The TV ad for the dating service, Christian Mingle, promises: “Find God’s Match For You.”
My first ugly thought was something like: OMG, I'm not sure I'd want to mingle exclusively just with Christians. Good Lawd amighty forgive me!
BUT, we live in a consumer-driven/ marketing-obsessed culture. What a thrilling prospect this ad promises, especially it you’ve tried all human means to find what some call “the perfect mate.” Well, I’m not sure there is such a thing as a marriage, or a relationship, made in heaven, mostly because I don’t think of Godde as a yenta.
Don’t misunderstand me, I do think God cares greatly about each and all of us and desires our well being as much as we desire our own. Godde cares enough, however, to give us freedom to use our gifts, both natural and acquired, to live fruitful lives and discern our choices, even if some of them don’t work out just as we’d hoped.
None of the above means to me that God has a plan, or a mate created and already picked for me, or you, if only we’d join Christian Mingle and find out—for a fee of course and with a guarantee that our mate will be a Christian, likely of a more conservative stripe than, for example, me. If you believe God has a match for you, then sign up. You may find someone who believes the same, and be compatibly happy ever after.
How do we meet and mate? Let me count the ways. Right now I am praying that a dozen women may meet a man who will love them and be loved by them, for better or worse. Why?
Well, I pray not because I think God will matchmake, but because these women have told me their longings and I let everything be known to God—all my own fears, hope, longings, anxieties, sorrows, and desires— for myself and people I care about, near and far. Once I let God know what I want, I say AMEN and leave it, for today. I don’t know the outcome, I only know what I’d like, and I’m not afraid to say it.
Very often things work out as I desire, but not always. Is that because I was wrong to ask? Not at all. Is it because God didn’t grant my request? No.
Prayer for me is more about nurturing and deepening an open and honest relationship with Godde, in whom I live and who lives and breathes in me, than it is about expecting prayer to make things happen.
The Lord's Prayer prays: THY will be done, not MY will be done. It’s an act of faith and trust, not control. I pray for the same reasons I talk to my spouse and closest friends or family about my concerns.
For me prayer (and its equivalent practices, including Reiki, meditation, et. al.) is what connects me to Godde-in-God, to christ-in-Christ, to God-in-me—and you. Prayer is what lets me in on myself, too.
Wednesday, April 10, 2013
Sunday, April 7, 2013
2013.04.07 Phineas
The sanctuary’s emptiness made it even more hallowed than when it was filled with exuberant hosannas and bloated hallelujahs—echoes of Easter spent.
I felt spent too. I sat alone in the pew of a tiny suburbanish church, its steeple piercing the blue sky, humming the hymn of the 50s, What’s it All About Alfie?” Out of the corner of my eye I saw something green poking out from under a front pew. I stooped and discovered a leftover palm—aging and beginning to brown and dry. Its still sharp point stuck stubbornly into the aisle. Inexplicably, I thought of Phineas.
Phineas was like a perfect storm: thick glasses, overweight, duck-footed and lumbering. His face was pocked with teenage acne, and he played the violin. Put those ingredients all together, then put poor Phineas in teenage terrorist camp, by which I mean the daily school bus full of testosterone-challenged seventh grade boys.
Every single day Phineas would slowly climb onto the bus. Every single day the boys would call to him to come to the back of the bus and sit with them. Their cooing was not friendly. Girls tended to sit in the front of the bus, as did I. Yet, how could Phineas sit with the girls? It would have made his perfect storm even more disaster-bound. So he lugged his violin to the rear of the bus.
They pushed him to the floor; they grabbed his hat; they spit on him; they opened his violin case and tried to play on it while singing dumb songs; and every single day Phineas would miss his stop and have to walk back to get home.
God knows what awaited him at home. Love, I hope. But if I were his parent I’d drive him to school and pick him up. But he might not have told his parents about his daily torture. Why add to his humiliation like Mr. Fitz, the paunchy bus driver, did? Mr. Fitz laughed and scoffed and never intervened to save Phineas, or me.
To witness such suffering and feel helpless is a trauma as vivid to me now as it was sixty-three years ago. My choices seemed almost as paralyzing as Phineas’s must have felt to him. I could fight, flee, or freeze. I was too scared to fight so I froze in my seat, wishing and wishing, fervently as a prayer, that Phineas would fight.
After a few weeks of school bus culture, I chose flight. I made my mother drive me to school. Knowing she’d remember my carsickness, I told her I now had bus-sickness. I did, but it wasn’t motion sickness; it was compassion nausea. I didn’t tell the truth, nor befriend Phineas because I feared repercussions.
