A BIT OF WISDOM, Spiritual Lemons, Lyn G. Brakeman, blog post, 10/27/24

“Moral imagination is the special gift of the prophet and the artist. The artist listens and looks and sees and hears the pain and suffering of the world, and it is from these experiences that the artist creates new images. Without moral imagination there is no compassion, for it is from the ability to picture the suffering of others, that we develop the skill to imagine other ways of living.  

Solutions to political problems depend on moral imagination. We find these solutions in the process of being and doing, listening and seeing, with deep sensitivity, to the insights of our imagination. But it is not just artists who exercise their imagination in this way: we are called to sensitize our perceptions so that we come to learn where real suffering and injustice lie.” 

 

-Sister Stan Gardening the Soul. Soothing Seasonal Thoughts for Jaded Modern Souls.  The author has an honorary Doctorate of Law from Trinity College, Dublin. She joined  the Irish Sisters of Charity in 1958 and develops programs of social service for people in need.  

*  *  *  *

This wisdom I believe is precisely geared to how to make choices, and how to vote using our moral imagination—not just according to the authority of a political party. It is also how anyone governs, with compassion and respect for the office AND for those you will govern.

 

Notice that the biblical gospel story for today is that of the blind beggar Bartimaeus (Mark 10: 46-52) who, after he received his sight, did not run off in joy to celebrate like most of the healed do, but stayed to follow Jesus.  

Oddly admirable, no? 

2021.09.12 Nine Eleven

The perfect remembrance in poetic form by the late Brian Doyle, brilliant writer, author of many books, and former editor-in-chief of the Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, Oregon. His life and career were cruelly interrupted at age 60 by a brain tumor.

LEAP

    by Brian Doyle

A couple leaped from the south tower, hand in hand. They reached for each other and their hands met and they jumped.

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them falling, hand in hand.

Many people jumped. Perhaps hundreds. No one knows. They struck the pavement with such force that there was a pink mist in the air.

The mayor reported the mist.

A kindergarten boy who saw people falling in flames told his teacher that the birds were on fire. She ran with him on her shoulders out of the ashes.

Tiffany Keeling saw fireballs falling that she later realized were people. Jennifer Griffin saw people falling and wept as she told the story. Niko Winstral saw people free-falling backwards with their hands out, like they were parachuting. Joe Duncan on his roof on Duane Street looked up and saw people jumping. Henry Weintraub saw people “leaping as they flew out.” John Carson saw six people fall, “falling over themselves, falling, they were somersaulting.” Steve Miller saw people jumping from a thousand feet in the air. Kirk Kjeldsen saw people flailing on the way down, people lining up and jumping, “too many people falling.” Jane Tedder saw people leaping and the sight haunts her at night. Steve Tamas counted fourteen people jumping and then he stopped counting. Stuart DeHann saw one woman’s dress billowing as she fell, and he saw a shirtless man falling end over end, and he too saw the couple leaping hand in hand.

Several pedestrians were killed by people falling from the sky. A fireman was killed by a body falling from the sky.

But he reached for her hand and she reached for his hand and they leaped out the window holding hands.

I try to whisper prayers for the sudden dead and the harrowed families of the dead and the screaming souls of the murderers but I keep coming back to his hand and her hand nestled in each other with such extraordinary ordinary succinct ancient naked stunning perfect simple ferocious love.

Their hands reaching and joining are the most powerful prayer I can imagine, the most eloquent, the most graceful. It is everything that we are capable of against horror and loss and death. It is what makes me believe that we are not craven fools and charlatans to believe in God, to believe that human beings have greatness and holiness within them like seeds that open only under great fires, to believe that some unimaginable essence of who we are persists past the dissolution of what we were, to believe against such evil hourly evidence that love is why we are here.

No one knows who they were: husband and wife, lovers, dear friends, colleagues, strangers thrown together at the window there at the lip of hell. Maybe they didn’t even reach for each other consciously, maybe it was instinctive, a reflex, as they both decided at the same time to take two running steps and jump out the shattered window, but they did reach for each other, and they held on tight, and leaped, and fell endlessly into the smoking canyon, at two hundred miles an hour, falling so far and so fast that they would have blacked out before they hit the pavement near Liberty Street so hard that there was a pink mist in the air.

