ADVENT. Who Is He? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 12/04/22

All it takes is one—some ONE—to start a social/religious/political/cultural transformation, to break long-held patterns of behavior, our “ways” we say.  

Think Rosa Parks, Martin Luther, Alexander Hamilton, Syrophoenician Woman, Charles Dickens, Pope John XXIII, FDR, MLK, JFK, Julian of Norwich, William Shakespeare,Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Jesus of Nazareth, Harriet Tubman, Mary of Nazareth, Mr. Rogers, Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Pauli Murray, Karl Jung, Jean Baker Miller, John the Baptist. Who is he? 

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I remember my brilliant young high school daughter singing in the musical Godspell. She sang “All For The Best” and never missed a beat or a word of the high speed lyric rendering of the biblical scenario about Jesus’s gospel, according to Matthew. The song was perfectly emblematic of what happens to people who are confronted with great confusion, great pain, and great hope all at once over a short sweep of time.    

Imagine the confused joy of people, especially those most destitute and those with a surplus of wealth and resources, also leaders, wondering and worrying about the future in chaotic times, just like our own, when suddenly out of the desert and into the crowds came an exotic messianic prophet screaming at people to REPENT NOW. Unburden yourselves of sins and worries now. Prepare!  

A herald’s voice cries in the desert:

Prepare the way of our God,

Make straight the paths of God. 

                            (Mt. 3,The Inclusive Bible)

Would you have listened? I might have sensed the urgency and wondered. I’d engage in lots of obsessive overthinking to prepare for all possible outcomes—known and unknown. I would have felt stirred by fear and hope all at once?  But I might also have condemned the message as crazy. I’d also call my closest most trusted confidantes or an authority figure, for support and answers.  Secretly with tears, I’d inwardly confess my own naked neediness? Then I’d step out and follow.

According to the biblical story, Jesus knew about his cousin John’s eccentricities and the risks of dire political consequences. John tried to persuade Jesus that he Jesus was the one who should be doing these repentance baptisms. But Jesus reassured John, telling him to “leave it this way for now”—in other words, there is a power greater than the two of us in whose faith we trust to make it all for the best. Then Jesus went into the waters for his baptism and began his career as an activist for justice, peace, and righteousness—not being holier than others, but being in right-sized and humble relationship with friend and foe alike.  

How did this new movement we call Christianity, ignited by one brave man named John work out?  In the Bible story, both John and Jesus established a following. Both became proclaimers of justice for all people, in the name of God. Both became heroes. Both were persecuted as enemies of the State. Both died ugly, ignominious deaths (beheading and crucifixion). Neither went unforgotten. 

 

Many still ask: who was that ONE who first cried out?  

2020.12.06 HOLY

Where is John the Baptist when you need him? His is the voice of alarm, the clarion call to wake up. It is the screeching of the fire engine racing to help. It is the scream of a police car siren racing to help. It is the cry of a hungry baby, the agonized why? of the crucified, the whimper of those alone and dying, the near-silent mutter of a street beggar, the rage of the able and of the helpless, the sigh of the contented writing out a check which is too small to matter, the groan of a planet in peril, the blast of a shofar in early morning—calling, calling, calling.  

What voice do you need to hear? What voice is strong enough to break open your heart? To wake you up to the naked need that surrounds us even when we neither heed, nor hear, nor need. It’s there. What voice moves you to stop running and start listening? Who is your prophet?

In every call, there is Godde. In every need, there is Soul. In every despair, there is Hope. In every wound, there is healing. I know this by faith and by glimmers, glimpses, glows, and guesses.

A glow: December 6th is St. Nicholas day. In life he was a bishop in the early Christian church who died in 343 CE. Nicholas was of Greek origin. At 5’6” he was small in stature but giantesque in heart. Sometimes called the Wonderworker, Nicholas instructed children to leave their empty shoes out by night, and by morning the shoes were filled with goodies and surprise treats. From this small holy activity emerged Saint Nic’las and then/now Santa Claus.

 

 

 

 

 

 I am reminded that the generosity of Godde —in Creation and through all life of all beings—is extravagant and eternal.

 

 

 

 

 

A shimmering story. One of my granddaughters asked for a cross on a chain for her 21st birthday. She specified :“Not one with that body on it.” I remembered a time when this young woman was in her teens and had a fight with a classmate about religion. What middle-schooler fights over that? She’d angrily insulted her friend’s religion, calling it stupid. The dispute was arbitrated by the principal, an apology was made, and my girl did further penance on her own. She went to church with her friend, jumped up for the altar call, and got “saved.” She came home, announced her salvation, and told her older sister that she should get “saved”—it would help her a lot. By the next weekend she decided against church and for the mall.

