2024.09.29 FOUNDATIONS, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

“Foundations” refers to many things, one of which is a woman’s undergarments. Below is how I see the “foundations” of this United States of America—with a place for ALL of us AND those who desire to join us legally, respectfully, and with pride.  My piece below was recently  published in online journal, Persimmon Tree. It publishes works of women OVER 60 only.     Love that foundational requirement!   

*  *  *  * 

This is the first United States presidential election in which I, a Democrat, will be voting intentionally against the Republican candidate!  I will also be voting for Kamala Harris, not simply because I’m a Democrat, but because I think her plans are closer to my values about socio-economic justice for all people, and especially for the reproductive rights of women, including, and specifically, making decisions about their own bodies.

 

States are biased by the politics of their geography. Some decisions require broader consideration. We need federal legislation to ensure women’s legal rights, specifically a woman’s right to choose abortion with medical assistance as appropriate for her health and her circumstances.  I appreciate Kamala Harris’s openness and honesty about her views—not simply because she is a woman herself, but because she respects and honors the pain of exclusion any human being of any gender, political party, geography, religion, race or ethnicity feels when robbed of personal freedom for any reason. Any reason.

 

I know all the pain of such decisions. I once sat with a young woman who took seriously her own right to life and freedom. We wept together, because this is a matter of personal wellbeing of mind, body, and soul. Either way one decides there is profound grief, and need for kind and compassionate guidance from an unbiased guide.

 

It is neither sin nor crime to choose one’s own good—as an individual or as a nation. 

NEITHER WAR NOR VIOLENCE solveS or resolveS OR evolveS   ANYTHING OR ANYONE.  

Life In Death In Life—Stories, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 3/26/23

There’s a story in John’s gospel (8:3) about life-choices.The locals complained to Jesus about a woman who was caught in adultery. For this she should be condemned and stoned to death. [NOTE: The Inclusive Bible translation is: “A couple had been caught in the act of adultery, but the accusers only brought the woman.” This contemporary translation completely, and rightly, changes the slant of this story. ]  

Still, according to traditional translations used in most worship settings, we hear about the offender being female. Biblical stories are hefty, whether people take them literally or as symbolic stories. Think of favorite children’s story books. I bet they still tell you something about your personality, your soul, life’s big issues, about sins and graces. 

Sexuality is one such issue in the news daily, although sex is usually private. How did this adulterous woman get caught? You might think that the cunning politicians of Jesus’s day brought this case before him to trap him: Did he know the sin/sex-rules or not? Jesus, no fool, stooped to scribble something in the sand, such as “So where’s the guy?”  We don’t know so we wait. Jesus bought himself time to think before he offered the divine teaching/verdict, which is what these accusers wanted. He then stood to address the crowd: “Let the person among you who is without sin throw the first stone.”  Stoning, then and now in some places, was the prescribed punishment for such a sin.    

Silence fell. 

No stones were hurled.  

“Has no one condemned you?” Jesus asked the woman, who said, “No one, Teacher.” 

 “Neither do I condemn you,” Jesus said, sending her off with a warning not to sin further—not the couple, just the woman, mind you. 

This story speaks volumes about the breadth and depth of divine grace, no matter what our sins. It also speaks volumes about human vulnerability, spiritual naiveté, and ignorance about God’s love under all circumstances. 

Is it a Resurrection story?   

*  *  * *

Jesus went on his way to preach and to heal. Before long he encountered the sisters of his best friend, Lazarus. They were angry because Jesus wasn’t there when Lazarus fell ill and died. To them, Jesus could have prevented the death. A moving scene then played out in which Jesus openly wept over his friend’s death.  

Much has been made of this open expression of emotion. It tells me that we human beings have strong and, even holy, feelings, even when we simultaneously have faith that God’s grace is also always present. Jesus’ tears remind me that Jesus was fully human. Did he weep over Lazarus’s death or because he wasn’t there when the sisters needed him? I don’t know. The story tells us that Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus and called the dead Lazarus to come forth from the tomb. Lazarus is raised from the dead.

