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) 

2023.01.08 Where IS The Epiphany Light? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/08/23

The Holy Bible is rich—full of proverbial wisdom, history of a people liberated, birth and death, prophetic vision—and most of all, stories. It must never be taken literally/factually yet must always be taken seriously.  It’s all called Holy, because it is all about people seeking God and God seeking people. In each story there is spiritual truth, even though it’s not a  documentary/docudrama. I promise you, your own story, or parts of it, is in there. Use your imagination and intuitional intelligence as your guiding light. 

You may not be a king or a Magus, one of a priestly cast in ancient Persia, but surely you have followed a dream against all good societal advice, simply because something has tweaked your heart, moved your soul deeply, saying GO or TRY.  You may even have taken traveling friends along, or traveled just in your own mind. Not every trip is about illegal drugs or mapped on AAA, yet every such trip is full of courage, wariness, fear, eagerness, curiosity, faith and doubt—yours and God’s, I assure you.  

The Epiphany story about the traveling threesome, Magi, is politically danger-ridden and compelling. I imagine a conversation they might have had after they saw something odd and fascinating at once. (Odd and fascinating usually accompany something Holy.) A simple family scene. What to make of that, really? They’d  trusted the night sky and had brought shower gifts in case. They also knew they couldn’t linger but had to get back home.  I’m spooked, let’s go home another way! What do you mean. Are you a scaredy cat? No, of course not, I was just thinking it might be easier on these panting camels. Yeah, and also your own butt, Melchior. Nah. Creature comfort is Balthasar’s issue, not mine. Well, I, Caspar, am the elder and I lead here. That king Herod hates competitors, so we’re not taking that same detour again. Come on, we have tons of light from the stars. Okay, you’re the boss, bossy. 

And so they head back by another way. They have followed the brightest Star. But when they turn their back on it, they discover they are still following it. Or it is following them?  Of course we know that astronomy doesn’t work this way, but holy stories do, and spirituality does. 

 

They were following this particularly bright star, and now they are leaving it behind. But this star seeks them out, still guides their wondering and their wandering. Remarkable. Look carefully. This camel has three humps, and these kings have new pronouns! In the “driver’s seat” sits a female who apparently knows the way quite well. Behind her rides an Asian figure, and behind him rides a black king—all similarly crowned. This group is inclusive. Maybe you’ve never noticed. 

Is this great Star shining to show us that the world is about to be transformed not by any ONE race, vision, regime, creed, or rule, but by something bigger? Right now our world is full of riots, violence, wars, bloody murders, abuses of women, starvation, and so much more. Perhaps this ongoing star is suggesting a much broader vision for our world, our planet, our politics, and our religion. Does this Light shine to light and enlighten the entire cosmos?  Is this what the Epiphany Light is? 

*  *  *  *  

I continue to question traditional imagery and interpretations. Here I see a Star that is more accompanying than leading, more beckoning than commanding, more shining than telling, more present than distant. This star is bigger, more universal than many Christians have thought and taught. Don’t you think? 

 

I will follow.  

2021.01.24 'Dom Ring

Today, the third Sunday of Epiphany for Christians, the New Testament Gospel tells the story of Jesus’s choosing his disciples, those he would train for a renewed way of being with God, self and neighbors. It was a Kairos time for his ministry on earth. It is now a Kairos time for us earthlings as we choose new leaders and plot new courses.
                                             *  *  *  *
The Greek language give us two words for time: chronos for clock-measurable time and Kairos for time that, for a variety of reasons, many unforeseeable, is simply opportune or favorable. Kairos time is neither measurable nor predictable, yet it is discernible— a time made special by a sense of one’s presence to oneself, all creation, and to the creator. Kairos is God’s time. It knows no bounds, has no measure, and is available to all Creation.

Most days are run by chronos. We are chased by, or chasing, time’s passage, racing against its inevitability as if it were in our control. Some of us run too fast and some too slowly. To accurately asses time and make room to notice Kairos occasions, we have to let go of the dominance of chronos, get conscious of what our own insides and our senses reveal.

What time is it now?
                                             *  *  *  *

When I was a child I begged my mother with annoying persistence: “Sing ‘Dom Ring’. Sing it again, Mommy.”  My mother, not particularly gifted with a singing voice, took a while to figure our what ‘Dom Ring’ meant, and not much longer to say: “Ask Daddy.”

