Mary van Balen

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 

Bud, wearing his veteran's hat, spoke to the staff on Memorial Day, as he always does. He reminded us of the sacrifices made by men and women in uniform. I listened with a heart still grieving the loss of my father. The first Memorial Day since his death. The first time in a long while that my siblings and I didn't visit him and thank him for his service.

As a child, I hung his photo on the bedroom wall, Dad looking dashing in uniform, a rare photo of him with a mustache and pipe. I loved the one of him wearing a Scottish kilt taken while stationed in England. I loved them all. I loved my Dad.

He returned from the war a bit quieter than he had been. So I was told. He was a gentle spirit, responding to a need, but not a solider at heart. He was proudest of Operation Chowhound, or Manna, as our Cousins in the Netherlands called it. Near the end of the war, American and British airmen flew over the country devastated by the German army. Bridges had been bombed, fields flooded, canals mined. The Dutch people were starving.

I have heard the story from my father, from family in the Netherlands, and from a couple there who still live by the field where they watched bombers fly low, dropping not bombs, but boxes and tins of food: Operation Manna. Read More 

Despite having to drive across town, I decided to attend St. Thomas the Apostle for Pentecost Sunday. It had been home to me for almost two years while I was living with my father. Over sixty years before, St. Thomas had been my parents' parish. I was baptized there. For the past year I have been going to various churches, trying to attend closer to my little flat. I have found some good places, but today, I wanted to "go home" for the feast.

Like any real "home," the folks there take you in, no matter how long you have been away. One of my favorite ushers hugged me back with a smile when I could not resist giving him a warm greeting despite arriving a bit late. When I walked up the aisle to find a seat, a woman offered me a place in her pew.

"Mary, isn't it?" she asked.

"Yes, yes. And you are..." I was embarrassed by the lack of recall. She didn't mind. Once I heard her name, I knew it well: her family and my family go way back. I settled in and looked around, happy to see so many familiar faces.

I came hoping for an infusion of spirit. A week ago I confessed to my spiritual director that I was low on energy. I wanted to move ahead, discern direction, etc. etc, but I just didn't have much spiritual oomph. Read More 

On this feast of the Ascension, I offer the reflections of two Catholic's on the subject, one a theologian and the other a specialist in the fields of spirituality and systematic theology. The first is Karl Rahner, a German Jesuit whose contributions including those at Vatican II have made him one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth century. In the book The Great Church Year: The Best of Karl Rahner's Homilies, Sermons, and Meditations, he writes of the gift of the Spirit which is the gift of the Ascension. Though through his leaving Jesus seems to be removed from us, he is really closer to us than he could have been in the flesh: He dwells within us in the Spirit.

"We notice nothing of this, and that is why the ascension seems to be a separation. But it is a separation only for our paltry consciousness. We must will to believe in such a nearness--in the Holy Spirit.

The ascension is the universal event of salvation history that must recur in each individual, in our personal salvation history through grace. When we become poor, then we become rich. When the lights of the world grow dark, then we are bathed in light...When we think we feel only a waste and emptiness of the heart, when all the joy of celebrating appears to be only official fuss, because the real truth around us cannot yet be admitted, then we are in truth better prepared for the real feast of the Ascension than we might suppose."

Hmm...How does that work, in my life? In yours? Read More 

But now ask the beasts to teach you,/ the birds of the air to tell you;/Or speak to the earth to instruct you,/ and the fish of the sea to inform you./Which of these does not know/that the hand of God has done this? Job 12. 7-9 from Morning Prayer



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The homily at Mass yesterday included a reference to the pelican and the stained glass window depicting a pelican feeding her young. I first encountered this image in an old university building housing the school of theology. Intrigued by the old ceramic tile with the image of a pelican and her young, I made a rubbing of it in my journal and later asked about it.

According to legend predating Christianity, when food was scarce and starvation threatened, the mother pelican would peck at her breast and feed her chicks on her blood, saving them though perhaps dying herself. Christians used the symbol to represent Jesus Christ, who sacrificed his life for all of us.

Often the case with legends, its origin is unknown, though it may have come from the pelican's habit of pressing its bill to its breast to more completely empty its food pouch. No matter. The image is powerful and an appropriate one to use on Mother's Day, focusing as it does on the feminine face of God. This day provided me with much to ponder from divine motherhood, the joy of my daughters, and national and international issues that face women and girls around the globe.

Blessed with three daughters who each helped me celebrate the day in their unique ways, I am often reminded that God is our Mother as well as our Father.

After a wonderful, long conversation with my middle daughter, I woke on Mother's Day to find an e-card from her in my inbox, an unusual event. She had honored me with a donation in my name to the Girl Effect, an organization that addresses issues that prevent young girls from developing in a healthy way into young women who can contribute their gifts to the world. I encourage you to look at the website and view their short video.  Read More