2022.06.19 Divine Empathy. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I used to think that with God as my father I would always be safe and loved. I also used to think that my own father, whom I loved without reserve, had no fears or flaws. That was until he took a course on assertive training that I offered at our parish church when I was in my thirties and he was in his seventies. Turned out he was shy. Turned out he trusted his oldest daughter to teach him how to love himself as much as his own “Father” God did. It also turned out that God is much more than a father. God is the Creator and Source of ALL Being—all living beings not just fathers or sons or daughters or mothers or Whites or Blacks or sinners or the righteous. Creation itself is an act of divine Empathy.

*  *  *  *

The other day as I sat on one of the many benches strewn along our walking paths at McLean Village retirement community where I live, I witnessed a poignant and typical scene.

Two children were riding bikes, a young boy of perhaps six and his older sister on her bike riding behind him. I watched them progress and overheard snippets of conversation.

She: Wait. Don’t go so fast. You’ll fall!

He streaks on ahead. 

She mutters: “This was my mother’s idea that we go out and ride bikes. What a stupid idea! He’s too far ahead now.” 

She is about to fall off her bike, so she stops and shouts after her small brother: WAIT! He’s so stupid I know he’s going to fall. She shrieks at the nearly out of sight brother, as she tries to mount her bike and can’t steady it. She mutters: “This is so dumb! I’m done.”  

She catches my eye, and I smile. I think to say, “It’s not easy being the big sister, huh?” But I don’t say it out loud. A simple nod with a loving intention is all I can manage in the face of a deep sorrow at this child’s life-plight. 

She mounts and rides off wobbling. God, don’t let her fall. 

*  * *  *

I think of the parable in Luke 9 about Jesus’s being confronted by a man possessed by countless “demons” all of which, or whom, Jesus banishes, making the man well, lightening his burden. My imagination plays fast and loose with this story. What rivets me is not the apparent miracle of an exorcism, but Jesus’s single-minded focus on the possessed man’s misery—not only derived from his illness, but because his terrified community had shackled and exiled him because of it. Of course he also feared more torment from Jesus. Jesus is slow to react. This is an emergency! Jesus should flee for his life. Still, he pauses to ask the man his name, and does not act before he gets a response. “My name is Legion,” the man cries.  Legion is the name his frightened and ignorant community have labeled him. It is also the name used for the Roman military, a fear-inducing name. You know how it is in adolescent years when certain teens are called sticky names like wimp, bully, nerd, queer, lard-ass, fraidy-cat, sissy, on and on. Such names are like glue, hard to live down—legion. 

But Jesus wanted to know all these names before he banishes them all, sending them to find a new host—a herd of pigs that suddenly race pell mell down a steep slope of land to their death in the sea below. 

Many people hate this parable, because they feel sorry for the farmer who has lost his whole herd and his livelihood, and/or they are overtaken by cruelty to innocent animals, or, yes, they are horrified at Jesus’s own careless insensitivity to local needs. I wonder. 

Eventually they called Jesus the Christ—anointed as healer/savior, not because of magic powers but because of extraordinary, dare I say divine, empathy. It turns out Jesus was much more than a son.

          *  *  *  * 

I’ve referred to my sorrow about this child’s “life-plight”. Of course I’m projecting from my own experiences, and no exorcism is called for, yet I wonder: Does she battle legions of invisible “demons” such as shame at being plump, anger about her caretaker role assignment, resentment about the cute, disobedient little brother’s freedom, hurt by her mother’s apparent favoritism, and her own enslavement—this child in hot pursuit of an assignment she feels compelled to do and hates but does clumsily, hastily, out of duty not faith?  

I don’t know. I pray. God’s grace I trust far exceeds my small momentary concern. After all God is a good “father,” right?  Okay, I’m kidding, something I do when I feel a little wobbly inside like the girl on the bike, or like my own father on occasion, or like Jesus before he heads to Jerusalem, facing execution.   

My dad was shy like me, but he kept it hidden. Once at a party for my seminary graduation he announced: “We’re not sure how this happened, but Lynda has graduated from Yale Divinity School.” He raised a glass to toast me and said how proud he was. I knew he was “just kidding”, so I too laughed along with Dad and everyone else. And I never forgot that “joke”. Dad wasn’t a cruel man, just a man with a few leftover “demons” of his own—like most of us really.   

So, happy father’s day to anyone who fathers, mothers, parents with good grace, and prays like crazy anyway. 

God bless the girl child on her way. 

God-in-Jesus, named Christ, who knows fear, empathizes, names, and disempowers all our big or little “demons,” to save us in spite of ourselves, bless this girl and all children.   

God is Creator of the TREE of LIFE—the one left in the mythic Garden of Eden to continue to flourish no matter what for all creation—forever.  

     

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? 

2011.07.13 My Ways are Not Your Ways

The biblical wisdom on Godde's lovely lips written by Isaiah lets us know that Godde's ways are not our ways. BUT there is no judgment in this so don't put it in there.

The degree to which I critique, compare, condemn,judge, interpret negatively the ways of another is the degree to which I lack appreciation for my own ways.

Damn. Hard to give up that old sin.

I'm abstinent from sin on occasion only and with Godde's grace.

I have learned this truth from years of creating, participating in, observing sibling warfare.

My sister and I still react. Her ways are airy, light and lovely when she's not on a rampage. My ways are dark, dense and lovely when I'm not in my cave assessing my ways.

Life is not a battle to be won or a success to make me better. It is a spiritual gift to embrace and pluck from, yes, the forbidden Tree of Life