I am far less impressed by this miracle than I am by the tears of Jesus.  

The Lazarus story, however, is a crucial building block in the Christian story. It’s a springboard for theological statements about Resurrection—not as doctrine but as experience as viable as Jesus’ tears. Resurrection stories abound, and all of them create emotional intelligence that is missing in doctrinal interpretations. 

Today, I saw the first Robin redbreast strutting about on the dry un-flowered earth. Resurrection.

Today, I got a message that an old friend had suddenly died. I felt tears well up, then remembered this friend’s robust humor—her regaling clergy at a somber clergy conference with a joke about a poor guy with a highly communicable disease who had to be isolated/quarantined and fed a strict diet of flounder only. Q: Why flounder? A: It’s the only thing flat enough to fit under the door of your room. In itself, this  joke is only mildly worthy of a grin, but when this friend told it, her laughter was robust and contagious. It filled the air with sudden joy as we all fell into peels of laughter. Resurrection.  

Today, I heard from a friend in a nursing home who is a steadfast atheist. She called to tell me that she was no longer an atheist. “I’ve moved to agnostic!” We laughed together. Resurrection. 

If our Constitution were amended to include the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA)?  Resurrection. 

So let’s get out there, each with our own abilities, gifts, and personalities, and let’s resurrect, revivify whoever, wherever, however. 

RESURRECTION IS  NOW. 

2023.02.05 Shining a Light on Bruised Grace, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

How often do you say, aloud or to yourself, Well, it depends. . . 

Pope Francis tends to stay away from formal changes in Catholic Church doctrine, but, according to op. ed. writer, E.J. Dionne, Jr., “Pope stood up for LGBTQ lives” Hartford Courant, 2/4/23. The pope regularly moves the conversation from judgment to mercy, and from condemnation to encounter. 

He does a pretty good job of it. He wrote a handwritten note to clarify his remarks on homosexuality as sin. He said he was speaking of the official Church moral teaching about sexual acts outside of marriage as sin, intrinsically disordered. In itself it's not a crime. The Pope then distinguished between crime and sin, noting that "It's always a sin to lack charity with one another." Now this caveat tops all the rest. It also insists on case-by-case processing. It depends. 

Just think of all the absolutized doctrines—moral laws. They are many of them about sex with the onus on women and their bodies: no pre-marital sex, no divorce, no remarriage, difficulty getting annulments, no birth control, no abortion, not to mention celibacy for all religious vocations—priests, monks, nuns. Personally, I do not think we worship a God whose nature is defined as “moral”—not to suggest that God is immoral, but to say that God is never trapped by moral rules made by human minds.    

It may be cagey to resort to the “golden rule” to silence all protests or lobbies, but consider the office he holds and the multitudes he represents. He does not abandon Catholic moral teaching about sex outside marriage (I and many could be doomed or damned for that one!) At the same time, Pope Francis insists on a case-by-case approach, as in “one must also consider the circumstances. which may decrease or eliminate fault.”  It depends. 

When criticized, Francis responds:”Criticism helps you to grow and improve things, providing protection against a dictatorship of distance…where the emperor is there and no one can tell him anything.”  

*  *  *  *

So here we are once again confronted with what can be called situational ethics. It depends. See Romans 14: “Do not pass judgment on your brother or sister.” Paul elaborates to say that nothing in itself is unclean, yet if someone thinks it’s unclean it is unclean to that person. For example, if you know that your neighbor believes that pork is “unclean” then, do not serve pork chops for dinner, even if you do not think them unclean. To prove what? Your own superior knowledge? Now, that IS sinful!  Paul calls for “mutual upbuilding.” We cannot absolutize specific laws as applicable to everyone. It depends. I guess that is how the Bill of Rights began.  This is also why God does NOT share judgment with us. Only God may judge. Thanks be to God. 

