2021.05.30 Becoming Forever

Today is Trinity Sunday—Creator/Christ/HolySpirit all becoming one at once.

Can you see how becoming this intricate, intimate, impossible, confused, and tangled doctrine is? It is quite unbecoming, in fact. It simply does not fit into any of our compartments of theological understanding. Nor does it lend itself to appropriation into the safe comfort zone of being spiritual but not religious. Not much soul-breeching Mystery does, does it? After all, how many voices, dark and bright, silent or aloud, thrum about in your own mind, blow out from your own mouth, and pulse away in your own heart all at once?

Becoming

What greater joy can there be
    than to be becoming?

My mother always used to say,
    “Oh darling, that dress becomes you.”
The coat I bought you is so becoming.”
And my father would say,
    “How much was it?”

But what’s more becoming than
    to become yourself,
And so to know that God becomes you?

Now look about and say to the tree, the tiny bud,
    the bunny, your stuffy, your neighbor:
God is so becoming to you.
            by the Rev.Lyn G. Brakeman


Healer

The healer seeks the venues of the harmed,
The stressed, the victims of the brunt
Of inhumanity unchecked,
Of those who have been plunged into
A porridge of unmitigated pain.

The hands of unobstructed love,
With time and patient, gentle skill,
Bestow a sense of healing peace,
And send the reassurance that
Goodness lives and can be found
In the embrace of a true Friend.
            by Peter L. Dal Negro


Tell Me My Tears

Tell my my tears,
I asked the gull.
Ratcheting her head
One moist eye beaded mine
She waddled—away.

Tell me my tears,
I asked the sun.
Ducking under some clouds,
He winked, a bold flirt
Then dried them—all.

Tell me my tears,
I asked the wind.
Combing my hair
With gusto and purpose
She blew them all over my face.

Tell my my tears,
I asked the sand.
Warm granules, cozy toe blankets
A single grain
stuck in a teardrop.

Tell me my tears,
I asked the sea.
Curlicued tides, looping, lost
Salty to heal
Between coming and going.

Tell me my tears,
I asked my Beloved—
and waited.
        by the Rev. Lyn G. Brakeman

 

Left Out Of The Bible

What Adam said to Eve
As they lay in the dark
Honey, what’s making
That dog out there bark?
        by Charles Simic

What Eve said to Adam
As they lay in the dark
Honey,  just noticed
Not ticklish anymore.
        by Lyn G. Brakeman

 

Last Prayer

Dear Coherent Mercy: Thanks. Best life ever.

Personally, I never thought a cool woman would come close to understanding me, let alone understanding me but liking me anyway, but that happened!
    And You and I both remember that doctor in Boston saying polite but businesslike that we would not have children but then came three children fast and furious!
    And no man ever had better friends, and no man ever had a happier childhood and wilder brothers and a sweeter sister, and I was that rare guy who not only loved but liked his parents and loved sitting and drinking tea and listening to them!
    And You let me write some books that weren’t half bad, and I got to have a career that no kidding helped some kids wake up to their best selves, and no one ever laughed more at the ocean of hilarious things in this world, or gaped more in astonishment at the wealth of miracles everywhere every moment.
    I could complain a little here about the long years of back pain and the occasional awful heartbreak, but Lord those things were infinitesimal against the slather of gifts You gave mere me, a muddle of a man, so often selfish and small. But no man was ever more grateful for Your profligate generosity, and here at the very end, here in my last lines, I close my eyes and weep with joy that I was alive, and blessed beyond measure, and might well be headed back home to the incomprehensible Love from which I came, mewling, many years ago.
    But hey, listen, can I ask you one last favor? If I am sent back for another life, can I meet my lovely bride again? In whatever form? Could we be hawks, or otters maybe? And can we have the same kids again if possible? And if I get one friend again, can I have my buddy Pete? He was a huge guy in this life—make him the biggest otter ever and I’ll know him right away, okay?
    Thanks, Boss. Thanks from the bottom of my heart. See You soon.
    Remember—otters. Otters rule. And so:amen.
          by Brian Doyle

 

2021.05.23 A New -ISM To Consider: Single Storyism (Pentecost, 2021)

Look. See. Taste. Smell. Touch. Feel. Intuit. Speak. Praise. Repeat.

