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.

2022.08.28 A Wedding Does Not A Marriage Make, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Everyone has a wedding story or two, and many great films are made about weddings. 

Even the New Testament has a wedding story. No, Jesus did not preside or wed any brides, but he did once miraculously fill wine jugs with more wine to make sure the hosts of the wedding feast (reception) did not run out and that the guests could drink their fill—and then some. That wine “miracle” has been traditionally viewed as one of the first “signs” to indicate that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed destined for messiahship or something even bigger, like Son of God, or a big messianic title such as the Christ. Stated less grandly, however, most weddings are in themselves miracles of love and commitment bonded—by the grace of God or the bride’s mother.  After that you are married and the hard work of intimacy-forever begins.

*  *  *  *

Seriously though, I bet everyone has amusing wedding stories to tell. Here are a few of my own.

-At the wedding when I married my first husband I was so nervous I clung onto my father’s arm a bit too long. I doubt that anyone noticed, and he never said a thing. I just was terrified about this transition from dependence on my parents to dependence to my new husband.  I figured marriage to be a solemnly sworn trap—till death us do part. It was 1961, and my fears were not far off, given the way church and society viewed marriage and the role of women. It is said that love overcomes fear. I wonder if fear can overcome love?  Will a couple grow together— together?  

-At the wedding when I married my second husband, 26 years later, I was more sure of myself in love. Still, I cried saying my vows. My dearly beloved looked terrified. I saw his mustache quiver. My tears were not from fear but from something much deeper, something grief-like, some combination of mystery and miracle. My second marriage is 35 years old and holding—till death us do part. But what is death? If someone has resided in your heart for any length of time, that person never leaves your heart. 

-At a wedding at which I presided as priest in my first parish after I was ordained, I was waiting for the organist to finish her musical prelude, when I poked my head out to view the congregation seated and waiting. What to my wondering eyes should appear, but several little bridesmaids teetering/wobbling on skyscraper high heels down the aisle toward the altar where no one was waiting for them—no groom, no officiant. I had to make an instant decision. I moved quickly from the sacristy out into the sanctuary and headed down the aisle to meet these  lovelies and turn them around. I gently whispered to them that the music they had heard was NOT the wedding processional—their cue to start to hit the aisle.  Turn about and let’s start over, sweeties. 

-At a good friend’s wedding, there was a “guard” posted at the church doors to make sure the groom’s mother did not enter the sanctuary. We knew that if she showed up she would voice a loud objection and create a commotion worthy of going down in history.  Of course there was no clear plan about what this “guard,” a small woman, friend of the bride’s sister, would do to block a raging, scorned mother of the groom, who, mercifully never appeared.

-And one wedding in which I was a bridesmaid, the whole spectacular event had suddenly to be switched from the church to the bride’s home, and from June to January. The bride’s mother pulled off this miracle—smoothing the fury of her husband as well as lining everyone up for a grand procession‚ of sorts.  

*  *  *  *

So you see, there’s no such thing really as a glitch-less wedding. Nor for that matter is there a glitch-less marriage, or a glitch-free love. Love grows and matures slowly as you go, and both people must invest in its care. Take regular stock of your relationship, for it is like a precious child for whom you care tenderly and into whom you invest yourself with hope, trust, and your own vigor. 

The trick is to keep the commitment renewed and renewed and renewed in your heart and with your behavior. Also, get therapeutic help when you feel the marital sag or snag. I think such therapeutic re-fueling is called forgiveness—or God. 

  

    

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. 

   

2020.09.06 My "Racism"—Brief Anecdotal History. Part Nine. Independence?

Chapter XXIII. Marriage and Family

My first love, Bill Brakeman, and I married in June of 1962 after I returned from Spain and taught classroom Spanish at Smith College for a year. Bill was in college at Rensselaer Polytechnic. He pursued his natural gift for electronics and I pursued mine for languages—words strung together for communication and beauty.  

I hated the traditional way languages were taught, but I wasn’t trained enough to change it. While teaching Spanish boringly at Smith I also took intensive French with Mme. Cattanés. From her I learned how one teaches a language: you speak it. Students learn just the way children do—by imitation and pointing and asking. I also took a year of Russian with Mr. Kolosoff. That was more difficult because the alphabet was—foreign-er than Greek. He too spoke Russian to us, but we also had to memorize a lot of words and phrases. He was a humorous man who wore a boot-shoe for a club foot. We could hear him coming a mile away.  

I also pursued my Spanish under the supervision of Smith Professor Whitmore. She pushed me hard, assigning me a thesis in Spanish on any topic I wanted. I chose to write about the role of the priest in the 19th century Spanish novel. How telling my choice was I had no idea at the time, but I had noticed what a dominant role the priest, (Roman Catholic of course) played in fiction. He was dominant, authoritative about morality and everything else, inserting himself into the family scene—not always graciously. It made me laugh and shiver. I felt attracted and resistant all at once.

