2023.10.01 "Who Says So?" Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

From the Gospel of Jesus the Christ according to Matthew 21: 23-32 comes one of those tough choices stories we love to hate. It’s about authority and how some things are not really part of the Kingdom of Heaven plans, but if you must………..

One of my favorite rejoinders to my mother when she told me not to do something was: “Who says so?” Of course her greater authority, though highly questionable in my mind, won over—sort of.  I somehow found a way round it when she told me to stop sucking my thumb, an activity of consolation that seemed to me to be absolutely and indispensably necessary to my salvation at the time. After all, they’d gotten rid of the dining room table under which I hid to assert my own authority and to hold my secret one-sided conversations with God whom I’d met in a book. All I had left for my soul’s comfort after that table was gone, was my thumb.  I practically sucked it raw as I grieved the loss of my hideout.  

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In this gospel story, Jesus asks the Temple authorities where John the Baptist got his authority to baptize people. Was it divine or human? Not easily fooled, they conferred and knew that if they said “divine” Jesus would ask them why they refused the baptism? BUT if they said ’human’ the people would rise up against them, because they understood John the Baptist to be a prophet sent from God. So they answered, “We don’t know.” to which Jesus replied  Well then, neither will I tell you by what authority I do, and say, the things that I do and say. 

Brilliant! 

Now, substitute abortion for baptism for a moment.  You can see, even experience, the authority bind: is it “God’s will aka divine authority,” that we all have equal rights/freedom of will? Or is it by divine authority that we do not murder ever and under any circumstance whatsoever—even under the best, most loving/caring/compassionate/true circumstances. 

                                        ?

Most all our worldwide current quarrels, uncertainties, even murders or executions are about one thing: AUTHORITY. Are you, and can you be, the AUTHOR of your own divinely given freedom—no matter what?  "It depends" really doesn't cut it—or does it? 

2023.01.15 A First Waking, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

So much of what we all hear and see in the news, from our pulpits, and in our biblical stories is basically: WAKE UP people. WE gotta change. There are differing definitions and interpretations about what that change should be, but it’s pretty clear to me that the change is internal, changes of hearts, in the flesh—not rioting and street violence. This is a very tall order given our differences and our attachments to individualISM and INdependence.  For this change we gotta include ALL Mama Earth. We gotta do it IN the flesh. And we gotta include GOD, by every name known.  

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Birthing comes to my mind, specifically, birthing my first child—flesh of my flesh— and my own first-time realization of the power of my own uterus to push life itself from the dark inner womb into the glare of the light of the world. This process was full of excruciating pain and shock for mother and child, and it is I think too glib, or at least it is for me, to toss aside or minimize the impact of the monumental change that takes place at birth.  It can only be completed in and by a woman’s flesh. My husband was present, standing by, watching me groan and howl and push with all my might—for hours, eternity I thought. In this joint creative effort, he got all the pleasure, and I did the work.  

Of course I was overjoyed with my amazing 8 lbs 13 oz squalling infant daughter. I was also terrified, partly at teeny undershirts and huge diaper pins (1963, no Pampers), and partly at the commitment to being a good mother, which meant losing my independence. Yes, I chose that vocation, and yes, often I failed and flailed, and no, I do not regret the ongoing painful intimacy of loss and joy motherhood brings.    

In giving of your own flesh you simultaneously lose the control you thought you had in the running of your embodied life. Child-bearing, more than marriage or vocation, or any other vowed bodily commitment, means signifiant loss of independence—freely undertaken, usually though not always.  The only way to live with this loss is to weep, and in the tears find the necessary lubrication to see Beauty, just as God as Creator shows the biblical heckler, Job: Look. Take it in. All this creation I accomplished without you and for you!! This is where it’s at.

