2023.01.29 On Following—Many Beatitudes

We read in the New Testament that a small band of Jews followed Jesus of Nazareth around as he taught and preached and healed. He advocated and preached a radical renewal of the covenant between God and the people—a covenant to love God, self and neighbor in the constant, peaceful ways Jesus taught, and for which he eventually was crucified. It is a covenant of hard blessings that challenge power politics in all cultures and in all religions. 

God promises to provide grace divine with and for ALL human conditions as we try to use our freedom to love not hate, as we try and fail, and fall and flail, as we stumble and straighten, as we live and die. The delicate balance between divine grace and human freedom is precarious to say the least. So how do we respond?   

Using some natural metaphors offered by Episcopal priest and hymnist Michael Hudson, I offer some elaborations.

The grace of God is like a road—it beckons but does not drive or force.

The voice of God is like the wind—it comes and goes as we manage the “sails” of life.

    If we pull too tight, trying to control the wind, we capsize. If we don’t pull at all, fearing the wind’s power and our own, 

    we go nowhere—becalmed.  

The strength of God is like a stone—cold, hard, eventually worn thin. 

     Pick up many stones as you grow and go.  

The hope of God is like the sun by day and the stars by night—alway there 

    to guide.

The love of God is like a stream—slaking all thirsts.

The peace of God is like a friend—constant company, 

    attuned accompanist, weakened strengthener.  

Road, wind, stone, sun, stream, friend.  

You really will—never be alone, always be blessed.     

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.  

2022.05.15 Easter Five. Risen Indeed? A Risen Rant. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/15/22

The great proclamation on Easter Day Sunday, and through the Easter season of 50 days is: Christ Is Risen. Clergy shout it out. People in congregations shout back: Christ is Risen Indeed. It's like a password—our Christian 'open sesame'.   

I never thought of this before, but the phrase is in the present tense and the passive voice. It doesn’t say Christ rose or arose. Or Christ has risen. It says Christ IS Risen. So who did the rising? Was Jesus connected enough to raise himself up, or does he leave the rising to his identity as the Christ, the Anointed One? And to where? Well, heaven, we presume, or to the place where the God Jesus called Abba is.

Who can figure this stuff out? Not me. No wonder my mother became exasperated with all my questions and wondering. 

*  *  *  * 

The gospel of John remembers Jesus being accused of blasphemy, because he called himself God. His closest followers are smart enough to question all this rising/risen/raised up doughy theological language. Was Jesus daring to say that he IS God? Accusers threatened to stone him. Jesus told them to look at the works he was accomplishing in the name of this God. “. . .if I am doing God’s work, there is no need to believe me; but if I am doing God’s work—even if you don’t believe me (and they don’t)—at least believe the works I do. Then you will know for certain that Abba God is in me and I am in Abba God.”  (14:11-12 ff) 

Hearing these words, they again tried to arrest him but he eluded their grasp. God knows how, of course. Still is it not blasphemous to say he IS God? But he says he is IN God. That is different. 

Recall that John’s gospel was written later than the Synoptics and has a theological agenda to promote, rather than a story to tell. John’s is a gospel of remembrance, close remembrance, but based on eye witness material, gathered from the oral tradition of reciting events and teachings of Jesus. By now, Johannine writers must persuade the listeners that the story they’ve heard has profound, and yes, “risen” meaning. It was a very hard sell, and sometimes John’s gospel sounds like the gospel of the losers, going out on a limb to persuade others that Jesus was the Christ. 

God is in me and I am in God.

How ironic that the same biblical words that persuaded Jesus’s accusers that he was certifiably phony and blasphemous are the very same words that first assured, and still assure, me years later that Jesus is my guru/Master. These words secure my own Christian faith: “God is in me and I in God.”  I am completely convinced by these words. Why?

First, because this is my own experience of God Immanent—closely, deeply present within me.

And second, because, historically and still, these are precisely the words that persuaded the institutional worshipping Churches that it is very important to keep this image of Divine Immanence out of the liturgy, away from the God who dominates our liturgical worship, the One we regularly worship and consistently clothe in patriarchal language. We may not pray these words privately, but we continue to publicly worship a God who is consistently imaged as distantly transcendent, dominantly almighty. Check the Collects, prayers almost all directed to Almighty God and exclusively masculine. Even Christ is masculinized. Jesus was a man, but the Christ IS risen above any gender identity.