It struck me that immersing oneself in a new language was like marriage—a commitment which does not thrive on love and attraction alone. I remember the thrill that rushed through my whole body when I suddenly realized I was reading in Spanish without the middle step of translating words into English. I’d loved the language and now I was committed to it, married to it—in love, not just feeling love.

An integrative process like this is difficult between humans. It requires attentiveness to self and other. But I thought I wanted independence. Could I have my freedom and still be married at once—share vulnerability, desire, inside of plain mystery? It occurred to me that each partner devotes the same kind of commitment and intimacy you’d devote to learning a new language—making it your own. Bill and I had children whom we adored, yet we could not rely on them to complete our wholeness. We pursued our own goals and visions. We did not talk and listen with enough honest mutual attention. Instead we talked over wine, and our love lost its roots. Neither of us was independent, because we both feared dependency. For me it felt stifling. Both of us I suspect were too independent to know how to be healthfully dependent.

I was learning that the kind of deep personal engagement required for marriage or foreign language mastery could also heal racism. It was a deliciously enticing idea—this  inherently far-fetched interlocking of love and commitment. It was fleeting, unattainable, and something I knew I wanted and needed.  I’d relished tantalizing glimpses of its near-mystical potency, yes, even as a child with Carol Lee. When would I meet a Carol Lee? It would be years. Glimpses kept coming.

Chapter XXIV.  Ether

"What’s that?" my small and curious oldest daughter, Bev, asked, pointing her finger at the black woman who answered the door at a neighbor’s house. I knew we were in trouble. I could explain who this was to my four-year-old, but it never occurred to me that her innocent amazement might be racist. How to explain blackness without stereotyping it as being the “maid”?  

At about that time my parents who lived one street away from us hired a woman to clean their house. She was black. Her name was Ethel, but the way she said her name made it sound like “Etha”. She came to be called Ether. I thought I could introduce Bev to her, but how awkward would that be—taking Bev over to introduce her on whatever day Ether came to clean, as if she were a specimen or a phenomenon? And Bev, being Bev, would have a million embarrassing questions such as: How come your skin is so black?  Strategic avoidance was my strategy, although I couldn’t avoid the “maid” issue. Bev was too young for much more anyway. Was my choice racist?  I had no idea, although the question tugged at my worrying heart.

I did not know this then, but our young family would soon be moving to Alabama. Surely there I would meet black people on their own terms, wouldn’t I?

2019.11.24 No Matter What, Love!

 Modern Declaration
    by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I, having loved ever since I was a child a few things, never
    having wavered
In these affection; never through shyness in the houses of
the
    rich or in the presence of clergymen having denied these
loves;
Never when worked upon by cynics like chiropractors having
    grunted or clicked a vertebra to the discredit of these
loves;
Never when anxious to land a job having diminished them by
    a conniving smile; or when befuddled by drink
Jeered at them through heartache or lazily fondled the fingers
    of their alert enemies; declare

That I shall love you always.
No matter what party is in power;
No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied
    interests wins the war;
Shall love you always.  


I might have meant this declaration of love to address God whose presence I met as a young child and trust every day—okay with some dips and pauses.

But today I mean this poem for my beloved spouse of 33 years. We were married within the context of the parish Sunday morning Eucharist on Christ the King Sunday, November 23, 1986 with the proviso that we NOT sing the traditionally-themed hymn, “Crown Him With Many Crowns.” There were, and are, enough “hims” taking over everything everywhere that one more hymn to him was just too much, I ruled. And not on the day of my second marriage. 

This day honors a God who brings life out of death. For us, that “death” was the end of our first marriages. I felt joy, fear, grief, gratitude, and love all at once. My pile of feelings brought a few tears during the vows. I will never forget the look on my dearly beloved’s face. The memory makes us laugh. I felt the need and trust of God’s presence intensely, and I was marrying a man who shared that faith. We still do and we call Christ the King Christ in Majesty—a tad less gendered, though I prefer Christ the Kin (one of the Germanic origins of the word King). Yes!

So we married each other on this special Sunday, which in 1986 was November 23. I have never regretted a single moment of our 33 years of loving and sparring and loving and weeping and loving again and again. So, dearly beloved, I say, with the poet (never say poetESS):

That I shall love you always.
No matter what party is in power;
No matter what temporarily expedient combination of allied
    interests wins the war;
Shall love you always.  

2018.11.25 Christ in Majesty. Us In High Hilarity

Here we are sitting on a wall under a huge tree at a monastery. Now how romantic is that? Not very—however, we are laughing.  Other than bad jokes or good jokes or church jokes, laughing for us is a way we make love and keep love alive. It's not derisive, just boldly out of line or unexpected. 