By senior high school my own hormonal rage kicked in, and I actually dated one of those bus bullies to see what he was really like. He told me his father hit him, then laughed. I was sixteen years old when I understood that bullying was total avoidance of vulnerability, mostly because someone had bullied you first and you had to make sure it never happened again. This boy had turned into a macho hot shot, full of bravado and just as scared inside as Phineas, and me.
After high school I never saw Phineas again, but I never forgot him. I never knew him except by heart. When Google-God came to be, I searched Phineas but found no data that fit my Phineas. It’s funny, but I count him as one of the inspirations that called me into ordained ministry—one way to make up for having been a silent complicit bully myself.
Sitting in the pew fingering the palm’s green tip, I said one small alleluia for Phineas. I hoped he was alive and a concert master violinist in some major symphony orchestra where huge crowds applauded and never hissed.
I felt spent too. I sat alone in the pew of a tiny suburbanish church, its steeple piercing the blue sky, humming the hymn of the 50s, What’s it All About Alfie?” Out of the corner of my eye I saw something green poking out from under a front pew. I stooped and discovered a leftover palm—aging and beginning to brown and dry. Its still sharp point stuck stubbornly into the aisle. Inexplicably, I thought of Phineas.
Phineas was like a perfect storm: thick glasses, overweight, duck-footed and lumbering. His face was pocked with teenage acne, and he played the violin. Put those ingredients all together, then put poor Phineas in teenage terrorist camp, by which I mean the daily school bus full of testosterone-challenged seventh grade boys.
Every single day Phineas would slowly climb onto the bus. Every single day the boys would call to him to come to the back of the bus and sit with them. Their cooing was not friendly. Girls tended to sit in the front of the bus, as did I. Yet, how could Phineas sit with the girls? It would have made his perfect storm even more disaster-bound. So he lugged his violin to the rear of the bus.
They pushed him to the floor; they grabbed his hat; they spit on him; they opened his violin case and tried to play on it while singing dumb songs; and every single day Phineas would miss his stop and have to walk back to get home.
God knows what awaited him at home. Love, I hope. But if I were his parent I’d drive him to school and pick him up. But he might not have told his parents about his daily torture. Why add to his humiliation like Mr. Fitz, the paunchy bus driver, did? Mr. Fitz laughed and scoffed and never intervened to save Phineas, or me.
To witness such suffering and feel helpless is a trauma as vivid to me now as it was sixty-three years ago. My choices seemed almost as paralyzing as Phineas’s must have felt to him. I could fight, flee, or freeze. I was too scared to fight so I froze in my seat, wishing and wishing, fervently as a prayer, that Phineas would fight.
After a few weeks of school bus culture, I chose flight. I made my mother drive me to school. Knowing she’d remember my carsickness, I told her I now had bus-sickness. I did, but it wasn’t motion sickness; it was compassion nausea. I didn’t tell the truth, nor befriend Phineas because I feared repercussions.
By senior high school my own hormonal rage kicked in, and I actually dated one of those bus bullies to see what he was really like. He told me his father hit him, then laughed. I was sixteen years old when I understood that bullying was total avoidance of vulnerability, mostly because someone had bullied you first and you had to make sure it never happened again. This boy had turned into a macho hot shot, full of bravado and just as scared inside as Phineas, and me.
After high school I never saw Phineas again, but I never forgot him. I never knew him except by heart. When Google-God came to be, I searched Phineas but found no data that fit my Phineas. It’s funny, but I count him as one of the inspirations that called me into ordained ministry—one way to make up for having been a silent complicit bully myself.
Sitting in the pew fingering the palm’s green tip, I said one small alleluia for Phineas. I hoped he was alive and a concert master violinist in some major symphony orchestra where huge crowds applauded and never hissed.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
2013.04.03 Poetry of Rob Brakeman
I'm proud and pleased to share with my blog readers my son Rob's poetry. He has recently become a blogger himself. You can find his work on www.robbrakemanpoetry.com. Poetry is one of the creative endeavors that, to me, is very spiritual. Why? Because it has a way of going to the heart and soul of the matter, giving it full dignity as it is, grit and all, while at the same time communicating hope and new life. Matter and Spirit together.
Here is a poem Rob wrote some nine years ago when his brother was critically ill and Rob kept vigil in the hospital. His brother would do the same for him.
