2022.06.12 Trinity Sunday. IT'S THE LANGUAGE!

For years I have squawked and lobbied, consistently and at varying levels of intensity about the need to change traditional theological language—words and ideas we Christians use to describe the image of God.  HE, HIM, HIS, ALMIGHTY, TRANSCENDENT, SUPERMAN OMNI-EVERYTHING. 

We have for millennia worshipped this Divinity, voiced from afar, presiding from above, empowering from without. Oh, I do know that there are many people, especially women, who wonder and protest such a patriarchal Divinity, even as they sing and praise otherwise. I know that many academics teach new ideas. Every Sunday School I ever attended and most preachers anywhere told me God was Love. And, yes, the Bible tells us so, too. 

What’s a girl to do? I fretted and even wrestled with this issue in my waking sleep. In my mind I howled at God, fretting about upcoming Pentecost and Trinity Sundays. What to say in my weekly blog? I thought God was silent because I could take care of this issue by myself. As I tossed about in my half-sleep I heard this: IT’S THE LANGUAGE!

It’s the language? The language?  I already know this. But what if this were God speaking directly to me? I thought it might truly be the bath kol  (Hebrew for the voice of God). If it were simply my own inner voice speaking to myself I’d have heard: “It’s the language, STUPID!”  

But God does not call anyone stupid. We do. 

*  *  *  * 

Feeling spiritually bolstered, I calmed down and considered exactly how and why words matter and words about God matter deeply?  I cringed at the number of times a good editor would write “WC” in my margins. WC= word choice, as in find a better word to make your point.  

It’s Trinity Sunday. I love the idea that God is One, a Creator whose singular divine immensity is shared with humanity and in all living things, yes flowers and weeds.

Now consider the language we Christians use to express this amazing mystery. 

FATHER=GOD  This WC is both gender-bound AND role-bound. Divinity is restricted.

SON=GOD        This WC is also restricted to male roles and gender. Jesus was a man. Christ, his title, is gender-free. 

HOLY SPIRIT = GOD  This WC is more free yet still is masculinized in some liturgies, some credal statements, and, though more mobile, remains exclusive. Some churches change the Spirits’ gender to She, but that feels condescending, a kindly and unofficial nod. 

This Trinitarian formula and its traditional language must be used by Episcopal clergy to baptize.

I used the required formula, adding another such as:  “I baptize you in the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, God, Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit.” My much longer-ordained spouse did the same.

Why quibble and bother? For me, the theological idea behind the Holy Trinity means the joining of humanity and divinity through sacramental grace—in Baptism and in Eucharist. When our WCs  bind BOTH divinity AND humanity into role and gender language, they undermine God the Creator’s immensity, restrict humanity and all nature, and generally fail to communicate what the Holy Trinity—three in one AND one in three— means. 

*  *  *  *

I’m an Episcopal priest, a spiritual director, and pastoral counselor, retired. I believe in the healing power of sacraments, music, and beautiful liturgy. I am not alone in feeling frustrated about the consistently patriarchal imaging of God in Christianity. I am also in my eighties, and I’m tired with not enough stamina to be a Job. 

Michael Hudson, Episcopal priest writes a meditation on cosmogenesis for Trinity:

The union of created life and God

eludes our understanding, but we trust

that here and now and through the sweep of time

we each exist in God. And God in us.” 

It is simply not that hard to get our WC’s together, to accurately represent an already beautiful idea, and to listen to God saying: IT’S THE LANGUAGE,  BELOVEDS.

Not only is the traditional language idolatrous, worshipping not God but the culture from which this language derives, it is also aesthetically clumsy. Try Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit.  

2022.03.27 A Prodigal Homecoming. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 3/27/22

This wonderful drawing by Tim O’Brien on the cover of the winter, 2021-2022 magazine, Columbia momentarily brought me home to my self, my soul, and divine omnipresence. 

I have so many memories of walking/trudging through all kinds of weather to night classes to earn my Masters degree in Spanish Language and Literature at Columbia. I used to wave and practically genuflect at the majestic steps leading into the halls of academe. I would have knelt before a statue like this one—to pray that I wouldn’t flunk out, or end up divorced before I even figured out what marriage was,  not to mention sex and procreation. 

I was newly married to Bill Brakeman in 1961 after a trip to Spain and a year of teaching Spanish to Smith students. We spent our first year in a small, one-room apartment on Claremont Avenue, on N.Y.’s upper west side. After eating dinner, prepared by this new “bride” who had ordered groceries delivered from a small local store and cooked one of five basic options, (chicken in some form, smothered in some soup, ham steak, pork chops, hamburger patties or meatloaf, minute steaks).  Then we went to bed, such as it was. We rolled into one another on a small pullout sofa bed and parted early each morning with a hug and a kiss. Bill would commute out to Connecticut to his engineering job, while I studied myself into oblivion, then walked over to campus for evening classes. I mean, after all, they awarded me a Danforth grant to get this degree, so I could teach Spanish. I’d better perform.  

We newlyweds must have had some conversations, but most of what I remember is exhaustion from studying, fretting over my distinctly inadequate culinary skills, and wondering if I was doing the right thing. I mean shouldn’t I be married AND pregnant by now, like it’s  supposed to happen? Be a mother?  A proper wife? Also can one get pregnant without orgasms?

