2024.09.01 Done. Begun. One. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post.

I’m detaching from the political scenario—not because I don’t care but because I do care. 

We watched VP Harris’s interview on CNN. Her address got almost lost, bobbing up and down amidst so many ads it was annoying. I know that I will vote and for whom. I can get all the info I need from newspapers, from general news from the public television we watch nightly, and from people in this retirement community whose politics shows on their faces and in their behavior, or if not, in their excesses of commentary or their avoidance thereof.  

Political “debates” are silly, because they are not debates over issues, but simply political sales pitches thrown back and forth. 

Both candidates have been clear about their own values, and plans. I admit I have noticed former President Trump wobbling and stumbling over words and focus. Could he perhaps be too old for this job?    

Watching a TV astronaut drama last night, I saw a cosmic view of the Universe.Yes, I knew it was an image for the show, and yes, my heart sang the hymn we sang as children.

LORD OF ALL TO THEE WE RAISE

THIS OUR HYMN OF GRATEFUL PRAISE.

I vote for good cartoons, laughter among friends, family, all guests, invited and uninvited, my own ongoing talks with the God who listens without a lot of palaver. 

Presence. Breathing. Hope without fear.

2023.04.09 What's New? Old? Here? Gone? Near? Far? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Today is Easter Sunday. Everything’s new!  Last evening we celebrated the Holy Eucharist around the dining table with two lovely friends. We had no organ, only our reedy aging voices. Is this a newly minted “church” perhaps?  A sacrament without a proper sanctuary? 

Easter felt intimate. God’s presence felt near, in our words, smiles, shared prayers, the flesh of our hands held. And yet, we worshiped a risen God. Far? Close? Near? Far?

I needed a new word for my two-faced spiritual experience. A new word popped into my head as I wondered. Did we experience divine transcendence immanently—or maybe divine immanence transcendently? Or both? 

TransImmanent. 

TRANS? In contemporary lingo, “trans” is short for transexual or transgender, someone whose sexual identity does not correspond with their birth sex. Deep inner truth prevailed. Is that just for individual human beings?  Trans is from a Latin root, meaning across. I envision God crossing, even dancing, back and forth, over and around two traditional theological definitions for the image of God: Divinity is transcendent—above and beyond physical human experience. Divinity is Immanent—remaining within, inherent.  

TransImmanent? 

The God I first met under the large table when I was a toddler chatting away about whatever popped into my small inquisitive mind, was a loving/listening presence, yes, on a cloud with a long white beard. That cloudy image faded, but the experience of God being intimate never did. Over many years I’ve studied and prayed and done all sorts of academic, sacramental, and spiritual calisthenics, trying to contain, or explain, or even shake off this inner God, thinking it was my own illusion. 

I can hear the echo of my wonderful late Spiritual Director the Rev. Pierre Wolff’s voice   in my ear: Doucement cherie. Yes, but . . .

Through all my wordiness and wonderment over years, I’m struck with a sudden heart-thumping elation—a new idea I can’t suppress, a new emotion, even though it is attached to, yes, a word and my childhood experience! Without warning, a very old traditional childhood hymn popped into my mind:  

For the beauty of the earth, 

for the glory of the skies, 

for the love which from our birth, 

over and around us lies. 

Lord of all to Thee we raise 

This our hymn of grateful praise. 

TransImmanence.  Over and around us. . .  

HAPPY EASTER. 

  

2022.05.08 Rock of Ages, Get a Grip On Me. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/8/2022

Today I write to honor and remember the nurturing energy of all mothering persons and animals in this fragile world—and also our mothering God.  

                                                *  *  *  *

I have always hated the image of a rock for Christ Jesus, for Divinity, a trusted friend, a parent, the church, or for my own soul’s faith. A rock is plain too hard and cold. 

But then the old hymn goes on to tell me that this hard old rock is “cleft for me.” Cleft? That’s from cleave, split in half, or some version thereof. All I could think of was cleft palate, a sad image of misshapenness. But how could this happen to a rock? What would a hard rock look like if it were split? And who could split a hard rock?

This hymn was my maternal grandmother’s favorite. She croaked it a lot and I never thought it was soothing until I heard her sing these words—nearly inaudibly, like a private prayer.  

