2023.05.28 PENTECOST, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I’ve loved and trusted the Presence of God since childhood, but I’ve never felt the urge to evangelize as we Christians are supposed to, right?  To me Pentecost was/is not the birthday of the Christian Church, nor the arrival of the Holy Spirit for the first time ever, but rather a stunning advertisement for the steadfast loving Spirit of God, present broadly, deeply, and wildly to all sorts of people the world over. Will they all be Christians? Not likely. Will they all be endowed with divine grace? Yes. Is that enough salvation? Yes. Is it the only way of salvation? No.

*  *  *  *

Recently at a sacred music concert taking place in an enormous church sanctuary, a listener turned to me and said bluntly: “What’s a mystic?” As if I knew! People ask clergy the most annoying real questions just because we are clergy. Clergy are NOT God, thank God!  

Still, the question got me wondering: What IS a  mystic really?  

A prayer practitioner. 

Pop-up answers seem foolish, I know, yet they are the kind of answers that force my attention away from my ego and all my educated answers. A prayer practitioner?  

Who, what, where, when, and why? 

WHO is a prayer practitioner? Anyone hoping, perhaps longing, to deepen their relationship of love with self, God and neighbor.  

WHAT is prayer? Being silent, preferably in solitude, while willing to open up to inner thoughts and feelings, to listen for God in your soul or notice God sitting on the branch of a tree. 

WHERE? At a place of deep quiet usually but not always at a monastery or a convent, run by monks or nuns whose ministry is to provide and maintain space and hospitality for prayer practitioners. 

WHEN? As soon as you admit to yourself that you need well, to know what the hell you are doing with your life.  And when you decide to sign up for a silent directed retreat for 3 days, then for 5 days and eventually for a whole week or 10 days. And when you submit to talking about your innards with a wise and trained Spiritual Director who listens and makes suggestions about things to use from Scripture or, annoyingly, recommends more silence. That’s when you take a walk, fume to God about all this damned silence, return to your room and sleep like a champ. 

WHY?  Because I said so.  On my first silent directed retreat, I stared for a very long time at a huge portrait of a rose. I loved its sheer size, its astounding beauty, elegance, and all its petals. I went to the greenhouse and asked if the man I met there was the gardener, just like Mary Magdalene had asked the Risen Christ who appeared to her as she wept at Jesus’s empty tomb in the gospel story in John 20:15.  In my case, this guy in the greenhouse actually was the gardener. He gave me one rose. I took it back to my room and dissected it, one petal at a time. The bright red petals were strewn all over the floor. There were only about 29. I left the petals and slept. The next day I returned to the chapel where the rose portrait hung. This time I noticed its long stem. There were thorns, sharp and pointed all along the stem on both sides.

 The thorns were hard. I frowned.

The petals were soft. I cried.

The petals far outnumbered the thorns.  I laughed.

  

2021.02.21 COMPASSIONTIDE, Retreat with Martin Smith

It’s time!!  Go!

I’ve been restless, irritable, uneven of soul. It’s not the virus or hermetic ways, not even the bombardment online of a million glamorous offerings to deepen everything from your spirituality to your drain pipe flow. Something was missing. What?

RETREAT!  It’s been over two years since we’d been on retreat—out of town to a quiet place of contemplative solitude-in-community where you make friends with yourself and your God.

What is contemplative about Zoomed distance watching? Still, I need for my nerves a retreat, darling. So we sign up for a retreat, Compassiontide, at Holy Cross Monastery with Martin Smith, our favorite ex-monastic-now-married Episcopal monk-priest.

Retreat Silence  

An infuriating irony about retreat silence: the more you concentrate your focus outward on icons, images sculpture, artwork, natural scenery, a speaker, the more your inner focus sharpens.

Retreat prep 

I re-read Martin Smith’s Lenten classic A Season for the Spirit. I noticed the noble dedication by the then Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie who commissioned a book for Lent, 1991. “It still comes as a surprise to many people that there are monks and nuns who belong to the churches of the Anglican Communion.  .  .  . This book is not a substitute for prayer itself. Instead it leads us into the experience of prayer.  .  .  .  Martin Smith has written a practical book.   .  .  .   I have much confidence that it will be found a rich quarry for Christians of varying traditions seeking to come closer to God in prayer, and also for those just beginning the journey of faith.”   