Even now as I remember, I close my eyes tight and imagine myself into this wintry scene, transporting myself backwards into total student mood, a favorite fallback over the years. I wanted children, and what if my uterus suddenly aged too fast? Worrying was another fallback mood, as you can tell. Essentially, I felt pretty small and lonely and scared, like the bird—a Cardinal no less—on this cover art for the issue devoted to climate change. My imagination flew me into the wintry scene where I met my own Cardinal. 

 

Well, hello big guy.  Watcha doing?

Silence

Oh, your reading your texts or something, right?  I wish I had a phone like yours. Hey, I’m talking to you. 

Hmph

Thinking up a storm, I see. 

Little bird, little bird, do shut up. You’re casting a shadow on my phone. 

It’s snowing you see, and I just need a perch. Also, I’m lonely and bored out here.

Why won’t you talk to me? I’m pretty much of a standout feature in my flashy red suit. Like it?

I’m thinking. 

About?

Are you a Cardinal?

Yup, none other, or so they say. What other guy do you know who has such a handsome coxcomb? Hey, smile why don’t you, Mr. serious guy. What could be more fun than a conversation with another proud male in the snow on a moonlit evening in the midst of academia’s crowning jewel itself? Hey, are you grinning? 

Little Bird, little Bird where were you when I took myself so seriously, almost lost my way, or drowned in my own mind?

I was here, you just couldn’t see me. I am your imagination. I open you to create wonder and spy on God, to whom I introduced you to when you were a small child. Remember? You thought I was prodigal. But I was never wanton or wallowing in extravagance. I, like you, was just  explorative—searching out, crying out, longing, reaching—and sinning along the way.   

Cheerleading life itself, eh?  Well, thanks for the company out here in the snowy cold. 

Sure thing. I travel well. In Christian lore, I’m a symbol of vitality, sometimes a messenger. Church Cardinals dress all in red, strut their stuff, get stuffy. I do that too. So do you. Now cheer up. You can do this, even though you’re just pregnant. 

What? 

Oh, you didn’t know? Hit those books. Keep on going and next winter you’ll be trudging to the big city to take your comprehensive examinations here—great with child. I’ll be with you. 

So that was how I got through, got pregnant, received a Masters degree, and relied on my comprehensive imagination in its latest incarnation—a red male prodigal bird-angel—to remind me, once again, even now, to trust this Omnipresent One.   

2022.02.06 Paschal Mysteries, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The Christian Church’s central proclamation is called The Paschal Mystery, in caps to make sure everyone knows it’s of ultimate importance—and, well, crucial to my own wellbeing, now and forevermore. 

I remember once asking a church official with a higher title than mine: What really IS the Paschal Mystery anyway?  He coughed, cleared his throat, looked down on me and said, “My dear, you should know that one!”  Then he walked away, leaving me feeling ashamed and angry.

Why then am I wondering and worrying over this doctrine now? Because I’m 83.

I’m a word person, so I make sure I know, again, that “Paschal” means pascha Passover/ Easter, from Greek pascha, from Hebrew Pesach  or Passover. Good, it’s Christian and Jewish, nicely inclusive. My maternal grandfather was Jewish, so I’m all in, saved from all sides. Yes, but, I already learned all this in seminary, drank it into my flesh, practiced it regularly for 34 years as a priest at the altar of the sacrament, and wondered at its power. The Paschal Mystery. The Mystery part of it, I notice, is taken for granted. It’s like a way to field and discourage too many annoying questions like mine. Yet here I am asking it again—not because I doubt it, exactly, but because I doubt it, sort of. Am I saved, and if so, will it hurt much? 

What helps my old-age distrust, when words grow tiresome, is graphic art, pictures that tell me more than words, images that call my heart to attention.   

In this superb painting, called Creation and painted between 1508 and 1512, by Michelangelo Buonarroti Simoni for the Sistine Chapel, I at first see what I’ve always seen, even in Italy: the old man God, his anatomy delicately draped in a swath of cloth, looking feminine save for the beard, and surrounded by many cherubic faces in the clouds, creating the handsomely sinewed Adam, apparently on earth though not very distant. I’m fascinated. As I stare, my eyes fall on HANDS. I look down at my own hands wrinkled with veins, more blue and evident than they were when I was younger. Just now all I see in this painting is those two hands with perfectly drawn muscles, reaching, stretching, both together each one reaching with all its might, toward the other, their forefingers not quite touching—not quite. I stare and wonder at the depth of this mutual yearning between God and Humankind, between God and me, perhaps all Creation.

This, I think, or rather feel through my tears, is how much I, and maybe all human beings, yearn for connection with God—and how much God yearns back. And sometimes we do connect,  just lightly, just briefly, through a kiss, a laugh, a smile, a touch, a poem or music, a child, a ninety-some year old woman who misses her mouth with most every bite, chuckles, and keeps on going, the sight of a tiny bird swooping by outside, or a ladybug crawling about on the window ledge, going nowhere. Then each night, as I snuggle down for sleep, I reach my hand towards Dick’s. Aways warm, his hand reaches back.

In all these small ways I learn again that The Paschal Mystery is not tie-downable (lovely new word). It’s not even strictly Christian, nor magically distant. It is plural. It is perennial—within the enchanting repetitive cycling of life-death-new life—and again—each cycle more beautiful than the last, each spark of life a brief affirmative certainty.

