Mary van Balen

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 

My day off. No alarm set. Still, I rose early, before much light filtered through the blinds. I slipped into some comfortable clothes, feeling for their familiar fabric rather than turning on lights that would shatter the calm of darkness. Jeans, I knew, hung over the back of the chair by my bed. A cotton T. A sueded jacket to ward off chill.

In the kitchen, I lifted the electric kettle to feel the weight of water it held. Enough for a mug of tea. I moved a beeswax candle from my office to the dining room table and lit it. The flame jumped erratically throwing out strobe-like flashes of light. Alternating bright and dark were distracting. I blew out the candle and had a look at the wick. It needed trimmed, and once relit, burned with the steady warm glow of beeswax.

I chose a favorite, round mug made by a potter in Woods Hole on the Cape, drawing sea, salt, and friends into my morning. Just enough dawn to allow me to pour boiling water over the tea bag and stop before it overflowed.

"Honey," I thought. Usually, I drink tea black, but honey was right. Gifts of wax and sweetness from the work of thousands of industrious insects graced time to sit quietly in the Presence of the One who made them. Read More