2023.02.26 Ashen Days/Dusty Path, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

 

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. 

The repeated refrain on Ash Wednesday echoes in my mind. Is it just this one day called Ash, or is it all of Lent, or is there something more universally true about this dusty theme? Is the spiritual life one long unpaved path—straight, curved, twisted, hilly, full of distractions, temptations—tedious and irresistible? What keeps us on this path and why? 

People stream forward up the aisle and stand or kneel before a priest whose thumb, dampened with blessed healing oils presses into a small bowl of black ashes that stick. Over and over the priest smears the black ashes onto each upturned forehead, making the sign of the cross and saying: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. 

This ritual kicks off the season of Lent, and shapes the whole season, one of reflection self-examination, grace and grit all the way to its climactic tragedy of Good Friday. Gloomy to say the least.    

Why is this ritual so popular?  You’d think it would fearful, depressing, overwhelming. Who wants to be reminded of their mortality? Many apparently do. 

When I worked as a chaplain in hospitals, staff would seek me out to get their ashes. Just the one phrase with the smearing and they hurried off to finish their day. Patients as well often requested ashes. I knew there were some who weren’t even Christian, including former Roman Catholics and young agnostics who had left the institutional church long ago, constrained by its rules and its gloom, not to mention their resistance to “organized” religion. Name me something that isn’t organized? Yoga, the spirit-calming practice, is very organized!  

Once the ashes I smeared floated down onto a recipient’s nose. She laughed. So did I. No point in being overly solemn or pious, as if we actually knew exactly what we were doing.  While working as chaplain in an alcohol/drug rehabilitation hospital I added a phrase to the traditional line: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. And God by grace will restore you to fullness of life. It was cheap grace, arrogant idolatry, and playing at God, I know, but some of these people were so beaten down by disease. And I had difficulty leaving them in ashes.

I left my own ashes on all day long—profoundly convinced that Ash Wednesday is the most true and honest day of the Christian year. 

-There is not a single soul who doesn’t mess up, clean up, mess up again, and clean up again. 

-No one does anything without two motives, one truly altruistic and generous, the other secretly self-serving. 

-God does not lead anyone into temptation. We do! Then we pray for help from God and others to get back on track, to save us from ourselves. God is far more generous than we are.  

*  *  *  * 

Do you know that our bodies can actually be composted, turned into rich, fertile soil, in which new green life grows? Tis true. Far less costly to the environment than cremation. Now there’s a new beginning!    

2022.02.19 Transfigured? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I am attracted to words, and today to  words that begin with with the prefix trans. Trans means across.  Transfigure means to move across, as the sun moves across the sky, crossing over the earth and thereby causing the earth’s light to shine. As its light passes it changes, transforms, enhances, illuminates, enlightens the whole landscape. This process is a transfiguration. I ponder trans word, transmogrify, which adds an almost magical dimension to my trans word games ie. a cucumber becomes a pickle. 

All those who witness trans movements feel changed in the moment.

There is a moment we Christians call THE Transfiguration, a time when Jesus chose the big three disciples (Peter, James, John) to accompany him up to the mountain called Tabor as he prayed. (NOTE: Israel is hilly, full of mounts, hillocks, rises, but not huge mountains like The Rockies or Giant Mountain in the Adirondacks in NY)

Imagine that you are one of those chosen disciples. You’re pretty exhausted as you trudge and climb, but you follow, imagining that something may actually come of this futile climb. You have not been forced to come on this journey, but you come—because Jesus invited you. I’d follow out of curiosity and my pride at being a confidante of Jesus whose light I would soon see for real and feel inside myself, for myself. The other two said they also saw Moses and Elijah in that light, but you didn’t, and Jesus seemed to be clueless about it. He just hustled you all down the mountain and continued with the ministry of listening love for all in need. 

Would you follow the light you saw? I would dash home and write all about it as if it might vanish or be forgotten. Would you wonder what it meant? I would. I would never forget it whether I understood it or not, yet I would remember that it all had something to do with prayer. Others in time wrote it all up, and still others would build a lovely Christian Church at the top of Tabor for future pray-ers, because prayer is what connects us all to one another and to God. See?

Mountainous transfiguring grandeur alone is enough to sweep you up, out of your fears, out of your doldrums, for just a minute or ten? You can experience it spiritually without climbing, and even without a mountain. 

Some mornings I gaze at the usual daily scenery outside my bedroom window: lines of tall trees, clipped golfing greens in the background and a few cars grounded in the parking lot. And then I see movement. Birds of course as usual. But this day there are many birds, not swarming but gathering. I count eight. They perch all at once, close and separate, on different branches atop the highest trees. They sit completely still—immobilized. I sit still—posed, paralyzed. I do not reach for binoculars. I just stare. Suddenly, without sound or any detectable warning signal, the birds all take flight at once—in unison, off and gone, vanishing into the sky for the day. I have just witnessed the morning meeting of the birds.  

Why, in that moment, did I not grab for the binoculars? Why did I delay my own purposive daily routine? Why didn’t I even glance at my schedule, check for appointments, make phone calls, bustle about as I usually do?

I saw something slightly different from what I expected. I felt internally transfigured, transfixed. I had no thoughts at all, which tells me that my mind was blanked, halted, yanked away from its thrumming drumbeat of a task: managing my life’s agenda in time and space. And I was conscious. Don’t tell me trance, dissociative shock, fixation or day-dreaming absent-mindedness. Don’t even tell me it was definitely God. 

No. I have no idea what happened to me. None. I just know it was a trans moment, inexplicably mystical and quotidian at once. 

