2025.08.03 SPIRITUALITY 101, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

As I look out my window and stare at the natural beauty all around us, I wonder how much the divine Creator appreciates this particular piece of art?

The way many of us treat our beloved earth, the way we too often treat each other with scorn or neglect, and our financial excesses, all cause me to wonder.  If I could I would sign up for yet one more academic class in Art 101, Music 101, or World Literature 101. AND I would start a new course called Spirituality 101. 

Oh, how unbearably trite, and yet…………….what is it that makes your very soul ache or your mind go blank even as you feel  surges of joy?  ALL AT ONCE!

The entire display of Creation is at risk, and it is the most beautiful gift Divinity ever gave us. Do you know this? The Earth all by itself is at risk, and it is the most beautiful gift Divinity gave us. Do we know this? The Earth all by itself has charisma—grounded charisma. Charisma derives from a Latin word for kharis which means favor or grace.

In ancient biblical tradition, the patriarch of all things spiritual, Abraham, asks, then begs the Creator for this gift—a better understanding of the divine mind. God ignores Abraham’s begging as a good parent ignores a child’s pleading for just one more cookie—pleeze, puleeze.

This is how I feel these days when I pray and get confused between what I want, what someone else wants, what supposed experts say they want, and what I THINK God might want. Then I create a prayer and make a choice—with hope. 

2024.03.17 Potentiation. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, 3/17/24, blog post

 

Above is my home altar, a great messy array of memories and images—all iconic to me.

Most everything you ever wanted to know about God is in Genesis, anyway. It’s the beginning of a very long story in a book called The Holy Bible—ancient and still a best seller. It’s not “holy” because it’s so old.  It’s not even holy because the Christian Jesus is in there, or the Jewish Moses, or even big bang theories. No, it is holy because your story is in there, too.

*  *  *  *

It was 1978, my first day as a student at Yale Divinity School. I sat in a huge lecture hall, loaded with tumultuous emotions—guilt, fear, joy, anxiety—great expectations!  I was supposed to be a traditional stay-at-home mother, not a forty-year-old woman in a huge lecture hall, wondering about having an affair, or who Jesus was, really, really, or who God might be, when suddenly a loud deep voice from the podium announced: “In the beginning (pregnant pause) God potentiated . . .” 

Potentiated?  

I wrote that word down. It was not the word the professor used; nor does it appear anywhere in Genesis or anywhere in the Bible. It was the word I heard. 

Where did this word come from? I didn’t know then, I don’t know now. Nor did I know just how potent it would become in my life, or just how painful it could be, or just how much personal truth it held for me. God or not God, potentiation exploded inside me. I sat up straight and listened.

I’m tech-savvy now so I “Googled” this word. It has to do with the potency of Being itself, whether it is found in material or spiritual beings. Courtesy of Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle of course.  

I’m aging. I talk to God all the time as I always have. I don’t expect “answers.” I just watch for potentiation—tiny or huge bursts of Being itself. It just happens. It’s an experience, not to be evangelized from any single point of view.

*  *  *  *

I live in a retirement community. A young woman, CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) specializes in shower assistance as needed. Nothing fancy, but when you can’t get about without a walker, and when the shower seat is “miles” away from the water source, and when you’re stark naked and shivering, well, you need expert help. 

My shower was refreshing and lovely. I memorized the process and taught my live-in help/spouse. 

The after-shower conversation I had with my CNA, however, brought mutual potentiation.  After the shower I “walkered” into my office to my comfortable swivel chair.  She followed and sat on a small rocker from which we removed two stuffed owls and a stuffed pink “valentine cupcake” of sorts. She wrote her official notes and I swiveled round in my computer chair.  We sat facing my home altar at which I hope to kneel again sometime. It was designed and hand-carved, a gift from one of my daughters and her husband, a professional wood-worker. It is carved from good maple wood, about the measurements of a door lying flat, and it is polished to a sheen. On it rests my entire prayer life. Underneath it is written a date, and an inscription of love from my daughter and the artist, Pete. 

