2024.04. 21 The Law Weighs In. Gospel Stays Steady. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

One of the very first little ditties, written for “little children weak and small,” I learned in Sunday School. It went like this:

Jesus loves me.

This I know.

For the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to him belong

They are weak but he is strong 

Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

The Bible tells me so. 

Now I am an aging adult still rooted in this childhood chant. It makes me laugh and cry at once. It is true and false all at once. It’s as “gospel” as the latest excerpt from a recent H.C. Richardson report:  "Many congress members have left Washington, D.C., since Friday was to be the first day of a planned recess. This meant the partisan majority on the floor fluctuated. Olivia Beavers of Politico reported that that instability made Freedom Caucus members nervous enough to put together a Floor Action Response Team (FART—I am not making this up) to make sure other Republicans didn’t limit the power of the extremists when they were off the floor."

FART for freedom? It actually might clear the air, especially if we add to it the little gospel ditty above. Can you imagine a divine fart?  We could call it the Big Bang. Laughter is down-to-earth embodied laughter. 

I stay clear of most political commentary, and yet........  I am drawn to the clarity of prosecuting attorney, Alvin Bragg. You can see his story in Sunday's NY Times magazine of 4/14/24. The sliver of hope I feel gently tugging at me is this: hush money payments are immoral and slimy but not illegal. HOWEVER, if the Republican presidential candidate running for election as President this November used money from his campaign donations to make such payments, that IS illegal.  Bragg steadfastly declined comment until he had thoroughly read everything. Only then did he choose to take this case, pronouncing himself "pleased."  It was the Law. 

His spokeswoman confessed later that "it was a struggle to get him to say even that.”

Such careful, undramatic, grounded, simple, and deliberate discernment I trust. Law and Gospel reconcile. 

And the Bible does tell us so:

        Beloved, let us love one another

because love is of God;

is begotten of God

and has knowledge of God.”   (I John 7:10)  

2024.02.25 And Then There's Music! Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The first spiritual experience I had with classical, aka “good” according to my mother, music was in college sitting on one of the uncomfortable lecture hall seats with the pop-up desks that slid between the seats, ready to take notes on music.  The first “lecture” was a piece of music played once, then again, and then again. In between the “hearings” the professor told us how to diagram the piece which was Wagner’s Overture to the opera, Tannhauser.  

I was thrilled, not simply by the music itself, but by the fact that a grand piece of classical music could be diagrammed, just like a sentence can. Music, not just the elementary scales and practice books my boring and haughty first piano teacher used, but grand public music with thrills and trills, movements, transitions, themes with variations, rests, and punctuations. 

As a writer, a lifelong devoted reader, and lover of words, I now heard that music could be read. I was also excited to know more about the music business of my maternal grandfather, known in NYC as “Pop” Adams. He was an impresario whose business with the Wolfson Bureau was to attract, import, and promote European classical music, vocal and orchestral, in the United States, where in the 1900s there was a dearth of classical music, vocal and orchestral. I never knew him because he died when Mom was twelve and I was unborn. Still, I felt as if I knew A.F. Adams through my immediate attraction to classical music, especially opera, with the exception of the occasional scorching soprano who could not blend. 

Despite occasional flirtations with rock and roll and jazz, my love has stayed steady. We had season seats for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and now with the Hartford Symphony Orchestra whose conductor is the animated and vibrant Carolyn Khan. 

*  *  *  * 

Wendy Gerbier, to us, is Auntie Wendy, a mezzo-soprano with a voice that soars with a slow die-out, like an echo. It stays with you. She is an ambassador of singers who have sung our national anthem at events, and has a three-octave range. Wendy is the aunt of my stepdaughter’s son. She recently performed a concert here in the auditorium at McLean Village Retirement Community. The listening audience sat still in awe and delight. You’re never too old for fine music, even if your ears don’t hear each note. Here we are (Dick Simeone and moi) after the concert, munching on brownies with Auntie Wendy with whom we munched on brownies, provided for the event which was open to the public. 