Daddy did have a good voice. I knew this, because I saw pictures of him in lines of singing men dressed in fancy suits called tuxedos. They were called a glee club and named after a famous musician, Mendelssohn. Daddy was famous.   

There were no women in the group, but I was used to such displays of male importance, and besides my Daddy was the handsomest, even though he was mostly too tired to sing ‘Dom Ring’—to me.  ‘Dom Ring came from the British national anthem sung for their Queen, but America stole it, and I made it my personal favorite. Here is the first stanza.

My country, 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims' pride,
From ev'ry mountainside
Let freeDOM RING!

                                              *  *  *  *
Not given to paroxysms of patriotic zeal, episodes of urgent flag-waving or flag-burning, or seizures of praise-cheering in church, I have suddenly just now been twice overtaken by surges of patriotic fervor with echoes of “'Dom ring" flooding my heart. Both brought me to tears.

On the day of Epiphany, January 6, 2021, collective ignorance met collective rage. What appeared in full view was America against itself. The well-planned, presidentially-incited, white supremacist attack on the Capitol building in Washington D.C. was violent and horrifying. Many of us were asleep to this possibility, entirely unprepared for such an insurrection, operating on chronos time only. There hadn’t been time or will to organize such violence, many thought. Not in America, many said. We’re safe and secure here, politicians, law enforcement officials, and mainline Christians said. Our president wouldn’t allow such a thing, many said. This was unprecedented—and indeed it was. Nevertheless, we did have warning signs—misread, little heeded, and imagined to be isolated. I trembled and wept.

Then on January 20th, the United States inaugurated a new President—not chosen by dissent or the will of a dictator, but by the votes of record turnouts of voters. Many labored together, outside of political preferences, to make sure there was no voter fraud and that all vote counts were accurate. This was a Kairos-driven process—unexpected but crucial. The losing candidate finally left, declaring himself the “real” winner of a “stolen” election. He was deprived of nothing except the dignity of truth with humility. I worried and wept.

Would this inauguration come off free of violence, safely, without foreign or domestic interference, and within the structures of tradition?  For 13 days I’d held my breath and prayed like hell. I still held my breath as I watched Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. and Kamala Devi Harris, first black and Asian American woman to serve in executive office, swear on huge bibles, using God’s name, promising to uphold the principles of the Constitution as they held its highest office. This was indeed a Kairos within chronos event. This was a ‘Dom Ring moment. I exhaled and wept for joy.
                 
                                               *  *  *  * 

On that same day things came together in Kairos time for me personally:     

    1) My country chose Democracy over politics, Constitution over party, and leaders with integrity and a chronos-time commitment to American diversity truly represented in our government. 
    

    2) My husband and I received our first vaccine shots against a deadly virus.
    

    3)  One of my nephews, a long-time heroin addict, for whom I’d prayed incessantly, finally got clean and was willingly admitted to a local Suboxone clinic for treatment.
    

    4) President Biden proclaimed and embodied empathy and mutual respect for the dignity of all humankind and the whole created order, promises central to the baptismal covenant of The Episcopal Church in which I am a priest. America would UNITE NOT FIGHT! Biden’s “whole soul” was/is in this effort. Mine too.

    5) Amanda Gorman, age 22 and the youngest national youth poet laureate ever in this country, recited her brilliant inaugural poem, “The Hill We Climb”. (Not a grueling self-defeating hill like Sisyphus’s, nor a hill like Jack & Jill’s, down which Jill came tumbling after Jack, of course.) Besides her natural beauty and verve, Amanda Gorman, like Biden, has had to overcome a stutter. Now she preached a gospel of “right not fight”—irresistibly.  
    
    If we merge mercy with might, and might with right,
    then love becomes our legacy in change, our children’s birthright.

    With every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
    we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.

Maybe this nation, long enthralled with its own freedom, progress and self-love, is ready to turn itself inside out for the freedom, progress and self-love of others. Is that enough unity? Will freedom ring for us all?  We shall make it so—kairologically and chronologically—as we plot together the daily wonders of Epiphany.  

‘Dom Ring.
 


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2019.02.24 Epiphany Everlasting?

Once a long-lost Epiphany Collect, #8, saved my life.

