the past. Young people already look at you as if you are older – if they look at you at all.

Several years ago, I traveled with a small group to a wonderful retreat in Germany. On the plane flight home, I made my way to the back of the plane to use the restroom. When I left the restroom, several young men were in the aisle. They did not look at me at all, and they hardly moved so that I could make my way up the aisle.  I know the reality that “older” women are invisible.

Invisible!  How sad is that?  The wisdom-carriers, those who have lived, and not lived, and are alive to tell it…!  Invisible!

When the weather is warm and the days are long, I long for the days when I was young.  What a joy to bicycle to work, to spend long days in the sun, to enjoy a music festival under the long, long, sweet evenings, humid and languid.  What joy to walk barefoot in the streets, way past midnight!  What luxury to be a student, to set my schedule by classes and papers and interesting conversations in the Student Union.  What a joy to look at the young men – and to have them look at me!  What a joy to know that life lay ahead of me!

But those were hard times, too.  Things are always easier in hind-sight, aren’t they?  Those were fear-filled times, times of uncertainty, of not-knowing, of living with the anxiety of knowing I had to make that passage into being an adult, whatever that meant for me.  And there were the days of loneliness, of fears, of failed relationships, of being adrift in my life, until I began to realize I had to grow up, on my own terms, in my own way.  I had to take the road that was calling to me.

And – I did.  For that, I am grateful, too.  I am grateful.

One of the gifts of being “older” is that I know that when we take that step – when we step off the cliff to fall into the journey of trust in What Is, without seeing the safety net, without knowing the answers, without having someone’s hand to hold – except the hand of the great unseen, unknown one – the journey will not always be happy, or be easy.  It is in the nature of journey to have beginnings, and endings, like birth, and death.  And in the “in between,” in all those days and moments and years, there are lots of hard times.  I know it now.  I don’t expect to take a magic pill and be all happy, all the time.  Life – the spiritual journey included – is not happy all the time.  We do a dis-service to life, and to ourselves, by only expecting happy times, good times.

But I digress… or do I?  I am writing today about that ping, that small, silent, but strong ping that “pings” in my solar plexus, day after day, when I know I will never know those long evenings, that utter bliss – and terror – of being young.  I am older, now.  I am one who has lived for many years, now.  I am one who has known this life, my life, as it is.  I am one who now, as I am, must surrender again to the great expanse of time and distance and space.

Even now, I must say, “Yes!” to this time, to this call, to this journey.  Come what may.

And will I discover the wisdom in this falling, in this surrender?  I don’t know.  I really don’t know.  I’m not there, yet.  For now, all I have is the ping, that little ping that is the reality of this time, this age, this moment.

 

 

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Taking the long view…

Mary Elyn Bahlert

IMG_0634“The long view,”  from my camera…

These past few weeks, I have watched, as much of America and the world has watched, the aftermath of the death of a black man in police custody – in Baltimore, MD.  People have gathered in the streets to protest the death, and to bring the country’s – and the world’s – attention to the matter of racism and police use of force in the United States.  Having marched on many occasions in my lifetime, I am from a generation and a family of people who understood that sometimes the people must take to the streets to take back our democracy.  Like so many of us, I do not condone the violence that has erupted, the fires started in Baltimore, the reckless among the marchers.  But I also know that some things will happen, some people will not march peacefully; so many things in this situation – as in our lives – are out of control, and can become out of control.

Hopefully, the violent few will not stop the message of many from being communicated:  change is needed.

I especially appreciated the simple and clear statement made by David Brooks on the Public Broadcasting System New Hour last Friday, May 1:  “We know what the problem is:  we don’t know what to do about it.”  Hopefully, that is a statement of progress, a statement that those of us who are white are coming out of denial, that we realize that we are implicated in the systems, the structures that are our system, and that we also will be looked to for solutions for our part in these systems.  I pray that strong leadership will arise that will allow us as a country to confront the institutionalized racism that is in the fabric of who we are.

