2020.12.27 Grace-To-Go

Many people wonder what exactly grace is. It's a verb. Spiritual grace, the kind that comes out of nowhere and stuns one awake, is often confused with forgiveness, which is more transactional. Grace is a verb.

I have a dear friend who adopted/rescued a small female puppy in the wake of her beloved husband’s death.The puppy was named Minnie, but my friend rechristened as Grace. Grace came into her life at just the right moment when she needed the most comfort and courage to help her with her intense grief. I imagine that the dog represented the soul of her dead spouse coming into her life in the flesh of this tiny pup called Grace. She told me: "I named her “Grace” because I somehow KNEW deep down that she would be a grace to and for me following my husband's death earlier in 2018. And she has been just that, a grace, a blessing in so many ways. Gift of Godde… that’s my Grace."

There is enough sour in the sweet of Love to make it a VERB. So it is also with the Grace of Godde—also a verb.

Here is my alphabet:

A  aerate, amaze, activate
B   burst, bother, bellow
C   clap, cherish, create
D   drop-kick, delve, dazzle, deify, DO
E   eulogize, effervesce, erase, eulogize
F   fly, fix, forgive
G   God/Godde, grace, GO
H   hallow
I    irrigate, itch
J   jolt
K  know, kiss
L   lift, love, lavish
M  mourn, marry, mortify
N   notarize, navigate, nourish
O   own, overwhelm
P   potentiate
Q   query, quake
R   reconstitute, re-open
S   sanitize, suffer, sanitize, STOP
T   thank, terrify, tenderize
U   undergird, ullulate
V   vivify, verify, verbalize
W   wonder, water, WAIT
X   xylophonize
Y   yearn
Z   zest, zip

GODDE = GO ORDER DEIFY DIVINIZE EARTH

2020.12.20 My "Racism". Part Fourteen. Words Alive.

Scene XXXIX. Potentiation

I am an inveterate note-taker—a regular nerd. But who do people ask when there’s uncertainty about what happened at a meeting? Or, what did that professor say again?  

Here I sat, ready, poised, pen in hand, spiral notebook open, my arm resting on the little pop-up writing desk in the huge lecture hall full of upturned faces. The professor of Old Testament (required course for all of us first-year seminarians) entered, mounted the podium, slapped a swath of notes onto the awaiting lectern, put on his large dark-rimmed glasses, looked down, then up. A hush fell. Inhaled breath held. He began: “In the beginning God . . .”  God what?  

Potentiated.  That wasn’t right. Genesis said created, didn’t it? Nope, it said: In the beginning, Earth was an empty nest. . .

Empty like a womb? Waiting? Barren? Divorced?  

No, I was wrong. What was I hoping for? Genesis said: “In the beginning when God began creating, or God created.” Obviously, God came first, took action first. I exhaled. Also, there was nothing written in Genesis about potentiation. Wrong again. Then, who said potentiate? I know that’s what I heard, but who said it? Never mind. I loved that word, fell quickly in thrall to its potency.

Potentiation.

I was at God-school in the lats 70s. Would I too be potentiated? I glanced around, looked up from my obsessive note-taking. The students were mostly white, but not all white. They were mostly male, but not all male. They were mostly young, but not all young. (I was forty!) They were mostly Protestant, I surmised, because I didn’t see a lot of quickie self-blessings with the sign of the cross. Everyone looked bright-eyed. I felt good. I felt as if I belonged. The first day. Potentiated.  

Later we streamed into the refectory for lunch. I found my “group”—my pod without the peas. We were older mid-life women, most of us commuters, some with children, all of different Christian denominations—Lutheran, United Church of Christ, one Catholic, and three Episcopalians. We were chatty and excited about jumping into potentiation, which word they loved, even though I was the only one who heard it. I swear I did.

I headed for my car at dusk to drive home, lugging the biggest, newest brand new Bible I’d ever seen or owned. I felt scared. By the time I got home it was dark. I hugged my children, threw some supper together, and sat down with my notes and my outsized holy text. I would study for this potentiation till I dropped.
 

I’d craved independence and called it freedom. What I began to see as I plunged into the Old Testament was that God created freedom of choice, not paradise. Biblical people were all mixed up and messed up, yet somehow they kept getting re-potentiated—back in sync with God who, for no sane reason, went on potentiating. Anything could happen. Risky business this kind of spiritual freedom. I felt just like these ancients—completely fascinated and and equally fearful.

What if I chose wrong, and what if God really did exile me, or I rejected God?  

Despite my mixed feelings, I dove in—too much, because once when a child came begging for one more cookie or something, I’m ashamed to say, I said: “Leave me alone, I’m reading my Bible.”

Scene XL. Inerrancy

The big required hot-shot basic courses had one lecture and three section meetings a week. To my surprise, Jim Echols, a young black man, a student in the doctoral program, was the teaching assistant of my section. I don’t know why his skin color surprised me, but of course a God-school could never be racially segregated.

Jim was tall and lean with a lavish but neatly trimmed afro. We were invited to call him Jim. I loved his sense of humor, his mild, slightly amused manner, and his willingness to entertain any and all argument. Jim believed in and taught us biblical inerrancy, the idea that there were no errors or faults in the Holy Bible.

Inerrancy?

What? That’s nuts? What about God’s telling Abraham to kill his son Isaac as proof of Abe’s great faith? What about God’s having created, even invited, sin in the first place in Genesis? What about God’s holy wrath—wholly unjust? I argued ferociously against this inerrancy idea. Jim listened with kindness. I thought he was completely wrong. I mean he was a black man. What about racial injustice in the Bible? How about women? Errant and still holy?

What I noticed as I pored over the Hebrew Scriptures, however, was how easily I assumed that all those people were white. I also noticed in story after story that God seemed quite content to include the whole messy array of Creation in the divine plan to keep this creation thing going—all of it. If not why did God refrain from blasting Eve out of Eden, divorced, after her brilliant grab for freedom?  And why had Sarah survived divine wrath after laughing at the absurdity of God’s promise that she’d get pregnant in old—very old—age? There were countless examples (Ruth, Miriam, Hagar, Job’s wife who cursed God, Moses the murderer, David the adulterer, and more).

Why was all this sin and deceit and acting out, obviously all wrong and errant as hell, so visible in people God chose as collaborators, the ones who got written up in the HOLY book?  

Jim stuck with his inerrancy platform while I struggled mightily with my confusion and my effort to make this Holy Bible literal, factual, historical, infallible. How could something called holy—and taught in a God school—not be thus? I’d read the whole thing in 7th grade. But now I was a mature woman of forty—seeking only comfort and answers. Where was my God?

I kept going to lectures and listening to Jim anyway.  After a time I found my consistency, the inerrant God Jim proclaimed. It turned out to be in the compassion of Jim Echols, a young black man with chutzpah and intellect—both. 

Thank you, Jim, for not evading all the academic material of scripture, yet  always saying: “Remember there is a story here, too.” I felt alive. Stories. My story. I wrote in my little blue final exam book:  OT LIVES!!  You added a big red exclamation point right next to mine. You gave me a new word. You expanded my little white world, my little Christian world.

PS. Today in twenty-first century America, there is confusion over facts, so much that we’re losing the founding vision of our nation. What is a fact and what is fake news? How do we evaluate the news of the day? It seems to depend on who says it. Some call this era post-truth  We need leaders like you, Jim, to help us see both facts and truth in context, the larger vision within well-examined, well-articulated facts. We need to remember there’s a story.

By the way, here’s an inerrant truth, obviously not a fact: There are no white people in the Bible.

2020.12.13 I FLESH.

Dear God
    I’m here
I flesh
    tired, blurred, blessed

Dear God
    I love you
    I need you
    
    I’m sorry
    I thank you

For the beauty of Earth
For gleam and glower
For dirt and long-gone flower.

So?

Is there any chocolate in this house?

For the pain and for its power
For today and for its morrow

So?

For clouds and shrouds
    and silence loud

I hear
    I listen
        I here

I flesh

    You?

Son. Sun.

