2024.03.24 Stethoscopic Listening, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

If you want to hear the pulse of the universe, you have to BE a stethoscope, listening not just hearing. Turn off your urges, your longing for security. Move out of the eager parade, such as the one so many Christians try to reenact on Palm Sunday, the tragic walk towards what everyone imagines will bring ultimate satisfaction to that longing to belong. Surely it will become obvious—atop a mountain, in a procession of Palm-waving, by Easter for sure? Surely. 

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Once upon a time a very old— ancient by any measure—snake called Rock-Dweller was born in my imagination at a writers’ retreat at a very holy monastery, when this very famous spiritual director named Madeleine told us all: Think of someone in Holy Scripture who was angry and write about it.  The snake in Genesis popped up. She was furious, asking: “Why do women hate snakes? Why, for that matter, does God?” Was there no grace for the snake? My snake prayed fervently, doubted even her own doubt, discovered her own secret shame, and laughed at divine folly. Eventually, my snake dozed on her “sun-warmed, soul-soaked rock”. (Spiritual Lemons. Biblical Women, Irreverent Laughter and Righteous Rage. Augsburg edition, 2005.) 

One recent morning, I did not want to wake up and face another day of what is called aging-in-place. I missed my get-up-and-go self. I felt angry and helpless, damning all self-help baloney, including my own. I lay still and listened stethoscopically—underground, beneath my heart’s resistance, my mind’s curse. 

“It has to be Qoheleth!” I finally said to my slowly-awakening spouse who groaned. 

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Qoheleth is the Hebrew translation for the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. The name translates as teacher/preacher/messenger, sometimes collector of sayings. Ecclesiastes was written after the exile (450BCE) at a time of tremendous economic growth accompanied by the politics of, let’s say, acquisition of wealth for its own sake and its attendant temptations. Much like today, the poor got poorer while the rich got richer—and the gift of divine grace got, well, undermined, taken for granted, forgotten. In this socioeconomic situation Qoheleth struggled to find God. He asked: Is everything vain, futile, spiritually bankrupt?   “What’s the point?” 

“What’s the point?”was my own father’s deathbed question in 1983. We stood, my sister and I, on either side of his bed as he groaned out his last breaths. Dad was only 71! 

There is never a clear answer to such a question or quest. Qoheleth stayed open-ended—wise enough to continue to question himself, his world, life itself, and the divine intention. Also wise enough to be reverent and skeptical at once. I aspire to do likewise—with my imaginary stethoscope. 

For everything, the inquisitive one concluded, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven—birth/death, hate/love, mourn/laugh, silence/speech, war/peace. 

 

 

2020.12.20 My "Racism". Part Fourteen. Words Alive.

Scene XXXIX. Potentiation

I am an inveterate note-taker—a regular nerd. But who do people ask when there’s uncertainty about what happened at a meeting? Or, what did that professor say again?  

Here I sat, ready, poised, pen in hand, spiral notebook open, my arm resting on the little pop-up writing desk in the huge lecture hall full of upturned faces. The professor of Old Testament (required course for all of us first-year seminarians) entered, mounted the podium, slapped a swath of notes onto the awaiting lectern, put on his large dark-rimmed glasses, looked down, then up. A hush fell. Inhaled breath held. He began: “In the beginning God . . .”  God what?  

Potentiated.  That wasn’t right. Genesis said created, didn’t it? Nope, it said: In the beginning, Earth was an empty nest. . .

Empty like a womb? Waiting? Barren? Divorced?  

No, I was wrong. What was I hoping for? Genesis said: “In the beginning when God began creating, or God created.” Obviously, God came first, took action first. I exhaled. Also, there was nothing written in Genesis about potentiation. Wrong again. Then, who said potentiate? I know that’s what I heard, but who said it? Never mind. I loved that word, fell quickly in thrall to its potency.

Potentiation.

I was at God-school in the lats 70s. Would I too be potentiated? I glanced around, looked up from my obsessive note-taking. The students were mostly white, but not all white. They were mostly male, but not all male. They were mostly young, but not all young. (I was forty!) They were mostly Protestant, I surmised, because I didn’t see a lot of quickie self-blessings with the sign of the cross. Everyone looked bright-eyed. I felt good. I felt as if I belonged. The first day. Potentiated.  

Later we streamed into the refectory for lunch. I found my “group”—my pod without the peas. We were older mid-life women, most of us commuters, some with children, all of different Christian denominations—Lutheran, United Church of Christ, one Catholic, and three Episcopalians. We were chatty and excited about jumping into potentiation, which word they loved, even though I was the only one who heard it. I swear I did.

