2026.04.19 AH, SUCH FOOLS WE CAN BE! Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Do we live now in an age in which the search for authority figures to help us thrive happens in a world almost too swiftly changing to read? 

*  * *  *

The Holy Bible, frankly, remains my own best source of truth, imaginative or factual. It has been around for centuries, and has many writers and multiple ideas, and many translations, revisions.  It starts: “In the beginning……” and I hold my breath. Do I want a version of truth or do I want a vision of possible truth?  Or am I just too old at 87  and a retired Episcopal priest? My husband loves me but he has all the same quests and questions, as do my relatives and colleagues. Tears blur my eyes and, yes, clutch at my heart.

Without reason or thought, the prophet Ezekiel comes vividly to my mind. I’ve always loved those elderly, aka ageless, prophets who speak with fierce authority. I imagine an ancient old guy in flowing robes who stands in the wind and rants. He’s a lunatic everyone says, and yet crowds gather, just to see, in case. . .  

Ezekiel talks about a valley of bones, brittle, dry and useless in death. But this prophet remained sure that all these dry bones would suddenly spring into life. I listen into the silence of my imagination. I stand up and grab my walker, walk about the room, look out the window. Everywhere there is no one. Suddenly the ranting of the prophet tells their bones to live. Is he also talking to my osteoporotic old bones? 

It doesn’t matter. I’m crying. I feel my elbows, my knuckles, wrists, fingers, on down to my ankles, feet and toes. I’m too old to kneel but I do kneel anyway, right down in front of my home altar table. I’m facing an aging crucifix. Jesus is on a cross, just hanging there like a jerk, one hand gone, the other limp. Nevertheless, Ezekiel’s words ring loud, screeching. My tears fall, until I sob. Save me.

*  *  *  *

Years ago when I went regularly on silent retreats at Mercy Center, I would visit their chapel late at night. I would kneel there, pour out my heart-prayers, and stare up at a large non-traditional crucifix created over twenty years ago by Sister of Mercy, Mary Daly. Instead of the drooping crucified dead body of Jesus, there is a huge and beautiful rose. How lovely, and loving, and beautiful.

*  *  *  * 

Time shifts and I’m back at my computer. I glance upward and there, taped to the wall, my own version of that crucified rose—thorns of my own life’s journey and all my hopes in one image with one message: I am a rose. You are too. We two rise.

 

2018.06.24 On the Divine Beauty of Children

Children have been in the news a lot lately, mostly in horror stories of cruelty at our borders—cruelty that makes my heart quiver. Just this morning in the Boston Globe I read the story of a young teenage girl who jumped to her death from a Massachusetts Turnpike overpass bridge onto the busy highway below. Her young body lay in the breakdown lane last Monday as cars sped by. Her family tracked her cell phone GPS. The final sentence of the piece by Mark Arsenault iced my lifeblood: “And yes, it was early and it had been dark, but it hurt Dean (the father) that nobody had stopped for his baby.”

Lord, have mercy, I prayed—not reasoned but real, and full of fear for our own grandchildren. It took time, some conversation, and a morning in church where a million chants and hymns, holy words and music, lovely food, and tributes to a departing priest both absorbed and converted my fears to gratitude. I think of this odd experience as an answer to a very old prayer—the baby talk of early Christianity: Lord have mercy.  

With gratitude I write about some of our children of issue. Children of issue is a legal term for one’s kids. It means children or lineal descendants such as grandchildren or great-grandchildren, but only the direct bloodline. Associations to this “issue” term suggest legal battles over custody or inheritance—control or money. Who are the real bloody children of issue? But my associations are spiritual, not legal. It’s my wont to see divinity in everything, but just because it’s my wont doesn’t mean it’s errant.

Our “issues”  number 12, 6 boys, 6 girls, ranging from 22 to 4, and some pugs, Louie and Frankie and Olive. We count them as “issue” because their owner, my second daughter, Jill Brakeman, does. They go to work and help their Mama the lawyer, sort out many complicated issues.
 
Plenitude and potentiation are words that pop into my mind when I think of children. It’s June and many of our “issues” are blooming.

