2023.06.04 Trinity and Transcendence, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

It’s Trinity Sunday, a day when Christians celebrate the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.This  is an ancient discernment that Divinity itself is ONE with three distinct self-expressions, all divine and mediated through Creation, through the Created, and through a Holy Spirit, traveling music for the unitive flow of energy. I guess this is why one of the lectionary readings for this Sunday is from Genesis 1:1–2:3—the entire Creation account according to the ancient priestly writers. 

I recall one professor loudly proclaiming: “Yes, the trouble doesn’t start till Genesis 2:4b when God foolishly decided to create us earthlings in the divine image and gave us freedom to choose good and evil.” We can choose God or not.                                                                                           

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What better Sunday than Trinity Sunday to weave a new tale of coherence in the Christian faith I embrace, the faith that, according to Mother Teresa is the Christian FAITH not the Christian Certainty.  

Andrew McGowan, Dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, wonders about the Genesis reading for Trinity Sunday. He points out that Genesis as a trinitarian story is not just because God is called “we” in Genesis, but because Genesis is about “the complexity of divine purpose, action and presence” throughout. Genesis never stops, I’d say. 

Still, I’m not a scholar/professor, and this is not a lecture with grades for superb parroting.  Also, doctrine is not the same as dogma. No one knows precisely what the nature of Divinity is. Some of us, of course, think we do, then set up prohibitive fences like certitude, to protect our own interpretation. What the Trinity does is to keep God alive and bristling with energy, available to all—inclusive and not mediated by any single religion, viewpoint, or source.

We are endowed with unique gifts: imagination, intuition, creativity, and yearning. We also get signs, hints, intuitions, dreams and occasionally a cattle-prodding wallop from a source we do not control but which we recognize as not entirely of our own making. These signs we label Mystery. I call them God-incidences.                                                                     

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A good friend and wise professor recently commented that a Mystic was someone who experienced the divine, aka God, without mediation. My immediate thought was: there’s no such thing as an unmediated experience. It can only come to us through us—our prayers, senses, intuitions, imagination, even our unconscious as vision. Of course such an experience can come to us from outside us, but it still comes to us through us. It is Divinity Immanent. 

Helen Keller learned to know the world through touch. When her teacher Annie wondered aloud how to communicate God to Helen, Helen answered: “Oh, I already know God.”  

In the 1970’s, when I was a young mother of four growing children from fifteen to eight, I was in the midst of baking whatever number batch of chocolate chip cookies I’d baked as part of my maternal repertoire. I’d meticulously laid out all the ingredients. There were no cookie mixes then, or if there were I deemed the use of them as cheating. On what? Oh, on the ideal image of the contented housewife. As I plodded through this routine, I thought with affection of the children who would delight in my cookies. I was also bored. I felt like a metronome, not missing a beat of the the musical score written for my role. In my mind I heard my children’s lilting voices and saw them dashing into the kitchen, lifting my mood, grabbing a cookie then running out to play in whatever weather was available, their exuberance a guarantee of my maternal worth and my love. They were a delight. My ennui was not their fault in any way. Nor was it mine. Nor was it my husband’s who worked hard to make sure we were financially secure. 

Still, I knew there was something missing. Suddenly I smelled the odor of burned cookies. I jumped into action to save my cookies. As I did, I also heard a voice from deep within me, or from far beyond me. It was not harsh or confrontational. It was firm and gentle. It grabbed my attention. I wept.

Why are you doing this? 

I had no idea how to answer the question. I knew it didn’t sound like my own voice—exactly.  I knew I had to answer. Was this the voice of God? Possibly. Am I a mystic? No. But I knew this question interrupted my boredom, my uncertainty. I knew it was mediated through the odor of burning cookies and the depth of my own soul’s discontent. I also knew it was not from far away or high above, but deeply embedded in the ongoing, immanent trinitarian process.  It was not Divinity Transcendent.                                                                                 *  *  *  *  

P.S. I cannot resist now sharing the thought that popped into my head this morning: Gallia est omnis divisa in tres partes. (Gaul was the region we know as ancient western Europe.)  My Latin teacher would recite this magically as if we should remember it. AND Gaul is still one Gaul.  How galling.  

