2022.03.06 Ashes, Ashes of Truth, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 3.6.22

Ashes announce the first day of the season of Lent. Ash Wednesday is a holy day for Christians, beginning the time when Jesus was driven into the wilderness to, well, consult his soul and his God about his own choices. On this day priests, or laity if no priest is available, smear ashes onto each upturned forehead to remind us that we are mortal and beloved as such. The imposition of ashes is the ritual that  springs us into Lent, a season that has nothing to do with things borrowed or lent! It does have to do with one’s own willingness and ability to, let’s say, think things over—not as a life review, but as a way to spend more time in quiet and to ask yourself: Is there anything or anyone in my life that gently tugs at me, visiting my quiet contemplative time with worry, or wonder, or regret, or simple uncertainty—or any ongoing temptation to sin, understood as anything that separates us from the goodness in ourselves, God, or our neighbor.  

                                *  *  *  *

For the last two years I have had regular, often daily, conversations with an old friend and Episcopal priest, the Rev. Lee McGee-Street. Lee was my, and many other women’s mentor, in and through the ardors of the ordination process in the Episcopal Church in the late 1970s and 80s. Although we women were finally voted “ordainable” as priests in 1976, it took years for the “law” to settle into the minds and hearts of a people formed in patriarchal language and hierarchical politics. The process felt like wiggling a fat’n happy overweight man into a corset meant for a petite ballerina. 

Lee McGee, then an Episcopal deacon from Washington D.C., had been one of those courageous women (eleven in Philadelphia in 1974, and four in D.C. in 1975) who bucked the traditional system to get ordained priest, with the "Washington Four" before the official vote was taken. These ordinations were labelled “irregular”. They were not illegal, because a bishop carried out the sacramental rite. Still, these women had to endure another ceremonial liturgy to get “regularized” so that they could function as priests with sacramental authority: to bless, consecrate and absolve. 

The ordaining male bishops suffered no consequences of course. (Amazing what you can do after you retire, your pension is secure—and you’re a man.) Nevertheless, every institution has it rules and regulations to create a sense of order. The Church is no different. 

Lee, herself, had first been against the idea of pushing the Church into taking action on gender justice, but she soon changed her mind. She had a rich career as a chaplain, counselor, parish priest, and professor of pastoral studies at Yale Divinity School. She was very present to me and other women as we floundered into and through the journey to priesthood in Connecticut, encouraging us to persist, informing us about the dynamics of the double standard, and later helping us to understand how hard it was for male clergy, who had controlled the sacramental life of the Church for centuries, to lose that primacy and to suffer a “breach of collegiality”—aka old boys’ club. One meant loss of power, the other loss of intimacy. The Church today is not the only institution still learning to live with the idea of shared power. 

Dick and I had left Connecticut for Massachusetts in 1997, and in 2020 returned, just as the COVID pandemic was taking hold, to live in a retirement community in Simsbury. Lee and I resumed our connection and had daily telephone conversations, rich with humor and debates about church politics, and feminism. We were moving from our mentor/mentee relationship to good old friendship.  

In these last two weeks, I continued to call and leave messages, yet received no callbacks. This was not usual. I knew that, Lee as she aged, became housebound with painful arthritis, had regular caregivers, experienced some depression, was grieving the death of two husbands, and lived with a form of macular degeneration that had left her legally blind since her late twenties. I also knew that she was one of the more resilient women I’d ever known. She never talked—except I imagine to her therapist of years, her several beloved guide dogs, and perhaps God—about her disabilities. It was never easy to, well, be empathic or feel Lee’s own pain with her. She was always “fine,” and she always turned the conversation away from herself to me. Each time we talked, I pressed her a bit about how she was—really. She consistently assured me, “I’m all right.” I wondered. I doubted her “all-rightness” and felt helpless.

On Tuesday, March 1, I saw a message on an online site for Episcopal clergywomen that Lee, at 78,  had died on February 20, 2022. My heart crimped with grief, and also some anger. Why could she not have told me she was in that much decline?  I was slow to remember that this was how Lee had managed her difficult life all along. She helped others, period. My grief would have some ambivalence; no grief is ever pure. Nevertheless, Lee and I had been, and would always be, connected enough through God, our seminary, and our passion for the causes of women in the Episcopal Church, to make my grief whole and holy. 

Thank you, Lee McGee, and bless you always. 

So what has this remembrance  to do with Ashes and Lent? 

*  *  *  * 

I suppose I will never get over the allure of ashes, black smudges on the forehead in the shape of a cross. It is a powerful ritual to acknowledge the beginning of Lent, yes, and also to remember how small, silly, and yet how beloved we all are in God’s eye.