Such images of divinity simply do not affirm the God within me. Nor do they affirm the God within whose love we all move and have being. Yes, I can change the words in my personal prayer, but that is not enough. Without conscious awareness, we Christians are reinforcing, through our regular communal, liturgical prayers, a patriarchal image of God. This is the God we worship, the God we hear about most frequently, the God to whom we pray. To me this sexist imagery is idolatrous. 

          *  *  *  *

I can focus on my mostly good works, as Jesus said, and know that God is manifest therein. But I cannot say ‘God is in me and I am in God’ when this God is imaged in this alienating way.

OK, my ire has never been enough to cause me to leave the Church, to bag Christianity, to devalue the historical Jesus, to stop seeking wisdom from the Bible, or renounce my holy orders. But it is enough to cause me pain. And enough for me to liberate God’s image in my personal prayers as well as to seek and create inclusive translations of Scripture. I am not alone. 

*  *  *  *

Way back in 1975, just when I was drawn to follow my own stirred heart, this summary statement from the introduction to Liturgy for All People was written as part of the attempt of some post-Vatican II Roman Catholic clergy to examine theological language:  

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me” says the old proverb. We know now that this is a lie. Words can wound, alienate and degrade people.  Language can also affirm and express love. Care for language is a show of concern for people and a revelation of the attitudes of the speaker.    .  .  .  Church language is predominantly masculine. Male terms, images, and stereotypes, so-called sexist language, dominate church expression. Such usage is no longer adequate. It is time to build gender equality into the very fabric of church life. The effort to build new gender-balanced ways of speaking helps us toward gender equality for women and men.”    (from the Preface to The Inclusive Bible, First Egalitarian Translation, published in 2007 by Priests for Equality)

This is the translation I use now. It is not perfect, yet it is written with integrity and faithfulness to the earliest biblical texts. I’m grateful to these Roman Catholic scholars, clergy and lay, for their effort. And of course we are not done yet, and will never be done, trying to follow the Holy Spirit whose wisdom and lithe movement almost always leave us lagging.

Let’s remember how many times the Holy Bible itself has been translated, each time imperfectly. Chasing God is always playing catch-up. Nevertheless………..

God is in you and you are in God. 

2022.05.01 Easter Three. Theology Made Ordinary. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/1/22

Last week we zoomed in on parts of the Diocese of Massachusetts clergy conference. We heard talks from the Rev. Dr. Kate Sonderegger, Episcopal priest and Professor of Systematic Theology at Virginia Seminary. 

But what is theology? Can we actually dare to have a Doctrine of God? Sonderegger spoke to the intimate connection between academic explorations and prayer. “Theology is the intellect at prayer—alive and encountering us in all things.” I can relate to that, because I find myself talking to God, and sometimes Jesus, all the time—conversationally as well as asking for specific healing help. It’s simply a habit I’ve had since I was a very young child. At least God never talks back with advice, teaching, direction, or, God forbid, counseling. I guess God is like my mind’s eye, opening me to notice, or think, or feel, or imagine new things.

Sometimes an attention-arresting question pops into my mind, like the one God-in-Jesus popped to Peter, asking him the same question THREE times: Do you love me? Well, duh, now feed my sheep!  

God’s Love IS God’s will. Not hard to understand but easy to forget, especially when you’re busy blaming others, shaming yourself, spouting off like Job, or just plain feeling unloved, unloveable, too proud to ask others for help, or grumped out.  And when we fail, which is inevitable, then there is still Love enough to go round. So touch “restart.”   

Living into this faith of Jesus in a secular age is scandalous. Sonderegger said: “Simply being an ordinary person who is a person of faith, is an important testament to the goodness and glory of God.”  With a touch of humor, this academic theologian recognized that in the eyes of the secular world, a Christian—a person who puts their faith in a God who died and rose again, and shapes their life according to ancient laws—must be an idiot or a bigot or both. Nevertheless, to be the person who you are—to be an ordinary person, imperfect but loving, thoughtful, and decent—is itself an invitation to the people you know who love and respect you but who have no time for God, to wonder whether your faith and your goodness may in fact be related after all.

May we all have the courage to be visible symbols of God’s presence in our ordinary lives, and may our very ordinariness reveal to others the possibility of divine presence everywhere. Grace after all is the experience of being fully known AND fully loved at the same time. 

