2023.05.07 Mansions of God, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

In my Father’s House there are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. (John 14:2)

I’m getting your room ready as we speak. 

*  *  *  *

When I was a child I heard this promise proclaimed in a solemn preachy voice drifting  down upon me from a skyscraper pulpit. I also imagined my own room. If Jesus said so it must be true, right?  I wondered, curiously prying child that I was. God I knew and trusted, but Jesus?

Mansions, I thought, were palatial houses owned by very rich people and located in the Hamptons somewhere. Or Hollywood. I was sure that mansions were to be avoided at all costs. My father said they cost a fortune and had to be very taxed—unfairly. He also told me his family once lived in a mansion, on a hill called Tower Hill in Morristown, New Jersey. From that hill one can see the skyline of New York City. 

“But Daddy, that’s not where Grahmy and Grahmpy live. I’ve been there and it’s not really a mansion, is it?”  In fact, it was only the post-depression step-down house with no fewer than twelve bedrooms. No answer from Daddy. Either Daddy or Jesus must be wrong. Jesus, I figured. Then again, do you know what amazing fun I’ve had imagining what room I would design in God’s “mansion” It would be a library in pink, filled with “banned” books with a huge dining room table in the center of it—maybe some Ritz crackers, but you don’t need much food in mansions because there are servants, or angels.

*  *  *  *  

I grew up and studied the Bible—a book with many, many translations. I learned that the latest scholarly translations of the New Testament substituted dwelling places for mansions. I missed the mansions. As an adult and an Episcopal priest I went exploring in New Jersey. I wanted to see this putative family mansion, this Tower Hill.    

Lo and behold! Tower Hill is a mansion—elegant and with many rooms. It’s too big for one family. My father’s father grew up there, and today, if you drop the family name you can get a private tour. Roman Catholic nuns of the Sisters of the Filipini bought and fitted up the mansion to be a school for girls. How perfect. I gawked at the hand-carved mahogany ceilings and fireplace mantels. There was a special room for music and, imagine, my paternal great-grandmother summoned the family there for prayers every evening—Presbyterian prayers no less. This indeed was a mansion. 

*  *  *  

Jesus’s “mansion” I’m sure, is, yes, spacious enough to house ALL creation without condition.

And no, not the result of works or wealth, inherited or earned, but rather of a freely given divine grace. 

Still, do feel free to design a room of your own.  

2022.04.25 What Does It Mean? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 4/22/25

This week recognizes St. Mark the Evangelist’s calendar day, April 25th. I wouldn’t just automatically know that,  but I have one of those calendars that has red numbers for saints’ days.  

Mark was/is very important, not because his gospel was written first, nor because it is one of the three synoptic gospels, but because it’s my favorite. “Synoptic” comes from the Greek word meaning synopsis. Mark, Matthew and Luke write to different cultures and audiences, and each has a particular slant on the happenings of Jesus’ ministry on earth. 

Mark begins his gospel: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”  (NRSV)  We are at attention. This is one of the best once upon a times I’ve ever heard. We are about to hear a story, a very ancient story, one we will never forget, even though we will probably never quite believe it. 

Mark’s writing is clipped, clear, concise, and concrete. He leaps onto a scene and simply writes what he sees and hears and what happened, as any good reporter would. )f course much of it was on the streets being told and therefore subject to some distortions. Yes, it was all news fit to print when printing became possible. What is news stays news when it changes people’s lives. 

I was a newspaper reporter of local news many years ago, and I know how very hard it is to report accurately on any event while keeping your own interpretative thought and opinions out of it. Of course Mark was probably not present at every scenario he reports, but there is a very good chance that he knew lots about Jesus even if he was not in the original twelve of Jesus’s closest fellow travelers who became official disciples and had eye-witness advantages. 

In general, it is important to remember that a number of years elapsed before anyone went public with the revelations they’d discovered. Also, that Paul was the first to write about Jesus’s divine identity, the Christ, the Anointed One.  Christian orthodoxy tells us that Jesus is the word made flesh. He is God incarnate. He has two natures, one fully human and the other fully divine, neither compromising the other.  I tell you a Mystery. What else is new?  Still, be not deterred or discouraged, just read the story and you will find wisdom and parts of your self within the ancient story. I believe that the Bible is a collective memoir—full of truth and grace and wonder. 

Why do I like Mark the best? Well, I didn’t always. At grieving times in my life, I’ve been drawn to John’s gospel, because it is more mystical, allows for offbeat spiritual reckonings and acknowledges the sorrow of Mary Magdalene, crouched before the empty tomb where her dead teacher and Lord was buried. BUT, he is gone. Where is the body?  This is the way any great mystery novel begins, before it peels off into elaborate detective work and police searching for criminals. 

But Magdalene’s search takes a sudden alarming and enlightening turn. She hears her Lord’s voice calling her name, "Mary". It is enough to raise her despair to hope. She runs to tell the other devotees, who do not believe her, until they too check out the empty tomb. It is empty. It’s true. The rest of the story can be summed in these words: “But what does it mean?” 