“What are these?” my shower aide asked, pointing to two small multi-colored striped triangle-shaped pins. They symbolize support for the Pride movement, celebrating the many different expressions of human sexuality GLBTQI.  

“Oh. We don’t allow that where I come from.”  

I chuckled. My altar array represents my family, my church, my culture, my favorite images of God, a crucifix, and most of my sins. All holy. I then  asked her if she thought the great and loving Creator of all of us cared equally for all of us, even with our differences?  She pondered a bit then shook her head Yes. YES!

In that small moment we potentiated the image of God.    

2023.07.30 Leavening The Soul, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Sometimes, the smallest seemingly insignificant acts implant the most enormous transformations in the least expected places.  

According to Andrew McGowan, Dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, parables are not what they seem, and words changed to fit the modern ear may not evoke the spiritual power that Jesus desired. The word “yeast” used in the story of the woman who baked bread is better translated as it would have been in the ancient times, as leaven. Leaven is a sourdough starter. McGowan suggests that we read this parable when we’re actually hungry. Even as I write this my mouth waters and I check the clock to see if it’s dinner time yet? And too, I feel my heart pumping with eager hope. 

Take the story of the woman who leavens her bread with a pinch, and it suddenly swells, enough to feed not only the body but the family, and the soul. Well, I bet if you read these little stories of Jesus when you’re really hungry, any reference to good food, not gourmet or fancy but basic, makes your mouth water, and your heart leap with hope. 

Think of this tiny rising as a prayer, and remember that the outsized God we often envision comes most often in very small pinches of joy and truth—leaven for the soul.

                                        *  *  *  *

I just listened to the the Smith College 2023 commencement speech by Rashma Saujani, younger than my youngest child, attorney, author, politician. She leavens the huge gathering of female grads and guests. She says that there is no such thing as “imposter syndrome” because women are not imposters. 

And furthermore, the strong ongoing resistance to our equality is “not because there’s something wrong with us, it’s because there’s NOT.” 

Now that’s good leaven!

Here’s a tiny story about leaven that happened in my own kitchen over 50 years ago. I remember it as if it were yesterday. It still leavens my heart. When my youngest son was about three, he and his cousin decided to create a “wedding” in front of our house. For authenticity, they bit off all the newly risen tulips and strewed the petals all over the lawn. Such a wedding!!  

I knew that we parents had labored hard to plant and nurture these tulip bulbs to adorn our barren hillside. When they came up we were thrilled.“Daddy” would be furious when he came home that evening and found the tulip disaster. I’d reprimanded our son already and, like any good mother would, put extra wads of night diapers on him as we awaited the father’s homecoming. 

When Dad came in the door, already fuming, his tiny youngest son ran (waddle-toddled) to meet him. He stood, hesitated, and looked up at his father with the sweetest look I’ve ever seen, and said. “I love my daddy.”   

Even the weeniest leavening softens the heart, and signals the presence of God. 

Racing for Life/Slowing for Life, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 6/11/23

Are we racing to catch up with God? Or, is God racing to catch up with us? Either way, we are usually moving too fast, possibly fueled by anxiety, a very efficient fuel when we were young. And now?  

Small boys and big boys love their cars. Speed, control, daring, and too often crippling and death. 

Jesus is remembered as falling asleep in the midst of a storm when the winds kicked up and the boat wobbled, threatening to capsize? How come he says fear not at such moments?  Does he overdo that message of assurance, advice to trust in God when beset with life’s many “waves”?  How can he imagine that forgiveness of our sins matters when all we need is a good car, cautious teenagers, and a paid mortgage? 

It’s antimony—a truth that defies logic. 

Just remember the little paper plate cars you loved that empowered you. Yes, this energy is still in you, around you, above you, and beneath you, as close to you as your own heartbeat. Listen up. Keep on keeping on. Inside, be the boy with his toy cars. Keep driving, beloved.

Boys and Their Cars

Why do boys love cars?

ejective—boom

projective—zoom

propulsive—vroom

I’ve wondered about this a lot.

Could be anatomy

or e’en the academy

But no.

It’s love on wheels.