In the beginning God created "original mixed"—my own bottom line for all this squabbling. Institutions have a very hard time making general rules or dogmas because they represent and legislate for so many different and varied members, without considerations.  It depends. 

The Episcopal Church does quite well with trying not to absolutize or dogmatize its canons, and yet the good old C of E (Church of England) just voted against allowing their clergy to officiate at same sex marriages, even though of course no individuals are condemned or rejected. And of course clergy may bless anyone. Such sleight!

*  *  *  *

I recommend the late Brian Doyle’s (1956-2017) Eight Whopping Lies and Other Stories of Bruised Grace. It takes the galloping energy of a poet who cares deeply for his faith to speak of unjust institutional biases with radical honesty and with faith. Bruised grace AND bruised faith. 

Doyle, former editor-in-chief of Portland Magazine, journal of Portland University, Portland, Oregon, cited eight classic lies as examples:  1) This won’t hurt a bit. Said with the large novocain-filled needle hidden at his or her side.  2) It is a peacekeeping operation. The alternative word is WAR!  Human sacrifice is alive and well. 3) My campaign is all about family values. “No it isn’t. If that were the case, why are there fifteen million American children who don’t have enough to eat today?” 4) God is on our side.“No, he isn’t, or she isn’t, and how incredibly foolish to even assign human gender to something we all admit is so unimaginably epic that any shred of claim to knowledge let alone intimacy is lunatic, not to mention murderous.” 

May we move our conversations from judgment to mercy and condemnation to encounter.  AMEN.  

2022.11.27 ADVENT—Woes Begotten and Be-Gone, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The season leading up to the birth of Christ is called Advent, derived from Latin ad + venire (to come). Something worth noting is coming up. Even waiting can make one’s soul tingle, anticipating even God!  

Sadly, Advent often gets run over by the sin of buying, shopping, shoving, crowding, crowing. Sin is whatever separates us from the goodness in ourselves, God and our neighbors. Preoccupation with over-shopping blinds us to this goodness. 

In this country we’ve overstuffed ourselves, offered thanks, and now head for a shopping day we nervously call Black Friday—now extended for weeks.  We also have witnessed  SEVEN days of SEVEN mass murders—one per day. We have witnessed world starvation and weather events of mass destruction. We are traumatized. What will bring hope and healing? 

Can collective prayer be a "weapon"? Dare we openly, out loud, barrage the God we usually thank and praise with a prayer assault, a prayer war? Love, divine and human, is best of course, yet how much Love is too much Love before it becomes empty of truth? I don’t know. 

Apparently neither does Jesus who, in the face of fear and questioning about ongoing apocalyptic chaos, says: “I don’t know. No one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, only the Father.”  (Mt.24:36) I find this harsh truth oddly comforting. I cannot know exactly why trauma and tragedy and unbearable loss happen, even if I can exactly describe and analyze the circumstances. So I live at the edge of unknowing. No one is ever condemned by God for wanting to know, for simply giving up, for wavering in faith, longing to know, or taking one’s own life. 

*  *  *  *

Once upon a time this lonely boy met this lonely girl. In their loneliness they found love. In the love they had found fun and laughter and marriage which, in the 1960s, meant they had to play house—he to work for money and she to home to cook and clean. Years went by. They had their money and their beautiful children, but they no longer could see each other clearly through the dense mist of fear and tears that—slowly slowly— had settled around them. They turned away from each other, said goodbye to each other, to the love they once had and would never forget, but reinvested it in their children and in new love.  

*  *  *  *  

I wonder if this is what Jesus’s followers did when they remembered that he once told them that the world as they knew it would come to an end, never be the same, and no one knew exactly when, why or how, except God who is silent.  

I’m annoyed but not depressed or helpless. I’ve been tempted to choose atheism or feign weak agnostic faith, but damn it, I can’t. Woe is me. And so I pray.  