I believe children are born insistently human, vulnerable, and innocent—not sinful. God is present in every single conception and birth. Christian baptism is the sacramental affirmation of that graced condition. These are Christ’s children of issue.

Our “issues” don’t visit much because they are in the middle of their own “project life.” We don’t visit much, mostly for the same reason. But when there’s a visit there is joy. Facebook has no flesh, but it fills in when visits aren’t possible.

Dick’s youngest child, a daughter, Honor, was just here for a few days with her son Brianjohnson who is thirteen. They are vivacious and full of fun, and Brianjohnson has the biggest laptop I’ve ever seen. It’s keyboard is back-lit in red and there’s a small satanic insignia on the top—Alienware. “I can play games right on the computer. This computer can do that.”  He brims with joy, much deeper than any computer.

In other June news, Beverley Brakeman, the oldest of our 12, is now officially the new Director of Region 9A of the United Auto Workers, sworn in at their 37th Constitutional Convention. Bev will lead the Connecticut-based region forward in their ongoing advocacy for workers’ rights. Bev has always been a leader. Ask her siblings. Already facing big challenges to her program, she felt normal temptations to split, but she said. “I won’t because good leaders don’t do that.” We couldn’t be in Detroit to cheer Bev and hear her acceptance speech, but I know she received heartfelt and hearty salutations from her members and more than one standing ovation. Her boyfriend and her two daughters and her dad and stepmom all were there. Bev is bringing me a “Team Brakeman” tee shirt. Here she is giving her acceptance speech and with her brother Rob and with Chris Corcoran.

Another brimming-with-pride-and-joy “issue” is Thomas Joseph Simeone (middle) who just graduated from 5th grade. He’s 11 and a serious hockey and baseball player. When he was little he made sure to kiss all his many stuffed animals goodnight. This kid has soul. So does his sister, Lucia, (top) who recently suffered a severe break in her elbow and surgery but plans to strengthen herself so she can return to the sport she so loves. And then there is Harrison, 8, the youngest of these three—solemn and bright-eyed. He’s a kid who could actually run/skitter sideways just after he’d learned to walk.



Yesterday we went to a marathon dance recital in which one of our “issues” Eliza Brakeman, 14, danced. She moves with precision and is obviously delighted with this sport of beauty and energy—and community. Dancers, like singers, do not always have solos so they must cooperate in the movement together‚ as one. That is the spirituality of dance.

And here is one happy little boy out for his first ride on Daddy’s (John Brakeman, 47) motorbike. Dylan Brakeman is just four. When the bike started up and moved out, he hollered, “Hey, baby!”

Children of all ages brim over, not just the privileged ones. I’ve seen photos of kids brimming over and laughing even in the midst of squalor and poverty.

I know I exaggerate and am selective to make my point but I did see happy, poor Palestinian children in a refugee camp in Israel when we visited in 2015. Out of respect I didn’t take any photos. I’ve also seen children happy while terminally ill when I was a chaplain on the pediatric floor of a large city hospital.

All children are children of issue of the one God called Love. And their joyful beauty, against all reason, is contagious—I dare say divine.

 

2016.06.12 The Quality Of Mercy

A MERCY BLESSING

May God give you:
For every challenge, Wisdom;
For every stony path, Strong Shoes;
For every storm, a Rainbow;
For every hardship, Support;
For every journey, Faithful Companions;
For every concern, Hope;
For every blessing, Gratitude;
For  every prayer, an Answer;

And may all life's seasons bring God's
        gift of MERCY to
You and those you love.
          AMEN
 (Based in part from an Irish Blessing. Michele Aronica, RSM)

Last week I was on retreat at Mercy Center in Madison, CT.  This blessing was framed and in each room. I awoke to it very morning and its truth sank into me. This is all I want and hope for: not that stony paths, challenges, hardship and all the rest will bypass me, but that I will have gifts to help me keep going, especially faithful companions and Hope. Hope, to me is the greatest of the Big Three spiritual gifts: faith, hope, and love. (St. Paul thought love, but he might've been wrong, ya know!)