2020.12.06 HOLY

Where is John the Baptist when you need him? His is the voice of alarm, the clarion call to wake up. It is the screeching of the fire engine racing to help. It is the scream of a police car siren racing to help. It is the cry of a hungry baby, the agonized why? of the crucified, the whimper of those alone and dying, the near-silent mutter of a street beggar, the rage of the able and of the helpless, the sigh of the contented writing out a check which is too small to matter, the groan of a planet in peril, the blast of a shofar in early morning—calling, calling, calling.  

What voice do you need to hear? What voice is strong enough to break open your heart? To wake you up to the naked need that surrounds us even when we neither heed, nor hear, nor need. It’s there. What voice moves you to stop running and start listening? Who is your prophet?

In every call, there is Godde. In every need, there is Soul. In every despair, there is Hope. In every wound, there is healing. I know this by faith and by glimmers, glimpses, glows, and guesses.

A glow: December 6th is St. Nicholas day. In life he was a bishop in the early Christian church who died in 343 CE. Nicholas was of Greek origin. At 5’6” he was small in stature but giantesque in heart. Sometimes called the Wonderworker, Nicholas instructed children to leave their empty shoes out by night, and by morning the shoes were filled with goodies and surprise treats. From this small holy activity emerged Saint Nic’las and then/now Santa Claus.

 

 

 

 

 

 I am reminded that the generosity of Godde —in Creation and through all life of all beings—is extravagant and eternal.

 

 

 

 

 

A shimmering story. One of my granddaughters asked for a cross on a chain for her 21st birthday. She specified :“Not one with that body on it.” I remembered a time when this young woman was in her teens and had a fight with a classmate about religion. What middle-schooler fights over that? She’d angrily insulted her friend’s religion, calling it stupid. The dispute was arbitrated by the principal, an apology was made, and my girl did further penance on her own. She went to church with her friend, jumped up for the altar call, and got “saved.” She came home, announced her salvation, and told her older sister that she should get “saved”—it would help her a lot. By the next weekend she decided against church and for the mall.

All of this is not exactly what one might call divine salvation—or is it? Something happened that this girl never forgot. Something to do with Christ, she told me, and wrote me a note, with this salutation: “To my Holy Grandmother.”  It is a beautiful articulation of her spiritual experience, her gropings and her raw and innocent wonderings as she tries to discern what Christ means to her. Salvation is a process. This kid’s a pretty topnotch theologian already!

I wondered about myself being called “holy” refraining from sophisticated definitions of holy.  She wrote me this: “In terms of your holiness, I think I meant it in the way I have always seen you. The only person in my family growing up that was spiritual and religious. I remember being young, exploring at St. John's, and finding peace there. I also remember always asking my parents if we could go to church (I mean, what kid does that??). There's always been a yearning in me for spiritual knowledge. I think for me growing up, you embodied that for me. So thank YOU!! :)”

I say the same to her!

11.29.20 ADVENT FLASH

Every once in a while—requested or not, planned or not, expected or not, desired or not, rational or not, explicable or not—there come a flash of awakening.  It’s not like the slow sleepy arising in the morning. Nor is it the sudden kick in the gut of noticing the obvious for the first time, or the surprise of finding a lost earring peeking from under the edge of the bureau. This flash partakes of Mystery.

We live as everyone the world over is living in near-quarantine in this season of Covid-fear and masks and huglessness. In the midst of this the town where we just moved, Simsbury, Connecticut, had its 350th anniversary. How does one celebrate antisocially?  Town officials decided the best, perhaps only, way was to have fireworks. This phenomenon is bravely American and traditionally reserved to July 4th. The best place to set off the display was at a local golf course. Guess who lives right behind that golf course, bordering its well-pruned green expanses. WE DO!  

Last night Dick and I sat at our window and watched. The flashes came in succession, each one louder and more colorful than the last. In the parking lot below, cars gathered, one with a bunch of young children atop it and all around it. Sounds of their laughter and screams of delight accompanied the fireworks. 

Mysteriously, this 20-minute flash was better than any July 4th I’ve ever seen. It was far better than the costly displays with musical accompaniment, tailored for global viewing to advertise America’s brand of freedom. Now more than ever we need to learn how to live our brand of freedom—not as power but as joy, not as exclusive to us but as available to all living things in nature and human nature, not as dogma but as covenant.

As this flash subsided, I was suddenly suffused with tears—gratitude, inner warmth, hope, awe, and sheer Mystery.

PS.  Simsbury. Thanks for your wondrous fiscal irresponsibility!

I LIKE YOU JUST THE WAY YOU ARE. 11/22/20

You might think I am obsessed with Mr. Rogers, and you’d be right. My obsession isn’t pathological but spiritual—something this secular world might consider pathological anyway.

My “Rogerian” focus is broad and deep, perhaps global. I think the late Fred Rogers is an icon for our time. An icon is an image through which we see the glory of God, aka divinity. It’s only a glimpse, but when you see it you recognize it. The early Christian bishop, Irenaeus of Lyons (130-202 CE), pictured below, best summarized such spirituality this way:                       

                  The Glory of God is the human person fully alive.

But this post isn’t about Irenaeus; it is about Fred McFeely Rogers (b.1928, Latrobe, PA.) who embodied Irenaeus’s theology:
    -not because he happened to be an ordained Presbyterian minister who had attended Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, spoke Greek and Hebrew, and in time graduated magna cum laude with a specialty in musical composition from the University of Pittsburgh
    -not because he was strictly religious or doctrinaire: You don’t have to speak overtly about religion in order to get a message across. He knew there were “terrifying ideas in all religions.”
    -not because he loved children so much
    -not because he became famous for his work in public television for children, won many awards and honorary degrees including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded by President George W. Bush in 2002
    -not because he took daily naps, stayed fit, maintaining his weight at 143 all his 74 years
    -not because he never smoked or drank
    -not because he was a registered Republican, which some folks think is godly these days
    -not even because he was a vegetarian: I couldn’t eat anything that had had a mother, he'd say.

Rogers reflected the glory of God because he was a person fully alive—and imperfect:
    -because he had a difficult childhood, spending many hours at home because of asthma
    -because he had many stuffed animals who helped him make friends with himself
    -because he learned to play the piano at age 5, and followed this passion to get a degree
    -because his personality was introverted and shy
    -because he was bullied in early school for being overweight, called Fat Freddy, and made to feel “very sad”   
    -because he was resilient and blossomed in high school to pursue his early passion for music, eventually marrying a fellow student Sara Joanne Byrd with whom he played dual pianos and who became the puppet Sara Saturday on Mr. Rogers’s Neighborhood
    -because he would get perfectionistic about his show and cranky, as he did over the arrival of the educational television show for children called Sesame Street. It was competition and he didn’t like it, probably because it was too teacherish.   
    -because he struggled all his life with anger and self-hate
    -because he hated television, yet when he discovered an old television at his parents’ home in 1951, he exclaimed: There must be some way to use this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen.” This “aha!” moment shaped his career in public television.
    -because he insisted on a private funeral in 2003 in a chapel in Latrobe for family and friends to have some protected time for their own grief.  There was a public ceremony later at which violinist Yitzkak Rabin, cellist Yoyo Ma, and organist Alan Morrison played, for 2700 people who mourned this humble hero fully alive in their hearts
    -because his mother knitted all his sweaters, including the famous red, front-zippered one he wore on his daily television show, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. Tom Hanks, who played Mr. Rogers in the current movie, “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” had difficulty managing Rogers’s nightly entrance into his “neighborhood”—grabbing the red sweater, zipping it up, spit spat like that, removing his shoes, flipping one shoe into his free hand, then donning sneakers, ready to play with puppets and charm his young audience, nightly from 1968 to 2001.
    -because he was an avid swimmer of laps, saying that this and the piano gave him a chance to feel capable and in charge. Swimming was his most important self-discipline.
    -because as a boy Fred Rogers saw scary things in the news and never forgot the advice his mother gave him: Look for the helpers. you will always find people who are helping.
    -because, despite his lifelong dedication to the psychological and moral well-being of children’s emotions about painful life challenges like divorce, sibling rivalry, death, Rogers ably directed his energy to adult politicians when he testified before the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Communications on May 1, 1969. His testimony enchanted the Senators charged with eliminating government funding for public television for children. He closed his testimony singing a song he wrote for his own show: “What Do You Do With The Mad That You Feel?”  

