2025.08.03 SPIRITUALITY 101, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

As I look out my window and stare at the natural beauty all around us, I wonder how much the divine Creator appreciates this particular piece of art?

The way many of us treat our beloved earth, the way we too often treat each other with scorn or neglect, and our financial excesses, all cause me to wonder.  If I could I would sign up for yet one more academic class in Art 101, Music 101, or World Literature 101. AND I would start a new course called Spirituality 101. 

Oh, how unbearably trite, and yet…………….what is it that makes your very soul ache or your mind go blank even as you feel  surges of joy?  ALL AT ONCE!

The entire display of Creation is at risk, and it is the most beautiful gift Divinity ever gave us. Do you know this? The Earth all by itself is at risk, and it is the most beautiful gift Divinity gave us. Do we know this? The Earth all by itself has charisma—grounded charisma. Charisma derives from a Latin word for kharis which means favor or grace.

In ancient biblical tradition, the patriarch of all things spiritual, Abraham, asks, then begs the Creator for this gift—a better understanding of the divine mind. God ignores Abraham’s begging as a good parent ignores a child’s pleading for just one more cookie—pleeze, puleeze.

This is how I feel these days when I pray and get confused between what I want, what someone else wants, what supposed experts say they want, and what I THINK God might want. Then I create a prayer and make a choice—with hope. 

STRIVE, THRIVE, BE ALIVE. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 4/27/2025

It seems to me that all the things that matter most to me in my life are things that I have strived for and thrived with and lived because of. 

Besides avoiding my mother’s overweening praise, the obvious first-up on my list was the process of birthing, actually bringing forth into the light a brand new life, and then immediately feeling the rush of joy and terror at once. 

Perhaps I exaggerate, but for me, beside the trauma of sexual intercourse itself for which I was totally unprepared, birthing was first up. My first child was a daughter with amazing lung power and great weight for a firstborn: 8 pounds 13 ounces, born on the 13th of January, 1962, well before there was safe medication to ease the pain, not to mention much good literature on things like breast feeding and childcare. It is embarrassing to admit that I was both dazzled and intimidated by my beautiful new daughter—so afraid that I was sure I’d break her arm while putting on a wee undershirt, not to mention getting the diaper pin on securely without stabbing her, all at once and with adoration!

She was, and is still, capable of engaging my awe and my love at the same time. I went on creating, yes, more biological children, all equally beloved, and also my own dreams and sins. Unlike what our religions tell us, there is no end to such potency, such striving and thriving, such unjust justice, even to such believing disbelief. Ever. 

I wonder if this is how the Divinity the Bible calls God/Creator kept on slowly striving, paying meticulous attention to each tiny detail and its placement, laboring and even feeling pained by the effort itself as Life turned into Being?  Would Creator-God have felt such pride and awe at once?  

The Holy Bible itself even ends with something like, I’m coming and I’m not telling you when or why.   

And beloved Job, finally and after a whole life of nagging and being righteous, received a guided tour of Creation and ended up with something like WOW!

It is enough to strive, thrive and be alive— never imagining an end. I am ready to give up all that language about justice in order simply to proclaim: 

Divinity isn’t moral, only holy?    

2025.02.09 ODD EPIPHANIES. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

’Tis the season to be wary. Grim and gruesome, scary and sudden, wild and weird, beloved and bewildered, insane and inane, in flight and buried—all at once and never before.  Here I am.  

Our President makes sweeping plans for lands and people not his own, not in his jurisdiction, not in his heart. All these people want is the same thing we all want, already bestowed by Divinity on ALL creation from the beginning. What is that gift?  FREEDOM? Deeper than that.

One of the most beautiful recordings I’ve ever heard is one someone taped from within a womb—the steady gentle thrumming of a mother’s heartbeat. When I heard it I felt instantly serene, calm, gentled no matter what was going on. Odd. 

Do most children obey as they grow, because they are afraid?  No, it is because they receive and give LOVE. Love is the most precious gift anyone can receive, and it is the most precious gift anyone can give, and it is what Divinity first gives. Such is the divine mystery.

Intimacy precedes independence.  

In the beginning.  

2024.01.07 Let There Be Light and Let There Be Darkness. Lyn G. Brakeman,Spiritual Lemons, blog post

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and called all of it good.

What is wrong in a country, in a world, in any society that prays for Peace all the time and has no idea what makes peace happen?

What is wrong with a country that calls itself a Democracy, a United states, establishes a Bill of Rights/Freedoms for all its citizens, and then silences some of these citizens from telling or writing the truth about themselves in an honest way? As a citizen I protest.