Such profound change is both brilliant with hope and frightening with challenge—all at once.  All I could do was follow my heart and love my dear daughter to the best of my ability. For her, coming into life was the trauma and shock of Being itself, first the slap and scream, then the cleansing, then at last a warm, womb-simulating blanket, in this case pink, and finally her mother’s arms and breasts. (There was no advice on nursing in 1963, and my equipment wasn’t equipped enough. Not wanting to starve my daughter, I fed her with bottled formula, which she loved.) In time there was Baptism in which a big man took her out of my arms (kidnapped), tried to drown her with water (Baptism), then called her “Christ’s own forever” while a whole congregation clapped, and cameras flashed. Shocking! 

From Kahlil Gibran’s book The Prophet:  On baptisms: ”Your children are not your children. / They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. / They come through you but not from you, / And though they are with you they belong not to you.”    

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As limited as my personal analogy may be, I imagine that God experiences this ongoing entire mix of pain and joy in giving birth to all life, sharing the divine nature with every living thing, all of which, comically and expectedly, goes instantly out of control. But that’s the point and the purpose isn’t it?  The only way to live with such loss is to weep, and in the tears find the necessary lubrication to see—and love— Abundant Beauty.    

God gives God’s own life into Creation, and in this act of radical sharing relinquishes control over project Life. The best definition of the nature of God I learned from Anglican priest/theologian, John Macquarrie who described God this way:  

     

GOD IS LETTING-BE AND DRAWING-NEAR.       

2019.01.13 Birthday Baptismal Day

Today is my oldest daughter’s birthday. She is fifty-six years young, looks beautiful as always, and is filled with vigor and passion for justice for all people.

Today is also the day the Christian church remembers the Baptism of Jesus at the hand of his cousin John the Baptizer. Baptism is the day one becomes a Christian—nothing to do with denomination or any particular community. Baptism is belonging to Christ, becoming an initiated followers of Jesus the Christ. When anyone is baptized they are welcomed into a community of faith with powerful promises, some water, the Holy Spirit and a passionate sentence of chrismation, anointing the forehead with oil, saying their name and “. . . you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.”  This sacramental ritual carries the weight of thousands of years of tradition, the biblical mandate, a whole community of prayer and support, and just plain sacred beauty. When you are baptized you work for Jesus Christ in whatever you do.

The baptismal job is no cushy or high-paying job. It’s lifelong, serious, risky and grace-filled.    In addition, who wouldn’t want to work for a boss who had a great sense of humor, cried real tears, never gave up on the vision, knew he could not do this alone, and looked roughly like this?

Baptized when she was about five months old, Bev wore a long white, sweeping, dress—elegant. Her small head, covered with heaps of very dark hair, stood out amidst billows of white lace. There is a photo of her in that baptismal dress, somewhere in the annals of years of scrapbooks. I wish I could share it, because it is etched in the eye of my heart.

Bev is fulfilling her baptismal vows. She might laugh at this, since she does not attend church; nor, is she at all certain about God or Christianity. She has, however, always followed the ways of Jesus. She is kind and compassionate and a devoted mother of two daughters. She has navigated painful ups and down in her life with dignity. She works, in every job she has ever had, for justice for all people, gender equality, the rights of the poor, and the working classes.

In my lingo, Bev is most baptismal in her involvement with politics, making sure that the values of the “kingdom” Christ proclaimed are secured on earth as they are in heaven. Why would Jesus speak so strongly and consistently about working to bring about the kingdom of God, if he were not a politician?  “Kingdom” is a political term, lest we forget. The spirit of this kingdom is not constrained by partisan politics, binary absolutes, sexual identity, wealth, religious affiliations, or territorial boundaries. This kingdom calls for us to drop our precious identity labels and work together for the good of the whole. That is good politics. That is also good religion.