I headed for my car at dusk to drive home, lugging the biggest, newest brand new Bible I’d ever seen or owned. I felt scared. By the time I got home it was dark. I hugged my children, threw some supper together, and sat down with my notes and my outsized holy text. I would study for this potentiation till I dropped.
 

I’d craved independence and called it freedom. What I began to see as I plunged into the Old Testament was that God created freedom of choice, not paradise. Biblical people were all mixed up and messed up, yet somehow they kept getting re-potentiated—back in sync with God who, for no sane reason, went on potentiating. Anything could happen. Risky business this kind of spiritual freedom. I felt just like these ancients—completely fascinated and and equally fearful.

What if I chose wrong, and what if God really did exile me, or I rejected God?  

Despite my mixed feelings, I dove in—too much, because once when a child came begging for one more cookie or something, I’m ashamed to say, I said: “Leave me alone, I’m reading my Bible.”

Scene XL. Inerrancy

The big required hot-shot basic courses had one lecture and three section meetings a week. To my surprise, Jim Echols, a young black man, a student in the doctoral program, was the teaching assistant of my section. I don’t know why his skin color surprised me, but of course a God-school could never be racially segregated.

Jim was tall and lean with a lavish but neatly trimmed afro. We were invited to call him Jim. I loved his sense of humor, his mild, slightly amused manner, and his willingness to entertain any and all argument. Jim believed in and taught us biblical inerrancy, the idea that there were no errors or faults in the Holy Bible.

Inerrancy?

What? That’s nuts? What about God’s telling Abraham to kill his son Isaac as proof of Abe’s great faith? What about God’s having created, even invited, sin in the first place in Genesis? What about God’s holy wrath—wholly unjust? I argued ferociously against this inerrancy idea. Jim listened with kindness. I thought he was completely wrong. I mean he was a black man. What about racial injustice in the Bible? How about women? Errant and still holy?

What I noticed as I pored over the Hebrew Scriptures, however, was how easily I assumed that all those people were white. I also noticed in story after story that God seemed quite content to include the whole messy array of Creation in the divine plan to keep this creation thing going—all of it. If not why did God refrain from blasting Eve out of Eden, divorced, after her brilliant grab for freedom?  And why had Sarah survived divine wrath after laughing at the absurdity of God’s promise that she’d get pregnant in old—very old—age? There were countless examples (Ruth, Miriam, Hagar, Job’s wife who cursed God, Moses the murderer, David the adulterer, and more).

Why was all this sin and deceit and acting out, obviously all wrong and errant as hell, so visible in people God chose as collaborators, the ones who got written up in the HOLY book?  

Jim stuck with his inerrancy platform while I struggled mightily with my confusion and my effort to make this Holy Bible literal, factual, historical, infallible. How could something called holy—and taught in a God school—not be thus? I’d read the whole thing in 7th grade. But now I was a mature woman of forty—seeking only comfort and answers. Where was my God?

I kept going to lectures and listening to Jim anyway.  After a time I found my consistency, the inerrant God Jim proclaimed. It turned out to be in the compassion of Jim Echols, a young black man with chutzpah and intellect—both. 

Thank you, Jim, for not evading all the academic material of scripture, yet  always saying: “Remember there is a story here, too.” I felt alive. Stories. My story. I wrote in my little blue final exam book:  OT LIVES!!  You added a big red exclamation point right next to mine. You gave me a new word. You expanded my little white world, my little Christian world.

PS. Today in twenty-first century America, there is confusion over facts, so much that we’re losing the founding vision of our nation. What is a fact and what is fake news? How do we evaluate the news of the day? It seems to depend on who says it. Some call this era post-truth  We need leaders like you, Jim, to help us see both facts and truth in context, the larger vision within well-examined, well-articulated facts. We need to remember there’s a story.

By the way, here’s an inerrant truth, obviously not a fact: There are no white people in the Bible.

2019.03.10 Getting "Woke"

Today is Gillian Brakeman Colbath’s  23rd birthday. I remember how miraculous it felt to be present the day my oldest daughter brought forth her oldest daughter. Potentiation. Creation. Woke!

