2020.09.13 My "Racism"—Anecdotal History. Part Ten. In The Dark.

 

Chapter XXV. Alabama 

 

Our two daughters Bev and Jill were four and three when their brother, Robert William Brakeman, III, affectionately known as R.B. or Rob, was born. It felt very odd to be praised for having a boy child when I had nothing to do with it—except to endure a terrifyingly hasty but late placenta praevia birth. The placenta (supposed to be the afterbirth) emerged ahead of the infant. Blood spurted and flowed, and somewhere in all that bloody mess was a tiny baby boy, healthy at 7 pounds and some ounces. The pediatrician was summoned. She informed us with steady tactlessness that we wouldn’t know for six months whether this oxygen-deprived baby would be retarded or not. I found another pediatrician and knew pretty quickly myself that this child was not retarded in any way— unless you can count near-professional thumb-sucking.

Rob was a toddler in diapers when we moved to Anniston, Alabama for Bill’s new job as electronic engineer with a start-up cable television company. In Alabama we would meet black people for sure I thought. No such thing. The only black person I met and got to know well was a delightful woman I’ll call Elvira, the neighbor’s childcare person—and “maid”.  She became a good friend and gave me lots of advice about how to clean our black-and-white tiled entryway floor. I’d purchased a huge floor waxer. I followed the directions with care. Those tiles just wouldn’t stay clean—black tiles ran and heaved black specks onto the lily white tiles. There was no vice versa. This was a poignant metaphor, which I missed, yet lovely Elvira addressed my frustration with affection: “Too much cleaning, honey. Leave ‘em be.”

Alabama, of course, was comfortably segregated in the late1960s. The house we’d bought was—of course again— in an all-white neighborhood. The uptown Episcopal church was advertised (seriously, with a sign!) as segregated, and the downtown church was more Baptist liturgically than Episcopal. I felt deprived and angry, but I passed off the obvious racism as being Southern. It was the South’s fault. Not mine.

Chapter XXVI.  Jonah

Sometimes one is in the dark for obvious or willful reasons, and sometimes one is in the dark because, well, it just happens almost inevitably by circumstance. Amazing things grow in the dark. Take Jonah.  

As was the imaginative wont of my mind, I suddenly conjured the putative biblical Jonah. The poor guy couldn’t win. He wasn’t even an official prophet of Yahweh, yet he got tagged by the voice of God to hightail it to Ninevah to reprimand the people for exceedingly bad behavior—sleeping around and more. Jonah turned down the divine offer, knowing its danger would be tantamount to one more tour in “Afghanistan”. He fled across the sea. A storm kicked up. The sailors all prayed to several variations of divinity, but the storm didn’t abate. Jonah slept through the storm. (Does this behavior sound familiar?) Horrified, they threw him overboard as he himself suggested they do to appease God and the storm. It worked for the storm but not so well for their consciences. Then, alas, God sent a “large fish” to swallow him. At this point Jonah’s prayers get serious, reciting all his pious deeds and finally confessing his powerlessness. Only God delivers! True that, because God caused the whale to throw up, and splat! Jonah flew out, landed on terra firma and headed for Ninevah. There his errand of rebuke failed to change evil hearts, and he ended up bitterly humiliated and furious at God who did not repent. And there you have it. Beware of your pious expectations of God. Jonah was left in the dark. You could be too.

The tale of Jonah is a fable, yet in every tale there is deeper meaning if you wake up and suss it out. Let yourself identify with whatever the plight of the main character might be. I have always wondered what Jonah thought about while he was in the dark.

 Chapter XXVII.   Leviathan

The great vision given to the miserable in-the-dark Job was a visual tour of all Creation, including the great Leviathan. Job was wowed enough to feel humbled but not humiliated. The mere sight of Leviathan in breach could knock the wind out of anyone’s sails. Have you ever been on a whale watch when the whale, all 100-foot/170 tons of flesh, came close alongside the boat, puffed out its foul breath from its blowhole, then reeled, plunged deep beneath the boat, emerged on the other side, dove again, flashing its mammoth tale at the shrieking fans, then leapt straight up, exposing its front side to the now-cheering crowd. All of this is just the foreplay understand. Who wouldn’t be awestruck? I was. Job was. Jonah not so much—yet.

In fairness to Jonah, his view was from inside the beast’s belly. He remembered God and prayed wildly that his indigestible presence alone would cause this beast to retch him out. Would Jonah then be humbled enough to face Ninevah, a city for which God cared deeply, just as much as God cared for little Jonah apparently? What happened to Jonah in the dark?

Chapter XXVIII.  Breaching

As I write this brief anecdotal history of my racism, it is 2020, and the world, although still in the dark about the depths of racial injustice, is on the brink of a new breaching similar to the one I would personally embark on back in the 1970s.  

Therefore, in the name of HOPE, FAITH, and LOVE, I breach the rigors of my chronological structure to include below a 2020 poem by Canadian poet and spiritual director Antoinette Voûte Roeder. Her three collections include The Many Singings, Poems for Meditation, and The Space Between, all available with Amazon. This poem perfectly reflects what might happen in the dark—to Jonah, to me, and to this twenty-first century world as yet riven with ignorance, conflict, fear, and death—all racially bound together.

Jonah’s Whale: Not the Whole Story

Perhaps he liked it down there
in the dark cave of its belly

Delivered at last
from God’s demands
and the press of people
to a sanctuary quite unlikely
to be shared with others .

Now he had time to reflect on the past.

