2022.02.22 TRADITION? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

When we returned from an HSO (Hartford Symphony Orchestra) Concert) I fell into the sleep of heavenly rest, some churches actually identify with such a tom- fool idea!

The concert was so beautifully orchestrated as to be mesmeric—hypnotic enough for us to pause for breath, then rush over to our favorite Asian food restaurant to be spoiled by good food and better wine. Now quite besotted, I fell into deep sleep— enough to awaken my soul to dream impossibilities alive.

I now understand the experience of near-death experiences. When we arrived   home later in the cold, all we could do was fiddle with the TV to naught, then roll into bed where I slept the sleep of insatiability, a sleep of such vulnerability, a sleep from which only LOVE will arise.

*  * *  *

Yes, some will oversleep!

* *  * *

So do lovers when enchanted by the music of Prokofiev—cold, precise, and alluring all at once.  A “theatrical concert” this one was called—an art form as delicate and fierce as a memoir in which the author/star is born into a world of family dysfunction, fierce enough to be life-threatening to young lovers/LOVE itself. You know them well: Romeo and Juliet…..

The full symphony orchestra posed as the “backdrop” for a young black-skinned lover/tenor, Romeo no less. And Juliet, a slim, barefoot, tremblingly childlike ashen-white woman, desperately racing about in hide-and-seek fashion as she appeared suddenly in a balcony, then tucked into an onstage bed, moved according to the storyline. I froze waiting/hoping for the familiar lines: “Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?”

The musical story of a romance between two lovers so hypnotically attracted that they shocked to life an entire culture, not to mention erupting the slumber of  dysfunctional families, even whole societies struggling to be/stay fully awake like these two frantic young lovers grasping at embodied love within the context of acutely rigidified familial and cultural dysfunctions. 

*  *  *  *

I tell you it’s more difficult than trying to find your own identity —not through another but within another.  And yet unflinchingly we reach, and fail, and reach again, for this is LOVE. 

2026.02.08 WHAT TO DO NOW? Spiritual Lemons blog post, Lyn Brakeman

I don’t know about you, but I often emit an internal howl!!  

No one but me can hear me, unless of course the HEAVENLY HOST have ears as all good choruses do. Their vocabulary of course is limited to words like ALLELUIA—or alternatively HOSANNA.

I am old by traditional measures, that is 87. I’ve had spinal surgery to strengthen my spine and protect it from more deterioration thanks to osteoporosis, that too a gift of genetics + AGING. I have nagged and kvetched to the top administrative staff of the residence where I live whose mission is to provide ALL levels of care for elderly folks to “age in place–independently.”   

Aging I am. BUT I will LOSE my independence at a rate I do not control, despite fantasies to the contrary. 

In short, I tell you a mystery I cannot solve with even the best of rational  acrobatics. BUT I do talk every day to those who travel this way with me, especially my beloved husband, my own adult children and grandchildren, and friends, both old and new.  AND when I can I continue to act as the listening chaplain I used to be in hospitals, and the one I lobby-in-place for here now among aging people. 

Oddly, one of the most important aspects of a chaplain’s job anywhere is MOBILITY–moving about, taking in the many scenes, using all senses, taking in the world of Being itself all around me. I am free to follow the quiet breath sounds, even gentle snoring.  I don’t mean being free to follow a job geographically, but rather free to listen and accompany the breath of souls.

I’m an introvert. Some would call me shy and others would say I’m nosy. I’ve always had one, or maybe 2-3 close trusted friends, with whom I travel. You could call me a snob—or a born chaplain. 

A chaplain wanders, roams, listens for loneliness, yearning, leans into the silence of divine quietude, beckoning or simply being present.  

2026.02.25 THE INTIMATE ULTIMATE VALUE OF CHAPLAINCY. Spiritual Lemons, Lyn Brakeman blog post

I was a chaplain in big city hospitals, including a treatment center for recovering addicts. I had to self-advocate with the Director of the center. Yes, I will organize counselors and groups for all kinds of issues and will supervise staff on request. No, chaplains do not sell any single religion; instead we acknowledge, advocate, and serve as a presence on staff to acknowledge and care for and about spiritual health—connectedness to a Higher Power, the intimate value of Soul, and Prayerfulness.  

I impressed myself!

“But these people often feel lost and angry at the church or alienated. They don’t want any religion!” the Director said.  

Imagine having to lobby for God? But lobby I did, and LO! The Center magically found the money to hire me as a part-time chaplain, and even make room for a small private office—no, not a closet—with a nameplate on the door, saying CHAPLAIN. I was only part-time, so I had to make sure that I honored the self-definition I’d designed with such jaunty bravado.

