Just Say Yes, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 8/21/22

There are many ways to be “bent.”

The New Testament story on the healing of the bent woman is compelling. I once suggested to a friend who was riddled with arthritis and, yes, bent, that she pray with this story. I suggested that she read it slowly and carefully, then imagine herself in the story as Jesus calls for her to come forth from the shadows into the light. “Are you crazy?” she said. “Not really,” I said. She did not believe me. I wondered about myself, too. 

*  *  *  *

In this story, Jesus was teaching in the synagogue. This fact signals us that it was the Sabbath, and he, the Rabbi, was teaching listeners wisdom for life. Nevertheless, Jesus interrupted himself, and in an almost nonchalant way, called this woman, bent double and unable to straighten herself, crippled for eighteen years, to come towards him.  Are you crazy?—she must have thought, but it all happened so fast. She approached, he touched her and told her to stand up straight. She stood.

Such stories are unbelievably shocking, even scary. And yet, our desire to believe them is intense. The woman herself does not thank him, or apologize for being a nuisance—on the Sabbath no less. She simply gives thanks to God. That’s all. Is that enough? 

Yes, it is enough. 

*  *  *  *

But no! Onlookers start a FIGHT!  Jesus broke a rule—healing on the Sabbath, The Sabbath is to be sacred for God alone. Well, who do they think created this miracle?  Who in this story is “bent”?  

They then, and we now, fight about miracles, about Jesus being God or a phony actor, about her condition being God’s fault or will, about it being her own fault in some way, (or today, some would say it was her childhood trauma), about the authenticity of scripture itself, about Luke’s political agenda trying to persuade the Gentiles about Jesus’s godliness by making it all up. 

I think that the very worst perspective on this or any miracle is to override its splendor with self-aggrandizement: Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. In other words, I did something wrong that qualified me for a miracle. Bad me. This habit of self-deprecation is common, and it is anti-theistic, leaving little or no room for divine action, no matter how that comes, no matter how dark, how sinful. How much almighty energy will it take to break through such sinister pride? It takes a miracle!  

*  *  *  *

And even when such a miracle takes place we often take the credit for it, as if we ourselves had created this miracle‚ by “fighting” no less. Our language is revealing. The poet Ocean Vuong in his novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, wonders about the overuse of warrior language for everything: “But why can’t the language for creativity be the language of regeneration?" Vuong asks. Instead we use violent language, as Vuong notes, citing some reactions from his fans: You killed that poem. You’re a killer. You came in to that novel guns blazing. I am hammering this paragraph., I am banging them out, we say. I owned that workshop. I shut it down. I crushed them. We smashed the competition. I’m wrestling with the muse. The state, where people live is a battleground state. The audience a target audience. “Good for you, man,” a man once said to me at a party. “you’re making a killing with poetry. You’re knocking ‘em dead.” 

Even in the biblical story violence erupts. They can’t believe the bent woman is straight, so the onlookers start a FIGHT—about rule-breaking for the sake of a bent old woman, no less. And we too, alas, remain addicted to the need for explanations, preferably our own, and yes, violence in word and deed.

Who in this story is bent? 

*  *  *  * 

What to do? Well, do not go passive or give up in the face of impossible adversity. Even the dictionary tells us that the word “miracle” comes from the  Latin root mirari, to wonder. If you are able, find ways to join WITH—co-operate—using your natural gifts, medical care, therapeutic help, friends, family, prayer, whatever is creative for you—including the unexpected, WITH an inexplicable miracle when it happens. God, it turns out, transcends science, logic, reason, fights, religion, politics, ritual, even our love and prayer. So just wonder.

The best definition of “miracle” I’ve ever encountered, is one offered by Anglican theologian and priest, John MacQuarrie (1917-2007), pictured below: “A miracle is something we are grateful for.”  Simply so. 

So rejoice!  Something incredibly good, small, unforeseen, inexplicable, eccentric, impossible, yes, miraculous, will happen. Just say yes.

And, because there’s no one worldly source, including yourself, to thank, thank God as the bent woman did with her prayers. Then straighten up and walk on. 

    

2021.01.03 A STORY. AN IMAGE. A SONG.

The Christmas season lasts for a mere twelve days, but that’s silly really, because Christmas is whenever, however, wherever there is awe, splendor and wonder.

A STORY
    Once a man told me a Christmas story I never forget. His father had told him and he told me. It was Christmas Eve and my friend’s father was a boy of about eight in bed very sick with chronic bronchitis. The doctor had been giving him Sulpha. It was the 1940s and the miracle of Penicillin had not yet hit the market. The doctor told the parents that he didn’t think he could pull the boy through this bout.
    The boy’s parents felt helpless and frantic. Suddenly the boy’s father couldn’t stand sitting idle. He jumped up, put on his heavy overcoat, hat, and a muffler against the winter cold, then left their small New York City apartment, being careful not to slam the door. This father had a plan.      

