2021.08.29 My "Racism"—Part Twenty-One, Saint/Sinners

Mark’s gospel reminds us that any and all gifts—sacramental liturgies, music, scriptures, even personal gifts within our own flesh, we receive from God. The paradox is this: gifts we praise the most we must give away in order to retain their deepest value. We can experience God’s gifts yet we cannot own, control, or possess them. 

I can’t help but notice, as I think about my own racism, that many women I’ve followed and admired are women of color or lesbians—or at least women who barked at the edges of tradition and made their way from the “outback” of religious tradition into the center where they continue to ruffle the feathers of patriarchy in the church. They are gifted prophets, prophets of transformation, my chosen prophets, ancient and modern, few of them white, all of them healers of my natural, learned, and inherited racism, all of them saints and sinners.   

  *  *  *  *  

Who is not a saint and a sinner?  Ask anyone to tell the truth about both, and you’ll get some kind of definitional sleight of mind, or else denial, usually of the saint category, or, as a last resort, a humble nod and shrug, feigning modest sainthood. No haloes appear. Could it be that sin makes a better God-story? 

Scene LVIII.  Mary Virgin, Mother of the Church, Theotokos

One of the most famous and ill-reputed female heroes of the biblical and church tradition is Mary, the mother of Jesus. She has many names, most of them honorific. Mary was a real woman, a woman who “miraculously” found herself with child, aka pregnant, while she was “betrothed”— engaged, not yet wed. She didn’t lie about it, but listened to God’s voice guiding, not condemning, her from within. Nevertheless, the Church, in its embarrassment at scriptural transparency, elevated her to a place of great esteem, made her a virgin blessed forever, and virtually eliminated any masculine role for both conception AND parenting—unless you want to put faith in God as both sperm donor AND Heavenly Father forever.  

See how patriarchal religious politics accomplished and set in cement the following sins: 

-impugned the female body as a conception machine

-settled on Mary Magdalene as the scapegoat, creating The Magdalene Syndrome, the ugly, unjust brush with which many women are tarred—some innocent and some errant and unforgiven. (see Spiritual Lemons blog post, 8/1/21) 

-enslaved sexual activity within marriage

-put celibacy on a moral high holy ground

-made marriage a sacrament, not of blessing but of control 

-outlawed divorce, birth control and abortion, further imprisoning women

-contributed to poverty, overpopulation, despair, and crime

-made sure Divinity was advertised as transcendent, almighty, and masculine

-locked the image of God into parenting titles 

Women today, and historically, including my own grandmothers, have empowered themselves to change patriarchy in church and state by asserting their gifts, offering their bodies and their voices. They continue to be silenced and abused for their efforts, but they do not stop. I long for the day when the church will let Mary step off her pedestal, relinquish her virginal holiness, and preach her Magnificat to churches and seminaries.  

Scene LIX. My Grandmothers

Eleanor Sampson Gillespie, my paternal grandmother whom I called Grahmmy, gave up her aspirations to be an opera singer in order to get married and have children. She boasted long and often about being one of the first women in her family to graduate from college, in this case Vassar, class of “aughty-aught” (that’s 1900). She fulfilled her “assigned” vocation well with six children, four sons and two daughters, all of whom called her Ma. My dad, Scottishly named McDonald, was #5, sandwiched between two sisters, not always comfortably. Ma was an imposing presence, pigeon-chested like any proper diva would be. She had a beautiful singing voice, and most evenings after dinner she would assemble her “boys” gathering them around the piano to sing. She sang along with gusto. A family “opera.” 

Marguerite Gordon Hall Adams, my maternal grandmother whom I called Ga, and occasionally Goggie or Gagarrhea, if I was angry, defied her family and eloped with her beloved when she was eighteen. Ga grew us in Medford Massachusetts, born into a well-to-do family and living in a large house, let’s say small mansion. She met and fell in love with a man by the name of Avon Franklin Adams, an impresario who imported musical talent from Europe to this country, specifically to New York City, quite bereft in the 1920s of classical musicians. He brought violinist Jascha Heifitz and Alma Gluck, soprano and concert singer, to name just two—both Jewish.  

A.F. Adams’s Jewish identity horrified the Hall family. So the young couple eloped! They were married in Manhattan at the non-denominational Church of the Strangers, established in 1868 by the Rev. Charles Alexander Force Deems. He was a Methodist elder who moved to New York City from North Carolina to pastor the Church of the Strangers on January 1, ’91 (that’s 1891).  

I can’t tell you how fascinating my research was to establish my grandfather’s Jewishness, and therefore my own. He died when my mother was just twelve. She was the youngest child of four, born in1912 when Ga was forty-five, and her father’s favorite. It was apparently mutual, yet she kept the secret of his Jewishness for reasons of her own at which I could only guess. I wish I could have met him. I remain proud of my heritage. 

Scene LX My First Patient in Alcohol/Drug Rehabilitation. 

My experience in parish ministry was, frankly, exhausting. I had trained in and worked in chaplaincy ministry in two general hospitals and one drug/alcohol rehabilitation hospital  in Connecticut. To be a chaplain is a gift I give wherever I am. 

Chaplaincy is a more expansive ministry than parish ministry. A chaplain does not have to comply with, rely on, or “sell”, any one set of religious principles. There are many people who are hospitalized and in need of someone to listen to all their fears, pains, and the deep needs of their souls. They may want to talk to a pastor of their religious preference, and yet many simply long for a listening and compassionate ear, perhaps a prayer or a blessing if this is what they wish. Chaplains by intention transcend religious boundaries. They may have their personal commitments, but they do not wear these on their sleeves. This was especially important with the addiction population, some of whom were openly hostile to religion while their recovery program required that they at least remain open to the idea of a power greater than themselves to support them in their quest for sobriety. 

The first patient assigned to my counsel and care at the treatment center was a young black woman I will call Rochelle. I went to meet her in the detoxification unit and she screamed at me: “Get the hell outta here, you fucking white religious freak!” I was terrified and split. My supervisor was sympathetic but would not change the patient assignment. I would be Rochelle’s counselor for four weeks. Four!  I needed a higher power more than Rochelle! 