What Wisdom is the divine spirit of communication/communion creating now? NOW.

How hazardous it is for me to take the biblical story of Pentecost literally, as if the shocked and bereaved followers of Jesus were suddenly overtaken by rushing winds and tongues of fire, not to mention preaching prowess. Thus empowered, they preached in such a way that foreigners from all over Judea heard, understood, and proclaimed the good news of this new savior Christ in their own languages. Their babbling ecstasy raised such a ruckus that onlookers thought they were drunk. Many Christians still call this bash the birthday of the Church.

When I was four my whole extended family, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins gathered to celebrate me. Their whole focus was on me as they toasted and sang and showered me with attention. I received gobs of gifts, including a favorite doll, still intact after many repairs. There’s a photo of me sitting at the head of the table, wearing my pointed birthday hat and a special new pinafore, and trying to eat a huge piece of birthday cake. I was in tears—too much well-meant pentecostal hype for me. Being overwhelmed, even by God and the love of many, can be traumatic.

I do believe that the depth and breadth of the Holy Spirit is beyond my comprehension, but the image of “drunken” charisma spawns doubt not faith in me. Joy, yes, but I’ve survived enough drunken bashes in my life not to invite another, even metaphorically. Persuasive evangelism and conversion happen in many ways, I know, yet sudden unanimous conversionary zeal and ecstasy gathered up in a party is just not my style, and I do not think Pentecost, metaphorically or not, is the birthday of the Christian Church.

My experience tells me that there are many different stories about ways the Spirit shapes each of us. God after all has no way to us but through us. Everything created is always becoming, not like a new dress, but as a matter of sentient Life breaking forth through a single Creator known by many, many names, and incarnations, and stories—all valid.

I’ve noticed that we are quick to attach -ism to a phenomenon. Ism reminds us to pay attention to something important. That’s positive, however, -ism carries with it the danger of spawning a fanatic, a single-minded purist, a rigid proselytizer, or worse, a violent warrior who rarely talks and listens but easily fights. Isms can endanger the becoming process. For example, my own waking up process led me to feminism—the general need to pay more attention to the growth, maturation, and full value of women beyond domesticity and at all levels of society.

For me, feminism encouraged my desire to grow beyond being a stay-at-home wife, mother, and homemaker. It meant focusing my spirituality, getting a seminary education, and pursuing ordination as a priest of Word and Sacrament—a traditionally all-male vocation—in the Episcopal Church. I never burned a bra or shot a bishop, but believe me I seized my mid-life awakening, my free-to-be womanhood with wild  “pentecostal” abandon. I hurt my children and others. I soon ran headlong into church politics, chose resilience over shame, and engaged in a long, painful fight toward ordination, one I almost gave up. Some wounds are still in need of healing.

I’m glad Christianity has no -ism attached to its name, although Christian evangelical-ISM encourages Christians to believe that their religion is THE ONLY ONE TRUE way, as if one version of divinity offered some kind of guarantee of spiritual correctness, if not salvation. To absolutize this one way, one gospel, one story has led to the painful politics of exclusion with its obvious extension into hatred, violence, blind devotion, even war. It doesn’t do much for divinity or humanity.

Racism is currently an upfront focus in religion and culture. It doesn’t simply mean bias against people of color, which is bad enough, it means that ONE race—the white one, the right one— has self-selected as dominant, its story the ONLY story worth honoring, teaching, telling, and privileging. This phenomenon holds true for other -ism-bound words: sexism, heterosexism, able-ism, individualism, colorism ( skin whiteners, really?), truism, individualism, and yes, American-ISM. I am a patriot who loves this country and detests patriotISM. PatriotISM can create peace and/or war.
            *  *  *  *

Associate Professor of New Testament and Ancient Christianity at Yale Divinity School, Michal Beth Dinkler, is offering a summer course, “The Danger of a Single Christian Story.” The title made me shiver with hope. Could someone else be wondering like I am? 
 

Her talk was inspired in part by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie’s  2009 TED talk,“The Danger of a Single Story",  in which she tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice —and warns that “if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.”