Prayer will be my weapon, instead of knowledge. Prayer will be my faith-of-unknowing.                   

 

2022.06.26 In The Beginning? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The biblical story of Creation portrays a God who created, giving spiritual birth to humanity in the divine image. The only “rule” God set was the only “rule” humanity disobeyed: Just don’t eat of this one tree or you will open the door for evil alongside good in the world. Simple, right? Let’s check out if God is just being parental. One bite won’t hurt. Follow your bliss. It was HER idea. Turns out God was being loving not judging. This mythic story continues to be re-enacted over and over. It turns out we all have control issues. 

And again. 

The Supreme Court just ruled that the constitutionality of rights secured for 50 years by the Roe V. Wade ruling was, yes, unconstitutional. Make no mistake, this ruling is about women, none of whom get pregnant alone, some of whom get pregnant not by choice but by immaturity or crime. All of them are held responsible for the consequences of their putative “sins”, and many suffer abandonment, poverty, racial bias, classism, and ill health. Oh yes, others are condemned in the name of God as well.  

I think of the biblical story in the New Testament (John 7:53-8:11) about the woman brought to Jesus for condemnation. She has been accused of adultery. Assuming the accusation is true, did she commit this act all by herself? Jesus famously bends over and writes something in the sand. What he wrote no one knowe The crowds bellowed for her execution by stoning. Jesus rises and challenges the crowd:  “The one among you who is without sin may cast the first stone.” The crowd disperses—each heading home carrying their “toys.”  The woman is told to go and sin no more. 

Was it a “sin” to be a woman? Well? She didn’t commit adultery alone or get pregnant alone. As to what Jesus wrote in the sand, I bet he wrote: “So where’s the guy?” 

*  *  *  *  

This statement below was posted on June 24, 2022, by Kathleen McCartney, the President of Smith College, a woman’s college and my alma mater. There are many concerns and fears generated by the Supreme Court’s decision, and one of them of course is higher education, especially women’s education. 

“Today the Supreme Court issued its ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case. As reported by The New York Times, “the decision, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years, will lead to all but total bans on the procedure in about half of the states.” Decisions about reproductive rights are now relegated to the states, which will exacerbate inequalities in access to reproductive healthcare. In the words of Gloria Steinem ’56, “medical needs should not be distributed geographically. They're way too distributed by class and economics as it is because we don't have national health care as we should. And this makes it far worse for the female half of the population.”

In an amicus brief in support of Jackson Women’s Health Organization, economists noted that “there is a substantial body of well-developed and credible research that shows that abortion legalization and access in the United States has had—and continues to have—a significant effect on birth rates as well as broad downstream social and economic effects, including on women’s educational attainment and job opportunities.” Research in the years since Roe v. Wade became law has shown that access to abortion increased the probability that young women finished college by nearly 20 percentage points and entered a professional occupation by nearly 40 percentage points; it also found that teen motherhood was reduced by 34% and teen marriage by 20%.”

*  *  *  *

I am not in favor of abortion. Nor am I in favor of pro-life arguments that claim to save the life of the fetus but fail to consider all other lives, especially the mother’s life as one of those lives to consider in the pro-life arguments. I am in favor of LISTENING to many stories told by women about their experiences. I am in favor of compassion all round, in church and state. I am in favor of lobbying the Congress to codify Roe v. Wade so it becomes federal law, not to be regulated by states with wildly different moral and religious cultures. I bet that’s what Jesus would do. President Biden agrees, too—not about Jesus necessarily, but about restoring the rights and choices Roe v. Wade secured.   

As far as I can figure, women and men are equal by Constitution, by Democracy AND equal under the rule of law, AND equally created by a Creator-God who gave a nod to the other tree in the garden, the Tree of Life—abundance of food and life for ALL living things. Here is an image that depicts this forgotten Tree of Life God placed in Eden. 