I wondered if there was a trigger, other than the pangs of detoxification, for Rochellles’ hostile outburst. As I wondered I fingered the small gold cross I wore around my neck. Bingo! She had probably reacted to the Jesus image. It was a gift to me from my second husband and I still treasure it because it has no corpus on the tiny cross but simply an empty space. That said a lot to me about God’s desire to free us from suffering and pain, not to impose it. We did enough of that all by ourselves. I resolved never again to wear that cross while I worked at this treatment center. My resolve failed. 

I’m not sure exactly how this happened, but I remember wallowing in the Serenity Prayer, the prayer recovering people often use at their meetings. 

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference. AMEN

While I focused on the serenity to accept what I couldn’t change, that is, Rochelle’s animosity toward me, I could stop wearing my cross. I could make myself look completely neutral and safe. I could. But I didn’t. 

When Rochelle was discharged from the detox unit and released into the ongoing program of education and counseling support to help her sustain sobriety, she came to my office. I had my cross on. God, grant me the serenity just to shut up about our first meeting. I did. Rochelle poured out her story to me and I listened with compassion. Whew! I had gotten away with the cross. But just as Rochelle was getting ready to leave the session, she pointed to my cross;. “Oh, that is such a beautiful little cross, so small and is it empty?”  “Would you like to see it close up,” I offered. She did. I removed the cross and handed it to her. She held it and fingered it briefly. I resisted a tiny temptation to give it to her, thank God. She returned it to me with a big grin and a thanks. I did not resist the temptation to consider myself a hot shot chaplain, but I did remember to fondle my small cross and thank Jesus for his corpuscular “absence” from it.  

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

 

2020.06.07 Trinity Sunday

Today, for Christians, is Trinity Sunday. To keep it simple, Trinity means Diversity within Unity, neither compromising the other— all of it divine.

The Trinity is a vision to emulate, especially at this time in the United States of America—a time when we are struggling to be united and free of our original and ongoing sin of rank-ordering our common humanity according to skin color, sexuality, social class, ability, political leanings, mental health, or religious preferences. We are murdering each other, thanks to this sin-sick practice.

I do not need to rehearse the events in history or just last week; nor do I need once again to remind us all about the purposeful misinterpretation of the Creator’s charge to humanity to care for all creation. Dominion does not mean domination, unless rank-ordering is the ethic, a practice that destroys Oneness, Diversity and Goodness.

As a therapist and spiritual director and priest I know that deep wounds interrupt the flow of Life itself. There are many ideas out there about what America’s wounds are. Racial injustice tops the list right now. I agree, yet I think the deeper wound is that we Americans are afraid.
    -afraid of ourselves
    -afraid of each other
    -afraid not to be great
    -afraid to be great
    -afraid to weep rather than shout,
    -afraid even to touch our wound.

Slowly, yet deliberately,
I touch the painful place.
I don’t know why;
I just need to.

Is there a strange kind of comfort in acknowledging the
pain?
The wound?

Strangely, the rollercoaster slows.
I hear the words,
“Pay attention. This is your life. This is Sacred.”

                                     
Mary Ann Bigelow, Spiritual Director, above words first published in 
Presence, International Journal of Spiritual Direction, March, 2020

To heal our wound we—together— must touch it, hallow it, give it belonging, a voice, bless it, talk about it in conversation, pray it, make it holy.  This is spiritual intelligence. This is Trinity.

P.S. Happy 86th Wedding Anniversary, Mom and Dad. 

2019.07.07 Are We Free Yet?

America has just celebrated its big National Holiday. I hear the echoes of firecrackers and take in all the flags that suddenly popped out everywhere. We think it’s our birthday as a nation, the time we gained our precious national independence and identity. I celebrated with cookouts, friends, sitting by a pool, thinking of my children, loving the world, and feeling thankful and free. This flag image is rigid. I chose it for that reason.

Now that fireworks and celebrity have died down, I wonder: have we celebrated with integrity the spirituality of this great holiday/holy day? What IS the spirituality of independence anyway? How do we live it? Does it mean independence FROM one another? Or does it mean independence TO make local decisions that guarantee state’s rights. OR maybe it means that we have lost sight of our INTERdependence? Have we forgotten how to be ONE nation indivisible yet supple?

At a high school graduation we attended recently we all stood to sing the national anthem, and I wept—yes for the sheer sentimentality of it, but also with grief over our self image. Have we lived up to our song’s vision?  Or have we used it to justify making one more war somewhere? Are we the land of the free and the home of the brave of which we sing? Are we free to be who we say we are and want to be according to our national vision?

I think this holiday is stuck in its original historical context: winning the war and getting rid of Brit rule. We thought we were free. By proxy right now, we are cleansing ourselves of other foreigners and strangers in our midst, especially those who might threaten our political and legal stability, deplete our resources, and present a moral and spiritual challenge we do not have the courage to confront. 

We are stuck, it seems to me, in a rigid habit of thought. We think in opposites, personally and globally. Our mentality, reflexively, is oppositional, frozen-in-place. Whoever we imagine to be our opposite has power over us. We could think appositely. We could ask: what stance, position, or way of thinking is apt in the realization of our vision of collective freedom?

Here’s a word I just ran across: misandry.  It means dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against men (ie the male sex). It’s pronounced MISS-andree from the Greek miso- (hating) + aner,  andr man—on the pattern of misogyny.  Hey, there’s a word I bet we all recognize: misogyny, the opposite of misandry. Misogyny is recognizably popular right now in church and state.

I’ve been tempted at times to nurture a bitter misandry, especially in this patriarchal world and church. But I don’t hate men. I love them, well, most of them. And I need them to compliment and to enrich my femaleness. Some of Dick's and my best marital moments grow out of our spats, which, ironically, serve to boot us from opposition to apposition. Really!

Whenever I’ve expended too much energy on hating men, using patriarchy as my cover, I’m not free to be FOR much of anything, including my self. Still, I admit the men I know and love are apposite to my religion and politics, not opposite. I hang out with the proverbial “choir”—appositely aligned.  Am I too afraid to find real opposites? Sometimes. 