Epiphany is the season of light and life. It leads us into Lent, a season that calls for self-reflection, which can be gloomy. Reflect honestly and you’re sure to discover something icky. The brightest light is Easter of course, but the more light you can attract on the way the better. Hence, the longer Epiphany lasts the better—not only for Lent-avoidance, but because more light in my winter heart reminds me that spiritual light does not start—or end— with Easter.

Few would care, but it’s amusing to eavesdrop on clergy crowing knowingly among themselves: “Hey, we have a long  Epiphany this year! We get to pray EIGHT Collects.” Who but parish clergy would think to think such a thing?

Q: But what happened to Collect #8—my lucky one?
A: Well, my child, my upstairs professor informed me, when Easter falls after April 22, which happens rarely, we get a full Epiphany season, and we pray #8. The last time we got to pray it was 2011. (Oh, how inauspicious! Poor little #8)
Q:When will #8 recur?
A: 2038. Check it out—a splendid prayer (BCP p. 216). Just because it’s rare doesn’t mean it should be neglected. Besides, you’ll be 99 and maybe in heaven by 2038.

Here begins the story of me and #8:  I was hired as a consultant for conflict resolution in a parish in which the leadership was sorely challenged by some malcontents. Chaos was spreading like a red tide into the wider community. Attempts at reconciliation had been ineffective.

Situations like this are not uncommon, but they are painful. Some people had left; some stayed to fight; others sank into anxiety and discontent. The leaders felt helpless and under attack. I was no miracle-worker but at least I had no big personal axe to grind. I listened to the principals, met separately with each, made no judgments, and soon felt as if I were sinking in quicksand, secretly losing my cool while looking cool. Only then did it occur to me to ask God for help. I had of course dutifully prayed at every meeting, but there is soul-deep prayer and token prayer. I had a great big Gethsemane-like ask: Get me outta this!

Out of nowhere, or maybe from the upstairs professor in my head, the esoteric, infrequently used #8 popped up. I thought it was no kind of answer, but then God didn’t really do exactly what Jesus asked in Gethsemane either. I wanted a brilliant self-generated solution that would please all parties and get me much kudos; I got a Collect of little note.

I copied #8, said it over and over, prayed it with my little group, by now stuck in a concrete impasse, then sent them off with the assignment to recite this prayer every single day until we met again in two weeks. Good God, how impotent I felt, but I prayed this Collect daily as if it were my last meal.

“Most loving Father [sic], whose will it is for us to give thanks for all things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our cares on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and which you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.”

In two weeks we met again. I went in, fearing a mini Armageddon and my own self cast into outer darkness. The air in the room I noticed was not as stifling. I don’t know why. The complainers were as adamant as ever, but one cracked a tiny bit, as did the rector. Men close to tears? A deep honesty penetrated the icy standoff. I had no idea what would happen but sat silently with them for a bit, then announced that these meetings were over, and to go in peace. I wanted to add: “and sin no more” but tactfully refrained from doing a Jesus imitation. Everyone left. My consulting work hadn’t worked.

The “brats” continued to attend church. They contended that they were being “forced to leave”  by the rector. They sent me hostile emails to announce their eternal victimhood. The rector presided at the Eucharist as he always did. The complainants left two weeks later, never to return. I have no idea why. Rumor had it they went down the street to another church to try again. I kept on praying the Collect—a dash of necessary humility, laced with gratitude.

#8 just might have preserved us all from “faithless fears and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may hide from us the light of that love which is immortal”—and kept us humble.   





 

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. 

2018.01.07 The "Royals" Arrive—Epiphany

We waited and waited through Advent. Then we waited with bated breathe for the actual baby to get born on Christmas Eve, or is that actually Christmas morning itself?

But  . . . nothing of moment happens until the “royals” arrive, and they, as “royals” do, take a very long time traversing, crisscrossing, the desert sands on camels to evade the watchful eye of a jealous ruler named Herod. Rumors have alerted them and they are curious to see if there really is a new “king” who will bring peace and good will and replace the politics of the tyrant Herod. That’s the ancient story. That story is not old!

There is no better idea than replacing our current politics—the whole fraught mess of it.

May we rise above partisanship. It’s not working for either party. I don’t know what a politics of Love would look like exactly, and perhaps it’s not humanly possible except in small ways in big hearts.