I have so many underlinings in this little book that it makes me laugh. I’ve internalized it and now imagine it to be my own clever theology. There really is nothing new under the sun. Good!

Typos 

I notice with a laugh that on pages 12 and 21 there are typos—the same word misspelled twice: INdentification.    
    In the chapter, “The Wind In The Wilderness,” Martin Smith describes the biblical story of Jesus being driven into the wilderness by the Spirit to discern his vocation. How could, or would, Jesus be human and divine at once? “If he is the Holy One of God, the Only-begotten, what becomes of his sense of INdentification with weak mortals?”
    In the chapter, “The Anaesthetic Begins To Wear Off,” Jesus wrestles with how to reconcile a broken world into the divine embrace of God. “The Spirit of Jesus moves us, as it moved him, to INdentify ourselves with a broken world AND to bring it within the reconciling embrace of God.”
    
I will  INdentify. Honestly, I slip-slide around, flop to one side or the other, and pray a lot to keep balance and be compassionate with my blundering. I’m a failure. But I’m awake. I go for more.  

Retreat Meditations In Small Bits    

God is an Overflowing Never-ending Immensity of Compassion—a Niagara. We can resonate with this flow, as a piece of paper lying on the strings inside a piano would when that note is twanged. The paper suddenly rises with the vibration. That’s how we RESONATE with divine Compassion—seeking more. The MORE is always available. I go with the flow.

The mystical password to enter the Gospel Mystery is ADORATION, not obedience. Adoration is loving God with the brakes off. A brain-damaged child would butt his head on the TV screen. He was aroused and gestured that he wanted MORE. He wanted IN, into the action. How adore-able. Me too!

Christianity is the only religion that puts passion back into compassion. Our God suffers. The hands that hold us in existence are pierced with unimaginable nails. The Cross, therefore, is a judgment, not because it is violent, but because it brings human cruelty into the light. I see!  One of Jesus’s hand on my home altar crucifix is missing. I cover its absence with a tiny white shell.  I shiver.

Martin has a small lamb tattooed on the inside of his arm. “The Lamb of God takes away the sins of the world; the sins of the world do not take away the Lamb.”  I see that silly lamb with new eyes—no longer ridiculing but with gently tenderness.

Compassion for others is an unstable idea. What? Justice is very popular for good reason today, but it is not the Gospel of Christ. What?  Justice offers equality, giving all of us just what we all, by rights, deserve. Mercy, however, is not just. It gives us all what we do not deserve, have not earned. Say again? Consider the parable of the laborers in the vineyard. Some worked hard all day, and some worked an hour only. They all got the same pay. Equal pay for equal work? Nope, not the way of God.

When you are helpless establish a sheltering heart in prayer. I pray with a young man of 25 whose acquaintance I have only recently made through his grandmother. He had a normal accident for a teenager who at 17 climbed a tree, lost balance, and fell to the hard ground—flat on his back. He is now 25 and quadriplegic. His grandmother left the church long ago, in disgust about rules that hurt people. I’d told her I was going on a retreat—virtually. We laughed. She knew what a retreat was, and the next day asked me if I’d pray for her grandson on my retreat.  I do. I am. No brakes on.
 

Practice promiscuous empathy. OK, I’ve tried promiscuity in other ways, but this is much harder. Screech go my brakes. They still work—in case.

The Holy Spirit invites compassionate experimentation: Try this. See this. Ask this. Wonder this. Pray this. The Spirit tugs gently at your heart and gives it clues. For example, imagine that the person whose behavior you deplore may have an unhealed wound hiding behind mean behavior. In prayer, recall your own wounds, and Compassion will soften your heart. That’s God—madly soft-hearted.

Last Laughs

I asked my usual question about the lumbering pace of the Church in eliminating gendered language to find a more expansive and compassionate vocabulary for God. Martin grinned and said he knew who had asked that question. I’m that much of a pest, yes. He said he was not adept in this area, offered “Loving Parent,” and admitted that, although Church rhetoric is hard-edged to change, it is still locked into a masculine distanced God. (He didn’t add white. I forgave him immediately.)  After all, most of the quotes and images he used were from women.