America does not feel free to me right now, fireworks aside. Americans are stuck in spat mode, either FOR or AGAINST our current president. That’s how we think. It’s how we talk. It’s in the air and on the air. People talk about how to “cope.” Many opt out of the fray. Others fight. Some pray. Some get lost in cotton candy positivity. But few honestly pretend this is not going on.

My Christian faith helps me. Christ’s compassion has no borders—no borders on the human heart. Divine generosity is limitless, its signature vast. The spirituality of freedom and true independence is scandalous open-heartedness.

Yes, I know this spiritual vision is extremely demanding. I also know that we have no right to give God a nationality—ours.  Nor do we have a right to give God a gender—anyone's.

What do we dare to want for our birthday, America? What will be apposite to freedom?  How can we soften our flag, our souls, and our borders? With what gift?

Today I saw a small boy with his pregnant mom and another woman perhaps a grandmother. He was restless, shifting his weight around and clutching a towel and a set of goggles. I smiled at him and said: "Hi, you ready to go swimming?" "Yes, I've been waiting to come to this pool for years. This is my big moment."

2019.06.30 Leaving and Grieving With Grit and Grace

It is hard to say goodbye and harder to make that goodbye authentic, that is, with feeling but not sloppy. There’s only one way to do it—just do it. The apostle Paul called it speaking the truth in love. I call it leaving and grieving with grit and grace.

We have been priest associates at a parish in Charlestown Massachusetts for seven years. Today was our last Sunday. We’ll be moving on, not because of anything negative, but because it is time. A bit of the process:

Our notice in the parish newsletter, June 10—Holy Spirit season takes hold.
 
Dear Parishioners of St. John’s,

In conversation with one another and in communication with the parish wardens and Canon Carol Gallagher, the regional canon for our area of the diocese who has oversight over transition processes, we have decided that it is time for us to move on from St. John’s parish. Our last Sunday in the parish will be June 30th.

The Priest Associate arrangement was made under the appointment of the former rector, and we have served in that capacity over seven years with gratitude. Your gracious hospitality gave us an altar and a pulpit  whereby we could function as priests during our early retirement years. Thank you.

You are entering a transition time when you will be discerning your future and new leadership. It’s the right time for us to move on. We are making plans for our next retirement phase which will have us moving out of Massachusetts.

With deep appreciation and gratitude for this community, we bid you all farewell and bless you with grit and grace as you go forward. Thank you.

Affectionately,

The Rev’ds Lyn G. Brakeman and Richard J Simeone, aka Lyn and Dick

A Gracious Response

This Sunday June 30, we say farewell to Rev. Lyn Brakeman and the Rev. Dick Simeone, who have been an integral part of St. John’s for many years.
       
Together with us:
    They have preached, celebrated baptisms, officiated and been a spiritual balm at funerals, heard and healed us, and called us time and time again to the Eucharistic table.
    They’ve broken bread with us, laughed, cried, fussed, found things that were lost, and sat with us when we were feeling lost.
    They’ve visited those of us who were sick, dying, grieving, newly parenting, struggling, or confined.
    They’ve inspired and provoked us to look within ourselves and without ourselves to the needs of the whole world.

Lyn and Dick—we will miss you. We wish you oh so well in the next stage of your lives. We send our love, our prayers and our knowledge that we are all and always a part of the community of Christ.
         Catherine and Sarah, Parish Wardens.

What I love most about this response is that it acknowledges that parish ministry happens together. 

Final Blessings  On invitation from the Interim priest, we offered the closing blessings—dual but not dueling. As we said our favorites heads nodded and lips moved in recognition. We felt warmed.
  
Lyn: Time is short and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts and minds or those who travel the way with us, so be swift to love and make haste to be kind.
Dick: And, as you go forth to life and ministry, the blessing of the eternal and ever-living God, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit, sustain, strengthen, challenge, and renew you this day and forevermore. Amen.

Party Time This parish specializes in food glorious food. There was enough to feed those 5000 hungry stragglers on the hillsides as Jesus did. (I’ve often thought it would be a great idea for St. John’s to start a small café/tearoom ministry. Then I remembered we don’t have a dishwasher.)

Many people shed tears of love, offered goodbyes and remembrances of beauty and humor, even a little anger. One man remembered that when his mother was sick and lonely and uncertain about God’s judgment, he’d asked if I’d give her a call. I gave her many calls. She called  me “her spiritual advisor,” and, after she’d read my memoir, declared: “Well! I guess if this woman did all this acting up and is a priest, I must be fine with God.”

Parting Words  We each offered parting thoughts—humorous, wise, and into the future. I am only qualified to share my own.

Well, we are soaring up, up, and away with Elijah in the whirlwind, but according to a typo in today’s bulletin we’ll be back again next week.
   
My two favorite spiritual gifts are grit and grace. [Grit and grace! they repeated knowingly.] A lot’s been said about grace, God’s, yours, ours, so I’m going to zero in on grit. I know some of you worry about the future of this parish, but let me assure you, you have what it takes in your DNA to thrive. I call this grit your blunt force determination and resilience. Two iconic examples:
    -Years ago a fire threatened to burn down the sanctuary. The rector, the legendary Mr. Cutler, placed his body between the stained glass apse window of Christ presiding at the Eucharist and a fireman wielding a large axe, ready to demolish the window. The window survived and the sanctuary didn’t burn down. Grit and grace.

     -Once a diocesan bishop was thinking of closing this parish. A small group of stalwart gritty parishioners, some of them here today, raised a great fuss, organized, and, as legend would have it, actually barred the bishop from entering the sanctuary.  I love the legend, but, in this case, the real story is even better: the gritty small group organized, went out into Charlestown, and rallied as many people as they could ambush to come to church that Sunday. The poor bishop arrived to a full house. He didn’t dare close the place after such a show of Christian zeal! Grit and grace.

The challenge this gritty and graced parish faces today, I think, is twofold: trust mightily in your DNA and simultaneously, slow down, listen to your self, to God, to one another, even a bishop. Christ isn’t presiding over a horse race, you know.

