2025.03.09 BIG TENT/LENT SERENITY. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post.

The Serenity Prayer—all of  it, written in 1951 and still so needed!

God, give me grace to accept with serenity 

the things that cannot be changed, 

Courage to change the things which should be changed, 

and the Wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. 

Living one day at a time, 

Enjoying one moment at a time, 

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, 

Taking, as Jesus did, 

This sinful world as it is, 

Not as I would have it, 

Trusting that You will make all things right, 

If I surrender to Your will, 

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life, 

And supremely happy with You forever in the next. Amen.

Noted American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr was born over in Wright City, MO on June 21, 1892. He graduated from Eden Seminary in 1913 and also earned degrees from Yale Divinity School (1914, 1915). At Eden, Professor (later President) Samuel Press, who is the namesake of the school’s main building, particularly influenced Niebuhr. Ordained in the Evangelical Synod in 1915, Niebuhr was a pastor in Detroit and went on to teach at Union Theological Seminary. He authored books like "The Nature and Destiny of Man" and "Moral Man and Immoral Society."

2024.02.18 Why NOT Tell? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post.

There is a series of healing stories in Mark’s gospel in the New Testament. All of them are healing stories —the transformation of some painful condition that interferes with someone’s wellbeing in life, health, or the normal progression of what is expected. In all of them Jesus of Nazareth is identified as the healing agent. He makes these miracles happen.  

Healing means change. Healing means restoration to the fullness of Life. There’s the healing of Peter’s mother- in-law. There’s the healing of a leper. There is the healing of a paralytic.

What is startling, is that in each one of these healing events, Jesus specifically warns the healed and the witnesses NOT to TELL.  Why not? Is this not all Good News? 

Is this secrecy because Jesus is not in full command of his powers yet? Is it that these healing stories are hints of his yet unrealized identity as Messiah? Or was it hasty, delusional reporting by the first gospel narrative, Mark?  

I don’t know the answer. Perhaps it was simply timing. There were many healers and “miracle” workers in first century Palestine. Who’s to say that Divinity is not at work in them all—and in the creation of amazing wheelchairs like this. 

*  *  *  *

I do know I need to make my own recent wheelchair-bound dependent condition more clear to my readers, and I do know that healing is not magic but requires the full participation of the healing agent, the one who desires healing, and Mystery.  

-In early December, 2023, I felt a twinge in my back as I was doing a familiar Yoga post I’d done many times. I stopped.

-Soon my legs became very weak and I felt pain when I put weight on them.

-Ct scans showed a compression fracture at Lumbar #3.

-One day my legs gave out completely.

-I ended up in our Health Center/Hospital for physical therapy and more. There I learned how to use my walker for assistance in walking, bathroom use, transferring from bed to walker, and getting in and out of a wheelchair.

-I am now back in my apartment working with various therapies to strengthen my legs with the goal of walking on my own—in view and not yet accomplished.   

I’m appreciative of all prayers and more grateful than I can say for the presence of my beloved husband, Dick, who is managing all other household chores, his own worries, and our joint irascibility.  I’m also grateful for all our children who call, visit, and care.

*  *  *  *

So, for this Lenten season I am giving up giving up! Some days the task of weight-bearing on my legs is so painful I am tempted to stop trying to walk at all. I wonder if Jesus was also sorely tempted to STOP trying to persuade the people that this God who created all earth desires liberation, wellbeing, fullness of life and love—on earth as it is in heaven?   

2023.02.26 Ashen Days/Dusty Path, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

 

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

The repeated refrain on Ash Wednesday echoes in my mind. Is it just this one day called Ash, or is it all of Lent, or is there something more universally true about this dusty theme? Is the spiritual life one long unpaved path—straight, curved, twisted, hilly, full of distractions, temptations—tedious and irresistible? What keeps us on this path and why? 

People stream forward up the aisle and stand or kneel before a priest whose thumb, dampened with blessed healing oils presses into a small bowl of black ashes that stick. Over and over the priest smears the black ashes onto each upturned forehead, making the sign of the cross and saying: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. 