Guess who got the funding? And guess who left the hearing feeling fully alive—divinely so?

I think Rogers is an icon for this time, this 2020 year,
    -because he listened attentively—present physically and emotionally to every single child, kneeling to be on their level,
    -because he said over and over: “I like you just the way you are.”   
    -because he prayed— regularly and no matter what
    -because journalist Tom Junod said of Rogers: “It was very hard to interview him because he just wanted to focus on me and who I was and my feelings.”
    -because when asked what he thought Mr. Rogers wanted him to do, Junod said: “Oh, I think he wanted me to pray.”  
                                              *  *  *  *
Tomorrow is the 34th anniversary of my marriage to Richard J. Simeone, brother priest, mentor, friend and companion-in-cranky. Above our sleeping bed hangs the wisdom of old Irenaeus.  
    
               The Glory of God is the human person fully alive.

 
I like you, Dick, just the way you are—whether asleep or awake. Some days I don’t love your every way, but I always like you just the way you are.

And to us all: Let’s try to be a little bit like Mr. Rogers in our own neighborhoods—every day.

My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal History. Part Thirteen. Choices.

My very first choice was at three when I left my parents to their own cocktail hour and went off on my own to meet God with my reckless imagination. Whether that choice could be considered free I can’t say, except that it felt free to me. Looking back, I’d like to say I had good emotional intelligence, yet honestly it was more likely impulsive, childish creativity writ large—accidental grace. Is there any other kind of grace?

My first morality-laden choice had been choosing my own pleasure against loyalty to my black friend Carol Lee. The burning memory of it still stings. Whether I called it racist or not didn’t matter. My conscience did. Carol Lee and I were different—not just because of our skin color but because of my choice—my choice.

My early experience set me up for knowing that choice was an intimate part of life and that it would always be impure.

Scene XXXIV. Why?

I was nearing forty. I’d made made choices about marriage and children. These might not have been perfectly timed, but I had no regrets as I watched the children I adored and admired grow and thrive. They were my greatest pleasure. But something was missing. I didn’t know what exactly. I sat in my kitchen conjuring up fake images of myself as a domestic wonder-mother when an interruptive question—the kind only God-from-within could inflict—broke into my reverie.  

Why are you doing this?  

I sat down at the kitchen table, rested my bowed head on my crossed arms and sobbed—sobbed.
Why was I doing this?  Truly, madly, deeply why?

Scene XXXV. Leap

As I sat in my tears I made a choice to answer the question—truthfully. What was missing from the lovely picture was me. Yes, me. I leapt first into a part-time job as a local weekly newspaper reporter.
I faithfully reported on the most boring of town meetings. I was a stringer, paid by the column inch, so I made my articles as long as I dared. Soon I leapt into writing features, then editing.  

I listened carefully to the instructions from the hang-gliding teacher. He strapped me into my glider wings. I took a deep breath, swallowed my fear, and leapt off a mountain top, well, really a ridge. Lifted and held by puffs of wind, I was airborne—a soundless plane. The thrill was—forgive me—godlike. I looked down and saw the world, my world. I wanted it all. All. I wrote it all.

Choice by choice, I devoured my freedom—moving, leap by leap, away from traditional and expected roles. I could blame the 70s or Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem, but that would be cheap grace. I took it anyway. I would deal with the sin of my profound selfishness in time and through tears. My four children were too young for this loss, for my leaps, for my evenings meetings, for too much maternal abandonment—paternal too.

I got involved with the local church and took on leadership roles. I eyed the altar territory with something akin to lust. I wanted to stand up front. I wanted to be a woman-in-the-flesh up front and not a statue draped with sorrowful looks and roses. I also leapt from the Republican party to the Democratic—away from my parensts'  party to one of my own, one I thought more in line with the  kind of values and choices I thought Jesus would make.  I was sure Jesus would ordain me if he were a bishop—or still enfleshed, or not Jewish.  
 
In 1977,  just after the Episcopal Church had voted—not by a landslide—that women could be ordained priests, I made application to get into the ordination process in Connecticut. The Bishop of Connecticut had voted against the ordination of women priests—unbeknownst to yours truly who had an outsized idea that the Church was the Body of Christ, therefore apolitical. My application was rejected, mostly because I had “2.24-too-many children”, and I couldn’t be a mother and a priest. “Dual vocation” they said. No mention of men and fathers, of course.

I leaped into God-school anyway. Anyone could get a theological education, the bishop had said. I applied for a student loan—something I thought carried great authority. Paying it back I’d worry about later. The second I came onto the campus of Yale Divinity School for my interview, I gazed at the very Protestant chapel keeping watch over the quadrangle of buildings, went to sit in its emptiness, and filled it with my prayers. My heart soared. I leaped into seminary education in the autumn of 1978.

In March, 1979, my youngest sister died unexpectedly at 34 after surgery for congenital aneurysms in her brain, leaving her husband and three young children. Her death precipitated severe asthma in me. There is nothing like not breathing well to make one feel like death. I never thought this was divine judgment or punishment. I did feel a terror I hadn’t known before—and again the pain of  betrayal. On medical advice, I found a new home for my second daughter Jill’s two cats. Fear-based choices never work well.

There was probably no better place for me to be than studying the Old Testament, not a single word of which was free of anguish, pain, grief, sin, and relational turmoil—all of which God created, absorbed, healed, frowned at, and and wept for. Sin and mayhem were as omnipresent as divine love no matter what. I chose it all.

Scene XXXVI.  Free?

All my choices, my leaps, shaped me, hurt me, hurt others, helped me grow, helped others grow, required amends—and forgiveness.

I was dimly—gradually, painfully— learning that most of my personal big choices could be followed, because I was white, privileged, and moneyed.

My freedom was not bound by poverty, class, or the color of my skin, although I knew the pain of being restricted because of my gender. White freedom of choice looked free, but it was racist. It was embedded in a context of racial injustice. Others, chiefly blacks, couldn’t make the choices I could. There wasn’t room for their freedom in American society. Black people and others did not have the same access to the famous and, to my mind questionable, “American dream” as whites did—even though such freedom was preached. A racist set-up if ever there ever was one.

My choices were made in a racist context and therefore indirectly partook of racism. My racism was getting clear enough not to surround it with quotation marks.  All it needed was to be fleshed out.

 

We Voted. WE.

WE, this United States of America,  just voted on its next President, former vice president Joe Biden. We have voted in record numbers—yes, to a man, no, to another man/incumbent; yes, to a Democrat, no to a Republican; yes to the first woman/first black/first daughter of immigrants as vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, no, to an arch-conservative evangelical Christian vice-president/incumbent; yes, to a measured inclusive style of leadership, no to an authoritarian leader of excess. The voting went smoothly and deliberately. Every single vote was counted with care, efficiency, and I’d say with love for democratic process.

This is a lot of change at once—qualitative change. It’s easy to analyze the many whys and evaluate the numbers according to partisan politics and differing cultures. It’s easy to observe all the celebratory festivities on television screens, and easy to feel the general mood of those gathered to celebrate—HAPPY, simply happy. Fringes of discontent were likely present but went unnoticed. It is less easy to discern the larger picture—the deeper meaning of this historic vote—after all the minute statistical details that have provided exactitude are cleared away.

President-elect Joe Biden praised the cheering crowds, saying, as former President Obama did, “Yes, we can!” He added his hope for America now: “Lead by the power of our example not by the example of our power.”  

Further: We are the united States, not the red and blue states. Let us put away harsh rhetoric, marshal the forces of decency. Everyone needs a fair shot, just a fair shot. Let the moral arc of the universe move towards justice. It is now a time to heal, to mend, to love, as the biblical Ecclesiastes says.  Biden promised to be a unifier. He has the experience, the intelligence, the character and the personality to keep that promise. Specific plans are in the works to create teamwork and conversation.  This man knows how to cross the aisles. Good thing, because this was a close election in which Republicans did well and Democrats did well. Good for the whole.

