2022.01.02 Shop Till You Drop—But Not Dead. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/2/22

One of the most prominent activities that lures the younger generations, is shopping. It is how they divert their attention and how they focus it. While we are all shopping may we all pray as we go—for Life itself and an end to Fear, the dominant “religion” of choice. 

                         *  *  *  *

Once in my late 70’s, I went shopping with my two daughters in their 50s. Once was enough. They dashed around the store at mach speed, snatching up garments and accessorizing them each as they went. I stood dazed, awed, resisting the temptation to sit down in a corner and suck my thumb. I bought nothing, and they could not figure out what was wrong with me—nor I with them.

I obviously am not a good shopper, but that does not mean that I am not one of God’s more curious creatures, my mind full of questions about life and death and awfulness and wonderfulness at once. I always see both light and shadow in everyone and everything. When I shop I am not driven by clothes or glittering jewelry, but by ideas—ideas that glow in the dark. 

Why then, I wonder, do we religious folks, or those who worry about the validity of the religious project, not present a Divinity attractive to the shopping generations?

There are many and varied images of the Supreme Being in a variety of attractive hues suitable for any and all occasions, portable and reproducible as needed according to your own dearest and deepest desires of heart. You have to know yourself to know God, but prayer does not depend on your having the “correct” image of God or any image at all.  

Is this creating God in your own image? Yes, but—God has no way to you but through you, and when you pray, you open your heart to Life and Life without Fear. ’Ts enough.

*  *  *  *  

My intuition, however, tells me that people are shopping for God-images. So why do we not advertise God? Why not set out a variety of images to attract shoppers? Varieties of shoppers of all generations, locations, spiritualities, and interests?

Last week I blogged about the “beloved ass”—an image of divine determination, divine strength, and tolerance for all kinds of human need. This image shows off the God of steadfast faithfulness and sturdy loyalty through thick and thin—no matter what.

This week, according to ancient—symbolic not literal—story, the three Magi, one female, one black, one Asian, finally arrive at the nativity scene with their gifts—expensive gifts, extravagant gifts, overdone affluence from their abundance. Why? Why not?

 

Here is another among the multiple images of divinity, and attributes thereof. A man named Jon Gallie, a wildlife biologist with the Washington state Department of Fish and Wildlife, has devoted his life to finding and protecting endangered species. Here he holds one of North America’s tiniest rabbit species, the Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit. These minute critters, with bodies the size of a mango, feast on pungent sagebrush across the plateau. Their survival and food supply have been threatened by wildfires that have swept across eastern Washington, Oregon, and into Idaho. Thanks to human intervention, these rabbits have been rescued and placed into predator-free enclosures where they can breed. (National Geographic, Winter, 2021)

Is this not an image of the hand of Divinity—incarnate in human flesh?  This holy work of salvation is tiny, considered by some to be insignificant, mostly unknown to the world, precious, extremely tender, gentle, and yes, divine.  

*  *  *  *

Do pray—god or no god/God/Godde. Keep praying your own personal causes, needs, and cares, using your own images. AND please pray deeply and daily for Life itself—for the salvation of Earth and the whole Cosmos. May your prayers have the steady sturdiness of the beloved donkey and the the tender frailty of the newborn infant and the aged adult. Thank you.

©LynBrakeman, 2021

2021.10.31 HALLOWEEN WONDERMENTS

Whatever Hallowed Eve is, it’s at least a time to have fun, to dress up in funny or scary costumes, to say BOO, to eat mountains of Candy Corn (a horrifyingly bad candy), and most of all to laugh with and at ourselves. As the poet says, so it goes. 

HALLOWED EVENING

Do the beloved dead

come back

this night

to sit in their favorite

easy chairs

and breathe in

the earthly fragrances

they once knew

  so well?

Do we believe

that heaven is so 

ailing

that the beloved dead

would not be 

infinitely happy

there and would need

a trip back to earth

to fill their hearts?

Best allow

the commercial

takeover of this night

to erase all thoughts

of this bizarre idea,

and to enjoy the dark.

Best just open the door

and hand out candy

to kids in costumes. 

by Carole Jean Smith, poet, Watertown MA., Into The Wild

As well we should!—because, according to Western Christian tradition, the next day, November 1, is declared Holy: All Saints Day, all Hallows Day, as in “Hallowed be thy name.”  It is a day to honor all saints who are deemed to have attained heaven. Silly, right? Because who knows who is in heaven?  Sainthood is not about points for good deeds or for martyrdom, a vocation to which few are called. It is safe to assume that it is God’s gracious loving desire that everyone be heavenbound. If you want to know who a saint is, look in the mirror—and grin! 

WHO COOKS FOR YOU?

  

I call this critter a hooting owl fish. She, or he, was photographed by David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes in Night Life for National Graphic Magazine (10/21) in the darkest night-depths of the sea.  “The only way to know which way is up is to watch which direction the bubbles are going,” Doubilet says.

HINENI   (Hebrew for "Here I am"  pron. hee-NAY-nee)  

 

Here is the latest discovery in fossildom. Years ago, with a friend at a museum of natural history, looking at fossils, my friend announced: “There are no fossils.” I did not pursue her certitude, because I knew I would get a lecture on “creationism”—the idea that God created everything fully formed, that is, no room for evolutionary processes. But this little crab defies that notion. I call her/it/them/who knows “Buster in Yellow.” They are a fossil encased in hard plastic. She says: “hineni”.