2018.04.29 Memorial Homily: a Letter, February, 2018

May I speak to you in the name of the God who inspired St. Ignatius of Loyola to say: “We are created to live in God’s love and life for all eternity.”

Dear Pierre,

I am honored to be here today speaking your praises. I can hear your voice now in my ear: “Pffft non, non, non. It is the Lord, not me.” For all your adorable arrogance, Pierre, you were truly humble.

Still, I will speak.

I knew you'd choose scriptures that affirmed Ignatius’s wisdom:
    -From Isaiah, a message deeply personal and universal:  Do not fear for I have redeemed you. I have called you by name. You are precious in my sight and honored and I love you.
    -Psalm 23, of course. I picture you now beside tranquil waters in lush meadows—these could be French meadows, possibly resembling Marseilles, or Wallingford, Connecticut, where you lived with your beloved Mary. 
    -From  I John: Beloved let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that God loved us . . .” (I John 4: 4-10a)
    - Gospel of Matthew: Jesus recited Beatitudes, blessing the beauty and messiness of life all together—in terse inclusive phrases, a little blunt, like you, Monsieur.  Your beatitude? Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.  Thank you for your courage, Pierre. You took risks where others feared to tread.

For you it was always about Love and Jesus the Christ, the one you called “that guy.”  If on a directed retreat I didn’t see Jesus on the horizon as I prayed on the beach at Mercy Center, something was missing. You would question, not scold, but with intensity ask: “Leen, do you see the Lord, the guy? I squinted as I looked out to sea from the beach. No Jesus-guy.

In time I learned to see the Lord through my beeg eemaginashun, as you would say. I sat on this bench.

And too, Pierre, you would say when I came to visit in your latter days: “Hey, where is the guy?” You meant my guy, Dick Simeone, my beloved priest spouse. He is right here today, offering your praises and remembering with me.

Through your ministry, Pierre, especially the Spiritual Exercises of your genius-saint-guy, Ignatius, I discovered that you would never not be a Jesuit. You can take the guy out of the Order but you can’t take the Order out of the guy. Getting to know this Jesus-guy in my own flesh was the best spiritual gift I ever received. Merci Monsieur, merci beaucoup.

I remember when we first met met in the early 1980s. I’d heard a Roman Catholic chaplain colleague rave and rave about knowing Jesus so well. I thought she was pretty nuts. I also felt insulted, as if I didn’t know Jesus very well, which I didn’t. But I was also entranced and intrigued. I asked her how she knew Jesus so well.
    “You have to have a Jesuit for that!” she announced.
    “Where do I get a Jesuit?” I asked.
She intimated, but stopped short of telling me, that I should become Roman Catholic. I did, however, have to sign up for a silent directed retreat at Mercy Center with Pierre Wolff, her Jesuit of choice.

I sat in a retreat room among several other quivering eager newbies, half expecting to see Jesus sweep in. But it was you, Pierre, announcing that we all would introduce ourselves—briefly. Very short, you said, and gave your own introduction: “Pierre Wolff. France.” Spit spat. I would soon learn that you had a big heart— and a snappy mouth.

There followed a bunch of paragraphs-long, mini-bios, none of them necessary, except to quell our nerves. Then came the seestairs, your three female minions who would assist you in directing us on this retreat: Judy Fortune, Mary Daly, Elaine Deasy, Sisters of Mercy. Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.

Oh God, I thought, nuns! Maybe this is too Catholic for me. But I had harbored secret longings since junior high school, mostly because they had a woman up front in their churches. A woman, no less—a stone statue, but still . . .   I prayed I’d get one of these Mercies for my director. This Pierre-guy would not be warm and fuzzy! 

But I got my Jesuit. So began our fifteen-year relationship of spiritual director and directee. It was never a flirtation, although I had become quite expert in this strategy in my midlife. Pierre, you accompanied me, respected me, let me argue with you, even reprimand you, nursed me through the heartache of being rejected initially in the Episcopal ordination process, the grief of divorce, and the joy of remarriage, convincing me—over and over— that I was a good enough mother, and that God saw me as precious and honored and beloved, no matter what. When I’d get overwhelmed and freak out you’d say: doucement cherie, doucement. Take it easy.

