2017.11.26 Thanksgiving—A Love Sabbatical

On Thanksgiving day this year we celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary. That’s not such a big deal, but it’s not bad mileage for a second marriage, or for two Leos living under one roof roaring.

Today is Christ in Majesty (aka Christ the King, but that's too limiting) Sunday. We were married on this Sunday in our parish church during the Eucharistic liturgy, November 23, 1986.

We celebrate our anniversary and Thanksgiving every year in southern Maine. But isn’t that family time? Yes, and the gift we chose to give ourselves was some time just for us—time away from professional duties, home, and yes, from our very large extended blended exuberant family. 

Yes, we miss them, and yes we love them all. And yes, we always call them all. And yes we (I) have felt guilty. They in turn are relieved of having to manage the holiday to include one more family— besides their own, their in-laws’ and that of former spouses, not to mention any aunts, uncles or cousins— in the Thanksgiving rituals.

To ease my guilt about breaking tradition, being selfish or abandoning, or thusly accused, I told myself for years that it was good for our progeny that they didn’t have to worry about us—including us, or not, or where. Thanksgiving after all is only one day, not an easily moveable feast. That was my assumption, not necessarily their desire or convenience.

But this year I tell the truth without excuses. This love sabbatical from the beginning has been our choice, a mutual choice made, only in part to escape family chaos, but mostly for our own benefit. Oh, yes, we are retired now. And yes, we aren’t living geographically on top of most of our offspring. And yes, we are able to see some old friends living in Maine. And no, this isn’t where we honeymooned. And no, this sojourn is not a glamorous vacation or getaway. Our choice has little to do with these factors.

So why do we do this?

We do it because we like coastal Maine and wintry sea, and the little humble unglamorous Seaside Inn bed-and-breakfast with large rooms and teeny bathrooms, we have stayed at for years. We do it for quiet, to catch up on reading, to avoid the temptation of over-checking emails, texts, phone calls. We do it for memories. Mostly—truly, deeply, really— we do it for love. We do it so we can enjoy each other’s company—just the two of us. We do it so we can stay in love. I am grateful we have enough health and resources to nourish our love and marriage this way.

As always the poet best captures the value, both ultimate and temporal, of love.

THAT I DID ALWAYS LOVE

That I did always love
I bring thee Proof
That till I loved
I never lived - Enough -
That I shall love alway -
I argue thee
That love is life -
And life hath Immortality -
This - dost thou doubt - Sweet -
Then have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary -
        Emily Dickinson

2017.10.08 Clarity of Voice and Action

When news of extreme violence such as the recent massacre in Las Vegas goes viral we all cringe and crouch and feel horrified—and if we’re religious we pray. 

Christians try to do what we see in the life of Jesus the Christ as remembered by the writers of scripture. There is a time to let go and move on, to wipe the dust from our feet, a time to grieve, as in Gethsemane, a time for strong action like asserting God’s agenda in the Temple, and a time for prayer—all the time without ceasing.

What response is called for at this time?

May we suggest that now is not the time to flee or fear or freak, or even to let go and let God. There is reason to fear but no reason to hide. This is no time to indulge the greatest temptation of all: to huddle together inside the precincts of our own prized safety and wrap up in the warmth of community. Parish churches are often guilty of this behavior. Even the disciples ran for cover when their leader was violently executed, their world collapsed, and they were frightened. Such a response to violence is understandable, and for them it was in their “back yard”.

And today? Spiritual responsiveness knows no geography. We pray for all these things. Do we have the right to pray for what we are not willing to work for?

The Church too regularly falls into the sin of self-idolatry. It is hubris in this age to ignore global reality and needs. It is irrational to believe that all we have to do for God is be warm and friendly and take care of the gifts God has given us with responsible stewardship. In a word, there is imbalance between community outreach and community in-reach.

Are we called to correct this imbalance?

In-reach is spiritual consolation and nurture, yes. Outreach is noisy and unsettling.  It involves clarity of voice and action like Jesus took in the Temple, which had abdicated its role as a house of prayer, a place revealing the justice and compassion of God. Jesus acted on behalf of God and the people exploited by unjust social, political, economic, and religious practices. Such practices do as much violence to the will of God as does a hurricane or a deranged individual with an assault weapon he owned by right.  

We are a House of Prayer just like the ancient Temple in Jerusalem. What action do we create?

What about a Revolution of Compassion for the sake of God and our common humanity exercised by our clarity of voice?

