2023.08.27 WATER, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The hardest thing I remember having to learn when I was a child was how to float—trusting the water to hold me up. This later evolved into a spiritual issue: Could I trust the divine Presence/Higher Power I call God to hold me up? 

Swimming has never been my thing, although as a teen, I did learn how to dive into ocean waves and jump off the high diving board holding my nose. I am not that good a swimmer, although I can manage an old-lady breast stroke across a heated pool, and I passed the college admissions test for entering freshmen (1956) to tread water for 15 minutes without drowning. NO idea what their rationale was! Maybe because there was a pond on campus, and maybe it was the era of crazed and sudden awareness of total fitness, not just intellectual/academic.  

Nevertheless, Beverley, my oldest daughter, now 60, has befriended water and swimming in a big way. She is a master swimmer, and long distance swimming is her sport of choice, as well as her pleasure. She swims across lakes and pools with style and elegance. She trusts the water and her own practiced skills—enough in fact that yesterday she sliced into the cold (58-64 degrees) rough waters surrounding Alcatraz, one-time prison placed on an island in San Francisco Bay to deter escapees from trying to escape and surely drowning. 

Yesterday’s challenge event was called “The Sharkfest Swim”. Swimmers can publicize and ask for sponsorship donations to their favorite charity. Bev chose The Red Cross. We donated in her name. I confess that I engaged in gentle worrying even though I trust Bev’s prowess. I also knew there were rescuers on hand. Bev trusts the water. She was accompanied by her friend Geoffrey Matesky, a heroic man familiar with life challenges. Here they are on the plane. 

After the swim Bev wrote: “I’m going to live the shit out of the rest of the time I have in this life.” Such is the headline on her “bucket list”. After training for eight months, Bev took the plunge. There were 600 other swimmers, kicks in the face, sizable waves, and swallowing lots of salt water—but no fins in sight.  Bev came in fifth in her age group and 127th for all women who swam. 

She swam these choppy waters not to escape to freedom but rather to celebrate the joy of freedom for its own sake. Here she is just after she came to shore. 

This mother’s pride is blooming at her daughter’s athletic prowess—also trembling about what she will take on next. 

I too plan to “live the shit out of the rest of the time I have in this life”—though not in the water.

Grit and grace to us both.   

2019.01.13 Birthday Baptismal Day

Today is my oldest daughter’s birthday. She is fifty-six years young, looks beautiful as always, and is filled with vigor and passion for justice for all people.

Today is also the day the Christian church remembers the Baptism of Jesus at the hand of his cousin John the Baptizer. Baptism is the day one becomes a Christian—nothing to do with denomination or any particular community. Baptism is belonging to Christ, becoming an initiated followers of Jesus the Christ. When anyone is baptized they are welcomed into a community of faith with powerful promises, some water, the Holy Spirit and a passionate sentence of chrismation, anointing the forehead with oil, saying their name and “. . . you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  This sacramental ritual carries the weight of thousands of years of tradition, the biblical mandate, a whole community of prayer and support, and just plain sacred beauty. When you are baptized you work for Jesus Christ in whatever you do.

The baptismal job is no cushy or high-paying job. It’s lifelong, serious, risky and grace-filled.    In addition, who wouldn’t want to work for a boss who had a great sense of humor, cried real tears, never gave up on the vision, knew he could not do this alone, and looked roughly like this?

Baptized when she was about five months old, Bev wore a long white, sweeping, dress—elegant. Her small head, covered with heaps of very dark hair, stood out amidst billows of white lace. There is a photo of her in that baptismal dress, somewhere in the annals of years of scrapbooks. I wish I could share it, because it is etched in the eye of my heart.

Bev is fulfilling her baptismal vows. She might laugh at this, since she does not attend church; nor, is she at all certain about God or Christianity. She has, however, always followed the ways of Jesus. She is kind and compassionate and a devoted mother of two daughters. She has navigated painful ups and down in her life with dignity. She works, in every job she has ever had, for justice for all people, gender equality, the rights of the poor, and the working classes.

In my lingo, Bev is most baptismal in her involvement with politics, making sure that the values of the “kingdom” Christ proclaimed are secured on earth as they are in heaven. Why would Jesus speak so strongly and consistently about working to bring about the kingdom of God, if he were not a politician?  “Kingdom” is a political term, lest we forget. The spirit of this kingdom is not constrained by partisan politics, binary absolutes, sexual identity, wealth, religious affiliations, or territorial boundaries. This kingdom calls for us to drop our precious identity labels and work together for the good of the whole. That is good politics. That is also good religion.

I got a clue to Bev’s direction in life from baseball. She wasn’t particularly interested in baseball, but she was interested in being the first girl admitted to play on a local Little League team. She made the team. I went to the games. Bev’s batting skills were sporadic. She struck out, or lucked out with a bad pitcher and walked. But she could run like crazy. Sitting with other gabbing parents, paying attention only when their kids were up, I was startled one evening by the sound of a loud CRACK. It was Bev’s bat. She hit a home run—out of the ball park, as they say. She was so stunned she forgot to run until the coach yelled: RUN!!  There was much applause, cheering, and kudos. I can’t remember if her team won, but that day she won. I cried. I thought then that she’d hit a home run for women’s equality and inclusion. I also learned that she approached life with a combination of curiosity, desire, and caution in about equal proportion—always summoning courage to try new things and keep on swinging. Baseball is a team sport. So is Jesus-work.