Although Wendy Gerbier sings mostly operatic selections, she usually offers a program of varied selections, each with a bit of information about each piece. She opened this concert with two spiritual classics, the Schubert “Ave Maria” and the Malotte Lord’s Prayer, then continued with a mix of “a little bit of everything,” including “O Danny Boy” and Bernstein’s “Somewhere.” My favorite selection in this concert was Bésame Mucho, which is a bolero (Mexican dance tune), composed in 1932 by Consuelo Velazquez Torres, a female concert pianist. The words mean: “Kiss me Lots ’n Lots” Como si fuera esta la noche La última vez.".  Kiss me as if this were our last night.”  Both song and artist are important in the history of Latin music, a downright sexy and elegant way to flirt with song and gesture and coy desiring. Wendy sang it with her voice, danced it with her body, and lured us into the rhythms with her sway—seductive and alluring. Such is the universal language of music itself.  

*  *  *  *

What has this to do with one of the most difficult times in the life of Jesus of Nazareth? After he had spent hours in prayer and discerned that his mission would be to persuade his people that he had a messianic message of universal love, he withstood all the usual temptations at his disposal—wealth, power, and unbridled control—to choose the ways of peace, justice, compassion. That sounds promising and simple, but it was not. It cost him his life.  

Temptations to betray such gracious love for all creation bombarded this Jewish preacher from many directions, even, and especially, from his closest disciples who failed to understand the depth and breadth of Divinity itself. He would have to be persuasive and totally human—have sex appeal— to lure people to follow his countercultural message.

Have you ever betrayed someone’s trust? Has anyone ever betrayed yours?  Oh, let me confess the many ways. It is blindingly difficult to trust a love you cannot see or touch or hold onto and keep as a guarantee about your direction in life. All this and no profit with little salary. 

It’s like flying blind. Or going to a symphony or opera when deaf. Or breathing in the scent of spring without the ability to smell. Or pretending to love with no heart. The last sense to go in death is that of touch. So hold a hand, and be present at the end if you can, because no one knows for sure if it is a beginning or an ending.   

Ay, dios mio! 

2023.05.28 PENTECOST, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I’ve loved and trusted the Presence of God since childhood, but I’ve never felt the urge to evangelize as we Christians are supposed to, right?  To me Pentecost was/is not the birthday of the Christian Church, nor the arrival of the Holy Spirit for the first time ever, but rather a stunning advertisement for the steadfast loving Spirit of God, present broadly, deeply, and wildly to all sorts of people the world over. Will they all be Christians? Not likely. Will they all be endowed with divine grace? Yes. Is that enough salvation? Yes. Is it the only way of salvation? No.

*  *  *  *

Recently at a sacred music concert taking place in an enormous church sanctuary, a listener turned to me and said bluntly: “What’s a mystic?” As if I knew! People ask clergy the most annoying real questions just because we are clergy. Clergy are NOT God, thank God!  

Still, the question got me wondering: What IS a  mystic really?  

A prayer practitioner. 

Pop-up answers seem foolish, I know, yet they are the kind of answers that force my attention away from my ego and all my educated answers. A prayer practitioner?  

Who, what, where, when, and why? 

WHO is a prayer practitioner? Anyone hoping, perhaps longing, to deepen their relationship of love with self, God and neighbor.  

WHAT is prayer? Being silent, preferably in solitude, while willing to open up to inner thoughts and feelings, to listen for God in your soul or notice God sitting on the branch of a tree. 

WHERE? At a place of deep quiet usually but not always at a monastery or a convent, run by monks or nuns whose ministry is to provide and maintain space and hospitality for prayer practitioners. 

WHEN? As soon as you admit to yourself that you need well, to know what the hell you are doing with your life.  And when you decide to sign up for a silent directed retreat for 3 days, then for 5 days and eventually for a whole week or 10 days. And when you submit to talking about your innards with a wise and trained Spiritual Director who listens and makes suggestions about things to use from Scripture or, annoyingly, recommends more silence. That’s when you take a walk, fume to God about all this damned silence, return to your room and sleep like a champ. 