Is this moral? Is this ungodly?  Is this a violation of the freedom of every citizen to practice his/her/their own religious faith? Does this corruption, this lie promote holocaust, exile, soul-murder, evil, the censorship of truth itself?  That you can be stoned for being who you are, that you can be exiled for being who you are, that you can be lynched, jailed, buried alive, murdered, butchered, burned, bludgeoned, maimed, scalped, terrorized, banished, humiliated, deformed from foot-binding, censored, crucified, and shamed for being who you are and for writing, publishing, telling your own story about who you are.   

*  *  *  *

Why am I so passionate about all this? Well, because I am a reader who has read about campaigns to ban books that MIGHT be offensive to young minds. And because I’m a writer who remembers Holden Caulfield!

American writer J.D. Salinger, born in New York City (1919) is one of the most famous living authors in America even though he hasn't published anything since 1965, and he lived reclusively until his death in 2010. He’s best known for his novel The Catcher in the Rye, about a boy named Holden Caulfield who gets expelled from his boarding school and spends the next few days wandering around New York City, trying to figure out why people have to grow older, why everyone is so phony, and where the ducks go when the pond in Central Park freezes over.

The Catcher in the Rye started out as a short story called "Slight Rebellion Off Madison," and it was the first story that Salinger managed to sell to The New Yorker. The New Yorker bought the story in November of 1941, and planned to run it in their Christmas issue. That December, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and Salinger's story was put on hold, considered too trivial in a time of war. Salinger writes from within the mental musings of a young teenager, gawky, curious, sexually awkward—unforgettable.  

Salinger expanded the story into the novel, The Catcher in the Rye, which came out in 1951 when I was 13.  The New York Times ran a review, titled "Aw, the World's a Crumby Place.” The children in it were unbelievably intelligent, and the style of the novel was too "showoffy." What adolescent is not?  Within two weeks Catcher made the best seller list. 

Who can forget Holden Caulfield, Jane Eyre, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, Ebenezer Scrooge, Oz, Bambi, Christopher Robin, Pooh and Piglet, Mrs. Dalloway, Peter Rabbit, Cinderella, Grumpy, Moses, Cruella Deville—and more? 

Every tale and every character embodies good and evil, sorrow and joy, love and hate, light and darkness, heaven and hell, life and death—together. 

In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth and called all of it Good. 

O, light of the world, let your bright star stand over the place where the poor have to live; lead our sages to wisdom and our rulers to reverence. Hear this prayer for your love’s sake. Amen.  (from The New Zealand Prayer Book) 

2023.01.15 A First Waking, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

So much of what we all hear and see in the news, from our pulpits, and in our biblical stories is basically: WAKE UP people. WE gotta change. There are differing definitions and interpretations about what that change should be, but it’s pretty clear to me that the change is internal, changes of hearts, in the flesh—not rioting and street violence. This is a very tall order given our differences and our attachments to individualISM and INdependence.  For this change we gotta include ALL Mama Earth. We gotta do it IN the flesh. And we gotta include GOD, by every name known.  

*  *  *  *

Birthing comes to my mind, specifically, birthing my first child—flesh of my flesh— and my own first-time realization of the power of my own uterus to push life itself from the dark inner womb into the glare of the light of the world. This process was full of excruciating pain and shock for mother and child, and it is I think too glib, or at least it is for me, to toss aside or minimize the impact of the monumental change that takes place at birth.  It can only be completed in and by a woman’s flesh. My husband was present, standing by, watching me groan and howl and push with all my might—for hours, eternity I thought. In this joint creative effort, he got all the pleasure, and I did the work.  

Of course I was overjoyed with my amazing 8 lbs 13 oz squalling infant daughter. I was also terrified, partly at teeny undershirts and huge diaper pins (1963, no Pampers), and partly at the commitment to being a good mother, which meant losing my independence. Yes, I chose that vocation, and yes, often I failed and flailed, and no, I do not regret the ongoing painful intimacy of loss and joy motherhood brings.    

In giving of your own flesh you simultaneously lose the control you thought you had in the running of your embodied life. Child-bearing, more than marriage or vocation, or any other vowed bodily commitment, means signifiant loss of independence—freely undertaken, usually though not always.  The only way to live with this loss is to weep, and in the tears find the necessary lubrication to see Beauty, just as God as Creator shows the biblical heckler, Job: Look. Take it in. All this creation I accomplished without you and for you!! This is where it’s at.