*  *  *  *

Personal Stories

 

In my  ministry and in my counseling, I have sat, on more than one occasion, with a young teen who is pregnant, in tears, and terrified. She has no money. She looks forward to higher education and to pursuing her dream vocation. She is not equipped to take care of a child. She is afraid to tell her parents, and certainly her very Catholic boyfriend. She feels condemned and all alone. I have helped such children make decisions, choices each could live with. And I helped one girl find a doctor who helped her abort.  

And once I sat with an older woman who, in midlife, confessed her earlier abortion and sobbed with grief over the loss of her unborn child, a son, she felt sure, whom she had named. I listened with compassion. Further, I suggested that we could baptize this unseen, unborn son. She looked at me in amazement and then knew this was exactly the right thing, the right kind of absolution if you will. So she held her invisible son while I consecrated water and baptized him in the name of God. I think I have never presided over a holier baptism. 

May we begin again, please. And may we remember that God is not a gracious puppeteer but a gracious indweller. 

 

2020.10.25 Scared Sinless

We "Whities" seized dominance with vigor, vengeance, veracity
We consumed everything within our reaches—and more.
We—voraciously and stingily— gobbled up
    all land
    all healthcare
    all money
    all goodly resources
    all power—and made it male
           
At first our status gave us
    pride, joy, glory
Then denial, ignorance, lassitude.

Now we are dying
    in droves,
        droves.

The Beauty of the Earth
    dims
    blurs
    dwindles.

We are quick to say wild animals—some human—have invaded,
        BUT
It is we—we—who have invaded their living space. We. Us.

We are scared to death
    ashen.
On knees we pray, and pray, with all that makes quiver our minds.

There is only one solution—one.
    Forgiveness?
    Too slippy slippery

No, we must actually love our neighbors as ourselves.

This cannot be lame lip service, a nod to Biblical aspirations.
    NO.
It must run deep into the veins of our heart.
We must get to know, not just love, our neighbors.

Known and unknown,
    always the one commandment.
        
Bidden or not, neighbors are here.

Moses legislated the politics
Jesus summarized the vision
Paul made it unconditional
Parental figures taught the young
   repeatedly taught and told and taught
the only one—just one behavior
    crucial
        necessary
            indispensable
            
               SHARE.

2020.06.07 Trinity Sunday

Today, for Christians, is Trinity Sunday. To keep it simple, Trinity means Diversity within Unity, neither compromising the other— all of it divine.

The Trinity is a vision to emulate, especially at this time in the United States of America—a time when we are struggling to be united and free of our original and ongoing sin of rank-ordering our common humanity according to skin color, sexuality, social class, ability, political leanings, mental health, or religious preferences. We are murdering each other, thanks to this sin-sick practice.

I do not need to rehearse the events in history or just last week; nor do I need once again to remind us all about the purposeful misinterpretation of the Creator’s charge to humanity to care for all creation. Dominion does not mean domination, unless rank-ordering is the ethic, a practice that destroys Oneness, Diversity and Goodness.

As a therapist and spiritual director and priest I know that deep wounds interrupt the flow of Life itself. There are many ideas out there about what America’s wounds are. Racial injustice tops the list right now. I agree, yet I think the deeper wound is that we Americans are afraid.
    -afraid of ourselves
    -afraid of each other
    -afraid not to be great
    -afraid to be great
    -afraid to weep rather than shout,
    -afraid even to touch our wound.

Slowly, yet deliberately,
I touch the painful place.
I don’t know why;
I just need to.

Is there a strange kind of comfort in acknowledging the
pain?
The wound?

Strangely, the rollercoaster slows.
I hear the words,
“Pay attention. This is your life. This is Sacred.”

                                     
Mary Ann Bigelow, Spiritual Director, above words first published in 
Presence, International Journal of Spiritual Direction, March, 2020

To heal our wound we—together— must touch it, hallow it, give it belonging, a voice, bless it, talk about it in conversation, pray it, make it holy.  This is spiritual intelligence. This is Trinity.

