2022.05.29 Easter Seven. My Wound and Its Revelations, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I once said to a young female client whom I’d been counseling for some time with no surcease of the incessant anxiety that reigned over her mind and was now causing her to wound herself: “In your vulnerability is your power.” I never saw her again. 

My intervention was probably insensitive and perhaps ill-timed, but it worked in a very paradoxical way. I heard later that she had gone to a psychiatrist, a recommendation I had made several times to which she’d responded angrily, “I’m not crazy!” The “shrink” of course prescribed medication, and I got a call from her mother who wanted to see me for some therapy for having been a “bad” mother. 

*  *  *  *  

I do believe that none of us is invulnerable and that we all have wounds. A wound needs attention. As a Christian, I think of Jesus’s many wounds, openly displayed yet mostly managed in worship—objectively but not emotionally.  

When children have dreams, as all of us do, they start small and expand in breadth. A little boy child dreams of being a fireman—first, to be able to drive a huge shiny red fire engine, later, to be able to help save lots of people. A little girl child dreams that one day she will be God—first, to give orders that her parents must stop fighting, later, to end warring violence, establish world peace and justice, and end gender stereotypes. 

When I was a child I dreamed that one day I would be like the old daddy-God I’d seen in a book who made everything happen just as He wanted it—first, to sit under a big table and give orders according to my own will, later, to lose faith in this kindly patriarchal God and devote my life to finding a new kind of God.  

*  *  *  *

By the time I was eight years old, I’d become an expert little nagger. I nagged my way into an invitation to go to New York’s Radio City Music Hall to see the The Rockettes, amazing precision dancers I admired too much. The big day finally arrived. New York City, my hometown, sparkled at Christmas like a million different trees all lit up at once. I had a brand new skirt to wear, and my aunt and I took a taxi downtown. I sat in the huge theater, holding my breath watching and waiting for the curtain to rise, revealing wonders unimaginable—miracles I thought, maybe even like God. The curtain finally rose—slowly, slowly. And then I felt someone’s hand on my left leg. Sitting next to me in the aisle seat was an old man with a long scraggly white beard, not Santa-like, but God-like. You know all those images of a bearded old man God reclining on a cloud making the world buzz with life. The man next to me looked just like this image. He had nimble fingers that tickled my thigh—going up higher and higher, causing my skin to tingle with an odd pleasure to accompany my terror. I was paralyzed, save for my left hand that removed his hand—over and over. 

I never saw the Rockettes. 

I never told a soul.

I hung my brand new skirt in the closet to stay. 

I lost God.

      *  *  *  *

I turned  to school, because I could do it well, get great grades; then to marriage and bearing children, because I wanted to love and be loved; then to therapy because I lived in my mind and had lost my feelings, and therapy helped me unbind my rage; then finally back to school again, this time God-school, seminary. All of this coping soothed my soul and blew my mind open. But nothing worked to restore me fully to God as well as my own coming to terms with my wound of so long ago, with the help of prayer, spiritual retreats,  and a Jesuit who introduced me to Jesus.  

Revelation #1: I had fallen in love with an IMAGE of God that was beautifully childlike and immature— limited, visual only, yet not totally false.  

Revelation #2: I survived, and even thrived, thanks to one part of that image— the portrayal God as a listening Presence within me—my inner god-voice. 

Revelation #3: God, in whatever image, does not eliminate or prevent evil. 

Revelation #4: Whether wounded or well, vulnerable or hearty, I am powerless over the awesome Mystery I name God.

Revelation #5: For the very first time, I remembered, with a grin, that I’m not too powerless to pray—actually hammer my dear old listening God to change that precociously almighty, omni-masculine image—all by “Himself.”  

*   *  *  *  

Half a century later, two tickets to the Christmas show with The Rockettes appeared on our kitchen counter. This time I went with my husband who sat to my left—my hand in his.  

 

Easter Six.How To Be We. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/22/22

It’s important to notice that the accounts of Jesus’s postmortem appearances to his close disciples remember the message as Peace! Peace is what the risen Christ offers, not Love but Peace, because Peace is the only way we will love each other as God does.

*  *  *  *

For many years I have sent small and consistent donations to a group called Listening Hearts Ministries. This project, founded in 1987 by Suzanne Farnham, believes that listening well is the key practice to assure goodness and peace in the world. 