Carry on with grit and grace, beloved. You got this one. 
   

2019.01.06 Oh, My God. Epiphany LIghts.

The church begins the season of Epiphany today. It’s the season of light, of manifestations of Christ in our lives, of new beginnings. Epiphany light makes what was hidden come to light, often startlingly. We ask: What is this? Is this God?  Our biblical ancestors asked this about Jesus: Is this God? It took them a long time to see, and longer to say: yes, we see God here. It took more time to realize that after Jesus died, they still saw and felt Jesus’s presence. They called this the Light of Christ, and said again: yes, this is God.

Epiphany invites us still to see that light, and still to say: yes, this is God. And yes, God in Christ illuminates, and yes,  it's not always easy and sweet.
                                         OH, MY GOD.

Seriously, I have a black tee-shirt from the Episcopal Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City with Oh, my God., in white calligraphy on it. Note the emphatic period not an overenthusiastic !.

Do you have epiphanies that feel spiritual? Spirituality is a matter of training your heart and your eye to see beyond or inside a simple ordinary scenario and marvel at its sudden inexplicable grandeur. Do you ask: Is this God? Listen to how often you, or people around you, say or text: OMG! OMG!
                                            *  *  *  *  *  *  *

Across the street from us there’s a creche—not unusual at Christmastide, but this one is a standout, not for its artistic beauty or creativity but for its inner glory. The creche scene is squeezed into the small fenced-in strip of concrete alongside the front of the house.The traditional manger figures are all present, including a camel tied to a fence post so it won’t blow away. The figures are life-sized, colored pink and blue and yellow, save for the camel and Joseph who get to be browny/goldish. Each figure is illumined. It is honestly a most gawdy scene, yet every year out it comes—set up faithfully, tenderly by its owners. This year all the lightbulbs, save for Joseph and an angel, were out. The creche stood darkened. I thought maybe the owners had lost their enthusiasm. But, Oh, my God!  on Christmas eve new lights bulbs suddenly flickered on for Mary, Jesus, Magi, shepherd, sheep, and the other darkened wise men. Some work went into that illumination, some money and effort, some God.
                                         OH, MY GOD.

A young man rode by on his bike with his small son in a seat on the back of the bike. He was going fast, possibly in a hurry to get home before pitch dark. I watched and saw the little boy gesticulate with his arms, and also no doubt shouting. The dad screeched the brakes on and executed a swift, not without risk, u-turn. Why? Oh yes, the siren call of the train whistle, the clang clang of the crossing gates coming down, and the train’s light approaching. The child simply had to see this, so dad whipped around so the child could wave vigorously to the train from his little seat.
                                         OH, MY GOD.

A very self-important man holding the highest office in our land had a conversation with a seven-year-old child. He asked the child whether he believed in Santa Claus. “Oh yes” said the boy. “Isn’t that a bit marginal for a seven year old?” said the man. Undaunted, the child nodded, saluted the man and stuck to his answer. One can only hope the child did not know the meaning of “marginal”—or better yet, rejected it.  

When I was seven, a friend in school told me in no uncertain terms that there was no Santa Claus. She had a very good reason for her surety: Santa certainly couldn't afford all those presents. I went home and told my parents: “You won’t believe the stupidest thing Nancy told me in school.” I scoffed. I continued to believe in Santa Claus. I still do, marginal that I am. This might explain the fact that no one has ever dissuaded me from my own devotion to God and all things religious.
                                        OH, MY GOD.

Daniel Jackson, author of "Portraits of Resilience", a book that brings light to people’s stories of depression in order to reduce the stigma of shame that surrounds mental illness, keeps a blog called “Resilience Postcard.”  Recently he posted this idea: Civility = Optimism

“You can’t solve a problem with the very means that created it in the first place. Radicalism and incivility got us where we are now; only thoughtful compromise and relentless civility will bring us back.  . . .  Civility is essential in our personal lives too. It’s not just that being civil to each other makes our interactions more pleasant. Or that behaving in a civil way, and restraining our anger, is curiously empowering.

"More than anything, I believe, it’s that civility is a form of optimism, because it draws us back from the precipice. Civility tells us that our society is not yet in such dire straits that we must take up arms against each other. That people are fundamentally good, and that rational and sympathetic discourse can change minds. That each human being deserves as much respect as any other; and that many small actions can bring about big changes.”
                                      OH, MY GOD.
                                          
Sometimes what is unspoken carries more power than what is spoken. Some inner explosions represent truth, even when civility keeps us from speaking them aloud. Well-meaning religious idiots often say in the face of a sudden trauma of unimaginable death: “God never gives us more than we can handle.”  Here are Elaine Pagels’s inner reactions from her memoir, Why Religion?, after her young son and her husband died a year apart:“How dare you speak of this as a gift from God? What do you know of what I can—or cannot—handle?” Never stifle the soul-truth of a profound spiritual outcry with religious platitudes. Never, never do it. Never. If God is God, God cries out. Christians ought to know this. Let’s not give God a bad name or demolish divine Love.
                                   OH, MY GOD—NO.

On a sweet note, here is a photo of a tree ornament my son John created, with help I'm sure, when he was in nursery school in 1973. On the back are his initials and date:  JTB, 1973. His nursery school teacher saved some of these ornaments and hangs them on her Christmas tree. She is nearing ninety, and John is nearing fifty. Memories, like Love, never die.
                                   OH, MY GOD—YES. 

2018.06.24 On the Divine Beauty of Children

Children have been in the news a lot lately, mostly in horror stories of cruelty at our borders—cruelty that makes my heart quiver. Just this morning in the Boston Globe I read the story of a young teenage girl who jumped to her death from a Massachusetts Turnpike overpass bridge onto the busy highway below. Her young body lay in the breakdown lane last Monday as cars sped by. Her family tracked her cell phone GPS. The final sentence of the piece by Mark Arsenault iced my lifeblood: “And yes, it was early and it had been dark, but it hurt Dean (the father) that nobody had stopped for his baby.”

