2025.05.11 Letter To My Mother On Mothers Day, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Dear Mom,

This, I know, is late in arriving, yet I hope, or rather I know, that the God we both trust will make sure this is delivered.  

I have learned over the years that mothering is the hardest job and/or vocation that exists in the whole created universe. 

It is not restricted to any one gender.  

It is not dependent on sexual intercourse, anatomical wombs or anatomical penises.

It is not dependent on marriage between a man and a woman.

It is not dependent on childbearing in any traditional way with all its moral baggage. 

It is not even dependent on perfection of character or catechetical behavior, from a rulebook. 

It does depend on LOVE, and love is of God by whatever name you give to Divinity.

*  *  *  *

All this preamble is to let you know that you were a good mother to me even though we both doubted it along the way. You embraced me as a “miracle” when I was born in 1938 after many miscarriages. Only now can I imagine how terrifying that must have been for you. Yet you gave me a definition of “miracle”—something God does for you that you cannot do for yourself.  Obvious perhaps, but very clear. And only now do I feel enough grace in myself to understand and to forgive and to love.

When, at the end of your life, you applied such mothering skills to all of your nine grandchildren, you go down in history as the best grandmother in the world, or better! 

Here is a quote from a Michael Hudson hymn text for Hymn # 306.   

There are no fences in the fields of God,

to come an go is an abiding choice;

but like the flock before we’ve come to trust

the supple tether of a shepherd’s voice.

Or perhaps, the supple tenor of a mother’s voice.

So, dear Mom of mine, from me to you wherever you are in the heavens of God, know that I love you dearly and thank you profoundly for being my mother, forever and ever AMEN.

 

2023.05.14 Be a Poem, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

To be a poem is not the same as to write a poem. Being a poem takes lightness of mind and soul, weightless wisdom, boldness of heart. In other words, the branches are less weighty, but more supple, lithe, and limber than the vine. Together they create great spiritual choreography. Such is the embracing way of our mothering God.

*  *  *  *  

She had some horses she loved.

She had some horses she hated.

They were the same horses. 

Joy Harjo

A NAME

When Eve walked among

the animals and named them—

nightingale, red-shouldered hawk

fiddler crab, fallow deer—

I wonder if she ever named

them to speak back, looked into 

their wide wonderful eyes and

whispered, Name me, name me.  

Ada Limón

INSTRUCTIONS ON NOT GIVING UP

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out

of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s 

almost obscene display of cherry limb shoving

their cotton-candy colored blossoms to the slate

sky of spring rains, it’s greening of the trees

that really gets to me. When all the shock of white

and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave

the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,

the leaves come. Patient, plodding,  green skin

growing over whatever winter did to us, a return

to the strange idea of continuous living despite

the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,

I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf

unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Ada Limón

BREATH IN ME

Breathe in me, breath of God

healing my lungs’ disease

So that I may in purest love

breathe in, and breath out with thee.

Breathe in me, breath of God,

For when my life is done

And my sweet lungs lose all their pow’r

My last breath and yours are one.

Lyn G. Brakeman (after Hymn #508)

And then the plant, fresh charged, would be

itself a vein of grace,

a way the keeper might extend

a hopeful, green embrace,

connecting child and foe and friend,

co-mingled and entwined,

to be and bear the fruit of god

in one life-giving vine. 

Michael Hudson

* * * *

And such are the many and varied ways of affectionate naming, guiding, breathing, mothering we recognize and celebrate on this 2023 MOTHERS’ DAY. 

2021.05.09 Mothering Day

Just two days ago I awoke in a funk, feeling sorry for myself, sure no one of my four biological children would remember the M-day, or make a last-minute quick phone call or maybe a card from CVS. I moaned to myself in an orgy of self-pity when a phone call from my youngest son on his way to work. He was telling me about the heart maps he helps his young students make for their moms. I asked him to make me one. He said he was at work on it.