Dear Gillian, I remember when you were 7 you sang a solo on stage all alone—a song learned at camp: “Down by the River to Pray.” I remember you taking the lead in the play “Annie Junior”—little orphan Annie singing “Maybe” in your brand new red dress with the white sash as she dreamed. And hearing your mature adult voice sing as you played your guitar to the Joplin song: “Me and Bobby McGee.” I got “woke”. Most beautiful precious Gillian, I know one day you will sing your own perfect love song to yourself.  You are beloved. I love you. Grammy. (Photo of Gillian, Grammy and Auntie Jill, also with a wondrous singing voice)

According to biblical story, Jesus and his disciples got “woke” on the Transfiguration Mount; the brightest big-bangiest light they’d ever seen shone on them, and Jesus lit up like a firecracker. Have you ever seen someone light up with insight, song, love, whatever? It’s biblical, honestly. 

My “woke” story isn’t as grandly biblical. I was forty, feeling like a mid-life “first-grader” in my first course: The Scriptures of the Old Testament ,at Yale Divinity School in 1978. I didn’t know much about the OT, because, until the advent of the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, readings from the OT happened only at daily Morning and Evening prayer, not at the Sunday Eucharist.

The Old Testament! My adolescent impressions, formed from reading the whole bible in seventh grade (when else?), were that the OT was hot and sexy and murderous. Hence, I could hardly wait to find out more. In seminary it was required, and soon we’d be hearing it every Sunday in church, along with a reading from one of the many epistles, most of them Paul’s, and a gospel reading from the New Testament’s big 4: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—specialists in the life of Jesus the Christ.

I sat on the edge of my chair, in a huge lecture hall, my notebook opened out on the pull-up desk, and my pen poised to write down every word I heard. I never wanted to be any place as much as I wanted to be here right now, ready to study God in OT.

The professor entered and mounted the podium. The room hushed.

“In the beginning, God potentiated . . . “ he began in sonorous tones. 

I wrote that down. I knew this once-upon-a-time story: God creating to the point of divine ecstasy, every living thing—even mosquitoes.

For big required courses like this one there were weekly lectures and also smaller classes called sections for which we wrote papers, and where we got to ask our questions and discuss. The sections were led by teaching assistants (TAs), usually graduate students earning their keep. That’s when I met Jim Echols. I bet he was younger than me. He was tall and lean with an afro so significant it looked as if it could topple his head. We could call him Jim. I loved his sense of humor, his mild, slightly amused manner, and his willingness to entertain any and all argument, chief among them biblical inerrancy, which most of us, including me, had confused with biblical literalism. I still wonder.

Just last week I read in the Christian Century Magazine that Jim had died at age 67 of complications after a fall at home. You don’t get a big obit in this magazine unless you have some religious clout. I felt sad. Jim Echols helped me get “woke.” I remember him well.

According to his obituary, Jim did accomplish big stuff. He was an ordained Lutheran pastor, a Rev. Dr. no less, and the first African American scholar to serve as the Dean and President of  an Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA) seminary in Philadelphia, and a retired ELCA pastor, having served many parishes along the way of his career in theological education. Jim grew up in Philadelphia. At Yale he was studying psychology, religion, theology, and the church and culture, earning his PhD among a string of other degrees. 

Formation seemed to have been a passion for Jim. He did much work to support and promote high-quality continuing theological education. He would have been a fan of the Education for Ministry (EfM) program in which I have been involved at many levels for 35 years. Another connection I discovered was that Jim, like me, encouraged interfaith relations, helping to create a Center for Christian-Muslim Engagement for Peace and Justice at the Lutheran seminary.

So my fondly-remembered TA in OT was a rock star. A professor emeritus of church and society and urban ministry at Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago where Jim was president from 1997-2011, called him “a giant in the world of theological education . . .who stirred many people of African descent to aspire to be faithful in their service in the church and the world.” I bet I intuited that way back when I was a green seminarian falling in love with OT and getting “woke.” 

Dear Jim, I am so proud to have known you for such a short time at the beginning of my own theological education. You helped me love the OT and find the grace of God in the oddest of places. I remember when I wrote my final exam for the OT course, I got carried away and wrote in my little blue exam book:  OT LIVES!!  You added a big red exclamation point right next to mine. Thank you. You helped potentiate me. Call it “woke.”

Psalm 23, Beloved Prayer Song Re-potentiated

A word is dead when it is said
Some say
I say it just begins to live
That day
        Emily Dickinson, 1924

Hear an old favorite psalm with just a few fresh words that change its complexion. 

Psalm 23 translation, Pamela Greenberg The Complete Psalms

God is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack.
You lay me down in lush meadows.

You guide me toward tranquil waters,
reviving my soul.

You lead me down paths of righteousness,
for that is your way.

And when I walk through the valley, overshadowed by death,
I will fear no harm, for you are with me

Your rod and your staff—they comfort me,
You spread a table before me
in face of my greatest fears.

