Mary van Balen

What is good has been explained to you; this is what the Lord asks of you: only this, to act justly, to love tenderly and to walk humbly with your God.
Micah 6:8 Afternoon reading (None)






Most days, walking to the grocery means passing a beggar sitting at the top of the steps that lead to the metal walkway across the busy street. He is a young barefoot man with a scraggly goatee and dirty clothes. Sometimes he holds a throw away plastic cup. At other times he lays beside the cup and covers his face with his shirt. I don't know whether it is a sign of humility, shame, or just an attempt to keep the bright sun off. I pass by making a mental note to keep some change in my hand on my walk back, but often I forget. Carrying plastic sacks of food, I walk past without adding to his daily take since unzipping my purse and rummaging through it to find coins or small bills is too awkward.

Poverty is all around this city. Families live in metal huts with no plumbing that sprout along alleys and streets behind store fronts and the plastic table and chair restaurants that spill out onto the sidewalks in the evening. Some street vendors have lovely carts refrigerated or piled with ice to keep fruits and meats cold. Some set up stands where they fry batter dipped bananas or bamboo and greens stuffed pastry. Others have little to sell and customers are few. How do they make a living? I wonder. Read More 

I visited the Baan Kuhn Pranee project to purchase intricately woven bamboo baskets by women employed by the SUPPORT project in Phanat Nikhom District. On July 21, 1976, Queen Sirikit of Thailand established Supplementary Occupations and Related Techniques, popularly known as SUPPORT. For many years, the Queen had established cottage industries using her own money, enabling women living in rural villages and on farms to work from home or near home. The women were taught Thai crafts in danger of being lost. The results are baskets and fabrics of top quality and unique patterns and style. These women are paid a fair wage and are able to help raise their families out of a life of poverty.

In some of the SUPPORT projects, women with handicaps are taught the fine crafts giving them, as the Queen said, a chance at raising their self-value as well as earning a living. Read More 

On February 18, Buddhists in Thailand celebrated Makha Bucha Day or Sangha Day. It commemorates the unplanned yet simultaneous appearance of 1,250 disciples before the Buddha nine months after his enlightenment. They paid him reverence and listened to him before setting out around the country to spread the teachings which became the root of Buddhism.

"You lucky to be in Thailand now," a friend of mine said. "February a holy month for Buddhists. You go to temple, buy lotus and candle, and walk with the people three times around temple."

I did. Sandra and I took a taxi to a nearby temple. The young Thai driver parked the car and led us through the rituals. We wended our way through vendors of flowers wrapped with three incense sticks and a deep yellow candle. We walked past a few people selling small wooden cages of birds, or so it seemed. Actually, they were selling the opportunity to set the birds free, a symbol of peace and freedom for the people.

The procession, called Vien tien, moved slowly clockwise around the temple with the people remembering the Three Jewels of Buddhism: the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. As I walked I again prayed to the Holy One who created us all for peace and justice in this world.  Read More 

My thoughts are not your thoughts,
my ways not your ways – it is the Lord who speaks.
Yes, the heavens are as high above earth
as my ways are above your ways,
my thoughts above your thoughts.
Noon reading Isaiah 55:8-9





I look over the ancient city bounded by sea and mountains, and think of the eternity of God. The Mystery. The One Who Is. The Holy One has known peoples from all times and places. Those of us who live on this planet in 2011, those who first walked upright and reflected on their own existence, and everyone in between.

I have walked archaeological sites in Europe and wondered at Stonehenge, touching the huge monoliths before ropes and restrictions made their appearance. I have walked into caves dripping stalactites and growing stalagmites from their floors. I have prayed in great cathedrals of Western Europe, and like the character, Lionel Louge, from "The King's Speech," have walked over great poets and authors in Westminster Abbey.

Those sites and experiences moved me to prayer and wonder, but walking in the midst of a culture so ancient and so different than my own provides a fleeting sense of the infinitesimal place I hold in the expanse of space and time that are but a moment in the eye of God.
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PHOTO: Mary van Balen
There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them.
1 Corinthians 12:4-6 from Mid-morning reading



Today, I walked to a Buddhist festival at a temple in Thailand. A friend who knows of my interest in spirituality suggested that I might want to see it. The evening was warm and humid after an afternoon downpour, but not unpleasant.

As I wandered through the temple grounds, many sights reminded me of parish festivals at home: children hoping to take a gold fish home, games, rides, and lots of food. Of course, plenty of things were different: Monks were chanting as were ever changing groups of laypeople who, after offering orange buckets filled with ordinary items for the monks daily use, knelt and joined in their prayer. No hotdogs or cotton candy, but roasted chestnuts and sweets that included sweet corn as well as chocolates.

Some people purchased a lotus flower, incense sitcks, a candle, and gold leaf squares before stepping over the lintel leading into a shrine of Buddhas. People knelt and prayed, stuck their candles in sand-filled containers and rubbed the gold of the Buddha images.

The evening was an interesting mix of booths, games, food, rides, and prayer. When I looked up the readings for today's liturgy of the hours I was struck by what Paul had to say: One God, many people; different tasks, different people, same God working in them all. Read More