This ritual kicks off the season of Lent, and shapes the whole season, one of reflection self-examination, grace and grit all the way to its climactic tragedy of Good Friday. Gloomy to say the least.    

Why is this ritual so popular?  You’d think it would fearful, depressing, overwhelming. Who wants to be reminded of their mortality? Many apparently do. 

When I worked as a chaplain in hospitals, staff would seek me out to get their ashes. Just the one phrase with the smearing and they hurried off to finish their day. Patients as well often requested ashes. I knew there were some who weren’t even Christian, including former Roman Catholics and young agnostics who had left the institutional church long ago, constrained by its rules and its gloom, not to mention their resistance to “organized” religion. Name me something that isn’t organized? Yoga, the spirit-calming practice, is very organized!  

Once the ashes I smeared floated down onto a recipient’s nose. She laughed. So did I. No point in being overly solemn or pious, as if we actually knew exactly what we were doing.  While working as chaplain in an alcohol/drug rehabilitation hospital I added a phrase to the traditional line: Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. And God by grace will restore you to fullness of life. It was cheap grace, arrogant idolatry, and playing at God, I know, but some of these people were so beaten down by disease. And I had difficulty leaving them in ashes.

I left my own ashes on all day long—profoundly convinced that Ash Wednesday is the most true and honest day of the Christian year. 

-There is not a single soul who doesn’t mess up, clean up, mess up again, and clean up again. 

-No one does anything without two motives, one truly altruistic and generous, the other secretly self-serving. 

-God does not lead anyone into temptation. We do! Then we pray for help from God and others to get back on track, to save us from ourselves. God is far more generous than we are.  

*  *  *  * 

Do you know that our bodies can actually be composted, turned into rich, fertile soil, in which new green life grows? Tis true. Far less costly to the environment than cremation. Now there’s a new beginning!    

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.    

2021.02.21 Ashes Change Hearts

    “Most loving God [sic], whose will it is to give thanks for all
    things, to fear nothing but the loss of you, and to cast all our
    care on you who care for us: Preserve us from faithless fear
    and worldly anxieties, that no clouds of this mortal life may
    hide from us the light of that love which is immortal, and, which
    you have manifested to us in your Son Jesus Christ our Lord;
    who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
    one God, now and forever.” AMEN.

We rarely get to pray together this Collect for the Eighth Sunday after Epiphany (BCP, p. 216), because Easter is a moveable feast and we seldom get eight Epiphany Sundays. Somehow this prayer feels to me like standing shivering at the end of the high diving board looking down, feeling small and anxious at eleven. Do I have the nerve to jump? How cold will the water be? Can I do this or not?  Then I inhale deeply, grab my small nose, and jump wildly into the air. The water does catch me. I do surface triumphant. Now all I have to do is refrain from boasting.  

This Collect takes my soul on a dive toward humility—being right-sized, not too big and not too small. It is a difficult spiritual balance to strike. This prayer helps me prepare for a season of reflection, and retreat, and deep personal honesty—diving into myself, praying that the smudge of ashes I just received has mysteriously prepared me.
 

ASH WEDNESDAY, 2021    

I think ashes are powerful symbols through which the Church alerts us to our mortality, how profoundly vulnerable and fragile our sweet lives are—and how valuable.

The ritual reminds me of the nursery rhyme: “Ring-a-round-a Rosie.”  We children joined hands in a circle, then skipped around singing as if we all had a pocket of posies. Then we sang:  “Ashes, Ashes we all fall down.” We’d collapse to the ground on our bums, laughing with glee before we hopped up to repeat our dance.  

Of course we had no idea about the grim implications of this rhyme, understood by some to refer to the rosy rash one got during the 1665 Black Plague in London, herbal posies carried to ward off the smell of the disease.  We kindergarteners just loved it for fun and games. Faster. Faster. We whirled around. Falling down was the best part. We didn’t give death a thought.  BUT……. once one of the girls circling fell down and did not, could not, despite urging, get up. (As I recall she had a heart event, needed immediate treatment, and returned to school in time.)  