  When I told someone that I'd been on a silent retreat for a week, she said, "A whole week?"—followed by, "You and Dick?" Some things are quite astonishing. I told her we weren't rigid about it, and that we convened each evening to sit outside and chat, or just sit and gaze at the natural beauty of the sound stretching before us and all the glorious trees that adorn the Mercy property. I added: "You know the silence, after a while, becomes a friend, one whose comfort you begin to appreciate like an over-soul." (Over-soul is a Jewish descriptor of the affects of a true Sabbath rest.)

Mercy is different from compassion or sympathy, or even empathy. Mercy has the power to soothe, season, or soften all life's aches and pains, all our passions, strivings, even the great and righteous judgments we make, and the social justice causes for which we labor.  James, the most practical book in the New Testament, makes a big deal about the unity of faith and deeds—one no good without the other. Yet even James reminds us, almost casually, "For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; . . ."    And btw: ". . . mercy triumphs over judgment." (James 2:13b)  [Italics mine]

Biblically, mercy is translated as divine lovingkindness toward all living things. In Hebrew it's chesed, and in Greek eleo, both rooted in the word which means guts or womb (racham and splagchnizoai)".  I do so love words.

And from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

By all means, do not forget to be merciful with yourself, please. Godde will assist.  

2016.04.17 Oceanic Wisdom Of Islam in Easter

“The mercy of Allah is an ocean. Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean. It only has to open its beak.”
        from Minaret, a novel by Leila Aboulela

I love this image of the Divine Being named Allah. It’s in the first small chapter of Aboulela’s novel about Najwa, a Muslim girl from an aristocratic family who has been displaced from Khartoum, Sudan, as was Aboulela, and exiled in the wake of a 1985 military coup. Najwa struggles to adjust to the bustling urbanity of London where she cleans the houses of people who live as she used to live. The minaret in a nearby mosque becomes a symbol of hope and the hijab Najwa had eschewed at home, a garb of pride—and protection.

Minaret is a book about the power of religious symbols and traditional practices to be sturdy steadying anchors—assurances of divine compassion in any storm.

I can identify. When nothing makes sense and I have no sight, I perch, like the pigeon, in a pew, or before my home altar, on the edge of my bed or on a park bench, open my beak, and howl. Aboulela (left) is more quietly passionate.

Some days I feel like the ocean itself—vast and open and also glutted and sated with my own and everyone else’s shipwrecks stored up in my depths. Some days I’m like the pigeon staring into the ocean from a safe perch. I want to call out, assert my presence, but my "beak" is stuck in  mushy lumpiness. That’s what I feel like when I am mired in my own sin: the fear of being too exposed, too intimate, too transparent. The fear disconnects me from trusting goodness—in God, myself and others.

Aboulela’s image of sin as clay reminds me of the gray clay we used in kindergarten—all wet and squishy like mud. Our small fingers plunged deeply into the tough clay. It was like a jihad, which in Islam is the spiritual struggle within oneself against sin. I worked strenuously on my lump of clay to mold it into something that looked like something appealing that I could then put in the kiln to dry and take home to present to my parents. All of my great sculptures looked like turtles with longish legs. My mother adored every one, with a little too much adulation. My father stupidly asked what it was. It was a horse, of course! Whatever its identity, my offering fell graciously into the ocean of mercy.

My primary care physician, a Sufi Muslim named Noor, recommended Aboulela’s novel to me. In between listening to my chest for wheezes, taking my vitals, and recording my list of symptoms, she tells me where to go to enjoy the food she loves and recommends things to read. I return the favor. Noor is as sure of herself medically as she is about ethnic foods, spiritual books, and her absolute trust in Allah. Her trust in the unfailing compassion of Divinity is one-way and absolute. Mine is more two-way, favoring a co-creative process between humanity and divinity. Her husband, she says, would agree with me.

Noor, like Najwa in Aboulela's book, draws strength from her infallible faith in the oceanic Allah. Her trust is unswerving and never breaks, no matter the hardships of life on earth. My faith strengthens me, too, as the mercy of God, my Allah, participates with me, to mold my “clay"—even unto death. 

Either way, we both end up in the ocean where nothing is ever lost. Everything is nicely salted and preserved—forever. That is the most merciful outcome I can imagine.