And we both know what is funny even when others don't see it. Jesus had a knack for that, which is probably why it is nowhere written that Jesus laughed. Once when reading the gospel portion in John, when the disciple were going nuts wondering how anyone could be born again, I inserted: Jesus laughed. Then he went on to elaborate a teaching. No one in the congregation laughed. Do people listen I wonder?

This photo was taken in the autumn of 1991. We were at Holy Cross Monastery on retreat. We were invited by the monastery p.r. monk to pose for this photo which was taken by a professional photographer.  They used it on the cover of a promotional brochure. We are laughing about suddenly being catapulted into fame as cover-couple contemplatives. I wish I could enlarge this cover more, but I guess you can discern that I am clearly making some big point to Dick who clearly appreciates my every word. This only happens on silent retreats.

Happy 32nd anniversary, my beloved marriage partner. We were married in 1986 on this Sunday when Christ is praised for rising triumphant above it all—sin, death, hate, politics. Together we have risen above lots of adversity and weathered lots of scorn, including a near-crucifixion for being "church criminals." (Seriously one man called us that when we got divorces and married, but he had a diagnosis.)  

I love your laughter, our laughter, and the humor we find in the most seriously righteous befuddlement. 

2017.12.31 Threats With Promises

Threats in world many. Each carries promise. Indulge year-end blogger rant in headlines. Bless you.

1. Drugs: far more abundant with cheap choices and more omnipresently aggressive in their demands for attention. It’s hard to say no.
     YET many do, and many heal from addictive disease through medication and therapy, and from love, faith and hope—three unconditional spiritual values. Yes, unconditional.

2. Venomous American political conversation: escalates to violence, government paralyzed, guns more available to more people than ever—and considered indispensable to some. To inject sanity and, godde forbid, love for all, into this environment risky as hell.
    YET good people, political and priestly, keep praying and working for good gun control legislation and an end to violence in speech and action. They are the blood donors, the organs our culture needs.

3. Sex, as in practice thereof and orientation therein: acceptance, no, expectation, that sexual behavior, yes, intercourse, is the normative even for teens, common—and competitive. When did you have your first lay—or get laid? When did you lose your virginity first? When did you have your first smoke, beer, snort—gun? Kiss feared old-fashioned. It may have lost its supremacy as a sign of young, tenderly-cautious, physical attraction-towards-love.
    YET older teens and twenties are engaging in less sex than past generations. No one knows why. Possibly choosing to explore getting-to-know-you love first? Psychological data: females depend on mutually supportive relationships for their well-being. So do men, GLBQIS. Dating around, sleeping around, hooking up, one-nighters can’t satisfy the deep longing for relationship; nor can erections and orgasms.

4. Marriage: uncertain and faraway goal for many. In olden days girls pushed and shoved into it by the fear, no terror, of getting pregnant. Currently, more choice. Birth control seen as  protective, except for STDs, but the safety it provides can hinder long-term relationship security aka marriage.
    YET emotional commitment, whatever one’s orientation, is, yes, still nourishes mind, heart, body, and soul—if nothing else to practice the sanctity of marriage should one choose it in the future.   

5. Technology: broad range of options, bordering on omniscience (Google) and omnipresence (i-phones actually text you to let you know your parents are tracking your whereabouts—true), and omnipotence (Amazon Prime.) These attributes used to belong to God (by whatever name) aka divine Mystery. They still do. Technology unable to provide flesh-and-blood love, unconditional beneficence, or shared audible visible embodied rich laughter. Easy to hide behind emojis.
    YET social media technology does give people a community of understanding, support, advice, accompaniment, and safety.

6. Religion: weak in the northeast; humanism, atheism, secularism viable options; religions fail at apologetics. What does this or that religion mean? Who or what really is God? Christ? Moses? Is there spirituality beyond morality and rules of conduct? Is it enough to be a good person?       
Researcher at Harvard Divinity School, Angie Thurston, calls millennial generation “religiously homeless” in opinion piece by Zachary Davis:“Has Secularism Gone Too Far?”  (Boston Globe, Ideas, 12/24/17) Response letters (12/31/17) unanimously—tellingly— defensive, angry.
    YET secularism thought too rational, pessimistic. Davis identified a mismatch between the job religion is supposed to do and society’s floundering search for that job to be done. The job? Not the preaching of morality, but the steady inspiration of hope, not just in afterlife but now: “. . . a hope that goes beyond reason—to give us the strength to pursue a world beyond reasonable expectations.”  Religion stretches the possible.  Granddaughter asks, with an edge: “Grammy, why do you pray?” “I pray because I love. And because my love is not enough.”