2022.01.30 Holy Scripture—How Holy and Whose? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/30/22

I do not believe that Holy Scripture should be taken literally, as if everything that is in it happened just the way it was/is written, as if there is no room for interpretations and ongoing scholarly research, study, and prayerful discernment. 

How can one embrace something called “Holy” without acknowledging as well the grandly attracting Mystery, not for me to attain but for me to receive, love, and appreciate like the rays of the Sun. 

Having said all that, I do take Holy Scripture, which for me is the testaments of the Holy Bible, seriously. In fact, I take it too seriously to take it literally. I love it too much to demean its depths and flexibility, by insisting that there is only one single way to understand its various parts. I value divine spiritual mobility too much to limits its wisdom to a single holy document, no matter how canonized it may be. I also respect Holy Scripture too much to make it the single measure of my faith in God.  

And yet, I take Holy Scripture too seriously to take it, or any portion of it, as THE Word of God, as if God dictated it word for word, while some speedy ancient stenographer/scribe wrote it all down, or as if its contents and revelations were static, the sole source of divine holy Word to faithful communities.

Still, every Sunday in many Christian churches, worshippers hear the lector say, The Word of God, to which they all respond, Thanks be to God after a biblical reading from anywhere in the whole Bible. Is this word the only holy one?  Or is it just for now? I’m grateful that alternative, more flexible options are offered in our Episcopal tradition, so a reader can say, Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people, to which we respond, Thanks be to God. 

Fulsome holiness, praise, and thanks, are reserved for the portion of the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ from Mark, Matthew, Luke or John, read each Sunday. The gospel gives a special shout out to Jesus the Christ whose story is, well, gospel. Most preachers focus on the Gospel in the sermon. This top billing makes sense, because Jesus is, to Christians, Lord, Savior, Son of God—our raison d’être. But this story is not considered holy for those outside the Christian tradition. Holiness is not just Christians. Jesus was Jewish. Many others have holy stories. 

I am not unique in my thoughts and queries, although I have wondered if I am a sinner, maybe a heretic, fooling myself for the sake of my own egotistical meanderings, ideas that energize and revitalize me. I conclude each time of self-doubt and recrimination by returning to the roots of my own childhood story. My mother read me The Little Book About God by Lauren Ford when I was 3 2/3. (I’m sure of my age, because my sister wasn’t born yet). Mom also told me I was a miracle and a gift from God. I was already inquisitive to the point of annoyance. Hence, when this book and my mother’s own joy collided with my natural curiosity, I just had to meet this God. I found the necessary  privacy for my monumental quest under our large dining room table with a cloth to the floor. There I set up a child’s inquisition for God—something like, I’m here and I want my parents to pay more attention to me, but what I really want to know is who are you? I got no answers, only the sound of my own imagination pounding silently away at God’s absence. God never said a word, nor did God grant any of my several wishes, such as banishing my mortal enemy, the martini glass. What God did do was to listen without advice. This way I learned that I mattered.  

It is to this God that I still pray. This God I followed to the church altar—not to be a bride but to become a priest at the altar. This God I discovered in the Holy Bible, a collection of stories about people to whom God spoke, and to whom God listened.  And it is this God who in time finally spoke to me with the simplest and dumbest question imaginable: Why are you doing this? (I was just baking chocolate chip cookies for my children who loved them.) 

Yet this question awakened me with words I knew were not my own, words that stunned me, words whose meaning I felt compelled to explore, words that brought me up short, that forced me to, well, check out my depressed mood with a therapist. From this God, I learned that not only can God listen to little girls, but God can ask dumb questions, and is no bully. In fact, God waited over ten years for me to address just this one “dumb” question—to wrestle an answer out of myself. I felt as if I were writing my own scripture, maybe not so holy, but my best effort.  

This God is why I believe that small stories of deep meaning come to each one of us, in all religions and all spiritualities, ancient and modern. From such inaudibly audible communications come stories, both tender and fierce, mobilized by Love. This is how I first knew that I mattered, and this is how I still know that all living things in heaven and on earth live, and move, and have their being in God. (Acts 17:28) 

Here’s a story, told about the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a man to whom God spoke in deeply holy ways, ways that engaged his own emotions and questions, ways that shaped Heschel as a theologian who told stories about God as an intimate presence. Both Heschel’s spirituality and his social-justice activism grew from prayer within this intimate God’s presence. There was no separation between Heschel’s religious faith rituals and his politics. To me, Heschel is a spiritual giant, although he was aman short in height.  

In 1968, Heschel was engaged in protest marches and demonstrations against the Vietnam War. One Sabbath his brother protesters and friends, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., came to Heschel’s apartment and were greeted with this welcoming exuberance: “You are just in time for the last bit of disengagement from the world we have to change . . .  Shabbat!”  Heschel let Coffin hold the ritual spices and King the candle while they chanted the prayers, smelling the spice box and collectively drinking a sip of wine. Then Heschel told Coffin and King the story of the wise men of Chelm who deliberated over whether people grew from the feet up or from the head down. The answer was neither. Quoting the va-yetel el echav, he said that individuals grow from within and eventually move beyond their own egos towards other people. “Here’s to the world’s outgrowth of selfishness towards the humanities . . . L’Hayim!”  The Rev. Daniel Berrigan a Roman Catholic priest, called Heschel’s practice of uniting prayers and social action for justice “an ecumenism I could take seriously.” (p.195 Abraham Joshua Heschel. A Life of Radical Amazement, biography by Julian Zelizer, 2021)

Holiness belongs to everyone everywhere always. 