Some of my own thoughts about broader, deeper meanings, especially those with racial implications:  
    -Partisanship itself is racist, because whites historically identify with one party, Republican, and blacks with the other, Democrat. I am not a blue person, and my favorite color is red. Blacks voted in high numbers this year. HOPE.
    -Whites are blind to the racial implications of party politics, mostly because they are concerned with what is happening with their money, taxes, and their classist lifestyle, safely bound to “whiteism”. Paying taxes is one way I contribute to that “fair shot” for all .
    -COVID is also racially tinged, mostly because black people suffer more from poverty and limited access to adequate healthcare benefits or good insurance benefits. This President-elect will immediately set up a diverse task force  just to focus on the best ways to eliminate a killer virus that knows no politics, no race, no gender, no creed.  
    -Reliance by the media on polls that assess political opinion and predict outcomes can also be racially tinged, because white college educated people respond to polls bringing their own biases, and black people are often not poll-responsive. Poll-driven statistics demand instant responses i.e., pick a detail, ask a question, and then expect a brief response.
    -American culture, it has been said, is anti-intellectual. This doesn’t mean that people are not intelligent, but that they are conditioned—by advertising, social media, i-phones, and many social media devices that provide instant stimulation and instant communications—to expect, if not demand, instantaneity. Deep and broad thinking accompanied by much conversation, listening, and exchange of ideas, is not a high cultural value. We live in a Skinnerian world of stimulus and response.
    -Religious fundamentalism contributes to this mindset. It is very selective about which texts one should live by in order to please God—and the local congregation. It discourages individual spirituality and exploration of biblical texts through prayer and the gentle guidance of spiritual direction.

The late Dorothy Day (1897-1980), convert to Roman Catholicism, activist, and founder of The Catholic Worker Movement, speaks of a politics for going forward in this Beatitude Kingdom we here call the United States of America. Day in 1934.

 

“What we would like to do is change the world — make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute — the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words — we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever-widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day admired America's efforts to take responsibility through the government, but ultimately felt that charitable works were personal decisions that needed the warmth of an individual. I’d say we need the best of both at work together. Day said: “My strength returns to me with my cup of coffee and the reading of the Psalms.”

So does my own. Today’s morning prayer Psalm 96 (translated by Pamela Greenberg) begins:

“Sing out to God a new song
sing to God, all the earth.

And ends:

You will judge all people of the world justly,
all nations with steadfast truth.

By this I remember to honor each day with a new song—or mood—and to remember that there is only ONE JUST JUDGE—and it’s not me, or you, or even us.

All Saints, 11.01.2020

Today in the Christian Church we celebrate All Saints Day, which immediately confronts us with the very practical challenging question: Who is a saint? What does a saint do, or not do?  Why?

Most preachers in Christian churches will elaborate about the higher values of the kingdom of heaven of which we are citizens and whose values we live by.  YES, BUT how does this Transcendent Kingdom connect with Earthed Kingdom?  I can only think of one acceptable answer: God doesn’t stay in “Heaven.” Simply so.

I was struck with the ever-so-familiar—even trite Scripture—THE Beatitudes.These are hard blessings. Each divine blessing presumes its polar opposite: poverty of spirit, mercilessness, grief enough to suffocate a soul, persecution, torture, evil, unrequited justice, and the absence of peace. For each and all of these blessings God offers its opposite but not its elimination. In other words, dearly beloved, this kingdom of Saints is neither all good nor all bad. It’s both.  

On my home altar sits a small scallop shell. It was hinged but spread open when I first spotted it years ago on an ocean beach. The shell has traveled with me, in pockets and on altars and through a few geographic moves. Hence, the tiny hinge that held the two halves of shell together, enabling it to yawn open and clamp shut for the sake of the tiny critter within, broke. Now I have just the shell in two halves. They look exactly the same, but notice. The outsides of each half are quite distinct.

BUT when the shell is open the insides of both halves are exactly the same.

 Such is the all-blessed image of the Kingdom of God—all residents different one from another externally and all the same internally.  Beatified.



Today I remember a human saint who embodied these beatitudes of inclusion. I first met the Rev. Roy Parker at Holy Cross Monastery while on retreat. He was my spiritual director for a time. Monthly I drove over to Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, New York, where he listened well to all my palaver. I felt soothed by his presence, until one day I stopped talking and looked over to see Roy sound asleep. I woke him and we laughed, followed by my strict instruction that he see a therapist for possible depression.We laughed—together. He still laughs I believe.

Once some years later —in the mid 80s—Roy was on a meditation trip with a nun as his companion. Dick and I offered them a place to spend the night along their way. We served them a delicious dinner and gave them each one of our three spare bedrooms available at the rectory and laughed about sharing such a delightful evening with a monk and a nun.  Our two travel buddies left with deep gratitude for our hospitality. A lot of funny stuff can happen under the sign of the Cross.

We stayed friends with Roy, and I consider him still an exemplar of true sainthood. He was present at my ordination to the priesthood in 1988. We’ve enjoyed his humor whenever we’ve visited the monastery. Once he sidled up to Dick on the way to lunch and whispered: “You know this aging stuff is not for sissies!” Roy’s work hangs on the monastery walls heading toward the chapel.

 

Roy calligraphed the cover for  my ordination bulletin. The larger version of the wisdom of St. Irenaeus of Lyons also hangs above the bed where we sleep. 

Our favorite image of Roy’s calligraphy is a quote from the work of the late mystic and beatitude type, Thomas Merton, American Trappist monk. He wrote if you can't read it: "Dance in the sun, you tepid idiot. Wake up and dance in the clarity of perfect contradiction." I gave it to Dick because it, well, reminded me of him.  We will never ever reframe this to get rid of the crack in the glass!

Roy Parker died of a paralytic laryngeal disease in 2020. The disease took away his voice entirely and then his life. Just before he went silent, he did this last calligraphy.

 

 

Roy is a saint in good standing in the beatitudinal kingdom of all saints. My heart can’t help but be lifted, my cup filled to the brim, my soul drenched in the generous faithfulness of God when I remember Roy.    

2020.10.25 Scared Sinless

We "Whities" seized dominance with vigor, vengeance, veracity
We consumed everything within our reaches—and more.
We—voraciously and stingily— gobbled up
    all land
    all healthcare
    all money
    all goodly resources
    all power—and made it male
           
At first our status gave us
    pride, joy, glory
Then denial, ignorance, lassitude.

Now we are dying
    in droves,
        droves.

The Beauty of the Earth
    dims
    blurs
    dwindles.

We are quick to say wild animals—some human—have invaded,
        BUT
It is we—we—who have invaded their living space. We. Us.

We are scared to death
    ashen.
On knees we pray, and pray, with all that makes quiver our minds.

There is only one solution—one.
    Forgiveness?
    Too slippy slippery

No, we must actually love our neighbors as ourselves.

This cannot be lame lip service, a nod to Biblical aspirations.
    NO.
It must run deep into the veins of our heart.
We must get to know, not just love, our neighbors.

Known and unknown,
    always the one commandment.
        
Bidden or not, neighbors are here.

Moses legislated the politics
Jesus summarized the vision
Paul made it unconditional
Parental figures taught the young
   repeatedly taught and told and taught
the only one—just one behavior
    crucial
        necessary
            indispensable
            
               SHARE.

2020.10.18 Wisdom. Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Wisdom is considered one of God’s unfathomable gifts.  This is a note on the first chapter of the biblical Book of Sirach the central theme of which is that Wisdom comes from God, was with God in the beginning, is of God, is a female figure, and is deeply connected with spirituality. Whew!     

But why is Wisdom “unfathomable”?  Well, I suppose because Divinity itself is unfathomable.

