2022.01.30 Holy Scripture—How Holy and Whose? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/30/22

I do not believe that Holy Scripture should be taken literally, as if everything that is in it happened just the way it was/is written, as if there is no room for interpretations and ongoing scholarly research, study, and prayerful discernment. 

How can one embrace something called “Holy” without acknowledging as well the grandly attracting Mystery, not for me to attain but for me to receive, love, and appreciate like the rays of the Sun. 

Having said all that, I do take Holy Scripture, which for me is the testaments of the Holy Bible, seriously. In fact, I take it too seriously to take it literally. I love it too much to demean its depths and flexibility, by insisting that there is only one single way to understand its various parts. I value divine spiritual mobility too much to limits its wisdom to a single holy document, no matter how canonized it may be. I also respect Holy Scripture too much to make it the single measure of my faith in God.  

And yet, I take Holy Scripture too seriously to take it, or any portion of it, as THE Word of God, as if God dictated it word for word, while some speedy ancient stenographer/scribe wrote it all down, or as if its contents and revelations were static, the sole source of divine holy Word to faithful communities.

Still, every Sunday in many Christian churches, worshippers hear the lector say, The Word of God, to which they all respond, Thanks be to God after a biblical reading from anywhere in the whole Bible. Is this word the only holy one?  Or is it just for now? I’m grateful that alternative, more flexible options are offered in our Episcopal tradition, so a reader can say, Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people, to which we respond, Thanks be to God. 

Fulsome holiness, praise, and thanks, are reserved for the portion of the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ from Mark, Matthew, Luke or John, read each Sunday. The gospel gives a special shout out to Jesus the Christ whose story is, well, gospel. Most preachers focus on the Gospel in the sermon. This top billing makes sense, because Jesus is, to Christians, Lord, Savior, Son of God—our raison d’être. But this story is not considered holy for those outside the Christian tradition. Holiness is not just Christians. Jesus was Jewish. Many others have holy stories. 

I am not unique in my thoughts and queries, although I have wondered if I am a sinner, maybe a heretic, fooling myself for the sake of my own egotistical meanderings, ideas that energize and revitalize me. I conclude each time of self-doubt and recrimination by returning to the roots of my own childhood story. My mother read me The Little Book About God by Lauren Ford when I was 3 2/3. (I’m sure of my age, because my sister wasn’t born yet). Mom also told me I was a miracle and a gift from God. I was already inquisitive to the point of annoyance. Hence, when this book and my mother’s own joy collided with my natural curiosity, I just had to meet this God. I found the necessary  privacy for my monumental quest under our large dining room table with a cloth to the floor. There I set up a child’s inquisition for God—something like, I’m here and I want my parents to pay more attention to me, but what I really want to know is who are you? I got no answers, only the sound of my own imagination pounding silently away at God’s absence. God never said a word, nor did God grant any of my several wishes, such as banishing my mortal enemy, the martini glass. What God did do was to listen without advice. This way I learned that I mattered.  

It is to this God that I still pray. This God I followed to the church altar—not to be a bride but to become a priest at the altar. This God I discovered in the Holy Bible, a collection of stories about people to whom God spoke, and to whom God listened.  And it is this God who in time finally spoke to me with the simplest and dumbest question imaginable: Why are you doing this? (I was just baking chocolate chip cookies for my children who loved them.) 

Yet this question awakened me with words I knew were not my own, words that stunned me, words whose meaning I felt compelled to explore, words that brought me up short, that forced me to, well, check out my depressed mood with a therapist. From this God, I learned that not only can God listen to little girls, but God can ask dumb questions, and is no bully. In fact, God waited over ten years for me to address just this one “dumb” question—to wrestle an answer out of myself. I felt as if I were writing my own scripture, maybe not so holy, but my best effort.  

This God is why I believe that small stories of deep meaning come to each one of us, in all religions and all spiritualities, ancient and modern. From such inaudibly audible communications come stories, both tender and fierce, mobilized by Love. This is how I first knew that I mattered, and this is how I still know that all living things in heaven and on earth live, and move, and have their being in God. (Acts 17:28) 

Here’s a story, told about the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a man to whom God spoke in deeply holy ways, ways that engaged his own emotions and questions, ways that shaped Heschel as a theologian who told stories about God as an intimate presence. Both Heschel’s spirituality and his social-justice activism grew from prayer within this intimate God’s presence. There was no separation between Heschel’s religious faith rituals and his politics. To me, Heschel is a spiritual giant, although he was aman short in height.  