That’s a big statement. I believe it, because listening happened to and for and through me when I was a small child of three under a large dining room table with a cloth to the floor and four fat legs connected by flattened cross beams on which I would place my food supply, five Ritz crackers, while I sat cross-legged and talked to God—who listened without interruption or commentary to all my chatter—my every small and large thought and feeling. In time I called this practice prayer. 

God didn’t do a thing I asked; nor did God tell me precisely what to do. God just listened. Thus I learned that I mattered. I also learned that God did not fix the world according to my specs, which were, I thought, quite honest and righteous and right. 

Suzanne Farnham, trustee and founder of Listening Hearts, was married to an Episcopal priest, the late Rev. Barny Farnham. She is the author of many books on this kind of quiet listening prayer. 

We listen for God in the way God listens for us. I have no way to prove the divine presence; I just trust it. However, I do know that the churches and the world could use more listening right now. Listening builds community anywhere, from small family units to large congregations, governments and societies. Here are some guidelines to listening conversations or meetings anywhere for any reason. (Parenthesized comments are mine.)

-Take time to settle, sit down and shut up. (How many times do you rush into a meeting of any kind breathless?) 

-Listen to others with your whole being. (Sometimes, I just surface listen. It helps to take notes, so I do not miss the point entirely.)  

-Do not interrupt. (An impulse I often have, and too often fail to respect, especially if someone else non-stop blats)  

-Pause between speakers. (Impossible but try for a breath or two.) 

-Do not formulate what you what you want to say next while someone else is speaking. (Laughably impossible. Helps to jot one-word reminders.)

-Speak for yourself only—your own thoughts and feelings. Avoid being hypothetical or generalizing. (Sometimes hard to avoid phrases like, “I read somewhere that . . . OR Well, everyone says . . . )

-Do not challenge what others say. (Keep thoughts, such as, ‘What a jerk!’ to yourself.) 

-Listen to the group as a whole—to those who have not spoken as well as to those who have. (I do this well, occasionally asking what the silent one thinks or feels.)

-Generally, leave space for anyone who may want to speak for the first time before speaking a second time yourself. (Yikes!)

-Hold your thoughts and opinions, even your convictions—lightly. (How lightly!?) 

All these guidelines are excellent for effective decision-making, soothing family tensions, and group discernment. They are heavily used in churches and religious organizations, because most spiritual people know that God’s peaceful, loving presence is more likely to be clearly felt in contexts in which we deeply and respectfully listen to each other. 

This is how we can move from the omnipotent “I” to the even more potent “WE”. 

2022.05.15 Easter Five. Risen Indeed? A Risen Rant. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/15/22

The great proclamation on Easter Day Sunday, and through the Easter season of 50 days is: Christ Is Risen. Clergy shout it out. People in congregations shout back: Christ is Risen Indeed. It's like a password—our Christian 'open sesame'.   

I never thought of this before, but the phrase is in the present tense and the passive voice. It doesn’t say Christ rose or arose. Or Christ has risen. It says Christ IS Risen. So who did the rising? Was Jesus connected enough to raise himself up, or does he leave the rising to his identity as the Christ, the Anointed One? And to where? Well, heaven, we presume, or to the place where the God Jesus called Abba is.

Who can figure this stuff out? Not me. No wonder my mother became exasperated with all my questions and wondering. 

*  *  *  * 

The gospel of John remembers Jesus being accused of blasphemy, because he called himself God. His closest followers are smart enough to question all this rising/risen/raised up doughy theological language. Was Jesus daring to say that he IS God? Accusers threatened to stone him. Jesus told them to look at the works he was accomplishing in the name of this God. “. . .if I am doing God’s work, there is no need to believe me; but if I am doing God’s work—even if you don’t believe me (and they don’t)—at least believe the works I do. Then you will know for certain that Abba God is in me and I am in Abba God.”  (14:11-12 ff) 

Hearing these words, they again tried to arrest him but he eluded their grasp. God knows how, of course. Still is it not blasphemous to say he IS God? But he says he is IN God. That is different. 

Recall that John’s gospel was written later than the Synoptics and has a theological agenda to promote, rather than a story to tell. John’s is a gospel of remembrance, close remembrance, but based on eye witness material, gathered from the oral tradition of reciting events and teachings of Jesus. By now, Johannine writers must persuade the listeners that the story they’ve heard has profound, and yes, “risen” meaning. It was a very hard sell, and sometimes John’s gospel sounds like the gospel of the losers, going out on a limb to persuade others that Jesus was the Christ. 

God is in me and I am in God.