Hilarious irony: the theological language question about which I am the most passionate, I have never prayed about, never directly consulted God in prayer about. Have I assumed that God already agreed with me?  Oh God, forgive me and help the Church loosen up and change traditional theological imagery. Thanks.
 

2017.10.01 A Turnaround—A "Baby" Found

I’m recently home from Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY where Dick and I led a retreat on my pet passion and peeve: the inadequacy of theological language as we use it to define—confine—the image of God.

Attendance was dismally small (6) and the participants were all superbly introverted. No one disagreed with the language inadequacy issue though. So what’s not to like? Nothing!  

After the second day we felt discouraged however, because the solution that presented itself as the most attractive to resolve disgruntlement with a sexist institution was to jump ship ie. leave the church. Negativity was up and tolerance was weak. Most felt conflicted.

We had provided some resources and some explanations. It was clear that everyone had come to this retreat seeking hope. No one wanted to “throw the baby out with the bath water.”

The question loomed large: What is the “baby” you do not want to throw out?

The morning of the final day of retreat and our last group meeting, I woke up, turned to Dick and announced: “It’s a bomb!”  He replied: “Let me wake up first, for god’s sake.” 

Just like the biblical Jacob, lying on his stone pillow dreaming of hope, restless, and later engaging in a wrestling match in the dark with the invisible “man-angel” in whom he recognized God, our retreatants wrestled through the night.  Each one lost sleep. Each one seriously contended with her or his doubts and sought right words.

Isn’t this how it happened for the early Christ-followers?  

A whole lot of wrestling with theological concepts and finding the best words to make them intelligible to the average faith-seeker, was the rule of the day for the early Church as it struggled to get established, even institutionalized. Even people on the street and in markets were wondering and gossiping about the nature of Christ. Imagine!! Everyone felt desire. Everyone groped for clarity. Is it really so different today?

Faith happens in the dark.

In the morning our group met for our last time. One member had to leave to be with her sick husband. I was prepared to throw more consoling crap around. Instead we listened—and probably threw out a few prayers like yikes and help.

Someone arose early and wrote—in purple— on our newsprint:
                      
       “The glory of God is the human person fully alive!!” 

Irenaeus of Lyons, a bishop of the church, had said this. A trip to the library revealed that Irenaeus said this in the second century, not the 13th, as this person supposed. “That long ago he summed up what we are saying in this retreat.”

Someone else snuck down to the fruit baskets in the night to get a banana for nourishment before sitting down to wrestle with the Nicene Creed. By morning a personal creed had been written. “At least I know exactly what I believe!”  This kind of activity gives one a strong spiritual anchor to overcome temptations to obsess about things one does not believe any more.

Another retreatant went to the official Episcopal Church website and discovered, with amazement, that the institution she found so offensively sexist was actually wrestling with the same issues as we were. "The institution cares about what I care about."
   
And one remembered words a cursillo friend once said: “Look into my eyes so I can see Christ in yours.” These unforgettable words came from someone whose Christian language system was so utterly different it threatened to interfere with the relationship. “Our language is so different, yet I knew he really cared about me.”

There were no clichés, no blue ribbon packaged solutions, no perfect clarity, just openings. Wow!

The Spirit came through and gave birth to some “babies” for these night wrestlers. It made us both very happy. See?

Thanks!

2017.06.25 A Retreat To Consider

Words Matter: A Conversation About Theological Language and its Impact

Tuesday September 12- Friday September 15
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Led by Rev. Lyn G. Brakeman and Rev. Richard J. Simeone

A young rabbinical student raised her hand, and the Rabbi gave her a nod. “Rabbi, does G-d have a gender?” Students laughed. The Rabbi answered respectfully: “No.” The student had more to ask: “Well then, if G-d has no gender why do we use only one gender when we talk about G-d?” To this the Rabbi had no answer. It’s not easy to stump a Rabbi. He could have said that the Hebrew noun for god was masculine, but that, he knew, was inadequate. The student had awakened the teacher. The Rabbi who told this story some years ago still ponders that question.

How does theological language and imagery shape the divine image? How does it shape our souls? What about all that familiar and beloved liturgical formulae? What about pronouns? What would you change? Why or why not? Is this simply a women’s issue? Is it an issue of spiritual formation of human souls? Is it just politics? Or is it a theological issue? What would Jesus do?

