2022.07.03 IN-dependence? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blogpost

We, in this country and on this Earth, are living in the midst of the death throes of patriarchy. As I stutter to understand things, a question pops up, like in the game Jeopardy. Let’s call this category: Values. 

The highest personal value in the United States.

What is Independence?  

Ding. Correct. That’s $$$$ more for you, dear Contestant. 

More Word Play 

“Throes” does not mean death itself, but rather the painful struggle, the convulsion that accompanies great change. 

“Patriarchy” does not simply mean the rule of all things male. It means a system of social organization based exclusively on the dominance of White straight maleness, often Protestant—garnished with the temptingly alluring word: INDEPENDENCE. 

“Independence” does not simply mean freedom. IN-dependence means without dependence. Consider: other words, such as IN-ept (without aptitude), or IN-animate (without animation), or IN-adequate (without adequacy), or IN-domitable (without defeat) or unbeatable, or even IN-formation (without full formation)—just a list of facts without a fully formed idea, plan, or conclusion. 

All my eccentric word-play explorations make me wonder even more about the American idolatry of IN-dependence. We even set apart a whole day, July 4th, to honor our IN-dependence. It came about historically after a bloody war, the loss of many human lives, and the establishment of our own government, based in IN-dividual (without divisions) freedom for our nation. We fought to be free of British rule, and we prize our freedom(s) without letting them evolve and ripen. Too much? 

Have we overvalued our IN-dependence?

*  *  *  * 

When I read about the move to end checks and balances in our government I feel alarmed about the return of originalism, a political fundamentalism that IN-hibits (hinders) national evolution and advocates autocratic methods and purposes—so alarmed that I have actually prayed for what Christians call The Second Coming. We need divine INter-vention (coming between). NOW. It could also open enough hearts and minds to, well, revive the ancient ethic of the good old Golden Rule: What you hate do not do to another OR Love one another as you would have them love you. 

We need INTER-dependence (sharing mutual dependence) not more IN-dependence. No one is ever without dependence, despite all of her or his dramatic adolescent delusions. 

Who is not dependent? 

Personal Spiritual Stories

When I was a child I struggled consistently to be INdependent of my mother’s over-attentiveness, not the same as nurture. She was well-meaning I know, but I needed to know my own embodied self, INdependent from her. I needed to breathe. I achieved my INdependence. I also lost much in the process, including the capacity to mother myself and give enough maternal nurture to my own children. What did I gain? I gained a strong sense of myself, strong enough to make many choices like divorce, professional success, and happiness. What did I lose?  A marriage and full IN-timacy (without timidity) with my children. 

What helped me reclaim my dependent self?  

1) The consistent and INternalized (not externalized) loving listening presence of God whom I encountered in prayer—the chatter of a small child to the God she’d seen in a picture book. 

2) The affectionate good presence of a therapist, herself suffering from excesses of INdependent sadness and anger. 

3) The abiding INtimacy and good humor of a man who taught me to love and cherish my body as if it were his. 

4) The cautious yet authentic devotion of my four biological children whose feelings and fears I have learned to listen to without condition or parental-ism.  

5) The very recent acquaintance I’ve made with a young (26) man named Jared, who, because of a tragic accident, is paralyzed by a spinal cord injury that has left him dependent on others. Talking with Jared, I admit, has felt at times emotionally paralyzing to me. He has taught me again how to be healthfully dependent, ironically through his very fine, educated mind, fully IN-tact (without tactile sensation). Jared works as a design engineer at a healthcare facility for people with spinal cord injuries such as his own. He texted to me:  “I’d say that my greatest joy is seeing my ideas become reality. Having something to build, designing it, and eventually holding it in my hands.” 

I remain dependent on all these love-factors—IN-definitely (without definition), but not quite IN-finitely (without finitude)—yet. 

Happy Dependence Day. 

 

2015.08.07 Birthday Love Letter

Dearly Beloved,

I was born on August 7th 1938, and three years later on that same day you were born. I’m your elder. We’ve been married as two priests—two Leos in one house with enough roar space for each of us—for almost 30 years. Your brain is sharper; mine is tackier. Now we are growing old together. But look how cute we still are.





When people get older they go down—settle like a house over the years settles into its foundation. They settle into habits, get “set” in their ways, maybe more opinionated, especially if they don’t remember what they did this morning or what their spouse told them she/he was doing today. Most of us also settle down emotionally, get less reactive and defensive—sometimes and for less length of time. For one thing we have less energy to invest in unsettledness. And often what we believe in gets set in stone—heavy metaphorical language, tomb-ish really. Dear Godde, we just don’t want change. Transformation is perhaps okay, but only because it’s a more spiritually desirable word, has a little more flex and grace about it.

You will say I speak for you. True. And don't you agree with my persiflage? Yes, dear, you say.

All this is based on some of my own experience as well as some of what “they” say will happen. But who are these “theys”?  No idea really! You? 