Back in the 1980s, I was the chaplain at an alcohol/drug rehab facility. I was giving a talk on Spirituality to the patient community and ventured into the topic of Wisdom and its role in recovery. I began with a phrase from the biblical book called Sirach: “To fear the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, or God./Higher Power” A young black man leapt to his feet, raised his fists and shouted: “What the hell do you know about wisdom, anyway—or God?” He called me inept and stupid. I froze. Unbidden, a surge of energy rose up inside me:  “Excuse me, sir, sit down right now. I have listened to you and others with respect. You owe me the same. So sit down and shut up!” He sat down—wisely. Whether this was a wise confrontation or not, I have no idea, but it surely was unfathomable and felt damn good-godly to me.
            
                                             *  *  *  *

Sister Stan (Stanislaus Kennedy), Irish Sister of Charity since 1958, wrote in Gardening the Soul. Soothing seasonal thoughts for jaded modern souls, 2001. Her entry for October 12, our traditional Columbus Day, now quite discredited, unless you are wise enough to hold the wonder of explorative adventure in your soul alongside modern historical skepticism about legends, is:

Wisdom is not knowing as well as knowing, and being at peace with that uncertainty. It is about awareness and it is about wonder. It is about stopping and noticing phenomena in the world around us—air, water, wind, light, gravity, birth, rocks, heartbeats—and appreciating and understanding them.   

To glean wisdom we must keep ourselves open and receptive and perceptive. Wisdom comes from boldness, from participation and tolerance, uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, suspicion, pain, suffering, joy, laughter, fun and love. Wisdom comes from our participation in and appreciation of all things in our mind, heart, body, and spirit.

                                           *  *  *  *

Who is wise? What is wise? Why be wise?  You could after all be a wise-arse or a wiseacre.

Some years ago my late great Jesuit Spiritual Director Pierre Wolff  wisely told a group of retreatants, eager for a clear Word from God: "If you want to know how you stand with God, then look at how you stand with your neighbors.” Simple, right?  Inside I thought: hopeful, uneasy, fearful, judgmental, ashamed, loving, longing, hopeful.  Simple?   

From ancient Persian wisdom: “How do you know God?” You should respond, ‘Because God is in my heart.’ Can we know ourselves if we do not know God? The real understanding of ourselves is our understanding of God.”

The Bible is called Holy exactly because it is a jumble of unfathomably interconnected paradoxes—all of them beloved in Godde. The biblical book called Ecclesiasticus (book of the Church) or The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, composed about 180 BCE, was not included in the Jewish canon, but considered canonical by the early Christian Church. Protestant reformers relegated it to Apocryphal writings—runners up. Hence!—Sirach was and is controversial, unfathomable, and obviously wise.  

Sirach makes the case that Wisdom is from the Lord God, insisting throughout: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning is Wisdom. . . . To fear the Lord is fullness of wisdom; she inebriates mortals with her fruits . . .”  (Sirach 1: 16) This line is scandalous. She? Inebriation as in drunkenness? Her fruits? Sex?  Unfathomable! Yet it was the energy that surged inside me and gave me courage enough to confront those in my path who would hold me back, turn deaf ears.
 
Wisdom inebriates mortals with her fruits. She inebriates mortals with her fruits.

HOLY WISDOM. HOLY WORD. Thanks be to God.

Oh, and what does Wisdom look like? Check your mirror, my friends.

2020.10.11 My "Racism". Part Twelve. Sowing Seeds.

I started to attend the Episcopal church regularly. I loved the unitive meal, called Holy, but it didn’t happen every week. Why not? Did they think we Christians only needed to be transfused with Christ’s body and blood monthly?

All this religion. All this prayer. All this church. All these beautiful rites and rituals and songs. No one has a right to any of it. I was learning that rights and duties merged—merged—in acts of simple creative gratitude, like worship. Worship is art for the sake of everyone’s spiritual delight. Worship is, or should be, natural. It just happens, like praise. Birdsong is worship as grand as the huge Mormon Tabernacle choir, or a Gospel Choir of all black people, or a little girl marching about crooning Handel’s Hallelujah chorus, or the murmuring hum of prayers.    

What matters to God, really?  Would I find that in church? I went to graduate school at Columbia in N.Y.C. where I got my Master’s degree in Spanish language and literature, still searching for God and myself, still wondering about my racism and God’s vision, feeling sure that words mattered as much as sacrament and song in true worship.

I was married and the mother of four lovely children. I was still searching for God’s will—or mine, whichever came first. This might be the first time in my young life that I tangled with a moral dilemma that had no right answer.

Chapter XXXII. Motives and Consequences—Another Pungent College Learning

The professor, Miss XXX, walked slowly, so slowly you could call it deliberate, into the Ethics class to deliver the first lecture. Would she make it onto the dais? I thought she was either too ancient to care about ethics, or had lived enough life to be close to a guru on the moral life. Either way, I remember exactly her first sentence of the first lecture: “In making ethical decisions, which is more important, motives or consequences?”  She added: “Please prepare an essay with your own thoughts on that question and have it ready for next week’s class.”

This old woman was nobody’s old fool. I wrestled with that question day and night. I thought there had to be a “right” answer. This was an Ethics course, wasn’t it? I argued for consequences, imagining all the innocent people hurt in car accidents, or in wars, or in love.

I remembered that Bill Brakeman had been very badly injured in a car accident. I remember the phone call from his mother; I remember going to visit him in a hospital off of Den Road, in Rye, New York, just over the Connecticut line into New York state. Bill had been driving home from the big city where he had gone to hear jazz and was hit by another vehicle. I have no idea who was at fault. All I knew was that Bill was very badly injured. I stared down at him, pale and in pain, in that hospital bed. Not sure of a thing except my own shock, I bent over and kissed him lightly on the lips. I thought but do not remember saying: I love you. Bill’s recovery was very long, so long it delayed his going to college by a year. He had been a year ahead of me in high school, and now he would be a year behind me in college. God, I was glad he lived.

Years later I would decide that motives outweighed consequences. I think I got that from the Bible. God was often portrayed as a voyeur into human hearts, and people often changed from within, like Job. I decided that what happens inside a person has a lot to do with God—and motives.

Chapter XXXIII. Who Is The Greatest?

Memory: Once in junior high school a teacher posed this question to a bunch of upturned but blank faced seventh graders: Who was the greatest man in the world and why? I hated the WHY!  I knew enough not to put down my father, which wouldn’t have been quite true anyway. I wrote down Abraham Lincoln. Why? He freed the slaves of course. I learned that my answer was void of any historical complexities, but the teacher cleared up my confusions—and failed. There was no freakin’ right answer! Later I thought the church’s answer would have been Jesus of course. I didn’t understand that one either, but I recall a twinge of guilt that I had not put Jesus down.

Would I now? Would Jesus have freed slaves? Surely he died trying. Jesus’s cruel death was inevitable given his political vision. So was Lincoln’s.  Jesus acquired the messianic title Christ after his followers woke up years after his death to the image of God he proclaimed and lived. Lincoln had no such a title though he was a devout Christian. Still, one does not have to be a Christian to be a christ.

Both men, strikingly, were “men of sorrow acquainted with grief” as the great messianic lyric (Handels’ Messiah) tells us. Lincoln didn’t smile much. And Jesus is not remembered in the New Testament as laughing and smiling either.

     

Both of my chosen heroes told parabolic stories with a punch, stories that pointed without GPS directions, stories that confused and transfixed. These stories were provocative and told not to convert but to create—to stun, astonish, make something new, motivate people to do something new, something true. Parables are motivated by greater goals. My choice wasn’t such a miss.

Chapter XXXIV. The Sower

Jesus’s Parable of the Sower was told to listeners living in an agricultural culture.  A sower goes into a field to sow seeds with the obvious hope that some of the seeds will take root, grow, and supply food enough to feed hungry people.

Those who remembered Jesus and retold his parables, orally and later in writing, knew that he had a habit of not explaining them. Jesus hoped his stories would seed the kingdom. Lincoln too sowed seeds he hoped would become a country. BUT, in this parable, Jesus, or Jesus according to Matthew’s gospel, gives in to nagging disciples who beg to know what this parable means—exactly. Please, please, please. He succumbs to the lure of consequential ethics. He details the different qualities of soil, each one descriptive of a human condition—too dry, too rocky, too distracted—none of which yield a fruitful harvest.