CONVERSATION WITH A WASP

In a piece by Paul Hond, Columbia Alumni/ae Magazine, Fall, 2021, he quotes Michelle Ashkin, ’04 alumna: “Then a strange thing happened. My mother and I were looking at a wasp. It cocked its head, and my mother and I just stood there. Did you see that? We moved, and the wasp followed our movement. My mother and I looked at each other, and it was an ‘aha moment’ for both of us. This is a being. This being sees us, or sees something—recognizes it, and is aware of it. How in the world were we going to kill it? We couldn’t—it became a being, not a disposable, not ‘oh, we can kill it because there are hundreds more outside. So we found a cup, captured it and let it go.' ”   

I used to do the same for ants in the city of Cambridge. Then I’d unfasten the screen and put it on the window sill where it froze until it felt safe enough to bug off on its own.  Lady bugs —family signs of new life—get to stay in residence. 

We are human beings. All Creation is shared Being. So be it. 

THE MISSING TREE

She is bent but not broken. He is weary but not tired. 

They are old and alive, missing every tiny life, animate or inanimate, 

that ever was, or is, or is to be—without regret. 

WISDOM

“Lord increase my bewilderment.” That is the entirety of this Sufi Muslim prayer. 

“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”  Jesus, according to King James.Mt. 6:36

“Let go and let God.” Twelve Step Recovery (AA et. al.) slogan wisdom.

CRACKED CLARITY CONFUSED  

I’m going out

without a jacket

or a hat, only a mockingbird

for directions.          

Carole Jean Smith, Into the Wild. Poems in praise of the beauty of our imperiled world. 

©Lyn G. Brakeman, 2021

 

2019.07.21 The Man In The Moon

Fifty years ago in July of 1969, I was thirty-one and the young mother of three children: two daughters, ages six and five and a son, age two. My then-husband and I were on Nantucket vacationing with some friends. All the children had gone to bed and were all, finally and mercifully, asleep at once. We adults, however, were more awake than we wanted to be after a drowsy beach-day in the sun. We sat huddled around a small radio, the only communication available in our rented cottage, and strained to make out voices through the static. It was barely possible to believe that the radio voices were speaking to us from the moon, the same moon to whom, or to which, we nightly bid “good night” reading the favorite bedtime story, Good Night Moon.

This night was not like any other night. It was so unusual that not one of us bedraggled parents was drinking a goodnight beer. Nor did we repair to the porch to gaze at the stars-and-moon show, which on a cloudless night was panoramically visible thanks to the absence of ground light.

This night we strained to hear American astronauts, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, deliver a newscast from the moon on which they walked, or more accurately toddled or wobbled in their moon-suits. We kept silence before, during, and after the broadcast was over for some time. No one commented at all, but our faces shone—alive with wonder. Then we went to bed without comment.

Who knew awe could be so unitive—electrifying and soothing at the same time? 

The next morning we told our children what we had seen. A daughter comment offhandedly: “Oh yeah, the man in the moon. I’ll have Cheerios.”

Details and speculations about further space research and travel are available and most beautifully presented in the 7/19 issue of National Geographic. I was fascinated to read about the array of meaningful earthly objects the astronauts took with them into space.
    -Alan Shepherd (Apollo 14) hid in a sock a six-iron clubhead, which he attached to a tool handle to hit two balls on the moon. [Wonder if they’re still orbiting, and if so does this count as an everlasting cosmic hole-in-one?] 
    -Neil Armstrong (Apollo 11) brought a piece of the Wright Flyer’s wooden propeller. [Never forget those on whose shoulders you stand as you make advances into uncharted territories.]
    -Deliciously, John Young (Gemini 3) smuggled on board a corned beef sandwich to share with his crewmate, Gus Grissom, who stuffed the treat into his pocket when crumbs began to float around the cabin. [Not till after he got a huge mustardy bite, I hope.] 
    -Closest to my heart was the offering of Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11). He brought wine, bread and a chalice to celebrate Communion on the moon before he walked on it. NASA kept a lid on the gesture to avoid negative reactivity, and later Aldrin wondered if he’d done the right thing celebrating a Christian ritual in space. He wrote in his 2010 memoir: “We had come to space in the name of all mankind—be they Christians, Jews, Muslims, animists, agnostics, or atheists. But at the time I could think of no better way to acknowledge the Apollo experience than by giving thanks to God.”

Before Aldrin and Armstrong disembarked, Aldrin asked the ground crew on Earth to keep a moment of silence to contemplate what was happening and to give thanks in their own way. Many future space travelers have memorialized awe in words and gestures of their own traditions.To this day Lunar Communion Sunday is still celebrated at Webster Presbyterian Church in Houston where Aldrin was an elder. Aldrin’s impulse is easy to understand. Only the small of mind and heart would think he was trying to colonize the moon for any one religion!

“In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup.”  Aldrin wrote.  Here is the cup. Interestingly, he read the New Testament parable of the vine and the branches not the Last Supper  story.

To me his description of the wine's movement is just how the divine Spirit moves about in the world, curling slowly and gracefully—like a snake but neither biting nor poisonous, though it may nip a bit to make sure we are awake. 

Future space research and travel will continue I’m sure and, I hope, build a spirit of collaborative awe not competitive grandiosity. The National Geographic article interviewed Russian cosmonauts as well as Americans: “Interestingly, the cosmonauts I met in Russia seemed to share two perspectives with their American counterparts. First, their time in space made them profoundly more interested in protecting the Earth. Second, they think the idea of permanent colonization of space is bonkers.”  (p. 95)

Bonkers indeed. I’ll have Cheerios while I appreciate the lovely moon from right here on this  glorious Earth, praising human ingenuity right alongside divine creativity.

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.