Lord, have mercy, I prayed—not reasoned but real, and full of fear for our own grandchildren. It took time, some conversation, and a morning in church where a million chants and hymns, holy words and music, lovely food, and tributes to a departing priest both absorbed and converted my fears to gratitude. I think of this odd experience as an answer to a very old prayer—the baby talk of early Christianity: Lord have mercy.  

With gratitude I write about some of our children of issue. Children of issue is a legal term for one’s kids. It means children or lineal descendants such as grandchildren or great-grandchildren, but only the direct bloodline. Associations to this “issue” term suggest legal battles over custody or inheritance—control or money. Who are the real bloody children of issue? But my associations are spiritual, not legal. It’s my wont to see divinity in everything, but just because it’s my wont doesn’t mean it’s errant.

Our “issues”  number 12, 6 boys, 6 girls, ranging from 22 to 4, and some pugs, Louie and Frankie and Olive. We count them as “issue” because their owner, my second daughter, Jill Brakeman, does. They go to work and help their Mama the lawyer, sort out many complicated issues.
 
Plenitude and potentiation are words that pop into my mind when I think of children. It’s June and many of our “issues” are blooming.

I believe children are born insistently human, vulnerable, and innocent—not sinful. God is present in every single conception and birth. Christian baptism is the sacramental affirmation of that graced condition. These are Christ’s children of issue.

Our “issues” don’t visit much because they are in the middle of their own “project life.” We don’t visit much, mostly for the same reason. But when there’s a visit there is joy. Facebook has no flesh, but it fills in when visits aren’t possible.

Dick’s youngest child, a daughter, Honor, was just here for a few days with her son Brianjohnson who is thirteen. They are vivacious and full of fun, and Brianjohnson has the biggest laptop I’ve ever seen. It’s keyboard is back-lit in red and there’s a small satanic insignia on the top—Alienware. “I can play games right on the computer. This computer can do that.”  He brims with joy, much deeper than any computer.

In other June news, Beverley Brakeman, the oldest of our 12, is now officially the new Director of Region 9A of the United Auto Workers, sworn in at their 37th Constitutional Convention. Bev will lead the Connecticut-based region forward in their ongoing advocacy for workers’ rights. Bev has always been a leader. Ask her siblings. Already facing big challenges to her program, she felt normal temptations to split, but she said. “I won’t because good leaders don’t do that.” We couldn’t be in Detroit to cheer Bev and hear her acceptance speech, but I know she received heartfelt and hearty salutations from her members and more than one standing ovation. Her boyfriend and her two daughters and her dad and stepmom all were there. Bev is bringing me a “Team Brakeman” tee shirt. Here she is giving her acceptance speech and with her brother Rob and with Chris Corcoran.

Another brimming-with-pride-and-joy “issue” is Thomas Joseph Simeone (middle) who just graduated from 5th grade. He’s 11 and a serious hockey and baseball player. When he was little he made sure to kiss all his many stuffed animals goodnight. This kid has soul. So does his sister, Lucia, (top) who recently suffered a severe break in her elbow and surgery but plans to strengthen herself so she can return to the sport she so loves. And then there is Harrison, 8, the youngest of these three—solemn and bright-eyed. He’s a kid who could actually run/skitter sideways just after he’d learned to walk.



Yesterday we went to a marathon dance recital in which one of our “issues” Eliza Brakeman, 14, danced. She moves with precision and is obviously delighted with this sport of beauty and energy—and community. Dancers, like singers, do not always have solos so they must cooperate in the movement together‚ as one. That is the spirituality of dance.

And here is one happy little boy out for his first ride on Daddy’s (John Brakeman, 47) motorbike. Dylan Brakeman is just four. When the bike started up and moved out, he hollered, “Hey, baby!”

Children of all ages brim over, not just the privileged ones. I’ve seen photos of kids brimming over and laughing even in the midst of squalor and poverty.

I know I exaggerate and am selective to make my point but I did see happy, poor Palestinian children in a refugee camp in Israel when we visited in 2015. Out of respect I didn’t take any photos. I’ve also seen children happy while terminally ill when I was a chaplain on the pediatric floor of a large city hospital.

All children are children of issue of the one God called Love. And their joyful beauty, against all reason, is contagious—I dare say divine.

 

2018.05.06 Creation Praise

Creation Praise
. An early Celtic prayer

I offer Thee
Every wave that ever moved,
Every heart that ever loved,
Thee, my Creator's Well-Beloved,
Dear Lord.
Every River Dashing,
Every lightning flashing,
Like the angel's sword.
Benedicimus Te!
I offer Thee Every Cloud that ever swept
O'er the skies and broke and wept
In rain, and with the flowerlets slept.
My king.
Each communicant praying,
Every angel staying
Before Thy throne to sing.
Adoramus Te!
I offer Thee
Every flake of virgin snow,
Every spring of earth below,
Every human joy and woe,
My love!
O Lord! And all the glorious
Self o'er death victorious,
Throned in heaven above.
Glorificamus Te!

From Calvin Miller, The Path of Celtic Prayer (Downers Grove: IVP, 2007), p. 96

A sturdy and relentless theology of Creation, aka cosmology, is crucial right now. We need to stop arguing differences, to appreciate both diversity AND the wholeness of God’s creating. We need to do this in order to collaborate to save our one small unit of divine cosmic creativity. Such a perspective has been present in the Celtic tradition for centuries, as the above prayer illuminates.

Hearing the Creation story in Genesis always gives me a spiritual boost. It’s majestic, bold, and grand—a poem of overwhelming inclusivity and diversity. We pay lip service to diversity, yet it terrifies us. Still, God potentiated all this Wonder, culminating in beings made in the divine image—humanity.

BUT . . . did Godde create a hierarchy of being? Humanity immediately fell prey to such a notion and acted on it—men at the top, of course. All religions downsized Creation's wholeness and rank-ordered humanity and all other matter for the sake of power and control. Some things good and others bad. God's idea was that ALL of it was GOOD. This can't be said enough. 