It grow from within. You’ll recognize it. 

2021.07.11 I Know This, Said The Child

When Jesus of Nazareth chose his disciples, he didn’t look for them in expected places, such as his own temple, authority figures of his day. No, he chose working people, the poor, the mentally ill, and children—those who knew their need of God.
            
                            *  *  *  *

When the family of my youngest son made their first visit to see our new digs, seven-year-old Dylan whipped breezily through our apartment, commenting on nothing except how huge our bed was, and asking “When are we going to get pizza?” Nevertheless, when he came into my office and looked at the home altar where I kneel to pray, he stopped and took a longer-than-a glance look. I imagined he was thinking how weird his Grammy was, but then he pointed to the small wooden crucifix arrayed in seashells in the center.

I remembered when I'd decided to buy this little item. I snuck into a tiny gift shop located downstairs under a large shopping mall and run by some Carmelite sisters. It felt almost secretive, illegal, to be selling religious artifacts while above so many people were engaged in one of the most important worshipful activities in American life—shopping.  I was shopping too—underground, for a crucifix. But I’d been in spiritual direction with a Jesuit, and I knew I had to meet Jesus on the cross without a flinch or a moan—or at least with all my own flinches and moans.
 
Resisting my habitual impulse to explain, or invade the moment with resurrection talk, I shut up as I watched Dylan. Pointing at the crucifix, the little boy said: “Oh, I know this one. They shot lots of darts and spears into him and he died. It was very sad. But he was good.” Then he shot off, leaving me puzzled and amazed.

Dylan had been baptized Christian as an infant and privately by a willing Congregational minister on a Florida visit to his maternal grandpa. It was, in my opinion, one of those side-deals with little attempt to honor the sacrament of becoming a Christian in community. I confess I’d felt angry, hoping to have the honor of baptizing him as I had my other grandchildren. But who dares fuss about baptismal rights or rites?

This wise child has never been to church, but he has his own unique way of being in the world.

Where did his stunningly accurate and uncomplicated summation of Jesus’s crucifixion come from?
        A fantasy sport on his little game screen?
        Eager first grade classmate’s “evangelism”?
        The biblical prophet, Isaiah (11:6) in which little children shall lead the way to the kingdom?

Jesus in Mark 10, miming the prophet, teaching that we enter the kingdom of God as children?    

Theologians may continue, and will continue, to debate and fuss over the theology of the crucified one we call Lord, as in how could a good God allow such an unjust and cruel thing happen to a Christ, a Messiah—and worse, a Beloved Son?

So go, already, buy a crucifix you can hold and rejoice in what you can’t explain.

2020.10.18 Wisdom. Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Wisdom is considered one of God’s unfathomable gifts.  This is a note on the first chapter of the biblical Book of Sirach the central theme of which is that Wisdom comes from God, was with God in the beginning, is of God, is a female figure, and is deeply connected with spirituality. Whew!     

But why is Wisdom “unfathomable”?  Well, I suppose because Divinity itself is unfathomable.

Back in the 1980s, I was the chaplain at an alcohol/drug rehab facility. I was giving a talk on Spirituality to the patient community and ventured into the topic of Wisdom and its role in recovery. I began with a phrase from the biblical book called Sirach: “To fear the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, or God./Higher Power” A young black man leapt to his feet, raised his fists and shouted: “What the hell do you know about wisdom, anyway—or God?” He called me inept and stupid. I froze. Unbidden, a surge of energy rose up inside me:  “Excuse me, sir, sit down right now. I have listened to you and others with respect. You owe me the same. So sit down and shut up!” He sat down—wisely. Whether this was a wise confrontation or not, I have no idea, but it surely was unfathomable and felt damn good-godly to me.
            
                                             *  *  *  *

Sister Stan (Stanislaus Kennedy), Irish Sister of Charity since 1958, wrote in Gardening the Soul. Soothing seasonal thoughts for jaded modern souls, 2001. Her entry for October 12, our traditional Columbus Day, now quite discredited, unless you are wise enough to hold the wonder of explorative adventure in your soul alongside modern historical skepticism about legends, is:

Wisdom is not knowing as well as knowing, and being at peace with that uncertainty. It is about awareness and it is about wonder. It is about stopping and noticing phenomena in the world around us—air, water, wind, light, gravity, birth, rocks, heartbeats—and appreciating and understanding them.   

To glean wisdom we must keep ourselves open and receptive and perceptive. Wisdom comes from boldness, from participation and tolerance, uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, suspicion, pain, suffering, joy, laughter, fun and love. Wisdom comes from our participation in and appreciation of all things in our mind, heart, body, and spirit.

                                           *  *  *  *

Who is wise? What is wise? Why be wise?  You could after all be a wise-arse or a wiseacre.

Some years ago my late great Jesuit Spiritual Director Pierre Wolff  wisely told a group of retreatants, eager for a clear Word from God: "If you want to know how you stand with God, then look at how you stand with your neighbors.” Simple, right?  Inside I thought: hopeful, uneasy, fearful, judgmental, ashamed, loving, longing, hopeful.  Simple?   