It’s speed on speed

It’s vrooming

Zooming

Vroom vroom with paper plates

sweeping clean the kitchen floor

Zing zinging with Matchbox minis

Panicked cries when one goes missing

Is there more?

Ah yes,

it’s freedom beckoning

warring duty’s reckoning

There is more, my love,

Just round the bend.

No hurry

Keep driving 

2022.10.23 Naked Humility, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I’m spiritual, not stupid.  

You know this story in the Bible (New Testament Luke 18) about these two guys in the same holy Temple—both praying. One’s a Pharisee, respected religious leader of his day. The other’s an unpopular tax collector. Already we’re into stereotypes. It’s a set up. 

Then we listen in on each one’s prayers. The Pharisee thanks God that he is so holy and rich and lofty and so much better than the other scum of a guy. The other just asks for God’s mercy to forgive him all his sins. Now which guy do you think gets points for humility? Right, the sobbing sinner.  What think you?

Well, it’s in the HOLY BIBLE, you whine. So yes, we take it seriously—but not stupidly. 

Both of these praying men tell God exactly how they feel. Both of them tell the truth, the inmost truth. Neither lies. I’m grateful for all my wealth and hard work and disgusted at this other poor slob who is crying for mercy all the time, says the Pharisee. I’m scared and worried all the time that I’m unworthy, worthless, and unpopular. No one likes me, even God, says the tax collector.  

Both prayers are emotionally honest. And both are humble if that means simply telling yourself and God exactly what’s on your mind—your truth, your truth right now. That’s not easy to do. Prayer is come-as-you-are. To stand naked of soul before God is humble, even if what you say gets condemned by yourself or others, and you decide that such condemnation is of God. It’s not. Judgments, positive or negative, imposed from without, even those put into the mouth of Jesus, as Luke does for his own purposes here, cause us to feel either superior or inferior. That’s not God’s assessment. It’s ours. Simply so.

Be spiritual, not stupid. 

Neither beg nor brag, just be. 

Stand naked of soul before God. 

2022.02.13 I Saw It On The Playground. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 2/13/22

One of my own happiest memories from growing up in Manhattan was the daily trip to the Central Park playground at 94th Street. To my delight, there in our North Cambridge neighborhood just blocks away from where we lived for the first ten years of our retirements, was the “queen” of all playgrounds, Danehy Park, a 55-acre park named after a former mayor. Not only is it spacious, with several athletic fields, three tot lots for young children, walkable paths throughout, with benches along the way for chats or rest, and of course a sprinkler, because there must always be water play for cooling off and wild splashing. 

I loved to walk over to the park, sit on a bench, watch kids play on swings, slides, and climbing devices, witness the occasional spill, rejoice with their exuberant shouts, often in several languages, for praise: “Look at me, Daddy, Papa, Auntie, Grandma” as their small legs pedaled trikes at astronomic speeds. Play that includes daring challenges like monkey bars is essential for the souls of children, if somewhat nerve-wracking for parents or caretakers. Probably the most frequently heard adult shout to a child was: “Be careful!! You’ll get hurt if….”  Hurt happened, yowling in pain happened, bloody knees and noses happened, even the occasional spat about whose turn it might be. Without exception, some kind of rescue, comfort, arbitration happened as well. I did not see much scolding, lecturing, shaming, or punitive consequences. The kids were comforted, cleaned up, and off they sprinted right back to play exactly as they had been—not a single warning heeded. And often children themselves stopped their games to make sure a playmate who fell was okay. I also saw gracious sharing of food. I mean most kids know what to expect in their lunch bags, they know what their own preferred adult would have prepared for them to munch on. But other parents, of course, made better snacks. One must learn, after all, to develop one’s cuisine—an appreciation for different foods and fluid ethnicity. I’m sure I missed ambulance arrivals and more, but I never saw them. I’m also sure that I am an idealist, yet I will not deny that what I did observe lifted my hope quotient, reinforced my faith in God, and warmed my heart.  

