2025.05.18 A WEE SNAKEY STORY ABOUT TRUTH-TELLING, Spiritual Lemons, Lyn G. Brakeman, blog post

I woke up one recent morning with a strange prayer running about in my mind: “Well, dear God, do you dare pray for yourself, or is such an idea preposterous?” I pray for myself. And also with you. Jesus prays for himself, but he’s not female. The Holy Spirit is up for grabs, so to me SHE is feminine. Perhaps SHE IS prayer.

So I guess that praying for oneself is a good practice of holiness, eh? 

These awakening thoughts propelled me first to the bathroom for self-emptying and then back to my warm bed, next to my dearly beloved sleeping spouse. He I know would say, “You think too much!” He is right of course, so I grin and go back to sleep. 

Such is me brief anecdotal story. Story, I conclude, is the building block of faith, not doctrine but true-of-heart story. It is the stories we all remember.

*  *  *  *

The Holy Bible is full of stories. In fact they are the glue, the connecting links. They are not forgettable. These stories are why people love to read memoirs—stories in the flesh. It’s important to notice what or who in a bible story wakes you up. 

When I read Genesis, for example, about the beginning of all Creation I notice, not Adam’s loneliness, nor God’s giving Adam a hot soulmate named Eve, nor the fruit of the tree, likely a pomegranate, because of course Israel is Middle Eastern, thus too hot for apples. 

I DO notice the little snake. I’m not afraid of snakes like my mother who taught me snakes were hostile and poisonous, a curse, especially to women. I did not believe her fear, but instead took note of the snake’s valuable role in this story. This snake curled and coiled around the tree trunk in Eden. This snake told the truth: You won’t die if you eat the forbidden fruit.   

Thus began my sin career. Thus as well began my love for this Creating God who created NOT rules and punishments but truth and freedom. This Divinity created even snakes for truth-telling. This snake made me laugh. She too was there in the beginning. She told the truth. I love this story, and I love the role of Ms. aging snake whose truth-telling is there in the beginning.  

 

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.    

On The Road—Again, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 4/23/23

The biblical story, as reported in Luke’s gospel (24:13-35) about what happened on the road away from Jerusalem and towards Emmaus is a classic story: something so radically outside the realm of our expectations happens that we can’t believe it. We can’t believe our eyes, our ears. These followers of Jesus knew that he had died—dead and gone. 

I remember such a feeling when I saw the bare body of my dead father, his frail bony legs hanging limply over the arms of the big burly funeral director who carried him from his home. I knew he was very sick with esophageal cancer. The surgery to remove the tumor had left him unable to swallow. I knew he was going to die. He was only seventy-one. I knew I’d received a call from my mother early that Sunday morning that “Daddy died.”  I, with my sister and mother, had kept vigil, taking turns for days as my father moved through his dying process. It took nearly a week. I timed his groans— every fifteen minutes as he tossed and turned on the pillow. The nurse said he wasn’t in pain. Was he wrestling with “demons” or himself or God?  I thought I would die from helplessness just listening and counting. I knew my father was dying, yet when I saw him dead I did not believe it. I could not believe it. My love was not ready for this death.

*  *  *  * 

A neutral Jewish historian at the end of the first century reported: “When Pilate, upon hearing him (Jesus) accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemn him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. (from “Overture” The Gospel of Jesus, by scholar John Dominic Crossan.)

Does this mean that these early Christians were stunned by their disbelief as if it were a delusion, or did it mean that some kinds of love never dies? I don’t know. But I do know that Emmaus-like experiences happen all the time. The couple in this Emmaus story left the crucifixion scene and walked along the road, incredulous. Of course they talked, trying to understand the incredible death. The gossip and the wondering ran wild. Who do we believe? How will we know? A stranger came along and asked them what they were talking about. They told him of Jesus’s death, and their incredulity. 