P.S. Happy 86th Wedding Anniversary, Mom and Dad. 

2019.03.24 Why Church?

In Lent we’re invited to reflect on things that matter, not on every little sin we keep on committing and committing—and once again commit. I define sin simply as whatever separates you from the goodness of God —in God, in yourself and in your neighbor. One of my sins is to be too pushy about my considered opinions, most all of which I adore and consider indispensable

This morning I told my beloved spouse that, although I’d exercised my senior exemption from fasting, I decided to fast from being ornery and bossy toward him. He said: “Don’t do that. I won’t know you’re here.” We laughed.

When one of us gets too high-falutin, the other fights back defensively, and BOOM, we’re disconnected. Then we confess and laugh and kiss, and BOOM, we’re reconnected—over and over. 

One of the things we tussle about is the Church. We have both been professional “churchies” for years. The Church seems, in many places right now, to be failing, or are we failing it? We do not settle our questions of course, but we go to Church regardless. Why? What IS the Church? What is it for? What is its unique raison d’etre? How is it different from so many things that call for our attention, some of which we’d rather be doing?

I’d like to say the Church exists to offer forgiveness for the repetition compulsion called sin. But every family knows and often exercises that function well enough. Why Church?

Is the Church about social justice?—all the rave just now. Well, in part, but not really. Anyone who is civic-minded and inclines toward activism for good causes does social justice. It’s central to the current penchant for humanism—the new true religion. Why Church?

Is the Church a building—preferably on Main Street front and center? Partly, yes. It is easy to get attached to a lovely setting, one in which you have felt safe, have experienced the love and grace of God, not to mention the pastoral care of a priest, many prayers, and those colors sparkling in the sun through stained glass. But God is not a building, though God may be felt in a building. On a religious retreat years ago, I sat enjoying a good meal. Suddenly I looked at my watch and realized I wanted to get to the chapel before dark for my meditative prayer time. I thought “I’m late for church.” Immediately, I laughed at myself, realizing: I AM in Church. And the Church is in me.

Is the Church for community?  Well, yes, but not really. We can find community in many ways, and people do because it’s naturally human to make and gather a community of concern and a team to pursue mutual interests and activities—to belong. Twelve-step recovery communities are an excellent example of intentional communities of support for wellness.

Why Church? 

My answer is that the Church is unique because the Church worships: shows reverence and adoration for a deity, a power both beyond and within ourselves, either individually or collectively. The Church is the BOOM. It offers structured liturgies, rites, rituals practices that re-enact the basic passages of human life—connected in God. I speak of the Christian Church but I know all religions offer similar rites, rituals, sacraments across a lifetime.

In Church you ae lifed—birthed in a font-womb, baptized into God with Christ.

In Church you are fed, brought to a long dining table-altar with the rest of your family. You may be an infant who doesn't take solid food so the priest blesses you; sometimes a tiney fingertip of wine is placed into your mouth. You sleep like a baby—well fed.

In Church you hear lots of music—lullabies cradle you and zestful praise awakens you. You learn some songs yourself in a choir.

In Church you absorb the divine into your flesh—over and over again.

In Church you get to pray, silently or aloud, feeling your sins and sorrows—getting forgiven over and over. You get to say I am sorry and I love you to God and to other worshipers, silently or aloud. Sometimes you get a hug.

In Church you are remembered after you die with prayers, hymns, and sweet words that soak your soul in the security of eternality.  No one forgets you. Neither does God.

In Church you re nurtured from birth to death in wonder, love and praise—over and over.

That’s why Church. Worship is as important as other things you do to take care of yourself. All living things in Nature worship without much help—naturally. We humans? We’re more needy and complicated—mysteries on our own. BOOM, we need Church. 

