2025.09.07 PRAISE FOR ALL WHO LABOR? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post,

I have always detested this holiday we call Labor Day, not because I do not appreciate people who work hard to make their own living worthy and helpful for all of us, but because of a hymn! 

 “Come Labor On” # 541 in the 1982 Hymnal, The tune name is Ora Labora, written no less by a woman, Jane Laurie Borthwick (1813-1897) in 1859. Another woman, Mary Jo Latham, wrote the laborious lyrics. “Come labor on. Who dares stand idle while all around waves the golden grain, and the Master (boss) nags: “Go work today. . .”

It is a painful text for women who lose their lives and/or their infants when birthing, or for those who for whatever reasons bear no children. It is a horrifying text in times of job shortages and rampant unemployment —not to mention the slavedriver portrait of Divinity. Are you inspired? 

Besides, who claims to know exactly what the divine will is?  There is only one biblically-recorded good outcome of all this forced laboring, and that is in the Book of Ruth, because she, a starving abandoned widow, crawls along the edges of the field and gets to gather up the leftover pickings at the side of the path and thus not starve! Okay YHWH (Yahweh) thanks!

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We live in a residential retirement community—aging as we go. It is not difficult to contact the village office and request some help even to hang a heavy-framed picture. You used to do all this stuff, which in this house meant get my husband to do stuff, but do NOT risk it. Ladders are no longer friendly; neither are hammers. The expression “all thumbs” is serious!! 

Aging in place is one thing, but to try to do it “independently” is quite another. Today I am grateful we have a very good maintenance team,  a very good spouse who is not too proud to admit he’s too old, and a balanced spirituality that steadies my heart.     

2025.06.08 PENTECOSTAL BIBLICAL DISSONANCE, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

If the Holy Spirit is anything it is full of hot air!  

William Brown, Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur Georgia, reminded us all that if the Bible is anything it is off key and filled with dissonance. 

Personally, this is precisely why I do trust the Bible, and its many translations, to leave room for me in it. I can always squeeze my perspectives in, because I do not take every word literally, ipsissima verba, though I take every word seriously.  

Women who experience a call to the sacramental ministry of priest are organized and have been lobbying for ordination in the RC Church for many years, are still hopeful, and still waiting, and still failing to understand precisely why their gender disqualifies them from ordained ministry.

I was at a grandson's college graduation recently. There were many women who have served in executive positions sitting on the platform. 

I also remember the politics and the pressures for a female presidency way back in the 1960s—at an all-women's college no less!!! 

Now I live with my husband at a residential retirement community. The entire administrative staff is made up of women. Let me say that a leadership team that is exclusively female is ALSO not the best model. 

Effective leadership is not either-or, or both-and, regarding gendered pronouns, but rather, it is according to vocational qualifications, educational and experiential qualifications, training, and yes, a deep inner calling, some of us would identify as divinely inspired—none of it bound by gender. 

Thank you, Holy Spirit!  

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!   

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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.  

2023.03.19 Blindness Of One and Of Many, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

 

I never forget journalist Betty Friedan, the woman who in 1963, the year my oldest daughter was born, published her first book The Feminine Mystique. It begins:  "The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the 20th century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night — she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question — 'Is this all?'" 

That question sparked a second wave of feminism in the United States, after the first one led by Suffragettes in the early 20th century under the banner “Votes for Women” brought the painful truth of political lop-sidedness into American life.  Is that all?  Of course not. Friedan’s book would permanently transform the American social fabric and inaugurate a pioneering moment in American history as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century. For me, I wanted my own self-honesty and freedom, and I wanted to stay close to my children and theirs—at once.  

*  *  *  *

I’m in the 21st century now, and with conversations much has healed in my family, and I still have blind spots. I wonder why God is still clad in masculine gender. Is this all? 

What about larger questions? What about all our warrior language about peace? Do we make war for peace? Do we “battle” cancer? Do we call domestic violence, abuse? Do we “hate” or “demonize” or “fear” people in a political party not our own? Is this all?

Just today an anonymous person delivered a package we had ordered to our door. It meant we didn’t have to travel down to the first floor to get it. It was toothpaste! We laughed. Such a small gesture felt so silly and small and wonderful. This is all. 

May we be courageous enough to be open-minded not single-minded. More dependent than independent?

