2025.12.28 ALLELUJAH! Lyn B. Brakeman, spirituallemons, blog post

My earliest encounter with the true power of the word ALLELUIA was when I was a child—vulnerable, smitten, and swollen with pride and joy. These praise words were my mother’s—for me not Handel. They almost swallowed my own. 

I was eight years old and quite smitten with our music teacher, herself well chested and with a voice like a military Sergeant’s summoning his troops to line up for a war. Everyone stood at attention and was ready to hoist guns to march into war. That’s how ready I felt when Miss Ball signaled us girls, all in pleated navy blue serge uniforms—sacks—to stand at attention. 

Still, all of this uniformed ugliness suddenly became holy as our whole music class rose almost at once, at attention and ready to sing our hearts out—not for our school, our uniformed conformity, or Miss Ball, but for The Lord God. That part was okay with me because I had already met this “Lord God” in a book that told me God listened and picked up even “weeny sounds” all over the earth. 

Nevertheless, this choral Alleluia was far from “weeny”.  We had over-rehearsed this one for weeks, stretching our small mouths widely open, and making sure our tongues gently touched—no clicking—the back of our front teeth, even if one were missing.  “Not the lips, girls. NO lisping!”  And no “h” sound, just  ah!”  We rehearsed all this for weeks because we were, she told us, “angels”—just for that one performance of course. 

On the magic night itself our parents and school officials would all be in the audience. I prayed my mother wouldn’t clap or stand up in the wrong places, or shout for joy just for me. 

On alleluia-with-no-h night, we all assembled and lined up on bleachers, steady and ready, as if praising God was some kind of sport and we were cheerleaders. 

True enough that night—and still.  

2015.03.08 Now I Ask You! ? A Lenten Rant.

Now I ask you...... Would anyone think, or in their wildest imaginings draw a mental picture, of  anything womanly or feminine at all, while joining a joyous congregation in lustful song: “O, praise him! Oh, praise him! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleloooo-ya!”? (Hymn #400, “All creatures of our God and King.”)  ALL creatures! The text was written by none other than St. Francis of Assisi, a saint greatly to be admired and imitated for his capacious spirituality. I love St. Francis, and I love his current namesake, Pope Francis I. I love the Ralph Vaughan Williams music. I would never not want to sing this great hymn. Alleluia means: Shine your praises on God. It's a beautiful bright word.

BUT it’s Lent, and we've banned alleluia until Easter. So I get to reflect on serious things, not just my own sins and flaws but the Church’s. I have given up restraint for Lent.

It’s easy when singing to get caught up in a trance of crowd-sourced praise. It’s the music. I’ve been quite conscious of words we use to define—and confine—God, but with hymns, the music takes over. However, I’ve begun to be aware that hymn texts sink into our hearts, embed themselves into our flesh, just as much as the music does.

What are our words communicating— over and over? To our children, girls and boys, to our own souls, to the world? I want us to remember all creatures, not just male ones. I want us to remember God as Creator/Author, not just King. A creator/author makes something beautiful and then lets it go,  in hopes of course that it will please and be appreciated, not trashed.

When I sing this hymn’s refrain, I sing, “O praise God. Alleluia.”  I do the same with the Doxology. It’s easy to let God be known by name, rather than by a masculine pronoun.
            Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
            Praise God all creatures here below.
            Praise God above ye heavenly hosts.

I know I’m in my personal porti-pulpit, and some will say I have spiritual OCD. So I stop my rants for a while, until something hooks me.

Recently we sang, “The Church’s One Foundation”— a great old Christian chestnut. I was singing along with nary a thought until I hit the word “consummation,” and, I’m sorry, but all I could think of was the sexual meaning of that word. The female Church was awaiting her consummation with the male God. I laughed it off.  UNTIL a woman came up to me after the service, agitated, and said, “Did you hear what that hymn was saying about women? Awaiting consummation? Being bought?” We laughed together—half-heartedly.