2016.04.17 Oceanic Wisdom Of Islam in Easter

“The mercy of Allah is an ocean. Our sins are a lump of clay clenched between the beak of a pigeon. The pigeon is perched on the branch of a tree at the edge of that ocean. It only has to open its beak.”
        from Minaret, a novel by Leila Aboulela

I love this image of the Divine Being named Allah. It’s in the first small chapter of Aboulela’s novel about Najwa, a Muslim girl from an aristocratic family who has been displaced from Khartoum, Sudan, as was Aboulela, and exiled in the wake of a 1985 military coup. Najwa struggles to adjust to the bustling urbanity of London where she cleans the houses of people who live as she used to live. The minaret in a nearby mosque becomes a symbol of hope and the hijab Najwa had eschewed at home, a garb of pride—and protection.

Minaret is a book about the power of religious symbols and traditional practices to be sturdy steadying anchors—assurances of divine compassion in any storm.

I can identify. When nothing makes sense and I have no sight, I perch, like the pigeon, in a pew, or before my home altar, on the edge of my bed or on a park bench, open my beak, and howl. Aboulela (left) is more quietly passionate.

Some days I feel like the ocean itself—vast and open and also glutted and sated with my own and everyone else’s shipwrecks stored up in my depths. Some days I’m like the pigeon staring into the ocean from a safe perch. I want to call out, assert my presence, but my "beak" is stuck in  mushy lumpiness. That’s what I feel like when I am mired in my own sin: the fear of being too exposed, too intimate, too transparent. The fear disconnects me from trusting goodness—in God, myself and others.

Aboulela’s image of sin as clay reminds me of the gray clay we used in kindergarten—all wet and squishy like mud. Our small fingers plunged deeply into the tough clay. It was like a jihad, which in Islam is the spiritual struggle within oneself against sin. I worked strenuously on my lump of clay to mold it into something that looked like something appealing that I could then put in the kiln to dry and take home to present to my parents. All of my great sculptures looked like turtles with longish legs. My mother adored every one, with a little too much adulation. My father stupidly asked what it was. It was a horse, of course! Whatever its identity, my offering fell graciously into the ocean of mercy.

My primary care physician, a Sufi Muslim named Noor, recommended Aboulela’s novel to me. In between listening to my chest for wheezes, taking my vitals, and recording my list of symptoms, she tells me where to go to enjoy the food she loves and recommends things to read. I return the favor. Noor is as sure of herself medically as she is about ethnic foods, spiritual books, and her absolute trust in Allah. Her trust in the unfailing compassion of Divinity is one-way and absolute. Mine is more two-way, favoring a co-creative process between humanity and divinity. Her husband, she says, would agree with me.

Noor, like Najwa in Aboulela's book, draws strength from her infallible faith in the oceanic Allah. Her trust is unswerving and never breaks, no matter the hardships of life on earth. My faith strengthens me, too, as the mercy of God, my Allah, participates with me, to mold my “clay"—even unto death. 

Either way, we both end up in the ocean where nothing is ever lost. Everything is nicely salted and preserved—forever. That is the most merciful outcome I can imagine.

2012.07.29 Dream On?

I dreamed a lot as a kid, day and night, always about things I wanted to do or be or accomplish. I was lucky enough to have enough happiness, enough creativity and imagination, and enough intelligence to dream—and read many books.

After the fairy princess/ballerina/moviestar phase,  I settled into the dream of having children and being a mother. The children made my dreams. Then I discovered no one paid for motherhood or gave it much recognition, so I thought it would be better to be a man. That one didn't last long, but I did invade the sanctuary of an all-male profession, priesthood, and discovered it wasn't that much fun to be a parish "Father"—too lonely.

Every dream I've had I've worked hard to help along, revise and tweak, and get help with.

We all dream dreams. It's what keeps us alive and vital. Even on my death bed I bet I'll be conjuring heaven and dream of meeting God and Jesus.


