Mary van Balen

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 

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 

PHOTO:Mary van Balen
"...Others fell on rich soil and produced their crop, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty..."

Today’s gospel reading is the familiar story of the sower taken from MT 13. Most often, when I encounter it, I think of the seed as God’s Word and of myself as the soil. Am I inhospitable ground? Shallow? Distracted? Of course, I want to be rich soil where God’s word can take root and bear fruit not only for me but also for the Kingdom. Today, however, I had a different take. Read More 

LINKS: "Delights and Shadows" by Ted Kooser Home Page Ted Kooser's Official Website "I'm In Charge of Celebrations"

PHOTOS: MARY VAN BALEN
“He has a fish house on the lake behind the Abbey and goes out there, drinks tea and reads poetry. He welcomes visitors. Once he invited the Queen of England when she was in the States, but she sent her regrets, saying she was “devastated” that she could not come.”

My heart beat faster, and as Byrd Baylor says in her book, “I’m in Charge of Celebrations,” I knew tea in this monk’s fish house would be an experience worthy of anniversary remembrances.

The comment was part of general conversation at my daughter’s college graduation party. Friends gathered to mark the occasion, and while discussing unique aspects of studying at a university connected with community of Benedictine monks in rural Minnesota, a professor mentioned the fish house.

I plied the speaker with questions, hungry for more details. First, there was the matter of learning what a fish house looked like. I had visions of an old oriental carpet laid directly on the ice. What about the hole for fishing? Would that be there? Did he plumb the waters as well as verse? And how did he make tea on a frozen lake without melting something important, like the floor? Read More 

PHOTO: MARY VAN BALEN -MOON,VENUS, JUPITER OVER COLLEGEVILLE INSTITUTE

After writing about the Kepler Mission, I remembered an article my Trappist friend, Fr. Maurice Flood, sent to me years ago. It was from the July 1994 issue of Sky & Telescope and told the story of Trappist sisters at Santa Rita Abbey in Arizona who shared the love of contemplating the night sky. One in particular, Sr. Sherly Chen, a graduate of Yale, shared her thoughts with author David H. Levy.

Levy was struck by the connections between science and religion as he listened to the sisters, experienced their prayer, and gazed with them at the clear night sky. I remembered that Chen had shared a poem she had written after considering the distance starlight had to travel to be seen by her that night. I found the article and poem in my old office:

Light

which left the Pleiades
2,000 years ago
arrived just when
a Mayan's eye
peered upwards
through the stone shaft
of the Temple of the Jaguar Sun.

Other rays

began their earthward Journey
before I even existed
to meet my eye
in the expanse of desert sky
after Vigils.

Grace

sets out from God
before I need it
rushes light-years toward me
meets me at the very moment I fall.

When it arrives
I am there.

 Read More 

I am sitting in the foyer of Boston College's School of Social Work as I type this blog entry, having come to look at a couple of graduate programs. I have always loved this part of the country, and the thought of possibly living here for a time is a happy one.

As if to contribute to my feeling of "being at home," I have run into two people who are connected with another favorite place: The Collegeville Institute at Saint John's University. The first encounter was with a young man I met at SJU last year while I was a resident at Institute He was a master's student at the School of Theology there.

I started to call out to him, but checked myself. What were the chances of running into a SOT grad here on my short visit. He continued to walk toward the door.

"What would it hurt," I thought. "If it isn't him, no harm done."

"Don't I know you from Collegeville?" I asked. He stopped and turned around and smiled. Yes, we had spent a number of afternoons visiting over lunch at the SOT's Thursday's Conviviums. And, he made the best caramels to share at Christmas time. He is on campus working on a PhD in theology. We reminisced briefly about our experiences and fond memories of SJU and wished each other well.

I was still thinking about that encounter while I sat in the foyer of the Boston College School of Social work. In the middle of checking email, I glanced up and saw, sitting across the entranceway, a young woman wearing a St. Ben's sweatshirt. Remembering my own daughter's surprise and pleasure when she was at some academic function and someone recognized her alma mater, I walked over to talk with the St. Ben's grad.