*  *  *  *  

My very first patient was a young girl in her late twenties. She didn’t knock but barged into my small office, sat down, crossed her arms, frowned, and did not respond to my gushingly friendly greeting. I idiotically asked her why she was here, and she exploded.”I don’t need any goddamn god shoved down my throat!!”  I said a quiet little prayer to this “goddamn god” and pushed back: “What do you need?”  “Nothing from you, you goddamn religious freak!” 

Well okay then . . . 

I ushered her out, resisting my urge to kick her butt.  Then I went to the bathroom for a private cry all my own. God, help me! I thought to quit. I was inadequate. I cannot do this job. Why did I ASK to be called chaplain!  I straightened up and said to myself, “Well, fuck her, too!”  Then I went to see the Director to resign and and failed at that, too. On the way home I felt my spine tighten up and I cursed God as I drove. “Dammit, where were you when I needed you?” 

Hearing nothing from God, receiving lots of love and loving from the omnipresent stuffed fluffy owl-of-my-soul. I regained strength enough to stay on, to be a chaplain, to become what my first patient hated, and even to wear my favorite necklace, a gold cross with an empty space where the crucified body of Jesus usually was. I learned to say the F word when absolutely necessary. Such an opportunity arose during my Spirituality talk.  A young black man blasted God with the F word, and I returned the favor: “Shut up and sit down, Sir. I’ve listened to your bullshit. Now it’s time for you to sit down, shut the f**k up, and listen to mine!”  He sat down and grinned. Sometimes, you just have to use language—the kind we still bowderlize with * * as if that worked!                                                                                                        

*  *  *  *

Chaplain Margaret Kibben, now acting chaplain of the House of Representatives, has spent much of her long career as a U.S. Navy chaplain in camouflage. Often it has been the sailors and Marines she has ministered to who haven’t always known how to decipher exactly who they are meeting. 

In a recent interview, Kibben recalled a day in the late 1990s at Camp LeJeune, in North Carolina, when she overheard a Marine ask a comrade, “Who the * * * *was that?” Later in the day, after learning that Kibben was a chaplain, he asked, “Hey chaplain, got a minute?” It led to a chance for them to speak privately about his personal challenges.

“For me, that is quintessential chaplaincy,” said the Presbyterian Church (USA) minister and former chief of chaplains of the Navy, the 26th person and the first woman to fill the role. “You are where it matters, when it matters, with what matters. And sometimes the ‘when’ goes over a whole day, sometimes the ‘where’ takes you on a hike and into a camp post, but wherever or whenever you are, you’re there with what matters, and that’s an ear and a safe place and an opportunity to let that person be who they are and to be received with love and grace and mercy in those moments.”  (from Religious News Services RNS)

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This is why I advocate for chaplaincy services for ALL people, aging or drunks or teens or kindergarteners. It is omni-important to use the title Chaplain, because it indicates that this person has religious training and identity alongside psychological training. 

I am now aging. I live with people in a community for all people who are aging in place—independently. I know that there are many challenges for this group, and I know how proud they/we are about NEVER needing as much help as they/we really do and admitting that trifold care for body, mind and spirit is non-denominationally religious. 

Aging with grace is our last job on this earth. So let’s do it with both grit and grace and without fear! 

2026.01.18 CLARO QUE SI!! Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons blog post

I majored in Spanish in college. I was good at languages and was awarded a Danforth fellowship to take some time in Spain living with families in Madrid and then up north in Santander—now the name of our bank!! 

I felt both adventurous and scared at once. The experience of excelling at languages in a classroom is obviously very different from living that language among people who have known no other. In short, I felt a bit like Don Quixote without his companion, Sancho Panza who, like a guide dog, made sure his master didn’t get lost or wander off aimlessly. 

On the plane I put together my first sentence. Donde esta el taxi?? The man behind the desk smiled, not mockingly, as he said: “We all speak English here, Ma’am.” Okay, so I wasn’t about to drown in the naiveté of my own nerves.         

                        *  *  *  *  

My time in Spain was full of wonderment and naiveté. My family in Madrid had an unmarried daughter almost twice my age. They married young girls off in this culture, at least promised them into good families FOREVER it seemed. I noticed that the families I lived with in Spain had no evident adult men living at home. The women managed very well on their own faith, skills, MUCH prayer, and determination. I felt safe!

I actually received one marriage proposal from a teenage boy named José (Pepé) Setien Roldan. I was terrified but managed to stand boldly upright and stammer: “En las USA we do not do such things!” (half in Spanish and half in English)………     I decided right there that I had better not flirt anymore! 