From ancient Persian wisdom: “How do you know God?” You should respond, ‘Because God is in my heart.’ Can we know ourselves if we do not know God? The real understanding of ourselves is our understanding of God.”

The Bible is called Holy exactly because it is a jumble of unfathomably interconnected paradoxes—all of them beloved in Godde. The biblical book called Ecclesiasticus (book of the Church) or The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, composed about 180 BCE, was not included in the Jewish canon, but considered canonical by the early Christian Church. Protestant reformers relegated it to Apocryphal writings—runners up. Hence!—Sirach was and is controversial, unfathomable, and obviously wise.  

Sirach makes the case that Wisdom is from the Lord God, insisting throughout: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning is Wisdom. . . . To fear the Lord is fullness of wisdom; she inebriates mortals with her fruits . . .”  (Sirach 1: 16) This line is scandalous. She? Inebriation as in drunkenness? Her fruits? Sex?  Unfathomable! Yet it was the energy that surged inside me and gave me courage enough to confront those in my path who would hold me back, turn deaf ears.
 
Wisdom inebriates mortals with her fruits. She inebriates mortals with her fruits.

HOLY WISDOM. HOLY WORD. Thanks be to God.

Oh, and what does Wisdom look like? Check your mirror, my friends.

2020.01.19 Prayer Habits

The most important thing I offer about prayer is this: Make it a habit! Some of it will feel useless or tepid, or foolish, or too wise for your own darn good, but do it anyway. It forces you to shift the focus away from your own glorious and ever-needy ego—at least once a day. It humbles you to invest some faith in a mysterious power deeper and greater than yourself, while you are simultaneously investing in your embodied self.

Things about prayer:
    There is no wrong or right way to pray.
    Never pray for something you are not willing also to work for, however you can.
    There are public prayers we all say together when we worship, and there are personal prayers we say inside our hearts, or alone in voice or song. All are equally spiritual. There is absolutely nothing you cannot express to God in prayer.
    You do not have to believe in God to pray.  If you’re worried about that, just pretend you do, or address an image of God you can open up to. God does not care. (It’s humans who do!) Besides, God will pray with and for you—no matter what.
    Prayer may not change things outside you, but it will change you from within. You will get to know yourself better as you pray. What matters most deeply? What are your ideas about God and why? What happens when you pray to Jesus?
    It is as important to ask as it is to receive. BOTH. And for the love of God do remember to say thank you, occasionally.
    It’s important to involve your body when you pray. There are many praying postures.
    Jews daven and murmur prayers. They move their lips and their bodies bow up and down. They pace and pray the psalms when a child is being born—nervous for the labor of childbirth, therefore rote well known prayers are the menu.
    All Psalms are prayer songs to chant.  Shiru l’Adonai shir chadash (Sing to the Lord a new song.)
    Buddhists and yogis and yoginis  make prayer hands as they bow to one another and say Namaste (The divine within me salutes the divine within you.)

    Muslims kneel and bow down five times a day to recite prayers—all the way down to touch the sacred earth and pray. FIVE!
     Pray naked—very revealing. (Don't recommend trying this in church on Sunday, at least until everyone has gone home—or not.)
      Christians pray standing , kneeling, sitting, and making the sign of the cross (head, groin, right side, left side). The Eastern Orthodox cross right to left. I do both. The gesture makes the sign of the cross to remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus the Christ, Christians’ role model to say the very least, and to remind me—and God—to be in my mind, womb, right side, left side. [I cannot resist an old yiddish joke that explains crossing oneself to remember: spectacles, testicles, vallet and vatch.] 

Most prayers address the Divine. ALL prayer is energy that connects divine and earthly, temporal and eternal. Do animals pray? Of course. Look deeply into the eyes of a dog. Relax into the vibrations of a cat’s purr. Shiver to a lion's roar. Or go on a silent retreat and listen to your own breath.

Prayer is a spiritual practice, a habit as essential to life as cleanliness and courtesy. It keeps the soul alive. When you cannot pray, others do it for you.

I have kept a prayer journal at different times in my life. I write letters to God: Dear God, love, Lyn. P.S. Amen and I love you.

2019.04.07 A Flat Out Failed Wrinkle

Recently we watched the movie “A Wrinkle in Time.” I was looking forward to it. I had loved Madeleine L’Engle’s book by that name and was sure the movie would live up to her vision. After all, Ty Burr, cantankerous Boston Globe movie critic, even gave it a few nods, and Oprah Winfrey was in it. How could it lose?

To say I was disappointed is to put it mildly. I was furious. The movie was flat out terrible. Even if you knew nothing about L’Engle’s book or had no expectation, the movie failed to portray in an integrated way the forces of mystery, science, religion, spirituality, and the drama of three children in search of their missing father, an astrophysicist, whom they believed was lost in space.

On their journey the children meet three guides who represent Goodness, possibly the Christian idea of the Holy Trinity, and named accordingly: Mrs Whatsit Mrs Who and Mrs Which. The actors who play these three guides in the movie are token black, token middle east, and token vaporous-mystical. Despite spotlighting big name stars and making God imagery expansive, the film’s dialogue is flat and the plot contrived. Possibly trying to be too “p.c.”, it fails to convey the spiritual depths of the classic good vs. evil drama. The film even downplayed the climactic scene in which heroine Meg Murry, token black, tries desperately to save her younger brother from the forces of evil they call IT. This rescue scene was one Madeleine L’Engle often chose to read publicly, in dialogue with her husband, a professional actor.  L'Engle (1918-2007) wise story-teller imagining tesseracts.