Mark just tells the story from a more down-to-earth perspective. Markan language and literary style are different, but the story told has the same basic ingredients and ends simply with the empty tomb without further embellishment or explanatory revelations. We are left simply with the mysterious quest and question. 

It is what still drive us today, WHAT DOES IT MEAN?  

*  * *  *

I offer an image of God and the relationship between divine and human, including the whole natural world of living things. The image is from the Hebrew word L’mantzeach: “To the Conductor of the Eternal Symphony.” Pamela Greenberg, author of “The Complete Psalms” a translation. She dedicates many of the psalms The Conductor of the Eternal Symphony—an image of God as “the arranger of the many diffuse aspects of existence.”  (Greenberg, p. 323.)

I played in our high school orchestra too many years ago to count. I cringed when my clarinet squeaked, and/or if someone’s trumpet blasted in where it wasn’t time, or too loud or something. I’d feel sorry for the conductor, who nobly continued to direct the orchestra anyway for the sake of the whole production and for the integrity of the symphony itself. Greenberg writes: “the image suggests a deeply concerned, involved, and orchestrating God.”   

To me, it also suggests that everyone and every variety of player and instrument is involved, has has a part to play, and each is essential to the harmony of the whole.  

We make the best “music” together when we play our part well, and do not judge ourselves, punish or mock others, or violate the harmony. Such behavior is sinful, wounds the eternality as well as the finitude, and disturbs the fluidity of the “symphony” itself, not to mention making the “conductor’s” job a mockery. 

May we trust each other and listen with respect to our own voices and all the others in this Creation. Why? We are all making a Symphony. 

An Elegant Soul in LIfe and Death: James Keegan, S.J.

The Rev. James Keegan, S. J. (1940-2018), a man of wit and wisdom who brought life to others through his ready grin, bold heart, and sharp mind—always ready to leap the bounds of traditional religious rigidities, died this week into the great mercies of God.

I say this, not because Jim complained or was fed up with life. Not at all. Jim gave life every ounce of everything he had for 78 years. He was born in Franklin New Hampshire, grew up attending Roman Catholic schools and Boston College where he majored in English. He taught high school English and theology in Portland Maine and then was assigned to Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There he met William Barry under whose tutelage he learned to pray, fell in love with Jesus in his own flesh and prayer, and was ordained a priest in 1971—a late vocation you could say. Still, his early experience formed him to be, to use an old-fashioned sort of word, well rounded: all life mattered. Jim Keegan's mantra was: seize life!

In his last years Jim struggled with the diminishments of Parkinson’s disease for many years. He had lost mobility, speech, and most recently, bore up under a case of shingles as a “bonus". Yet Jim retained a sharp sense of the divine voice and energy, so much so that he received visits from people who sought him out for spiritual guidance and direction until just a week before his death.

[NOTE: Despite what you might have heard anywhere from anyone, God doesn’t cause any of this. It just happens. Still, some people seem to have more suffering to bear than others—again, by nature’s design, not divine design, or desire. The sacred holy heart weeps with us who weep, and wept, for Jim.]

The Rev. Jim Weiss, Episcopal priest and Professor of Theology at Boston College, as well as one of Keegan’s directees, shared his own reflections: “The last time I saw Jim for direction I told him I had nothing much to say, that I’d been busy and hadn’t even prayed as I would like. Jim, whose head drooped low and whose speech was generally unintelligible, suddenly lifted his head, his eyes bright and focused, and said clearly: ‘That’s just what you think. There’s a lot more going on.’”

Weiss also revealed that two things about Jim Keegan had stayed predictable and constant right up to the end: his sweet tooth and his penchant for puns. He loved chocolate chip cookies [I can identify!] and wherever he was, in his long career as a Jesuit priest, spiritual guide, teacher and friend, his family sent him tins of cookies. When the cookies arrived his colleagues hung out and hovered, like children ready to pilfer from the cookie jar. Jim would tell them: “There’s a toll for the Toll House Cookies, you know.”

The sermon, delivered by Jim’s friend of many years, Richard W. Bollman, S.J. of Milton, Ohio, was quite splendid—faithful to the person and wealth of character of his buddy as well as to the gospel message of hope in the midst of inevitable aging and death. In John 21, the risen Christ grills Simon Peter about the fortitude of his love. Christ is remembered in John’s gospel as saying to Peter: “When you are old, you will stretch out your hands. Someone else will dress you. Someone else will lead you where you do not want to go.”

Will Peter carry out the vision of love and service in the best and worst of times?  Will we?

Bollman spoke about his visits to Keegan. The phrase he used about pushing his dear friend about in a wheelchair was: “It softened my competence.” Most of us can admit with honesty that when we are helping someone who is disabled, we secretly think about how good it is that we are just fine and able. I know that’s my first thought. Bollmann told us, however, that giving companionship to his suffering friend over time “fractured my poise.” He was plunged into his own vulnerability and rage at Parkinson’s. “Like Simon Peter in the gospel story, I was led somewhere I did not want to go,” he said.  

Jim Keegan’s poems are equal to his presence in the flesh. Words and feelings, raw and real, all move as one. One day in the midst of the dawning of awareness about his condition, he examined his own hands with dismay. As he did, he received a strong vision—newborn hands. It inspired him to write this poem, called “Hands.” The title of Keegan’s collection of poems is These Hands.