The “royals” were not kings but wise men/Magi from the far east. In our house, in ancient story, and in many cultures, they don’t make it to the creche until Epiphany.

We don’t fully celebrate Christmas until three guys arrive—El Dia de los Tres Reyes, January 6th.

Our Magi have just arrived—a bit disheveled—one Asian, one black, one female, all without their crowns. They must have lost them on the way.  If you look closely you can see the fallen crowns tucked in between the camels' one-too-many humps. I consider this an extremely good omen: no crowns, no kings, no emperors, no almighty display. Just a group of hopefuls following an out-sized star no less.  


Welcome these crownless dethroned worshipers. They’re exhausted; they still bring gifts; they still brandish Hope—in the most royally defiant way.

2017.01.08 Wish Upon A Star—Always

We in the northeast are in the middle of our first big snow storm. It’s no time to venture out—unless you’re a Magus in search of something more.

I stare at this beautiful and whimsically visionary image created by my sister and her late husband  many years ago.

The image is symbolic. It honors the three Magi of biblical story. They are out at night on a dangerous mission. All three together sit astride a single camel, with three humps, one for each of them.  All three wear crowns. The flirtatious camel winks. The image stands for hope in a new kind of world in which all people and their leaders are on the same page (or camel) truly committed to equality, justice, and compassion for all living things. 

It’s hard to see the three faces in this photo, but one is black, one oriental, and the third, riding high in the middle, is obviously a woman. It’s comical. It’s prophetic, and it’s a work of art that articulates a powerful biblical message of universal wholeness fueled by Hope—against hope. Here's a close-up.

These three storied Magi in the New Testament set out in the deep darkness of night on three camels to follow a star and a promise they sense is of God—the impossible possibility of a new kind of "king" for the world as symbolized by a newborn child lying in the hay in an improbable stable in Bethlehem.

As the story goes, they went at night for fear of the Judaean acting king (37-4 BCE) King Herod's  jealous rage. They returned home by a different route to deceive Herod who had uttered a sycophant-ish request about the whereabouts of this infant—that he too might go there to worship this new monarch. The Magi were political figures of some wealth. They wanted change and had followed a star that looked exceptionally bright to them. There are such stars of course, especially when your heart is expanded by hope beyond hope and things appear brighter than they are. That’s the power of mystical inspiration— sight and insight. It is what empowers us to keep on keeping on—no matter what. It’s why we keep telling the same story. It’s why we call such impulses spiritual—godly.

Hope has been the driving vision of the Obama administration (2008-2016) in the United States. President Barack Obama wrote a book called The Audacity of Hope. We have seen what many thought was an impossible hope: a black president and the hope of racial, ethnic, religious, and sexual diversity with safety and freedom he and his family represent.  (It isn’t about policy or party politics, it’s image.)

In her recent farewell speech to a group of school counselors, First Lady Michelle Obama articulated this “star”:  “The infusion of new ideas, and cultures and talents is what makes this country great. . . . Our glorious diversity is not a threat to who we are, it makes us who we are.” She invited all young people to take this star into the future, to get a good education, to think critically and creatively, to believe in the power of hope, and then work for the vision. I wept.

Will we follow? Will we be like those Magi, risking deep desert darkness and hostile powers, filled with hope, spiritual and political, bringing their wealth to invest in something new. Godde knows we all have followed the wrong star from time to time and invested in empty errant causes. But we don't lose hope or stop trusting God. Nor do we stop envisioning new possibilities—always wishing upon a star. 

Three courageous outlaws pushed on through the cold desert night. Their apparent insanity, it turned out, was remembered and recorded in the Christian gospel of Matthew as well as other Roman writers, all proclaiming a new message to the ancient first-century world darkened by oppression, inequality, and desperate fear. This is why some Christians celebrate Christmas on January 6, el Día de los Tres Reyes, Three Kings day. It is why Christians honor a whole season called Epiphany, the season of light, a season to follow stars that look bright with hope. 

The Magi were wise adults, and their pilgrimage of hope inspires us forward as powerfully as that babe in the manger. As Michael Hudson writes in his Meditation on the Journey of the Magi:

God gave the child to love the world
that noticed neither child not light;
but love grew up, a brighter star,
to guide a pilgrim through the night.

May we follow their Hope and make it our own.

2016.01.10 Little Epiphanies

Dedicated to……..
   