2014.11.16 Stretching for Age in Gratitude

It seems odd to be grateful for aging, yet I am, because aging calls me to do things I might not have done, oh, even ten years ago.

What stretches me, quite literally, is my yoga practice.We are instructed to stretch our bodies to our "edge," but not beyond, not to create pain. Now, what a temptation such instruction wards off! (This lovely image is called Dancer's Pose. It's not me. I can do the pose but I sure don't look like this:0)

My culture would tell me to push—do more, be more. My ego would say, show off.  I’ve done this most of my life. Push. Push. Push. This is what my Lord’s prayer warns me against, the temptation I pray God will lead me away from. All my life I’ve prayed this, and all my life I’ve pretty much failed to heed its wisdom. Aging, however helps. It forces mindfulness; it makes me listen.

My attitude, mind you, isn’t greatly transformed. It’s my body. She talks back to me now. Living in a older body that can be crotchety, keeps me mindful of my “edge.” The yogic instruction is good body wisdom. It is also good spiritual wisdom. 

When I stretch my body, I also stretch my soul. We work together more closely now. We don't go over the edge. If it weren’t for the gentle reminders of aging, I’d push the edge.

I know this because when we first retired we moved into a city. I grew up in a big city, New York. I was thrilled to get back to city sidewalks and storefronts to gaze into, watching for my reflection and checking out the wares. There is a lovely 55-acre park near where we live, so I have plenty of opportunity to walk in nature and watch the garb of each season unfold in its course. It’s a perfect balance.

Then I fell, not once but thrice, and apparently for no reason, though I blamed the heaving sidewalks.

But I know I didn’t trip. I was lucky and only suffered black eyes and bruises, but I felt afraid. Medical tests revealed that nothing was wrong with my brain or bones. So? Aging? Yes, brains age along with everything else. My elderly brain let me know that it could no longer stretch itself to walk and daydream at the same time. I would have to be mindful of my steps.

Grateful for these little salvations, I developed a body-soul practice: Every day before my feet hit the floor, I thank God that I can walk. Every day that I take my first morning stretch and breathe, I thank God for my aging lungs that still inhale and exhale, like a bellows to keep me going. Every day I bless my body and give it a word of thanks for accompanying my wild and wandering mind and my roaming spirit—just not over the edge.

With each step I take, I say this mantra to the rhythm of my pace: pick up your feet and fear not. The first part is my own reminder to my feet, and the second I got from Jesus and Mary.

I also thank Godde for the blessing of marriage and a good man (also full of gripes about THE church!) Also, lots of good friends and good Mercy sisters where I am an associate. And for the Holy Eucharist that feeds me daily with grace. If God can stuff grace into that tasteless old wafer we call “bread,” then Christ can surely get some grace into me—and you and you and you, aka everyone who reaches for it.

2014.10.26 How Mercy Happens

The poet, perhaps, says it best. Would you do this kind of thing for someone you loved, or just for a pigeon?  For some this act would seem gruesome, but I shed a tear for the gentle mercy in the gesture, coupled with this husband’s immediate and heroic act—without thought or delay—on behalf of his wife’s ease. Many would have spirited her away with some natural law explanation, as any rational  person would do. Am I sentimental, or is there a powerful depth to this love poem—a kiss of divinity breaking into quotidian routines?


GRAND AVENUE
        by Ron Koertge

My wife and I were jogging, like we do every morning. Down Mission, left
at Trader Joe's, then up Grand Avenue and past the stately houses we will
never be able to afford. We'd just turned the corner by Senior Fish, scattering
a flock of pigeons strutting their stuff. One of them took off late, veered
right into the path of a silver Lexus, then lay against the curb beating his
one good wing like he was trying to put out a fire. My wife asked me to, for
God's sake, do something, so I turned the delicate head clockwise until I
heard a click. Then darkness poured out of the small safe of his body. That
is when I realized I used to merely love my wife. Now I would kill for her.

Mercy is a piteous word, really. So many eschew pity, as if it were a sin to need pity, to be pity-full. But Mercy comes from old French, merci—as in thank you. Oh, thank you.