Later that evening they invited this stranger to join them for more conversation and a meal. In the meal, the breaking of the bread, they recognized the meal we now call the Communion/Eucharist, the meal Jesus had told them to keep on doing for remembrance and for ongoing sanctification of Truth. Suddenly, they remembered all they had experienced in their travels with Jesus. Yes, he was dead and yes, he still was alive with them in this meal. Only then did they race back to Jerusalem in high spirits, proclaiming the aliveness of Jesus the Christ/Messiah.  

Crossan wrote: “The symbolism is obvious, as is the metaphoric condensation of the first years of Christian thought and practice in one parabolic afternoon. Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.”  

*  *  *  *

Some time after Dad died I rummaged through his drawers to find some kind of memory. I found his old faded golf sweater. I put it on. Its sleeves hung down well below my hands. I smelled the scent of his cigarettes, poked my fingers into the little holes made in the sweater by cigarette ash. I wore that old sweater on and off for some years, until one day, I knew I would never forget my father and his dumb toxic habits, nor his love for me and mine for him. That day I rolled up the sweater and placed it gently into the trash basket with a gentle pat. My father was dead. My father remains alive in my heart. 

Will I see him again? I don’t know, nor do I much care. Remembering is enough. Loving and writing the memories is enough. Continuing to celebrate the sacramental meal Jesus instituted in God’s name is enough to keep the Love he preached alive—to trust and reenact its potency always.  AMEN. 

2021.06.27 The Mantilla

It’s June—month of wedding joy and blooming fleurs. I find it annoying that the parables Jesus of Nazareth doled out are never, ever pure. Okay, he calms a storm and exorcizes demons, and raises the apparent dead. Yes, BUT, there are still raging storms and death-dealing illnesses, physical and mental. Sometimes I curse this God who loves us all enough not to override the freedom Nature, including human nature, enjoys, a freedom bestowed on the best and the worst of us all. And you never know what kind of freedom you have, or you need, or will need.  

It's still June, therefore:

Dear Coherent Mercy,

Yes, I wore a mantilla at my first wedding. At the urging of my mother, I bought it in Spain where I lived with two families, one in Madrid and another in Santander (now my bank!) over six weeks in the summer of 1960 after my college graduation.  

I loved Spain, fell madly in sophomoric love of course with a young man named Pepe, and cried all the way home on the plane. I truly had no idea who I was or what I wanted, but I had at least been obedient enough to follow my mother’s plans and buy the mantilla in Spain. Spain was Roman Catholicism on steroids, and I knew the mantilla veil had all kinds of religious associations—paternalistic, patriarchal, puristic and prurient, but I was following my mother. Within two years I donned my mantilla and married the boy named Bill back home, walking unsteadily on my father’s steady arm, down, a long church aisle to marry.  I loved Bill,  just not enough to compensate for or extinguish my self-uncertainty.    

After the wedding my mother whisked my dress and the mantilla off to her good friend who had moved to California, so this friend’s daughter could wear it in her wedding. All this happened unbeknownst to me, or at least in a communication so veiled I didn’t get it; or by then I had stopped listening to my mother with both ears. Anyway, mom told me she had sent my dress and mantilla off to the local cleaners to be “preserved” in a sealed “coffin”—cardboard box all its own. It would keep “forever, darling” she told me. Unlike my marriage but who knew that then?

Anyway, years later when I remarried and we were moving from Connecticut to Massachusetts, I retrieved from our attic the box in which my dress was buried and opened it. I screamed. My husband came running. The dress inside the box was eaten alive, the fabric torn, yellowed, shredded as if mice or moths had eaten away at it. On closer examination, I saw that this dress was NOT my dress. AND there was no mantilla at all. Either it got entirely eaten, or God knows. It’s a Miss Havisham kind of story really. I do adore Dickens!

There’s more if you can believe it. Just this year I got a Facebook post from the young woman, still living in California, who wore my dress and mantilla in her own wedding. She sent me pictures of herself in my dress. The mantilla was beautiful on her, more beautiful than I remember it being on me. I’ll have to check. This young woman was a good friend of my youngest sister who died young at aged 34, so we shared memories, and she assured me that her mother, my mother’s friend, had snatched up the dress and mantilla and mailed them back to my mother right after the wedding at which it had made its second appearance. My mother I assumed whisked it off to the cleaner to be “boxed.”