Jesus and a Samaritan woman, as well as Jesus and a man born blind, had conversations that changed both of them, both perspectives, and left both to ponder. Me too.  Is this all?  YES. 

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?” 

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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%.”

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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. 

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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. 

 

2014.09.28 Women Who Talk Too Much?

When I’m in an informal group of women, 2 or 3 but no more than 6 or 7, I notice a phenomenon. It’s enough to die laughing over—or die for.

I only notice it when I stop talking myself and listen—detached from my own thoughts enough to hear the whole.

All the other women talk at once and keep right on talking. It sounds like the proverbial hen or chicken house, but, at closer hearing, it’s not.

Women seem to be able to talk and listen at once. Everyone talks at once, everyone listens and hears at once, and everyone comes away knowing what was said and mostly by whom—and still with her own reflections intact and often enriched or altered by what she has heard. Now that’s amazing! My husband says it's baloney! (He really used another b word.)

It seems to me that the key to this phenomenon is in the breathing pauses. We all do have to breathe after all. Perhaps it is in the breathe that the thread of meaning and content is picked up. How Spirit-uelle.

Of course you might not want to count on such a group in any formal way. Such groups have only one agenda: being together. We’re usually not trying to accomplish a task. I’ve been in groups where we women take turns in an ordered way, a linear way. I prefer the breath-filled chaos.

Learning theories about women suggest that in fact some women learn best by connection or in relationship—in a group. Connected learning.

                                                     

                                                         

                                                            YAK IT TO ME, BABY!

This practice can be risky. Occasionally, a gavel might be useful. Also, basic relational rules, to say nothing of courtesy, suggest that one person should speak at one time, a space should be left, and then a response made. ONe. ONe. ONe. Such rules of conversation work better for my own "sin" of interrupting—usually out of the fear I may not get heard at all, an old conditioned habit.

My spouse, a man, sometimes shouts out, “Stop talking.” He clutches his hands to his head: “I can’t get my thoughts together. You don’t know what I was going to say. Let me finish!”  He thinks I’m interrupting, filling in his blanks. He has a point. I tell him I'm only commenting, interjecting stuff as we go along. To me, I interject as HE goes along. I don't understand why he just doesn't pick up and keep going. “This is a conversation,” I say, and add, “Besides, you go on and don’t stop.”  Then I talk some more, just to clarify—until one of us exits the space.

I mentioned this phenomenon to my male dentist and his female hygienist. She and I laughed. The dentist said: “Tell me about it, I eat lunch with all of them,” and waved his hand, referring to a good-sized all-female office staff.

Perhaps Godde made women multi-task thinkers and talkers needing snatches of breath—a mind on several tracks. It could be a gift to help us hold onto women friends and keep track of children, or even lively canine pets, who dart and race through the world exploring recklessly, in their developing years and beyond. It’s like having antennae.

As we evolve, and gender roles lose their grip, men and fathers might develop this capacity, though I suspect not to the same breathy degree.

Godde the Spirit breathes in us, in each one differently, as any sensitive deity would.

2013.05.22 Endangered Values/Endangered Patriarchal Religion

I remember thinking when we—my first husband and three children—lived in Alabama (imagine!) and Jimmy Carter was running for Governor of Georgia in 1969 that he had something different going for him. I didn’t know what it was but I trusted my intuition over my shamelessly northern distrust of those who drawled and said “bless your heart” too much.

We’d moved to Annniston, a “northern”city about midway between Birmingham and Atlanta for a job offer too good to refuse. The job had promise, but the company boss was an all-day alcoholic who drank Pepsi Cola laced with bourbon, which more than once landed him in Birmingham Hospital with unstoppable hiccups. Guess who got a call in the middle of the night to go rescue him? 

Our house was elegant red brick and had a spacious front entryway of large square black and white tiles— fit for Scarlett O’Hara, not for three children, ages 6, 5 and 2, who ran in the red clay soil and tracked it into the house.  I slaved to keep the floor clean with my newly purchased electric floor cleaner. Still, the black tiles bled onto the white ones besmirching them with black flecks. What a ghastly metaphor for racism. I was as angry at the tiles as I was at the segregated uptown Episcopal church I could not, by any twist of conscience,  make my spiritual home

Alabama was a foreign land and I was a bored housewife who missed New England and had not much else to do but clean the freakin floor!—also drink scotch, nurse my depressed rage, write sloppy laments, read crap, correct the kids’ blossoming southern accents,  get pregnant with a fourth child— and watch TV.  