Rock of ages cleft for me

Let me hide myself in Thee.

Let the water and the blood

From thy wounded side which flowed

Be of sin the double cure,

Save me from its guilt and power. 

The words were written in 1763 by an English cleric, Augustus Toplady (no kidding) when he was hiding under a large rock during a thunderstorm. The rock kept him from being struck by lightning. Toplady was ordained priest in 1764..

The hymn tune, paired with Toplady’s lyrics, was written by Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley with whom Toplady feuded about ecclesiology, that is, the saving role of the institutional church. John Wesley thought Toplady was a “dirty writer”— a veritable chimney sweep of a writer too smudged up with sin for Wesley even to bother fighting with.  

So you see there is a story behind every effort, and a meaning to every text under God, or Heaven. I didn’t know my grandmother’s mind, but I now know some of her story. She was born in 1873 into a wealthy, socially elite family in Medford, Massachusetts. She was named Marguerite Gordon Hall but soon took on the nickname Daisy, because marguerite means Daisy in French. A lively bright child, she wrote little poems called “The Sayings and Doings of Joey Pumps”, and when she was a young seventeen she met and fell in love with Avon Franklin Adams, a Jewish impresario from New York City. The Halls of Medford were horrified at the scandalous match, so the two eloped and got married in 1891 in New York City at Church of the Strangers, formerly the Mercer Street Presbyterian Church. The church seemed perfectly named for two young people who  broke family and societal rules to follow their love.

I called my grandmother Ga. We had our clashes, mostly because she and I had similar spirits of rebellion. But when I heard her singing her hymn, I glimpsed her Christian faith, and thought about how she must have felt sheltered by the old fashioned, somewhat morbid to me, imagery of Christ crucified, blood and water, together no less, spilling from his wounded, pierced side. How could this ugly image have felt healing to my grandmother? It was her grief. Her chosen beloved husband died in 1924, leaving her a young widow with four children, the youngest of whom was my mother whose own grief was lifelong.  

Such a gruesome image repels and compels. Life hurts and heals. God is OMNIpresent in Love—and symbolically in a cleft rock.  

In the midst of my own midlife crisis, I broke rules and wounded myself and others—not to death you understand, but emotionally. One day, as I struggled to get right with myself and God, I sneaked into a small store located down some stairs under a huge shopping mall north of Boston. I feigned curiosity only—browsing—while deep down I knew darn well that I hoped to find a small unobtrusive wooden crucifix—for myself. Here it is 25 years later and partially maimed. 

Daily I pray this line from the Ignatian prayer, Anima Christi: “Hide me within thy wounds.” How could such a prayer be healing? Was it like that old rock of ages cleft for me, a sheltering prayer, as if the rock were gripping me as it had gripped my grandmother, or gripped Jesus in the midst of his dying moments? One day I too will sing to the cleft rock.

Life’s all about taking multiple chances—offered by God and/or taken on one’s own— is it not? 

2021.11.21 Whose King Are You?

Today marks the liturgical anniversary of our marriage on November 23, 1986. We were married on Christ the King Sunday during the morning Eucharist in the parish church, Trinity in Collinsville, Connecticut, where Dick had served as the rector for eight years, and I had been on the Search committee that elected him to serve. 

So why all this introduction? Well, because this small parish had supported us both through more than difficult times for us and them. It isn’t easy to divorce and remarry when you are clergy, but this little place had seen us both through vulnerable times and stayed loving towards us both. That is why we wanted to celebrate the sacrament of our marriage within this context at Trinity—our spiritual home, not just his job.  

While planning our service, we fussed over the hymn chosen for the day: “Crown Him with Many Crowns.” It was the obvious choice for this Sunday before the season of Advent begins and hurls us— willingly or reluctantly, depending on one’s ability to play mental gymnastics with the ordering of events in time—towards Christmas when this “king” was crowned just four weeks prior to his birth. Either a very short pregnancy, or a very premature baby, or possibly an act only Divinity could, or would, pull off. None of that mattered much to me, but I did not want to walk down the aisle with my about-to-be new marriage partner, singing about “HIS” triumphal crowning. 