Jennifer Brickhouse saw them holding hands, and Stuart DeHann saw them holding hands, and I hold onto that. 

And our response was, well, you know.  Sister Stan, Gardening the Soul, entry for 9/11. 

A destructive way of life thrives on fear. Most especially it thrives on fear of love itself, 

the fear of being opened by a force and call of love, the fear of entering into reciprocity.  

2020.10.18 Wisdom. Who? What? Where? When? Why?

Wisdom is considered one of God’s unfathomable gifts.  This is a note on the first chapter of the biblical Book of Sirach the central theme of which is that Wisdom comes from God, was with God in the beginning, is of God, is a female figure, and is deeply connected with spirituality. Whew!     

But why is Wisdom “unfathomable”?  Well, I suppose because Divinity itself is unfathomable.

Back in the 1980s, I was the chaplain at an alcohol/drug rehab facility. I was giving a talk on Spirituality to the patient community and ventured into the topic of Wisdom and its role in recovery. I began with a phrase from the biblical book called Sirach: “To fear the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, or God./Higher Power” A young black man leapt to his feet, raised his fists and shouted: “What the hell do you know about wisdom, anyway—or God?” He called me inept and stupid. I froze. Unbidden, a surge of energy rose up inside me:  “Excuse me, sir, sit down right now. I have listened to you and others with respect. You owe me the same. So sit down and shut up!” He sat down—wisely. Whether this was a wise confrontation or not, I have no idea, but it surely was unfathomable and felt damn good-godly to me.
            
                                             *  *  *  *

Sister Stan (Stanislaus Kennedy), Irish Sister of Charity since 1958, wrote in Gardening the Soul. Soothing seasonal thoughts for jaded modern souls, 2001. Her entry for October 12, our traditional Columbus Day, now quite discredited, unless you are wise enough to hold the wonder of explorative adventure in your soul alongside modern historical skepticism about legends, is:

Wisdom is not knowing as well as knowing, and being at peace with that uncertainty. It is about awareness and it is about wonder. It is about stopping and noticing phenomena in the world around us—air, water, wind, light, gravity, birth, rocks, heartbeats—and appreciating and understanding them.   

To glean wisdom we must keep ourselves open and receptive and perceptive. Wisdom comes from boldness, from participation and tolerance, uncertainty, confusion, ignorance, suspicion, pain, suffering, joy, laughter, fun and love. Wisdom comes from our participation in and appreciation of all things in our mind, heart, body, and spirit.

                                           *  *  *  *

Who is wise? What is wise? Why be wise?  You could after all be a wise-arse or a wiseacre.

Some years ago my late great Jesuit Spiritual Director Pierre Wolff  wisely told a group of retreatants, eager for a clear Word from God: "If you want to know how you stand with God, then look at how you stand with your neighbors.” Simple, right?  Inside I thought: hopeful, uneasy, fearful, judgmental, ashamed, loving, longing, hopeful.  Simple?   

From ancient Persian wisdom: “How do you know God?” You should respond, ‘Because God is in my heart.’ Can we know ourselves if we do not know God? The real understanding of ourselves is our understanding of God.”

The Bible is called Holy exactly because it is a jumble of unfathomably interconnected paradoxes—all of them beloved in Godde. The biblical book called Ecclesiasticus (book of the Church) or The Wisdom of Jesus, Son of Sirach, composed about 180 BCE, was not included in the Jewish canon, but considered canonical by the early Christian Church. Protestant reformers relegated it to Apocryphal writings—runners up. Hence!—Sirach was and is controversial, unfathomable, and obviously wise.  

Sirach makes the case that Wisdom is from the Lord God, insisting throughout: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning is Wisdom. . . . To fear the Lord is fullness of wisdom; she inebriates mortals with her fruits . . .”  (Sirach 1: 16) This line is scandalous. She? Inebriation as in drunkenness? Her fruits? Sex?  Unfathomable! Yet it was the energy that surged inside me and gave me courage enough to confront those in my path who would hold me back, turn deaf ears.
 