      *  *  *  *

Life is about not being afraid or intimidated by rules while still allowing yourself to be seen and to see the other close up and deep down. It takes courage and several faithful, trustworthy companions/friends who listen to all your dreams—whether practical or not. Such friends are also willing to share their own vulnerabilities and remind you when you have lost your way, and when you have to wake up, and when you are dreaming, and when you need to wake up.  Then you might need a therapist to help you come back down to earth while never abandoning your dreams. 

From Don Quixote: “All I know is that while I’m asleep, I’m never afraid, and I have no hopes, no struggles, no glories — and bless the man who invented sleep, a cloak over all human thought, food that drives away hunger, water that banishes thirst, fire that heats up cold, chill that moderates passion, and, finally, universal currency with which all things can be bought, weighted and balanced that brings the shepherd and the king, the fool and the wise, to the same level.”

 You know when it is time to live your dream and when you must literally sleep on it.  

Claro que si.  But of course.

2026.01.11 WHAT'S UP? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons. blogpost

 2026.01.11  Who Knew?  

 This is a TRUE story of biblical proportion. Like a wondrous miracle of ginormous proportions, there appeared to these two just as they felt tempted to bemoan their own aging, a small bloated sheep seeking even more green pastures to nibble down. 

Staying faithful to the Gospel of Love for all creatures great and small, these two laughed with joy. They’ve since found many lost sheep, forever safe, beloved—and well fed. 

2026.01.04 WHAT'S NEW? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The National Geographic honors this season and this new year, 2026, by paying attention to one central question: What do all our usual, even cherished, expectations and traditions mean in the midst of what I’d call just the right amount of excessive CHANGE? 

It is not enough to rebuild everything to get it all back the way it was, especially in the face of soul-shattering events like mass murders, raging rampant fires, wars waged in the name of PEACE, murders of young children in schools, and the politics of racism in the name of divine LOVE?  

We have to build back better using community resilience and, yes, simple lovingkindness, a word I learned as a very young child in my Sunday School class. This combined with exciting stories in the Bible, a book all about people getting into trouble and other people helping them out for no reason except lovingkindness. There was no “principal’s office” to send me to, so lovingkindness stuck to my soul—and stayed.  

*  * * *  

The Rev. Grace Park, associate pastor of Pacific Palisades Presbyterian church, lauds the faithfulness of her congregation. In spite of the destructive fire that destroyed their entire building, they stayed together. Where to meet? They borrowed other people’s buildings and Lo! Divinity was still there, like any good traveling salesperson should be.

Still, what does it mean to be church when you do not have your own building? That is what The Pacific Palisades people kept asking. To rebuild would cost $20 million. This sum was unmanageable. They kept talking and worrying about the future. In the rubble was a photograph, taken by Gideon Mendel, of a bible fallen open, to the Book of Job.

Church is about people, not pews and books and a script, not even a proper denominational title to claim as a name. It is about people gathered together to focus on lovingkindness—everywhere, for everyone, at all times, no matter what!!!  

2025.12.28 ALLELUJAH! Lyn B. Brakeman, spirituallemons, blog post

My earliest encounter with the true power of the word ALLELUIA was when I was a child—vulnerable, smitten, and swollen with pride and joy. These praise words were my mother’s—for me not Handel. They almost swallowed my own. 

I was eight years old and quite smitten with our music teacher, herself well chested and with a voice like a military Sergeant’s summoning his troops to line up for a war. Everyone stood at attention and was ready to hoist guns to march into war. That’s how ready I felt when Miss Ball signaled us girls, all in pleated navy blue serge uniforms—sacks—to stand at attention. 

Still, all of this uniformed ugliness suddenly became holy as our whole music class rose almost at once, at attention and ready to sing our hearts out—not for our school, our uniformed conformity, or Miss Ball, but for The Lord God. That part was okay with me because I had already met this “Lord God” in a book that told me God listened and picked up even “weeny sounds” all over the earth. 

Nevertheless, this choral Alleluia was far from “weeny”.  We had over-rehearsed this one for weeks, stretching our small mouths widely open, and making sure our tongues gently touched—no clicking—the back of our front teeth, even if one were missing.  “Not the lips, girls. NO lisping!”  And no “h” sound, just  ah!”  We rehearsed all this for weeks because we were, she told us, “angels”—just for that one performance of course. 

On the magic night itself our parents and school officials would all be in the audience. I prayed my mother wouldn’t clap or stand up in the wrong places, or shout for joy just for me. 

On alleluia-with-no-h night, we all assembled and lined up on bleachers, steady and ready, as if praising God was some kind of sport and we were cheerleaders. 

True enough that night—and still.