2019.06.16 Knocking Off THE Father and Loving the Daddy

Happy Father’s Day. Happy Trinity Sunday.

Many Christians claim to understand the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity, yet no one does. How can the one God be partitioned—thrice holy? In church we pray to OUR FATHER. We bless and anoint in the name of THE FATHER. Adding HIS only son and a holy spirit, we lustily sing Holy, Holy, Holy. We proclaim, praise, and triple-bind ourselves into this girdle of holiness and name it One God. Now who really does not secretly know that the real head of this sweet holy trio is THE FATHER? 

I’m a woman, also a mother. My preferred pronouns are she, her, hers. I’m not named as one of these major God parts. I’m not bitter, because my spiritual experience tells me I’m holy, and that the Trinity really means that the One Father God’s holiness is innumerable—not three or even three zillion. God has no preferred pronouns. God is not my father. 

Most days I adored my father. I used to think he was like God and imagined him in grandiose ways. One day though I did discover that he really was the bravest man in the universe.

Daddy was a city man—reserved, handsome, advertising executive. As a child I longed to capture his attention. My strategies, chiefly cuteness, incessant questions, and begging for one more book, bore little fruit—except in the summer when left the city and spent time on a farm up-state. Daddy commuted but took lots of vacation time. We got to explore the near-sacred mysteries of life on a farm.

We’d read picture books about farm animals, so we’d practiced neighs, brays, moos, cackles, and oinks. On the farm our book-animals leapt alive. We bonded over barnyard sights, sounds, and smells, especially freshly mown hay, pigs wallowing in mud, and cows. I was scared but Daddy was brave. Watching a cow give birth terrified me. The mother cow struggled and bellowed. Daddy told me to wait, luckily refraining from a lesson in sex education. I held my hands over my eyes, but peeked. When the calf finally emerged my heart jumped. How had it fit inside? This led us to the bull—a daddy to avoid, Daddy said.

The bull had his own stall. We peeked in. The bull snorted and had sharp piercing eyes—angry. One day the farmer asked Daddy to help get the bull up a ramp and onto the trailer for transport. The bull was secured by ropes tied to a halter. I watched, shivering with fear. Some men tugged the lead on the halter and pulled. Others poked with pitchforks from the rear. The raging bull jerked his head and took a quick turn toward Daddy. The farmer yelled: “Jump aside quick!” I held my breath till the bull galloped up the ramp onto the truck. Daddy was saved.

Driving home, I asked softly: “Daddy, were you scared?”

“You bet I was Lynnie,” he said.  

At that moment I knew my father really was the bravest man in the universe.

Happy Father’s Day, Daddy—God also of course and in case.

2018.05.27 Another Spirit-Filled Occasion—HolyHolyHolyHoly . . . and Holy

When Dick and I recently went, as Grammy and Grampy, to read a picture book to an excited and exciting flock of 2-3 years olds, I thought of the Trinity: God is one and three, and maybe many more. I know. I’m odd. But I got this idea from the Holy Spirit who, indiscriminately, spreads HolyHolyHoly—and more Holy—in surprising places we might judge to be unsuitable.

This is the story of Big Wolf. Big Wolf lives alone; his habits of mind and heart are quite set; he is content living this way—until one day Little Wolf enters his life and disturbs his peace. Big Wolf has mistaken his need for security and control for his need for love. Love makes him feel the pain of loneliness—pangs sharp enough to open his heart, and his home. 

Our youngest grandson, Dylan, is three—almost four he reminds us. The teachers had arranged the group of about twenty in a broad circle with tiny chairs in front for us to sit on as we read. (Luckily the chairs supported our butts and our weight.) We were the “Mystery Readers.” It was  no mystery to Dylan, because his parents simply cannot keep a secret.

Dylan is the youngest of our twelve shared grandchildren. Sometimes he is exuberant, sometimes willful, sometimes shy, and always adorable.