All of this is not exactly what one might call divine salvation—or is it? Something happened that this girl never forgot. Something to do with Christ, she told me, and wrote me a note, with this salutation: “To my Holy Grandmother.”  It is a beautiful articulation of her spiritual experience, her gropings and her raw and innocent wonderings as she tries to discern what Christ means to her. Salvation is a process. This kid’s a pretty topnotch theologian already!

I wondered about myself being called “holy” refraining from sophisticated definitions of holy.  She wrote me this: “In terms of your holiness, I think I meant it in the way I have always seen you. The only person in my family growing up that was spiritual and religious. I remember being young, exploring at St. John's, and finding peace there. I also remember always asking my parents if we could go to church (I mean, what kid does that??). There's always been a yearning in me for spiritual knowledge. I think for me growing up, you embodied that for me. So thank YOU!! :)”

I say the same to her!

Advent III—What Then Should We do?

Biblical characters are frequently demanding and commanding in the name of God, even to the point of name-calling, like John the Baptist’s indictment of the crowds seeking baptism: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Trees that do not bear good fruit will be thrown into the fire and burned up. This is harsh. John the Baptist would never win any popularity contests. And yet he sheds glaring, revelatory light on human behavior. What you do matters to you, to your neighbors, and to God.

Does God judge? Yes. Does God condemn forever? No. Does God call for repentance and change? Yes. Does God love with zeal equal to the zeal with which God judges? Yes.

“What then should we do?” the crowds asked John. They, like us, wonder about this kind of God, and feel threatened, a little scared.  

The Baptist’s answers are inconvenient but quite clear: give away one of your several coats; do not extort money falsely; no usury or threats of violence; be content with your own wages. Someone more powerful than I am is coming.

Ah, good: our Jesus Christ is coming with the Holy Spirit in tow. Good news! Whew!

Not so fast. This Christ, whom we think is our Christmassy Jesus, has a winnowing fork and bears exactly the same message as the Baptist delivered. The harsh light of judgment exposes us all, inside and out. It hurts. Certainly no one would dare be silly and sentimental about the power of this Word, this Christ, this God who calls for right behavior.

What then should we do?

The first thing to do is to scrutinize your own greedy habits. The second thing to do is to realize you can’t blame the OLD testament for this one. It is in our NEW testament. Then resist the temptation to blame, even yourself. Historically and today, one of the first reactions when we feel afraid, challenged, insecure, and powerless is to defend self by blaming others, rather than taking into account our own behavior.

Just like the crowd the Baptist warned, we are in disarray, not centered, unclear about what to do, how to behave. Our values are askew, so we blame: Republicans, Democrats, climate-deniers, the media, the atheists, the theists, God godself, science, the White House, the northeast, the southwest, the midwest, Catholics, Muslims, Sikhs, the law, religion, the Bible, the police, car salesmen, LGBTQI  people, THE Institution—on and on. Add your favorite blamee—even shaming yourself neurotically counts. All of this gets us off the hook. Face it: we might just be a brood of vipers who need to get honest.

Throughout history, the preferred blamee has always been the Jews. NOTE: John the Baptist, Jesus, Mary, Paul, the gospel writers, all of our beloved biblical forebears, were Jews.

I worry about this die-hard and deadly habit of blaming the Jews. All -isms are on the rise in our confused world, and anti-semitism is too. It’s always the Jews, or the OT, which is to say the same thing in disguise. Why is that? Cynthia Ozick proffers an answer in her essay “Hep! Hep! Hep!”, published in A Sense of Wonder (2016).

H.E.P. was the call of the Christian Crusades in 1099. It stood for Hierosolyma est perdita (Jerusalem is destroyed.) Hep! Hep! Hep!—a raging marching song, a Christian cry, a Nazi cry, an anti-Zionist cry. It’s the cry of blamers and haters anywhere. If you listen carefully to your deep inner self you might hear the impulse to cry Hep! when you feel frustrated, angry, wanting to vilify another and declare yourself absolutely right. Toddlers do this well.