Such profound change is both brilliant with hope and frightening with challenge—all at once.  All I could do was follow my heart and love my dear daughter to the best of my ability. For her, coming into life was the trauma and shock of Being itself, first the slap and scream, then the cleansing, then at last a warm, womb-simulating blanket, in this case pink, and finally her mother’s arms and breasts. (There was no advice on nursing in 1963, and my equipment wasn’t equipped enough. Not wanting to starve my daughter, I fed her with bottled formula, which she loved.) In time there was Baptism in which a big man took her out of my arms (kidnapped), tried to drown her with water (Baptism), then called her “Christ’s own forever” while a whole congregation clapped, and cameras flashed. Shocking! 

From Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet:  On baptisms: ”Your children are not your children. / They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. / They come through you but not from you, / And though they are with you they belong not to you.”    

*  *  *  *

As limited as my personal analogy may be, I imagine that God experiences this ongoing entire mix of pain and joy in giving birth to all life, sharing the divine nature with every living thing, all of which, comically and expectedly, goes instantly out of control. But that’s the point and the purpose isn’t it?  The only way to live with such loss is to weep, and in the tears find the necessary lubrication to see—and love— Abundant Beauty.    

God gives God’s own life into Creation, and in this act of radical sharing relinquishes control over project Life. The best definition of the nature of God I learned from Anglican priest/theologian, John Macquarrie who described God this way:  

     

GOD IS LETTING-BE AND DRAWING-NEAR.       

The Road Called Creation, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 10/09/22

Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God; it is the road itself. 

I quote from  The Writings of Martin Buber, a Jewish mystic and scholar, Austria-Hungarian and Israeli philosopher. He’s famous for constructing a relational spirituality called “I-Thou”.  His book on this idea was translated from German to English in 1937.

When in seminary in the 1980s I first read Buber. As I read I felt a great surge of sheer aliveness rise up from within me like a giant blush. As a student of language I know that the pronoun “YOU” has two forms, one more formal to use with someone you don’t know very well or are just meeting, the other for your own beloved, a good friend, a family member, or, dare I say, God.  

In Spanish usted is you-formal and tu is you-informal; in French it’s vous and toi. I was surprised when I lived for a while with a family in Spain and heard in their family prayers the “Hail Mary” (many more times than I thought necessary) using the familiar pronoun for the BVM. 

“Blessed art thou among women” was “Bendita tu eres entre todas las mujeres.”  Notice that the English pronoun in the Hail Mary is also THOU, Blessed are thou among women.” AND in the traditional “Our Father” —Hallowed be THY name, THY kingdom come, THY will be done.  I sometimes think all our pronoun problems would be solved if we just went back to using thee and thou and and thine.  And would that in fact, and in spite of contemporary usage of YOU and YOUR, be more honest to our gospel of divine Love?

Which brings me back to Buber and his ethic of I-Thou relationships. Essentially, that means that each individual being regards every other being as worthy of the same respect each accords the other. You see how tangled up in pronouns I get, but you get the idea. Buber advocates I-Thou as a model for effective mutual dialogue. Often relations become monologues, which Buber calls I-It relationships—deaf self-talk. Otherwise, supposed conversation become monologues—deaf.

So do we dare consider such intimacy with God? Most would say NOT. But I wonder if God alone is bold enough to shed his almighty power in favor of  I-Thou  relations with all Creation?  

The parable Jesus tells in Luke’s gospel tells us about his healing TEN lepers who all go leaping away in joy, free of ugly sores and disease. ONE leper returns to thank Jesus for this healing. Jesus asks: Where are all the others? Were they not healed as well?  (Luke adds to the story that the one who returned with gratitude was a Samaritan, that is, a foreigner, a reject, a gentile—enemy of the Jewish majority Jesus addresses.) 

Please note that Jesus praises the grateful one, does NOT condemn all the others, AND proclaims that the reign of God is already in our midst. THIS DOES NOT MEAN HIMSELF, (Christians, take note) BUT RATHER THE JOY OF HEALING ITSELF AS WELL AS THE GRATITUDE FOR IT. 

This story teaches us all to be I-Thou with ALL today’s “lepers”—those we secretly imagine and secretly fear, to be the “It” to our “I”?   

Who on this road of Creation would you avoid?—a Republican? a Democrat? a Muslim? an anti-vaxxer? an Evangelical? an immigrant? a Queer or Trans? a trillionaire/fat cat? a criminal? a feminist? a schizophrenic? a Jew? an addict? a Pope? a demented one? a dirty street urchin? a beggar?  or, God forbid, someone whom you cannot call THOU? 