I got a clue to Bev’s direction in life from baseball. She wasn’t particularly interested in baseball, but she was interested in being the first girl admitted to play on a local Little League team. She made the team. I went to the games. Bev’s batting skills were sporadic. She struck out, or lucked out with a bad pitcher and walked. But she could run like crazy. Sitting with other gabbing parents, paying attention only when their kids were up, I was startled one evening by the sound of a loud CRACK. It was Bev’s bat. She hit a home run—out of the ball park, as they say. She was so stunned she forgot to run until the coach yelled: RUN!!  There was much applause, cheering, and kudos. I can’t remember if her team won, but that day she won. I cried. I thought then that she’d hit a home run for women’s equality and inclusion. I also learned that she approached life with a combination of curiosity, desire, and caution in about equal proportion—always summoning courage to try new things and keep on swinging. Baseball is a team sport. So is Jesus-work.

Bev’s personality exhibited both toughness and softness—tough on herself and soft on others. Her intelligence and passion for good causes even at a young age remains contagious, likewise her robust sense of humor and agility. Swimming became her sport of choice. Not only is she an excellent swimmer, but swimming has spiritual consolations—trusting the water’s buoyancy to hold you up, and letting it support you.

Bev might say I am imposing my perspective onto her life, and perhaps I am. It would be nice if she joined a Christian church community, I suppose. Nevertheless, I see the fruits of baptismal spirituality in her, and I dare say that one does not have to be Christian to be a christ. 

Advent III—What Then Should We do?

Biblical characters are frequently demanding and commanding in the name of God, even to the point of name-calling, like John the Baptist’s indictment of the crowds seeking baptism: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” Trees that do not bear good fruit will be thrown into the fire and burned up. This is harsh. John the Baptist would never win any popularity contests. And yet he sheds glaring, revelatory light on human behavior. What you do matters to you, to your neighbors, and to God.

Does God judge? Yes. Does God condemn forever? No. Does God call for repentance and change? Yes. Does God love with zeal equal to the zeal with which God judges? Yes.

“What then should we do?” the crowds asked John. They, like us, wonder about this kind of God, and feel threatened, a little scared.  

The Baptist’s answers are inconvenient but quite clear: give away one of your several coats; do not extort money falsely; no usury or threats of violence; be content with your own wages. Someone more powerful than I am is coming.

Ah, good: our Jesus Christ is coming with the Holy Spirit in tow. Good news! Whew!

Not so fast. This Christ, whom we think is our Christmassy Jesus, has a winnowing fork and bears exactly the same message as the Baptist delivered. The harsh light of judgment exposes us all, inside and out. It hurts. Certainly no one would dare be silly and sentimental about the power of this Word, this Christ, this God who calls for right behavior.

What then should we do?

The first thing to do is to scrutinize your own greedy habits. The second thing to do is to realize you can’t blame the OLD testament for this one. It is in our NEW testament. Then resist the temptation to blame, even yourself. Historically and today, one of the first reactions when we feel afraid, challenged, insecure, and powerless is to defend self by blaming others, rather than taking into account our own behavior.

Just like the crowd the Baptist warned, we are in disarray, not centered, unclear about what to do, how to behave. Our values are askew, so we blame: Republicans, Democrats, climate-deniers, the media, the atheists, the theists, God godself, science, the White House, the northeast, the southwest, the midwest, Catholics, Muslims, Sikhs, the law, religion, the Bible, the police, car salesmen, LGBTQI  people, THE Institution—on and on. Add your favorite blamee—even shaming yourself neurotically counts. All of this gets us off the hook. Face it: we might just be a brood of vipers who need to get honest.

Throughout history, the preferred blamee has always been the Jews. NOTE: John the Baptist, Jesus, Mary, Paul, the gospel writers, all of our beloved biblical forebears, were Jews.

I worry about this die-hard and deadly habit of blaming the Jews. All -isms are on the rise in our confused world, and anti-semitism is too. It’s always the Jews, or the OT, which is to say the same thing in disguise. Why is that? Cynthia Ozick proffers an answer in her essay “Hep! Hep! Hep!”, published in A Sense of Wonder (2016).