Such impasses happen everywhere and any time to any society and people, so why do Jews bear more of the brunt than other groups? Ozick suggests it has much to do with: “. . . the forceful powerful resistance to what Jewish civilization represents—the standard of ethical monotheism and its demands on personal and social conscience.”

We’re right back to the Baptist’s cry, to Jesus’s winnowing fork—calling us to high standards of morality. We plain don’t like it. Think Ten Commandments—foundational divine expectations, the manifesto of the Jews.

I think the worldwide symptom of this resistance is that we are stuck in fight mode—spewing toxic, hostile energy, and humor that falls short of being prophetic, into the midst, rather than enough respectful intelligence to open up relationships with and any and all putative blamees.
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Still: are we less divided than we think we are, or than we are told we are? As long as we think we have to fight we will have to blame. The space between us will remain contaminated, and that space is where commonly held values live—gasping for air.

Think tug of war. If each of only two teams dropped the rope and abandoned the fighting spirit, the passion to win and to be right, the dust would settle. Could we then see clearly and hear each other clearly? Is this the baptism of the Holy Spirit and cleansing water? 

Is this then what we should do?

2018.12.09 Advent II—Lions of God

In Advent we hear a cry of warning from the wilderness, the city, within our own souls. It's a call to change, to return to the ways of God, to seek goodness in God, self, and neighbor—ALL.

I initially wondered what a female version or image of John the Baptist would be?  All I envisioned was some variation of the cartoon cave-woman, Wilma Flintstone, going from cave to cave with the latest news and a baked goodie of some kind. I used to love the cartoon characters, the Flintstones, as did my children: Fred and Wilma Flintstone with Barney and Betty, their BFFs.  Here they are, Wilma at left.

But let’s be serious. John the Baptist is a biblical character, not a cartoon, and a key figure in the New Testament stories of Jesus of Nazareth. He was a fierce and deeply honest biblical prophet, the “voice of one crying in the wilderness.” John was mostly associated with dire news: Change before it’s too late, you brood of vipers! Also, a bad wardrobe: clothing made of camel’s hair; and a lean and strange diet: locust and wild honey. His job description was stark: baptizer of frightened hordes in the Jordan River and preacher of a new reign. And his death, like Jesus’s, was brutal and violent—imprisoned for treason by Herod Antipas, ruler of Palestine (4 BCE-39CE) and beheaded at the whim of Salome, a young girl who danced for the king at a banquet and requested the head of John the Baptist in payment for entertaining the drunken Herod and his court.  (See Midrash , "The Vow" by Lyn G. Brakeman in her book The God Between Us: A Spirituality of Relationships).

Jesus’s day, like our own, was beset by unrest, fear, distrust, and persecution of anyone who resisted the tyrannical ways of oppressive authority. Classism was then, as it is today, a most terrifying sociocultural plague. John the Baptist and Jesus preached God’s reign of justice, peace and hope for the poor and oppressed. If ever there was a time to heed the Baptist’s cry of CHANGE! it is now. This eccentric figure frightens us with his warning to be alert in bad times while choosing the path of Good. His clarion call for repentance, although terrifying, also brings hope against hope.

All the images of John the Baptist I found were either too stylized/religious, or too bloody, or for sale only. I wanted an image that was fierce and noble, one that bespoke a story of terrorism and greatness all at once, good news and bad in one. Then I ran across C-Boy.

C-Boy was an African lion who lived a longer than average life (14 years) for an African lion.  According to “Elegy for a Lion”  in National Geographic Magazine, December, 2018, this lion was admired for his “tenacity and fierce spirit.” He would be my John the Baptist image. “He was everything an African lion should be: resourceful, cantankerous, patient, proud but pragmatic, seemingly indestructible, continually imperiled, and gorgeous to behold.”

No one knows how C-boy managed to survive in the wild and live as long as he did, breaking the mortality record. We do not know why he got a second chance at life after a battle with killer lions. The number one cause of death for lions in an undisturbed environment like the Serengeti National Park, Tanzania, is other lions. Like John the Baptist, C-Boy gives us a story of mystery and hope that lives on. No one knows how John the Baptizer survived the wilderness and managed to risk provoking hostile authorities for as long as he did—long enough that Jesus sought him out, followed his teaching, and continued what John started. John and his follower, Jesus, live on in the memories and memoirs of the Biblical New Testament.

There are books, films, and animated versions of great Lions of God—Christ, Paul the apostle, and Judah of Israel. Now I have added John the Baptist to this regal leonine array. The Holy One is so vast as to require multiple images. Look in your mirror.