Of course I am overdoing my sarcasm here, but the truth is we did debate the hymn choice for that day—the  diademata, “Crown Him With Many Crowns.” I lost that battle; the long liturgical tradition won; Christ (not He) got crowned; we married each other. When we said our vows I had a small grief seizure—tears flowed down my cheeks. Dick’s mustache quivered with alarm. It was crazy and incongruent— unless you know something about grief and it’s odd inexplicably unpredictable timing. I did not regret my first marriage, nor did I regret the divorce, but I did grieve both and occasionally still do in spurts. 

Anything or anyone that has been such a significant part of your life, will always need to be grieved, even in cases when divorce has meant a sad but inevitable end to a marriage. 

*  *  *  * 

See what we marriage partners are doing now after 35 years of happy marriage!  It’s Halloween, 2021, at a party for the retirement community where we now live in Connecticut. A party and fun was just what we all needed—a time to laugh, enjoy hors d’oeuvres and cocktails, and show off costumes. Dick and I went as Good Brother Monk and the Beloved Monastery Cat. I dressed all in black, including mask and hat, and Dick wore his hooded alb. (Someone asked where he got his costume. It’s his liturgical vestment, the one he wore when he presided at the altar.) Ms. Cat  was saved by Good Brother Monk after she lost her tail on a coyote trail. He fed her lots of fish and milk in a dish. I made plenty of mewling, howling, and purring sounds. Good Brother Monk, who prays all day and all night, closed our routine with a somewhat edited, and slightly ribald Irish blessing, ending with Latin (illegitimi non carborundum) and final praise for the monastery pussy. 

Everyone laughed heartily and we won a prize—a large beautiful woven quilt to keep us warm in winter months. Meeeowwwpurrrr. Amen. 

   

2020.09.20 Breathe!

I often suggest to people that they breathe, that is, stop a moment, take a deep breath, and give your racing mind and body a rest. This is great spiritual wisdom. I should try it myself sometime.

It is 2020. Our whole world right now is being forced—by an ugly and lethal traveling virus, political mayhem, and racial pain—to breathe, even if it is behind a mask.

I already have a respiratory illness and need medication to help me breathe. I also need yoga, exercise, and writing—nice and sedentary yet full of spiritual electricity. I believe this: there is nowhere God is not, no one in whom divine grace is absent, even if interrupted by death itself.  

Therefore, to give myself and my readers a break and a breath, I resurrect my 2005 rewrite of a dear old hymn: “Breathe On Me Breath of God”.

Breathe In Me Breath of God

Breathe in me, breath of God,
Healing my lungs’ disease
So that I may in purest love
Breathe in and breathe out with thee.  

Breathe in me breath of God,
For when my life is done
And my sweet lungs lose all their pow’r
My last breath and yours are one

I now sing it daily as a prayer. Sing with  me.


The composer of the hymn text on which I riffed, was Edwin Hatch (1835-1889), an Anglican theologian, student of languages, and Bishop of Manchester, noted for his independence and extreme study habits. He does look a bit harried.

Hatch, a graduate of Oxford, and his wife Evelyn, had one son and four daughters.  His hymn was published privately in 1878, not too long before he died at 54.  It reveals his deep faith and his spirituality of hope, and was published publicly in 1886. The hymn tune #508 in The Hymnal 1982 is Nova Vita, by Lister Peace who died in 1969. The first stanza gives us a clue to Hatch’s state of mind: “Breathe on me, breathe of God, fill me with life anew, that I may love what thou dost love and do what thou wouldst do.” He sought peace of mind, reassurance, and unity with the Divine.  He was running out of breath.  Some days it feels so, eh?

Breathe.

2019.12.02 At the Turn of the Year

It is not the calendar year that turns in the bleak mid-winter. It’s the Church year. And the Season’s year. Looking outside at 4 p.m. to see the darkness begin to descend, reminds me that the day is turning itself downwards like the knob on the stove makes the bright fire of the burner’s flame slowly lower and lower and lower.