H.E.P. was the call of the Christian Crusades in 1099. It stood for Hierosolyma est perdita (Jerusalem is destroyed.) Hep! Hep! Hep!—a raging marching song, a Christian cry, a Nazi cry, an anti-Zionist cry. It’s the cry of blamers and haters anywhere. If you listen carefully to your deep inner self you might hear the impulse to cry Hep! when you feel frustrated, angry, wanting to vilify another and declare yourself absolutely right. Toddlers do this well.

Such impasses happen everywhere and any time to any society and people, so why do Jews bear more of the brunt than other groups? Ozick suggests it has much to do with: “. . . the forceful powerful resistance to what Jewish civilization represents—the standard of ethical monotheism and its demands on personal and social conscience.”

We’re right back to the Baptist’s cry, to Jesus’s winnowing fork—calling us to high standards of morality. We plain don’t like it. Think Ten Commandments—foundational divine expectations, the manifesto of the Jews.

I think the worldwide symptom of this resistance is that we are stuck in fight mode—spewing toxic, hostile energy, and humor that falls short of being prophetic, into the midst, rather than enough respectful intelligence to open up relationships with and any and all putative blamees.
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Still: are we less divided than we think we are, or than we are told we are? As long as we think we have to fight we will have to blame. The space between us will remain contaminated, and that space is where commonly held values live—gasping for air.

Think tug of war. If each of only two teams dropped the rope and abandoned the fighting spirit, the passion to win and to be right, the dust would settle. Could we then see clearly and hear each other clearly? Is this the baptism of the Holy Spirit and cleansing water? 

Is this then what we should do?

2017.11.05 Paschal Symbol

What does this magnificent and majestic tall red sculpture look like to you?

It looks like a massive candle holder without a candle. It stands well over six feet tall and is rubber—not very romantic. [Colorful polymer cast rubber molded from stacked architectural elements, balusters, finials and monumental urns.] I was mesmerized.

The Boston-based sculptor Niho Kozuru, born in 1968 in Fukuoka, Japan, calls this piece Rising Column. I first saw it and photographed it at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusett
As I contemplated this vibrant work of art near a window I saw light shining through it. I thought it was reflecting the sunlight, but read that the rubber substance is, in fact, translucent, and was chosen by the artist for that quality.  

Of course I projected Resurrection onto the rising column—the simple yet mysterious idea that God is unconditional Love that lives forever. We see resurrection when it shines through us. I don’t believe this just because I was taught to, or because it makes sense, because it doesn’t make sense.

I see resurrection when it shines through something common—nature’s bloom, new ideas, extraneous acts of kindness, children at play, transcendent music, art, and words of poetry and prose. For something to signal resurrection to me it must lift my soul in surprise recognition of Life even where it might not belong—like in death, dying, sin, suffering or evil.

On All Saint’s Day (November 1) Christians let resurrection light shine through the dead we no longer see but sense and through the embodied living we do see, touch, hear and applaud, mostly through infants whom we baptize into the life and death of Christ. Nonsensically, we do this all in one breath. On this day, other feast days, and through the fifty days of Easter we light a paschal (Easter) candle—a resurrection light.

Most paschal candles would be dwarfed by Kozuru’s Rising Column. Wouldn’t it be splendid to have a huge symbol of resurrection in our midst all the time?  We’d never forget resurrection life. We can’t afford such grandeur, of course, but we can’t afford to forget resurrection either.

It is my intuition that the Christian church has devoted some fifty years of energy making sure the Eucharist returns to the center of our Sunday liturgy. The altar and the lectern are the upfront focuses, well dressed and lit. Everyone looks to these. Less so the font. I'd like to visually beef up baptism and the font? 

Eucharist and Baptism are the two sacraments Jesus ordained when he was alive, according to New Testament  recollections. Baptism ushers one into the faith of Christ, and Eucharist provides regular nourishment and strength for being a Christian: practicing the faith OF Jesus—not at all the same as belief IN Jesus. When you practice the faith OF Jesus, light shines through you.

Wouldn’t it be fine to have a paschal candle stand more prominent—one so big and central you couldn’t miss it, lit or unlit?  So big you can’t forget you are Christian—sealed with the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever— and what a huge gift that is.