What I saw on the playground was children’s playfulness let loose. There were children of many colors, languages, and cultural or religious dress in this neighborhood. Such diversity must be the gift of this USA, I thought. If only we could honor this gift. If only we could, well, NOT grow up and into the prejudices of our assigned group. No wonder Jesus pointed to a young child and told his followers to be like a child in order to realize the poignant words many of us so glibly, thoughtlessly, pray: “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” 

My limited yet profoundly real experience in this playground led me to think about play as a spiritual gift, a blessing best embodied by young children. I saw mutually enlivening play. I saw such play as proof of the sanctity of Being itself—proof as well that our cherished biases, and all -isms, are not inborn, but they are taught and learned as if they were hard and fast and aggressive social rules—reasons to justify ignorant enmity and war. But they are not present in young children at play. 

 

Mutually enlivening play is a passport to Heaven, understood as a metaphor for complete, all-embracing, no-holds-barred Love. Only in heaven can you ride a trike at Mach whatever. And be caught if you fall by an angel just your size. 

2021.10.10 Can Spirituality Trump Morality?

Sin, by one definition, happens when our own needs cause us to disregard, incorrectly assess, or fail to consider the needs of others. When this happens, individuals, as well as systems, fall into sin. Moral condemnations are made. What happens to Spirituality, that profound inner connection to Soul?

Even ancient biblical writers pondered this question. In the beginning God created everything in perfect order, hunky dory, with only one proviso, one moral restriction. Don’t mess with the tree that will give you both good and evil knowledge. You’ll fall into sin.and your life will be full of both good and evil. You will always be free to choose the good, the evil, or some mixture thereof. Oh, you won’t like the rules and the moral rectitude you think you need to live by, yet you will discover that when you get rigid about this moral effort, you risk losing your own soul’s health, your deep connection with the Love that created you and still re-creates you daily. So good luck. Take with you these clothes to protect you  from the elements, and remember that love triumphs over sin. 

All of us fall into sin, lose “Eden.”  All of us lament, all of us protest, and all of us struggle to re-create “Eden.” All of us hurt ourselves and others in this process.

My first husband and I struggled to be good spouses and good parents. We did what we thought was the right thing, the moral thing, according to the rules of the day and the promises we had made. We tried to stay married and to be good parents for twenty years. Over time we both broke promises, hurt the children, hurt each other. We grabbed for what I am calling our spirituality, our freedom-of-being. The “eden” of our whole loving family fell into sin.

While fulfilling my moral commitment to be a good mother, I’d neglected my own needs. Such imbalances may not be strictly immoral, but they are surely spiritual sin. The tremors from this loss of trust echoed for years. Over years I have been able to make amends, share tears, and make amends. Amends do not correct or re-create, but they can reconnect and heal. 

Institutions, too, fall into sin. The sin of the Institutional Church-Mama, all religions really, has always been the tendency to narrow access to God with rules and moral rigor. Spirituality, the soul-needs of the faithful, gets neglected. Worship does not entirely fill that need or heal that inner longing to know and trust God—Love itself. 

Spirituality can trump morality in the human heart. 

*  *  *  *

“There are as many paths to God as there are souls on earth.” Rumi. 

Rumi (1217-1273) was a Persian poet whose full Arabic name is too long to manage. He was Iranian, and identified as a Sufi Muslim—deeply, mystically committed to the Oneness of God and consequently the oneness of being:  

“On the seeker’s path, wise men and fools are one.”

“In that faith, Muslims and pagans are one.”   

A favorite Sufi parable tells about blind men washing an elephant, each one washing a different part, and each one concluding that the whole elephant can be described and defined by that one part.  We all know how misguided such narrow knowledge is, and yet Rumi compared it to the ways of institutional religions—each one posing as the best, each one too narrow. Rumi, a teacher, spiritual guru, poet, and theologian, did, nevertheless, give primacy to Islam and the Q’uran. A popular saying in Arabic apologizes: “Love, however, has its own many other dialects.” 

American religious scholar/philosopher and one-time professor of religious studies at UC Berkeley, Huston Smith (1919-2016), was born in China and raised in a Methodist missionary family. He devoted his study and life work to bringing the world’s religions together in order to promote understanding, justice, and peace. He said: 

“If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.” 