ANOTHER LATE NIGHT
an already slow elevator that stops on every floor
doctors and nurses, interns and surgeons
light blue OR scrubs and white coats
pens, clipboards and beepers
white sheets
the strange and continual smell of onion soup?
is that it? onion soup?
peristaltic pumps clicking on and off,
beeping too loudly when the bags are empty
intravenous pick line and dried blood
that yellow paste around every IV insertion
morphine
codeine
Tylenol
bed sores
blood pressure and pulse
an impatient nurse
no information
waiting
fluorescent lights
ileostomy
colo-rectal
gastroenterology
adhesions and adhesiolysis
holy shit
and there you were
in the middle of it all
like a small pea
held delicately between the forefinger and thumb of a giant
by Rob Brakeman when his brother John was in the hospital, 2004-5
Here is a poem Rob wrote some nine years ago when his brother was critically ill and Rob kept vigil in the hospital. His brother would do the same for him.
ANOTHER LATE NIGHT
an already slow elevator that stops on every floor
doctors and nurses, interns and surgeons
light blue OR scrubs and white coats
pens, clipboards and beepers
white sheets
the strange and continual smell of onion soup?
is that it? onion soup?
peristaltic pumps clicking on and off,
beeping too loudly when the bags are empty
intravenous pick line and dried blood
that yellow paste around every IV insertion
morphine
codeine
Tylenol
bed sores
blood pressure and pulse
an impatient nurse
no information
waiting
fluorescent lights
ileostomy
colo-rectal
gastroenterology
adhesions and adhesiolysis
holy shit
and there you were
in the middle of it all
like a small pea
held delicately between the forefinger and thumb of a giant
by Rob Brakeman when his brother John was in the hospital, 2004-5
Sunday, March 31, 2013
2013.03.31 Eastering
Easter for clergy is exhausting, even if you’re only assisting. I’m the good kind of tired, the kind that comes from a fine meal in good company with lots of laughter and children’s faces, the kind that satisfies.
In our parish, when small children come to the altar rail to receive their share of the Holy Communion bread, which is a flat white tasteless wafer, they run or skip. Their parents grab them by whatever is grabbable to hold them back, to make them wait, corral their eager energy. But the children know better. They know when something is special and they know that they belong. So they run up, hop onto the kneeler, prop their small elbows onto the rail and stick out their hands—right palm over left, as they’ve been taught. Some kids curl their fingers into tiny tight cups. They try to get the formation just right.
The priest comes by to give them their “treat.” When I am the priest, I look into their turned up faces and bend down a bit to their level to place, sometimes wedge, a wafer into each pair of cupped hands as I say their name, or my sister or brother, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”
Then they pop it into their mouth or take a bite and discover again that it tastes yukky. Still, they know that it’s important and that everyone is eating it with them, all together the same. Small faces register like and dislike —yes and no at once. There’s no faking here. Kids are truth.
Is it okay to say yes and no at once to Godde? Even okay to say yes, but—sometimes?
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
“God Says Yes To Me” by Kaylin Haught from The Palm of Your Hand, 1995
In our parish, when small children come to the altar rail to receive their share of the Holy Communion bread, which is a flat white tasteless wafer, they run or skip. Their parents grab them by whatever is grabbable to hold them back, to make them wait, corral their eager energy. But the children know better. They know when something is special and they know that they belong. So they run up, hop onto the kneeler, prop their small elbows onto the rail and stick out their hands—right palm over left, as they’ve been taught. Some kids curl their fingers into tiny tight cups. They try to get the formation just right.
The priest comes by to give them their “treat.” When I am the priest, I look into their turned up faces and bend down a bit to their level to place, sometimes wedge, a wafer into each pair of cupped hands as I say their name, or my sister or brother, “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven.”
Then they pop it into their mouth or take a bite and discover again that it tastes yukky. Still, they know that it’s important and that everyone is eating it with them, all together the same. Small faces register like and dislike —yes and no at once. There’s no faking here. Kids are truth.
Is it okay to say yes and no at once to Godde? Even okay to say yes, but—sometimes?
I asked God if it was okay to be melodramatic
and she said yes
I asked her if it was okay to be short
and she said it sure is
I asked her if I could wear nail polish
or not wear nail polish
and she said honey
she calls me that sometimes
she said you can do just exactly
what you want to
Thanks God I said
And is it even okay if I don't paragraph
my letters
Sweetcakes God said
who knows where she picked that up
what I'm telling you is
Yes Yes Yes
“God Says Yes To Me” by Kaylin Haught from The Palm of Your Hand, 1995
Friday, March 29, 2013
2013.03.29 Listening
It’s Good Friday, a paradoxical day when Christians remember Jesus’ hideous death on a cross and all the injustice and pain in the world, and at the same time see in it hope for transformation—brought forth by divine/human collaboration. Kinda crazy really, but hope against hope is like that.
One can only pray and write poetry. Here’s one that captures the whole hope-driven journey.