I wish many things all the time, and pray for at least half of them half the time. Some come true. 

When I saw this enormous sculpture my heart leapt and said, YES. Its towering red magnificence announced to me the presence of God. Just the sight of it knocked my socks off, jarred me into remembering my baptismal promises and how I will keep them—every day as my baptismal day. 

I need jarring. Therefore, my humble photo will now live on my home altar. It gives me hope.

 

2014.01.19 One Little Prophetic Photo

Here is one little photo that appeared in the Boston Globe’s Metro section on January 17th. It should have been on the front page. Maybe it wasn’t because there is something “wrong” with this picture.  

It pictures the Rev. Anne Robertson, United Methodist clergywoman and the executive Director of the Massachusetts Bible Society, making the Christian sign of the cross on the forehead of Boston’s Cardinal Sean O’Malley, anointing him with consecrated water and saying traditional words: “Remember your baptism and be grateful.”

This is not the expected order of things.

At the parish where I was Priest Associate in Gloucester, MA. there was consecrated holy water in the font as you entered the church and we dipped our fingers into it, blessed ourselves with the sign of the cross, and murmured, or said aloud, “Lyn, remember your baptism.”  It was a customary gesture, not unusual. We did it to renew a faith commitment, often very difficult to keep. I used to love to see children clamor to be lifted up to the font so they too could stick their small fingers into the water and joyfully giggling make the sign—all over themselves.

This little photo shows such a usual ritual—unusually administered. Would a Protestant  clergywoman be tracing the sign of the cross on the forehead of a Roman Catholic friar and cardinal, “Prince of the Church?”  

Yet here it is in living color. It's so darn Christian. I mean if you really follow Jesus you have to speak out wherever you see injustice, greed, cruelty and other inhuman behaviors. You also have to be kind of crazy and bust through walls of rigid rules, especially patriarchal ones. This is what I see here.

The photo was taken at an ecumenical service at a Sudbury Methodist Church last Sunday at which O’Malley had been invited to preach in order to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Cardinal Richard Cushing’s visit to the same church to promote Christian unity. The drill was that O’Malley would dip his thumb into the consecrated water and say the words to Anne Robertson who would then take the bowl of water from him and go to offer the ritual gesture to the others present. 

But O’Malley didn’t follow instructions. He anointed Robertson then gave her the bowl inviting her to do the same for him. It was a powerful expression of shared Christian identity. Nothing in his gesture violated Roman Catholic teachings, yet the image speaks volumes about change.

Much of the change Jesus stimulated he did with his body. He went places he wasn’t supposed to go, healed people he wasn’t expected to heal, dined with people who were outcasts, and invited women to follow him and be apostles of the gospel.  Scandal—2000+ years ago and today. Women’s ministries are still not fully accepted in roles and places of authority in the Christian church. And women's ordination remains against the law for Roman Catholics. 

O’Malley didn’t perform a sacrament, yet he made this familiar ritual mutual.  He broke rank with expectations—the man, the priest, the father, the holy father, the hierarch—received from a woman that which he was supposed to give to her, not vice versa. The Cardinal gave her pride of place and she gave him the touch of a woman. Robertson was moved to tears by the unexpected gesture. See her blog at annerobertson.org for more in her own words.

Extremists have weighed in of course. Those opposed call this gesture “heresy,” “disgrace,” and a repudiation of the sanctity of Holy Orders. O’Malley didn’t ordain Robertson. She’s already ordained and he gave that status respect. At the other extreme, some have downplayed the gesture calling it one of “courtesy," a simple exchange of blessing. Ho hum. Yes, and more.

The photo of course has gone viral. It’s news and I hope good news. No, not an official priestly gesture, yet an outer sign of an inner grace, perhaps an icon, a window through which we can glimpse divinity, dare I say Godde's will?  

To me, what the camera’s eye reveals is prophetic, a visual that simultaneously foretells the future of the Christian church—and advocates for that future.