We had just sung a hymn in which a female Church was “oppressed,” “scorned by men,” “rent asunder,” “distressed,” and crying out, “How Long?” Sounded like a theme song for female domestic violence victims, waiting for their divine male rescuer to change their “night of weeping into a morn of song.”

OK, it’s mystical, visionary, allegorical, metaphorical, intensely Christian, and written long ago. It’s only words. It means Christ. It's not real-world. AND, still,words matter. Pronouns are small and mighty. They alert us that the one done unto is identified as female, and the one to save her is male. Ah, Cinderella! I’m being overreactive, silly. Why all this spleen? (I really should have that organ removed!) I calmed down until two things appeared before my wondering eyes.

First, a  FaceBook posting of a friend and colleague, Elizabeth Kaeton, one-time president of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus, about the historic consecration of Bishop Libby Lane in the Church of England, a first. Kaeton reported the “dust up over whether or not the bishops who consecrated her have 'tainted' their hands and therefore must show 'gracious restraint' when next consecrating Philip North to the episcopacy because he - and three remaining consecrating bishops - do not believe women have 'sufficient ontological matter to be an efficacious bearer of sacerdotal presence.'" What? 

Does this mean we women don't have, well, proper sacerdotal anatomy, lodged between our legs? Yes, I know the carefully chosen word, “ontological” means dealing with the nature of being itself, not just the flesh. Now I ask you: how do you separate the two? God apparently did not when Godde became human and the Spirit inhabited all flesh, not just human flesh, and not just Christ’s.

I scolded myself, called myself cranky and too literal. 

Then.........  (Boston Globe, Op Ed, 1.26.15) . . .   Tennis U.K. wonderboy, Andy Murray, has a new logo, aka brand name, that will appear on a full line of clothing and accessories—everything   but tennis balls, or any balls—though who knows? What’s wrong with that? Laying aside any issues about the accumulation of wealth in the hands of too few, I had a fit of pique about the logo itself: “77 AM”. What’s wrong with that? Seven is my favorite number, and a lucky one at that, and AM are his initials. Doesn’t he deserve this kudos as a sign that he is the first British man to win the Wimbledon singles title in 77 years?

“In reporting Murray’s victory, numerous commentators and media outlets stated that he was the ‘first Brit’ to win Wimbledon in 77 years. As I noted at the time, that statement is true—unless you think women are people.” (Chloe S. Angyal, a senior columnist at Feministing.com. Italics mine.)                        
AM was not the “first Brit to win, only the first male Brit. Four female Brits won the equivalent title (Venus Rosewater Dish) at Wimbledon in women’s singles within that 77-year frame. But then don’t we all know that “winning Wimbledon” is shorthand for winning the men’s singles title? It is still assumed, without much thought, that what counts is what men do. To me, such ongoing assumptions discount women’s achievements and take away their worth. Some women let this happen easily, and some don’t, but we all feel it. 

Many hymn texts in the 1982 Hymnal, and most liturgical language, remains patriarchal, discounting  women as people who hold up half of the divine image. Carl Daw and Brian Wren, gifted hymn text writers, are notable exceptions. Thank you, gentlemen.  

I forgive myself this snark, but do not regret it. It is time to change. If indeed the Church is female, she has the resources to change, and ought to consider her own cry, “How long?”

Allow me to share a verse from Psalm 103 (translation of Pamela Greenberg) which gives me a personal blast of hope, and perhaps can inspire Mother Church as well. We are used to reciting or singing this psalm line: “Bless the Lord, my soul . . .”  Here is Greenberg’s rendering:

“Be wild, my soul, for the Source of wonder; let all my insides praise the Holy Name.”  

 

She will return, yes? 

2014.04.06 Prodigality Reclaimed

My favorite biblical story is the one about the so called prodigal son who grabs his inheritance early and splits to manage his fortune, which he squanders on loose living. It’s sort of a classic growing-up story. Ask any parent of teens.

