Tag: spirituality

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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.

beauty, nostalgia, reflecting, Uncategorized

words drop

Mary Elyn Bahlert

I hold my hand into the night
and words drop – light –
into my palm:
blessed words, delivered from the heart of the ancestors –
before them – from the hearts of others –
all who worked and walked and wondered
as we do now.
I hold my hand into the night
and words drop – light –
into my open palm. —Mary Elyn Bahlert, 5/2025

Where words drop from the sky – The Ridges,
Baileys Harbor, WI photo by meb, 5/2025

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In sha’ Allah

Mary Elyn Bahlert

“In sha’allah,” I like to say. “God willing,” or “if God wills it.”

These simple words have come into my consciousness – and my vocabulary – in later years. Before our cultural lens widened to include the people and the practice of Islam as their faith, I had not heard this expression.

But I like to say it now – often. Sometimes I say the words quietly, to myself, and sometimes, I say the words so that someone hears them. Either way, the beautiful words serve as a reminder: so much in life is, very simply, out of our control.

There’s a simple beauty in the Arabic words, “In sha’ allah,” and simple truth, as well. And there’s a simple truth about life, about life’s uncertainty. From day to day, we are in control of so little – the weather, the actions of others, the politics of our time, how other people act – or don’t act, what my spouse chooses to do – or not do, and even the outcome of my own actions.

To me, surrender forms the center of a life. We can act – we must act – and then we surrender to what happens, to what is, and to what will be. “In sha’ allah.”

“In sha’ Allah“, photo of window at Bethany United Methodist Church,
San Francisco, CA, photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, 11/17/2024

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“You learn something new every day.”

Mary Elyn Bahlert

In my memory, the words of wisdom: “You learn something new every day,” were spoken by my mother. Many times. Just recently I asked my sister, Suzie, in an email, if she remembered these words of wisdom. Yes, she answered: she remembered Dad saying them. Many times.

So much for memories. At any rate, the mantra, “you learn something new every day” has not left my memory, regardless of the source. As I’ve gotten older, and since my twenties, as I fashioned my own life in the world, my memory is accompanied by my own judgement. “…Yes, I do learn something every day, something about me, about how I manage to live my life in the world, something about my inner life, something about how life in this world works” – an important companion to me in my own journey.

I expect that my mother was thinking that we learn some new fact, some interesting detail, every day. I am grateful for the way she was interested in life, in other people, in new events, in changes. Always interested in Milwaukee, her – and my – hometown, she would send me clippings about new happenings in the city, even when I had moved across the country to the Bay Area of California. I could count on her hand-written notes to reach me, along with several newspaper clippings from the Milwaukee Journal. I read every single one she sent.

In my thirties, and as my inner life grew, I turned to therapy and body-work to grow in understanding – “consciousness” of myself, of how I ticked. Most of my companions, beginning with my days in seminary and later, among my colleagues, used the same tools to grow, to “learn something new every day.”

Along the way, I’ve come to be grateful for my mother’s – or my father’s – words. They’ve given me a mind that is interested in life, in the world, in other people. And those words, lived out in my experience, have opened doors to understandings that I had never imagined.

This morning, I worshipped in a small church a distance from our home in Oakland as I accompanied Jeff, who was filling the pulpit. He surprised me when he told a story about me as an illustration. I’ve recounted before that holy moment: when the idea occurred to me that I might be a pastor – at a time in my life when I had not ever seen – or even heard of – such a woman as pastor. “By faith, Abraham started his journey, not knowing where he was going…”

I learned something new today, and about my own journey. Thank you, Mom (or Dad…).

Surely even the trees learn something new as they grow… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert

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The One

Mary Elyn Bahlert 
She chose me before I knew Her,
or maybe - forgetting - I chose Her.
Silent, She's kept her peace:
Though I have risen and fallen,
though I have walked through the dark holding hands with demons,
forgetting who I am.
She observes, Her eyes deeper than mine:
She sees it all - sees clearly, with a wise heart.

She took my hand  
before I reached out.
She spoke:  sometimes with words, sometimes in silence:
She spoke.

One day - alone and afraid -
I said:  “Yes."
Then, we walked hand in hand.
We did not part ways again -
although sometimes I forgot Her for long stretches.

She is placid, clear, deep, full.
When I am angry, shaking a hot fist at the world,
She is placid, clear, deep, full.
She holds me then with great gentleness.
My breath returns, gentle, too.
                 - Mary Elyn Bahlert, 8/2020

Sometimes with words, sometimes silence, she speaks… photo by Mary Elyn Bahlert, Vilnius, Latvia,

7/2024