In 1968, Heschel was engaged in protest marches and demonstrations against the Vietnam War. One Sabbath his brother protesters and friends, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., came to Heschel’s apartment and were greeted with this welcoming exuberance: “You are just in time for the last bit of disengagement from the world we have to change . . .  Shabbat!”  Heschel let Coffin hold the ritual spices and King the candle while they chanted the prayers, smelling the spice box and collectively drinking a sip of wine. Then Heschel told Coffin and King the story of the wise men of Chelm who deliberated over whether people grew from the feet up or from the head down. The answer was neither. Quoting the va-yetel el echav, he said that individuals grow from within and eventually move beyond their own egos towards other people. “Here’s to the world’s outgrowth of selfishness towards the humanities . . . L’Hayim!”  The Rev. Daniel Berrigan a Roman Catholic priest, called Heschel’s practice of uniting prayers and social action for justice “an ecumenism I could take seriously.” (p.195 Abraham Joshua Heschel. A Life of Radical Amazement, biography by Julian Zelizer, 2021)

Holiness belongs to everyone everywhere always. 

It grow from within. You’ll recognize it. 

2022.01.23 In Praise Of Women Who Read—and More

So here’s a small story—a joke and not a joke. 

One morning a husband returns to the cabin 

after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap.

Although not familiar with the lake, the wife

decides to take the boat out, since it is such a beautiful day. 

She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads her book.

Along comes a game warden in his boat.

He pulls up along side the woman and says, Good morning, Madam, what are you doing?”

“Reading a book” she replies, (thinking, “Isn’t that obvious?”)

“You’re in a restricted fishing area”, he informed her.

“I’m sorry, officer, but I’m not fishing, I’m reading.”

“Yes, but you have all the equipment. I’ll have to write you a ticket.”

“For reading a book,” she replies.

“You’re in a restricted fishing area,” he informed her again.

“But officer, I’m not fishing, I’m reading.”

“Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know, you could start at any minute. 

I’ll have to write you up a ticket, and you’ll have to pay a fine.”

“If you do that, I’ll have to charge you with sexual assault”, says the woman.

“But, I haven’t even touched you,” says the game warden.

“That’s true, but you have all the equipment.

For all I know you could start any moment.”

“Have a nice day, ma’am”, he said, and departed immediately.

MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It’s likely she can also think. Sure, God created man before woman. But then, you always make a rough draft before the final masterpiece.

We Christians hear a lot about the mission of Christ, the human manifestation of Divinity on earth. We think it’s a mission to convert everyone in sight to Christianity—my brand of course. Some of us think Christ is only a title for Jesus. But I’m sure this mission is more expansive—a mission to enliven all Life everywhere. A mission to unite us all.

How? Follow the Golden Rule— golden because, it’s not a business deal; it has no value, is often costly, pays little interest, and, more often than not, you don’t see much payoff.  It is simply how we get along, and it requires grit, chutzpah, grace and a wicked sense of humor with a twist. The biblical version of this rule of life is in the biblical book Leviticus 19:18: “. . . you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” End of conversation. Jesus the Christ grew up with this rule and studied it like all good little Jewish boys. It was Holiness School; it was his credo. All religions advocate this way of life and, in spite of the tedious, rule-bound elaborations in Leviticus, this rule abides. 

So here’s a story about Leviticus—no joke yet funny. A boy of fifteen approached his grandmother with a pressing question she alone, the boy thought, could answer. He thought this because his grandma went to church and studied the Bible. The boy had searched for advice in the Bible and read in Leviticus (15:16, 32) that having a nocturnal emission of semen was against the law of God and could render him unclean, rejected by God—horrifyingly, to this teenage boy, the end of all sentient life. The grandmother chuckled inside herself, recognizing the boy’s urgency over what moderns would call a wet dream, but she answered with serious aplomb: “Well, my dear, you are a wonderful boy with normal inclinations. I love you. Stop reading Leviticus.” And from that day on forevermore, this boy was known to his grandmother and her closest friends as Leviticus.  

