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.  

2021.09.12 Nine Eleven

The perfect remembrance in poetic form by the late Brian Doyle, brilliant writer, author of many books, and former editor-in-chief of the Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, Oregon. His life and career were cruelly interrupted at age 60 by a brain tumor.

LEAP

    by Brian Doyle

A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped.

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.

Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.

The mayor reported the mist.

A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire. She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes.

Tiffany Keeling saw fireballs falling that she later realized were people. Jennifer Griffin saw people falling and wept as she told the story. Niko Winstral saw people free-falling backwards with their hands out, like they were parachuting. Joe Duncan on his roof on Duane Street looked up and saw people jumping. Henry Weintraub saw people “leaping as they flew out.” John Carson saw six people fall, “falling over themselves, falling, they were somersaulting.” Steve Miller saw people jumping from a thousand feet in the air. Kirk Kjeldsen saw people flailing on the way down, people lining up and jumping, “too many people falling.” Jane Tedder saw people leaping and the sight haunts her at night. Steve Tamas counted fourteen people jumping and then he stopped counting. Stuart DeHann saw one woman’s dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end, and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.

Several pedestrians were killed by people falling from the sky. A fireman was killed by a body falling from the sky.

But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.

I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.

Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.

No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, colleagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip of hell. Maybe they didn’t even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that. 

And our response was, well, you know.  Sister Stan, Gardening the Soul, entry for 9/11. 

A destructive way of life thrives on fear. Most especially it thrives on fear of love itself, 

the fear of being opened by a force and call of love, the fear of entering into reciprocity.  

2021.05.30 Becoming Forever

Today is Trinity Sunday—Creator/Christ/HolySpirit all becoming one at once.

Can you see how becoming this intricate, intimate, impossible, confused, and tangled doctrine is? It is quite unbecoming, in fact. It simply does not fit into any of our compartments of theological understanding. Nor does it lend itself to appropriation into the safe comfort zone of being spiritual but not religious. Not much soul-breeching Mystery does, does it? After all, how many voices, dark and bright, silent or aloud, thrum about in your own mind, blow out from your own mouth, and pulse away in your own heart all at once?

Becoming

What greater joy can there be
    than to be becoming?

My mother always used to say,
    “Oh darling, that dress becomes you.”
The coat I bought you is so becoming.”
And my father would say,
    “How much was it?”

But what’s more becoming than
    to become yourself,
And so to know that God becomes you?

Now look about and say to the tree, the tiny bud,
    the bunny, your stuffy, your neighbor:
God is so becoming to you.
            by the Rev.Lyn G. Brakeman


Healer

The healer seeks the venues of the harmed,
The stressed, the victims of the brunt
Of inhumanity unchecked,
Of those who have been plunged into
A porridge of unmitigated pain.

The hands of unobstructed love,
With time and patient, gentle skill,
Bestow a sense of healing peace,
And send the reassurance that
Goodness lives and can be found
In the embrace of a true Friend.
            by Peter L. Dal Negro


Tell Me My Tears

Tell my my tears,
I asked the gull.
Ratcheting her head
One moist eye beaded mine
She waddled—away.

Tell me my tears,
I asked the sun.
Ducking under some clouds,
He winked, a bold flirt
Then dried them—all.

Tell me my tears,
I asked the wind.
Combing my hair
With gusto and purpose
She blew them all over my face.

Tell my my tears,
I asked the sand.
Warm granules, cozy toe blankets
A single grain
stuck in a teardrop.

Tell me my tears,
I asked the sea.
Curlicued tides, looping, lost
Salty to heal
Between coming and going.

Tell me my tears,
I asked my Beloved—
and waited.
        by the Rev. Lyn G. Brakeman

 

Left Out Of The Bible

What Adam said to Eve
As they lay in the dark
Honey, what’s making
That dog out there bark?
        by Charles Simic

What Eve said to Adam
As they lay in the dark
Honey,  just noticed
Not ticklish anymore.
        by Lyn G. Brakeman

 

Last Prayer

Dear Coherent Mercy: Thanks. Best life ever.