Cost: $ 350; deposit: $80

To Register, call the Guesthouse Office: 845.384.6660, ext 3002


Holy Cross Monastery is the mother house of the Episcopal order of brothers (yes, monks) The Order of Holy Cross. The Monastery, in West Park, New York, sits atop a sloping hill, often dotted with deer, overlooking the majestic Hudson River.

The house is comfortable (nice new bathrooms), the landscape alluring, the food near-divine. The regular worship in the monastery chapel led by the brothers gives rhythm and structure to the soul and peace of the mind. You can follow from the Book of Common Prayer easily, or you can sit and let the chanting of psalms and canticles flow over you.

The retreat will include meditations by the leaders with ample opportunity for conversation, questions, humor, experiential learning together.  There will also be plenty of time for quiet reflection and prayer on one’s own. It’s a chance to have fun together and relish a few days away from the pace of the world in silence, solitude and community.  The monastery website is:  www.holycrossmonastery.com

2016.06.12 The Quality Of Mercy

A MERCY BLESSING

May God give you:
For every challenge, Wisdom;
For every stony path, Strong Shoes;
For every storm, a Rainbow;
For every hardship, Support;
For every journey, Faithful Companions;
For every concern, Hope;
For every blessing, Gratitude;
For  every prayer, an Answer;

And may all life's seasons bring God's
        gift of MERCY to
You and those you love.
          AMEN
 (Based in part from an Irish Blessing. Michele Aronica, RSM)

Last week I was on retreat at Mercy Center in Madison, CT.  This blessing was framed and in each room. I awoke to it very morning and its truth sank into me. This is all I want and hope for: not that stony paths, challenges, hardship and all the rest will bypass me, but that I will have gifts to help me keep going, especially faithful companions and Hope. Hope, to me is the greatest of the Big Three spiritual gifts: faith, hope, and love. (St. Paul thought love, but he might've been wrong, ya know!)

  When I told someone that I'd been on a silent retreat for a week, she said, "A whole week?"—followed by, "You and Dick?" Some things are quite astonishing. I told her we weren't rigid about it, and that we convened each evening to sit outside and chat, or just sit and gaze at the natural beauty of the sound stretching before us and all the glorious trees that adorn the Mercy property. I added: "You know the silence, after a while, becomes a friend, one whose comfort you begin to appreciate like an over-soul." (Over-soul is a Jewish descriptor of the affects of a true Sabbath rest.)

Mercy is different from compassion or sympathy, or even empathy. Mercy has the power to soothe, season, or soften all life's aches and pains, all our passions, strivings, even the great and righteous judgments we make, and the social justice causes for which we labor.  James, the most practical book in the New Testament, makes a big deal about the unity of faith and deeds—one no good without the other. Yet even James reminds us, almost casually, "For judgment will be without mercy to anyone who has shown no mercy; . . ."    And btw: ". . . mercy triumphs over judgment." (James 2:13b)  [Italics mine]

Biblically, mercy is translated as divine lovingkindness toward all living things. In Hebrew it's chesed, and in Greek eleo, both rooted in the word which means guts or womb (racham and splagchnizoai)".  I do so love words.

And from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained;

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes:
‘T is mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes
The throned monarch better than his crown:
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,
The attribute to awe and majesty,
Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;
But mercy is above this sceptred sway;
It is enthronèd in the hearts of kings,
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God’s
When mercy seasons justice. Therefore, Jew, 
Though justice be thy plea, consider this,
That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. I have spoke thus much
To mitigate the justice of thy plea;
Which if thou follow, this strict court of Venice
Must needs give sentence ‘gainst the merchant there.

By all means, do not forget to be merciful with yourself, please. Godde will assist.  

2015.01.18 Images of Boca Grande

Greetings from Florida where I thought it would be warm. Well, it's warmER, but my expectations were off again. So, what's new? I'm on a tiny (10 miles long and a few wide) island called Gasparilla.