We talked a bit about St. Benedict and Saint John's (a combined university) and her experience as a second year student in the MSW program at BC. She was getting ready to go to Thailand for a practicum, being part of the MSW's global concentration track.

"I am sooo glad you came over," she said. I was, too.

Something about meeting people who have connections to the same place I do, makes me feel more at home in new environs. BC has been a warm and welcoming place for me these past two days. A little bit of Minnesota and Saint John's camaraderie made if feel all the warmer despite wind and dropping temperatures.
Besides, we three had all lived through -39 F temperatures, so a little Boston wind and chill barely registered. Read More 

LINKS Redwoods Monastery Holy Cross Abbey The Abbey of Gethsemani Books by John Howard Griffin
PBS special "Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton

Today is the birthday of a good friend, Father Maurice, or as I knew him first, Hugh. Hugh is a Trappist monk and priest who is chaplain for a small community of Trappistine nuns in northern California. While at Gethsemani, Hugh worked with Thomas Merton, helping at his hermitage and welcoming guests that came to spend time with the famous monk, writer, and poet. Merton had thoughts of founding hermitages in Alaska, and Hugh had plans to accompany him when he returned from a conference in Bangkok. He did not return. Merton's unexpected death by accidental electrocution in his room was devastating for many including then Brother Maurice.

He took a leave to discern what direction to take and that is when we met. I sat behind him at a parish workshop and decided that I had to meet this intriguing person with a very short haircut (not in vogue at the time) who wore white socks and sturdy black shoes. It was the beginning of a friendship that has lasted forty years.

Along with a mutual friend, we drove to the Black Hills, camping our way west to pray on Harney Peak where the Oglala Lakota holy man, Black Elk, sought his vision. We visited the Rosebud and Pine Ridge reservations and marveled at Badland vistas.

I rode his motorcycle and enjoyed looking at the sky through his handmade telescope. Hugh introduced me to the Abbey of Gethsemani where I once spent an incredible evening at Thomas Merton's hermitage, the guest of John Howard Griffin, author (of among other titles, "Black Like Me"), photographer, and gourmet cook. John was working on a biography of Merton, but he took time to prepare a wonderful dinner on the hermitage’s two hot-plates and took pictures far beyond monks’ betime as my sister and I played guitars and sang the October night away.

Hugh decided to return to the monastery and later became an ordained priest. He became a friend to our children and it was on the grounds of Holy Cross Abbey in Virginia where each of them got behind the wheel of a car for the first time, driving with Hugh through the windy roads of the monastery.

On his yearly visits back to his home monastery we usually manage a visit. Besides that, phone calls and letters keep us in touch. When I was at the Collegeville Institute last year, Morgan Atkinson, director of the PBS special, "Soul Searching: The Journey of Thomas Merton,” and editor of the companion book of the same title, came to Saint John's University for a screening of the special and to answer questions.

I called Hugh.

"Are you in this special?"

He laughed. "Well....Yes."

That was all I needed to know. I enjoyed the special and while waiting to talk to the director I heard a man ask him if he had any connections at Redwoods Monastery.

"I would really like to get in touch with that Father Maurice. His comments really spoke to my heart."

I smiled, tapped the man on the shoulder and offered to put him in touch with my friend.

Friendship is a gift. One that lasts over forty years is unusual in a time when school and jobs keep people moving. Today I give thanks for Hugh, Fr. Maurice, and the friendship that, with good health, promises to last another decade or two.  Read More 

With positioning desk, table, file cabinet, and bookshelves, the metamorphosis is complete; the freshly painted "bedroom" has become my office. Despite a long day moving, I woke up ready to work. Just standing in the hallway and looking into the new space was energizing. Spaces where we live and work have such power.

