2024.03.24 Stethoscopic Listening, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

If you want to hear the pulse of the universe, you have to BE a stethoscope, listening not just hearing. Turn off your urges, your longing for security. Move out of the eager parade, such as the one so many Christians try to reenact on Palm Sunday, the tragic walk towards what everyone imagines will bring ultimate satisfaction to that longing to belong. Surely it will become obvious—atop a mountain, in a procession of Palm-waving, by Easter for sure? Surely. 

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Once upon a time a very old— ancient by any measure—snake called Rock-Dweller was born in my imagination at a writers’ retreat at a very holy monastery, when this very famous spiritual director named Madeleine told us all: Think of someone in Holy Scripture who was angry and write about it.  The snake in Genesis popped up. She was furious, asking: “Why do women hate snakes? Why, for that matter, does God?” Was there no grace for the snake? My snake prayed fervently, doubted even her own doubt, discovered her own secret shame, and laughed at divine folly. Eventually, my snake dozed on her “sun-warmed, soul-soaked rock”. (Spiritual Lemons. Biblical Women, Irreverent Laughter and Righteous Rage. Augsburg edition, 2005.) 

One recent morning, I did not want to wake up and face another day of what is called aging-in-place. I missed my get-up-and-go self. I felt angry and helpless, damning all self-help baloney, including my own. I lay still and listened stethoscopically—underground, beneath my heart’s resistance, my mind’s curse. 

“It has to be Qoheleth!” I finally said to my slowly-awakening spouse who groaned. 

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Qoheleth is the Hebrew translation for the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. The name translates as teacher/preacher/messenger, sometimes collector of sayings. Ecclesiastes was written after the exile (450BCE) at a time of tremendous economic growth accompanied by the politics of, let’s say, acquisition of wealth for its own sake and its attendant temptations. Much like today, the poor got poorer while the rich got richer—and the gift of divine grace got, well, undermined, taken for granted, forgotten. In this socioeconomic situation Qoheleth struggled to find God. He asked: Is everything vain, futile, spiritually bankrupt?   “What’s the point?” 

“What’s the point?”was my own father’s deathbed question in 1983. We stood, my sister and I, on either side of his bed as he groaned out his last breaths. Dad was only 71! 

There is never a clear answer to such a question or quest. Qoheleth stayed open-ended—wise enough to continue to question himself, his world, life itself, and the divine intention. Also wise enough to be reverent and skeptical at once. I aspire to do likewise—with my imaginary stethoscope. 

For everything, the inquisitive one concluded, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven—birth/death, hate/love, mourn/laugh, silence/speech, war/peace.