A few suggestions:
    - Write and call your Senators and members of Congress, beseeching them to relinquish their own “warfare” and miserable inaction for God’s sake if not for our common humanity.
    - Lobby for legislation toward regulating gun violence.
    - Give money or volunteer for any cause that works to end political, economic, and social inequality. It’s the gospel! 
    - Educate yourself as a way to eliminate the pervasive ignorance about mental illness, addictions, and other causal factors behind eruptions of violence.
    - Remove the cliché “thoughts and prayers” from your vocabulary. It has become empty of meaning—a justification for inaction. Members of Congress Seth Moulton and the recently injured Steve Scalise criticized the traditional  “moments of silence”.
    - Exaggerate kindness and smiling, even to strangers on the street. Such energy raises hope and it spreads.
    - Give money to beggars. You don’t know why they are out there, so make no assumptions or judgments and risk generosity with a smile. You notice they usually bless you. Bless them back.Today we gave away $20 in fives just in Harvard Square. It is passive violence not to help when you can and where there is need.
    - Pray out loud in church. We offer Prayers of the People every Sunday and everyone is silent, lost in a sea of words. God hears your silent prayers, but the community does not. Speak up. You don’t have to shout. A prayer is not an announcement. Here’s one way to practice clarity of voice.
    - Love the earth. Never throw anything away that can be recycled.
    - Get to know your personal image of God. A religious sister recently said: “We are killing God faster than we are killing each other.” Think about it.
    - Disturb the peace peacefully.
    - Pray daily for your personal needs and equally for the world beyond yourself.
    - Vote for a candidate not a party.

From Sister Stanislaus Kennedy of the Irish Sisters of Charity in her book of daily meditations Gardening the Soul:

“Many of us are taught about God rather than encouraged to know God. We are like children who have been separated from their parents at a very young age and whose only knowledge of them has come from photo albums and stories. Our alienation from God is a deeply felt deprivation, but often it is a misunderstood deprivation—deprived people do not know what they are deprived of, because they have never known or been helped to know God, who is the Divine in them.”   (October 3rd entry)

Dear friends in Christ, Jesus asked and prayed for the people of his day to help him spread the Embodiment of Love he called God, the Divine in us all. The Risen Christ asks and prays the same for us today. We too pray and ask the same.  May we be the prayers we pray.

© 2017 The Rev’d Lyn G. Brakeman and the Rev’d Richard J. Simeone
Priest Associates, St. John’s Episcopal Church, Charlestown, Massachusetts

What Really Do We Celebrate On Independence Day?

It’s July 4th, almost, a time when Americans wave American flags and celebrate our independence from British occupation and control of our land. We appreciate the liberties we enjoy, and we know there are other nations who do not have such freedoms. Some of us wonder if we're as free as we think we are. Still, we wave our national flag with pride.

Our flag has great colors. Fifty white stars on blue, each representing a state—the pluribus (many) of us. Then the thirteen red and white streamers, flowing freely and representing the thirteen British colonies that declared independence from Great Britain and became the first states in our union—unum. We are meant to be many AND one. Our nation is only 241 years young, and we are having trouble with the unum of our motto E pluribus unum. Yet we still wave our flag.


I like our flag. I do not, however, like our national anthem. "Oh, say can you see. . ." doesn't see far enough. It is time-limited, written to celebrate a particular military victory, and full of the language of bombs and war—hence fireworks with rockets and booms of bombs "bursting in air" through the night. I don’t mind making noise to celebrate but I admit to resenting the consistent language of war and destruction attached to patriotic celebrations.

Warlike language is also attached, disastrously I think, to issues of health, mental and physical—we “battle” cancer, “fight” depression or a cold, enter “combat” against diseased parts of our very own body, then speak of “winning”or “triumph” when we feel better? What is this odd war we wage right within our own flesh?  And what if we don’t “win”?  Warlike language is a habit to change.

On July 4th do we celebrate battles and victories won, or are we celebrating— with light and sound and loud booms in the sky— the sheer joy of our diversity "bursting in air?


The spiritual meaning of this day, I believe, goes far beyond our own nation’s independence. There’s no" us" and "them". We honor ourselves, and we must also honor national freedom and dignity for all lands. It’s a day to remember the mutual interdependence of all humankind, all species of animal life, and all vegetation—an interdependence founded in the measureless vision of a Creator God. Trying to live too independently is perilous. We live well together or we perish together.

I feel the same about my religion. It’s mine and I cherish it. But other hearts have faith as worthy and beloved as mine. We live well together or we perish. That’s worth a firecracker or two! A vision to keep us alive.

Nothing expresses this spiritual magnanimity better than the beautiful music of Jean Sibelius (1899) and the expansive lyrics of the Finnish national anthem, Finlandia.


Finlandia

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

A song of peace, for lands afar and mine.

This is my home, the country where my heart is;

Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;

But other hearts in other lands are beating

With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.


My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,

And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine;

But other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,

A song of peace for their land and for mine.