What I remember most, about this trauma was how instantly and firmly, our collective terror  gripped us. This ashes event lives on vividly in my mind, even as I dip my thumb into a bowl of blessed ashes and press it firmly onto the forehead of an upturned recipient, saying “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  I don’t feel negative. I do feel solemn. How desperately I want to add something Easterish, but I don’t. I just do not. Silence matters. Solemnity matters.

Then I just jump into Lent. After all, the Bible has said that it’s time to change my heart and turn about and wonder what in hell I am doing now, and what I have done in my little life, and whether I need to notice something new, or repent of something bad.

I can’t think of a single thing, so I think I’ll just follow my gut that tells me to strip down and streak the halls of the retirement residence where I live. I resist that temptation, mostly because of vanity. My aging body is a thing not to behold. Still, the thought itself has lifted my mood.

Mark's Gospel tells us that Jesus, properly awakened, heads not to church, not safely home, not for the road to proclaim and preach, but into the wilderness where he will figure out his own jumping in— his own right-sizedness—as the dry desert winds buffet and buffer his body and soul. 

Will he be a Messiah?  Or will he simply be Beloved?

Mark’s gospel account is honest and brusk:
    All we know is that Jesus’s adult baptism jolted him with his spiritual identity and calling, that he was sorely tempted, and that his discernment took a very long time—forty days a metaphor suggesting some time.
    All we know is that Jesus faithfully used his one mind, and his one heart to make his one plan: I will tell people about the God I know best, the God I believe in and who I believe believes in me.

This same God believes in all living things—including you and me, and the black squirrel who just sprinted and skimmed across the snow-laden chain link fence, pleased I bet with his or her athleticism. 

2015.03.22 Not Being In the Now—Now

I don’t know about you, but my mind is NOT in the NOW, now. I know they say this is a good idea, and that the NOW is all we have, NOW. But, with respect to Now-ism, I’m bowing out, for NOW. 

This is happening to me because I gazed out my window yesterday, and I saw......... what? SNOW.  NOW.  It has been a winter of WAY too much snow, even for one who loves its brightness and glimmer. The first snow when I was a child was always a spiritual event. UP went my spirits; OUT into the cold I’d bound. At least you can play in snow. Rain only soaks you.....no fun.

In the Christian church, it’s still Lent, a somber, sober, deep purple season. Lent is  a time for reflection and, for Christians, moving through the life of Jesus on the way to his death. Usually I like Lent. I tire of too much jump-for-joy glory. But not NOW.

I wanted out of Lent and into Easter, the happy season, life on the rise. I wanted to move out of the polar zone and into spring. NOW.

So I did.

Instead of covering myself with clichés about the power of now, I stared out at the dirty and impure remainders of snow. I kept looking until I saw shimmers of white, glints and gleanings of Easter—right NOW, in Lent. I was training my eyes to gaze, rather than avert or slam shut. (Gazing isn’t simply me being Curious-George-delusional; it’s a prayer practice common to contemplative traditions.)

Gazing, aka relentless staring, is probably how I came to pick up a book of poems, The Many Singings, by Antoinette Voûte Roeder, a Canadian poet. Roeder's poetry connects to life— in all its realness, and in all its unrealness—NOW. 

Thoughts About Snow and Art

The sky has forgotten
what blue is.
The ground
only knows snow.

In between
a fine mesh screen
of swirling crystals
day after day.

It is like a painting
by Seurat, the only difference
being his brushes were wands
of light, his palette a plethora
of color.

2015.03.08 Now I Ask You! ? A Lenten Rant.

Now I ask you...... Would anyone think, or in their wildest imaginings draw a mental picture, of  anything womanly or feminine at all, while joining a joyous congregation in lustful song: “O, praise him! Oh, praise him! Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleloooo-ya!”? (Hymn #400, “All creatures of our God and King.”)  ALL creatures! The text was written by none other than St. Francis of Assisi, a saint greatly to be admired and imitated for his capacious spirituality. I love St. Francis, and I love his current namesake, Pope Francis I. I love the Ralph Vaughan Williams music. I would never not want to sing this great hymn. Alleluia means: Shine your praises on God. It's a beautiful bright word.