I understand why people become depressed in this season. I understand why people hasten to put up Christmas lights—prematurely. I understand why we rush to the stores to shop for glitter and glamor. I also understand why the Christian church calls for a slow-down, not a speed-up, a space where candlelight suffices. I understand why my heart thrills at the first silence of the first snowfall, a cold wet blanket of hush that says: Nurture the darkness. Let it wrap your soul in hope. Don’t rush. Wait. Listen. Every single snowflake has it own unique shape and its own silence. So, beloved, do you.

Poets and mystics in all spiritual traditions discover the full presence of the Divine in the stillness. Eastern traditions have lead the way. No wonder the Church sings the hymn, “People Look East” in this season. The East is where the sun rises.

One of the Islamic world’s greatest poets, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (1207-1273), was a Sufi mystic, a lover of philosophy and of humanity. His followers began a school of mysticism for people to encounter the divine presence without mediation. The Sufi religious order was a mendicant order, so not noted for extravagance or shopping sprees. But they were noted for wild ecstatic rituals in which they danced and whirled and often howled. It is known to Westerners as “Whirling Dervishes.”

Notice these dervishes are all men. I find that exciting. Whirling wildly is a form of really letting go without getting drunk or high to do it. Women, then and maybe now, do dance wildly but not often in public, which could be dangerous—an invitation to sexual advances or rape.

Here is the poet Rumi to say it best.

Forget your life.
Say God is Great. Get up.
You think you know what time it is.
It’s time to pray.

You’ve carved so many little figurines, too
many.
Don’t knock on any random door like a
beggar.

Reach your long hands out to another door,
beyond where you go on the street, the street
where everyone says, “How are you?” and no
one says, “How aren’t you?”

Tomorrow you’ll see what you’ve broken and
torn tonight, thrashing in the dark.

Inside you there’s an artist you don’t know
about. He’s not interested in how things look
different in moonlight.

If you are here unfaithfully with us,
you’re causing terrible damage.

If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love,
you’re helping people you don’t know and
have never seen.

Is what I say true? Say yes quickly, if you
know, if you’ve known it from before the
beginning of the universe.


(NO, I don’t understand it either. So I just swallow it whole and say yes quickly—into the darkness, into the love, into myself, into God.)

2016.01.31 Certain? Yes, I see it. Are you Sure?

I saw two trees where I saw God. I'm sure of it.

Are you sure? Really? How do you know? I saw it! I believe it!

I have a highly intuitive way of knowing things spiritual. What I know is annoyingly unprovable, though I have trusted it all my life.  You see, it’s hard to talk about God using intuition alone to substantiate my knowing. Even a divinely-inspired hunch, is still a subjective hunch, empowering though it may be.  

As I get older I find that, more and more, my senses show me God in direct and immediate ways—ways so blazingly brilliant I dare to call them proof of the existence of the divine surround.

Just yesterday I saw this snow-covered tree at sunset. It was golden!  How could it not be divine, this tree transfigured—all lit up, haloed you could say, like Christ in glory on the mountain of which Christians sing? God for sure, I’m sure.

That same day I'd seen another snow-laden tree that stopped me in my tracks. Small elegant beauty, every branch puffed up in whiteness —another transfiguration. I touched the branch puffy with snow, even clinging on the underside of each branch. Even to my touch the snowy cover didn’t warm or disappear. Real! Our Lady of the Snow Tree, I thought, using religious/biblical language because it’s just the best to express this kind of objective spirituality.

As delighted as I am with my newfound sensory spirituality, I know that what I see, hear, touch, taste and smell, is only divine because I perceive it so. Someone else would say, “What a beautiful tree.”

Martin Smith, author, theologian, Episcopal priest and former monastic, once said, “The opposite of faith is not doubt but certitude.” He was quite sure of what he said and so was everyone listening. All of us nodded like bobble-heads. I agree with his wisdom, yet even now as I say it aloud, I protest: But…… I place such faith in those trees. I know they are there. I touch and see them, and in the wind I hear them swish and moan. I’m sure they are true, certain that before my very eyes I have seen God-in-a-tree.

My faith and my certitude have coincided—and neither has lost its acuity.  