WHY?  Because I said so.  On my first silent directed retreat, I stared for a very long time at a huge portrait of a rose. I loved its sheer size, its astounding beauty, elegance, and all its petals. I went to the greenhouse and asked if the man I met there was the gardener, just like Mary Magdalene had asked the Risen Christ who appeared to her as she wept at Jesus’s empty tomb in the gospel story in John 20:15.  In my case, this guy in the greenhouse actually was the gardener. He gave me one rose. I took it back to my room and dissected it, one petal at a time. The bright red petals were strewn all over the floor. There were only about 29. I left the petals and slept. The next day I returned to the chapel where the rose portrait hung. This time I noticed its long stem. There were thorns, sharp and pointed all along the stem on both sides.

 The thorns were hard. I frowned.

The petals were soft. I cried.

The petals far outnumbered the thorns.  I laughed.

  

2018.01.20 Abecedarius—Fun With Words For Sanity's Sake

When I awake to the falling snow I don’t groan like many people do. Rather I snuggle down under my warm comforter, my mind telling me: “Relax, it’s a snow day.” Of course it’s not a traditional snow day, meaning there is no school or work or anything to do at all but sleep in and possibly overeat. In retirement I could do that most days anyway.  Still, I’m psyched for having fun.

Few people would think it fun to play around with words, but for me it’s enlivening. and healing. So on my very own snow day, I created an abecedarius. An abecedarius is a little story in which the first letter of every word follows the alphabet.

Addled
bellicose
cats
dive
effortlessly
forward
gain
harrowing
immediacy
jumping
kindly
lilliputian
mice.
Nubile
opiated
prey
quiver.
Rats
sit
tantalizingly
upon
verandahs
while
xenophobiacs
yield
zip.

I wonder if Creator-God was in this kind of mood while experimenting with harrowing diversity and simultaneously trying to organize prey, predator, and sexes ahead of time so they’d all survive together on Noah’s ark— a Flood story of destruction, entitled:“How to Survive Disaster Without Killing Either Your Mate or Your Rescuer—or Both”?

Creative insanity helps me avoid being driven insane by today’s news headlines alone. They are like headlines in biblical times: Good News! Take notice: your government plan to raise taxes, split up families, deport your best friends, starve the hungry, legalize white supremacy—before it shuts down completely.

To call the biblical proclamation “Good News” is stunningly ironic. The gospel proclamation and prophetic preaching in both testaments was Good News from God. Good news from God, however, was the polar opposite of what governing powers announced as good news—both then and now.

2014.07.20 Amazing Grit

Often I sign my emails, “grit and grace.” It seems to have more pep than more common words, like blessings, peace, etc. Anyway, it came to me as some kind of spiritual holism.

I recently listened to a talk by Angela Lee Duckworth, a  psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. She has been grappling with the age-old familiar question of: What is the Key to Success?

Now just how many how-to and self-help books have been written about success, as if it were marketable? It’s not on St. Paul’s list of spiritual gifts, nor does Jesus mention it, yet success has been associated with religious faith, and so has prayer. And there is the so-called prosperity gospecertain habits, purpose-driven lives, etc. etc. make for divinely sponsored success.

Jesus failed, so let’s get over it. (That’s sassy, but you know what I mean. If it hadn’t been for Paul and the gospel writers, would he even be remembered, let alone his gospel?) Followers often mess up the founder's dreams. It could be that one of Jesus' gifts was his ability to attract followers who were really good at social media.

Success is a quintessentially American cultural value, and quest. Can-do mentality is our gift and our curse. We are effective and accomplished, yes, but so prone to compulsion and self-deceit. We don't fail graciously. Instead, we sue.

The Church too has been exploring its own success in the face of what looks like failure but probably is not, e.g. how many people come, how young are they, etc. Whoever thought of praying and asking Christ about all this? 

Dr. Duckworth has no easy answers, but she has amassed lots of statistics and studies on the question. Passion, perseverance toward one’s goals, hard work, belief in the future, being a marathoner not a sprinter—all present and accounted for. Unexpectedly, the strongest success predictors, talent, intelligence, personality, were not at all consistently correlative with regular success.

Duckworth isolated on factor that was more consistently present: GRIT.

GRIT.

