2025.12.21 HOPE FOR US—BE HOPE–BE. Spiritual Lemons, blog post, Lyn G. Brakeman

Tis the season to be what? Is it Jolly? Merry? Both or None? How about Hopeful!?

Last Sunday afternoon, we heard another fine concert of The Hartford Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Carolyn Kuan.  I expected a very traditional Christmas concert with at least a few of my favorites carols. I expected to be soothed, as if by a lullaby.

BUT. . .I was jarred to attention, every muscle taut, readied.

We heard a musical portrayal of CHANGE—specifically, climate change, featuring the solo work of violinist, Curtis Stewart, b. 1986, whose extraordinary composition and solo performance was part of a program designed to present and promote recognition of excellence in classical music while addressing systemic obstacles within Black and Latino communities.  How do you do that?????

*  *  *  * 

This is what we saw and heard following the opening talk offered by Kuan and Stewart who described his violin as extraordinarily versatile for its size. He demonstrated various sounds, such as a bike crunching gravel, a car’s screeching brakes, children laughing, traffic horns, door slams, even the flush of, yes, a toilet—and much more.   

FIRST: The entire large stage was filled with stringed instruments ONLY.  Where were all the drums, the woodwinds, the brass, all horns and even the tiny piccolo I always watch and wait for?  All gone. But wouldn’t you need all of these for Vivaldi’s Four Seasons? Well, you would if this wasn’t a RE-composition by violinist, Curtis Stewart, the identified soloist and composer of Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons. 

THEN: A movie screen dropped down behind the orchestra. On it appeared verbal interpretations of the experience the composer had when he first came to America and walked the streets of Phoenix, AZ. searching for HOPE among the poor people on the streets and finding none, as in the experience of being in a wilderness, groping. The words on the screen were all about unanswered questions—searching and searching, seeking hope and finding only constant change.  I followed yet found myself longing for a melody, just ONE tune. There was one but it seldom appeared, and when it did I felt, very briefly soothed. 

THE MUSIC:  This orchestra of strings played this piece with remarkable accuracy and alertness. Their heroic intensity of attention included perfectly-timed thigh slaps, foot stomps, patting the instrument itself (basses)—all perfectly synchronized and chaotic at once. Every player and the conductor had to pay close attention to what I’d call unreliable reliability. 

All I could count on was CHANGE. As I listened I had to remind myself to INhale AND EXhale. I had to stop looking for a single melody to soothe me. I listened AND watched the faces of the players. I saw heroic intensity of attention.  Was this RE-composition of the familiar Vivaldi music really a musical warning about climate change control?  

YES!  It was a demo of exactly what former Vice President Al Gore meant when he produced his  film “An Inconvenient Truth”?  When I first saw his movie, I felt terrified.  I saw that our beloved planet breathed in and out—evenly—Oxygen (O2) in and Carbon Dioxide (CO2) out. If that even rhythm were disturbed we all could suffocate. Too much exhaled CO2 or waste gases such as those emitted from garbage or car exhaust, prevents O2 from being inhaled = the Earth can’t breathe. Inhale deeply, then hold your nose against the exhale. See what I mean?

P.S. Asking for feedback from a few concert regulars as I left, I heard, yes, praise and awe . . . AND  quite a bit of negativity. One concert regular actually screwed up her face, shook her head from side to side, and said: “Not fair. It’s Christmas!”  

BLESS YOU ALL WITH HOPE IN ADVENT… HOWEVER YOU RECEIVE IT.  

2025.12.07 The Advent of What? Whose? When? Whom? Why? Spiritual Lemons, Lyn Brakeman, blog post

Most small children think that Santa Claus is a real person who will appear in the night to leave them gifts. It’s a hooker as huge as any traditional fairy-tale opener:  “Once Upon a Time”.  What? I hold my breathe still.   

Is it fair to raise a child’s expectations that you have already made unmeetable, like bring Daddy back, or tell Mommy not to tell lies about miracles, such as me. I won’t easily forgot my own experience of finding my wee baby tooth in the medicine cabinet wrapped in a tissue. Some tooth fairy!!  Not to mention that we lived in a NYC apartment and had NO chimney, not that I once caught my mother sneaking in to remove the milk and cookies we left, making sure she scattered a few crumbs and left the milk glass empty with milk on its rim. 

Even the classic Christian answer, about a sixth century Bishop, Nicholas of Myra, who actually did go around and leave small gifts and food at the doorsteps of homes he knew were impoverished.  That was true gift from a real ancient bishop from the far east who really did distribute gifts to children at Christmas time. There is definitely some holiness in such a tradition but few acknowledge it any more.  

There is such a thing, however, as on-the-ground fact, and there also is truth, often called Myth.  A Myth is not a lie.  It is simply a different perspective, a slant, on a common scenario. Most so-called fairy tales are social commentary on cruel situations turned upside down. Cinderella was a girl (beautiful blonde of course) forced into slavery by her Mistress, the “evil stepmother” (aka dad’s new wife) who is driven by jealousy and grief. Truth or fact?  Likely truth. 