When I worked in the 1980’s as a chaplain at Hartford Hospital, a big bustling city hospital, and later at an addictions treatment hospital, I used to bring a small vial of blessed ashes to work on Ash Wednesday. I was astounded at how many people, staff and patients, wanted me to smear their forehead with ashes. They chased me down. When each one stood before me, some much taller than I, I tiptoed or they bent. I said to each: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Oh, how I wanted to add a little phrase of reassurance, something silly like, like don’t worry, God always loves you and will resurrect your soul forever. Oh, how fearful so many of us are of dying and being gone—just gone. 

On Ash Wednesday I felt, and feel, like a small child again, hoping someone will just pick me up and hug me forever close. All I can do is grieve for my friend, Lee, and ask another friend to smear my own forehead with black ashes and remind me. 

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. 

There is something astonishingly unifying about this visible ritual—an outward gesture of our common humanity, the tattoo that marks our common nature. Without exception.    

2017.03.12 Life's Blood—Born and Born again and Again

God, I feel sure, has many wombs. One is the baptismal font. Womb-like, it evokes birth and is filled with water, which breaks when we emerge. We are sealed by baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.

Another is the womb of Earth, the planet we call our island home. From it we derive all our nourishment and a full supply of water and air for Life. We cannot sustain biological life without this womb. It must be born again and again. Too often we take it for granted and abuse its rich yield— to our peril and to our shame.

Another womb is the womb of Incarnation: the womb of our own flesh out of which we birth God’s life over and over again. We live in this womb all our life, and each time we connect with enlivening feelings, we are born again. 

Finally, there is the womb of the tomb. From that womb, God births us back into Life forever in God’s own soul.

Here are two poems that bring the mystical experience of being born— and born again—down to  flesh and blood and embodying divinity at once. Both are by the Rev. Regina Walton, a colleague, poet, and Episcopal priest in the diocese of Massachusetts. Regina is the author of The Yearning Life. Poems 2016, Paraclete Press. With her permission and with gratitude, I share these poems.


AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL POEM

I started out small
And got smaller.
Loved, humiliated, self-enclosed.

Some days lifting up my hands,
Others carrying my cross
where my shoulders meet spine.

I was knit together,
And know I’ve knit someone else
Thoughtlessly

Not that it happened without a thought,
But surely
It wasn’t the thoughts that did it.

I bled out when he arrived,
So they filled me back up
With the blood of another.

Now I am the same
By half.
Thank you


FIRST DAY
   
The baby: hale and pink and strong and fine.
But beached and bleached, you are much less sanguine
And so, two pints of blood by plastic line
Leach their slow way into your opened vein.
The scarlet bags like lungs suspended from
The scarecrow pole, unwanted hanger-on
This trinity: child, mater, sire gone
To sleep in a hard chair.

                                     Now the bald sum
Of all your pains naps in a plastic bin.
Your web of tubes a tether to the bed;
The buzzing, ringing, beeping, healing din.
Who thought, on your first day, who expected
So soon, to find so much of yourself gone?
In time, you will get used to being wrong.



from Songs for the Cycle by Michael Hudson.

. . .Seek to grow as all things grow
and trust what grace assumes—
That time will manifest the Life
Received within the womb.

2013.02.14 V-Day Excerpts

I came down to breakfast today to see two large red envelopes on the table. Love and humor cards from my beloved husband. Oops!  I forgot it was Valentine’s Day, and immediately justified myself by saying love was every day all year round.

Then, I went to my email and there was a beautiful e-card from a friend in Estonia where it is “Friends Day.” 

Then, three heart-shaped cookies arrived from another friend, theologian and professor at Boston College, who also sent an email with an article he’d written in 2005 in defense of Eve Ensler’ s Vagina Monologues, which students perform yearly at this Catholic college. It is as an educational experience, he contended—and more, it is empowering, even if it offends.

My oldest daughter’s beautiful blog post humbly and eloquently extolled the merits and complexities of maternal love for her two daughters. An “unrhythmic jaunty dance” she called it.

On today’s Writers’ Almanac, I read Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s love poem to Robert Browning that begins,” How do I love thee? Let me count the ways,” and ends “ If God choose, I shall love thee better after death.”

Now ..........I’m out the door to get a card—or three for my at-home Valentine.
                                                    *******

Walking home with my cards in my pocket and love in my heart for my family, friends, God and my own self, I remembered my own V-experience. 

Of course, not everyone will think the Monologues is education or art, but most agree it is politics with a punch and a large dose of chutzpah.  