Personally, I never thought a cool woman would come close to understanding me, let alone understanding me but liking me anyway, but that happened!
    And You and I both remember that doctor in Boston saying polite but businesslike that we would not have children but then came three children fast and furious!
    And no man ever had better friends, and no man ever had a happier childhood and wilder brothers and a sweeter sister, and I was that rare guy who not only loved but liked his parents and loved sitting and drinking tea and listening to them!
    And You let me write some books that weren’t half bad, and I got to have a career that no kidding helped some kids wake up to their best selves, and no one ever laughed more at the ocean of hilarious things in this world, or gaped more in astonishment at the wealth of miracles everywhere every moment.
    I could complain a little here about the long years of back pain and the occasional awful heartbreak, but Lord those things were infinitesimal against the slather of gifts You gave mere me, a muddle of a man, so often selfish and small. But no man was ever more grateful for Your profligate generosity, and here at the very end, here in my last lines, I close my eyes and weep with joy that I was alive, and blessed beyond measure, and might well be headed back home to the incomprehensible Love from which I came, mewling, many years ago.
    But hey, listen, can I ask you one last favor? If I am sent back for another life, can I meet my lovely bride again? In whatever form? Could we be hawks, or otters maybe? And can we have the same kids again if possible? And if I get one friend again, can I have my buddy Pete? He was a huge guy in this life—make him the biggest otter ever and I’ll know him right away, okay?
    Thanks, Boss. Thanks from the bottom of my heart. See You soon.
    Remember—otters. Otters rule. And so:amen.
          by Brian Doyle

 

2019.11.10 How Many Resurrections Are There?

The seasons of Halloween, All Saints, Daylight Savings are all about surprises and disguises. What you thought was one thing is suddenly another. There’s grief. There is also the joy of plain old wondering and searching for what you can’t see. Who is behind the mask? Where did that hour of time go? What now can be trusted?  This is surely what the early Jesus followers must have felt after he died and they could no longer see him in the flesh, even though he had told them he was always there. They told stories and learned how to see through and beyond the obvious. They did not conjure doctrines. They asked crazy questions and they laughed. So do we.

Could There Be a Badger Jesus?

You want to hear a resurrection story? I’ll tell you
A resurrection story. I saw a squirrel get squished
In the street. This was on Ash Street, near where a
Family named Penance lives. Things like this rivet
Me. Religions don’t live in churches. Religions are
Not about religion, in the end; they’re vocabularies.
This squirrel got hammered. I mean, a car ran right
Over it, and the car sped down the hill, and I recall
Thinking that some dog would soon be delighted to
Be rolling ecstatically in squirrel oil, but then, even
As I watched, the animal resumed its original shape
And staggered off into the laurel thicket, inarguably
Alive and mobile, if somewhat rattled and unkempt.
Jesus and Lazarus must have known that feeling, of
Being sore in every joint, and utterly totally fixated
On a shower and coffee and a sandwich. Or walnuts,
Depending, I suppose, on species. Our current form
Is a nebulous idea, is what I am trying to say. Could
It be that resurrections are normal and the one we’re
Always going on about in the Christian mythologies
Is only One a long time ago, when there are millions
Per day? Could there be an insect Jesus and a badger
Jesus and a salmon Jesus? Could there be impossible
Zillions of Jesuses? Isn’t that really the whole point?

American Badger

Thank you Brian Doyle, brilliant “incarnationist” poet. You understood deep incarnation—deep, as in the divinity of all living things, even the dead. I wish you were still alive and writing in your down-to-earth heavenly way. You got the point. You get the point. Thank you.

Look everywhere, especially when you’re squished, or think you are. Don’t forget to look in the mirror—deeply. 

2019.06.02 Ask and You Will Receive

Furious Prayer for the Church I Love and Have Always Loved but Which Drives Me Insane with its Fussy Fidgety Prim Tin-eared Thirst for Control and Rules and Power and Money Rather Than the One Simple Thing the Founder Insisted On.

Granted, it’s a tough assignment, the original assignment I get that. Love—Lord help us, could we not have been assigned something easier, like astrophysics or quantum mechanics. But no—love those you cannot love. Love those who are poor and broken and fouled and dirty and sick with sores. Love those who wish to strike you on both cheeks. Love the blowhard, the pompous ass, the arrogant liar. Find the Christ in each heart, even those. Preach the Gospel and only if necessary talk about it. Be the Word. It is easy to advise and pronounce and suggest and lecture; it is not so easy to do what must be done without sometimes shrieking. Bring love like a bright weapon against the dark. The Rabbi did not say build churches, or retreat houses, or secure a fleet of cars for general use, or convene conferences, or issue position papers. He was pretty blunt about the hungry and the naked and the sick. He was not reasonable; we forget this. The Church is not a reasonable idea. The Church should be a verb. When it is only a noun it is not what the Founder asked of us. Let us pray that we are ever after dissolving the formal officious arrogant thing that wants to rise, and ever fomenting the contradictory revolutionary countercultural thing that could change life on this planet. It could, you know. Let’s try again today. And so:amen.