On TV, however,  I became acquainted with Jimmy Carter.  Later, back north, I voted for him for President.  He was a one-term president, some have labeled “weak.” He was hardly the traditional American macho president-of-choice. But neither is Barack Obama, yet both of these men won Pulitzers for peace efforts, Carter’s, uniquely, awarded 20 years after he left the presidency.

I still think Jimmy Carter represents something our American culture needs very much, perhaps a return to our basic values and faith in a power greater than ourselves.  We are a country that needs more than ever to be "under God" not above or without God. “Under” to me means overseen, not as a spy or a tyrant but as Love that is intimately, providentially co-creative. Dare we return to Genesis and the all-inclusive image of deity?

Recently  I read about Jimmy Carter’s “high profile defection” (NY Times’ assessment) from the Southern Baptist Convention, of which he’d been a member for 60 years. Carter could not support the Convention’s selective biblical literalism used to justify the subjugation of women and prohibit them from serving as pastors. At last I knew why I’d thought Jimmy Carter had something different going for him. 

Carter published a book in 2005 called Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis.  In it he wrote: “The truth is that male religious leaders have had—and still have—an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women.  They have for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.”

He rightly connects patriarchal theology and abuses of power with abuses of women throughout the world—with God as their justification.  Carter knows that such gender discrimination is a “clear violation” of the core teachings of all major religions.

Please note: Jimmy Carter left the Southern Baptist Convention. He did NOT defect from Christianity, nor the Church, nor the Gospel of Jesus Christ—nor, I add, from his integrity as a human being and a son of the living God.

I don’t regret our southern sojourn in Alabama. There I got gifts: a dear fourth child, second son, born almost immediately after we came “home”; the memory of my friend, a lovely black woman who took care of the neighbors’ children while I took care of mine—we were domestics together; the surety that I would never have a black and white tiled foyer; and pride in an American politician who did have something different  going for him.

2013.03.06 A Red Shoe Rant

I’m so glad the retiring pope is leaving his red shoes behind.  I wonder if he knows that it used to be considered a scandal, or at least the sign of a “loose” woman afoot, when a woman wore red shoes—anywhere but most particularly in church?  

I still have the little red party shoes I adored as a young child. They are dirty and have lost all their luster, but they sit at the foot of my home altar—not for me to worship but for me to remember my spunk, and the God who gave it to me. I have adult red shoes, too, and have worn them to church.

The papal red shoes are supposed to symbolize the blood of the martyrs. It’s a nice gesture to stand in “pools of blood” once shed by people who would not deny their devotion and faith in Jesus Christ, or was it their faith in Christianity itself, or something else?  I think their hearts were true and the culture of the day supported such sacrifice, but I think it’s time the Vatican itself sacrificed LOTS of its excessive wealth and power, perhaps some of the accumulated papal wardrobe and regalia— red shoes and all.  Ya know, all this Pope as almighty demi-deity isn’t that old— wasn’t part of the original plan.  

Time to Occupy Vatican City.

My protest isn’t just about wealth and power, it’s about theology, ideas and words about God and religious practices that amount, in my book, to God-abuse—advertising a God whose immortal love gets hidden from us by the sins of the Church. I mean ALL Christian churches, not just the Catholic one because it’s the biggest, richest, and loudest. 

I reject the theology that says Jesus Christ died for my sins, or anyone’s. He didn’t die, he was
    killed!
I reject the theology that ordains the votes of men-only as the will of God.
I reject the theology that insists that God has a plan and a candidate in mind. Guys! Just pray     and vote, but for Christ’s sake don’t politik or lobby. Can a nun self-nominate?
I reject the theology and the language that consistently names Divinity as He, Him, His,     Himself—a sinful way to imprison Divinity in masculinity.
 I reject a church that protects men who abuse, and other men who cover up.
 I reject a church that will not ordain women to celebrate the Holy Eucharist. Either include     women in priestly ministry, or stop ordaining men.

I suggest all women wear red shoes to church—if you still go to church. Click those heels together three time fast, and PRESTO! all the non-avian cardinals will vanish. Look for them in Kansas—or not.