He trudged along the snow-filled city streets where he knew he’d find what he was looking for a few city blocks off on the corner. Yes, there was the scruffy old Santa Claus, all dressed in red, with the scraggly white beard covered with bits of the soup he’d slurped earlier, liquor on his breath, and a bell in his hand. He stood next to a pot on a tripod with a sign on it reading Salvation Army. Santa rang his little bell and called out, Merry Christmas—over and over. People passed by and popped coins into his pot.
    The father approached this Santa, pulled out a small wad of cash, pressed it into Santa’s mitten, whispered something in his ear, turned and walked off the way he’d come. Santa followed. The dad led Santa back to the apartment and into the bedroom of his sick little son. The parents propped their son up a bit. Santa stood at the foot of the bed, rang his little bell and said Merry Christmas. HO. HO. HO.
    The son got well soon. The parents were jubilant. This Santa Claus belched and rang his bell.

Who knows what Christmas really is? Who knows what salvation really is? Who know what a miracle is?
 

AN IMAGE

    The image above is of the little Christmas array we have outside our apartment door.  Ollie the Otter has hopped down from his usual perch to make room for the manger scene, the creche. If you look closely to the left on the floor you will see a three-humped camel (a dromedary) carrying three “Royals” one on each hump, their crowns askew. It’s been a rough desert journey eastward through many nights with only the light of one bright star, seeming to be close but always elusive. Luckily, these three, one a female, are gifted astrologers.
    They will arrive on January 6 to place luxury gifts at the foot of this newborn babe whom they believe offers hope for a just new kingdom, one free of tyranny and deception, one that promises peace, PEACE.

A SONG.

Everyone everywhere always needs a theme song. Here's mine. The lyrics are by songwriter, author, and comedian, Katie Goodman, daughter of Ellen Goodman, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and a favorite of mine. This song has been and will continue to be my theme song—including that old unexcised "u".  It is very base, maybe a little arch, and not traditionally christmassy. But it’s Christmas!
    I didn’t fuck this up.
    You probably didn’t fuck this up.
    We didn’t fuck this up.
    So let’s all un-fuck this up.

We can together unscramble our world, our politics, our economy, our social compact, our spirituality and more for the sake of our planet and all living things.

Will we?
   

    

2018.03.25 Why Wave Palms? Fake News?

We wave palms for the same reason we wave placards and posters and signs: to protest massive political and spiritual indifference to the needs of the smallest among us—our children.


In 1988, I was ordained priest, on March 25th. Thirty years ago my day as was the Feast of the Annunciation: Mary’s big day. She is remembered in biblical tradition and in the hearts of women of faith for her decision to listen to God’s request for help. Her assent destined her to a life of agonizing pain, heart-wrenching sorrow, and love.  She is often remembered with roses.  On my day roses adorned the sanctuary.

This year in 2018 her day and mine, March 25, is Jesus’s big day: Palm or Passion Sunday, often called The Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem. We wave palms—green, supple, fresh—and shout Hosannas. Like Mary’s day, this day was for Jesus his willingness to risk his life to confront  political and spiritual indifference to the needs of the least among us, especially children. His decision would mean spiritual betrayal, wrenching disappointment, and agonizing death.

On the surface, all three days were celebratory, triumphal. Great victories were cheered: Mary’s safe birthing and rearing of a Messiah; Jesus’s entering Jerusalem to confront the imperial powers with the need for justice and peace; my ordination after eleven years of rejections, in part because of my being a woman—in the wrong place at the wrong time. Each apparent victory was incomplete, shadowed by ambiguity at best—how monumentally paradoxical:  The less triumphal we act the more triumphant we are.  Or, the more triumphal we act the less triumphant we really are.

My ordination procession looked and sounded triumphal but . . .  I was scared witless and a bit numb—worried that the bishop, who strode behind me with his huge long crozier (ersatz shepherd’s crook), would reach out, crook my neck, and toss me out of the fold. My other worry was that the bishop might have to leave suddenly because he had a ghastly, sniffly cold. Would he sneeze in the middle of his crucial lines, without which I would not be a priest: “Therefore Father, through Jesus Christ, your Son, give your Holy Spirit to Lyn; fill her with grace and power, and make her a priest in your Church.”

I’d struggled through a long, hard, painful process to get to this day. The personal triumph was that I had not given up when I felt defeated. I had stayed the course against significant odds—my own flaws and the church’s prejudices.