Little mice scheme to rescue Cindy by chasing down a handsome prince to rescue her and carry her off to live in the castle, marry her course and thus legitimize her justification, her worth, her lovability. Truth? Possibly. Fact: proposition that does verify her hopes, her dreams, her worth as a woman her marriage-ability—for now.  Myth: Cindy’s happiness lasts forever and ever. Truth: maybe. 

A fact in time does not tie down any event or circumstance forever and ever. A myth makes us feel better, yet it is temporary beauty, never forever and ever for everyone, amen. We have hope and each other—gifts all. 

Grace is a gift free of charge and charges. Fact: God knows. Truth: we are free to choose, also to choose again.  Process: Tell it all and tell is slant!  

Wisdom from Emily Dickinson, a reclusive poet who lived in Amherst Massachusetts (1830-1886). Here below is her take on truth-telling:  Tell all the truth but tell it slant—

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth’s superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind—

 

2025.07.06 HOPE—FULLNESS. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Poetry

Whatever happens, stay alive.

Don't die before you're dead.

Don't lose yourself, don't lose hope, don't loose direction. Stay alive, with yourself, with every cell of your body, with every fiber of your skin. 

Stay alive, learn, study, think, read, build, invent, create, speak, write, dream, design.

Stay alive, stay alive inside you, stay alive also outside, fill yourself with colors of the world, fill yourself with peace, fill yourself with hope.

Stay alive with joy. 

There is only one thing you should not waste in life,

and that's life itself..."

Virginia Woolf

AND a sudden surprise popped out: a sprout on the “dying” presumed dead Amaryllis!

AND a portrait of three eager young bell ringers—a way for bored young children to participate in the liturgy of the Mass. I call it timed noisiness.  Let’em ring!! They are a sacrament. 

HOPE. . .FULLY. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/04/25

2025.05.04    HOPE…FULLY

The Hebrew phrase, Ha tikvah, means “Have Hope”. 

It says a bit more than simply, ‘Be hopeful’ as if hope were focused on the future only.  No, we are to FILL ourselves with HOPE. Breathe it. 

Ha tikvah is an everyday present reality, not future. It makes me think of the phrase in the traditional service of Holy Matrimony. It used to be among the minor sacraments, that is, an outer sign of an inner holiness, or the Presence of Divinity.   

Marriage is still considered holy, and yet it has many variations, and is no longer “holy matrimony”—a sacrament in which Divinity is both present and bestowed. Something got lost in revisions. I cannot explain this loss adequately, yet I know marriage is  now a “pastoral office”. It still requires ha tikvah.

Couples of all sorts and conditions view their marriage in a holy way, anyway. Couples do honor their love with all its vicissitudes, its flaws, its drastic ups and down. Married life can feel like a rollercoaster: we climb, we reach a pinnacle, and then we race down, only to begin a new climb. Over and over as we age. Marriage is hope-in-process, rooted daily in ha tikvah.

Thus rooted I think is all of creation, as the psalmist sings:

 “Let everything that breathes praise God. 

  Shine forth your praises on God.” 

  

HOPE. . .FULLY.

2024.11.03 WHERE ARE YOU? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post,

After this Coventry Cathedral in England was bombed in WWII, the shell was left. The  brand new cathedral, thanks to the efforts of many countries, is attached and grows forth from the old.  Here is an image of BOTH the shell of the bombed cathedral AND the new building—together.  Is this not an image of how we ALL must behave NOW? 

The profound influence of immediate surroundings is NOT something we notice much. We are too busy obsessing, squawking, arguing, or moaning about “climate change” on a large scale that we miss the impact of our more subtle surroundings.

By habit we jump  first to the weather report. Will it be too warm, too cold, below freezing, sunny, wet, on and on? All of it short-term and shallow—surface palaver.

*  *  *  *

Last evening we saw on television a brief special about how immediate surroundings affect conversation, mood, comfort levels, decisions, even outcomes. Some alert women noticed that controversial board meetings about expenses or future survival, or costs/benefit analyses, and the like went more smoothly, efficiently with fewer arguments and more clarity of agenda, purpose and outcome when the group met at a local Museum of Art. When surveyed, others in the group agreed.  Why?  

I have long thought that The Arts could heal/save the world. ALL the arts: music, dance, theater, painting, graphics, literature, poetry, even nature and, yes, even business, politics and governance—the art of respectful listening more than talking.  ADD the creative drama of Nature itself!    

*  *  *  * 

When you enter a library filled with shelves of books, do you suddenly quiet yourself, hush noisy children, relax? Few have ever violated the sanctity of a library. 

If you go to a huge concert hall or a large theater, even a movie theater, does it immediately hush your soul? Open your heart, make ready your soul?  

