Mary van Balen

According to James Lipton’s book An Exaltation of Larks, a group of turkeys is called a “raft,” as in a large, often motley collection of things: a raft of books. (p 47). I do not intend to challenge the term found in the 1486 book by Dame Juliana, "The Boke of Saint Albans," or the earlier "Egerton Manuscript," 1450, but rather to add to it my own term of venery for a gathering of these birds based on personal experience.

One evening last week, all of us attending the writing workshop at Collegeville, ate dinner at the Episcopal House of Prayer just down the road from the Institute. After wine and lentil stuffed peppers, we walked to see the Oratory that sits next door. Chairs circled the diameter of the prayer room, pillows and mats dotting the space between the edge and the center circle that was filled with sand and held an ornate brass cross on a tall standard. The space above the center telescoped out in softly lit layers that drew the eye to the evening sky.

A small rectangular space sat at the four direction points, a window looking out at the nearby woods. Four women were gathered in one of these, looking outside and discussing a bird in their view.

I heard snatches of their conversation:

“Do you think it’s a wild turkey?”

“No. I don’t think they can fly that high.”

“Maybe it’s a turkey buzzard.”

As one who had made a list of birds I might see while in Minnesota, I walked over and looked out the window to see the mysterious creature.  Read More 

Noon prayer did it. Three funerals in the Abbey Church that day, so I successfully navigated the maze beneath it and found the small chapel where prayers would be said. Two psalms spoke:

"Have mercy on me, O God, in your faithful love, in your great tenderness wipe away my offences; wash me clean from my guilt, purify me from my sin. For I am well aware of my offences, my sin is constantly in mind." Ps 51, 1-3.

Well, I hadn't been well aware of anything until I prayed that line. Perhaps it was hearing the words in communal voice, but I knew what I had done: I had forgotten what I had been given, and not been thankful.

Lately, I have been more aware of what I haven't been given: a job that feeds my spirit and makes better use of my gifts; a job that pays the bills; a home for my book revised, revised, and revised again; vision for my future...

As I prayed, I was suddenly embarrassed. How could I focus so much on what seems missing and overlook the gifts...

-The opportunity to come to the Institute, attend the writing workshop and pray at the Abbey. Reconnecting with old friends and making new ones.
-A fulltime job.
-Health. Home.
-Close family.
-Supportive friends.
The list could go on, but the point was made. I had sinned. Read More 

I stand on the patio behind the apartment and watch rain pour down in long lines, like strokes from a pen, shrouding everything in gray. Thunder rumbles in the background. A small chickadee, sinichka my friend from St. Petersburg called them, takes shelter in the blue spruce beside me. We are both hushed into reverential silence. I stand close to the brick house, beneath the overhang. Together, sinichka and I feel the wind and watch it play across the water, patches of light blooming and then, just as quickly, dissoloving back into dark as the wind changes its mind and churns up brightness somewhere else on the lake. Sometimes the light races across the surface, hanging on to the wind, but can't keep up and lets go, falling back into smooth green water.

We wait, sinichka and I. I'm not sure what she waits for. I suspect that once the heavy rain turns into a gentle summer shower, she will fly off in search of food, calling out "chick a dee dee dee" as she dips and darts away. I am waiting for Grace.  Read More 

The Lord's voice shattering the cedars;
The Lord shatters the cedars of Lebanon.
He makes Lebanon leap like a calf
And Sirion like a young ox.

The Lord's voice flashes flames of fire.
The Lord's voice shaking the wilderness,
The Lord's voice shakes the wilderness of Kadesh.
The Lord's voice rending the oak tree
And stripping th forest bare.
Ps. 29





The Psalm said the Lord’s voice shattered cedars. I looked around the Abbey Church. We were still standing, monks and the rest of us. All in all, morning prayer was pretty calm. A few voices stumbling to follow the chant. A few more following a more hurried pace, not yet used the monastic practice of pausing a bit at the end of each line regardless of punctuation. Prayer with the monks slows me down and gives God time to move into the hiatus. I have been here before. I know the pace will soon become habitual and when I return home, church will seem rushed.

But I am waiting for my heart to be shattered like the cedars. To feel Divine Power shaking me to my roots. Then I’ll know what to be about. What words to put down on paper…or in this case to fill the computer screen. Selling bras at Macy’s, doing laundry, watering flowers. It isn’t enough. Or it seems not to be. Then there was the customer who came by on Saturday just to wish me well at the workshop. Her daughter stopped by last week and told me her mom talks about me all the time. Recently widowed, she is a bit lost, and enjoys our conversations and my interest.

“Remember the worker priests of the 50’s and 60’s?” my counselor asked. “That is you. At Macy’s.” I guess she is right. I have women who come back to see me, sometimes just to talk, like Claire who wished me well, or Katherine, the sweet old woman in a wheelchair who told me she was so glad that she met me and had me fit her for bras. We spent forty minutes picking out three. There was the young woman who worked in the same department. She is a writer, too. Life had been beating her down lately. Assault. Illness. Separating parents. Medications. She missed too much work and was let go. I am sorry for that. She was great with customers and worked hard putting bras away, a thankless and futile exercise. We connected. I read her poetry. We hugged goodbye.

(Hmm the dragonfly at my backdoor. Does he want back in after I rescued him from the bathtub this morning? Or maybe just saying ‘thank you?’)