Later in my studies I fell in love with Irenaeus of Lyons’s famous saying: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” I had that phrase calligraphed on the invitation to my ordination to the priesthood.  I still believe it, but thanks in part to the biblical Job I have a new vision. When the faithful Job lost everything he had, except his insistent faith, he prayed—harangued—Godde to answer for the excess of calamity on such a faithful servant. God, more patient than the impatient Job, finally appeared to Job and walked him through the whole of Creation.

Once again awed, I learned that divine creativity was boundless—and ALL of it is the glory of God.

Jesus the Christ preached Love, period. This embrace includes ALL creation. Jesus might be horrified at how exclusive Christians have made his name.

The work of Jewish scholars, like Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, is essential to make us aware that we Christians do not need to buy into anti-Jewish translations of scripture, or Christian chauvinism, in order to assure the uniqueness of our Jesus.

As I approach my ninth decade, my body warns, “maybe not” while my mind says, “yes you can!” I slow down, take time to observe as much as I can. I relish the small things more than ever—all good, all Glory, all God.
    -A tiny ant makes its way along the edge of my home altar, stopping occasionally to wave its sensory antennae before it crawls up to join Jesus on the cross—a wise and foolish ant.
    -A frantic squirrel nibbles at the edge of a discarded sandwich crust. Alert, it drops the crust and dashes to a perch in a nearby tree. Five minutes later the squirrel returns, knows exactly where that crust has dropped, retrieves it, and resumes its “communion.”
    -A small boy speeds on his scooter down the hill in the playground; he is thrilled; his dad sees he will be unable to stop before he reaches the edge of the trafficked road ahead. Dad dashes.
    -A baby in church practices her newly discovered extended squeal—a siren of praise.
    -The redbud tree in our yard bursts into bloom, its bare branches popping with dark pink blossoms. They weren’t there yesterday.

Godde, save us from exceptionalism: Christian, human, even American. Glorificamus Te for  the whole shebang.
     

Weak and Strong—Whatever

I remember in seminary we frantic students, just trying to keep up with heavy readings and papers due all at once, used to engage in strenuously absurd debates about the “weak” and the “strong.”  We, without proper exegesis, thought that Paul was teaching that weak people were inferior to strong people who could eat meat sacrificed to idols to their hearts’ content. Like us!

Our level of hysteria about this teaching of Paul to the Church in Corinth (I Corinthians 8:1-13)  stood in direct correlation, if not cause and effect, to our own painful uncertainty about what we were doing studying God when we could hardly breathe from the strain of our, yes, weakness: believing that studying God might just bring us closer to God.

The lector who read this Pauline passage today in our parish church is a very competent reader, an intelligent man, and a master of grammar. He did pretty well, only stumbling once over Paul’s rhetoric and hopelessly run-on sentences. Poor Paul suffered from too many semi-colons, if nothing else. And we? Do we suffer from fearing we might be “weak”? Do we blame Paul for our imagined spiritual deficits?

I hope I have obfuscated enough to make myself sound like Paul, whose image is even blurry. It’s a cover-up for how truly weak I do feel, because I am not able to help one of my adult children the way I think a strong  mother should. I can love; I can be present; I can listen without judgment; I can talk to compassionate souls; I can pray silently and mightily that all will be well but never say that out loud because I don’t know.

Is this what Paul meant by “weak”?  Sort of, yes. Paul was writing about the state of one’s conscience with respect to certain cultural expectations or personal wounds we do not understand. I can not know or understand. I can cry.

Back to scripture. Historically, sacrificing animal flesh to the gods was customary atonal practice—bringing people closer to God. Paul acknowledged that for some people such a practice had spiritual value. Christ’s reconciling work however rendered this practice idolatrous. “Food does not bring us close to God.” Christ does.

BUT—here’s the kicker: The “weak” of conscience still believed, for whatever reasons, that such practices would bring them closer to God. Those who knew better, the “strong” of conscience, would sin against Christ if they failed to respect the conscience of the “weak.”

My late aunt, an aggressive convert to Roman Catholicism, believed it necessary to the salvation of her immortal soul to eat fish—never meat—on Fridays. Her rival sister, my mother, thought this was “stupid.” They argued. I agreed with my mother. [Well, as a child I agreed with her. Today I think I'd be better off fasting every day, for soul and body management at 79.]. Mostly, we avoided having my aunt for dinner on a Friday, but if we did have her, we did NOT serve meat out of respect for her  beliefs, letting our own judgments go—at least for that night. 

I’d love to tell you we were doing this for Christ’s sake, but I couldn’t swear to it. I hope I am in Christ with my vulnerability and helplessness, but I can’t swear to it. And so: Amen.

2017.12.31 Threats With Promises

Threats in world many. Each carries promise. Indulge year-end blogger rant in headlines. Bless you.

1. Drugs: far more abundant with cheap choices and more omnipresently aggressive in their demands for attention. It’s hard to say no.
     YET many do, and many heal from addictive disease through medication and therapy, and from love, faith and hope—three unconditional spiritual values. Yes, unconditional.

2. Venomous American political conversation: escalates to violence, government paralyzed, guns more available to more people than ever—and considered indispensable to some. To inject sanity and, godde forbid, love for all, into this environment risky as hell.
    YET good people, political and priestly, keep praying and working for good gun control legislation and an end to violence in speech and action. They are the blood donors, the organs our culture needs.

3. Sex, as in practice thereof and orientation therein: acceptance, no, expectation, that sexual behavior, yes, intercourse, is the normative even for teens, common—and competitive. When did you have your first lay—or get laid? When did you lose your virginity first? When did you have your first smoke, beer, snort—gun? Kiss feared old-fashioned. It may have lost its supremacy as a sign of young, tenderly-cautious, physical attraction-towards-love.
    YET older teens and twenties are engaging in less sex than past generations. No one knows why. Possibly choosing to explore getting-to-know-you love first? Psychological data: females depend on mutually supportive relationships for their well-being. So do men, GLBQIS. Dating around, sleeping around, hooking up, one-nighters can’t satisfy the deep longing for relationship; nor can erections and orgasms.