by Brian Doyle, A Book of Uncommon Prayer. 100 Celebrations of the Miracle and Muddle of the Ordinary, 2014

The Muddle
A man named James who sits in his wheelchair in Harvard Square. I pass him every time I walk from the subway to where I get my hair cut. I only see him once a month, but I look forward to it. James is a lovely man with multiple handicaps, a gentle soul, and a smile from heaven. You could say James is homeless, disabled, an amputee, a street person, a beggar just looking for the next drink. You could discount him, as some do when they bustle by. I know he lives someplace where he is taken care of, and that someone brings him daily to his spot. He’s not an aggressive man, and he doesn’t call out or rattle a cup of coins for attention. But boy, when James smiles you know the world is his proverbial oyster—and you are the only one who matters at this moment. And James knows how to ask for what he needs. This is the part of the biblical wisdom we do not easily engage: asking and receiving are related, part of a whole. Once James asked me to marry him, and once he stammered, “ I love you” and motioned to me to lean towards him for a kiss. He is a person who matters, and I am not the only one who notices James.

The Miracle
Google-godde came to the rescue. James made it online. A Harvard senior, George David Torres, befriended him. James told Torres that he needed a new wheelchair. He asked. In the midst of Torres’s final exams he took the time and the heart to start a gofundme page to raise money for a new wheelchair for James. People were generous and Torres worked with The Boston Orthopedic and Respiratory. James received his new chair plus the bonus of a new cup in which to store his earnings.  Here he is with his new chair and cup—and his thank you note in process.

So much for envious projections of snootiness onto Harvard students. Call it Harvardism.

So much for assumptions about the general goodness and generosity of the public. Most people are kind.

So much for judging street beggary and putting everyone into the same nasty box called lazy, irresponsible, poor, or drunks.

So much for the idea that it is mostly religious or churched or Christian people who do their spiritual homework and follow Jesus’s only one commandment: Love. And doesn't love require paying attention and listening, both asking and receiving?

From what I have read about street people they appreciate money, but more importantly, they appreciate being noticed. I am not the only one who notices James. All this took place at the end of last summer. This summer so far I have missed James and pray with him. Please do the same if you will. Prayer is not a haughty holier-than-thou practice, nor is it magic or useless. It evokes hope in absence. It invokes God. Anyone can pray, and there probably is no one who has never prayed.

May Brian Doyle have the last word: 
Let us pray that we are ever after dissolving the formal officious arrogant thing that wants to rise, and ever fomenting the contradictory revolutionary countercultural thing that could change life on this planet. It could, you know. Let’s try again today. And so:amen.

2018.07.08 The Real American Dream. Do Not Let It Die.

Most people think the “American dream” is that every American family will own their own home equipped with picket fence and other trimmings. Proprietorship is our dream and our downfall. Private property is our desire. Mine. Mine. Mine.

No, the American vision is far more extraordinary and far less selfish than a selfie. In a moving essay, “Mr. Lincoln,” published in a 2018 commemorative collection, Sweet Dreams, Story Catcher, the late Brian Doyle boldly proclaims: “He (Lincoln) gave his life for the extraordinary American idea. Do not let that idea die.”  
 
 That’s my prayer every day now. On July 4 it was my firecracker.

When I was in seventh grade a teacher asked us to identify someone we thought was the greatest human who ever lived—our hero. I immediately wrote Abraham Lincoln and felt quite sure of myself. I was thinking about ending slavery, winning a war for our side. Soon I was stricken with guilt because I had not identified Jesus as the greatest man. My guilt doubled when I realized that I’d never even thought of a woman—an unimaginable idea back in 1950. If I’d known enough I would have nominated Eleanor Roosevelt (below) even though my parents detested FDR.

Now I wonder: was I so wrong in seventh grade?  Lincoln, yes, had something to do with the Civil War, a war he grieved every day of his life, but his vision went far beyond my narrow idea. Lincoln, like Jesus and Eleanor, had a gospel, a vision of Union—American oneness. Beloved fools such as these often die for their ideas. Christ’s was not restricted to one country, or just to humanity, or even to one religion, but I wasn’t so far off when at twelve I nominated Abraham Lincoln—that we all may be one. Jesus (an artist's portrait below, left) was remembered for drumming this home—over and over. And Brian Doyle, a Jesus look-alike (below right) kept the vision going.