Wisdom inebriates mortals with her fruits. She inebriates mortals with her fruits.

HOLY WISDOM. HOLY WORD. Thanks be to God.

Oh, and what does Wisdom look like? Check your mirror, my friends.

2018.05.20 A Spirit-Filled Occasion

On Pentecost Sunday, everyone wears red, or shades of red such as orange or purple or pink. These are colors of fire and passion; they symbolize the energy of the Divine/Holy Spirit—She, if you must have a gender.

On May 1st I spoke to a college class called “The Psychology of Spirituality” at Southern Connecticut State University at the invitation of Dr. Jessica Suckle-Nelson. I was surprised and proud that a college would offer such a course. Two and a half hours with vibrant, curious students, and I had the time of my life. I began with deep feeling energy and practice and moved to religious mysticism.

Your spirituality is what pumps you, brings you alive, gets you going. It’s about the depth dimension of life—what matters most to you at the deepest level of your being, that sense you get when something touches you in your soul, the place inside you where your spirituality resides. Spirituality is a charge, as crucial to your well being as your pulse is to your heart. There are just three basic spiritual needs common to us all: to be heard, to be listened to, and to belong.

To support my own ideas, I added a brief quote from Gardening the Soul, Soothing Seasonal Thoughts for Jaded Modern Souls by Sister Stan, Irish Catholic Sister of Charity: “Belief is never far removed from unbelief. Love is never far from hate. Hope is only a short distance from doubt and joy lives side by side with tears.” 

That’s it! That’s Spirituality!—the amazing capacity to be truly wholistic, to hold feelings we normally would designate as opposites together in one heart. Most importantly, this spirituality keeps us from quickly condemning others, encourages listening and compassion to help us meet our own and others' needs.  AND, it’s close to Jungian psychology, a theory that makes room for the presence of divine energy as a motivating energy in human behavior. I had the psycho/spiritual thing nutshelled!

This occasion started with a granddaughter Gillian, 22, who texted one day: “Hi Grammy, I have a question for you.” It’s tantamount to a Bible-sized miracle for a grandchild to text or call, so I called back right away. She asked if I could come to her class. The teacher, Dr. S, had talked about difficulties Episcopal women had getting ordained, and Gillian volunteered that her Grammy was among the first groups of women ordained priests in the Episcopal Church. Dr. S. is an Episcopalian. Such a perfect storm of wonders!

“Dick, will you go with me and drive, and let’s also take Gillian out for a quick supper, OK? I’m excited and nervous.” “Sure,” he said. “Wear your God Is Not a Boy’s Name tee shirt AND your collar.” I love him.

I was excited that a young audience had some small interest in Spirituality. I was nervous about communicating the sluicy category. How could I leave poor unpopular God and religion out? I could. I did it for many years when I worked as chaplain at an alcohol/drug treatment center.

What I learned from this refreshing spiritual experience:
    -This group of 18 twenty-something coeds were eager, open-hearted, respectful, and bright. I will never again lump college kids into stereotypes that suggest they are all politically aggressive, irreverent, anti-religious, or indifferent.
    -This group wondered about negative spirituality. If it was personal could it be negative? Their definition was too self-centered, individualistic. Spirituality is personal but not private or unique. Groups have shared spirituality—energy that motivates behavior.
    - This group was highly diverse racially, sexually, and spiritually—agnostic, atheist, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and a former Buddhist nun. Diversity challenges identity and belonging: Who am I? Who are you? Where do I belong? I wonder whether the current well-documented high levels of depression and anxiety in college students are in part related to a sense of real or imagined loneliness? The move from tribalism to a common humanity and a common good in which everyone is included and equally valued is, well, good and fraught.
    -Most students pressed for answers. I gave them ideas and stories. To be spiritual is to hold possible answers right next to the next set of questions, which surely will arise.

Whether they thought I was nuts or not, they gave me a round of applause, scooped up my calling cards, and one young man suggested they applaud Dick, whom I’d introduced as my driver who could only speak if I called on him. They’d all laughed. Humor is essential to healthy psychology and spirituality. My beloved driver/husband grinned then drove me—exhausted, heartened and bursting with hope—all the way back to Massachusetts.