You’d say: “Leen, you are my priest.” But no, Pierre, you were my priest. You taught me how not to fear. You taught me to be free—free! It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. (Galatians 5:1) The charism of the Jesuits is one of open-heartedness and open-mindedness—like you.

And you taught me how to hate. When I read and re-read your amazing small book, May I Hate God, I knew it wasn’t God I hated, but the Church—at least for a time. You weren’t so happy with your own Church, Pierre, all because of the dismissive ways women were treated.

You celebrated Eucharist  among us informally—people of all  traditions welcome. You knelt at a low table on which the bread and wine rested, awaiting words of consecration, yet already consecrated by our presence in God. This is still my favorite way to celebrate the sacrament. Free.

Still, imagine my shock when one day at work I received a call from you in your frenchified English talking about Mary and marry and getting married, and Mary again. Somehow I knew this was not the stone statue of Mary, but a woman of flesh and blood that you loved deeply. You wanted ME to officiate at your marriage to this Mary. I said yes with more aplomb than I felt, and before I knew what I was doing. I was hardly wet behind the ears, and this would be my first ever marriage liturgy: September 10, 1988, just six months after my ordination as a priest.

The requisite pre-marital counseling felt quite hilarious. Me, a baby priest, counseling you, Pierre, a larger-than-life authority figure to me. It was comical.

But you and your Mary were gracious and dear. I listened to you two talk about your relationship, your love, your desire to marry in the sight of your Lord. I said something lame. But then I just looked and listened to you both, and I knew: here was love that participated in Love Eternal; here was Easter Love that would nourish you two and everyone your lives touched; here was love that could sustain great grief as you, Pierre, left your country, your order, your faith of origin, your Roman Catholic priesthood in a short span of time. Blessed are you who mourn for you will be comforted.

All this for the love of a woman named Mary. That has a scriptural ring, no? And Mary: Blessed are you who mourn for you will be comforted.

I couldn’t be a Catholic priest because of my gender; I couldn’t be a Jesuit, wrong gender again, so I became an Anglo-Catholic priest and an Associate of the Religious Sisters of Mercy. And you, Pierre, became an Episcopal priest.

Merci, my French, Jesuit, priest, Jesus-freak, Episcopalian. Blessed are you, for you have lived and loved in God who is Love and who loved you first.

Merci, merci le bon dieu, adieu. Good bye. Amen.

Love,  
Lyn

Oh, and Pierre…….. doucement cheri, doucement.

Memoir Musings Part Seven: Ordinations journey

How many ordinations does it take to make a priest? God knows!

In seeking an organizing structure for my personal/professional journey I have come up with the word-theme ordination and a new title, Ordinations:Becoming a Priest From the Inside Out.
When I play with words I look first at derivation, even before definition. There I often find clues to the word’s soul, where it was born and what its true meaning or vocation is. Ordination comes from the Latin root ordinatio, to put in order.

By definition, ordination means the act of making someone a member of the clergy, conferring on someone the authority of a sacred office, which can mean that the person has the status of the office but may not be clergy. In some traditions for example, lay people are “ordained” to serve for a time as an officer in the church.

Ordination also can mean the ceremony by which this ordering takes place.

By the traditional Anglican understanding of ordination (with a courteous bow to Luther's great idea of the priesthood of all believers conferred upon all Christians at baptism), you could analogize and say that ordination is to priesthood as authorization is to your credit card. Religious ordination is a sacrament of grace and it also means you have institutional sanction to do what priests do in an official capacity. You’re card-carrying.

I’ve come to see that I have had many ordinations in my life, significant occasions in which my personal life has aligned itself with my vocation as a priest before I became a priest in the Church. In all these ordinations I have felt authorized, ordained by the presence of the Spirit rising up from within me or conferred upon me by external means. My ordinations have always reset my course in some way, have always given me both new life and challenging tasks and have always authorized me to do something new.

They happen in prayer, in adversity, through significant relationships, in wilderness, wrestling with Church politics, rejection, compulsions and sins.

My book chapters weave personal themes with professional categories like a tapestry, following my ordinations path from the first one under the table when I was three to the official one by the Church when I was fifty.

It took a long time and much ordaining to get my spiritual ordination together with my religious ordination, but I’ve actually been an ordained priest for sixty-seven years not twenty-one.