MORAL: always trust a wise old woman who reads the Bible. It’s likely she takes it seriously with her tongue in her cheek and you in her heart.

  

2022.01.16 Amaryllis Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/16/22

 

This image is like an icon to me— an image through which I experience the wonder, beauty, glory and relentlessly ongoing creativity of God. This one, a gift from a daughter, was born at Christmas and with a little water, affectionate gazes, stakes to sturdy and steady it, this beauty should it feel floppy, it has already grown to four feet and has three blooms all on top. The little one at the bottom fell off the stalk but we placed her back into the soil, because you never know what can happen. Also, there are a few eager ladybugs burrowing about in the fertile soil. They are the eagerly beloved—like us. 

Amaryllis belladonna is a bulbous plant, native to South Africa. She got her name from the shepherdess in the poet Virgil’s pastoral Eclogues, from the Greek word amarysso, to “sparkle” and “amarella” for the bitterness of the bulb. All honest people know that bitterness and beautiful sparkle coexist within life’s vulnerability. Belladonna, beautiful lady, is also a chemical used in medicine as atropine, a muscle relaxant, too much of which is paralytic. 

Our work is to notice the Beauty and find ways to manage the bitterness. Talking to others who listen with love helps a lot, sometimes more than medicines. I use both. 

2022.01.09 Epiphanytide, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/09/22

Let There Be Light

At this time of winter solstice

In the nadir of the night,

Let us turn to one another

And appreciate the light.

Share the light of loving laughter

In the company of friends,

Light of dawning understanding

After nights of fear and doubt,

Light of simple, precious pleasures,

Newborn’s smile or kitten’s purr,

Lights on trees or light of candles

In our homes where families gather

Celebrating and sustaining

Mutuality of love.

For all in deprivation,

Let us strive to bring relief

Let the light of hope restore us

Lead us on the paths toward peace.

May the light provide us comfort,

Health, and safety through the year,

And the blessings of the season

To all those whom we hold dear. 

©PeterDalNegro

This beautiful poem was written by a friend who is a poet far too modest to boast. So someone needs to shed light on his work for him. That is I, by self-appointment. Thank you, Peter. 

Now of course, because I am one who presses to see all sides of people places and things, I seek the darkness alongside the light. The bible says we “walk by faith not by sight.” (II Cor. 5:7) It also says that the darkness, called Night, is not overcome by the Light, called Day. They coexist. Now that’s wise, and yet possibly annoying/angering to anyone who has lost their eyesight or is losing it. How many stories are there in the “Good Book” about blind people being healed by the touch of God through Jesus the Christ? Countless, I bet. But not everyone who asks receives what s/he/they desires. I don’t know why. 

I also remember the Magi or the Wise Men, seers, in pageants. My kids, and others over the years, having argued vociferously about who would get to wear the biggest crown, and who carried gold, because Myrrh was stoopid, and Frankincense was not pronounceable. The eager children jostled into position to march proudly up ( or is it down?) the aisle while the congregation sang the carol, “We Three Kings of Orient Are.”  The procession of these three came AFTER the "dumb angels,”  because the last is really the first, they'd heard. I also recall some fuss about the huge star on a stick that was carried in by an older child, a girl, or even a female Sunday School teacher, and without whose great light no one, apparently, went anywhere at all. That was how it went. And "almighty" God felt less "almighty" than usual—but more in love than ever. 

The loss of any of the five senses often causes one to lose faith in God, if such faith was ever there in the first place. Many still ask the classic unanswerable question we all keep on asking—secretly in the dark or out loud in the fury of light. 

Q: Why would a good God create evil and crime, and murderous weather, and blindness, and on and on. A: God didn’t. We did. Q: But why doesn’t God step in? A: I don’t know.

God only created Love. How useless is that?  And yet which would you prefer when you are in pain, or great fear, or all-consuming anxiety, or guilt/shame— a loving ear to listen to you all day and all night, a warm hand to touch yours, a medication that relieves pain and calms nerves, a gentle word of compassion OR the silent darkness of being alone?   