LISTENING
by David Ignatow (American poet, born in Brooklyn, NY, 1914)
You wept in your mother’s arms
and I knew that from then on
I was to forget myself.
Listening to your sobs,
I was resolved against my will
to do well by us
and so I said, without thinking,
in great panic, To do wrong
in one’s own judgment,
though others thrive by it,
is the right road to blessedness.
Not to submit to error
is in itself wrong
and pride.
Standing beside you,
I took an oath
to make your life simpler
by complicating mine
and what I always thought
would happen did:
I was lifted up in joy.
One can only pray and write poetry. Here’s one that captures the whole hope-driven journey.
LISTENING
by David Ignatow (American poet, born in Brooklyn, NY, 1914)
You wept in your mother’s arms
and I knew that from then on
I was to forget myself.
Listening to your sobs,
I was resolved against my will
to do well by us
and so I said, without thinking,
in great panic, To do wrong
in one’s own judgment,
though others thrive by it,
is the right road to blessedness.
Not to submit to error
is in itself wrong
and pride.
Standing beside you,
I took an oath
to make your life simpler
by complicating mine
and what I always thought
would happen did:
I was lifted up in joy.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
2013.03.27 Who Said Animals Don't Get Ressurected?
Imagine having a huge horse (10 feet tall, 1000-1200 pounds,) a lion 7 feet tall, and a giant brown bear, 8 feet tall, living in your barn, which is attached to your house?
This would be worse than being Noah and his wife, whose name was Elizabeth (I made that up, sick as I am of biblical female anonymity) on an ark. Imagine the demanding task of having to keep track of the feeding schedules of hundreds of creature couples, plus clean up their daily excrement—probably a lot, since being crammed into an ark for 40 days and nights with no sign of land would make even the fiercest of beasts nervously excremental. (The first thing Noah did, btw, when he got off that ark and onto dry land was get drunk—of course!)
But the large animals living in Arron Sturgis’s barn don’t make any noise, eat nothing, and don’t shit. They are wooden sculptures by the late Maine artist Bernard Langlais. The animals, signature Langlais art, have lived outside in the garden at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art for over 30 years. The wood has suffered from rot. Now, thanks to grants and gifts, these animal works of art are going to get a resurrection. And they’re not even dead yet!
Sturgis owns Preservation Timber Framing, Inc. in Berwick Maine. He’s a timber framing expert, sensitive to the needs of all kinds of wood that has gotten old and needs restoration. Usually his work involves old New England buildings, church steeples, and even design and framing work on the new American wing of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. And now beasts of wood.
“The challenge is doing this work without changing the artifact so it’s no longer a Langlais,” Sturgis said. “But they’re all salvageable, and they all will be Langlais when we’re done with them.” He wants to capture the same spirit and vigor he imagines Langlais invested in his originals. Now that’s humble integrity!
“This guy wasted no time on these,” said Sturgis. “They are not pieces of finely crafted furniture. He was really moving.” Sturgis, 52, is the same age as Langlois was in the prime of his creative years. As I know Arron Sturgis, he will move efficiently and with all of his own vim on these resurrections, which will be as valuable as the originals.
So you see there are artists behind the artists, behind the artists, all with the same goals as the divine artist, whom some of us call God-Creator/Godde-Resurrector.
A whimsical anecdote from Sturgis: One day he was transporting the bear, who sat nobly in the back of his truck as they drove through Ogunquit. He stopped ( no light, just courtesy) to allow a pedestrian to cross. The woman began to cross, with her head lowered, absorbed in her electronic device, when Sturgis yelled out his window, “Hey watch out for the bear!” The woman looked up, gave the bear a glance, then went right back to the non-ursine essentials of her life.
The bear (see below) was nonplussed as well. He knew he would soon receive the gift of new life.
This would be worse than being Noah and his wife, whose name was Elizabeth (I made that up, sick as I am of biblical female anonymity) on an ark. Imagine the demanding task of having to keep track of the feeding schedules of hundreds of creature couples, plus clean up their daily excrement—probably a lot, since being crammed into an ark for 40 days and nights with no sign of land would make even the fiercest of beasts nervously excremental. (The first thing Noah did, btw, when he got off that ark and onto dry land was get drunk—of course!)
But the large animals living in Arron Sturgis’s barn don’t make any noise, eat nothing, and don’t shit. They are wooden sculptures by the late Maine artist Bernard Langlais. The animals, signature Langlais art, have lived outside in the garden at the Ogunquit Museum of American Art for over 30 years. The wood has suffered from rot. Now, thanks to grants and gifts, these animal works of art are going to get a resurrection. And they’re not even dead yet!