One of my favorite hymns (1982 Hymnal of the Episcopal Church, #423, a Welsh hymn with text by Walter Chalmers Smith (1824-1908)  It begins: “Immortal, invisible, God only wise, in light inaccessible hid from our eyes….”  As the verses swell and the theology evolves it’s clear that the hymn writer begins to understand divine glory to be more accessible, less hidden, less silent, clouded perhaps, yet a source of true life. As the hymn text puts it: “. . .  in all life thou livest, the true life of all . . .”  And in the end, a prayer: “O help us to see ’tis only the splendor of light hideth thee.”

 So now I know that I believe because I see— and I see because I believe. Pretty sure.

2012.12.09 Breathtaking/Breathgiving

Some things take your breath away. Could be death, danger—or awe.

One such "thing" is Jesus of Nazareth, a man who lived and taught the God of love so fiercely, with such boundless compassion, that they called him the Christ, a word whose root meaning is salve, a healing ointment. Think salvation.

The other is oxygen.

At a recent retreat at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY,  I talked with  two brothers, both on oxygen. One of them I'd known about and one of them was newly encumbered.  I felt sad for them, and scared for me.  I have lung disease and dread one day having to drag around a tank and have tubes to force oxygen into and through my nose so I can breath. I'd been told things like: Avoid oxygen as long as you can. Resist it. Don't do it till the doctor threatens death.

But these brothers gave me hope.  Oxygen, they told me, rather than a death sentence oxygen meant new life. Oxygen was a beginning, not an end— metaphorically, a manger not a cross. Travel was possible, eating obviously was, as well as good humor, garrulousness, and a spritely step.

The way these monks spoke of their disability and their oxygen would've sounded counter-intuitive, or at least nuts, if it weren't so authentic— joyful not doleful. They weren't playing a pious role.

The click-clicking of the oxygen machines in the silence of chapel prayer suddenly sounded to me like applause. 
                                                               ********

I've prayed for years to the tune of a hymn,  Breathe On Me Breath Of God. I use my own text and prayed in hope, with fear in my heart. Now I can pray it in hope, with hope in my heart.

Breathe in me, breath of God,
healing my lungs disease,
so that I may in purist love
breathe in and breathe out with thee.

Breathe in me, breath of God,
for when my life is done
and my sweet lungs lose all their power,
my last breath and yours are one.

2012.08.08 BirthDays

It was my 74th birthday yesterday. It was also my husband’s but he’s only 71, mere child. My first birth day was in 1938, my second birth day was in 1973 when Godde woke me up to, well okay if I must say it, myself. Amazing grace!

John Newton wrote “Amazing Grace” in 1748 at age 23 in the wake of a spiritual conversion. It came to him on a storm-tossed sea when he prayed to God that the ship wouldn’t sink. It didn’t and Newton dedicated his life thereafter to God instead of to the slave trade business he was in.

(What Newton didn’t know was that God was more interested in saving the African slaves in the hold, who were also praying!)

Back in 1973 I wasn’t converted, just returned.  I’d sunk deeply into the listening presence of one I called God as a very young child under a table chatting and feeling heard and accompanied. As I grew up and began my efforts to fit myself into my lovingly dysfunctional family and a world of roles and rules I lost touch with the under-the-table God. You could say I went Stepford-robotic—functional but self-less. Where could I fit as an ambitious woman with ideas unsuitable for a woman and mother? Depressed I suppose, I baked chocolate chip cookies—too many but a delicious distraction for me and a delight to my children. I didn’t pray but God “spoke” de profundis anyway, asking, “Why are you doing this?” 

Though scared witless, I recognized the dear old accompanist I’d 30 years ago fallen into love with. So I followed God’s provocative question and, like Newton, became a priest. The rest of my life still is the answer to God’s question.

And this hymn, as Newton wrote it,  is its theme song. 

                                                                 *******

Amazing grace! (how sweet the sound) 
That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.



'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
 And grace those fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear,
 The hour I first believed!



Through many dangers, toils and snares,
 I have already come;

'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far,
 And grace will lead me home.



The Lord has promised good to me,
 His word my hope secures;

He will my shield and portion be,
 As long as life endures.



Yes, when this flesh and heart shall fail
 And mortal life shall cease;

I shall possess, within the veil,
 A life of joy and peace.



The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,
The sun forbear to shine;

But God, who called me here below,
 Will be forever mine.