The best love poem I ever read is one by Emily Dickinson, written in a time when she was 56 and near death from disability, possibly epilepsy. Her poem, “Possibility”, tells it all. Why? Because she tells the truth: there is no clear answer, so we live with possibility. 

I dwell in Possibility --

by Emily Dickinson

I dwell in Possibility—

A fairer House than Prose—

More numerous of Windows—

Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—

Impregnable of Eye—

And for an Everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of Visitors—the fairest—

For Occupation—This—

The spreading wide of narrow Hands

To gather Paradise—

Possibility, or potentiation, is a gift of the Heart, the pulse of life within, and it keeps us alive in spite of our gloom, our darkness, our deafness, our blindness, or our disease. Still, we cannot see it, touch it, make it happen. All we can do is ask for it. And wait.  

for the light

for the hands

for the insight

for the grace of God alive within.  

2022.01.02 Shop Till You Drop—But Not Dead. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/2/22

One of the most prominent activities that lures the younger generations, is shopping. It is how they divert their attention and how they focus it. While we are all shopping may we all pray as we go—for Life itself and an end to Fear, the dominant “religion” of choice. 

                         *  *  *  *

Once in my late 70’s, I went shopping with my two daughters in their 50s. Once was enough. They dashed around the store at mach speed, snatching up garments and accessorizing them each as they went. I stood dazed, awed, resisting the temptation to sit down in a corner and suck my thumb. I bought nothing, and they could not figure out what was wrong with me—nor I with them.

I obviously am not a good shopper, but that does not mean that I am not one of God’s more curious creatures, my mind full of questions about life and death and awfulness and wonderfulness at once. I always see both light and shadow in everyone and everything. When I shop I am not driven by clothes or glittering jewelry, but by ideas—ideas that glow in the dark. 

Why then, I wonder, do we religious folks, or those who worry about the validity of the religious project, not present a Divinity attractive to the shopping generations?

There are many and varied images of the Supreme Being in a variety of attractive hues suitable for any and all occasions, portable and reproducible as needed according to your own dearest and deepest desires of heart. You have to know yourself to know God, but prayer does not depend on your having the “correct” image of God or any image at all.  

Is this creating God in your own image? Yes, but—God has no way to you but through you, and when you pray, you open your heart to Life and Life without Fear. ’Ts enough.

*  *  *  *  

My intuition, however, tells me that people are shopping for God-images. So why do we not advertise God? Why not set out a variety of images to attract shoppers? Varieties of shoppers of all generations, locations, spiritualities, and interests?

Last week I blogged about the “beloved ass”—an image of divine determination, divine strength, and tolerance for all kinds of human need. This image shows off the God of steadfast faithfulness and sturdy loyalty through thick and thin—no matter what.

This week, according to ancient—symbolic not literal—story, the three Magi, one female, one black, one Asian, finally arrive at the nativity scene with their gifts—expensive gifts, extravagant gifts, overdone affluence from their abundance. Why? Why not?

 

Here is another among the multiple images of divinity, and attributes thereof. A man named Jon Gallie, a wildlife biologist with the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife, has devoted his life to finding and protecting endangered species. Here he holds one of North America’s tiniest rabbit species, the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit. These minute critters, with bodies the size of a mango, feast on pungent sagebrush across the plateau. Their survival and food supply have been threatened by wildfires that have swept across eastern Washington, Oregon, and into Idaho. Thanks to human intervention, these rabbits have been rescued and placed into predator-free enclosures where they can breed. (National Geographic, Winter, 2021)

Is this not an image of the hand of Divinity—incarnate in human flesh?  This holy work of salvation is tiny, considered by some to be insignificant, mostly unknown to the world, precious, extremely tender, gentle, and yes, divine.  

*  *  *  *

Do pray—god or no god/God/Godde. Keep praying your own personal causes, needs, and cares, using your own images. AND please pray deeply and daily for Life itself—for the salvation of Earth and the whole Cosmos. May your prayers have the steady sturdiness of the beloved donkey and the the tender frailty of the newborn infant and the aged adult. Thank you.

©LynBrakeman, 2021