Doyle wrote of Lincoln:   “. . . he could not stand the idea of Americans not walking hand in hand toward the extraordinary country we could be, a country unlike any other that ever was, a country where all citizens are free to speak their hearts, and gather as they like, and worship whatever shape of holiness they perceive or imagine, and offer their love to whom they like. He would not allow his beloved country to fly apart because of greed and lies, and for that he was murdered by a man whose greatest wish was to tear America in half.”

Lincoln was a complicated man and had many quirks to say the least. A friend who knew him well once wrote of Lincoln: "He was the only man I ever knew the foundation of whose spirit was love." That’s crazy; that’s only for God, right?  Or is it?

“It is a foul and evil lie of the mind and the heart and the mouth and the soul to account someone less because of his or her color or religion or gender or preference in lovers. That is a squirming lie, no matter how often, and at what volume, it is repeated and God willing it will be quelled and squelched and forgotten in the years to come. It will be squelched not by laws and regulations, not by political or religious or judicial powers, but by shivers of dawning light in the hearts of men and women and children in this country who begin to dimly understand that Abraham Lincoln was the greatest of Americans not because he won a war, not because he gave his blood and his life for justice and freedom, but because the foundation of his spirit was love and he acted that way.”

Lincoln was devout but practiced no one religion. His speeches were concise and brought people to silence. His ideas and parabolic stories, without a lot of advice or legislative patter, riveted the attention of his colleagues and branded the American soul forever. To our peril we let this dream die. This isn’t about Mr. Trump or any party or governance, it is about WE the people standing for the freedom for which we stand. 

Doyle writes, dare I say prays, it best: “ . . . that we will, by the grace of the profligate gifts granted us as Americans, stand for and speak for and defend and protect freedom anywhere and everywhere it is savaged; that we will continue to, as we have for centuries, open our golden door for the tired and the poor, the huddled masses, the wretched of the world, and here let them breath free; and that difference in color and gender and religion and preference in love matter not at all when it comes to treating each other with respect and reverence. Those who fan and foment differences murder the revolutionary American idea, and ought to cower and gibber in shame in the vast shadow cast by Mr. Abraham Lincoln, Republican of Kentucky, who gave his life for that idea.”

I guess I wasn’t too far off in seventh grade. Do not let this idea die. Do not.

2017.12.24 The Under-Genius of All Things—At Christmas

There is no joy that is not mixed with muck and muddle and cynical commentary and genuine pique, even if you hide it, eject it, silence it, blame it on the weather.  And  yet . . .

This morning we listened, my dear spouse and I, to the annual Kings College, Cambridge England, service of Nine Lessons and Carols. It is nothing if not utterly traditional. I admit to feeling tired, once again, of gendered language for the Holy. And yet  . . .

My emotions, my love of creativity, Creator God, and Beauty itself took over. Later I contented myself with a small addition to the wondrous words of the text of English poet Christina Rosetti (1830-1894) for the final stanza of the Christmas Carol: “In the bleak mid-winter.” 

What can I gave him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man, I would do my part;
but since I am a woman, I would give my flesh;
yet what I can I give him:
     give my heart.

To abandon one’s very correct political correctness for the sake of God’s holiday—and ours—is what I think the late poet Brian Doyle means by having the courage to discern the “under-genius” of  it all at Christmas. 

Muttered Prayer in Thanks for the Under-Genius of Christmas

Putting up ye old fir tree last night, and pondering why again we slay a perfectly healthy tree ten years of age, not even a teenager yet, and prop up the body, and drape it with frippery, and then finally feed the brittle former vibrancy into a chipper, paying a grim Boy Scout five bucks for the privilege; I watched mine bride and children quietly for a while, from behind the tree where I was struggling with that haunted cursed string of lights, and I saw the under-genius of it all: I saw beneath the tinsel and nog, the snarl of commerce and the ocean of misspent money; I saw the quiet pleasure of ritual, the actual no-kidding, no-fooling urge to pause and think about other people and their joy, the anticipation of days spent laughing and shouldering in the kitchen, with no agenda and no press of duty. I saw the flash of peace and love under all the shrill selling and tinny theater; and I was thrilled and moved. And then I remembered too that the ostensible reason for it all was the Love being bold and brave enough to assume a form that would bleed and break and despair and die; and I was again moved, and abashed; and I finished untangling the epic knot of lights, shivering yet again with happiness that we were given such a sweet terrible knot of a world to untangle, as best we can, with bumbling love. And so: amen.
Do you risk having eyes and ears and nose for the under-genius of it all? 