4. Marriage: uncertain and faraway goal for many. In olden days girls pushed and shoved into it by the fear, no terror, of getting pregnant. Currently, more choice. Birth control seen as  protective, except for STDs, but the safety it provides can hinder long-term relationship security aka marriage.
    YET emotional commitment, whatever one’s orientation, is, yes, still nourishes mind, heart, body, and soul—if nothing else to practice the sanctity of marriage should one choose it in the future.   

5. Technology: broad range of options, bordering on omniscience (Google) and omnipresence (i-phones actually text you to let you know your parents are tracking your whereabouts—true), and omnipotence (Amazon Prime.) These attributes used to belong to God (by whatever name) aka divine Mystery. They still do. Technology unable to provide flesh-and-blood love, unconditional beneficence, or shared audible visible embodied rich laughter. Easy to hide behind emojis.
    YET social media technology does give people a community of understanding, support, advice, accompaniment, and safety.

6. Religion: weak in the northeast; humanism, atheism, secularism viable options; religions fail at apologetics. What does this or that religion mean? Who or what really is God? Christ? Moses? Is there spirituality beyond morality and rules of conduct? Is it enough to be a good person?       
Researcher at Harvard Divinity School, Angie Thurston, calls millennial generation “religiously homeless” in opinion piece by Zachary Davis:“Has Secularism Gone Too Far?”  (Boston Globe, Ideas, 12/24/17) Response letters (12/31/17) unanimously—tellingly— defensive, angry.
    YET secularism thought too rational, pessimistic. Davis identified a mismatch between the job religion is supposed to do and society’s floundering search for that job to be done. The job? Not the preaching of morality, but the steady inspiration of hope, not just in afterlife but now: “. . . a hope that goes beyond reason—to give us the strength to pursue a world beyond reasonable expectations.”  Religion stretches the possible.  Granddaughter asks, with an edge: “Grammy, why do you pray?” “I pray because I love. And because my love is not enough.”

7. Public education: public schools forbidden to teach religion as a cultural phenomenon, as the spawn of great works of philosophy and literature, even some biblical literature and moral principles. Something missing. Separation of church and state necessary good. Still, young seekers in public settings unable to study every blooming thing they wonder about. “Wisdom begins in wonder.” Socrates.  But not in our public schools. Religion not even an elective. Religion condemned as proselytizing to fill its coffers. Good teaching never proselytizes.
    YET  . . . slowly religion and wonderments sneak in and silently infect and inform many curious hearts. The same granddaughter searches on line, not in school. Tries pantheism, atheism, agnostic theism, and many things. Trust God will find her and she will find the Love therein that she seeks.

8. Theology/God: how we think and speak about divinity, factor in sociological analysis. Religions consistently allow one image to dominate, a theological stereotype, a superpower deity who is almighty, transcendent, masculine, and interventionist. Image idolatrous. Limits divinity; limits human spirituality.
    YET traditional theology has always proclaimed God as equally immanent. God lives and moves deep within flesh, strengthening, encouraging and empowering love us to love—no matter what. In this God I trust. In this God possible to love, live, move and have being. For this Christians, this is God Jesus died for—to die and so to live.

8. Spirituality: name for what all humanity deeply craves and often does not find in society or church.
    YET Love discovered available in ditches and trenches, in pews and sewers, on streets and in mansions, in life and in death, and in one’s own lonely unlovely flesh. A woman, struggling for years to create/enhance her own self-esteem, suddenly hugs a friend and sobs:“I’ve just discovered that there is a little piece of God in all of us, and in me, too”
    YET God is Mystery—beyond our words—and small enough to adore them.

9. Personal: beloved husband and wife born on same day three years apart. Wife has seniority. Today both alive and well, bloated with gratitude—also fret, spat and grieve changes and terrors that seem to take away church and country. 
     YET  . . . they can still laugh and hug
    YET . . .  one day both will die and leave this beautiful place and all the people they love.
    YET . . .  there is something more Godde has in mind, they hope. Creation never stops.

Psalm 23, Beloved Prayer Song Re-potentiated

A word is dead when it is said
Some say
I say it just begins to live
That day
        Emily Dickinson, 1924

Hear an old favorite psalm with just a few fresh words that change its complexion. 

Psalm 23 translation, Pamela Greenberg The Complete Psalms

God is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack.
You lay me down in lush meadows.

You guide me toward tranquil waters,
reviving my soul.

You lead me down paths of righteousness,
for that is your way.

And when I walk through the valley, overshadowed by death,
I will fear no harm, for you are with me

Your rod and your staff—they comfort me,
You spread a table before me
in face of my greatest fears.

You drench my head with oil;
my cup overflows the brim.

Surely goodness and kindness
will accompany me all the days of my life

and I will dwell in the house of the Holy
for the length of my days.


The psalms are prayers—startlingly honest emotionally. No feelings are absent from these prayers, even violent ones, the ones that let us know where and how we are hurt and want to hurt back. Yet psalms are also poetry and we chant them. Pamela Greenberg has translated the psalms in creative new ways without allowing them to lose their poetic power and spirituality.

I love familiar words that lull me; I love fresh words to awaken me even more. These latter force me to pay attention, to tune in. That’s how I grow. Even in discomfort, there is soul. Besides, who says scripture must always comfort or edify?  Poetic words soothe and disturb in equal proportion, and psalms are poetry.
                                         *  *  * *

The Rev. Dr. Judith Fentress Williams, Old Testament professor at Virginia Theological Seminary, spoke to the Massachusetts clergy recently about the Old Testament—its value and its power, its connectedness with the fullness of earthly expression and experience. “Don’t be afraid of it. Preach from it,” she said.

I’ve always loved Old Testament. It was required in seminary, and the very first course I took at Yale Divinity School. The instructor began in solemn tones; “In the beginning, God potentiated……….. 

I wrote that down and tried to still my heart. Potentiated felt more powerful than created. It signaled the spiritual power behind/within everything that lives breathes and has being. It spoke to me of God’s agenda: ongoing potentiation. Whenever you are potentiated, by anything at all, you awaken. You feel suddenly lifted….in a word, resurrected. It’s a scary and a wonderful feeling.