I performed a script in the V-Monologues when I was in Gloucester. It was to benefit the Coalition for the Prevention of Domestic Violence on which I then served.  My monologue was about a mid-life woman who went to a vagina workshop—in secret, in trepidation, and in hope. In the workshop, the woman discovered and explored her own wowser secrets while lying on her mat with a group of other women, all being instructed by a slim young chippy who probably had at least three vaginas, or clitorae:)  Anyway, I wore my clerical collar in the play, and added a line about the institutional Church and its need to discover its own vaginal power. Well, I didn’t say it quite that way, but it was clear that religion needed women and it mustn't dry up.

The parish I served got two new young women parishioners out of that show.  They sheepishly admitted that they came to the parish because they'd seen me in the Monologues. I was identified as an Episcopal priest in the playbill.  Also, a lesbian friend in my Yoga class brought her 90-year old mother to see the play, and after it the mother said to her daughter,  "Can we go to that church?" This is called V-evangelism. 

May I add that six women from the traditionally more conservative 8 a.m. liturgy sat in the front row!  Never heard a word from them,  but I saw a grin or two.  

Life is love, and there’s plenty of both left in all of us. Happy St. Valentine’s Day.

2012.11.18 Religiophobic??

“Don’t mention religion or God to them. You’ll be blasted out of the room...they’ve been hurt and are pissed,” said my brand new employer.

 I’d just been hired by as a chaplain in a new alcohol/drug rehabilitation center. I was a religious professional on the way to being ordained an Episcopal priest— and already there was a gag rule.

During my first week on the job I went to the detox area in fear and trembling to visit my very first patient, thinking the warning might be exaggerated, and reminding myself confidently that they had advertised for a chaplain. It was a title they wanted to change to pastoral counselor but I had lobbied  for Chaplain, a title with religious implications—and won.

“Get the f... out of here, you goddam religious freak!”  Noelle screeched before I even introduced myself.  I backed out of her room slowly and mumbled fleeting impotent words of comfort like it will be all right—for my own benefit. Then I went to find my supervisor to ask for a change of assignment.  She said no.

“Take it slow and easy,” she said.  “Detox is monstrous. She’ll be more reasonable when she is alcohol free. Just don’t mention religion or God.”

But I hadn’t.

When Noelle came to my office for her first post-detox meeting I was tense awaiting another assault. Instead she was cautiously friendly. It turned out that her reaction had been to a cross I’d worn. It was a gift from my husband and I loved it. I hadn't mentioned religion when we met; I hadn't needed to, I was wearing it around my neck. Noelle told me that her mother had beaten her up at night and preached religion at her all day. It wasn’t hard to listen to her painful story and to feel compassion.

“Why is the place where Jesus is supposed to hang empty on your cross?” she asked.

“Because he’s not there any more,”  I said.

“It’s kinda pretty,” she said.

I  took the cross off and let her hold it. She declined the offer to let her try it on, saying it was mine.  When Noelle left the treatment center after four weeks she looked well and happy.  I'd never suggested she go to church, and I don’t know if she held onto her sobriety. I pray so. She healed my fears and helped me be an authentic goddamn religious freak.

                                                                  * * * *

Over time in my chaplaincy there I mentioned religion a lot in my work with addicts. Few were hostile; in fact many longed for the basic ideas and sacramental practices they’d known as kids. Every time someone came to see me it was a confession of sorts. Listening was absolving.  I used Bible stories like the prodigal son or daughter coming home to Love; spoke of prayer as a common denominator; offered ashes on Ash Wednesday,  and was bold enough to convert my office into a Meditation Room always open for prayer and quiet. No one came but it was there.

All these courageous alkies helped me become a goddamn religious freak of a woman priest.

2012.10.21 Who Me.....a Nun?

    It's my 20th anniversary as a nun—sort of. 
    I became an Associate of the Religious Sisters of Mercy in October of 1992 not long after I learned that Roman Catholic women’s religious orders had an associateship program by which lay people could join them in prayer and commitment to works of mercy. 
    The charism of the Mercies seemed perfect to me. I’m always in favor of mercy since I need so much myself and can be quite merciless with myself and others, though I try to keep that impulse a secret when it arises—except toward my husband...he says.  But the specifics of the Mercy vision were the attraction: a lifelong commitment to contemplative prayer and ministry that connected the ignorant with educational resources, the ill and infirm with healing resources, and the impoverished with economic resources.
    Knowledge, health, money and Godde all wrapped up in the spirituality of Jesus of Nazareth my chief guru.  
    My fascination with Catholicism began when I was a young child and my Catholic aunt came to visit. I used to tiptoe up to her bedroom door which she left ajar and peek in. She knelt down next to her bed and began to mumble and rattle a chain of beads.  Then she put on a black sleeping mask like the Lone Ranger’s and crawled into bed for the night.  
    I was drawn into some kind of spell by what I thought was magic . My aunt called it “saying my prayers.” My mother said they were “Catholic” prayers.  My Presbyterian church had prayers of course but these “catholic” ones seemed mystical, and embodied at the same time.  I saw the same thing at Mass.  These worshipers were active. They moved their bodies, kneeling, standing, folding their hands, bowing and walking up the aisle together to eat a holy meal at the altar.  In my church we mostly just sat for everything. They even brought the communion meal to you on little trays.