When did these hands become foreign to me?
Skewed like a lobster’s claws: about ten degrees
off at the wrist—and bony? Puffy blue rivers
of blood run north-northwest up their back side.

And when did these hands make enemies of
buttonholes, zippers, clasps, snaps, fasteners of
all sorts, screws, safety pins, paper clips or
any kind of knot? Did it happen in my sleep?

My sleep has been visited in recent weeks by a
newborn boy in a crowd. He looks at me and laughs,
stretches out to me ten perfect fingers and
holds my scarred flesh in his divine grasp.

Bollman had agreed to come and preach for one reason only: “Because he asked me.” Now here standing in front of the casket he asked his beloved friend: What do you want them to know?  The answer he received was: Tell them that it all belongs.

It all belongs.  Thank you Jim, and goodbye.

2015.07.26 St. Mary Magdalene, Alive and Well

The icon is painted by Robert Lentz. The inscription in Syriac reads: "Equal to the Apostles."

July 22 is the Feast of Mary Magdalene on church calendars. It rarely gets honored in parishes, except maybe in big Roman, Eastern, or Anglo Catholic ones where every feast and its subtitle makes the rota. Or in church communities named after the saint. Or where there is an uppity woman priest like me, nagging for its recognition, and incidentally, sleeping with the rector (married, don’t worry!)

Well, when the Feast of St. Mary Mag lands on a Sunday, it might get its due, but even then I wonder.

The reputation accrued to this gifted and faithful disciple of Jesus is worthy of vice-squad attention, despite the fact that it is not supported by biblical witness at all. It happened because of hierarchical resistance to lay preaching and patriarchal resistance to women leaders. Mary Magdalene, in a favorite story of mine in John 20,  stoops to peer into the empty tomb, weeping and looking for the body of Jesus, after the others had gone home. She turns away finally and has a direct mystical experience of Jesus the Christ. He tells her: noli me tangere (Latin for, don’t hold onto me.) This phrase was later interpreted to prove that Mary was a clingy and hysterical woman, and that therefore her testimony to the new vision a sham.

On a retreat, I prayed with the tomb scene, imagining myself as Mary and identifying with her grief. It sent me into fresh grief over the death of my father. He wasn't Jesus, of course, but in soul-talk such particularities don't matter.

It’s a miracle that Magdalene’s influence as a leader and teacher survived at all, and that the gospel she wrote has been translated and remains in print. There’s a great scene in it in which an angry (jealous?) Peter, incredulous that Jesus would have revealed so much to a woman, argues with her. (The Gospel of Mary, translated by Karen King is worthy of a read. The scriptural texts more kaleidoscopic and impressionistic, not news at 11. The more I read, the more I think, the more I want, the closer I feel to the Holy. All of it feeds my soul. King, btw, is a scriptural scholar at Harvard Divinity School and an Episcopalian.

Please note that Magdalene’s bad reputation did NOT follow her into the Eastern Orthodox tradition. So what’s with the West? Long story. Look it up. Think P for pope.

Consider this, should you doubt the veracity of ancient testimony: if women hadn’t already been functioning, historically, as leaders in the early church, their presence wouldn’t have been recorded in Scripture at all, now would it?  Mary Magdalene is alive and well. 

Every July 22nd for many years now, my feminist priest husband and I, have attended the Mary Magdalene Event at Boston College, School of Theology and Ministry.  The event is made possible by a woman of worth, both financial and spiritual, and the guest lecturers are always among the very best women scholars and theologians. This year we heard S. Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P. of Notre Dame. Next year’s speaker will be Amy-Jill Levine, Jewish theologian and professor of New Testament theology and history at Vanderbilt. Every voice counts.

                             

I got to shake hands with one of my favorite feminist theologians, Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, professor at Fordham. I felt like a groupie. Imagine! Who runs after women theologians? She gave me a vigorous handshake, grinned, and, upon hearing that I was an Episcopal priest who’d had ordination struggles with the patriarchal church, said: “Well, we are all still working together on this one.”  I wanted to hug her— but opted for boundaries.

The event began with a liturgy at the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola. The opening hymn, sung to the familiar tune, Old Hundredth (The Doxology) from the breviary of St. Helena's, an Episcopal Women’s Order, choked me up all the way through. I was expecting it. I knew it. I’d sung it. And yet I cried. 

 1. Out of the night where hope had died,
to tomb once sealed, now gaping wide,
the Magdalene made haste, to mourn
and bring her spices through the dawn.

2. She gazed in disbelief and pain
where Jesus in his death had lain,
until the radiant angel said,
Seek not the living with the dead.

3. Soon trusting love cast out her fears;
she rose and brushed away her tears.
As first apostle, Mary ran
to tell God's resurrection plan.

4.  Jesus is risen! Mary cries,
Lift up your hearts and dry your eyes,
Jesus is risen—come and see—
and goes before to Galilee.

5.  All glory be to God above,
for Mary's apostolic love,
all praise to God whom we adore
for ever and for evermore. Amen.