Just like when a parent gives in to a nagging child, Jesus’s usual strategy of not explaining got sabotaged. His immediate followers, then and forevermore, obsess and compete. Whose soil will yield the best growth for the vision of God? Right away they, and we, lose sight of the main character in the story: the Sower.

The Sower, a metaphor for God, continues to sow and sow and sow. That’s the idea. That’s the grace, the point. This is not a parable about divine condemnation, rejection, or self-improvement. It’s not even about the sin of competitiveness for self-gain. The silent sower, whose sack is never empty of seeds, keeps sowing—without ceasing. God is extravagant with seed. If your “soil” is too arid today, seeds keep coming. There is no end to such potentiation. And no discrimination. I pray to the Sower.

Sow me, Sower
Sow your seeds.

In the beginning, I am fertile—flirty, fruitful, foxy
Any seed is mine. Every seed bears fruit.

In the middle, I try out soil-types—obsess about my own—until
    I harden against any seed
       waste seeds, ignore others,
    arid with indifference,
                  thinned by busyness and grief,
        bloated with pride or affluence
The Sower deftly sows—all seeds mine, all soils me.

At the ending time
    I don’t care—nor lie nor fake nor die
         —nor try to be sower seed or soil alone

Sower, seed, and soil—just so.

Sower, sower, double my order. Thank you.


Chapter XXXV.  Formation
 

I learned from all the sources that have formed me over time. I didn’t realize this at first, but now I see that most of my seeds came from Scripture and prayer conversations with the Sower. I was seeded to believe that no one was excluded from divine seeding—no one. Such conditioning would become my armor against racism, even in a white-privileged world. I could see that this way of living was NOT the way of God. Simply so.

“Lincoln will not return from the dead, even as a ghost, but his broadly balanced democratic  pluralism may be all there is to rescue us yet again.”  New Yorker, 9/28/20, Adam Gopnik “Better Angel. An Abraham Lincoln of His Time, and Ours.”

Jesus the Christ appeared to many after he died. We are STILL working on Jesus’s vision of the Kingdom of God. Perhaps these two greats will collaborate—for kingdom, for country.  

I must note this: Neither one of my chosen heroes slipped into racism or exclusionary rhetoric along the torturous way of promoting a unitive vision—although both men were white, Jesus with a semitic edge, and privileged, Jesus with rich friends who provided consistent hospitality and some financing of his campaign.



 

2020.10.04 Listen! You Are Holy.

Below is a poignant prayer of great beauty by Jane Mead, award-winning American poet who loved Nature, lived in California, and died at 61—too young. Yet her words live on. Here she says: Listen!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I live in a retirement community surrounded by tall trees—Nature’s sentinels  I do not feel the ache of loneliness, because I do not live alone.There are many people here, however, who do feel such loneliness. The weather is friendly to outside walks. When I see people strolling I nod and wave at a distance. I stop to chat—standing 6-10 feet away and through my mask—when I see people sitting on a bench or on their walker seats. Sometimes we stand side by side to watch the construction site vehicles, at rest or at work. Despite the current isolating circumstances, amidst the silent dread of winter’s approach and anxiety about our nation, not to mention our planet in peril, there is a silent affectionate ache that connects every living thing. Listen for it.


Concerning That Prayer I Cannot Make
     by Jane Mead

Jesus, I am cruelly lonely
and I do not know what I have done
nor do I suspect that you will answer me.

And, what is more, I have spent these bare months bargaining
with my soul as if I could make her
promise to love me when now it seems
that what I meant when I said “soul”
was that the river reflects
the railway bridge just as the sky
says it should - it speaks that language.

I do not know who you are.

I come here every day
to be beneath this bridge,
to sit beside this river,
so I must have seen the way
the clouds just slide
under the rusty arch -
without snagging on the bolts,
how they are borne along on the dark water -
I must have noticed their fluent speed
and also how that tattered blue T-shirt, caught,
and the white islands of ice flying by
and the light clouds flying slowly under the bridge, though today the river’s
fully melted.  I must have seen.

But I did not see.

I am not equal to my longing.
Somewhere there should be a place
the exact shape of my emptiness -
there should be a place
responsible for taking one back.
The river, of course, has no mercy -
it just lifts the dead fish
toward the sea.  
Of course, of course.

What I meant when I said ”soul”
was that there should be a place.

On the far bank the warehouse lights blink red, then green, and all the yellow
machines with their rusted scoops and lifts
sit under a thin layer of sunny frost.

And look -
my own palm - there, slowly rocking.
It is my pale palm -
palm where a black pebble
is turning and turning.

Listen -
all you bare trees
burrs
brambles
pile of twigs
red and green lights flashing
muddy bottle shards
shoe half buried -
listen, I am holy.

2020.09.27 My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal HIstory. Part Eleven. A Silent Divide

Chapter XXIX. God’s Rights?

I never thought of God as having any rights, only duties to help us make sure we knew how to exercise our right, principally to freedoms. It wasn’t my right to go to Smith College, but my privilege. It wasn’t my right to visit Spain. It was my privilege, my class, my caste. It wasn’t even my right to get married or have children. It was my hope, my love, my choice, and, yes my privilege—until the murmurs and shouts of feminism, housewifery, wifeyness, and at-home mothering became my duty.

I began to think beyond the particulars of my duties and understand that my whole duty was to live my one precious privileged life to its full in compassionate consideration of myself, God, my family, and my neighbors near and far. I had left myself out of all these duties, and I was wilting.

As much as I’d loved Mr. DeNood I had to get off the teeter-totter of the rights/duties paradigm, because I was losing my balance, and I had to get on with that life and DO something. So I got pregnant—again. I also wanted to get out of Alabama, especially since the misogynist old gynecologist had fitted me for a dysfunctional diaphragm. My father was recently retired and he proposed to Bill that they start a cable television business together, with Bill on the electronics and sales and my dad offering business advice and financing. Our ticket out of Alabama! On the road again in our Chevy station wagon named Roosevelt Franklin, we headed “home.” I was nursing a huge belly and our fourth child-to-be—nearly born en route but holding on till we arrived at my parents’ home in North Canton, Connecticut. We lived with them until the house across the street was ready for us to purchase and move into with our family of six. It was 1970, November.

Chapter XXX.  Ether

I was surprised to see that Ether was now living with my parents. She had lived in Stamford and had moved upstate with them. Her boyfriend, Willie James, was in prison. I didn’t know why. As nearly as I can reconstruct it, Ether and my mother, who wanted a laundress (imagine!), cooked up a live-in arrangement that suited both of them perfectly. I don’t know what my father thought, but Ether became a member of our family. She was a large woman, strong, affectionate, and popular with the children. She accomplished a task I thought could not be done soon after we arrived at my parents’ home.

It was dark. My sleep was fitful but oddly sound. I was engaged in a dream in which I was drowning and struggling to save myself. As I emerged from the dream state, I realized I was drowning—in a pool of blood. I’d managed to contract an obstetrician in Hartford. Bill and I woke my parents, being very careful not to startle my father who, after reading Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood, had purchased a shotgun which he kept at his bedside. (Our family would not be murdered by intruders, but Dad might murder one of us by accident.) We took towels for my blood and hopped in Roosevelt Franklin to head for Hartford Hospital, the exact location of which we didn’t know. Why we did not call an ambulance I have no idea. We made it. The doctor showed up, gave me Pitocin to “induce her labor” he said. My first thought: “More labor?” My second thoughts: “Oh dear God, let this baby be born safely and don’t let me die! You could also make this labor short. Please and thanks.”

John Thomas Brakeman was born about 5:30 a.m. within a couple of hours (not bad, God). John weighed almost seven pounds, and I stayed alive even though this was another placenta praevia birth. This doctor had given my Scopolamine, a drug that gave me powerfully terrifying hallucinations of wild beasts—huge tigers and much more—racing all over the ceiling.  When I asked the doctor about this drug he did not tell me it came from a poisonous plant that sedates and has hypnotic properties, but he did reference my “old and tired uterus.” Lots of drugs that addicts adore come from plants. However, this son was fine and gorgeous I thought, and I was alive. Thank you, dear God. I also thanked myself and Bill, my father for not shooting us, and this baby—but not this doctor.