    As a twenty-something I took instruction to become a Roman Catholic, a convert like my aunt had been. It seemed I could have the spirituality and the ritual, but not without just the right amount of too many rules—and a pretty clear sense that women were important to clean up and set up but not allowed to serve at the altar. 
    This church of my infatuation was too tight for me, so, with the help of a college chaplain,  I discovered the Episcopal Church where I could have the sacrament of the Mass with all its grandeur and grace— and fewer rules.  There was a chance for women to be priests in that tradition, so much smaller and more supple than the huge Roman Catholic behemoth of an institution.
    I was ordained an Episcopal priest in 1988 after a colossal struggle with that church’s institutional bias against the presence of women invading  the centuries old inner sanctum of an all-male priestly caste of male privilege and authority. My little “jihad” was worth it. Today I’m proud of my small and limber Episcopal church—Anglo-but-still-Catholic church, still wrestling with integrity and threats of schism over issues of inclusivity.  And I’m proud and happy to be an Episcopal priest.
    Experimenting recently with an online invitation to write a six-word memoir I jotted down quickly: Wannabe Catholic nun turns Episcopal priest.  Pretty good summation.
 
    Lingering longings, however, persisted, not strongly just small heart tugs. I never felt called to be a religious sister. The Episcopal church has monastic orders for women I might have joined if I  hadn’t also been dying to have kids.  It was the Catholic connection I got wistful about from time to time especially when I went on retreats at Mercy Center in Connecticut and received spiritual direction from a wise, witty, and utterly French Jesuit priest named Pierre Wolff who guided me so well in the ways of Jesus Christ that I became smitten, not with Pierre or even Jesus, but with the whole astonishing God-in-the-flesh thing.
    One of the Mercy sisters sniffed out my heart’s desires, as good nuns can do. She told me about associateship and I leapt at the chance.  In the Extended Mercy Handbook Admission Criteria, the first eligibility criterion for associates reads,”be practicing members of a Christian faith, ordinarily, the Roman Catholic faith.”  
    ORDINARILY jumped off the page. It didn’t mean necessarily or always; it meant usually.  So I could be unusual and quite ordinary.

     Mercy Foundress Catherine McAuley’s leadership style was refreshing. Though every ounce a leader, Catherine did not like the Mother Superior title; she insisted on the dignity and integrity of every single woman who joined the order—also each one’s need for freedom to develop fully as a sister and a daughter of God.  This was advanced thinking in her day and certainly didn’t match any traditional patriarchal church leadership models I’d known. 
    Freedom within authority best facilitates spiritual and emotional growth. Catherine believed  this truth, and governed accordingly.  I liked that a lot!  Catherine was also fond of saying “Mercy is justice in tears.” Not original to her, but what wisdom ever remains original? Mercy has no patents or copyrights. She begins in wonder, and never stays put for long. 
    Taking instructions, something ordinarily expected, I bristled when our teacher Sister Grace Mannion called God “the divine conniver.”  It was the Protestant in me, but it didn’t arrest my journey; later Grace, whom I’ve come to regard with admiration and affection, and I laughed about it.

    I was inducted in a Commitment Ceremony 20 years ago almost to this day at the chapel of the Mercy headquarters in West Hartford, Connecticut.  I was one of several inductees, mostly female with a couple of brave husbands in tow.  It was a simple ceremony of prayer and the presentation of a  Mercy pin and a handbook—more rules and expectations.  A reception with lovely and loving food followed, because every holy occasion must always have food to remind us of our humanity and keep us humbly grateful.
    That day I felt complete as if I’d come full circle. I belonged, sort of.  I’ve always been welcomed and embraced, and an anomaly at the same time. Guess that’s my lot, a religious mix.

    Isn’t this how we all are supposed to be in order to blend back into the whole community of Creation?  

    Extraordinary!