How ironic that the same biblical words that persuaded Jesus’s accusers that he was certifiably phony and blasphemous are the very same words that first assured, and still assure, me years later that Jesus is my guru/Master. These words secure my own Christian faith: “God is in me and I in God.”  I am completely convinced by these words. Why?

First, because this is my own experience of God Immanent—closely, deeply present within me.

And second, because, historically and still, these are precisely the words that persuaded the institutional worshipping Churches that it is very important to keep this image of Divine Immanence out of the liturgy, away from the God who dominates our liturgical worship, the One we regularly worship and consistently clothe in patriarchal language. We may not pray these words privately, but we continue to publicly worship a God who is consistently imaged as distantly transcendent, dominantly almighty. Check the Collects, prayers almost all directed to Almighty God and exclusively masculine. Even Christ is masculinized. Jesus was a man, but the Christ IS risen above any gender identity.

Such images of divinity simply do not affirm the God within me. Nor do they affirm the God within whose love we all move and have being. Yes, I can change the words in my personal prayer, but that is not enough. Without conscious awareness, we Christians are reinforcing, through our regular communal, liturgical prayers, a patriarchal image of God. This is the God we worship, the God we hear about most frequently, the God to whom we pray. To me this sexist imagery is idolatrous. 

          *  *  *  *

I can focus on my mostly good works, as Jesus said, and know that God is manifest therein. But I cannot say ‘God is in me and I am in God’ when this God is imaged in this alienating way.

OK, my ire has never been enough to cause me to leave the Church, to bag Christianity, to devalue the historical Jesus, to stop seeking wisdom from the Bible, or renounce my holy orders. But it is enough to cause me pain. And enough for me to liberate God’s image in my personal prayers as well as to seek and create inclusive translations of Scripture. I am not alone. 

*  *  *  *

Way back in 1975, just when I was drawn to follow my own stirred heart, this summary statement from the introduction to Liturgy for All People was written as part of the attempt of some post-Vatican II Roman Catholic clergy to examine theological language:  

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” says the old proverb. We know now that this is a lie. Words can wound, alienate and degrade people.  Language can also affirm and express love. Care for language is a show of concern for people and a revelation of the attitudes of the speaker.    .  .  .  Church language is predominantly masculine. Male terms, images, and stereotypes, so-called sexist language, dominate church expression. Such usage is no longer adequate. It is time to build gender equality into the very fabric of church life. The effort to build new gender-balanced ways of speaking helps us toward gender equality for women and men.”    (from the Preface to The Inclusive Bible, First Egalitarian Translation, published in 2007 by Priests for Equality)

This is the translation I use now. It is not perfect, yet it is written with integrity and faithfulness to the earliest biblical texts. I’m grateful to these Roman Catholic scholars, clergy and lay, for their effort. And of course we are not done yet, and will never be done, trying to follow the Holy Spirit whose wisdom and lithe movement almost always leave us lagging.

Let’s remember how many times the Holy Bible itself has been translated, each time imperfectly. Chasing God is always playing catch-up. Nevertheless………..

God is in you and you are in God. 

2022.05.08 Rock of Ages, Get a Grip On Me. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/8/2022

Today I write to honor and remember the nurturing energy of all mothering persons and animals in this fragile world—and also our mothering God.  

                                                *  *  *  *

I have always hated the image of a rock for Christ Jesus, for Divinity, a trusted friend, a parent, the church, or for my own soul’s faith. A rock is plain too hard and cold. 

But then the old hymn goes on to tell me that this hard old rock is “cleft for me.” Cleft? That’s from cleave, split in half, or some version thereof. All I could think of was cleft palate, a sad image of misshapenness. But how could this happen to a rock? What would a hard rock look like if it were split? And who could split a hard rock?

This hymn was my maternal grandmother’s favorite. She croaked it a lot and I never thought it was soothing until I heard her sing these words—nearly inaudibly, like a private prayer.  

Rock of ages cleft for me

Let me hide myself in Thee.

Let the water and the blood

From thy wounded side which flowed

Be of sin the double cure,

Save me from its guilt and power. 

The words were written in 1763 by an English cleric, Augustus Toplady (no kidding) when he was hiding under a large rock during a thunderstorm. The rock kept him from being struck by lightning. Toplady was ordained priest in 1764..

The hymn tune, paired with Toplady’s lyrics, was written by Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley with whom Toplady feuded about ecclesiology, that is, the saving role of the institutional church. John Wesley thought Toplady was a “dirty writer”— a veritable chimney sweep of a writer too smudged up with sin for Wesley even to bother fighting with.  