There is gravitational physical evidence of such settling, no? I mean there is the hanging flesh syndrome —not gardens like Babylon’s, but just hanging there ready for reclamation, or girdling, or mirror-avoidance syndrome. I tend to bind mine up a bit with tighter-than-I-should-wear pants. Dumb. But I have the slender legs to make up for it, as long as they stay upright. One of my daughters tactfully indicates that I am an apple shape, not a pear. You just let it all hang out, or down. I so admire your relaxed physicality. It's a women's issue.

But really, looking at myself naked in a mirror, as “they” recommend also to be a good idea to build self-esteem, or to practice loving what you see, is flawed advice. What I see is my own reflection, no getting around it. So just don’t look, and I won’t either. It’s all bullshit really. To just stand there flinging airless affirmations at your image, hoping that it will suddenly look like the preferred image for women of the day and your age group—svelt and athletic like Blythe Danner on Prolia!—is perfect asininity.

I am most grateful to be married to you, an equally aging husband. Thank god your brain is three years younger than mine. Nevertheless, it takes us some time just to leave the house intact. One of us is incontinent, the other impotent—slightly, occasionally, simultaneously, alternately. We rarely remember who is which when.  A comedic affair. We laugh—so not to weep, or worse argue.

Seriously, if you take life too seriously at these ages you’re doomed. Still, I admit to some settling into myself, physically, mentally and spiritually, as I age. Do you?

How I notice our settling as a couple, chiefly, is that every evening as the 6-7 hour approaches I look forward to you. I leave my computer where I write and find enlivenment in my words and ideas, while enjoying plenty of sedentary energy. I love it.  AND..... I also can’t wait to close up, lock up, back up, and head upstairs to join you, my beloved, in the evening we’ve planned, well, assumed: watching our soaps, viewing multiple murders, all solved by a brilliant male team of British DCIs, with whip-smart female sidekicks, always the sidekicks.  I’ve been your sidekick, too, but with pillow privileges.

Before the soaps there’s Jeopardy to prove we still have some mind left. We rejoice that each of us knows something, you in politics and history, me in literature and word-ness. We both know at least half the Bible clues, although we say, “I knew that one, I just didn’t say it.”

Then there's juicy stuff . . . a drama/trauma of serious family embroilments, none solved by anyone, but softened by love moments. Or . . . a medical drama where someone dies or doesn’t really die, or might die, or suffers and no one knows what to do, save one brilliant young student who has burned the midnight oil just to get a diagnosis like a needle in a haystack. Or . . . the mental illness/small town drama, like Doc Martin, brilliant physician/surgeon with no affect at all, practicing in a tiny Cornish village because he is hemophobic (fear of blood not gays). He’s likely a victim of PTSD, judging from glimpses of the parental drama in which he, amazingly, grew up. Others argue for a diagnosis of Autism or Aspergers, which the Brits pronounce as-PER-jers. Who the hell cares? You want him to be your diagnostician and your doctor. Just keep him away from your bedside. 

Oh, we don’t call all these soap operas, a studied no-no for professional people of intelligence and social savvy like us. Nevertheless, there’s always a wealthy white woman, or two, found dead somewhere every night—hopefully not under our own bed or in our nightmares. Or . . . an abandoned lover with a killing secret, powerful enough to murder for. Or . . . women prisoners trapped with sinister all-male guards, also trapped. Everyone horny and finding ways. Still, it’s not us, we say. It’s only a TV soap.

They say the prison one is true. This is a memoir after all. But what is memoir save someone’s spotty memory? Other eye-witnesses swear that it didn’t happen like that. Sounds like the biblical memoir to me. All perspective and perception—all valuable, none absolute. But so what? That means that every perception and perspective counts in the whole, which no one but God sees anyway.

What’s real in our house at our age is that the best, most anticipated, relaxing, fun, funny, sometimes over-cookied time of the day is when we convene as a couple to eat dinner, watch our soaps— and pretend they aren’t real, and not us. Until...........

Until we come across a display of the most consistent tangle of dysfunctional behavior ever dreamed up, and one of us says: “I did that.” Or one of us remembers when we actually ran off to make mad love in a field and got scared witless by an approaching cow who was merely curious, but big!  It would have been worse in the sacristy, an option we never considered, because an Altar Guild lady would have been much more dangerous than a big old cow. That’s when love was a high, not a settled state of being.

We did that, or did we really do that? As long as there is something to laugh or cry at, we’re okay with mixed memory and muddled chronology. 

We never murdered anyone, did we? NO, of course not. Still, there are ways to “murder” for love and the final seizure of your own happiness.

None of this is true, of course. It’s only a soap. But here is a factual miracle (miraculous fact?): the photos above are our 2015 passport photos—just in case we're not too settled for one more trip, like Italy. Or heaven, which we hope is no soap!

I’ve loved you for years for many things. Today I love you most for being alive—also for how much delight we enjoy together when both of us jump on a Jeopardy clue ahead of the contestant, or guess the murderer correctly among at least six very obviously guilty-looking suspects.

Happy Birthday, beloved.