I admit my expectations for this film might have been too grand and complicated by my affection for L’Engle, but this interpretation missed her vision: her desire to communicate the wonders of quantum science through a dramatic quest story with obvious theological imagery.

Theology and science shaped Madeleine L’Engle’s spirituality. I first met her in 1980 when I was in seminary and fretting about having been turned down in the ordination process toward priesthood. I felt ashamed and inadequate. Madeleine, my spiritual director, did not argue with my feelings but rather told me that the institutional church was not exactly innocent in its devaluing of the ministry of women. She also persuaded me not to give up my quest and issued me a new commandment: “Now, my dear, when you get ordained, and you will, do NOT turn into a little man!” It made me laugh and gave me courage to resist being shaped by patriarchal forces—the IT in my life.

I felt like Meg Murry. She was driven to save her brother and find her beloved father. She dared to travel through time and space in the fifth dimension because of a tesseract, a word meaning four-dimensional cube, from tessara + actis "ray", adopted by L'Engle to mean a wrinkle in time through which one could travel into outer space.  As far as I was concerned the Episcopal Church might well have been a tesseract, a realm scary and mysterious with potential to destroy all my hopes and dreams. Besides her brain, her heart, and her love for her father, Meg uses her skills in math and science, her spiritual guides, and her wisdom to outwit IT, a force that insists that everyone is exactly the same. Meg knows that alike and equal are not the same. She persists. I have no mathematical skills, but I knew that women and men were alike but not the same. and definitely not equal—yet. And I did persist, nearly succumbing to the powers of IT and pretzeling myself into shapes I thought would please, rather than being myself. To come to my true self, I sinned and prayed, probably in equal measure, and enjoyed prodigal dollops of divine grace.

L’Engle also persisted. She submitted Wrinkle for publication twenty-some times over several years until finally the first publisher she’d submitted it to accepted it for publication in 1962.
Rejection hurts but it won’t kill you. Its plangency (don’t you love that word?) might even have provided me courage enough not to become a little man, as L’Engle had commanded.

P.S. My husband with whom I saw the movie found it boring. “So you have a copy of the book?”  he asked. I did. He read it and got every wrinkle of it—small but meaningful redemption.

2019.03.24 Why Church?

In Lent we’re invited to reflect on things that matter, not on every little sin we keep on committing and committing—and once again commit. I define sin simply as whatever separates you from the goodness of God —in God, in yourself and in your neighbor. One of my sins is to be too pushy about my considered opinions, most all of which I adore and consider indispensable

This morning I told my beloved spouse that, although I’d exercised my senior exemption from fasting, I decided to fast from being ornery and bossy toward him. He said: “Don’t do that. I won’t know you’re here.” We laughed.

When one of us gets too high-falutin, the other fights back defensively, and BOOM, we’re disconnected. Then we confess and laugh and kiss, and BOOM, we’re reconnected—over and over. 

One of the things we tussle about is the Church. We have both been professional “churchies” for years. The Church seems, in many places right now, to be failing, or are we failing it? We do not settle our questions of course, but we go to Church regardless. Why? What IS the Church? What is it for? What is its unique raison d’etre? How is it different from so many things that call for our attention, some of which we’d rather be doing?

I’d like to say the Church exists to offer forgiveness for the repetition compulsion called sin. But every family knows and often exercises that function well enough. Why Church?

Is the Church about social justice?—all the rave just now. Well, in part, but not really. Anyone who is civic-minded and inclines toward activism for good causes does social justice. It’s central to the current penchant for humanism—the new true religion. Why Church?

Is the Church a building—preferably on Main Street front and center? Partly, yes. It is easy to get attached to a lovely setting, one in which you have felt safe, have experienced the love and grace of God, not to mention the pastoral care of a priest, many prayers, and those colors sparkling in the sun through stained glass. But God is not a building, though God may be felt in a building. On a religious retreat years ago, I sat enjoying a good meal. Suddenly I looked at my watch and realized I wanted to get to the chapel before dark for my meditative prayer time. I thought “I’m late for church.” Immediately, I laughed at myself, realizing: I AM in Church. And the Church is in me.

Is the Church for community?  Well, yes, but not really. We can find community in many ways, and people do because it’s naturally human to make and gather a community of concern and a team to pursue mutual interests and activities—to belong. Twelve-step recovery communities are an excellent example of intentional communities of support for wellness.

Why Church? 

My answer is that the Church is unique because the Church worships: shows reverence and adoration for a deity, a power both beyond and within ourselves, either individually or collectively. The Church is the BOOM. It offers structured liturgies, rites, rituals practices that re-enact the basic passages of human life—connected in God. I speak of the Christian Church but I know all religions offer similar rites, rituals, sacraments across a lifetime.

In Church you ae lifed—birthed in a font-womb, baptized into God with Christ.

In Church you are fed, brought to a long dining table-altar with the rest of your family. You may be an infant who doesn't take solid food so the priest blesses you; sometimes a tiney fingertip of wine is placed into your mouth. You sleep like a baby—well fed.

In Church you hear lots of music—lullabies cradle you and zestful praise awakens you. You learn some songs yourself in a choir.

