Tag: reflections

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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?

 

 

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Share resources

Mary Elyn Bahlert

photo

Yesterday I followed another car for about a mile, stopping at stop lights long enough for the logo in block print on the trunk to register with me: “Wheels when you need them.” City-cars are vehicles you can rent for a few hours or a day, only when needed. In some cities, parking is almost impossible for residents, in San Francisco, for example. Car-sharing of any sort is needed, to be sure.

A long time ago, an acquaintance mentioned his idea that tools and other implements could be shared, from neighbor to neighbor. For example, let’s say you need a lawn mower. Maybe one person on your block owns a lawn mower, so you use it when you need it, then return the lawn mower in the condition you received it. Why, my acquaintance asked, did every house on the street need a lawn mower, or a rake, or a bush trimmer? Why, indeed?

A close friend of mine “rents” her car to a friend one day a week. He has a set of keys, arrives at her house before she leaves for work on the regular day, and uses the car for the day to do errands, to take care of business he can’t make happen easily without a car. No, he doesn’t need a car all the time. No, it’s not a problem for my friend to walk to work on the day her car is otherwise in use. She gets to enjoy the mile walk down an interesting street to her office. At the end of the day, her friend fills the tank with gas and returns the car to its usual place in the driveway. Often, the two don’t see each other for weeks at a time.

Share resources. Such a simple idea. Share resources. Something we have not been accustomed to doing, in our consumer-driven, “each person for him/her self” culture. Why not share the resources we can? Deciding how to share resources can be a community decision. Why not have a few folks from the neighborhood over for a cup of tea one evening to share some ideas. “How can we share resources, the resources we already have?” In community, in a group, our ideas build on the ideas of others, and new ideas arise. This is how group-think works!

Maybe you’ve seen pictures or even a movie that portrayed “barn-raising.” Sometimes in the U.K. the day-long event was called a “raising bee.” On a given day, the community came together to build a barn – an essential for rural life, for animals and crops – to use the resources of the whole community. This custom still takes place in Amish and Old Order Mennonite communities in parts of the U.S. In depictions of “barn raisings” I have seen, the men work all day, “raising the barn,” while the women and children buzz around below, the women lifting colorful cloths from baskets filled with abundant food. All day, the men take time from their work to eat the wonderful food. At the end of the day, musicians magically appear to make music, and the worn-out workers, men and women, find second wind to dance into the night. That’s community. That’s sharing resources.

Sometimes it seems that we are people who have lost our creativity, as if we are marching along, all to the same, droning drummer. To share resources will require some creative thinking on our parts. We’ll have to begin to envision our resources and their use differently.

We’ll have to ask one another for help.

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