            WORDS   
            and their
           beautiful
            hidden
              and
           beckoning
          uncertainties
   
          Dedication by David Whyte for Consolations, Meanings of Everyday Words,  2014, 
                an alphabet book of solace, nourishment and underlying meanings.

What Shepherds Do

Shepherds keep watch still.
Shepherds stood stock still
   agaze, agape, light-struck at night

We imagine them sore afraid
We are sure they made haste to follow

But no……………

They stood still to watch over their sheep.
What shepherds are made to do.

Stand still. God knows where you are.
                      Lyn Brakeman, 2016 

A Hymn and a Poem
 
I have enormous respect for the spirituality of Anglican hymnody, both its texts and its music. I love to sing and discover that voices age like everything else. I’d get depressed if I didn’t also put trust and hope in evolution: everything will change in order to grow. We don’t lose the old and familiar, though we add to it, amend it, and seek nourishment in resources and people outside our own tradition, to let more light in. Have you noticed that each time we let light in to grow we die a little too?  It must be so.

        To die and so to grow. If you have not experienced this
        you are only a dark guest on a lonely planet.
                             Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,“The Holy Longing”
 

Thus it may seem odd that my favorite hymn is quite outside the Anglican comfort zone. The music is classical yet the text is offered as a hymn in the Unitarian Universalist Hymnal. It is an anthem of peace, both for religions and nations: love what you love, and hold it dear enough to be able to love what others hold dear.

Finlandia   music by Jean Sibelius, lyrics of Finnish Anthem translated to English

This is my song, O God of all the nations
A song of peace, for lands afar & mine
This is my home, the country where my heart is
Hear are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean
And sunlight beams on clover leaf and pine
But other lands have sunlight too, and clover
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine
O hear my song, thou God of all the nations
A song of peace for their land and for mine

Holy Scripture  John 1:14 in the New Revised Standard Version.

Tiny words can make a big difference. This Advent I’ve been praying with some scriptural texts, all very familiar, but, by paying attention and by repetition, I have noticed them in new ways. One example popped up in St. John's Mystery of the Incarnation......of all places.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

So? The translators have chosen this wording over alternative translations that say: “as of the Father’s only son.” The use of the indefinite article “a” instead of the definite article “the” to modify father, in addition to the elimination of the capital F for father makes the phrase metaphoric, signifying a profound affectional bond. God is to Jesus as a father is to an only son. (Remember those Miller analogy tests?) Any father? Any parent? Any son or daughter? Divinity to humanity? The phrase is allowed to be symbolic rather literal. It can not easily be used to justify any claim to Christian superiority or exceptionalism.
                                         
Little things mean a lot.  So do little choices.

2013.01.16 Epiphany Stories

Epiphany means revelation or insight. Or in words of James Joyce, the "revelation of the whatness of a thing . . .the moment when the soul of the commonest object...seems to be radiant." 

Twelfth Night, Epiphany Eve, is an English celebration, a time to try everything new you can think of—pranks, scandals, and role reversals.  This is my favorite season of the church year, because I just LOVE new ideas and insights that shed light on something in a different way. And I love the God of reversals. I watch for such surprises and usually applaud.

Epiphany takes us from Christmas to Lent and is based on the biblical story of the Magi arriving for a baby-viewing. They’ve heard that this kid may be special, sent from Godde—also dangerous, according to King Herod who feared a challenge to his own almighty rule/dictatorship. He sent the wisest men in his kingdom to check out the truth of the theological rumor.  

Imagine the scene: three august foreigners, Gentiles, astrologers from the east no less, arrived at the stable entrance bringing lavish gifts to the little Jewish baby cooing in a filthy crib around which huddled two exhausted parents, wondering if they would survive. Just imagine what Mary and Joseph felt at this appalling visitation. 

It's only a story (but never say only a story), for this kind of thing happens all the time to mess up what we all agree is true and real, and even what we are sure God’s plans are!   The story is biblical, therefore a bit grandiose on purpose, and rich in symbols and imagery of light and star, things these Magi know something about, and trust to guide them.

The story’s meaning is not just to emphasize God’s action in history to enlighten the people, but also to show that Jesus Christ is intended as Messiah, a liberator for ALL people. 

Stories have power to transform and inspire no matter how fantastical they seem. Even if they don’t turn out the way they predict we keep on telling them, because we need to hear them, over and over. 