You drench my head with oil;
my cup overflows the brim.

Surely goodness and kindness
will accompany me all the days of my life

and I will dwell in the house of the Holy
for the length of my days.


The psalms are prayers—startlingly honest emotionally. No feelings are absent from these prayers, even violent ones, the ones that let us know where and how we are hurt and want to hurt back. Yet psalms are also poetry and we chant them. Pamela Greenberg has translated the psalms in creative new ways without allowing them to lose their poetic power and spirituality.

I love familiar words that lull me; I love fresh words to awaken me even more. These latter force me to pay attention, to tune in. That’s how I grow. Even in discomfort, there is soul. Besides, who says scripture must always comfort or edify?  Poetic words soothe and disturb in equal proportion, and psalms are poetry.
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The Rev. Dr. Judith Fentress Williams, Old Testament professor at Virginia Theological Seminary, spoke to the Massachusetts clergy recently about the Old Testament—its value and its power, its connectedness with the fullness of earthly expression and experience. “Don’t be afraid of it. Preach from it,” she said.

I’ve always loved Old Testament. It was required in seminary, and the very first course I took at Yale Divinity School. The instructor began in solemn tones; “In the beginning, God potentiated……….. 

I wrote that down and tried to still my heart. Potentiated felt more powerful than created. It signaled the spiritual power behind/within everything that lives breathes and has being. It spoke to me of God’s agenda: ongoing potentiation. Whenever you are potentiated, by anything at all, you awaken. You feel suddenly lifted….in a word, resurrected. It’s a scary and a wonderful feeling.

The Spirit of God potentiates Life in the beginning, at the end, and in every second in between.
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What do you notice in Greenberg’s translation of Psalm 23 that is different from what your ears are used to hearing? Say it aloud.

This translation is familiar —and brand new. The first thing I notice is: “God is my shepherd”— not the Lord. God is a name not a noun. God is free of royal role and all its accoutrements.

Then I notice is “there is nothing I lack.” It sounds different from: “I shall not want” or “I shall not be in want.”  “Nothing I lack” means I have everything I need. Do I? Even as I age and feel lacking in many joints, every sag of skin, every short-term memory lapse: what did I have for breakfast today? But with God I lack nothing.

This 23rd psalm hums along, and all of a sudden your mind is jarred. You expect: “You lead me in green pastures” And you hear: “You lead me in lush meadows.” The words mean the same and yet have different tonality, sensuality. Lush!

“You spread a table before me in the face of my (fill in the blank)—enemies, we all say. But we hear: “my greatest fears.”  What is potentiated by these new words? Are your fears like enemies? Do they not make you skulk, cringe, cower and hide? Are they at war with your aspirations? Do they help you sin against goodness? Is this translation as accurate as the idea of having real enfleshed enemies out to get you?

And “I will dwell in the house of (fill in the blank)…the Lord, we shout?  We hear instead: “the Holy.” Lord implies ruler; Holy suggests a quality of Being, a Presence within and without. This Holy Presence  “drenches” our heads with the oil of healing. “Drench” is more literal and stronger than “anoints.”

What do these new words potentiate in you? Maybe contempt or distaste? For me, it’s the knowledge that great words I love do not die when they are altered, but they do acquire a different flavor; they inspire me to think—again and again. As the poet says, these newly spoken and heard words live.

What am I saying? What am I thinking? What am I meaning? What words do I use?

Lastly, the image of the shepherd is softened by these new words. Real shepherds are rough and tumble, not so gentle with sheep. The divine shepherd accompanies yet neither drives not coddles. This shepherd is just be a little more, well, divine.

2015.07.26 Goliath Groupers

I read something amazing recently in National Geographic, a magazine to which I don’t subscribe but one I love for its photos and its daringly graphic information. I get to read it in my chiropractor’s office and feel annoyed that she is never late, and so efficient about moving her patients along that I don’t have enough time for my magazine.

There is a fish called a Goliath Grouper. You knew this of course.

When I think of Goliath of course I remember the biblical story of the young boy David who, by dint of the Lord’s favor and a few stones, slingshots to death a huge enemy giant named Goliath. I used to think of the Church as a goliathian institution I’d never break into. Many a dream I’d have in which I was David facing one of my many “goliaths”.

Incidental trivia: the Hebrew Bible texts report Goliath's height at six cubits and a span, about nine feet, nine inches. Giant proportions, even for today's most desirable basketball team recruits. More realistic, and earlier, is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible which measures Goliath's height at a mere four cubits and a span, seven feet, nine inches. Were the Greeks more realistic? No, just athletes, not wanting competition.