The key line in the story is in a scene of porcine gluttony and filth in which the destitute young man feeds with the pigs.

While in the sty the prodigal COMES TO HIMSELF and decides to go home, hoping against hope that his Daddy, aka Godde, will still love him. Mommy, btw, is not mentioned, so fill it in. (If I were the mother I’d have strongly advised my husband not to give sonny the inheritance in the first place.)

I’ve been prodigal myself. Once I thought I’d be ordained a priest. I thought this in my prayers and secret conversations with God. In fact, in my midlife whirlwind I thought that I could not be a woman fully realized unless I also became a priest. It wasn’t until I encountered the institutional church in the 1970s that I found out what it felt like to be a small davidic female thinking she’d take on Goliath—without five smooth stones or a slingshot. I had no inheritance to squander, but I did have a self to “come to.”

I had dashed forth too soon to manage my life and discovered I couldn’t do it alone, or at all well. I needed Godde, love, family, belonging, church community, friends, sex, seminary, grief, a divorce, and a ton of therapy in many forms. So there you have it.

The moral of this story is......  do you know who you are?  “Coming to yourself” may help you find out, and from that touchstone to go forward.

I think it’s possible for even a large institution to “come to itself,” that is, to re-member the purposes for which it stands and its core values. For the Christian church that core is love of God, self, and neighbor. 

This kind of spiritual self-recognition seemed to happen at our recent convention to elect a new bishop for the diocese of Massachusetts.  There were seven candidates, all vetted and known as much as possible. 334 lay people and 298 clergy gathered to worship, sing hymns, pray, and ballot until a simple majority in each order, clergy and lay, was reached to elect. We were there from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. There were no “hanging chads” but there was a vote count problem in the first ballot and we had to await legal recommendation about how to proceed, since the next two ballots, already processed, were declared invalid. Details can be found on the Diocese of Massachusetts website.

In addition, the retiring bishop, who has served for 20 years, is struggling with brain cancer. It was heart-breaking to see him strain to stay on track, and wonderful to see all those around him gently prompting him. Do we not truly bear each others' burdens when we can, as the Bible suggests? In this illness, the bishop’s temperament has softened and his sense of humor has taken more of a lead.  “I know all of you. I love all of you. I just can’t remember your names,” he joked.

Can you imagine there were a few loud and brash voices screaming out "It's Lent! It's Lent!" in response to the bishop’s request that we sing, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God…" a hymn with a wondrous lilting and upbuilding chorus of Alleluias. (In the season of Lent we do not say Alleluia until it reemerges strongly in Easter.) To me this objection to liturgical rule-breaking represents the worst of liturgical rigidity—and it wasn't even part of the official liturgy, only one of the hymns we sang to pass the time while we waited. The church can not afford to constrict itself unnecessarily. Remember those girdles and corsets women used to wear?? Constriction is one translation of the word sin. 

Our diocese had lost its way in many respects. The center wasn’t holding, and people felt anxious and vulnerable, the weight of sorrow hanging heavy in the air. Nevertheless, our true center—Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit—held. We came to ourselves as we sang. Despite a lot of mess and error, the Holy Spirit, whom we lustily serenade and, deep down, don’t believe a word of what we say, presided.

We elected the Rev. Alan Gates from Ohio, but we voted for ourselves as a faithful community gathered in Godde’s holy name. Many will grump and grunt and be negatively-focused, mostly about stuff we already knew was in disarray, but this is my take on the soul of this day—gracious with new life coming to us as we came to ourselves. What could have been a flop leaving bitter taste turned out to be amazing grace.

We're still covered with mud, but we’re headed home.  Alleluia anyhow!!

Do we ever practice what we preach, we clergy types of righteousness?  We are as prodigal as anyone else, longing to succeed in the world and longing to be held like an infant—at once.