Or a hospital, the sanctuary of vulnerability where sorrow and healing and love hover all about together creating the climate and fabric of the place. How about any religious sanctuaries— church/temple, cathedral, mosque where murmurs of prayers for peace and echoes of joy from live choirs linger. You can hear all this even though you were not or are not present. You just know. 

I recall the near panic, alongside bold, broad public mourning, that accompanied the collapse of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris.  A world shuddered, and lots of money poured in for its reconstruction. Few people worship there any more, and yet it drew the hearts of thousands worldwide. 

How about a planetarium? When you gaze at the stars all twinkling far above you, do you gasp with awe, even weep? Or a cemetery, the collective dead gathered? Woods. Gardens or Greenhouses. Swooping birds and squirrels build nests I see from my window.

I even recall the awe of the first huge lecture hall at the divinity school that caught and held my breath, as if Divinity itself gave weighty lectures that lingered there. 

Perhaps so.

2023.12.17 Creating Community, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Two lions stand together, side by side, a young male and his elder named Morani. The sun rises in the Maasai Mara National Reserve in Kenya. Morani is about 14 years old, one of a group know as the Four Musketeers, and the oldest known and last-surviving elder of the “musketeers.”  (The Nature Conservancy, Spring, 2023)

These lion “musketeers” support and provide for spouse/lionesses who are at home cooking, cleaning their lairs, nursing and feeding their cubs, while awaiting the return home of papas—both ready for a good night’s sleep.   

How hard it is for the human animal to break patterns set by Nature. But if we built “Reserves” where the human animal to prevent violent massacres that happen out of despair and starvation, and to free all of us for the sake of—all of us? It’s an idea.

In this COVID era, in fact, men and women pause for perspective on traditional patterns of social organization that entrap them in stiffly defined roles. We rejoice: Hey look! Now we BOTH have time, with mutual consent, control, and commitment, to CREATE. We are even free enough to conceive, birth and nurture a child together. And to LOVE our “creation” for its own precious sake.  

With this break in traditional patterns, older people can rest from their labors and enjoy the affection they have—in sickness and in health. Most can still laugh, and cry, and hope, and pray together—and lock no one out.

Create community in place! Wherever you are, be who you are—bedridden, or disabled, alone or accompanied, serene or enraged, happy or sad, you can share yourself, and yes, embrace yourself and others through prayer—the silent connector of Souls-in-Hope together.  

2023.03.05 Dirge With Hope, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

As one whose years are ebbing, I’m grateful that I do NOT have to huddle and fold up, wintry in soul, even though I could receive, if I wished, receive daily ashes to remind me to be humble daily. Soul does not age. Soul simply unfolds. And the dusty path stretches on before me. 

I know people who are struggling to let go of life. It is a life-long natural inclination to grasp for life always. Consider the tiny flowers that manage to grow up against all odds between the concrete seams in a sidewalk or path. I too can be born again and again. 

I pray that God, as Burns suggests, will “assist me to resign” when it is time for me to relinquish this life I have known and still cling to. I will resist. I will weep. I will pray.  I will hug and cling. And I will trust,  just like the birds who awaken me each day as they start their song in the darkness before the sun rises.

WINTER DIRGE   by Robert Burns    

The wintry west extends his blast,
And hail and rain does blaw;
Or, the stormy north sends driving forth
The blinding sleet and snaw:
While tumbling brown, the burn comes down,
And roars frae bank to brae;
And bird and beast in covert rest,
And pass the heartless day.

The sweeping blast, the sky o’ercast,
The joyless winter-day,
Let others fear, to me more dear
Than all the pride of May:
The tempest’s howl, it soothes my soul,
My griefs it seems to join;
The leafless trees my fancy please,
Their fate resembles mine!

Thou Pow’r Supreme, whose mighty scheme
These woes of mine fulfil,
Here, firm, I rest, they must be best,
Because they are Thy will!
Then all I want (O, do Thou grant
This one request of mine!)
Since to enjoy Thou dost deny,

Assist me to resign.    

2021.11.29 Thanksgiving Poem

THANKSGIVING POEM

Another report from overseas

in the day’s news about

a jailed reporter

of some government’s opposition.

Someone on a street corner

hauled off by the police.

The weather there in that country

on that day was beautiful.

So it looked

in the picture. Here

where I am it is dusk, raw

and drizzly from the day’s rain.

The group of us 

in the town square

hold up our placards and wave

to the rush-hour traffic.

Whether our candidate 

wins or not is only slightly

more important than the fact

that here we are

and that when we are done

we will each go home,

change out of our damp clothes,

and have a little warm supper. 

© Carole-Jean Smith

Does this brief poem depress you, or does it give you hope? I don’t know exactly, other  than I just like this poem and its down-to-earth solidity. It seems so obvious and true that we each and all do whatever we can do, where we are, for causes and candidates—and it is enough.  The one consistent inner activity is prayer—daily conversations with God all day long—heaved forth like energetic blasts of hope.