Although a Christian, Smith had no aversion to taking his “vitamins” from other religions. He wrote: 

“Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the AMA? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion. Religion is institutionalized spirituality.” 

This feels harsh, yet I can see how institutions, even small systems, become fearful and rigid. Families, societies, businesses, nations, religions get corseted by their need for moral rules and regulations, to such a degree that the beauty of personhood itself, not to mention Nature and her ways, gets stifled if not lost. Overbearing moral regulation stifles Love. Morality trumps spirituality. The system falls into sin. 

But do we not need organization? Even Yoga and Twelve Step Recovery are organized. The idea is to pay attention to the rigor, and by your own heart keep it from exploiting those, including yourself, seeking spiritual wholeness. 

  *  *  *  *  

Jesus is remembered as liberator and reformer of systems, both political and religious, that had fallen into sin. The love of God in and for all creation was gasping for air in stifling systems. When Jesus asks a rich young man, sincerely moral and devoted to his faith—upstanding and ambivalent—to give away his wealth to the poor and the hungry, he was calling for systemic change. He was asking for less morality and more spirituality—not chaos without organization, but living breathing space for all Creation.  

All we creatures, great and small

are the heirs of sacred wealth,

and we all, together, live

by the other’s Lasting Health.     (Michael Hudson. Songs for the Cycle, 2004)

2021.08.22 Who Is My God?

The disciples of Jesus asked him more than once what to do, how to do it, whom to trust, and the like. Finally they cave and ask again: To whom should we go, you have the words of eternal truth? We’re still asking.

*  *  *  *  

Do you remember the delighting children’s book called Are You My Mother? by P.D. Eastman about a tiny hatchling bird who hops out of his nest while Mama is off looking for food? The baby can’t fly yet so he walks/hops all over in search of his mother, asking every imaginable critter and object he encounters, even an old car: Are you my mother?  The book of course has a happy (resolved) ending, because all good books do, but I will tell you that the little bird alters his question to resolve his quest.  

I bet lots of people search for God the way the tiny bird searches for his mother—endlessly inquiring in every direction: Are you my God? 

The Church says: No, but people have called me a mother.

The Bible says: Not me, I ask all the same questions

The priest says: Close but no dice, birdie. I’m a man!

The tree says: Not God but God made me, I think. Check my roots.

The Buddha says: Don’t bug me, bird, I’m Oming.

The river says: Not me. I drown people who ask silly things.

The seagull says: Are you kidding, midget? Fly off.

The mountain says: Climb every one of my kind, kid. 

The Christ says: Check with the Father. 

The teacher says: Read another book. 

The psychotherapist says: Think of a time when you felt completely loved as is.

The theologian says: God doesn’t leave you, birdie. Get another God, not Mama.

The agnostic says: I don’t know.

The atheist says: There is no God. Get a grip!

The Virgin Mary says: I’m a virgin, but some think I’m God—gender aside.  

St. Ignatius of Loyola:  Pray and Discern 

The little bird collapses into exhaustion, sobs, and falls into a heap—when suddenly he hears a quiet voice: Try your wings, kid.

  *  *  *  *  

There is much more to finding God than the search alone. After you seek, you ask more and more questions, you find many, many answers. Then you seek, ask, and find more and more answers until you are exhausted. Do all the good you can, go home, look in the mirror, grin—and trust. 

2021.05.02 Very First Things

The biblical story in Acts about Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch is fantastically sci-fi and charged with spiritual energy. It’s an Easter story, acknowledging earthly life in full with heavenly life alongside. Philip runs into this eunuch, an Ethiopian court official in charge of the palace treasury no less, on the road. The eunuch by chance is reading a passage from the prophet Isaiah and doesn’t understand its meaning until Philip explains. The passage is fierce, all about sheep led to slaughter making no protest at all, humiliated and facing death soon. Such a God!  Philip leaps in with the the Good News of Jesus Christ, and the ecstatic eunuch leaps into a quickie roadside baptism administered by Philip who then vanishes.