In Church you absorb the divine into your flesh—over and over again.

In Church you get to pray, silently or aloud, feeling your sins and sorrows—getting forgiven over and over. You get to say I am sorry and I love you to God and to other worshipers, silently or aloud. Sometimes you get a hug.

In Church you are remembered after you die with prayers, hymns, and sweet words that soak your soul in the security of eternality.  No one forgets you. Neither does God.

In Church you re nurtured from birth to death in wonder, love and praise—over and over.

That’s why Church. Worship is as important as other things you do to take care of yourself. All living things in Nature worship without much help—naturally. We humans? We’re more needy and complicated—mysteries on our own. BOOM, we need Church. 

2019.03.17 Mixed Mood Management?

To balance a mixed mood is arduous, precarious—and yet.

I should be writing about St. Patrick, noted for pubs and miracles and shamrocks, but I’m not in the mood. Oh, I have nothing against this British-born patron saint of Ireland or green clovers, nor his day filled with parades, green cupcakes, and whiskey-induced joy. What does irk me is the one-sidedness of the way some of us Christians, or Americans, or Bostonians overplay the upside at the cost of ignoring the downside. Call it cheating the wholeness of the Holy.

I get it. Joy is more fun than pain. Still: both are real and both are godly and both belong together.


As to St. Patrick, it helps me to remember his beginnings as a lad of sixteen, captured by Irish pirates and taken into slavery to care for animals. That’s enough to know in order to balance things out, stabilize the mood swing option, and acknowledge that sainthood can arise within post-traumatic-stress syndrome.

Much of the time we worship in communities in which the mood is mixed, not unipolar. This is why we have carefully detailed liturgical seasons to observe—different colors, prayers, and moods—to make sure we honor all the vicissitudes of human life. Call it the wholeness of the Holy.

In my parish of the moment we are in mixed-mood mode. The rector of nearly ten years is leaving within two weeks. We feel naturally sad. On the other hand, we feel naturally joyous because he is leaving for celebratory reasons: his spouse has been elected to be bishop in another diocese. We want to rejoice, and we want to make room for sorrow too. We are in mixed mood.

The poor rector himself has been making strenuous efforts to pump the community full of trust, faith, hope, and love.—parting gifts. He is not dishonest in doing this, and the mood is mostly up. Nor is it wrong or even phony to keep the mood bolstered. How hard it is to have somber feelings and be upbeat at once. I was administering the sacrament of healing prayers today. At least twice the number of people came to request healing prayers. They focused on personal needs of course, all true and sincere, yet I wondered if the small numeric surge had to do as much with the underside of the general mood-mix as it did with their particulars. I don’t know. I only know that I felt spiritually enlarged, suddenly grateful, for this space to let down.

I was equally grateful for today’s anthem, for the beautiful poetry of John Donne (1873-1631), English poet and cleric.

-and for the authentic way the small choir sang it. It leavened the mood with wisdom.

WILT THOU FORGIVE?

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
Which was my sin, though it were done before?
Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
And do run still, though still I do deplore?
When Thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

Wilt thou forgive that sin by which I won
Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
A year or two, but wallowed in a score?
When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
For I have more.

I have a sin of fear that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
Swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.

 

2010.10.28 Bare Naked Love

We live in a world that sobs for love—not romantic, dutiful, or tough.

I mean sobbing, aching, sundering love—the kind that breaks hearts, even hearts most hardened by wealth or poverty.

“How much many more can we take?” A woman said in church today, her eyes flooding with tears. She was referring specifically to the mass shooting yesterday at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Tree of Life? How ironic. That is the other tree in Eden, the one we rarely hear about, not the one we humans grab for, prefer, the one that gives them knowledge, both good and evil knowledge. That’s what we grab for.  

“Only eleven people were killed, but still . . .”  the woman went on. Only eleven—only?

How many holocausts must happen before we let go of all our pretenses, our masks, our fears, our reasonable explanations, our religious platitudes, the most clichéd being God is Love, and simply sob.

Most of us look for a leader, a teaching, a solution, a word of wisdom, a path, a hope, a savior, a limb to grab onto as a child grabs the nearest adult leg to hold. This morning’s news reported that President Donald Trump declared that this shooting had ‘little to do’ with gun laws and suggested that the Tree of Life synagogue should have had armed guards. More defensive politics. I wanted heart!

But then . . . he expressed horror at such incomprehensible malice—and during “a baby-naming ceremony at a sacred house of worship on the holy day of Sabbath.”  My heart jumped. Maybe he would drop everything, yes, even in campaign season, and go to Pittsburgh immediately? You know the best, most remembered leaders are the martyrs, the ones who die trying.

But then he said: “We don’t let evil change our life and change our schedule.” My heart broke. We don’t let evil change our life and change our schedule?

To let evil change your life and your schedule is the best definition of Christian behavior I’ve ever heard—or the behavior of any good and true human being. To be a christ you have to let down your guard and sob. You have to see the wound, tend the wound, sob and sob and sob. That’s love—alone or together—no props, no fixes, no doctrines, just naked grief. It’s precarious, delicate, the artistry of a funambulist, a tightrope walker. The Bible says this in every story. So does this poem.