  

2017.12.10 How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

"Sonnet 43: How do I love thee, let me count the ways" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Public domain.

“How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.”  This is an intimate marital joke. I invented it and it always makes us laugh. If we are in a snit about one thing or another, or even if only I am feeling impatient, largely because of something utterly inconsequential, such as he’s in my way as I traverse our small kitchen, I say: “How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.”

It’s impossible to laugh and snarl at the same time. The face won’t do it.

This is very far from romantic I know, but what is romance in 2017 in a world full of snark and public incivility even from the White House? Yet it is true that everyone has a love story—not always exotic but always authentic. 

Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning fell in love, and poetry was their language. Browning wrote: ”I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett ... and I love you too." She wrote a long letter in return, thanking him and asking him for ways she might improve her writing. Barrett was an invalid, and was reliant on morphine, and it was some months before Browning convinced her to meet him face to face. Barrett's father didn't like Browning, and viewed him as a fortune hunter. Love and poetry prevailed and the couple eloped in 1846—off to Italy. Where else? Barrett never saw her father again.

Every love of any kind comes with its shadow. In spiritual terms, cross and cradle remain inseparable—not for doom but for truth. We all crave solution and resolution, and we sentimentalize love to rid it of fear. Every prophet in every religion fiercely cries out against falling in love with illusory glitter. Yet we do. So? God is still falling in love, still ready to elope, still ready to be born and to die. 

I offer this wisdom at all costs and anyway: Tell the bold, bare, fierce truth about hate and sin and rage and outrage. Then keep going. Be John the Baptist. Be Jesus. Be both. Go where the love is and invest with courage. So what if it can’t last or be perfect? Go for it anyway. God does.

2012.08.29 To Organize or Not To Organize?

My son John quipped the other day,  “Where is John the Baptist when we need him?”

(Today happens to be on the  liturgical calendar to remembering the beheading of John the Baptist, the biblical prophet who organized the people around sin, repentance and a new way of life. Good idea, not good for the powers of his day who preferred the status quo: despair and poverty for the 99%, power, money and isolation for the 1% with the egos.) 

Let’s get organized! hollered John the Baptist.  I think I shouted that to my young family, or if I didn’t I thought it loudly.  It seemed to me that in our family of six we needed to find a way to go in the same direction at the same time at least once a day—other than to bed. 

I wonder if Godde conjured that divine thought in Her mind just the instant before the firmament split-seconded out of control and Creation burst through—disorganized as hell.

Well, my family never did get organized much—except in heart.  We managed to stay in love despite internecine wars, divorce, suffering, geography, illness, alcoholism, sex, and even religion. We kept the vision of each other’s faces in heart and mind and memory. We occupied each other.

Occupiers recently occupied their vision of economic justice with their bodies. They sat down and stood for the shear voicing of truth.  AND I want them to get organized so that voice won’t fade out and whoosh off like so much sage brush in the desert.  I want them to keep screaming   like John Baptist. I want them to influence voters who have privacy in voting booths to vote, not according to external ideologies but according to their highest values and their spirituality— especially women who may be afraid to stray from the “herd” or think that they are better off kept in a patriarchal world.

To be blunt I want them to vote for the vision they occupied.  Republicans right now are organizing around a vision that compartmentalizes and categorizes human beings, envisioning an either/or nation, and excluding those who don’t fit their criteria.  Some Christians agree. I shudder.

President Obama envisions a both/and, bipartisan nation, organized and occupied by all for all. 
He could use a little more John the Baptist chutzpah but his vision bears my spirituality and will get my vote.
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What about ORGANIZED RELIGION? — which is currently thought heinous.

The early seekers and followers of divinity realized there was more to this messy life than human effort. So they organized themselves and drew a community together to worship a Mystery they couldn’t know except by faith. Awestruck and wonderstruck they uttered prayers. It all began in astonishments and a vision.
And then they organized, the inevitable next step to preserve what they held most dear. This is true for families, nations and religions. 

Of course organization can kill if it gets encrusted in mere habit and when it isn’t occupied by flesh and blood and soul. Let’s face it: Love, by its nature, is impossibly disorganized.  But not abandoned if the people keep hold of the vision: love, peace, justice and equity for all earth. 

So I want our church and our nation to re-organize, to re-occupy a vision of common good, love divine and human, sacred and secular.

 So where IS  John the Baptist when we need him?