Instant Christian conversion has not been my experience, yet I can understand the sudden burst of energy that accompanies a brand new awareness—irresistible so you leap or plunge.

I can identify with this eunuch a bit. When I was a child I sought to flee too much positive attention, while the eunuch sought to flee too much negative attention. There is something shaming about too much attention period, unless that attention is unconditional love—Godlike.  

I thought my spiritual story began at three under that dining room table, but in fact there’s a prequel. I’ve recently “unearthed” my baby book called “Tot to Teens,”written by my mother who, thrilled with my existence after several miscarriages, went overboard with her praise. I’m really not that great!  

My mother recorded EVERYTHING!  
    -first words Mmmm, DaDa and Ba—presumably my bottle.
    -seeing across the room at 3 1/2 months
    -played with rattle at 4 months
    -turned 1/2 way over at 4 1/2 months
    -ate prunes and baked apple at 6 months, asparagus tips at 6 1/2 months
    -first shot for whooping cough at 5 1/2 months
    -used the “toidy” after her first time on it at 6 1/2 months
    -crawled at 11 1/2 months
    -walked alone at 13 1/2 months

By two and a half I could button my shoes. I was real “olympian”. Notable: my next “first” words were boy and car.  No comment!

“Talks fluently (no exaggeration) and distinctly at 2 1/2 and can tell what is written in her book on any page from memory and is always right.”  I am delighted to read this prophecy, because I grew up to read and write with great pleasure always.

Equally prescient and humorous is the description of the celebration of my first birthday: “We gave a cocktail party but no babies on Lyn’s 1st birthday.”  There followed a complete list of guests and gifts, including a hot plate for my cereal, a monogrammed silver hairbrush, and a pearl necklace I still have.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My dental record included a diagram in which every tooth was labeled by number in order of appearance. No tooth fairy yet, but there was much concern about my thumb sucking and my front teeth—at 2 years and three months! “She looks like Eleanor Roosevelt.” If they’d only foreseen the orthodontist bills they’d later pay, not to mention my later becoming a Democrat! 

As to pets and playthings I had numerous dolls and animals, including two elephants named Lodie and Lodelot. My favorite was a white cat I named Pussy P’Sandra. I still have her lookalike but I machine-washed her, poor thing, and all her long white “fur” shrunk.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My first birthday party at 3, “wearing a little white dimity dress with a pinafore with red rickrack and red slippers.” My mother thought I was “adorable”—which I might have been, save for photographic evidence to the contrary in black and white. But the shoes are on my home altar. High fashion, right?  

 

 

 

 

As to religion, we were members of the Brick Presbyterian Church where I went to nursery school. “Lyn adores school and has learned the 23rd Psalm and “Onward Christian Soldiers.” I did love school and I do recall being excellent at memorizing—good enough to later reject all those omni-words I realized were inadequate descriptors for God. Who needs a know-it-all God who is also power-hungry!  I did like the choir and the music. Here I am at 6 or 7 in the New York Herald Tribune—my first publicity photo. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 As I write this I feel such sadness. I felt over-mothered and longed to wear dungarees and be free of incessant pinafores. I also knew I was loved, if a bit too attentively. One baby book entry brought tears. It was under the heading, Aptitudes. Mom, who loved to dance and was good at it, had missed her chance to follow her dream. She also wanted to be married with children. Back in the 1940s she couldn’t do both, so she wrote about teaching toddler me to dance: “I taught Lyn to “Truck” “Shag” and “Minuet”. She points her toes very gracefully and has a semblance of rhythm and timing. Is very graceful in nursery school and keeps excellent time to music. I was very proud of her skipping to music on a witches broom stick at the school Halloween party.”

Descriptions of my advancing years in parties, pinafores, and adulations continued till I weighed in at 33 pounds at 4. Then the notations stopped, although the book provided space through 9th grade. I’m sure Mom got too busy with two more daughters and life itself.

Today I can honestly say that I loved my mother, have forgiven our differences, have no pinafore regrets, and, as a mother myself, wish she were here to laugh and cry and dance.