So, where is the soul-shaking I long for? Read More 

Apartment 7 has a new couch and chairs, new beds, but the same wall of windows overlooking the lake. From the moment the door opened up, I felt at home. This was the same apartment I lived in a few years ago while a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute. I am honored to have been invited back for a weeklong writing workshop on spiritual autobiographical memoir directed by Lauren Winner.( Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis; Girl Meets God)

Along with eleven other women from across the country, I will be spending the days writing, workshopping one another's pieces, and learning about the craft of memoir. Of course there is time for conversation, making new friends, and praying with the monks in the Abbey Church. Read More 

On Father's Day I was winging my way to Collegeville, MN to participate in a weeklong writing workshop with Lauren Winner. My father was winging right along with me, I know. And how appropriate: Father's Day. I can't imagine a better father. Right up to his last days he was encouraging, giving hugs, and bestowing his warm smile. Love sparkled out of his blue eyes. Everyone at the nursing home loved dad. "A real gentleman." "Such a sweet man." "He waved at us when he was wheeled into the dining room."

My blessing. My grace to have such a father. I remember working with him in his workshop when I was a high school junior. I wanted to enter a painting contest and even though I could not fit art class into my college prep schedule, the art teacher had agreed to sign off on my entry. Dad was stretching fabric over a piece of wood. I wanted to paint a pregnant Mary, never having seen an image of her carry the child before.

Dad and I talked as we worked. I confided my dream of writing a book. As was usual in our home, I was given encouragement. Read More 

© 2012 Mary van Balen
Originally published in the Catholic Times



We ended the Easter season with the wonderful feast of Pentecost, the outpouring of the Spirit that continues throughout all time. The entrance into Ordinary Time reminds me of Fourth of July’s fireworks finale. The impressionistic splattering of night sky with color, pattern, and smoke has ended and you begin to pick up your blanket or fold up your chairs when suddenly spheres of intense brightness light up smoke trails left in the sky and deep booms vibrate through to the bottoms of your feet. A last hurrah. Feasts pile up like that these weekends: Pentecost, Holy Trinity, and Corpus Christi. Not Easter, exactly, but the glory and mystery of Easter threading through life as it does all year.

Sunday we celebrated our God who is family, relationship, and love. I always think of Rublev’s famous icon written around 1410. It depicts three angels at table, the three angles who visited Abraham at the oak of Mamre, but is often interpreted to represent the Trinity. The table has an empty place at the front, an invitation to come, sit down, and be part of the family. Easter leaking through. Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and sending of the Spirit who dwells in each of us. We are not strangers to this divine Family; we belong, related through our brother, Jesus.

Then comes the feast of Corpus Christi, celebrating the Eucharist. We owe this feast in great part to St. Juliana, a nun of Liege, Belgium, who had a great devotion to the Eucharist and was the driving force behind the establishment of the commemoration. She was an interesting figure, having been elected as prioress of a double monastery (Common in the Middle Ages, such a monastery combined a section for monks and one for nuns, both united under one superior, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman.)  Read More 

Elijah said to Ahab, ‘Go back, eat and drink ; for I hear the sound of rain.’ While Ahab went back to eat and drink, Elijah climbed to the top of Carmel and bowed down to the earth, putting his face between his knees. ‘Now go up,’ he told his servant ‘and look out to the sea.’ He went up and looked. ‘There is nothing at all’ he said. ‘Go back seven times’ Elijah said. The seventh time, the servant said, ‘Now there is a cloud, small as a man’s hand, rising from the sea.’ Elijah said, ‘Go and say to Ahab, “Harness the chariot and go down before the rain stops you.”’ And with that the sky grew dark with cloud and storm, and rain fell in torrents. Ahab mounted his chariot and made for Jezreel. The hand of the Lord was on Elijah, and tucking up his cloak he ran in front of Ahab as far as the outskirts of Jezreel. 1Kg 18,41-46 (First reading from today's Mass)



The King needed convincing. His people, in general, had come to accept Yahweh as their God, but Ahab was a holdout. He needed water. Elijah promised his God would send rain. So, Ahab drove his chariot (how does one do that?) up Mt. Carmel at Elijah's prompting. Don't know if the king ate and drank, or just brooded. Elijah prayed. Hard. Finally his servant reported that a small wisp of a cloud had appeared.

By the prophet's reaction, one would have thought it was a thunderhead. He instructed his servant to hurry to Ahab and tell him to get his chariot down in a hurry because the coming storm would soon make descent impossible. This little cloud held that much water? Read More 

The three transit viewing glasses I had purchased at COSI science museum nestled in my purse all evening. Despite a cloudy forecast, I remained hopeful: Weather conditions can change here every hour. But they didn't. Gray skies and sprinklings of rain moved in during the morning and camped out all day.

I took the glasses to Sabbath House meeting...a group that has met monthly for years to share food, conversation, and prayer. I knew my friends would be happy to take a look at the Venus Transit after dinner, or whenever the sun broke through. Which it didn't.

Mid-evening, I took a few moments to walk around the yard and driveway, hoping to see a patch of clear sky, but settled for knowing that something wonderful was happening beyond the clouds despite circumstances that made a first hand experience impossible. I closed my eyes and imagined gazing past Venus to the sun. Because we cannot see something with our own eyes does not mean it does not exist.

That is one bit of perspective. Like Job, I am humbled, an infinitesimal part of the expanding universe. Unfolding every moment. Full of planets and stars. And lots and lots of dark space. Of possibilities. And then there is the universe of family and friends, the universe of my street, my workplace, the grocery store where I shop. I cannot imagine what is going on in the many places and hearts that fill this tiny corner of the world.

Back from the driveway into the warm embrace of Sabbath House. And friends. Companions on the way. Dinner, as always was nourishingly delicious from wine and bread to homemade cardamon coffee cake for dessert. At least as vital was the conversation: Movies to see, the Vatican and LCRW, a letter of support from the president of a prominent Catholic foundation sent to sisters worldwide, including the ones at whose table we gathered. Read More