7. Public education: public schools forbidden to teach religion as a cultural phenomenon, as the spawn of great works of philosophy and literature, even some biblical literature and moral principles. Something missing. Separation of church and state necessary good. Still, young seekers in public settings unable to study every blooming thing they wonder about. “Wisdom begins in wonder.” Socrates.  But not in our public schools. Religion not even an elective. Religion condemned as proselytizing to fill its coffers. Good teaching never proselytizes.
    YET  . . . slowly religion and wonderments sneak in and silently infect and inform many curious hearts. The same granddaughter searches on line, not in school. Tries pantheism, atheism, agnostic theism, and many things. Trust God will find her and she will find the Love therein that she seeks.

8. Theology/God: how we think and speak about divinity, factor in sociological analysis. Religions consistently allow one image to dominate, a theological stereotype, a superpower deity who is almighty, transcendent, masculine, and interventionist. Image idolatrous. Limits divinity; limits human spirituality.
    YET traditional theology has always proclaimed God as equally immanent. God lives and moves deep within flesh, strengthening, encouraging and empowering love us to love—no matter what. In this God I trust. In this God possible to love, live, move and have being. For this Christians, this is God Jesus died for—to die and so to live.

8. Spirituality: name for what all humanity deeply craves and often does not find in society or church.
    YET Love discovered available in ditches and trenches, in pews and sewers, on streets and in mansions, in life and in death, and in one’s own lonely unlovely flesh. A woman, struggling for years to create/enhance her own self-esteem, suddenly hugs a friend and sobs:“I’ve just discovered that there is a little piece of God in all of us, and in me, too”
    YET God is Mystery—beyond our words—and small enough to adore them.

9. Personal: beloved husband and wife born on same day three years apart. Wife has seniority. Today both alive and well, bloated with gratitude—also fret, spat and grieve changes and terrors that seem to take away church and country. 
     YET  . . . they can still laugh and hug
    YET . . .  one day both will die and leave this beautiful place and all the people they love.
    YET . . .  there is something more Godde has in mind, they hope. Creation never stops.

2015.11.29 What Moms Are For—Sometimes

Mom, how in hell do you do this?

Do what?  (A million anxious possibilities flooded my mind)

This wedding stuff. They don't want anything about God, or any of that stuff.

Well, you can pray without mentioning God. (A loosey goosey Anglican response if I ever heard one!) 
Check in with your Higher Power.

I’m calling you, Mom!  I looked at the profile of the two of us he'd put on my cell phone and laughed.

My son, Rob, had obtained his short-term, priest-for-a-day license to officiate at his wife’s brother’s wedding in California. He was legally all set, and suddenly that didn’t seem enough. I have to admit I grinned. What Mom "does" is not disrespected, though not easily grasped, by her four children, who are all smart enough to tell me that they only like church the way “you and Sim (their stepfather, my second husband and brother priest) do it.” But now Rob was faced with doing something churchy himself.

I listened, decided that, bidden or not, God would be there, gave him a few ideas he didn’t need, and invoked the contemporary credo: you can be spiritual and not religious.

Within a few days he sent me a text with his proposed service.  “Mom, Please review and pray for your son that he doesn’t flub this or fall off the cliff.”

(So now I could envision the romantic cliff-hanger wedding setting and my son on a windy bluff feeling nervous/shaky—a mother's dream!)

I’m proud to share the marriage liturgy he put togeher: the idea to call it a marriage liturgy came from me, adding an official-sounding descriptor.
                                                     * * * * * * *

Mark Twain said: “Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than the things you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover”

A lasting marriage will be one where you Explore, Dream and discover together!  My wife and I believe that a lasting marriage is also about laughter and friendship. Laugh at yourselves and each other often.

Be friends. Nietzsche said: "It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”

This is just a short poem I wrote for you about friendship, love and marriage.
                                   
You

You
who is always there
next to me in my
breathing space
gentle like precious and pure diaphanous lace.
    You
who holds me when I’m weakest
who congratulates me when
I’m strongest
You raise me up
and let the world know
I’m in the star you think is brightest
It is you I yearn to laugh with
to sit by the fire with
on those cool San Francisco nights
It is your profile I want to see
through the gap
in the kitchen door
in the twilight of evening
as you prepare supper
    You
It is you who will adventure with
me near and far
running the coast down beach
by beach
spending the day in wet swim suits
forgetting where our shoes are
    This is love.
    This is friendship
You who calls me randomly to
say hi, to say hello
I will forever be there to make you laugh
to make you smile as best I can
to quietly listen
when you vent or cry
to say thank you
    You
My dearest friend
                          
         © June, 2015, Rob Brakeman (robbrakemanpoetry.com)


"Pastor" Rob called after it was over, also sent a photo on iPhone of the happy couple, and himself looking appropriately pious, bowed head—and with a triumphant Rob grin: "I did it!"

I texted back: I love you. He replied: Thanks, Mom.

Is there a better mutual blessing than that to be thankful for?