How do you assure grit, even blessedly? Duckworth called it a mystery. We don't know why one person has grit and another doesn't. She offered an educated guess: get a growth mindset. It's possible to teach a child to believe that the ability to learn can change with effort. 

The most spiritual thing I heard Duckworth say was: Failure is not a permanent condition. Now that’s gospel! In fact, the Bible has more failure in it than success. Oh, it's depressing! Consistent, however, is human faith-grit and God's gritty grace. Neither give up on goodness nor on each other—plain idiotic, but true grit.

Once a therapist of mine asked me who my hero was. She was trying to give me an image of power my mind could call on, because I was a wimp.  Here it is. Hard to believe.

 

I am adding GRIT to my list of words that describe resurrection—that transformative movement from death to life—not a one-time event, but an ongoing many-times-over dynamic. 

Grit is gritty. It’s a gut thing. It’s true and truth. God must have tons of it, lest why would Godde create such a mess, and never abandon it or give up hope for its growth? 

The other word that means resurrection to me is resilience—one of the latest and greatest word thrown about in the mental health field. It is almost as mysterious as grit but not quite as instinctive. The Latin root of the word is resile, to leap back. Sprong!  

Hell, Jesus called Peter a stumbling block and both men bounced back, one to face a trial with courage the other to start a church, God help him. Both had grit, resilience and resurrection.

So in fact do these superb, determined little petunias on our brick doorstep—starting their own little garden no less. What gritty praise!

2013.12.15 Christmas

"This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria..........."  So began the Christmas gospel, this year from Luke, telling the story of how Mary, pregnant with Jesus, and Joseph had to travel to their native town of Bethlehem to be registered for taxation. While there, something happened..........

This year, perhaps for the first time, Syria jumped out at me, a small part of the grand story. Syria in the midst of bombings, strife and civil war. I remember when we were in Israel in 2012 and we stood on a ridge overlooking the land so barren.  Our professor pointed to some mountains  in the distance and said, "That's Syria."

Syria not Bethlehem became the focus of my prayers. She is why God keeps on trying, in so many ways, to draw our attention to Love not War. 

2011.07.31 Ha-Motzi. "Who Brings Forth"

Today’s gospel reading was the story about the loaves and the fish, a strange miracle-like story in which Jesus, surrounded by a large crowd—5000 men “besides women and children” (Imagine!)—blesses God, who brings forth enough from what looks like not enough.

The blessing over grain products in Hebrew is:
BARUCH ATAH ADONAI, ELUHEINU MELECH HA-OLAM
HA-MOTZI LECHEM MIN HA-ARETZ

BLESSED ARE YOU LORD GOD CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE
YOU BRING FORTH BREAD FROM THE EARTH.

Ha-motzi means “who brings forth”— as good a definition of what God does as any.

Jesus, like all great holy men, besides many women, blesses God first BEFORE asking God to bless. Before you deliver your bill or particulars in prayer, bless God FIRST. To do so is neither an asking nor a presumption of result but a simple acknowledgment of the nature and possibility of the God HA-MOTZI. Then do your own part to assist the bringing forth.

The motzi is used in formal Temple liturgies. It is also used in homes. It’s a bridge blessing, It connects church and home. Anyone can use it. Once I went to a Jewish friend’s home for lunch. We made tuna fish sandwiches. She made ha-motzi over them and I swear that was the best tuna fish sandwich I’ve ever had.

Christians do not bring home the words of our eucharistic liturgy, the words Jesus would have said, the words he did say on the hillside, words addressed to God first.

What would happen if at our home meals, big gatherings or small, we first made our own ha-motzi?
BLESSED ARE YOU LORD GOD SOVEREIGN OF THE UNIVERSE.
YOU BRING FORTH BREAD FROM THE EARTH

And if we then added some words from our Christian Eucharist?
TAKE AND EAT THIS FOOD. IT IS GIVEN FOR YOU.
EAT THIS FOR THE REMEMBRANCE OF JESUS CHRIST.

Might this spiritual practice in time BRING FORTH humility, gratitude, re-enlivenment, hope, courage, a new chance— just as it does in church on Sunday?