Sturgis owns Preservation Timber Framing, Inc. in Berwick Maine. He’s a timber framing expert, sensitive to the needs of all kinds of wood that has gotten old and needs restoration. Usually his work involves old New England buildings, church steeples, and even design and framing work on the new American wing of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts. And now beasts of wood.
“The challenge is doing this work without changing the artifact so it’s no longer a Langlais,” Sturgis said. “But they’re all salvageable, and they all will be Langlais when we’re done with them.” He wants to capture the same spirit and vigor he imagines Langlais invested in his originals. Now that’s humble integrity!
“This guy wasted no time on these,” said Sturgis. “They are not pieces of finely crafted furniture. He was really moving.” Sturgis, 52, is the same age as Langlois was in the prime of his creative years. As I know Arron Sturgis, he will move efficiently and with all of his own vim on these resurrections, which will be as valuable as the originals.
So you see there are artists behind the artists, behind the artists, all with the same goals as the divine artist, whom some of us call God-Creator/Godde-Resurrector.
A whimsical anecdote from Sturgis: One day he was transporting the bear, who sat nobly in the back of his truck as they drove through Ogunquit. He stopped ( no light, just courtesy) to allow a pedestrian to cross. The woman began to cross, with her head lowered, absorbed in her electronic device, when Sturgis yelled out his window, “Hey watch out for the bear!” The woman looked up, gave the bear a glance, then went right back to the non-ursine essentials of her life.
The bear (see below) was nonplussed as well. He knew he would soon receive the gift of new life.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
2013.03.24 Empathy Week
Most Christians call the week we are entering, Holy Week. I call it Empathy week. It’s a week we re-enact the skein of tragically inevitable events in the life of Jesus Christ, events that led him to trial and then to execution on the cross, events human history never forgot and divine grace forgave.
Christians are not re-enactors, like the groups that re-enact Civil War battles and the like. Our liturgies are not pageantry for its own sake, or to memorialize for history’s sake. Christians, if we allow ourselves to be real, if we dare to feel what Jesus might have felt, ought to be heartbroken.
Do we dare to be empathic with the sorrow, the cruelty, the betrayal, the treasonous politics, and rigged proceedings? It takes courage to feel empathy. Can we put our hearts where our mouths are? All those bloated hosannas ring hollow without heart-truth.
I’m reading Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir, My Beloved World. Her life discoveries are interwoven into her story in a seamless way. Here is one such insight: “I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can’t imagine someone else’s point of view.”
At the time when Sotomayor, was “on trial” herself to prove herself worthy of being a Supreme Court Justice. She said that one of the values she thought important for a good justice to hold was empathy. Many people jumped all over that word and mocked it as absurd, not part of justice at all in fact. Do you remember the hullabaloo?
At the time I thought all the flap had something to do with Sotomayor’s being a Latina and a woman. Probably it did. However, at a deeper level, the reaction had to do with an incomplete and narrow understanding about what true justice is.
“I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can’t imagine someone else’s point of view.”
Without empathy, things (like love, justice, peace, truth, faith) break down. Simply so.
Sonia Sotomayor has served as Associate Justice on the United States Supreme Court since 2009.
Jesus Christ, as far as I know, is still feeding hungry souls.
Christians are not re-enactors, like the groups that re-enact Civil War battles and the like. Our liturgies are not pageantry for its own sake, or to memorialize for history’s sake. Christians, if we allow ourselves to be real, if we dare to feel what Jesus might have felt, ought to be heartbroken.
Do we dare to be empathic with the sorrow, the cruelty, the betrayal, the treasonous politics, and rigged proceedings? It takes courage to feel empathy. Can we put our hearts where our mouths are? All those bloated hosannas ring hollow without heart-truth.
I’m reading Sonia Sotomayor’s memoir, My Beloved World. Her life discoveries are interwoven into her story in a seamless way. Here is one such insight: “I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can’t imagine someone else’s point of view.”
At the time when Sotomayor, was “on trial” herself to prove herself worthy of being a Supreme Court Justice. She said that one of the values she thought important for a good justice to hold was empathy. Many people jumped all over that word and mocked it as absurd, not part of justice at all in fact. Do you remember the hullabaloo?
At the time I thought all the flap had something to do with Sotomayor’s being a Latina and a woman. Probably it did. However, at a deeper level, the reaction had to do with an incomplete and narrow understanding about what true justice is.
“I was fifteen years old when I understood how it is that things break down: people can’t imagine someone else’s point of view.”
Without empathy, things (like love, justice, peace, truth, faith) break down. Simply so.
Jesus Christ, as far as I know, is still feeding hungry souls.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
