2023.09.03 Winners? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Do you ever wonder why those who experience deep suffering, for whatever reason are considered “losers” in our current American, if not worldwide, cultural narrative of WINNING? 

I recall an experiment some years ago that was conducted by educators. I guess you’d call it an experiment on reversals of expectations. Young kids were invited to run a short race at the end of which there would be a surprise of some sort. The kids ran their hearts out. Those who came in last and second-to-last got recognized as “winners.”  The uproar was intense, and the conversation about “fairness” even more intense. As I recall, one child was quite overweight, expending every ounce of energy and effort he could muster, to “win”. He did.  Everyone learned something, and I’d wager that everyone still remembers that paradoxical race. I do.   

Still, the more we love to win and fight to win, and start wars to win sovereignty and assert our own values, the more we actually lose. Our heroic self-esteem only lasts for a short time, and then we wonder once again who we are, do we really matter—for what and to whom?  Wars don’t work. 

Q: Who gets to be heroes in the biblical narrative?  A: Those who lose.  

The passionate Israelites, the children of Abraham, the tribe of the Northern kingdom, Israel, lose every battle, yet they are the “chosen” of YHWH—the Jews. In fact, it’s odd the way “losers”— even in baseball, even in Ukraine, even in  Afghanistan, “abandoned” by the U.S.A. in one more failed war, and even Jesus, unjustly murdered—are remembered as “winners” over time. 

Easy to shrug off the question and decide it’s all God’s will—then keep on fighting to win anyway. 

The biblical Job is not satisfied with pat answers that try to silence his fierce prayers. Job’s losses and sufferings multiply in unbelievable ways, causing him to besiege and batter God for answers to his ongoing prayers: Why me? Where were/are YOU?  Finally, God responds—not giving Job the answers to his quest and questions about WHY the “Almighty” divine powerhouse keeps on letting all this bad stuff happen. What does God do?  God takes Job on a tour of all creation—amazing panoramic beauty, sparkling with life abundant. God does not provide a rational, logical, obvious answer to Job’s questions; nor does God address moral issues like winning or losing or fairness or justice. There is simply an enormous revelation of the brilliant huge, glorious enormity of the whole. It’s not about blame or shame, but about  divine compassion. Could God change the way it is?  Would God? 

Can we see, and will we love it all, in spite of our own troubles? I don’t know, but I do know that sometimes Beauty comes my own way and breaks through but does not eliminate all my fears and doubts and struggles and pains. 

“Winners” don’t break open our hearts, “losers” do. It is they who elicit our deepest caring, promote our finest connections, heal sin—anything that separates us from the goodness in ourselves, others and God. The poet gets it. 

THE HOLY LONGING

by  Johann W. von Goethe

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,

Because the massman* will mock it right away.

I praise what is truly alive,

What longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of love nights,

Where you were begotten, where you have begotten,

A strange feeling comes over you

When you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught

In the obsession with darkness,

And a desire for higher lovemaking

Sweeps you forward.

Distance does not make you falter

Now, arriving in magic, flying

And finally insane for the light,

You are the butterfly, and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced this:

To die, and so to grow,

You are only a troubled guest

On the dark earth.

Written in 1814 inspired by a German translation of Persian poet Hafiz, labelled mystical and magical and above all “untranslatable.” A rhythmic challenge in English.   

*”massman”means something like everyman or one of the masses. 

©Lyn G. Brakeman, 2023 

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.

2013.02.16 Leaving God?

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air."

Emerson was born in Boston (1803). His father, who died when he was eight, was a Unitarian minister, as were many of Emerson's family members before him. He was a quiet and well-behaved young man, not an exceptional student. He graduated in the middle of his class, studied at Harvard Divinity School, and got a job as a ministerial assistant at Boston's Second Church. Not long after his ordination, he was married. He was happy at home and in his work, and soon he was promoted to senior pastor.

All was well.

Two years after Emerson was married, his wife, Ellen, died of tuberculosis, at the age of 19. He was devastated. He began to have doubts about the Church. A year after Ellen's death, he wrote in his journal: "I have sometimes thought that, in order to be a good minister, it was necessary to leave the ministry. The profession is antiquated. In an altered age, we worship in the dead forms of our forefathers." He took a leave of absence and went on vacation in the mountains of New Hampshire. By the time he returned, he had decided to resign from his position as minister.

I don’t know whether Emerson left professional ministry, or whether he left some ideas that should be left.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: "Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense."

In this 21st century, there is much doubt and query about God, religion, ministry, church, et. al.  It’s not new. Myself, I have no plans to divorce God, if you mean the One whose love is immortal and available to everyone. Or the Church I love to hate—it still offers me Jesus, some grounding prayers, sacraments, and a community that will bring me casseroles—and pray. 

If you doubt and fear and are uncertain, so?  Speak your words honestly in prayer and in conversation. Many gods and god-ideas live and die, and pass us by. And ministries evolve.

A word from Goethe in a portion of his poem “Holy Longing.”
    “And as long as you have not experienced this,
     To die and so to grow,
     You are only a troubled guest on a dark earth.”