2022.06.26 In The Beginning? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The biblical story of Creation portrays a God who created, giving spiritual birth to humanity in the divine image. The only “rule” God set was the only “rule” humanity disobeyed: Just don’t eat of this one tree or you will open the door for evil alongside good in the world. Simple, right? Let’s check out if God is just being parental. One bite won’t hurt. Follow your bliss. It was HER idea. Turns out God was being loving not judging. This mythic story continues to be re-enacted over and over. It turns out we all have control issues. 

And again. 

The Supreme Court just ruled that the constitutionality of rights secured for 50 years by the Roe V. Wade ruling was, yes, unconstitutional. Make no mistake, this ruling is about women, none of whom get pregnant alone, some of whom get pregnant not by choice but by immaturity or crime. All of them are held responsible for the consequences of their putative “sins”, and many suffer abandonment, poverty, racial bias, classism, and ill health. Oh yes, others are condemned in the name of God as well.  

I think of the biblical story in the New Testament (John 7:53-8:11) about the woman brought to Jesus for condemnation. She has been accused of adultery. Assuming the accusation is true, did she commit this act all by herself? Jesus famously bends over and writes something in the sand. What he wrote no one knowe The crowds bellowed for her execution by stoning. Jesus rises and challenges the crowd:  “The one among you who is without sin may cast the first stone.” The crowd disperses—each heading home carrying their “toys.”  The woman is told to go and sin no more. 

Was it a “sin” to be a woman? Well? She didn’t commit adultery alone or get pregnant alone. As to what Jesus wrote in the sand, I bet he wrote: “So where’s the guy?” 

*  *  *  *  

This statement below was posted on June 24, 2022, by Kathleen McCartney, the President of Smith College, a woman’s college and my alma mater. There are many concerns and fears generated by the Supreme Court’s decision, and one of them of course is higher education, especially women’s education. 

“Today the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. As reported by The New York Times, “the decision, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, will lead to all but total bans on the procedure in about half of the states.” Decisions about reproductive rights are now relegated to the states, which will exacerbate inequalities in access to reproductive healthcare. In the words of Gloria Steinem ’56, “medical needs should not be distributed geographically. They're way too distributed by class and economics as it is because we don't have national health care as we should. And this makes it far worse for the female half of the population.”

In an amicus brief in support of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, economists noted that “there is a substantial body of well-developed and credible research that shows that abortion legalization and access in the United States has had—and continues to have—a significant effect on birth rates as well as broad downstream social and economic effects, including on women’s educational attainment and job opportunities.” Research in the years since Roe v. Wade became law has shown that access to abortion increased the probability that young women finished college by nearly 20 percentage points and entered a professional occupation by nearly 40 percentage points; it also found that teen motherhood was reduced by 34% and teen marriage by 20%.”

*  *  *  *

I am not in favor of abortion. Nor am I in favor of pro-life arguments that claim to save the life of the fetus but fail to consider all other lives, especially the mother’s life as one of those lives to consider in the pro-life arguments. I am in favor of LISTENING to many stories told by women about their experiences. I am in favor of compassion all round, in church and state. I am in favor of lobbying the Congress to codify Roe v. Wade so it becomes federal law, not to be regulated by states with wildly different moral and religious cultures. I bet that’s what Jesus would do. President Biden agrees, too—not about Jesus necessarily, but about restoring the rights and choices Roe v. Wade secured.   

As far as I can figure, women and men are equal by Constitution, by Democracy AND equal under the rule of law, AND equally created by a Creator-God who gave a nod to the other tree in the garden, the Tree of Life—abundance of food and life for ALL living things. Here is an image that depicts this forgotten Tree of Life God placed in Eden. 

*  *  *  *

Personal Stories

 

In my  ministry and in my counseling, I have sat, on more than one occasion, with a young teen who is pregnant, in tears, and terrified. She has no money. She looks forward to higher education and to pursuing her dream vocation. She is not equipped to take care of a child. She is afraid to tell her parents, and certainly her very Catholic boyfriend. She feels condemned and all alone. I have helped such children make decisions, choices each could live with. And I helped one girl find a doctor who helped her abort.  

And once I sat with an older woman who, in midlife, confessed her earlier abortion and sobbed with grief over the loss of her unborn child, a son, she felt sure, whom she had named. I listened with compassion. Further, I suggested that we could baptize this unseen, unborn son. She looked at me in amazement and then knew this was exactly the right thing, the right kind of absolution if you will. So she held her invisible son while I consecrated water and baptized him in the name of God. I think I have never presided over a holier baptism. 

May we begin again, please. And may we remember that God is not a gracious puppeteer but a gracious indweller. 