All this is true to my dying day, and I have no idea where my original dress and mantilla are. Luckily, I’m not attached to it and my mother is dead by 22 years—not by my hand. She had self-uncertainty problems too. She had loved me too much to let me be.

Sorry to unload all this on you, my love, but you triggered more story. Is it not stories that keep the world spinning and grinning and alive in this existence of mixed blessings?  The Bible tells us so. And you, Coherent Mercy, manage to cohere all our stories into one and keep us free.  

So, thanks.

Advent IV—Wonder, Wonder, Wonder: How Can This Be?

Advent is the season of anticipatory joy, the season of wonder.  Children are good at wondering.

Advent is nearly over and I am late with this post. Still: I want to remember with you Mary’s first response, the one for which she is less famous. When the angelic vision informed her that she would become pregnant, though a virgin, and bear a son who would be, in today’s lingo a spiritual rockstar, she  said: How can this be? 

Mary’s older cousin Elizabeth, through angelic vision to her priest husband Zechariah, found herself suddenly pregnant in her old age.  Both asked the same thing, and variations thereof, that Mary asked: How can this be? This was her first wonderment.

How can this be? is a wondering question. It is an Advent question and a daily question— both in those days and in these days.

How do we find enough stamina and  courage to carry on when unexpected, startling, confusing and challenging things happen, whether good or not good, tragic or miraculous? We are rendered powerless, and we wonder: How can this be? Where is God? How will I cope? 

One brilliant way we cope is simply to tell a heroic story, personal or communal. Most such stories tell of a God of spectacular reversals. Such stories are remembered and told over and over and they keep us in hope. Everyone has a heroic story. The Bible is full of such stories. We wonder and still say together: How can this be?

Luke's gospel tells the whole story of the birth of Jesus Christ and its prequel. Here’s what Mary did after accepting the inevitable facts of her condition and before marriage or birth: she set out, presumably alone, or at least no escort is reported, to cross the barren hills to visit her cousin Elizabeth. How can this be? Both women believed God was involved somehow, and both were scared in their vulnerable circumstances. The biblical story is called The Visitation. Here is The Visitation icon written by Benedictine nun Sister Marie-Paul. She was born in Egypt of Palestinian origin and Italian descent. She now  lives in a small community of French-speaking sisters near the summit of the Mount of Olives overlooking the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Mary and Elizabeth embraced and talked to each other. They shared all their thoughts and feelings, all of them. This is a common practice women have, often before acting. They get together and talk about the best and the worst. I call my women friends right away when I'm befuddledWhether we agree or not, we listen to each other, and more often than not derive no secure answers, except through the connections we make and the stories we tell, there comes necessary strength to carry on. How can this be? I have no idea.  I wonder.

Children are expert wonderers. Here is a recent and true story of one such child. I dedicate this true little story to a dear friend, a woman whom I have named the stealth evangelist. She is in California now visiting her son and daughter-in-law and their two sons. The oldest is a boy named Jack. He is just six and he loves it when his Grandma reads him stories, mostly because Grandma has  time to reflect with Jack, to have a conversation about the story they read. Many times Grandma has read  Jack a book by Eton Boritzer called What Is God?  The book illustrates in words and drawings the basics of many world religions. All of them have a special prophet/leader/founder. All religions conclude that God is Love. The Christian prophet/founder is Jesus Christ. Jack knows that he is a Christian, but has not been to church much. He wonders—a lot—about this Jesus.

This Christmas Grandma decided to tell Jack that Christmas is when we celebrate Jesus’s birthday. Jesus was born at Christmas.  Jack’s eyes flew open. He looked at Grandma with an expression of wonder and incredulity and said: No!  (Jack’s version of how can this be?)

Jack is on wonder overload now, and Grandma is empowered. They are now reading the biblical story in Luke 2.  Jack wonders about everything, chiefly mangers and angels, and he says: “Read it again, Grandma. Read it again.”