 Marie
Bellet
She’s a happily married mother of eight. And when she opens her mouth, people
listen.
Marie Bellet (you pronounce the “T”) never set out to make music. It just sort of happened along the way. The Catholic wife and mother from Nashville, Ten-nessee released her first album, What I Wanted to Say, in 1997. To date, it has sold more than 10,000 copies — an impressive feat for a relative newcomer to the Catholic music market. Her second album, Ordinary Time, was released in May 2000, just a month after the birth of her eighth child. To her children she is mom, but to the thousands who have heard her music she is inspirational.
Marie Bellet says that her Catholicism has always been something that distinguished her. She grew up as one of six girls in a family of eight in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois. Her family was one of only two Catholic families in the entire high school. “That was very good preparation. It made me comfortable being a Catholic among non-Catholics. We saw living [our] religion as a very bold thing to do.”
Her parents, she says, did not talk a great deal about their Catholic Faith; they lived it. “I learned by example. Faith was in the air. My father was a convert to the Faith. He held court every night at the dinner table, asking us what we had talked about in school each day, and debated with us. Mom was always teary-eyed in Mass. She sacrificed everything for her family.” The message, says Bellet was clear: “To sacrifice for family was a beautiful thing. The family was the most important thing.”
Anxious to see a world beyond cornfields, Marie left for Rice University in Houston and earned a degree in Economics from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. As a young adult, Bellet wanted a build a family, but found it difficult finding a man who wanted to as well. Not knowing if she would marry she pursued an MBA at Vanderbilt in Nashville. After earning her MBA she worked various jobs in the healthcare industry while singing demos, including duets with Alan Jackson, jingles, and back-up vocals. It was here that she met her husband, Bill.
Bill, a clinical psychologist, independently converted to Catholicism a few years before he and Marie were married. Shortly after their marriage, they moved to Singapore and then Spain. Bellet describes that as a particularly stressful time in her life where her faith saw her through.
“In many ways,” recalls Bellet, “I was very fortunate to have been plucked out of America at a very crucial time. We were newly married. Bill was working constantly. We were separated from our family and friends. We had a new baby. And we were Catholics in a pagan country suspicious of Catholics.” While in Singapore, Bellet says, she first learned undiluted doctrine through a priest at a Catholic study center. “It was here that I learned the Christian message of sacrificial love as a mother and a wife — the very message which has been obscured in American culture.” While in Singapore, Bellet says they “had none of the distractions of American culture to pull me away from that message.” They returned to the U.S. four years later with three children.
Bellet says that the battle cry of modern American women is “I will not serve.” “That is the same as saying, ‘I will not love,’” she argues. “It’s scary for mothers who work to make the decision to stay at home. They feel that they won’t have any friends, that they will be ignored, that they will disappear and be forgotten.”
What Bellet strives to do with her music is address the loneliness and isolation that mothers feel. “It’s easier to do something if you know that others are doing it. There are a lot of women all across the country doing really heroic things and no one knows about them. A lot of my messages are things people already know, but have simply forgotten. I’m trying to remind them, with my music, that what they are doing is important and noble.”
 While
she has always been a singer, the songwriting did not come until
Bellet was 34 and pregnant with her only daughter, who is now
four. The songs came to her as she did the dishes or folded laundry.
Bellet’s first album dealt with the dignity, importance, and beauty of motherhood and family. It includes songs such as “What I Wanted to Say” — in which she stands in a grocery line with her children while another woman looks on condescendingly. The checkout girl shakes her head as she scans the groceries and asks, “Are these all yours? When do you find time for you?” Bellet longs to tell her that her children are the “best of me.” Another track from that album is “Here I Am,” a morning offering for mothers.
Not all of Bellet’s songs, however, are for women. “One Heroic Moment,” from her first album, tells the struggle of a father who has worked a long day and is tempted to go out with the guys after work for a drink. Heroically, he denies himself — a sacrifice Bellet compares to the one made on Calvary. “Will You, Too, Go Away?” sings of a man who has exhausted all excuses to reject Christ in his life. While all of her songs are pro-life, “Life Line” and “Man of the House,” both from her new album, are explicitly so, the latter one honoring pro-life leader Representative Henry Hyde (R-IL).
“We sanctify ourselves through ordinary life,” says Bellet. Hence the title of her most recent album, Ordinary Time. “Housewives are often confronted with images of wealth, health and prestige in the grocery store checkout lane. I want them to see the value in their vocation as ordinary women in ordinary time doing God’s work.
Despite what the checkout magazines might say, they’re not missing anything.” Her recent album strives to show that there is supernatural value in the ordinary events of our lives. “It’s easy to lose sight of that when you are tired. There is absolutely nothing in our culture that tells us that,” adds Bellet.
Both albums reflect the traditional Catholic morality of Bellet’s youth. Her lyrics portray parents seeking holiness in everyday life. “Most people,” says Bellet, “do not have a contemplative life. I try to turn their heart toward God in the ordinary stuff of each day. That way religion and prayer become a natural part of one’s life rather than something separate.”
Of her Catholic Faith, Bellet says, “It has been written that Christianity is a story, not a system. But I’ve never seen Catholicism as a system. There is so much richness to it. It doesn’t try to squash you; it’s expansive. When you try to understand it, there is always more. There is a richness of Truth in the Catholic Church that you can’t find anywhere else.”
Marie Bellet’s records are available through Elm Street Records, P.O. Box 50052, Nashville, TN 37205 or by calling 800-611-7180 or at
www.mariebellet.com.
e |
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Her
parents did not talk a great deal about their Catholic
Faith; they lived it. "I learned by example. Faith
was in the air. My father was a convert to the faith. He
held court every night at the dinner table, asking us what
we had talked about in school each day, and debated with
us. Mom was always teary-eyed in Mass. She sacrificed
everything for her family." |
|
The
battle cry of modern American women is "I will not
serve." "That is the same as saying, 'I will not
love.' It's scary for mothers to make the decision to stay
at home. They feel they will disappear and be
forgotten." What Bellet strives to do with her music
is address the loneliness and isolation that mothers feel. |
|