As a child I was seized by my father’s absence from the tree project. Oh, he was present in body but he was preoccupied with his cocktail and didn’t join in. Perhaps he had suffered the epic tangle of lights. I don’t remember. I worried about him. I longed for him. I couldn’t understand why my mother and my sisters were jollily going along unheeding. There was something wrong with this picture, and I wept.

I could not yet see the under-genius of it all. If I had, I might have been able to join in and trim the tree without fear and inhibition. If I had, I might have called Daddy to come join us—just put one little bright ball on our tree. And he would have smiled, thanked me, and declined. If I had seen the under-genius of Christmas, I would have known that Daddy was there with us even if he couldn’t participate in the way I wanted. And that would’ve been enough. I also might have realized that my Daddy was not God— and maybe that there is a manger inside all of us. 

When I stop and notice the under-genius of Christmas I can see that joy is not happiness or maple syrup. It is an inner feeling of hope, hope so huge and defiant it counters all reason. It's the under-genius, the under-joy.  So I give my heart. 

Merry Christmas.

2017.05.28 Goodbye and Thank You Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle, a writer who made music with his words, just died yesterday.

I don’t write obituaries as news. I write today because I feel deep sorrow at the loss of a writer so supremely deft with words that I am left wonderstruck. (The formal obituary is below.) I did not know Brian Doyle personally. I grieve his writing, much of which I’ve read.

I would call Brian Doyle a Master of Words. He would, in his prose, pile words up—verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs—in heaps, and he never heeded the scorn of those who advise writers to use fewer adjectives and never an adverb. He wrote about everyday things and made them all shimmer with soul. He shunned no word that said what he meant and felt. Brian gave me courage to use as many words as I needed to match the energy of my emotional investment in whatever I was writing about. 

Here’s an example of my own attempt to describe the mysterious power of an experience which is not earthbound:  

There’s no telling exactly why such attractions take hold and cement themselves into the human mind and heart, yet most of us know the experience, and most of us admit it feels irresistible, indispensable, immeasurable, irreplicable, mysterious, and tidal, all at once. So we follow it.

If I hadn’t borrowed Doyle’s word-courage I would never have dared to use so many adjectives, one not even a legitimate word. But I felt each one. To pay proper tribute to Doyle’s faith along with his skill with apt words, here is a poem he wrote called God. 
    
GOD


By purest chance I was out in our street when the kindergarten
Bus mumbled past going slow and I looked up just as all seven
Kids on my side of the bus looked at me and I grinned and they
Lit up and all this crap about God being dead and where is God
And who owns God and who hears God better than whom is the
Most egregiously stupid crap imaginable because if you want to
See God and have God see you and have this mutual perception
Be completely untrammeled by blather and greed and comment,
Go stand in the street as the kindergarten bus murmurs past. I’m
Not kidding and this is not a metaphor. I am completely serious.
Everyone babbles about God but I saw God this morning just as
The bus slowed down for the stop on Maple Street. God was six
Girls and one boy with a bright green and purple stegosaurus hat.
Of course God would wear a brilliantly colored tall dinosaur hat!
If you were the Imagination that dreamed up everything that ever
Was in this blistering perfect terrible world, wouldn’t you wear a
Hat celebrating some of the wildest most amazing developments?
                        by Brian Doyle

Doyle had a vibrant sense of humor and was obviously passionate about God, his Christian faith, Roman Catholic brand, and basketball—not necessarily in that order. He also adored little stories and noticed absolutely everything that crossed his path, things others would pass by without a shrug. Everything, everyone, and every story is sacred—maybe religious and always soul-shaking. To perceive in this way is a gift—let’s say it’s Holy. 

Here is a poem he wrote in A Shimmer of Something. Lean Stories Of Spiritual Substance about tiny unnoticeable events of eternal magnitude. Call these poems Incarnation, Resurrection, Creation—or just plain Life, true and on the bone. 