I was also touched by the interviews by members of the news media as they talked to people on their front porches in the neighborhoods directly connected to the violence that had broken out in the protests.  I heard the comments of an African American man who lives in the neighborhood where buildings had been burned:  “When I was young, the police walked on our street.”  He was remembering that there was a different relationship with the police in those days.

I remember those days, also, and I often think about how times were different then, in the 1950’s and early 1960’s.  I remember that we knew the names of the officers who walked down the streets of the city where I lived.  I know that we respected those officers.  I was a white girl, of course.  I was also raised in a generation – for good or not – that was expected to respect adults.  When I was with other children in the neighborhood, we knew each others’ parents, and we called them by their last name:  “Mrs. Smith.”  “Mr. Schmidt.”  When I look back now, I realize there were many things we did not talk about, that were an unconscious part of those streets and of the lives of the children who played there – domestic violence, drinking, sexual abuse.  We held adults and authority with respect, to be sure, and that has, like anything in life, positive and negative realities.

Something has been gained with our growing consciousness of the whole reality of life.  We know we cannot go back to those times, but those of us who have lived 5, 6, or 7 decades now have the ability to “take a long view of history.”  What happened to the neighborhoods we knew?  What happened to the semblance of safety we all had?  What happened to the days when children walked to school – safely, for the most part?  What happened to our innocence?  When did we stop treating one another with respect, the respect we give to another human being?

Was it as simple as the end of our naivete?  Was it the Watergate scandal?  Or Vietnam, and the lives of so many sacrificed in a war that was never really called a war?  Was it 2001?  Was it the resignation of the President?  We are the generations that remembers  the assassination of a young President whose election had brought many great hope.  We are generations that saw immediately and horribly the assassinations of a great civil rights leader and prophet, The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Bobby Kennedy, within a few months.  I remember my brother shouting from in front of the television that day:  “He shot him!”  Like millions of others, my brother had witnessed that moment, on live television.

What is the role of the Internet in all these changes, and the ability we have to see events as they happen, all witnesses to the world’s quickly changing borders and the identities of its people?

What do these things say about us as a people?

I don’t expect any of us to have the answers.  There are many among us who are looking for the answers in scholarly ways, searching through the annals of history for the answers.  Some simplicity (was life ever really simple?) seems to have been lost.  And there are many among us who are remembering with friends, and asking questions, talking, ruminating.

I also am not offering these thoughts as an exercise in nostalgia.  We are here, now, given our history, given our mistakes, given our greatness as part of the creation, and even given our questions.  This is who we are – and who we are not.

As I enter the Wisdom Years, I can see that those among us who have lived a long time have something that those younger folks among us do not have.  We have the scope of history, a scope that has driven us through tumultuous and rapidly changing times.  We also have the scope of our own histories, reflections on our own mistakes, some simple learnings, and we also have the ability to hold questions, to know that we do not have answers.  We are wise enough to know that the questions may be all we have.  We are people who can take the long view.

I am grateful for the life I’ve had.  I know I have had privilege  that I did not earn, by who I am, a white woman, an educated woman, a woman who has lived through times that women of no generation before has experienced.  I know my mother did not know the freedoms – internal and external – that I have had and yet, she, too, is part of this history.

I am also filled with questions.  I think we all are filled with questions.  It would not seem to be wisdom to strike out to make changes without deep considerations.  But we know change must happen.  Change means loss, and change means that something new is coming.

I am certain that others who are the elders are ruminating, also, and although not quickly coming up with answers, considering, turning history and the changes of history over in our hands, as one turns a rock over to see the other side.  Political correctness and opinions and views that we have held onto for so long don’t hold the answers we need, and I think they will have to be set aside.  How can we stop being so afraid of one another, how can we stop taking offense so quickly, how can we hold a space for answers, new answers, new behaviors, to take up space?

These are my questions, these are my wonderings, these are my considerations, not all stated here, but the crust of all that is churning in me as I face the Wisdom years.

What are yours?