When at last he found
the cave inside
himself and knew it to
be sacred, out he vaulted
with great bravura
to claim his mantle
in the world.

The motto of this tale? Don’t mess with Leviathan unless you’re prepared to spend some time in the dark and emerge changed.  Also, do not assume or presume anything about God whose will empowers human agency—in other words, you and God make things good and right together and this pandemic is not the whole story.

2015.11.08 Tender Scene Remembered

There is no birthday or anniversary of Dad's death right now, but this poem emerged. I suppose I have not quite moved off the mood of death remembrances: Halloween/All Saints/All Souls—aka The Dark Triduum. And I suppose too that this arose out of spending the day yesterday as facilitator of a retreat day focused on grief. I offered a bit of education and some suggestions and then people dispersed to be in silence and solitude. At the end of the day we gathered as a group. I invited people to share anything they wished. The mood wasn't grim or gloomy,  just vulnerable, hushed. My heart was swollen—not inflamed or painful, simply enlarged as we sat together under the valley of the shadow of death, not overshadowed.


Tender Scene
    by the Rev. Lyn G. Brakeman

I knew my father was dead.
The 6 a.m. call told me so, but
surely he wasn’t dead. Like a detective
I needed a body. Some crime had been
committed, a crime against my heart. All
crimes need proof, don’t they?

I rushed to the scene and saw Mom
making Dad’s bed, neatening, purging the
death-bed of death. This bed where my father
had lain dying for a week, groan by
groan, wrestling his demons, like Jacob, to the pillow—six days exactly—
and on the seventh he rested from all the work he had done.

Dying with purpose is no easy work.
What was Dad creating? A life better than one with no esophagus?
From what did he rest on this cold Sunday in January, 1983?  

There remained
not a shred of evidence of his presence—not even the bedpan, I looked.
Where’s Daddy? The funeral director took him, said Mom.

Cry thief.

I turned and saw proof: Dad, cradled in the arms of Mr. Ahern,
the burly undertaker, his limp body draped across Mr. Ahern’s upper body. 
Dad’s bare legs dangled over the undertaker’s right arm; one of his arms hung loose,
the other tucked neatly against his bearer’s chest.
Dad’s head did not hang loose. Mr. Ahern made sure of that— as you would
carrying a young child off to bed—sound asleep after swearing
he could stay wide awake for “just this one more show”—dead weight.

Or a Pieta.

I’d never seen my father’s body so unclothed—
not quite naked but bare enough.
Doesn’t death deserve clothed dignity just like life?

How in the world did those spindly legs play golf? 
Honestly, you think the damnedest things sometimes. 

My Daddy, Dad, father chose death on the seventh day
in the barely-risen morning. I saw him leave
 on Mr. Ahern’s arm—soon to be ash and bone chips.

I was grateful for the raw viewing, yet . . .what?
I rummaged through Dad’s drawers, found an old golf sweater,
took it, scowled at my mother,
left.

I wore the sweater on and off for
two years—caught the scent of Dad’s soul.
                                                   

2013.09.01 Tribute To a Poet and Poetry

Seamus Heaney, Nobel Laureate poet, Irishman, Dublin resident who also taught at Harvard, devoted dad of three and husband of one wife, ebullient raconteur, imbiber, lover of the land, user of plain-talk words that make sense of life and don’t rhyme but have rhythm,  just died at 74— my age.
 


The purpose of poetry, as I see it, being a priest, is to consecrate what is,—simple things like bread and wine, small children, your own fruitless malaise, or the latest obit. You can do it with hand gestures, a smile for no reason, humor, deep listening, a kiss, a poem, like this one by Heaney:

DIGGING

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests; snug as a gun.

Under my window, a clean rasping sound
When the spade sinks into gravelly ground:
My father, digging. I look down

Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds
Bends low, comes up twenty years away
Stooping in rhythm through potato drills
Where he was digging.

The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked,
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.

By God, the old man could handle a spade.
Just like his old man.

My grandfather cut more turf in a day
Than any other man on Toner's bog.
Once I carried him milk in a bottle
Corked sloppily with paper. He straightened up
To drink it, then fell to right away
Nicking and slicing neatly, heaving sods
Over his shoulder, going down and down
For the good turf. Digging.

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap
Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge
Through living roots awaken in my head.
But I've no spade to follow men like them.

Between my finger and my thumb
The squat pen rests.
I'll dig with it.

2013.05.01 Sounds of Spring

Today a friend sent me a beautiful animated Happy Spring card.  I listened to it twice and felt my day begin well. 

Yes, it's May Day—day of resurrection life, day of emergency, someone needs help, and the old college chant: Hey, hey it's the first of May, outdoor f.....g begins today!  Such a versatile holy day, no?

I adore Spring. I can't smell it, thanks to allergies that come with it,  but I can see it and hear it—and most of all feel deeply into its heart where I heard a poem spring up.

Sounds of Spring
     
Thwack of fist
swish/crack of bat
thunk of ball
smack of mitt.
I hear it coming.
Batter batter batter
Run daddy run.
It’s spring. 

A young teen sits alone shivering
in the bleachers
She cheers at full voice for her star-hitter boyfriend
but her eyes rivet to the ball:
tossed, smacked, cracked, and finally
disappeared.


And, in the name of the depth dimension we call soul and spirit, I know that neither joy nor sorrow are  pure, nor do they last. Yet we are human and must feel them each and all.  That is the gift and solace of what Christians call the Holy Spirit. She goes with us into the deep.