THE SPARROW

Or, hey, listen, here’s a story for you.
A friend of mine who is 96 years old
And blind but still living in her beach
Cabin hears her cat capture a sparrow
Which the cat then presents as a prize.
My friend cradles the bird in a sponge
And goes to the front door and throws
Out the sponge, and then goes to wash
The dishes, only to realize she’s using
The sparrow, who objects strenuously.
Now, this is terrific story from every
angle imaginable: deft murderous cat,
Sparrow who didn't die, lady giggling,
The grin that just opened on your face,
The child who will fall down laughing
Later when you say now here’s a story . . .

And a favorite of mine.

THE SQUIRREL

Here you go. Here’s a moment to ponder carefully.
We think that there are greater and lesser moments
But how immensely and ridiculously wrong this is.
For here is a boy riding along the street in summer.
He is perhaps six years old. His bike is wildly blue.
He sees a smear of squirrel in the street. He pauses,
Using the heels of his sneakers as brakes. He looks,
He dismounts, he sets his kickstand, he looks down.
He kneels and gathers up the shredded creature and
Walks to the shady ravine where we saw the coyote
That time and he gives the squirrel to the tiny creek.
He washes in a muddy puddle and then he rides off.
I am the man who saw and testifieth of these things,
And what I say is true. I saw a boy bow before holy
Things, for all things are holy, and he reminded me,
And so now I remind you. Go thou and do likewise.
            


Brian was born in New York, my own home city, in 1956. He has been the editor of  the University of Portland’s (that’s Oregon)  quarterly Portland magazine since 1991. Author Annie Dillard called this “the best spiritual magazine in the country.” Brian died on May 27th, 2017 at age 60 of complications related to a brain tumor. He leaves his wife and three children. Here's the obituary link.

https://www1.up.edu/news/2017/05/Brian-Doyle-passes-away.html

2015.09.27 Papal Voice in Congress

I swear, a little pinwheel popped up spinning from the small white invisible zucchetto on my impious one-time Presbyterian head when I heard the unitive words Pope Francis spoke to our country and our Congress.

We in religions, and we in all other fields of endeavor, so need the voice of a big fat old religious visionary with an impish grin and a conspiratorial wink who advocates the Golden Rule as the chief guideline for church and world politics. The pope's words were unquestionably grounded in humanitarian-spiritual values which sustain viable life on earth: peace, justice, love, generosity, hospitality, respect, open-hearted mutuality, discernment, wisdom—and Love. His actions, ie. dining with the homeless, rather than attending the elegant banquet in his honor, followed his words. with action.

Pope Francis I addressed the assembled U.S. Congress on Thursday September 24th. He began by expressing his thanks and his joy at being in “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” He ended with: "God Bless America!" I was all ears, all heart in hope—hooked. This was the first time ever a pope has addressed our government assembled, and, thanks to 21st century sophisticated communications, the word got out!  He stood out, all dressed in white as he was. The sight was almost laughably symbolic. Seeing and listening brought back to me my old Catholic yearnings.

When I was a teen I set out to explore religion, curious to see if there was anything more out there besides skyscraper pulpits with men in them—preaching and praying as if they owned the whole spiritual territory. Okay, I know it was in the 50s, but I was restless with the status quo, believed firmly in a God who cared for me and everyone everywhere, and felt sure my behind would atrophy from sitting in a hard wooden pew every week—receiving, receiving and receiving—words, words, words. Even Holy Communion was passed out to us as we sat in the pew. God made me a body, a body I longed to move!

Looking for movement of some kind I went to a Catholic Mass. Behold! People moved their bodies—stand, bow, bend one knee, kneel, move their arms swiftly across their bodies more times than I could count, walk up the aisle to get bread popped into their open mouths. The only thing these RC’s didn’t do was participate orally in what was going on, because it was in a language only the priest knew. (Still, many of them murmured their own Mass prayers, using strings of beads to guide the process.)  This worship was still passive/receptive, but at least they moved!  AND they worshiped a woman named Mary who stood up front— in a statue and bad art but clearly female. 

The Catholics had stuff I wanted, stuff that involved my body, which I had learned was important because Jesus Christ had one. I took instructions to become Roman Catholic and found out they also had all the answers, which I deemed baloney. I uncovered some basic rules I knew would imprison my bodily freedom more than any of those awful girdles we used to wear.