As to my beloved Gillian, she had sparked the energy of her classmates with lots of questions to help her Grammy keep things moving. She also owned her agnostic approach and persisted with her agnostic questions. How do I know I’m spiritual or when something is spiritual? I told her that not knowing was scary and spiritual. Do the best you can and trust.

Later I texted her this: Chiqui, when you sing you connect to your depths, your soul. And everyone who hears you, even if no one is there but god or a tree or a squirrel, connects to spirit and feels a moment of uplifting hope. “Bidden or not, God is there.” Jung said that. Thanks for being you. Sing always. I loved your class, and so did Grampy Sim. ……. I added a healthy compliment of emojis. Here is Gillian serenading our family at Christmas, 2017.

And here is the cross they gave me in thanks, made by Dr. S and her husband.

2018.04.15 Images of Mystery

IMAGES IN WORDS AND PICTURES ARE WHAT WE HAVE OF MYSTERY

Through each of these images I see the Wholeness of all living things.

ORCHIDS—with—sunlight from windows, a mural of the Holy City Jerusalem, a broken-winged angel on the left, a half-burned oil candle on the right, a dancing flame lamp unlit center front. 

RULE OF THE ORDER OF THE HOLY CROSS, Episcopal male monastics:

LOVE MUST ACT
   AS LIGHT MUST SHINE
       AND FIRE MUST BURN



THE FORGOTTEN TREE

In the famous biblical myth of the Garden of Eden with all its wisdom about the human condition, we most often focus on the one tree whose fruit God, in all wisdom, advises against eating. It is called the Tree of the Knowledge of Good AND Evil. Its fruit, not an apple btw, is forbidden because it will bring shame and a strong temptation to doubt the goodness of in God, self and neighbors as we are. This fruit will bring shame and fear. It's the lush fruit that tastes delicious and can bear bad spiritual fruit. That simple. And we always grab for it, no? It is normal so to do. I would. I have. I will again.

BUT, there is another tree in this famous Garden of Eden. It is the Tree of Life from the beginning so placed by the Creator. It is full and rich and ample, and plenty. Its presence is almost always forgotten. We choose the other tree. It seems quite human to do so. Thank goodness we have a God who does not punish but does keep on reminding us in myriad ways, that the other tree is still there with its own fruit for us to choose—anyhow.

MEDITATION in Eastertide by Sister Stan, Gardening the Soul. Soothing Seasonal Thoughts for Jaded Modern Souls

"As we move into the third millennium, we need a symbol of hope, an image that is capable of encompassing the great traditions of the past, the energy of the present and hopes for the future.
   Could a woman with child be the symbol for the third millennium? For contained within her womb is all the richness of ancestral heritage, the unique, creative moment of conception and the infinite potential of the future. "

A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth.      Revelation 12:1-2


EMPTY TOMBS

I sought for an image of the sun-woman pregnant with life and writhing in pain. All I found were images of a virginal Mary, all white, or some Russian icons, stiff of face and form. 

Tiring of the hype of glory and knowing it to be only part of the promise, I thought of laboring women, pregnant with life, who then face the unfathomable sorrow when a child is born still, leaving an empty womb still vibrating with spasms of longing—and the woman alone, bedraggled, sunless, starless. 

Is that the truest image for women? The empty womb? For all of us who hope sightlessly? Is the truest image of Easter the empty tomb? A resurrection without a body? 

Aidan Owen, a brother at Holy Cross Monastery highlighted some words, taken in part from a poem by Christine Lore Webber, in his 2018 Easter Vigil sermon in the monastery church in the night.

"And some of us God hollows out with new life. Hollows us to be a tomb in which to lay the polar bear and the maple. Hollows us to be a bell tolling in witness to the lives of children killed while they study. Hollows us to be a throat calling out for justice, wailing in lamentation, and singing songs of hope and resistance, a throat proclaiming the great and unending alleluia of God, of life flowing from the heart of death, like the waters of Eden."

Are we not all called to be hollowed out like the tomb, even as we simultaneously long to be hallowed?