I would also soon thank Ether who took on the task of cleaning up my mess— not only all the sheets and blankets but the entire blood-soaked mattress. I do not know how she did it, but I was in awe—at her physical strength and ingenuity but also at the way she plunged into this task with utter commitment, you could say devotion.

Ether was a blessing in many ways, mostly I think for my mother who had moved from a city to a busy suburb, and now to this practically rural area. My parents had moved there because an attorney had advised them that labor for their new business would be cheaper in this area. Mom was lonely at first and felt out of place. Ether, though still a maid, became also a friend in whom Mom confided from time to time.  I know this because a few years later after my sister and her family moved into the house next door—a commune no less!—Ether commented that my mother had one good daughter and one bad one. I was the bad one. Laurie my sister was the good one. I resented Ether so did not get to know her very well. Her perception, however, was accurate, because I was feeling overwhelmed, alone in a marriage that wasn’t working well, drinking too much, and inwardly planning my breakaway from my mother’s lovingly intended control. Sometimes I wasn’t sure if my mother was living her own life or mine. I was inwardly preparing to consider a little job all my own. It was the 70s!

Chapter XXXI.  The Silent Divide

In time Willie James got out of prison, and Ether rejoined him back in Stamford. My children had loved Ether, and I trusted her completely with their care. I felt not so much love but admiring affection for this black woman who was so so much more than a maid. She did not do the cooking, but boy, could she iron—not a wrinkle unnoticed. Willie James, for his part, made a tea cart with wheels for my parents as a gift of gratitude for their taking care of Ether. Sometimes, it is hard to tell just who is taking care of whom. 

I noticed, however, that Ether never ate meals with my parents or the family whenever we all had dinner together. She had her own room and bath and must have eaten her meals there. That did seem strange. She was part of the family, and not.

Looking back, I do think that this separate eating was race-based. This made no sense at all given other interactions, and yet I was embedded in a family and class system that held dear the so-called “maid” phenomenon. It was clearly racist although it had little to do with mutual affection. Oddly, it had to do only with eating together, chiefly dinner. Was this racism by social distancing? Was it manifested with unique rigidity at the dining room table? Why didn’t Ether eat with us? Would I now invite my friend, Carol Lee, whom I'd first betrayed to my dining table? The irony of this strange tacitly-agreed-upon silent divide happening at a dining room table did not escape me. I had years earlier first met God under another dining room table.  

I took little time, however, to reflect much on this divide. I was too busy questioning the status of women and my own in particular—beyond motherhood and my own “maid-ism.”

2020.09.20 Breathe!

I often suggest to people that they breathe, that is, stop a moment, take a deep breath, and give your racing mind and body a rest. This is great spiritual wisdom. I should try it myself sometime.

It is 2020. Our whole world right now is being forced—by an ugly and lethal traveling virus, political mayhem, and racial pain—to breathe, even if it is behind a mask.

I already have a respiratory illness and need medication to help me breathe. I also need yoga, exercise, and writing—nice and sedentary yet full of spiritual electricity. I believe this: there is nowhere God is not, no one in whom divine grace is absent, even if interrupted by death itself.  

Therefore, to give myself and my readers a break and a breath, I resurrect my 2005 rewrite of a dear old hymn: “Breathe On Me Breath of God”.

Breathe In Me Breath of God

Breathe in me, breath of God,
Healing my lungs’ disease
So that I may in purest love
Breathe in and breathe out with thee.  

Breathe in me breath of God,
For when my life is done
And my sweet lungs lose all their pow’r
My last breath and yours are one

I now sing it daily as a prayer. Sing with  me.


The composer of the hymn text on which I riffed, was Edwin Hatch (1835-1889), an Anglican theologian, student of languages, and Bishop of Manchester, noted for his independence and extreme study habits. He does look a bit harried.

Hatch, a graduate of Oxford, and his wife Evelyn, had one son and four daughters.  His hymn was published privately in 1878, not too long before he died at 54.  It reveals his deep faith and his spirituality of hope, and was published publicly in 1886. The hymn tune #508 in The Hymnal 1982 is Nova Vita, by Lister Peace who died in 1969. The first stanza gives us a clue to Hatch’s state of mind: “Breathe on me, breathe of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do.” He sought peace of mind, reassurance, and unity with the Divine.  He was running out of breath.  Some days it feels so, eh?

Breathe.

2020.09.13 My "Racism"—Anecdotal History. Part Ten. In The Dark.

 

Chapter XXV. Alabama 

 

Our two daughters Bev and Jill were four and three when their brother, Robert William Brakeman, III, affectionately known as R.B. or Rob, was born. It felt very odd to be praised for having a boy child when I had nothing to do with it—except to endure a terrifyingly hasty but late placenta praevia birth. The placenta (supposed to be the afterbirth) emerged ahead of the infant. Blood spurted and flowed, and somewhere in all that bloody mess was a tiny baby boy, healthy at 7 pounds and some ounces. The pediatrician was summoned. She informed us with steady tactlessness that we wouldn’t know for six months whether this oxygen-deprived baby would be retarded or not. I found another pediatrician and knew pretty quickly myself that this child was not retarded in any way— unless you can count near-professional thumb-sucking.

Rob was a toddler in diapers when we moved to Anniston, Alabama for Bill’s new job as electronic engineer with a start-up cable television company. In Alabama we would meet black people for sure I thought. No such thing. The only black person I met and got to know well was a delightful woman I’ll call Elvira, the neighbor’s childcare person—and “maid”.  She became a good friend and gave me lots of advice about how to clean our black-and-white tiled entryway floor. I’d purchased a huge floor waxer. I followed the directions with care. Those tiles just wouldn’t stay clean—black tiles ran and heaved black specks onto the lily white tiles. There was no vice versa. This was a poignant metaphor, which I missed, yet lovely Elvira addressed my frustration with affection: “Too much cleaning, honey. Leave ‘em be.”

Alabama, of course, was comfortably segregated in the late1960s. The house we’d bought was—of course again— in an all-white neighborhood. The uptown Episcopal church was advertised (seriously, with a sign!) as segregated, and the downtown church was more Baptist liturgically than Episcopal. I felt deprived and angry, but I passed off the obvious racism as being Southern. It was the South’s fault. Not mine.

Chapter XXVI.  Jonah

Sometimes one is in the dark for obvious or willful reasons, and sometimes one is in the dark because, well, it just happens almost inevitably by circumstance. Amazing things grow in the dark. Take Jonah.  

As was the imaginative wont of my mind, I suddenly conjured the putative biblical Jonah. The poor guy couldn’t win. He wasn’t even an official prophet of Yahweh, yet he got tagged by the voice of God to hightail it to Ninevah to reprimand the people for exceedingly bad behavior—sleeping around and more. Jonah turned down the divine offer, knowing its danger would be tantamount to one more tour in “Afghanistan”. He fled across the sea. A storm kicked up. The sailors all prayed to several variations of divinity, but the storm didn’t abate. Jonah slept through the storm. (Does this behavior sound familiar?) Horrified, they threw him overboard as he himself suggested they do to appease God and the storm. It worked for the storm but not so well for their consciences. Then, alas, God sent a “large fish” to swallow him. At this point Jonah’s prayers get serious, reciting all his pious deeds and finally confessing his powerlessness. Only God delivers! True that, because God caused the whale to throw up, and splat! Jonah flew out, landed on terra firma and headed for Ninevah. There his errand of rebuke failed to change evil hearts, and he ended up bitterly humiliated and furious at God who did not repent. And there you have it. Beware of your pious expectations of God. Jonah was left in the dark. You could be too.

The tale of Jonah is a fable, yet in every tale there is deeper meaning if you wake up and suss it out. Let yourself identify with whatever the plight of the main character might be. I have always wondered what Jonah thought about while he was in the dark.