Dinkler focuses on the variety of stories in the Bible itself and on the four different canonical gospel narratives. The tendency in church and academy is to try to merge these four. But the stories about Jesus are different. What if the Christian imagination is restricted when we believe there is only one right way to understand Jesus stories? Or only one right way to worship God?

Well qualified with natural curiosity and her willingness to pursue theological education at an evangelical seminary, Gordon Conwell, and at Harvard Divinity School, Dinkler critiques storyism. She has landed at Yale Divinity, a non-denominational seminary.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 “It was like, wait a minute—there are all these different people who say they are Christians but believe very different things than I did at the time,” she said. “I had to think, ‘Am I going to double down on what I believed before [Harvard]? Or am I going to open up and allow for these differences?” The Holy Spirit itself prohibits such limitations. 

“Every retelling of a story is an attempt to persuade in some way,” Dinkler said in a recent interview. “And these four gospels show us the importance of context, for the person who is telling the story and for the people to whom they’re telling it. Coming to any biblical text and trying to force it into one kind of truth is an unimaginative way of understanding God’s work in the world. The New Testament itself tells us that diversity has been present amongst followers of Jesus since the very beginning.”
 

I love Jesus the Christ and all his teaching and ways. He is not an -ism; nor am I; nor is the Christian story. I appreciate Dinkler’s  critique of Single Storyism. I am, gratefully, not a Christian-ist.

2021.05.16 Spring Forth

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –         
   When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;         
   Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush         
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring         
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
   The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush         
   The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush         
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.         

What is all this juice and all this joy?         
   A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. – Have, get, before it cloy,         
   Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,         
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,         
   Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.         

                   Gerard Manley Hopkins

Hopkins was a short-lived (1844-1889) and short-of-stature Jesuit priest and English poet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He suffered with various depressive disorders, I’d dare call serious right-brainism. He struggled with what he thought was the conflict between his poetic expansiveness and the rigors of humility he felt his religious vocation demanded. Although his life in years was short, his poetry made up for it with a long, if not eternal, lifespan.                

                                 *  *  *  *  

Nothing is so cruel as the brevity of Spring.  As soon as its luxuriant blossoms have burst in full—a feast, a pallet worthy of only one divine Creator’s artistry—they fall to the ground. Rakes, efficient and painful, dispose and depose.

It’s a short reign this precious lifetime—with plenty of sin and sadness, crime and punishment. Choose it all—one tiny bright effulgent blossom at a time. Live it all—one tick of a second hand, one thump-thump of a heartbeat, one tear drop, one death, one breath, deep pure or wheezy raspy—one, one, one, one day at a time.  

I am privileged, being white, middle-wealthy and all, but my privilege is not what makes me happy. I am happy because there is Godde and prayer, and because I love. Love sighs, reaches fingertips, and heaves beside me in bed. Love cracks bold jokes, remembers my dusty pink voice, rages with me at institutional torpor and bad theology, argues vociferously as well.

Love is also within a short drive’s distance, forgiving and passing on more love, all the way down the line to a small boy who makes sure his daddy knows that learning to read is “just not interesting,” and besides, interrupts his play time. Furthermore, he asserts that he did talk in class despite no-talk rules, because, after all, if someone talks to you, you should talk back, right, Daddy?   

Passing on life to life to life to life. That is privilege. That is love. That is Godde. That is One— + one + one+ one—forever and forever. 

2021.05.09 Mothering Day

Just two days ago I awoke in a funk, feeling sorry for myself, sure no one of my four biological children would remember the M-day, or make a last-minute quick phone call or maybe a card from CVS. I moaned to myself in an orgy of self-pity when a phone call from my youngest son on his way to work. He was telling me about the heart maps he helps his young students make for their moms. I asked him to make me one. He said he was at work on it.

I remembered our blended plethora of mothers: step-mother, mother-in-law, their own wives/ significant others who have mothers, not to mention their wives' mothers, a few grandmothers—and godmothers! And this doesn’t even account for the many mothering friends and female mentors along the way. I’ve know plenty of mothering men as well. It is the quality of unstrained mercy. The count got unmanageable and quite beyond me, so I rolled out of half-slumber, checked my phone to discover that it was only Friday not Saturday, then thanked my own mother, dead by 23 years now. I told her I wished she were here with her lavish excesses always overboard for me. I could use her boostering.