 

2022.06.19 Divine Empathy. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I used to think that with God as my father I would always be safe and loved. I also used to think that my own father, whom I loved without reserve, had no fears or flaws. That was until he took a course on assertive training that I offered at our parish church when I was in my thirties and he was in his seventies. Turned out he was shy. Turned out he trusted his oldest daughter to teach him how to love himself as much as his own “Father” God did. It also turned out that God is much more than a father. God is the Creator and Source of ALL Being—all living beings not just fathers or sons or daughters or mothers or Whites or Blacks or sinners or the righteous. Creation itself is an act of divine Empathy.

*  *  *  *

The other day as I sat on one of the many benches strewn along our walking paths at McLean Village retirement community where I live, I witnessed a poignant and typical scene.

Two children were riding bikes, a young boy of perhaps six and his older sister on her bike riding behind him. I watched them progress and overheard snippets of conversation.

She: Wait. Don’t go so fast. You’ll fall!

He streaks on ahead. 

She mutters: “This was my mother’s idea that we go out and ride bikes. What a stupid idea! He’s too far ahead now.” 

She is about to fall off her bike, so she stops and shouts after her small brother: WAIT! He’s so stupid I know he’s going to fall. She shrieks at the nearly out of sight brother, as she tries to mount her bike and can’t steady it. She mutters: “This is so dumb! I’m done.”  

She catches my eye, and I smile. I think to say, “It’s not easy being the big sister, huh?” But I don’t say it out loud. A simple nod with a loving intention is all I can manage in the face of a deep sorrow at this child’s life-plight. 

She mounts and rides off wobbling. God, don’t let her fall. 

*  * *  *

I think of the parable in Luke 9 about Jesus’s being confronted by a man possessed by countless “demons” all of which, or whom, Jesus banishes, making the man well, lightening his burden. My imagination plays fast and loose with this story. What rivets me is not the apparent miracle of an exorcism, but Jesus’s single-minded focus on the possessed man’s misery—not only derived from his illness, but because his terrified community had shackled and exiled him because of it. Of course he also feared more torment from Jesus. Jesus is slow to react. This is an emergency! Jesus should flee for his life. Still, he pauses to ask the man his name, and does not act before he gets a response. “My name is Legion,” the man cries.  Legion is the name his frightened and ignorant community have labeled him. It is also the name used for the Roman military, a fear-inducing name. You know how it is in adolescent years when certain teens are called sticky names like wimp, bully, nerd, queer, lard-ass, fraidy-cat, sissy, on and on. Such names are like glue, hard to live down—legion. 

But Jesus wanted to know all these names before he banishes them all, sending them to find a new host—a herd of pigs that suddenly race pell mell down a steep slope of land to their death in the sea below. 

Many people hate this parable, because they feel sorry for the farmer who has lost his whole herd and his livelihood, and/or they are overtaken by cruelty to innocent animals, or, yes, they are horrified at Jesus’s own careless insensitivity to local needs. I wonder. 

Eventually they called Jesus the Christ—anointed as healer/savior, not because of magic powers but because of extraordinary, dare I say divine, empathy. It turns out Jesus was much more than a son.

          *  *  *  * 

I’ve referred to my sorrow about this child’s “life-plight”. Of course I’m projecting from my own experiences, and no exorcism is called for, yet I wonder: Does she battle legions of invisible “demons” such as shame at being plump, anger about her caretaker role assignment, resentment about the cute, disobedient little brother’s freedom, hurt by her mother’s apparent favoritism, and her own enslavement—this child in hot pursuit of an assignment she feels compelled to do and hates but does clumsily, hastily, out of duty not faith?  

I don’t know. I pray. God’s grace I trust far exceeds my small momentary concern. After all God is a good “father,” right?  Okay, I’m kidding, something I do when I feel a little wobbly inside like the girl on the bike, or like my own father on occasion, or like Jesus before he heads to Jerusalem, facing execution.   

My dad was shy like me, but he kept it hidden. Once at a party for my seminary graduation he announced: “We’re not sure how this happened, but Lynda has graduated from Yale Divinity School.” He raised a glass to toast me and said how proud he was. I knew he was “just kidding”, so I too laughed along with Dad and everyone else. And I never forgot that “joke”. Dad wasn’t a cruel man, just a man with a few leftover “demons” of his own—like most of us really.   

So, happy father’s day to anyone who fathers, mothers, parents with good grace, and prays like crazy anyway. 

God bless the girl child on her way. 

God-in-Jesus, named Christ, who knows fear, empathizes, names, and disempowers all our big or little “demons,” to save us in spite of ourselves, bless this girl and all children.   

God is Creator of the TREE of LIFE—the one left in the mythic Garden of Eden to continue to flourish no matter what for all creation—forever.