Such differences and inconsistencies ought to test my faith in biblical wisdom, and/or make me disdain the Old Testament. Instead, I'm fascinated. First, I love process that evolves. Second, I'm part Jewish, and Jesus Christ was all Jewish. We love to argue about texts. And third, I'm a woman who loves messy creative process. It's like real life; it makes me believe in the sacredness of it all because, as hard as I try, and as much as I tie my brain in knots, I can't force biblical stuff into a mold. All I can do is be wary about any claims based on the literal words of the Bible, appreciate the biblical literary composite, and love it for what it reveals to me about my relationship with God, myself, and my neighbor. That's how I can feel like David one day and Goliath the next.


But back to fish................big ones.

A Goliath is a huge saltwater fish, found in shallow waters among coral reefs, sometimes up to 8 feet and weighing 400 lbs when mature. A Floridian hauled in the record catch, 522 lbs., from his kayak as recently as May, 2015. The fish never hurt him but easily snapped his rod in half, and you should have heard his rapture: "Oh my God, holy crap, Jesus, oh God." The guy caught a Goliath and felt huge—enough to invoke God and Jesus. 

I wasn’t afraid when I saw my first Goliath Grouper because it was mounted on wood and hanging in a museum display in Boca Grande, Florida.

The Goliath swims along surrounded by thousands of little Grouper groupies swarming and never raises a fin at this disturbance. Nothing fishy here and this great Goliath is a metaphor for divine constancy.

Goliath has an extraordinary biology: it is born female and over a lifetime changes to male —without any gender reassignment. What is Nature thinking of here? Well, we know about that now in humans, don’t we? And we know God has no gender, don't we?

Years ago when I was attending a writers’ conference and staying in a hotel—on my own. Not such a big deal, but I have to tell you that one of the mornings when I was seated at my own table eating breakfast, I suddenly felt like a man. Hey, I can do this, too! I never wanted to be masculine, well maybe the Lone Ranger yelling Hi Ho Silver, galloping on a stick horse to the William Tell Overture. But I did want to be able to do some of the things men do without batting an eye. That day, for a brief minute, I felt like a traveling businessman, a professional with my briefcase, casually eating breakfast, tossing a credit card onto the bill, and feeling like Goliath. Really.

I still sometimes feel unsure of my own authority. Do I belong here? Women are priests now and still most priests are men, and “fathers” to boot. I hold my own, yet I’m tired of feeling uncertain and outnumbered. I’m immature, I say. The Church still tells women they have authority issues. I'm not alone in my Davidic feelings. But would I want to be Goliath?

The biggest fish I ever caught was from a small lobster boat in Gloucester on my son's birthday, 2012. It wasn’t a Goliath Grouper and it went back to the deep quickly at my command and with help. But in the moment I hauled that fish in and held it up, I felt as big as Goliath and David together.

2013.04,14 Potentiation Never Ends

“In the beginning . . . “  he began in somber tones.

I wrote it down in my brand new spiral notebook marked Old Testament; “In the beginning  . . . “  Then I waited, through a long pause, for more.

“In the beginning God potentiated life—over and over and over.” 

I loved that word, potentiate. I’m not sure if that is exactly what he said but that’s what I heard and never forgot.

Potentiation is what God, by whatever name, and there are many, is all about—over and over and over.  My time as a seminarian at Yale Divinity began in 1978 with this enormous required basic biblical course in Hebrew scripture.  The professor, Robert Wilson, has been teaching, potentiating, there for 40 years. (I never thought this then, but I bet he’s about my age now:)

I remember when some students nearly went nuts over an exam question which asked us to connect the texts about Sarah and Abraham in their aging process, with its attending issues, to our own lives and ministries. How would we use these texts to inform our pastoral care work, say in a nursing home? 

My recollection was that many students were angry and protested this approach, calling it proof- texting and all kinds of other putative interpretive “abnormalities” they thought were forbidden when working with sacred texts. I guessed they were afraid of aging and death, or other demons too fierce to mention.

But I loved it.  The issues were the same then as they are now, and I got it.  For me this approach made scripture come alive, and its people real. Years later I wrote two book of midrash stories using this connective experiential approach.

Recently I read that Robert Wilson said:”Religious tradition canonized the biblical text but it didn’t canonize an interpretation.  That is the job of each generation. . . .That’s the human condition. It was also an exilic problem.  How did I get where I am? How do I deal with tradition, with what has happened in the past? You have to figure out where you are and how you got there. It’s what being a fully involved adult means.”

It’s what Creator-God is all about: unending potentiation.