While I was in Minnesota last year, I had the opportunity to create my own space for the first time in many years. In the past our family created the spaces in our home. That is how it should be. We had places for art projects, "inventions," and science experiments. An old van der Graff machine sat in the dining room, and an upright piano rescued from a bar squeezed into our living room making music lessons possible.

We were a creative bunch and kept a couple boxes of dress up clothes handy for impromptu dramas. Juggling balls and pins mixed with favorite stuffed animals and a handmade dollhouse that sometimes held little people and other times was populated with small woodland animals. The house spaces changed as we all did.

In the midst of this, a space for writing was difficult to find. At first, a comfortable chair was my "place." After everyone went to bed I curled up in the chair with a journal and pen and wrote away. Eventually I moved into the dining room where first the table and later a small desk moved into the corner served the purpose.

One Christmas my husband cleaned out a small room off the living room that had been a storage place for stuff that had no other place to be. It was a wonderful Christmas present: it even had a door I could close.

Finally, at the Collegeville Institute, I had an apartment and an office to arrange. Housework is not high on my priority list, and I surprised myself with how I enjoyed keeping the rooms neat. I had brought a few things from home to make the apartment "my own:" Shells and stones from Cape Cod and interesting fossils that sat on window ledges, photographs of family and friends, books, two throw pillows, and an afghan.

It was a quiet place where I could work as well as a place to share tea and conversation or an impromptu dinner with friends.

Moving into the transformed bedroom at my Dad's house imparts a similar feeling: I am surrounded by carefully chosen things that have become part of my life: a monk bowl from Thailand, a modern soapstone carving of someone lost in reflection, an ivy plant started with cuttings from a plant at the Institute, an Ethiopian cestrum. A light blue crock that has held pens and pencils since I was in high school and a new pen holder made by a retired photographer from the Catholic Times. And of course, lots of books.

I have a special place for my Bible and a candle, and this morning I resumed Lectio Divina, something neglected in the upheaval of settling in to a new way of life.

Sacred Spaces can be anywhere; An office, a kitchen table, a comfortable coffee shop, or park bench. They allow us to more easily open ourselves to receive the Presence that is always being poured out. I am thankful for this space and for the people who helped make it a reality.  Read More 

Words from "October Days" by M. van Balen
Photos: by M. van Balen The Collegeville Institute



"...FLAMING TO THE SKY..."

Gazing out the coffee shop window, I look past a flower box full of watermelon-colored petunias to the public library across the street. I spent countless childhood hours there, curled up in a big leather chair reading Mrs. Piggle Wiggle’s Magic, books of science experiments, and biographies, especially about Abraham Lincoln.

I also ventured into gloomy stacks of the adult mystery section, tip-toeing along shelves of volumes that held horrible secrets of untimely death and clever murders. Every week I loaded my grandmother's finished books into the basket of my blue Schwin bicycle and pedaled to the library. After piling them on the “returns” counter, I slipped into the darkness and pulled new titles at random, delivering them to my grandmother who would have already read at least ten. But that left ten more to keep her going until the following week.

Today, the outside of the library looks as it always did; it is the inside that has changed. Formal carpet has replaced worn wooden floors. Computers line up on marble counters where the card catalogue once stood. Instead of a slightly dowdy grandmotherly type looking down at me as I walked around her tall desk, asking if she could help, a man wearing black suspenders, expensive gray slacks, and a starched white shirt with French cuffs held around his wrists with gold and black cufflinks sat at the information center, intent on his computer screen.

Can one be nostalgic for things one wishes had been as well as for what was?

My heart hurts with memories and unrealized expectations because I am in transition, working in a coffee shop instead of my small home office decorated like a porch on a Cape Cod beach house. Recently returned from an academic year as a resident scholar at The Collegeville Institute in Minnesota, I am staying with my elderly father while looking for a job that will allow me to rent a place I can make into home. Relationships have changed. Like the library, I am not quite the same on the inside, and I wonder when I will feel comfortable with my updated self. Read More