2023.02.12 YES? NO? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Let your YES be YES and your NO be NO. 

So it is written in the Bible, both Jewish and Christian testaments. Go look it up. We tend to think that the word of God is absolute and clear. Perhaps, in our limited moral capacity, it is that clear and easily obeyed.

Jesus and other sages all through time are consistent in saying something that is designed to set up a panic in any vulnerable heart, a heart that wants to get it right, that longs for justice, would die to please any and all authority figures, any and all loved ones, and avoid the delicate nature of choice, the impossible gift of freedom. 

Let your word be YES /YES or NO/ NO be the same; anything more than this comes from evil.  (Matthew 5:37). Say YES when you mean YES and NO when you mean NO.

*  *  *  *

Just after I received a Masters of Divinity from Yale Divinity School in 1982, and imagined myself as pretty smart—maybe a know-it-all, I was invited by our Connecticut local high school to teach a class on religion. This class of course was not required, but offered nonetheless. I imagine the schools were pretty desperate, because suddenly the school board decided to be whatever “liberal” meant. They could offer an optional class or two on religion which was off limits, because, after all, we Americans were still pledging allegiance to our nation as if it were God or at least “under” God. 

There I stood, quavering before a junior high school group of students, inquisitive and potentially hostile. They weren’t hostile, but they definitely wanted clear and definitive answers to their questions about faith, religion, church, sin and more. In those moments I felt alone and absolutely devoid of any and all knowing. 

A young girl waved her hand in the air and asked: “How do you know when you sin?” The room fell silent. I did too. Out of my mouth came these words: “You feel it.” I’m sure I elaborated a bit, but all I can remember is that these young students were satisfied, and I was saved. 

*  *  * *

YES and NO and MAYBE are matters of heart. or emotional intelligence. If you feel something to be wrong or right, it probably is. You are free to choose over and over. Likewise, 

God is free to choose love— over and over no matter what. 

 

2023.02.05 Shining a Light on Bruised Grace, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

How often do you say, aloud or to yourself, Well, it depends. . . 

Pope Francis tends to stay away from formal changes in Catholic Church doctrine, but, according to op. ed. writer, E.J. Dionne, Jr., “Pope stood up for LGBTQ lives” Hartford Courant, 2/4/23. The pope regularly moves the conversation from judgment to mercy, and from condemnation to encounter. 

He does a pretty good job of it. He wrote a handwritten note to clarify his remarks on homosexuality as sin. He said he was speaking of the official Church moral teaching about sexual acts outside of marriage as sin, intrinsically disordered. In itself it's not a crime. The Pope then distinguished between crime and sin, noting that "It's always a sin to lack charity with one another." Now this caveat tops all the rest. It also insists on case-by-case processing. It depends. 

Just think of all the absolutized doctrines—moral laws. They are many of them about sex with the onus on women and their bodies: no pre-marital sex, no divorce, no remarriage, difficulty getting annulments, no birth control, no abortion, not to mention celibacy for all religious vocations—priests, monks, nuns. Personally, I do not think we worship a God whose nature is defined as “moral”—not to suggest that God is immoral, but to say that God is never trapped by moral rules made by human minds.    

It may be cagey to resort to the “golden rule” to silence all protests or lobbies, but consider the office he holds and the multitudes he represents. He does not abandon Catholic moral teaching about sex outside marriage (I and many could be doomed or damned for that one!) At the same time, Pope Francis insists on a case-by-case approach, as in “one must also consider the circumstances. which may decrease or eliminate fault.”  It depends. 

When criticized, Francis responds:”Criticism helps you to grow and improve things, providing protection against a dictatorship of distance…where the emperor is there and no one can tell him anything.”  

*  *  *  *

So here we are once again confronted with what can be called situational ethics. It depends. See Romans 14: “Do not pass judgment on your brother or sister.” Paul elaborates to say that nothing in itself is unclean, yet if someone thinks it’s unclean it is unclean to that person. For example, if you know that your neighbor believes that pork is “unclean” then, do not serve pork chops for dinner, even if you do not think them unclean. To prove what? Your own superior knowledge? Now, that IS sinful!  Paul calls for “mutual upbuilding.” We cannot absolutize specific laws as applicable to everyone. It depends. I guess that is how the Bill of Rights began.  This is also why God does NOT share judgment with us. Only God may judge. Thanks be to God. 

In the beginning God created "original mixed"—my own bottom line for all this squabbling. Institutions have a very hard time making general rules or dogmas because they represent and legislate for so many different and varied members, without considerations.  It depends. 

The Episcopal Church does quite well with trying not to absolutize or dogmatize its canons, and yet the good old C of E (Church of England) just voted against allowing their clergy to officiate at same sex marriages, even though of course no individuals are condemned or rejected. And of course clergy may bless anyone. Such sleight!

*  *  *  *

I recommend the late Brian Doyle’s (1956-2017) Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace. It takes the galloping energy of a poet who cares deeply for his faith to speak of unjust institutional biases with radical honesty and with faith. Bruised grace AND bruised faith. 

Doyle, former editor-in-chief of Portland Magazine, journal of Portland University, Portland, Oregon, cited eight classic lies as examples:  1) This won’t hurt a bit. Said with the large novocain-filled needle hidden at his or her side.  2) It is a peacekeeping operation. The alternative word is WAR!  Human sacrifice is alive and well. 3) My campaign is all about family values. “No it isn’t. If that were the case, why are there fifteen million American children who don’t have enough to eat today?” 4) God is on our side.“No, he isn’t, or she isn’t, and how incredibly foolish to even assign human gender to something we all admit is so unimaginably epic that any shred of claim to knowledge let alone intimacy is lunatic, not to mention murderous.” 

May we move our conversations from judgment to mercy and condemnation to encounter.  AMEN.