Mary van Balen

ALL PHOTOS: Mary van Balen
Shortly after an interview with a journalist from The Catholic Times about blogging, I fought the urge to call him back with another comment about the advantages to blogging: It took me out for a walk in a summer rain.

I used to walk in the rain often. Whether the drops were heavy, soaking through my thick hair to drip down my face or were more like a mist settling on the surface of my mane like shining drops caught in a spider's web, I relished the openness to what nature had to offer.  Read More 

Watching dark plumes of oil and gas rise like dirty clouds from the broken pipe at the BP oil site makes me sick. My stomach turns over when I think of millions of gallons of oil fouling the earth every day. The thought that this will happen day after day for months is unfathomable.

Anger rising from my heart is as dark and dirty as the oily clouds. Read More 

PHOTO: A U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Employee

Waiting for Dad to don pajamas and prepare for bed, I sat on a couch tucked away in a nook off the nursing home’s wide hallway. I checked voicemail, made a few calls, and then looked out the window beside me and watched a spider working on her web. She was large, her bulbous abdomen marked underneath with an orangey hourglass shape, and her long legs were darker at each joint. She waved them about until they detected a strand of silk, then she hurried along it to the end. Once there, she dropped quickly to another point along the window frame where she attached the new thread, then began waving her legs around again.

I looked at the web from a variety of angles but could see no pattern let alone the familiar radiating design I expected. Read More 

PHOTOS: Mary van Balen
While helping me clean my old house, a friend asked if I would miss it when I moved. There are plenty of things I will not miss: non-stop noisy traffic, a one-person kitchen that managed to hold four or five people when the children and I were baking or we hosted a party, and a narrow hallway with four doors that all opened into each other. Of course, all homes have drawbacks.

As I stopped cleaning for a moment and considered her question, a number of thoughts came to mind.  Read More 

PHOTO: "MEMORY SYNAPSES" - SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE "How Our Brains Make Memories"
A few days ago I had the unusual experience of watching my vocal chords in action. Chronic hoarseness and some difficulty breathing sent me to an ENT specialist. I had gone to one decades before when singing in coffee houses, churches, and at sing-a-longs pushed my voice past its limits, but this time technology had a new tool to offer: a rigid stroboscopic endoscope, or in layman’s terms, a long silver tube with a camera that takes a video with soundtrack of one’s vocal chords while the patient follows the speech and language pathologist’s directions for holding pitches and taking deep breaths through the mouth.

The procedure was painless, and the results were amazingly clear. Read More 

PHOTO: Disney
Last night a couple of friends and I spent the evening at the local art theater watching Disney's new Earth Day offering: Oceans.
That it was short on storyline did not present a problem since I went for the images; the movie does not disappoint. I am an ocean soul and treasure every moment I can muster in the waves or walking the beach. I left the movie theater with a more profound respect for the complexity and wonder of the world under water.

The images were breathtaking: an octopus that looks like a silk scarf patterned with gold and brown undulating through its blue world, a leafy sea dragon that is almost indistinguishable from the plants it eats, humpback whales hanging upside down to sleep. The list is endless.

Some creatures travel thousands of miles every year while others that stay put like the leafy sea dragon that cannot survive if moved to a different depth or location.  Read More 

PHOTO: MARY VAN BALEN
One sunny afternoon, a friend asked me if I had taken photos of the pear trees in her neighbor's backyard.

"Just yesterday they were all bloom. Today the tops are greening with leaves. The beauty of a tree covered with flowers is fleeting."

From the second floor room where I write, I see dogwoods beginning to bloom. They look almost golden, as do the flowers and tassels that dangle from the sugar maple tree. I am reminded of Robert Frost's poem, "Nothing Gold Can Stay:"

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

My friend was correct: Springs blossoms drop soon after they flock trees in white and pink. Frost's poem begins with ephemeral golden moments of April and moves to ponder the transience of much earthly beauty. Yet, as Frost's poem suggests, when one beauty or good is gone, another takes its place: Flowers are lovely, but leaves provide food for the plant; dawn is rosy, but we live in the light of day; Eden was lost, but as we just celebrated at Easter, the gift of Divine Love and life is given to all. Nothing gold can stay, but would we want it to? One thing must give way to another as we grow. We must die to live again. Read More 

PHOTO: NASA
The heavens declare the glory of God;
the sky proclaims its builder's craft.
One day to the next conveys that message;
one night to the next imparts that knowledge.
There is no word or sound,
no voice is heard;
Yet their report goes forth through all the earth,
There message, to the ends of the world.
Psalm 19, 2-5

What profound beauty fills the cosmos. We are blessed to "see" some of it with the help of scientists, astronauts, and engineers. The Hubble Telescope sends back exquisite photographs of a universe still in process. God's creation continues and we are granted a look deep into its past.

What wonders quietly unfold at every moment? How often am I aware of them? How often do I gaze into the night sky or wake to the glory of morning light? Such constant miracles: our planet, the furthest reaches of space, the subatomic world! Without a sound they proclaim God's glory and generous love.

I will take time to stand still and rejoice in the mystery of it. I join my song to the silent song of the cosmos and give thanks.
© 2010 Mary van Balen
PHOTO: NASA  Read More 

PHOTO: MARY VAN BALEN


After this he went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the customs post. he said to him, "follow me." And leaving everything behind, he got up and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house, ad a large crowd of tax collectors and others were at table with them. Luke 5, 27-29



Yesterday's reading spoke of fasting. Today's gospel tells of the tax collector, Levi, leaving everything behind to respond to Jesus' call, and the first thing Levi did was throw a party and invite all his friends to meet and hear Jesus. To the Pharisee's consternation, Jesus attended. I imagine he enjoyed himself. He was not one to avoid celebrations. As recounted in Scripture, his public ministry began with a miracle providing wine when the bridal couple's store was running low. 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