In order to breathe, move my body in worship, keep asking questions, and, in time, be ordained priest, I joined the Episcopal Church. It had all the embodiment I needed, as well as hope for women to be up front as flesh and blood, not just as immobile, obedient, holy statues. I’ve happily been an Episcopalian for 55 years and an Episcopal priest for 27 years. I can breathe, speak, and question without fear, thanks to its flexible authority system. It gives my spirituality sanctuary.

RC’s do not have a flexible authority system, yet I heard this pope, definitely RC, calling for us to engage in dialogue, pray, and wonder out loud together about new approaches to life-threatening problems, such as poverty, climate change, unequal distribution of wealth, unfettered capitalism, territorial possessiveness, and paralyzing political polarization. His language was not harsh. He did not come to chastise, but to bless and to encourage. You can do better; you can be better when you accord your neighbor the same dignity, treatment, and respect you would like for yourself. 

Just the other day our dear Jewish neighbor said: “Look, all those little flowers are growing up right through the brick and concrete of your stoop. I know it’s because holy people live here.” (She was referring to me and my husband, both Episcopal priests.)

I said, “All people are holy.”  That conviction comes from my own early spiritual experience and from what the Episcopal Church/ Anglo-Catholicism gave me: a sacramental theology by which I know that all the created order is in the image of God and reflects divinity.

She retorted: “Lots of people don’t seem holy to me.”

“Well, often it’s thickly disguised!”  We LOL’ed, as they say. 

I haven’t forgotten my wannabe Catholic phase. With this pope’s presence and unitive message and style, his soft tone, authentic feelings, especially about suffering and children, and the bipartisan language he used, I felt it again—not the impulse to become Roman Catholic, but to know again the basic unity underlying all Creation, the goodness intended for us all, the common good of all living things for which we work and pray together, the true meaning of catholicity.

There are many reviews of the Pope’s speech and many have noticed he is not exactly offering to alter teachings that continue to imprison women’s bodies— and souls. Nor does he speak much about the abuse scandal. Yet and still, his approach values dialogue and open-mindedness, and non-dual thinking. There is no righteous over against unrighteous, immigrant and non-immigrant—no polarization of such moral values into absolute closed categories. Life is more fluid than that, and life requires room for transformation at all levels. I think this Pope is laying some groundwork for such transformation even in his own religion.

Applause went back and forth on both sides of the Congress. Imagine bipartisan applause in this Congress, and for the same speaker!  Who could argue with the Golden Rule?  There is a reason why it is called golden. It has the highest value—spiritual not monetary, please—and it's multi-faith.

But the Pope’s visit was more than just a prophetic analysis of the United States or a call to action, it was symbolic. The papal office carries heft, both historically and morally. The visit tells a new story. It means we must listen up. What I heard is that how we treat each other matters more than anything else. Are we decent? Do we listen with care to ourselves and to others? Do we resent our neighbors, near and far? Do we hoard wealth? Do we act from fear more often than from compassion? Do we listen to our own and others' stories? Because every individual has a story which matters intimately to him or her, and each story is a building block in the common good.

Author Brian Doyle writes: "I don't have any words that carry real weight. All I can do is tell you about it and somehow that's a prayer too, you know what I mean? Every story matters more than we know, or we ever will know—but at least we know that."

It was a nice coincidence, if such it was, that the Pope addressed the U.S. Congress the day after the Jewish high holiday of Yom Kippur.  Yom Kippur is the end day of a time devoted to teshuva: self-examination, turning around, an effort to  realign your self with God. The Word, according to the Hebrew Bible's Deuteronomy, is not up in the heavens or out over the sea, but very close to you, "in your mouth and in your heart to do it." 

To quote Rabbi Rachel Barenblat, who blogs as The Velveteen Rabbi: “Without change, there is stasis, and stasis is death. Yom Kippur comes to remind us that our habits of body, heart, mind, and soul become calcified and constricting. That each year we miss the mark in our habitual ways, and each year we have the opportunity to break free from those habits and become someone new.”

Jews can become immobilized by the need to have a better past, the Rabbi writes. I wonder if we Americans struggle with the need always to have a better future?  And I wonder if all religions struggle with the need to be divine favorites, the best way, the only true path? All such needs can be compulsive and constrictive—girdles again!

The Pope praised the American capacity to dream bold dreams—a gift. We have been successful with many dreams, but have we turned our successes away from hopes and dreams and into an ethic of domination, an identity of privilege, and overweening pride of place?

Should we desire to change, do teshuva, we can. After all, we have a papal blessing.