BUT it’s Lent, and we've banned alleluia until Easter. So I get to reflect on serious things, not just my own sins and flaws but the Church’s. I have given up restraint for Lent.

It’s easy when singing to get caught up in a trance of crowd-sourced praise. It’s the music. I’ve been quite conscious of words we use to define—and confine—God, but with hymns, the music takes over. However, I’ve begun to be aware that hymn texts sink into our hearts, embed themselves into our flesh, just as much as the music does.

What are our words communicating— over and over? To our children, girls and boys, to our own souls, to the world? I want us to remember all creatures, not just male ones. I want us to remember God as Creator/Author, not just King. A creator/author makes something beautiful and then lets it go,  in hopes of course that it will please and be appreciated, not trashed.

When I sing this hymn’s refrain, I sing, “O praise God. Alleluia.”  I do the same with the Doxology. It’s easy to let God be known by name, rather than by a masculine pronoun.
            Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
            Praise God all creatures here below.
            Praise God above ye heavenly hosts.

I know I’m in my personal porti-pulpit, and some will say I have spiritual OCD. So I stop my rants for a while, until something hooks me.

Recently we sang, “The Church’s One Foundation”— a great old Christian chestnut. I was singing along with nary a thought until I hit the word “consummation,” and, I’m sorry, but all I could think of was the sexual meaning of that word. The female Church was awaiting her consummation with the male God. I laughed it off.  UNTIL a woman came up to me after the service, agitated, and said, “Did you hear what that hymn was saying about women? Awaiting consummation? Being bought?” We laughed together—half-heartedly.

We had just sung a hymn in which a female Church was “oppressed,” “scorned by men,” “rent asunder,” “distressed,” and crying out, “How Long?” Sounded like a theme song for female domestic violence victims, waiting for their divine male rescuer to change their “night of weeping into a morn of song.”

OK, it’s mystical, visionary, allegorical, metaphorical, intensely Christian, and written long ago. It’s only words. It means Christ. It's not real-world. AND, still,words matter. Pronouns are small and mighty. They alert us that the one done unto is identified as female, and the one to save her is male. Ah, Cinderella! I’m being overreactive, silly. Why all this spleen? (I really should have that organ removed!) I calmed down until two things appeared before my wondering eyes.

First, a  FaceBook posting of a friend and colleague, Elizabeth Kaeton, one-time president of the Episcopal Women’s Caucus, about the historic consecration of Bishop Libby Lane in the Church of England, a first. Kaeton reported the “dust up over whether or not the bishops who consecrated her have 'tainted' their hands and therefore must show 'gracious restraint' when next consecrating Philip North to the episcopacy because he - and three remaining consecrating bishops - do not believe women have 'sufficient ontological matter to be an efficacious bearer of sacerdotal presence.'" What? 

Does this mean we women don't have, well, proper sacerdotal anatomy, lodged between our legs? Yes, I know the carefully chosen word, “ontological” means dealing with the nature of being itself, not just the flesh. Now I ask you: how do you separate the two? God apparently did not when Godde became human and the Spirit inhabited all flesh, not just human flesh, and not just Christ’s.

I scolded myself, called myself cranky and too literal. 

Then.........  (Boston Globe, Op Ed, 1.26.15) . . .   Tennis U.K. wonderboy, Andy Murray, has a new logo, aka brand name, that will appear on a full line of clothing and accessories—everything   but tennis balls, or any balls—though who knows? What’s wrong with that? Laying aside any issues about the accumulation of wealth in the hands of too few, I had a fit of pique about the logo itself: “77 AM”. What’s wrong with that? Seven is my favorite number, and a lucky one at that, and AM are his initials. Doesn’t he deserve this kudos as a sign that he is the first British man to win the Wimbledon singles title in 77 years?

“In reporting Murray’s victory, numerous commentators and media outlets stated that he was the ‘first Brit’ to win Wimbledon in 77 years. As I noted at the time, that statement is true—unless you think women are people.” (Chloe S. Angyal, a senior columnist at Feministing.com. Italics mine.)                        
AM was not the “first Brit to win, only the first male Brit. Four female Brits won the equivalent title (Venus Rosewater Dish) at Wimbledon in women’s singles within that 77-year frame. But then don’t we all know that “winning Wimbledon” is shorthand for winning the men’s singles title? It is still assumed, without much thought, that what counts is what men do. To me, such ongoing assumptions discount women’s achievements and take away their worth. Some women let this happen easily, and some don’t, but we all feel it. 