This day he was explorer-boy, but the day we read he was shy-boy. As I read Dick made faces and gestures—stern, pouty, sad, joyful, worried, joyful. The children were seated in a circle but at some distance. I wanted them to be more clustered and close but the teachers thought differently. So far this group is still obedient. As we read and got into the story they inched closer. One little girl could hardly contain herself with her commentary, questions, and pointing. Dick said she was like me. He’s right. I considered this a compliment. 

When we were done reading Dylan ran up and wedged himself between us. Then the whole class gathered around for a photo. Dylan is on my left and his friend Dante on my right.

The experience filled me with sheer delight. I knew this many-in-one/one-in-many imagery had to be holy—and Holy.  

2017.06.11 Graduating Into Godde

If I were giving a graduation speech or trying to explain the Holy Trinity to a bunch of eager, scared, impatient grads, I’d offer one idea to practice and a soul-poem that dared to mention God by name.

AT EVERY MOMENT, STOP TO WONDER AND ASK YOURSELF:WHAT MATTERS HERE? PAUSE. THEN ASK YOURSELF: WHAT REALLY  MATTERS HERE?

Do You Believe in Godde?
     by Lyn G. Brakeman
 
I say I believe in God
when I see a seventeen-year-old girl-child
catapult down
center aisle
–late–
 shot from a cannon.

Wait! she shouts;
her bright blue graduation
robe flaps open
to reveal bare knees ending in fuchsia sneakers.

She races— winged— up the steps
to the stage
then stops,
straightens her square hat
until it settles over her curls, then walks with slow steady steps
towards the school principal
—who waits.

I say I believe in God
when I see this girl
walk with no swagger.

The principal waits still.

When she arrives he hands her a diploma
He says her name
—all of it, out loud—
even the middle name she hates: Victoriana.

At the sound of her name she leaps into his arms.
He holds her tightly,
the diploma still in his hand.
It has her back.

I say I believe in God
when I hear murmurs of shock
ripple through the crowd of praise-addicts.

I say I believe in God when
—one-by one—they rise to applaud.

Two people in the very back row
keep on clapping
after the girl flings her tassled
hat into the crowd
and runs off the stage.
No one is there to snap her photo,
except the invisible Godde*
with the invisible camera that images all Earth.

I say I believe in God
when I witness such jubilation,
and keep on believing
long after the applause has died down.

I say I believe in Godde when years later
I see this girl
hard at work packing groceries
with neat precision into bags.
She grins at every customer
so broadly that the whole world can look down her throat.


*Godde is the Middle English spelling of God. It is used quite frequently in modern times, because it nuances femininity in the divine name and softens the hard "d" ending. 

2013.05.26 What Is the Trinity?

I don’t know what exactly the Trinity is, but yesterday was Trinity Sunday so it’s on my mind.

Oh okay, it’s a Christian doctrine that tells us that the nature of Divinity is relational: three self-expressions in one being: Father, Son & Holy Spirit. or Creator, Christ and Holy Spirit. Not very revolutionary unless you need God to be absolutely singular in nature—a monolith. 

Here’s the idea: Creator/Mother/Father ignites life energy; Christ is Jesus, who catches the energy and lives it so well he could be related, as a Son; the Holy Spirit is the Great Connector, She plants seeds of love and healing all over the cosmos. The three dance together as one ball of divine energy, and I am invited to join in just as I am, vulnerable, human, and resurrectable,  as Jesus was.

The Trinity evolved out of the faith of the early Jesus followers who experienced Jesus of Nazareth as the most divinized human being ever alive.  

Who really cares? I do. Why? Because the Trinitarian idea of God is more feminine—relatable and intimate by nature, not just because feminists change the spelling of the divine name or give the Holy Spirit a feminine gender.  The Trinity is re-creating every second, like a book you can read, re-read, and read again and it's always new.  

So here is my imperfect analogy—derived in part from my own efforts as a religio- spiritual writer.

God Creator is like the author who has a fabulous bright idea in mind.
Christ is like the book (first in a series) the Creator writes to give form to the idea.
Holy Spirit is like readers who read the book.

The original bright idea is the unifier, present in author, book, and readers. It’s my favorite book.