Mothering day is always a Sunday. In church we hear Jesus remind his followers of old and today to love each other as he loved them—without condition, forgiving regular lapses in affection, faith, and loyalty. He loved with trust in God, a constant presence no mother can ever replicate. Some hearty clergy dare to speak of God as Mother, but being averse to any theological genderizing at all, I wouldn’t slap the title of Mother—or Father—onto Divinity.

My thoughts strayed to Molly (not her name) a 95 year old resident in our apartment building, who is mother, grandmother, great grandmother, maybe even great great grandmother—beloved of many, loving many. Last night I, by pure luck, was walking down to the dining room and saw Molly, dressed elegantly in blue with earrings and necklace of pearl, standing in the doorway of her apartment, clutching the handles of her walker. She looked bewildered, not quite right, so I stopped and asked. She began to say something with great intention, but it was gibberish. She managed to say with slurred speech as I came close that she’d “never felt this way before—all dizzy and nauseous.”  

Another resident came by, and we managed to get Molly back inside and seated. Her lifeline was buried deep in her brassiere arrangement. Molly then tried to remove all her clothing in a great rush. I asked if she was anxious and her frenetic eyes answered. I felt my own panic rise in my throat, but I breathed and focused on Molly with soothing reassuring words—prayers for us both really. I knew time was of the essence.

At last we located the magic “savior” and pushed the button. A voice answered the call from a box on a table in her living room. I managed to locate numbers for her family. Her landline had large buttons with names on each. The message I received from family members was firm: Do not let them take her to the hospital! We’re on our way. The adamancy of their message alarmed me. Why would a family give such an order?
 

Within ten minutes the EMTs arrived with their gurney. Three energetic young men burst onto the scene and began to spray Molly with questions. How many fingers? Who is the President? What year? Molly’s face screwed up with effort. She knew these things but her mind was scrambled. We waited for the family to arrive. The men fumed and paced. I inhaled the swirling angst, exhaled to calm myself, and prayed. Finally THE family of authority arrived, daughter-in-law and a grandson. The daughter-in-law ran in as she loudly announced: “I’m a nurse. I’m a nurse.”  It was time for me to leave and join my beloved husband for dinner.

Molly did have a stroke, not her first. She is in the hospital receiving proper treatment. I continue to pray for the best outcome for her. Sometimes the most desired outcome is death—hard but not the enemy.  
                *  *  *  *

From Molly I learned some things about myself, about fear, and about mothering, chiefly that I can swallow fear and take charge when needed.

I learned some things about emergency behavior in general. First, when in an urgent situation like this, stay calm, firm, and kind. Breathe. Do not raise your voice or shove your own anxiety into another’s face. Second, make sure you have a conversation about your own desires with your own family. NOW. Third, have your information—instructions, medication, doctors, medical condition/history, insurance card, phone numbers of healthcare proxy— written out clearly on one sheet, laminated, and placed on the refrigerator to consult in a glance.

To die or not to die, that is not the question.

No one knows how they will die. Make a plan and share it with loved ones and professionals. Then pray, let go, and live.

For myself, I think I will have a sense of when I’m done with life and want to say goodbye to loved ones. I hope to die in peace at home or in a hospice with professionally managed palliative care. Trust your tears and your laughs, your memories, fears and prayers.
                

                   *  *  *  *

It was hard for those who loved Jesus to let him die. It was hard for him to agonize about his choices. He chose the way of integrity with courage. He confronted the powers with his gospel recipe—not new news but good news renewed. He chose to die, leaving his words to the bereaved to find their own ways to love, and fail, and try again to love as he had loved them.

2021.05.02 Very First Things

The biblical story in Acts about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is fantastically sci-fi and charged with spiritual energy. It’s an Easter story, acknowledging earthly life in full with heavenly life alongside. Philip runs into this eunuch, an Ethiopian court official in charge of the palace treasury no less, on the road. The eunuch by chance is reading a passage from the prophet Isaiah and doesn’t understand its meaning until Philip explains. The passage is fierce, all about sheep led to slaughter making no protest at all, humiliated and facing death soon. Such a God!  Philip leaps in with the the Good News of Jesus Christ, and the ecstatic eunuch leaps into a quickie roadside baptism administered by Philip who then vanishes.