I remembered our blended plethora of mothers: step-mother, mother-in-law, their own wives/ significant others who have mothers, not to mention their wives' mothers, a few grandmothers—and godmothers! And this doesn’t even account for the many mothering friends and female mentors along the way. I’ve know plenty of mothering men as well. It is the quality of unstrained mercy. The count got unmanageable and quite beyond me, so I rolled out of half-slumber, checked my phone to discover that it was only Friday not Saturday, then thanked my own mother, dead by 23 years now. I told her I wished she were here with her lavish excesses always overboard for me. I could use her boostering.

Mothering day is always a Sunday. In church we hear Jesus remind his followers of old and today to love each other as he loved them—without condition, forgiving regular lapses in affection, faith, and loyalty. He loved with trust in God, a constant presence no mother can ever replicate. Some hearty clergy dare to speak of God as Mother, but being averse to any theological genderizing at all, I wouldn’t slap the title of Mother—or Father—onto Divinity.

My thoughts strayed to Molly (not her name) a 95 year old resident in our apartment building, who is mother, grandmother, great grandmother, maybe even great great grandmother—beloved of many, loving many. Last night I, by pure luck, was walking down to the dining room and saw Molly, dressed elegantly in blue with earrings and necklace of pearl, standing in the doorway of her apartment, clutching the handles of her walker. She looked bewildered, not quite right, so I stopped and asked. She began to say something with great intention, but it was gibberish. She managed to say with slurred speech as I came close that she’d “never felt this way before—all dizzy and nauseous.”  

Another resident came by, and we managed to get Molly back inside and seated. Her lifeline was buried deep in her brassiere arrangement. Molly then tried to remove all her clothing in a great rush. I asked if she was anxious and her frenetic eyes answered. I felt my own panic rise in my throat, but I breathed and focused on Molly with soothing reassuring words—prayers for us both really. I knew time was of the essence.

At last we located the magic “savior” and pushed the button. A voice answered the call from a box on a table in her living room. I managed to locate numbers for her family. Her landline had large buttons with names on each. The message I received from family members was firm: Do not let them take her to the hospital! We’re on our way. The adamancy of their message alarmed me. Why would a family give such an order?
 

Within ten minutes the EMTs arrived with their gurney. Three energetic young men burst onto the scene and began to spray Molly with questions. How many fingers? Who is the President? What year? Molly’s face screwed up with effort. She knew these things but her mind was scrambled. We waited for the family to arrive. The men fumed and paced. I inhaled the swirling angst, exhaled to calm myself, and prayed. Finally THE family of authority arrived, daughter-in-law and a grandson. The daughter-in-law ran in as she loudly announced: “I’m a nurse. I’m a nurse.”  It was time for me to leave and join my beloved husband for dinner.

Molly did have a stroke, not her first. She is in the hospital receiving proper treatment. I continue to pray for the best outcome for her. Sometimes the most desired outcome is death—hard but not the enemy.  
                *  *  *  *

From Molly I learned some things about myself, about fear, and about mothering, chiefly that I can swallow fear and take charge when needed.

I learned some things about emergency behavior in general. First, when in an urgent situation like this, stay calm, firm, and kind. Breathe. Do not raise your voice or shove your own anxiety into another’s face. Second, make sure you have a conversation about your own desires with your own family. NOW. Third, have your information—instructions, medication, doctors, medical condition/history, insurance card, phone numbers of healthcare proxy— written out clearly on one sheet, laminated, and placed on the refrigerator to consult in a glance.

To die or not to die, that is not the question.

No one knows how they will die. Make a plan and share it with loved ones and professionals. Then pray, let go, and live.

For myself, I think I will have a sense of when I’m done with life and want to say goodbye to loved ones. I hope to die in peace at home or in a hospice with professionally managed palliative care. Trust your tears and your laughs, your memories, fears and prayers.
                

                   *  *  *  *

It was hard for those who loved Jesus to let him die. It was hard for him to agonize about his choices. He chose the way of integrity with courage. He confronted the powers with his gospel recipe—not new news but good news renewed. He chose to die, leaving his words to the bereaved to find their own ways to love, and fail, and try again to love as he had loved them.