 Chapter XXVII.   Leviathan

The great vision given to the miserable in-the-dark Job was a visual tour of all Creation, including the great Leviathan. Job was wowed enough to feel humbled but not humiliated. The mere sight of Leviathan in breach could knock the wind out of anyone’s sails. Have you ever been on a whale watch when the whale, all 100-foot/170 tons of flesh, came close alongside the boat, puffed out its foul breath from its blowhole, then reeled, plunged deep beneath the boat, emerged on the other side, dove again, flashing its mammoth tale at the shrieking fans, then leapt straight up, exposing its front side to the now-cheering crowd. All of this is just the foreplay understand. Who wouldn’t be awestruck? I was. Job was. Jonah not so much—yet.

In fairness to Jonah, his view was from inside the beast’s belly. He remembered God and prayed wildly that his indigestible presence alone would cause this beast to retch him out. Would Jonah then be humbled enough to face Ninevah, a city for which God cared deeply, just as much as God cared for little Jonah apparently? What happened to Jonah in the dark?

Chapter XXVIII.  Breaching

As I write this brief anecdotal history of my racism, it is 2020, and the world, although still in the dark about the depths of racial injustice, is on the brink of a new breaching similar to the one I would personally embark on back in the 1970s.  

Therefore, in the name of HOPE, FAITH, and LOVE, I breach the rigors of my chronological structure to include below a 2020 poem by Canadian poet and spiritual director Antoinette Voûte Roeder. Her three collections include The Many Singings, Poems for Meditation, and The Space Between, all available with Amazon. This poem perfectly reflects what might happen in the dark—to Jonah, to me, and to this twenty-first century world as yet riven with ignorance, conflict, fear, and death—all racially bound together.

Jonah’s Whale: Not the Whole Story

Perhaps he liked it down there
in the dark cave of its belly

Delivered at last
from God’s demands
and the press of people
to a sanctuary quite unlikely
to be shared with others .

Now he had time to reflect on the past.

When at last he found
the cave inside
himself and knew it to
be sacred, out he vaulted
with great bravura
to claim his mantle
in the world.

The motto of this tale? Don’t mess with Leviathan unless you’re prepared to spend some time in the dark and emerge changed.  Also, do not assume or presume anything about God whose will empowers human agency—in other words, you and God make things good and right together and this pandemic is not the whole story.

2020.09.06 My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal History. Part Nine. Independence?

Chapter XXIII. Marriage and Family

My first love, Bill Brakeman, and I married in June of 1962 after I returned from Spain and taught classroom Spanish at Smith College for a year. Bill was in college at Rensselaer Polytechnic. He pursued his natural gift for electronics and I pursued mine for languages—words strung together for communication and beauty.  

I hated the traditional way languages were taught, but I wasn’t trained enough to change it. While teaching Spanish boringly at Smith I also took intensive French with Mme. Cattanés. From her I learned how one teaches a language: you speak it. Students learn just the way children do—by imitation and pointing and asking. I also took a year of Russian with Mr. Kolosoff. That was more difficult because the alphabet was—foreign-er than Greek. He too spoke Russian to us, but we also had to memorize a lot of words and phrases. He was a humorous man who wore a boot-shoe for a club foot. We could hear him coming a mile away.  

I also pursued my Spanish under the supervision of Smith Professor Whitmore. She pushed me hard, assigning me a thesis in Spanish on any topic I wanted. I chose to write about the role of the priest in the 19th century Spanish novel. How telling my choice was I had no idea at the time, but I had noticed what a dominant role the priest, (Roman Catholic of course) played in fiction. He was dominant, authoritative about morality and everything else, inserting himself into the family scene—not always graciously. It made me laugh and shiver. I felt attracted and resistant all at once.

It struck me that immersing oneself in a new language was like marriage—a commitment which does not thrive on love and attraction alone. I remember the thrill that rushed through my whole body when I suddenly realized I was reading in Spanish without the middle step of translating words into English. I’d loved the language and now I was committed to it, married to it—in love, not just feeling love.

An integrative process like this is difficult between humans. It requires attentiveness to self and other. But I thought I wanted independence. Could I have my freedom and still be married at once—share vulnerability, desire, inside of plain mystery? It occurred to me that each partner devotes the same kind of commitment and intimacy you’d devote to learning a new language—making it your own. Bill and I had children whom we adored, yet we could not rely on them to complete our wholeness. We pursued our own goals and visions. We did not talk and listen with enough honest mutual attention. Instead we talked over wine, and our love lost its roots. Neither of us was independent, because we both feared dependency. For me it felt stifling. Both of us I suspect were too independent to know how to be healthfully dependent.

I was learning that the kind of deep personal engagement required for marriage or foreign language mastery could also heal racism. It was a deliciously enticing idea—this  inherently far-fetched interlocking of love and commitment. It was fleeting, unattainable, and something I knew I wanted and needed.  I’d relished tantalizing glimpses of its near-mystical potency, yes, even as a child with Carol Lee. When would I meet a Carol Lee? It would be years. Glimpses kept coming.

Chapter XXIV.  Ether

"What’s that?" my small and curious oldest daughter, Bev, asked, pointing her finger at the black woman who answered the door at a neighbor’s house. I knew we were in trouble. I could explain who this was to my four-year-old, but it never occurred to me that her innocent amazement might be racist. How to explain blackness without stereotyping it as being the “maid”?  

At about that time my parents who lived one street away from us hired a woman to clean their house. She was black. Her name was Ethel, but the way she said her name made it sound like “Etha”. She came to be called Ether. I thought I could introduce Bev to her, but how awkward would that be—taking Bev over to introduce her on whatever day Ether came to clean, as if she were a specimen or a phenomenon? And Bev, being Bev, would have a million embarrassing questions such as: How come your skin is so black?  Strategic avoidance was my strategy, although I couldn’t avoid the “maid” issue. Bev was too young for much more anyway. Was my choice racist?  I had no idea, although the question tugged at my worrying heart.

I did not know this then, but our young family would soon be moving to Alabama. Surely there I would meet black people on their own terms, wouldn’t I?

2020.08.30 Moving Dialogues

Where the freak are the bloody Q-tips?
How should I know? My ears are clean.

Isn’t this the Sunday Jesus suggests taking up our crosses?
Yes, but he was wrong. He meant to say hiking boots.
Yeah, for the trip back to Gethsemane.

It’s so quiet around here.
Maybe because we’re the only ones making noise.

What’s this?
What?
This little white L-shaped thingie.
It belongs on the bed frame—somewhere I think.

Can’t find my sweatshirt.
I saw it somewhere.
So did I.

I think we should put the good silver in here.
We don’t have good silver.
Your mother did.

Aw, aren’t we cute in this pic?
That was our wedding day.
Oh God!

There’s blood in the sink!
Oh yeah, I just knicked my finger.
Doing what?
Something with a knife.
Well, you used half a box of Kleenex on it.
Just bring me the paper towels, bandaids, and be quiet.
Is it bad? Like ER bad?
‘Tsokay, I remember where the hospital is.

I found us a chiropractor.
One that takes our insurance I hope.
I forgot to ask, but they would’ve asked me first, right?
Call them again.
Can’t, I already spent several hundred hours on hold. Besides, they might be hurt. At least the              new PCP I found takes Medicare.
Oh, and I bet the hair stylist does too!

Hey, our old eye doctor is still here.
Do the math. It would have to be his son!  

Hey, the front door clears our braided rug.  
Brilliant! Where’s the underpinning?
I might have told the movers to just chuck it.
What the ………?
It wont’ slide it you don’t step on it—much.

Hey, they have Bingo here! AND a movie on Friday nights.
(No answer)
Did you hear me? Movies. Maybe popcorn.
(No answer)
Hey, I’m talking to you.
Please, please, please stop talking.

I just had a vision
BVM?
No, the freakin’ Q-tips.

 

To be serious, we have just moved into our new home in a retirement community called McLean Village in Simsbury, Connecticut. For us it’s familiar territory, and we’re happy to be living near many though not all of our children and theirs. It is beautiful and tree-full. We are not settled yet, but alive enough to laugh and still believe in God—and Q-tips.