America was founded on a dream: liberty and justice and land, land, land. It was once bright and shiny and inviting— available to all citizens. Now it has turned to pablum spooned out by the unawares, the power-hungry, the ignorant, and the too-busy-scraping-basic-livelihood-together-to-notice.

Liberty has turned into license and arbitrary violence. Justice is an illusion because there is no peace on our streets. And land has morphed into private property that includes trophy homes and gated communities where we get isolated and insulated and mistake it for individual freedom. 

The Occupy Movement of 2011 raised awareness about classism and increasing economic inequity, which means less mobility. Less is available to a greater number of citizens than ever before. 99% of us is falling fast out of the amenic middle class. It scares me to read about it but I am able to live comfortably enough not to really feel it.

Paul Krugman in his NY Times commentary on Jan 16, 2012, Martin Luther King day, wrote: “Mitt Romney says that we should discuss income inequality, if at all, only in “quiet rooms. There was a time when people said the same thing about racial inequality. [They said it about gender inequality, too, and still are.] Luckily, however, there were people like Martin Luther King who refused to stay quiet. And we should follow their example today. For the fact is that rising inequality threatens to make America a different and worse place — and we need to reverse that trend to preserve both our values and our dreams.”

Has our so-called dream become a lie?

Maybe we need to focus less on owning homes and more on being at home together.

Loneliness is a first sign of the waning of a dream.  Are Americans lonely? 

I'm lucky not to feel loneliness much, in part because I'm an introvert, and in part because I have a spouse I like. We convene the day and the evening together.  And my dream of getting a memoir published, though dim, isn't extinguished. 

Also I have a church community, a bunch of people who come together weekly to pray, sing, learn, and gather around a table to eat blessed food, after which they gratefully move to another no less sacred space to drink coffee or lemonade and eat "tapas."

The Christian church has a dream, of a God whose spaciousness knows no bounds. We learned it from Jesus. We try to practice the vision, yet sometimes we are too isolated in our own ways and community that, just like the nation, we forget to dream beyond ourselves. To complicate matters the church has gotten allergic to much if any mention of sin, awareness of the dreams of others. 

Israel, like America, had, still has, a dream. Call it a home of your own.  It's less about ownership than it is about identity, meaning, self-governance, and healing a long history of displacement, persecution, execution, and being scapegoats. I asked a young rabbi once why Jews kept getting blamed, almost no matter what happens.   “It’s because we’re exclusive, think we’re special,” he said.  Well, my God, listen to the braying of some Christians!  And some Americans!

But once Jews got their homeland in 1948 their homeland security politics have run wildly beyond security.  Palestinian land has been seized; refugee camps are established with curfews and locked gates; moving from place to place requires going through checkpoints, some of them now “flying” (you don’t know where they will pop up); mountaintop surveillance station feeling like”big daddy;” Palestinians who dream of a return to their land,  elected a terrorist regime Hamas: and worst of all a Wall of Separation, the amen to mutual loneliness. I saw it and wept.

I asked a local politician, a liberal one, about U.S. Israel/Palestine policy. I received a firm reiteration of our alliance to Israel and a justification of military power tactics as "maintaining a qualitative military edge."

Are we as appallingly ignorant of the spaciousness of our own dreams as we are of Israel/Palestine's?

The feeling of threat, whether real or imagined, kills the soul and with it the land.  Sin is as organic as love; it multiplies.

Israelis are, once again and understandably, afraid. So are Americans. So are Palestinians. So am I. I pray daily that God, who created land and leased it to humanity as blessing, will transform the hearts and minds of leaders and people ( it doesn’t matter which comes first)  from fear to humility.
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Either dreams are not a good idea at all, except in sleep, or we need help to listen to and respect the dreams of our neighbors, far and near. 

Our Jewish next-door neighbor, the one who is a beautiful singer and who has never been to Israel,  came over to sing a Christian liturgical chant she’d prepared for us as a send off on our Israel pilgrimage.

Yes!  Dream on.