Many hymn texts in the 1982 Hymnal, and most liturgical language, remains patriarchal, discounting  women as people who hold up half of the divine image. Carl Daw and Brian Wren, gifted hymn text writers, are notable exceptions. Thank you, gentlemen.  

I forgive myself this snark, but do not regret it. It is time to change. If indeed the Church is female, she has the resources to change, and ought to consider her own cry, “How long?”

Allow me to share a verse from Psalm 103 (translation of Pamela Greenberg) which gives me a personal blast of hope, and perhaps can inspire Mother Church as well. We are used to reciting or singing this psalm line: “Bless the Lord, my soul . . .”  Here is Greenberg’s rendering:

“Be wild, my soul, for the Source of wonder; let all my insides praise the Holy Name.”  

 

She will return, yes? 

2014.04.06 Prodigality Reclaimed

My favorite biblical story is the one about the so called prodigal son who grabs his inheritance early and splits to manage his fortune, which he squanders on loose living. It’s sort of a classic growing-up story. Ask any parent of teens.

The key line in the story is in a scene of porcine gluttony and filth in which the destitute young man feeds with the pigs.

While in the sty the prodigal COMES TO HIMSELF and decides to go home, hoping against hope that his Daddy, aka Godde, will still love him. Mommy, btw, is not mentioned, so fill it in. (If I were the mother I’d have strongly advised my husband not to give sonny the inheritance in the first place.)

I’ve been prodigal myself. Once I thought I’d be ordained a priest. I thought this in my prayers and secret conversations with God. In fact, in my midlife whirlwind I thought that I could not be a woman fully realized unless I also became a priest. It wasn’t until I encountered the institutional church in the 1970s that I found out what it felt like to be a small davidic female thinking she’d take on Goliath—without five smooth stones or a slingshot. I had no inheritance to squander, but I did have a self to “come to.”

I had dashed forth too soon to manage my life and discovered I couldn’t do it alone, or at all well. I needed Godde, love, family, belonging, church community, friends, sex, seminary, grief, a divorce, and a ton of therapy in many forms. So there you have it.

The moral of this story is......  do you know who you are?  “Coming to yourself” may help you find out, and from that touchstone to go forward.

I think it’s possible for even a large institution to “come to itself,” that is, to re-member the purposes for which it stands and its core values. For the Christian church that core is love of God, self, and neighbor. 

This kind of spiritual self-recognition seemed to happen at our recent convention to elect a new bishop for the diocese of Massachusetts.  There were seven candidates, all vetted and known as much as possible. 334 lay people and 298 clergy gathered to worship, sing hymns, pray, and ballot until a simple majority in each order, clergy and lay, was reached to elect. We were there from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. There were no “hanging chads” but there was a vote count problem in the first ballot and we had to await legal recommendation about how to proceed, since the next two ballots, already processed, were declared invalid. Details can be found on the Diocese of Massachusetts website.

In addition, the retiring bishop, who has served for 20 years, is struggling with brain cancer. It was heart-breaking to see him strain to stay on track, and wonderful to see all those around him gently prompting him. Do we not truly bear each others' burdens when we can, as the Bible suggests? In this illness, the bishop’s temperament has softened and his sense of humor has taken more of a lead.  “I know all of you. I love all of you. I just can’t remember your names,” he joked.

Can you imagine there were a few loud and brash voices screaming out "It's Lent! It's Lent!" in response to the bishop’s request that we sing, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God…" a hymn with a wondrous lilting and upbuilding chorus of Alleluias. (In the season of Lent we do not say Alleluia until it reemerges strongly in Easter.) To me this objection to liturgical rule-breaking represents the worst of liturgical rigidity—and it wasn't even part of the official liturgy, only one of the hymns we sang to pass the time while we waited. The church can not afford to constrict itself unnecessarily. Remember those girdles and corsets women used to wear?? Constriction is one translation of the word sin. 