Bev’s personality exhibited both toughness and softness—tough on herself and soft on others. Her intelligence and passion for good causes even at a young age remains contagious, likewise her robust sense of humor and agility. Swimming became her sport of choice. Not only is she an excellent swimmer, but swimming has spiritual consolations—trusting the water’s buoyancy to hold you up, and letting it support you.

Bev might say I am imposing my perspective onto her life, and perhaps I am. It would be nice if she joined a Christian church community, I suppose. Nevertheless, I see the fruits of baptismal spirituality in her, and I dare say that one does not have to be Christian to be a christ. 

2018.01.14 Open-Hearted Girls

Countless prayers of faithful people
weighted in a cumbrous world
found an answer as an angel
met an open-hearted girl.
Not a master of a palace
where the airs of empire swirl,
nor a young and hardened warrior
but an open-hearted girl.

This lovely Michael Hudson text was written with Mary the mother of Jesus in mind, but I certainly know many open-hearted girls. Do you?

As I write this I'm thinking of one in particular, because it’s her 55th birthday. She is my oldest daughter, Beverley Ann Brakeman. She was born with much effort and also some “lucky” statistics: born on 1/13/63 at 1:13 a.m., weighing 8lbs13ozs. She was a big baby. She’s still a big presence, not in size but in vigor—and she has an open heart. (No significance to the Police van in the background:)

I remember how terrified I felt when I was birthing my first child. It hurt so much I thought I’d die. I’d prayed for a daughter, but in labor my only prayer was: “Let it be over!”  In time (too much I thought) my daughter was born. One look at her squished-up face, her perfect wee head nearly swallowed by a mop of black hair, and hearing her voluminous howl, opened my own heart forever—and ever.

I also felt anxious. I was even scared her small arm would break when I put the little undershirt over her head. My OB said: “They’re not as fragile as they look. You’ll be fine.” I was of course in love with him, or in thrall of what he did—forgetting to give myself any credit for enduring a long drug-free labor. All I felt was embarrassment because I'd thrown up all over my poor husband, standing anxiously by. I recall lamenting my intestinal expectoration because it landed all over the great sweater I had knit for him all by myself. You think weird thoughts when you’re in pain.

And I worried. Could I do this? Could I be a good mother? To these natural questions there is only one answer: NO. I’m not cynical. I’m just realistic about the vulnerabilities of parenting, especially for mothers, many of whom, at least in my generation, were handed a list of requirements for this job—omnipresence, omnipotent lovingness, and possible omniscience—qualities traditionally attributed to God, ironically called “Father.” Even my mother told me: “Being a mother is the highest destiny for any woman.” 

None of my stress was, or is, my fault, or Bev’s. It’s just how it was, and still continues to be, for many mothers and daughters. I listen to mothers struggling to balance their own needs, their vocations/careers with being a a mother. I recall once a woman priest in a group say: “Well, that’s it! I simply can not be a good mother and a good priest at the same time.” 

Still, Bev grew up and so did I. We have grown up together. Our hearts have opened and closed and opened again to each other through the years. We stitch it up with understanding and forgiveness and move on—because we both are open-hearted, both mothers to two daughters, both passionate about social justice, both tell the truth in love.

Happy Birthday, my beloved daughter. You are a blessing and I love you.

2013.01.13 Pink Is the New Black

It’s the 50th birthday of my oldest daughter and first child, the 10th birthday of my oldest grandson, so I’m thinking of firsts, and of time and its passage—not a preoccupation I usually bother with, at least until my body lets me know my age.  And it is the Sunday we remember Jesus' baptism in the Jordan. Another first.

My daughter was born on Jan. 13,  at 1:13 a.m., weighing 8 pounds, 13 ounces.  Thirteen is a very good number.  Some say it represents the divine feminine. Here is the 13 girl Bev with her boyfriend Steve. Happy Birthday to you Bev—young, beautiful, and limitlessly beloved.

In 1989, the diocese of Massachusetts, against all human odds, elected the Rev. Barbara Clementine Harris as its bishop suffragan.  She is the first woman to be elected bishop in the Episcopal Church. Some people thought it was “the final crisis,” a disaster of apocalyptic proportions. But it wasn’t. It was simply history making progress in the flesh of a small, feisty  African American woman with a passion for justice, and a sense of humor that has peppered the Church with the courage it needs to keep God’s creation alive and well in the Body of Christ.


I lament that no one ever seems to care or count what the Church does to advance the cause of women in leadership, unless that Church is Roman Catholic.  The Episcopal Church is small but mighty, and rarely gets noticed—except for its firsts: Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, first woman in that office, elected in 2006; Bishop Gene Robinson, first openly gay man elected bishop of New Hampshire in 2002; and Bishop Barbara Harris

HOWEVER......on Jeopardy this week, one of the clues under the Women Firsts category mentioned Barbara Harris. We Episcopalians made it to Jeopardy.  And, one of the contestants, a  a young man of Indian descent, knew which Church she represented—and pronounced it correctly!

Here is the Rt. Rev. Barbara C. Harris, bishop, maker of history, and woman of Godde, at a recent General Convention of the Episcopal Church.  Have you ever in your life seen so much PINK on a Church dignitary? 

                                                            Pink is the new black!