I remember when a man who lived in the local shelter in Gloucester started to come to church at our parish of St. John’s. His name was David. He sat quietly in the back for weeks, and in time came up to join others for the Holy Communion meal. He said,  “something's going on here.”  He revealed nothing personal, except that he had a drinking problem.  No one asked for more.

One day the office staff heard someone talking out loud in the sanctuary (open for prayer when the parish office was open, or people were in the building), and peeked in to investigate. They saw David standing at the lectern reading aloud to an empty church the biblical readings for the Sunday just past. I don’t think the church was really empty. 

In time David vanished, as quickly as he had appeared. He left the place richer for his presence, and perhaps he received something himself.


I have a story I’m trying to write.  You have a story. Theology has a story. Even Science has a story. 

What might be the inside story the Wise Men would tell?  I wonder if those ancient astrologers and sages faced some of the same problems and insights modern astronomers and astro physicists encounter? They could read the stars, and they knew the sky pretty well, but they couldn’t quite come up with a really good insight about the origins of the universe.  For that they needed theology’s story.  Their astronomical GPS wasn’t enough.

Even today, scientific calculations come up against a brick wall in the search for truth. Sometimes, they need theology, or let’s say insights from the mystical/spiritual/religious faith traditions. They need the Mystery some call God to fill in the blanks about the cosmos and its quantum beginnings.

Like the ancients who followed a star that the prophets advertised as leading to Divinity, scientists today are in respectful conversation with theologians they once dismissed as too non-scientific to be useful.  A result a new discipline called astro-theology is evolving.  (The Journal of Cosmology, based on the science of astronomy and mathematics, has a theology issue.)

When two or three gather together to share their gifts, there is Epiphany and epiphanies.      

2012.31.12 Holy Innocence

Isn’t it true that we often remember, best and most lastingly, the small pieces of advice from wise teachers in elementary school when we are most vulnerably wide open to awe and wonder— before worldly sophistication sets in.

Here’s one from a third grade teacher shared by our parish priest ,who never forgot it.  The children became tense at the sound of a loud approaching siren. The teacher asked what the siren meant.  “Someone has been hurt,” they said,  and called out their own fearful speculations: fire, an accident, an bad emergency. 

The teacher listened to the children’s apprehensive associations. She affirmed them all with the compassion that only good listening can offer. Then she said:  “All this is true, children, but remember too, that whenever you hear the sound of a siren,  it also means that someone is on the way fast to bring help.” 

The time between Nativity and Epiphany, when the Magi finally make it to Bethlehem, thanks to a good star + wise astro-physics and astro-theology,  is a time for breathing after the rush and panic of conspicuous consumption.  

It's a time for hope, enormous hope, unknowing hope.

Something brand new has happened, and we have no idea what it means yet. It’s also very dark time,  full of many “sirens.” A time of mixed fear AND wonder.

When I was pregnant with each of my children and in their early infancy I felt the same—excited wondering, and also exhaustion from the weight of it, and the worry about whether this child would be all right, and would I be a good enough mother?

You know that any “child” will face all of life’s challenges, some more intense than others. Being born whole is a blessing, but only the first step. In church, therefore,  we keep on singing hymns that include cradle and cross, because we know we need to keep hope alive amidst the sirens that signal both hurt and help.

For who knows? Three weird desert types, from the east or the streets, may just ride in, on camels or in hot green sneakers, with wisdom and gifts that may get us through the night, help us understand that there is more than hurt and fear in store—always.

The third graders and their teacher had it right. Help is on the way, and some of it is up to us. 

2012.01.04 Epiphany Insights Two Days Ahead

Epiphany, officially Jan 6, began with a point of light in the sky, tiny but bright enough to follow anyway and illuminative enough to shine on the face of, what else, a tiny baby. Whose eyes would not light up?

Epiphany offers many fleeting points of light. Watch for them in all the “wrong” places.

I overheard a talented writer say something like, getting published was ALL grace. I told him he should take some of the credit for it himself.

There's no such thing as disembodied grace.  

And the alarmingly paradoxical Christian insistence on the co-mingling of flesh and spirit, divinity and humanity forces us to face this odd truth: it is divine to be crucified and it is human to be resurrected.

Our either/or habit of mind is confounded and convicted.