Our diocese had lost its way in many respects. The center wasn’t holding, and people felt anxious and vulnerable, the weight of sorrow hanging heavy in the air. Nevertheless, our true center—Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit—held. We came to ourselves as we sang. Despite a lot of mess and error, the Holy Spirit, whom we lustily serenade and, deep down, don’t believe a word of what we say, presided.

We elected the Rev. Alan Gates from Ohio, but we voted for ourselves as a faithful community gathered in Godde’s holy name. Many will grump and grunt and be negatively-focused, mostly about stuff we already knew was in disarray, but this is my take on the soul of this day—gracious with new life coming to us as we came to ourselves. What could have been a flop leaving bitter taste turned out to be amazing grace.

We're still covered with mud, but we’re headed home.  Alleluia anyhow!!

Do we ever practice what we preach, we clergy types of righteousness?  We are as prodigal as anyone else, longing to succeed in the world and longing to be held like an infant—at once.

Ash Up for Ash Wednesday—AND Choose Life

So many avid Christians use Lent as an opportune lead-in to-Easter season to take off pounds, exercise more, get healthy—or at least prepare to fit into the Easter outfit they’d planned to wear for their twice-a-year visit to Jesus.

I suggest instead: take on new ideas and practices that delight, sort of like the famous Eden “apple.”  You won’t die, so grab for life. I swear it’s just what God ordained in the first place.

Here’s a witty and wise message from the late May Sarton—great poet and contemplative thinker.  This is in her little 1981 book of meditations The House By the Sea, April 29 entry.

Sarton has taken a “heavenly” train journey down the Hudson to NYC where she heads for Bloomingdales’ to find some summer shorts and jackets . . .

“. . .as usual, in total despair because I wear a size 18 or 20. I was shunted from floor to floor, on each seeing exactly what I needed. ‘But, oh no madam, we only have sizes 8 to 16. Try floor 3 . . . ‘Finally I managed to find a pair of very expensive jeans to garden in and a couple of shirts on the unchic, sad floor for half-sizes!  Meanwhile, two thirds of the women going up and down the escalators were obviously not size 16!  Why do we lie down and allow fashion to dictate our lives and to humiliate us?  I think the Fat Panthers (emulating the Gray Panthers) had better launch a crusade—large posters showing gaunt, thin women looking tense and one hundred years old beside round, rosy, happy women might be a first attack.”

I can’t resist the next entry, which Sarton calls her “other experience in New York.”

“After my discouraging rove through Bloomingdales’ I went to a small French restaurant, Le Veau D’Or, took refuge there during a thunderstorm, having bought a book to read—an ideal one, as it turned out—Helen Bevington’s Journal of the Sixties. The place was jammed; my table faced the door; I could observe people as they came in while I sipped my drink and it was good not to be waiting anxiously for ‘one person,’ to be free, no entanglements, no little thread pulled taut inside me, so that in an hour there I had the feeling of a whole holiday and enjoyed myself immensely.”

Whole and holy holiday.  Must’ve been Passover or Easter—and both.

I wish I’d known this woman, so compatriot with my own soul.

Please notice that Sarton’s journal is spiritual writing par excellence— high, wide, and deep—looking beyond, all around, and within, all at once.

In order to escape the term spirituality getting lost in a mush of eclectic meaninglessness, we ought to honor it by making Spiritual Writing a genre in its own write, or rite.
                                                              *  *  *  *  

Oh, and I do love that Pope Benedict, a pontiff with whose every word and pronouncement I have strenuously disagreed, has, with his reasonable recent decision to retire for age and health reasons, defrocked the Roman Catholic Church of its hierarchy-of-being delusions, and clothed it in humility.

As our President said last night, we are all in this together, and if we don’t act in bipartisan ways we will decay. I for one will not again vote for any local or national candidate with extreme partisan politics.

It’s the beginning of a new day. Carpe diem! And as the prophet Hosea says: Walk humbly with your God—yourself and your neighbors.