The Highwire of Grief

It’s quite the feat
the funambulism of the newly bereaved.
What a treacherous act it is
to attempt freehand balance without a support point.
Weighed down, paralyzed,
but forced to move anyway.
And press forward
by placing another tentative step
after that last unsteady step
into the thin air
on a fine wire
of twisted memories
stretching from there to here—
and all the while squinting through a salty waterfall.

    by Rabbi Janet Madden
      currently the Rabbi of Providence Saint John’s Health Center
      Santa Monica, California

2018.08.19 Two Sisters In a Basket?

Here is a poster by Maggie Meredith, Nantucket artist and poet (1922-2012). I have stared at it and smiled for some years. It reminds me of a feline version of me and my sister.

The poster hangs in the living room of our little timeshare cottage in Nantucket—the one Dick and I purchased in 1985 just before we were married in November, 1986. We change, our little cottage stays the same.

My interest in this poster is that it is expressive and whimsical. The kitties remind me of me and my younger sister Laurie—our personalities and different stances towards life. It cracks me up.

The white one looks alert and ready to pounce with a purr or a claw at whatever she has to do to manage things at a moment’s notice. Sometimes she pounces or springs into action too soon. When this happens it can be, well, messy or aggressive, though always well-intentioned. She protects people or defends them against injustices. That’s her strength and can be heroic, like a “knight in shining armor.”  Sometimes her power overwhelms.

I am more like the black kitty. I am just as alert but more worried about things in general, and sometimes about my sister’s ardor, especially if she is trying to protect me, and especially if I don’t need it. My ways are more cautious, considered, wise.

Sometimes I wait too long to jump in with assertions or actions, but when I do, I am focused and persistent, like the time over 20 years ago when Laurie and I collaborated on a book, and the publisher accepted my prose but not her poetry. I knew it would hurt my sister, but, after consulting with many people and praying like crazy, I accepted the publishing offer. Laurie felt left behind and crushed, her assumptions being that we were at work on our relationship, getting closer. I felt selfish and selfish-er, assuming we were at work on a book only. Our relationship suffered great pain and wounding I imagined was inflicted by me on her. Our needs were very different, though we didn’t know it then.

Many times we have fought over our differences; broken our relationship; striven to heal; tried to understand, and wounded our relational esteem. I have envied her, and she me. We are now able to tussle and burble, giggle and grin, then, sighing, sink into old age free of the stink and stench of envy or competition—dark forces that have shadowed our love and obscured the grace of God in our midst.

Still, we are in the same basket together, so we’ve tried to fight hard—and honestly. We’ve tried even harder to reconcile—honestly. It only took 70+ years.

Laurie uses her power wisely; I use my wisdom powerfully. Both of us agree that our efforts have paid off, and both of us are grateful to the God of our Christian faith whose Love heals all wounds and cares for each of us exactly as we are.  

2017.10.08 Clarity of Voice and Action

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

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

What response is called for at this time?

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

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

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

Are we called to correct this imbalance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2016.10.16 None Of The Above?—NOT!

Many people, including some news personnel, like Jim Braude of Greater Boston, whom I admire, are advocating that we the people check or write into our ballot: NONE OF THE ABOVE. 

It sounds good, maybe even true. It also sounds snarky. It sounds like a wasted vote. It sounds whiny. It sounds cowardly. It sounds individualized. It sounds like a way to contribute to the fracturing of our society, already anxious and scared.

If we Americans, whose country is founded on principles of freedom of the best kind, cannot get up the guts or the grit to vote, because we just don’t like either person on the ballot for president, or because we just don’t care about “the facts”, then we deserve what we get: a failed presidential election and a mockery of our freedom. In addition, a vote for a minor third party candidate is a cowardly cop out, contributing nothing.  So VOTE!

I am solidly for Hillary. She is not my best friend. I’m not even sure I like her personality. I don’t care. I do think she is the most qualified person we have ever had run for president. Hillary is a woman, and she therefore represents a step towards our founding idea that all men are created equal and should have equal opportunity, when qualified. "Men" includes "women". The wave of vile misogyny sweeping much of our nation, and accelerated by the media, is a sign that we have lost sight of democracy itself, not to mention decent civilized, yes, Christian behavior.

First Lady Michelle Obama has broken the confines of her traditional role to speak out in horror and pain about this kind of politics, particularly the outrage of  a presidential candidate making public braggadocio of sexually predatory behavior. She asks: Is this a model for our young boys and girls who look up to the leader of their country?  She does what prophets do. She is notable, because frankly there aren’t many honest and courageous prophets speaking out anywhere in any halls of power, including the church, right now. Are we drowning in fear? 

Be brave. Be a citizen. Be an American. Be a good Christian. It’s your duty and privilege as a Christian to exercise your right to vote. We pray weekly for our nation and all nations to work for justice and peace. That means a commitment to our political processes. The kingdom of heaven, founded by Jesus the Christ, is no less political than it is holy. Jesus himself felt the anxiety of hard choices and unpopular politics. But he did not wimp out. He did what he thought was right, in accord with the desires of a loving and just God, and the best for his nation.

What is best for the good of this nation and our neighbors whom we influence and serve?
Vote your conscience based on this spiritual discernment. Think beyond your own disgruntlement. Before you vote, pray for guidance as you would for a beloved who is ill, for our nation is ill right now. And you have an opportunity to make a healing difference. 

NONE OF THE ABOVE is not a vote, it’s a trick. NO VOTE AT ALL is passive cowardice.