I never blamed God. In fact I felt that God’s Spirit was present in the slow ongoing process of healing and reconciliation between my broken heart and the Church’s broken rules.

The less triumphal we act the more triumphant we are.

Did Jesus feel triumphal as he entered Jerusalem? He knew that his vision had stirred up crowds. He knew this was a life-threatening protest with a small number of believers. He knew this was a public political protest punishable by execution. Was it divinely ordained?  God does not desire the death of anyone. Jesus’s death was nothing to wax triumphal about. So where’s the triumph and when?

It would be an act of sheer Divinity that Mary’s motherhood would be remembered, lauded and written into holy scriptures as  a miracle to reverence. It would be an act of sheer Divinity, one that took many restless years to take root in the hearts of crestfallen followers, to turn Jesus’s actions into a triumph, a miracle of truth called Resurrection.

And my ordination? It made me a priest.

It also began a process of many restless years—discerning the fullness of my priesthood, with God’s help. The traditional track for priests, to be a parish rector, was not the way for me to be a priest. Rather, I was to be a non-stipendiary Sunday-only priest of Word and Sacrament in parishes. This sacramental ministry remained central.

But full triumph?  I continued to feel like a failed priest, as if my whole vocation was “fake news” until I saw that I was a priest at the altar and in my office. The three sacramental functions of a priest —bless, consecrate, absolve—transferred easily, sometimes formally, into people’s ordinary lives through my profession as a pastoral counselor, spiritual director, and writer. Occasionally, the traditional route for priests feels alluringly triumphal, but not the realized triumph.

May the triumphal massive March For Our Lives, led by teens all over the world, come to full triumph in unlocking the prideful partisan resistance of adults that we all may work together for life-saving change. Will this be an act of sheer humanity/divinity miracle?  I pray so.  Amen.

2012.05.02 Blogoir: Gift, Miracle, Table

Miraculousness, my status at birth according to my mother,  made me too precious for Mom to hug much but not too precious to fuss over.  She defined miracle as something God does for you without you. I’d seen the picture of me inside of her and obviously she was a partner in the making of this miracle. I became suspicious. Either God or Mom was lying but what little child can choose between these two deities?

Being “a gift from God” had more promise for me as an identity than miracle. I preferred being a gift because a gift required intention and thoughtfulness, even love, while a miracle seemed like a flash-in-the-pan quick fix.  Also, no one in their right mind, even my theologically addled mother, would turn down a present as adorable as she said I was.

Preferences aside however, both spiritual ideas imparted to my young and curious mind a fascination with God. Who was this divine guy and how did He choose me for His gift?

At first I confused the whole masculine divinity idea with my father because Mom always called him  “my divine guy.”  It seemed she confused us both with God. It was easy to tell Dad wasn’t that heavenly. Someone as big as God who created the whole world and all that was therein (words I heard from a book)  probably didn’t drink martinis and nightly neglect the daughter who was a gift from God to him also. Wasn’t she?

My father held the magic glass. He twirled the stem between his thumb and forefinger. My mother had a different glass, tall with ice and dark fizzy liquid in it. Still, Daddy’s glass drew worship from both of them. What was wrong with my mother?  She had told me this was supposed to be the “children’s hour” like the poem said. Their elitist nightly ritual disgusted me.  It hurt, too.

I stomped away from the sanctuary of the parental Cocktail Hour leaving my parents to gaze at the long-stemmed triangle-shaped glass filled with clear liquid and three enormous green cross-eyed olives. Too big to float they nestled near the stem, their red eyes staring out at me in a menacing way—the evil olive eye.

I found refuge under our large dining room table with the cloth to the floor. I took off my slippers and left them outside the tablecloth—token good girlism.  Then I crawled in under the table,  sat cross-legged on the worn maroon carpet, and hiked my yellow nightie with the tiny flowers all over it up over my knees.

For company I took my three imaginary friends; for food I took some Ritz crackers I’d snitched from the cocktail tray. I lined the crackers up on one of the cross beams  and started my “sermon”— a lively one-way conversation with God who joined the group and, unlike my distracted friends,  was the only one who listened attentively and unflinchingly—and listened and listened at a time when no one else did. 

After I’d turned myself inside out chattering I was hungry and it was time for our meal. I ate my Ritz cracker and left the other four lined up on the cross beam. I felt sure my communicants would come for them after I went off to bed, but of course my mother would have retrieved them, knowing that my faith in my three imaginary friends depended on it. She never asked about the fourth. 

That was how I got my image of God, how I first knew for sure that I mattered no matter what, and how I invented a eucharist.  I felt this experience could be the greatest story ever told.

Some days I still wonder.