Mary van Balen

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.

1 John 4:18 (NRSVCE)

Today I read a blog on Huffington Post by Linda Rovertson,
Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son. It moved me for many reasons.

First, I am familiar with fear taking over when really, all I wanted to do was love. When my daughter confided in me that she was transsexual and had known since she was a toddler, all I wanted to do was love her.

"I love you. I always will. God loves you. That will never change."

I spoke the words. And I meant them. But I was not perfect in love, as 1John 4:18 states. I was afraid of many things: Of my daughter getting hurt. Of hatred in the world for people like her. Of how friends and family would react. Of what her revelation would mean for all who loved her. So, instead of being free to love and to celebrate with her, I was afraid and wondered if there might not be some way to "fix" it.

I needed time and my daughter's love to make my journey past fear. 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.
 Read More 

PHOTO: Internet Movie Database
The movie, "Agora," tells the story of Hypatia, the great female mathematician, philosopher, and scientist of ancient Egypt during the fifth century CE. The story follows atheist Edward Gibbon's account of the destruction of the great library in Alexandria that has Christians destroying the collected wisdom of the ancient world. While a number of ancient sources place the burning of the library well before the time of Christ let alone the life of Hypatia, the library's destruction was likely not due to a single event but to many, some as mundane as crumbling papyrus and lack of time, money, and interest to maintain such a huge collection.(see The Mysterious Fate of the Great Library of Alexandria, Bede's Library, James Hannam ; The Great "Library" of Alexandria?" by Heather Phillips; Library of Alexandria, Wikipedia; The Burning of the Library of Alexandria by Preston Chesser . )

While the story of Hypatia, an independent woman in the male domain of scholarship, the history of Alexandria, and the fate of the library kept me riveted to the screen, the theme of intolerance and violence born of religious fanaticism was uncomfortably current. Read More 

Once again, I spent part of my day substitute teaching; this time it was language arts. The students were quiet as they took a long vocabulary test and then opened “With Every Drop of Blood,” a Civil War novel by James and Christopher Collier, reading until the period ended. I took advantage of the time and read the novel myself. It tells the story of an unlikely friendship between a Southern boy, Johnny, and one of his captors, a Black Union soldier named Cush Turner. As the boys become friends, they realize the erroneousness of many stories and stereotypes about Blacks and Southerners they had learned growing up.

At one point, after Cush ‘s fierce desire to learn to read and his reverence for Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address surprised Johnny, he began to rethink his assumption that Black slaves were inherently inferior to their white masters, and realized that he had never considered anything from the point of view of the slave. Read More 

PAINTING ON CANVASS BAG: RICHARD DURATE BROWN
Is this the manner of fasiting I wish,
of keeping a day of penance:
That one bow his head like a reed,
and lie in sackcloth and ashes?
Do you call this a fast,
a day acceptable to the Lord?
This, rather, is the fasting that I wish:
realeasing those bound unjustly,
untying the thongs of the yoke;
Setting free the oppressed,
breaking every yoke;
Sharing your bread with the hungry,
sheltering the oppressed and the homeless;
Clothing the naked when you see them,
and not turning your back on your own.
Is 58, 5-7

Fasting desired by the Holy One is more demanding than giving up chocolate, texting, or movies. While the author of this section of Isaiah carries on the theme of social justice central to the earlier chapters of the book, he goes further, challenging us to expand our vision of just WHO is "our own."  Read More