The Spirit of God potentiates Life in the beginning, at the end, and in every second in between.
                                               *  * *  *


What do you notice in Greenberg’s translation of Psalm 23 that is different from what your ears are used to hearing? Say it aloud.

This translation is familiar —and brand new. The first thing I notice is: “God is my shepherd”— not the Lord. God is a name not a noun. God is free of royal role and all its accoutrements.

Then I notice is “there is nothing I lack.” It sounds different from: “I shall not want” or “I shall not be in want.”  “Nothing I lack” means I have everything I need. Do I? Even as I age and feel lacking in many joints, every sag of skin, every short-term memory lapse: what did I have for breakfast today? But with God I lack nothing.

This 23rd psalm hums along, and all of a sudden your mind is jarred. You expect: “You lead me in green pastures” And you hear: “You lead me in lush meadows.” The words mean the same and yet have different tonality, sensuality. Lush!

“You spread a table before me in the face of my (fill in the blank)—enemies, we all say. But we hear: “my greatest fears.”  What is potentiated by these new words? Are your fears like enemies? Do they not make you skulk, cringe, cower and hide? Are they at war with your aspirations? Do they help you sin against goodness? Is this translation as accurate as the idea of having real enfleshed enemies out to get you?

And “I will dwell in the house of (fill in the blank)…the Lord, we shout?  We hear instead: “the Holy.” Lord implies ruler; Holy suggests a quality of Being, a Presence within and without. This Holy Presence  “drenches” our heads with the oil of healing. “Drench” is more literal and stronger than “anoints.”

What do these new words potentiate in you? Maybe contempt or distaste? For me, it’s the knowledge that great words I love do not die when they are altered, but they do acquire a different flavor; they inspire me to think—again and again. As the poet says, these newly spoken and heard words live.

What am I saying? What am I thinking? What am I meaning? What words do I use?

Lastly, the image of the shepherd is softened by these new words. Real shepherds are rough and tumble, not so gentle with sheep. The divine shepherd accompanies yet neither drives not coddles. This shepherd is just be a little more, well, divine.

2017.07.16 Be a Seed Already!

The parable Jesus told about the sower who went out to sow seeds is a very familiar story and many people love it. Why? Because the sower is supposed to represent God, or Christ for Christians, this sower keeps on sowing seeds and more seeds and all different seeds— no matter what.

Jesus seizes all the authority and mastery he can summon, saying LISTEN! A sower went out to sow.  The farmers must have felt excited. Expectant. What would Jesus say? They knew that land was life. Maybe they’d get some hot agricultural tips.  I bet too they might have felt some anxiety, because this was Jesus and he had a habit of challenging them in odd ways.

LISTEN! he said, and listen they did, perhaps too hard, too eagerly, too selfishly.  

What happened to them, happens to us also. Because Jesus elaborated all the different kinds of soil—hard and dry, rocky, choking, no nutrients—and some good soil, they began to focus on the soil. No, obsess. What kind of soil are we, or literally if you were a farmer, do we have?  They, like we, quickly forgot about the faithful sower and the seeds. I’d bet that most interpretations of this parable focus on the soil alone. Is my soil, my church’s soil, good enough to receive, nourish and sprout more God’s seeds?

Let it go—for Christ’s sake.

Most of us develop such a toxic case of soil-angst that we forget about the seed with all its potential.

Still, being a seed isn’t easy. Seeds are tiny. They have no will of their own. They are scattered to and fro, and they don’t know what kind of soil they’ll hit. The destiny of a seed is vulnerable indeed. Yet, seeds have enormous potential—enormous potency. Seeds sprout. It is through seeds that Christ potentiates Life, if not Love.

Living in the city I am continuously amazed at how the tiniest of flowers and grass blades pop up between bricks and concrete stones. What resilience and strength these little seeds have to keep on growing toward light and air through thick concrete. They always sprout—no matter how much concrete we trowel on. Seeds are unstoppable. Just a few days ago, I saw three men on their hands and knees laboriously picking small green tufts of growth and tiny wild flowers out from between the concrete stones on a front sidewalk. They worked for a stone cutting outfit and had been hired to repave the area in front of the garage. But first…..they had to get rid of all the sprouted seeds. I laughed out loud. So you think those little seeds will never return to sprout, do you?

Contrary to all logic, tiny useless seeds sprout amidst concrete—real concrete as well as the concrete that forms around our hearts, the concrete that causes us to have rigid set attitudes and assumptions. God’s seeds always sprout.

When I feel sure that something is right, makes sense, or even is the way of God, I have to FORCE, yes, force, myself to stop and rethink things—not till after I’ve argued my case of course. I could be wrong, or the tradition, or my culture, or everything I learned in school, or what my parents taught me, or my church believed could be wrong. Or it all might need tilling or some more seeds. God the sower doesn’t cultivate wheat fields. God cultivates souls. God willingly and willfully without force, sows seeds and seeds and more seeds—many varieties of seeds over and over and over.

Years ago in Connecticut I worked as a chaplain in an alcohol/drug rehabilitation center. Many patients saw themselves  as “bad seeds” They were ashamed of themselves for their disease, and their relapses, their painful, painful addictive patterns. Oh, they readily condemned themselves—bad seed, bad soil, bad God, bad religion, bad chaplain—everything. They did this all of course with raucous laughter and good humor, which I saw as a sign that they were God’s seeds and didn’t know it.

Violating the separation of church and state, I used biblical stories a lot to help them see that God wasn’t the vengeful judge they thought God was, and that they weren’t bad seeds. The sower story was very popular, second only to the prodigal son. The stories were seeds to re-potentiated them, give them hope.

I would say something like: Listen! You’re a seed and if you hit a rough patch God/Higher Power will sow you again, and again.” There was a hush. In that hush I would quietly add: “with your help.”

And so it is for us: God never stops sowing you, never stops potentiating you. No matter how much concrete has been slathered on your soul, you are a seed to be sown by God-in-Christ. So listen! Hey!………

Be a seed already.