Instant Christian conversion has not been my experience, yet I can understand the sudden burst of energy that accompanies a brand new awareness—irresistible so you leap or plunge.

I can identify with this eunuch a bit. When I was a child I sought to flee too much positive attention, while the eunuch sought to flee too much negative attention. There is something shaming about too much attention period, unless that attention is unconditional love—Godlike.  

I thought my spiritual story began at three under that dining room table, but in fact there’s a prequel. I’ve recently “unearthed” my baby book called “Tot to Teens,”written by my mother who, thrilled with my existence after several miscarriages, went overboard with her praise. I’m really not that great!  

My mother recorded EVERYTHING!  
    -first words Mmmm, DaDa and Ba—presumably my bottle.
    -seeing across the room at 3 1/2 months
    -played with rattle at 4 months
    -turned 1/2 way over at 4 1/2 months
    -ate prunes and baked apple at 6 months, asparagus tips at 6 1/2 months
    -first shot for whooping cough at 5 1/2 months
    -used the “toidy” after her first time on it at 6 1/2 months
    -crawled at 11 1/2 months
    -walked alone at 13 1/2 months

By two and a half I could button my shoes. I was real “olympian”. Notable: my next “first” words were boy and car.  No comment!

“Talks fluently (no exaggeration) and distinctly at 2 1/2 and can tell what is written in her book on any page from memory and is always right.”  I am delighted to read this prophecy, because I grew up to read and write with great pleasure always.

Equally prescient and humorous is the description of the celebration of my first birthday: “We gave a cocktail party but no babies on Lyn’s 1st birthday.”  There followed a complete list of guests and gifts, including a hot plate for my cereal, a monogrammed silver hairbrush, and a pearl necklace I still have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My dental record included a diagram in which every tooth was labeled by number in order of appearance. No tooth fairy yet, but there was much concern about my thumb sucking and my front teeth—at 2 years and three months! “She looks like Eleanor Roosevelt.” If they’d only foreseen the orthodontist bills they’d later pay, not to mention my later becoming a Democrat! 

As to pets and playthings I had numerous dolls and animals, including two elephants named Lodie and Lodelot. My favorite was a white cat I named Pussy P’Sandra. I still have her lookalike but I machine-washed her, poor thing, and all her long white “fur” shrunk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first birthday party at 3, “wearing a little white dimity dress with a pinafore with red rickrack and red slippers.” My mother thought I was “adorable”—which I might have been, save for photographic evidence to the contrary in black and white. But the shoes are on my home altar. High fashion, right?  

 

 

 

 

As to religion, we were members of the Brick Presbyterian Church where I went to nursery school. “Lyn adores school and has learned the 23rd Psalm and “Onward Christian Soldiers.” I did love school and I do recall being excellent at memorizing—good enough to later reject all those omni-words I realized were inadequate descriptors for God. Who needs a know-it-all God who is also power-hungry!  I did like the choir and the music. Here I am at 6 or 7 in the New York Herald Tribune—my first publicity photo. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 As I write this I feel such sadness. I felt over-mothered and longed to wear dungarees and be free of incessant pinafores. I also knew I was loved, if a bit too attentively. One baby book entry brought tears. It was under the heading, Aptitudes. Mom, who loved to dance and was good at it, had missed her chance to follow her dream. She also wanted to be married with children. Back in the 1940s she couldn’t do both, so she wrote about teaching toddler me to dance: “I taught Lyn to “Truck” “Shag” and “Minuet”. She points her toes very gracefully and has a semblance of rhythm and timing. Is very graceful in nursery school and keeps excellent time to music. I was very proud of her skipping to music on a witches broom stick at the school Halloween party.”

Descriptions of my advancing years in parties, pinafores, and adulations continued till I weighed in at 33 pounds at 4. Then the notations stopped, although the book provided space through 9th grade. I’m sure Mom got too busy with two more daughters and life itself.

Today I can honestly say that I loved my mother, have forgiven our differences, have no pinafore regrets, and, as a mother myself, wish she were here to laugh and cry and dance.