So you see there is a story behind every effort, and a meaning to every text under God, or Heaven. I didn’t know my grandmother’s mind, but I now know some of her story. She was born in 1873 into a wealthy, socially elite family in Medford, Massachusetts. She was named Marguerite Gordon Hall but soon took on the nickname Daisy, because marguerite means Daisy in French. A lively bright child, she wrote little poems called “The Sayings and Doings of Joey Pumps”, and when she was a young seventeen she met and fell in love with Avon Franklin Adams, a Jewish impresario from New York City. The Halls of Medford were horrified at the scandalous match, so the two eloped and got married in 1891 in New York City at Church of the Strangers, formerly the Mercer Street Presbyterian Church. The church seemed perfectly named for two young people who  broke family and societal rules to follow their love.

I called my grandmother Ga. We had our clashes, mostly because she and I had similar spirits of rebellion. But when I heard her singing her hymn, I glimpsed her Christian faith, and thought about how she must have felt sheltered by the old fashioned, somewhat morbid to me, imagery of Christ crucified, blood and water, together no less, spilling from his wounded, pierced side. How could this ugly image have felt healing to my grandmother? It was her grief. Her chosen beloved husband died in 1924, leaving her a young widow with four children, the youngest of whom was my mother whose own grief was lifelong.  

Such a gruesome image repels and compels. Life hurts and heals. God is OMNIpresent in Love—and symbolically in a cleft rock.  

In the midst of my own midlife crisis, I broke rules and wounded myself and others—not to death you understand, but emotionally. One day, as I struggled to get right with myself and God, I sneaked into a small store located down some stairs under a huge shopping mall north of Boston. I feigned curiosity only—browsing—while deep down I knew darn well that I hoped to find a small unobtrusive wooden crucifix—for myself. Here it is 25 years later and partially maimed. 

Daily I pray this line from the Ignatian prayer, Anima Christi: “Hide me within thy wounds.” How could such a prayer be healing? Was it like that old rock of ages cleft for me, a sheltering prayer, as if the rock were gripping me as it had gripped my grandmother, or gripped Jesus in the midst of his dying moments? One day I too will sing to the cleft rock.

Life’s all about taking multiple chances—offered by God and/or taken on one’s own— is it not? 

2022.05.01 Easter Three. Theology Made Ordinary. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/1/22

Last week we zoomed in on parts of the Diocese of Massachusetts clergy conference. We heard talks from the Rev. Dr. Kate Sonderegger, Episcopal priest and Professor of Systematic Theology at Virginia Seminary. 

But what is theology? Can we actually dare to have a Doctrine of God? Sonderegger spoke to the intimate connection between academic explorations and prayer. “Theology is the intellect at prayer—alive and encountering us in all things.” I can relate to that, because I find myself talking to God, and sometimes Jesus, all the time—conversationally as well as asking for specific healing help. It’s simply a habit I’ve had since I was a very young child. At least God never talks back with advice, teaching, direction, or, God forbid, counseling. I guess God is like my mind’s eye, opening me to notice, or think, or feel, or imagine new things.

Sometimes an attention-arresting question pops into my mind, like the one God-in-Jesus popped to Peter, asking him the same question THREE times: Do you love me? Well, duh, now feed my sheep!  

God’s Love IS God’s will. Not hard to understand but easy to forget, especially when you’re busy blaming others, shaming yourself, spouting off like Job, or just plain feeling unloved, unloveable, too proud to ask others for help, or grumped out.  And when we fail, which is inevitable, then there is still Love enough to go round. So touch “restart.”   

Living into this faith of Jesus in a secular age is scandalous. Sonderegger said: “Simply being an ordinary person who is a person of faith, is an important testament to the goodness and glory of God.”  With a touch of humor, this academic theologian recognized that in the eyes of the secular world, a Christian—a person who puts their faith in a God who died and rose again, and shapes their life according to ancient laws—must be an idiot or a bigot or both. Nevertheless, to be the person who you are—to be an ordinary person, imperfect but loving, thoughtful, and decent—is itself an invitation to the people you know who love and respect you but who have no time for God, to wonder whether your faith and your goodness may in fact be related after all.

May we all have the courage to be visible symbols of God’s presence in our ordinary lives, and may our very ordinariness reveal to others the possibility of divine presence everywhere. Grace after all is the experience of being fully known AND fully loved at the same time.