It's part of a chain of small islands, including Captiva and the more famous Sanibel, and named after a pirate of old called Gaspar, who led raids and got his name into history. The town in which this small isle is located is called Boca Grande. Its means Big Mouth in Spanish, a designation that refers to the big mouth of the Gulf of Mexico and its inlets. Thanks to the weather, I now have a Boca Grande sweatshirt— advertising my own big mouth.

Thanks to the recommendations of Google-god who spit out my name, I came to lead a women's retreat at St. Andrew's parish. We took a few vacation days as well. On this isle people get around mostly by golf cart, so we have the parish rector's cart on loan. Guess who drives?

And guess who gasps and yells slow down, STOP sign, and other harassments from the front seat?

Someone didn't charge our cart long enough, and the other someone called, "We're out of gas!" as our cart began to buck and jerk. The mate screamed back, "There is no gas; it's a battery, and I charged it!" Not long enough apparently. Nevertheless, we are grateful to the rector, the Rev. Michelle Robertshaw, who came to rescue us in her CAR, which we then could use to continue our touristic adventures while she got help to charge up the little cart. Good to go!

Here is our regular morning visitor, a scavenger. Handsome feathered fellow, well fed. And the little feral cat who, with its many buddies, all trapped, spayed and readied for their cat job of keeping the island's rat population manageable. Makes good eco-sense. Islanders are grateful and feed the cats well. They hang around restaurants purring pleasantly, a feline strategy of begging. It works. 

                                         

Fascinated with all the flora and fauna in this clime, but specially the wild and thick mangroves which keep the island safe and protected from the waters. Also the noble banyan tree, destroyed by hurricanes yet returning bigger and stronger than ever, some of the branches actually growing downward to plant roots below for another outcropping of the tree. Imagine!

Nothing is lacking, except gas stations. This the Johann Fust Memorial Library, restored, beautified by our friend, Alice Gorman, and a dedicated team and lots of generous people. It is a gift to minds, young and old. Cicero said: "If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." True!

We fly home tomorrow to northern climes. All in all, it has been a grand visit to a very unique place, filled with retired seniors like us, but with a lot more wealth than we have—a LOT more.

Oh, the retreat.....Spirituality 101, held in a sumptuous home, quiet contrary to ascetical practice, but with a gracious hostess, lots of laughs, and poetry, and wisdom, and bright women who want to know their own soul-worth more deeply and enhance their connection to God through the work of Christ Sophia, the feminine face of the Holy Spirit. Here is St. Andrew's church—a blessing.

Nathanael asked about Jesus of Nazareth, aka the Christ: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip said, "Come and see." 

I ask: Can anything good come out of a small church on a little island? Come and see!  

2013.02.24 BIG FAT UNMANAGEABLE THEOLOGICAL WORDS

Most people today palaver on about our tendency to use too many words, especially in the Church.  It’s true. We do.

Talk is cheap but words are precious—and remain our primary symbol system for communication and formation.

Words are also spiritual. I love languages, even Latin, and majored in Spanish. I clearly recall the moment when I suddenly realized that I was actually reading Spanish words in my head without first translating them into English.  You wouldn’t call my feeling ecstasy, but you would call it awe.

Christians use a lot of loaded words. But we have lost the meaning and truth of many of our words. Rather than throw our ancient words out, perhaps we need to reclaim and re-understand, our precious vocabulary. Here is an invitation to join me as you wish.

BIG FAT UNMANAGEABLE THEOLOGICAL WORDS—BROUGHT TO HEART

Saturday March 16, 2013, 10 to 3, a quiet retreat day offered by Episcopal priest, author and spiritual director, the Rev Lyn G. Brakeman, at Miramar Retreat Center in Duxbury, Massachusetts.  Retreatants will be invited to explore, through meditations, conversations, journaling, and personal prayer, some basic Christian vocabulary, words we often use without really knowing what they mean in lived experience. Little things like grace, sin, salvation, the holy are not cereal brands, but rooted in ancient and biblical contexts. What do they mean to you?  Individual spiritual direction will be offered for anyone who desires it. The goal is to enrich and enliven Christian spirituality in a beautiful space with lots of places to rest in God and pray, and enjoy a good warm lunch.

You may register on line at Miramarretreat.org, email at miramarma@aol.com, call 781-585-2460. Check website for more information.  Fee is $39 with a deposit of $15.