2017.12.21 A Death At Christmas

When someone dies near Christmas time people take it harder than at other times of year. Why is that? I suppose it creates an inner emotional conflict between joy and sorrow, between bright red and grey-blue. You know what I mean. We just have to feel both. God carries it all in one sacred heart, and good friends are friends or family who do not try to talk you in or out of your true feelings.

Christmas colors are bright red, gold, green. Christmas colors are also blue and black and gray. Simply so.

Today on the liturgical calendar is a day set aside to remember the apostle Thomas, one of Jesus’s disciples. He’s known for being a doubter, but that’s poppycock. All he asked for was the facts, please. And Jesus, with deep respect, honored Thomas’s request. Simply so. Death is like that.

On December 18th, a friend of many years died. Everyone called her Glo. Some of her grandchildren called her GoGo. Her full name was Gloria Masterson Richardson. She had more than her share of tragedy in her 90 years of earthly life, and yet she remained cussedly independent, no, obdurate, yet never lost her faith in Jesus Christ and herself, and kept her sense of humor, which was epic!  As she was going in and out of her dying she quipped to me over the phone which the good nurse held to her ear: “Better stick around for the damn carolers!” That was Glo. She was a poet, a mentor, a sister in faith, and my first official writing teacher, not to mention heavy duty cheerleader.   

Glo had three wishes she hoped would come true before she died:
    -that she would be able to attend her grandson’s wedding;
    - that she would live to see her dear friend Catherine admitted as a Companion to the Society of the Companions of the Holy Cross, a “community of women, Christ's disciples, called by God to a life of prayer, transformation and reconciliation within ourselves, within our Companionship, within our faith communities, and within the whole creation” of which Glo was a member;   
    -that she would live to see her first book, a collection of her fine poetry, published.

All three happened—no miracle just the facts and lots of loving help . . .
    Glo attended the wedding in a beautiful blue dress, which Catherine helped her buy—a comic adventure that ended in beauty. (Where is the bathroom in a huge department store—ever?)
    Catherine McGeary was admitted as a Companion on September 16, 2016. 
    Glo’s book of poetry, Currents, was placed into her dying hands by Catherine less than 24 hours before she died. Did she know it? Dying or not, no one misses the feel of a first book.

Here is one of Glo’s poems—a prayer of wisdom and serenity and courage.
   
PRAYER
    by Gloria Masterson Richardson

Open my heart, Lord,
so that I can be strong enough,
brave enough to surrender
to your healing love.
When I cannot say the words,
speak for me;
cannot trust, hold me;
cannot cry, weep for me;
cannot help, reach out for me;
cannot see the path, light my way.
Amen.

And here is a poem I wrote for her as she lay dying.

Helplessly Hopeful at 90
    by Lyn G. Brakeman

The old lady poet
—never a poetess—
is dying,
wasting away before my eyes
and ears,
her voice stiffens
her chuckle flutters
her cheeks sag and pouch
her faith mellows.
She is dimming—
only a poem brightens her day,
engages her mind
delights her soul—
a poem or heaven
the same to her.

“I’m just moving on through it,”
she tells me.
No not yet, I think, and cry.

If I were God I’d say to her:
Gloria, you are a poem
               Mine.
   

2017.12.17 Little Things Can Be Big

Sometimes I say to myself: Lyn, bevel your edge!

What I mean is my critical edge. I can spoil the fun when I’m too serious for my own good or anyone else’s. Ask my sister. She is always excessively joyful and it bugs the bejesus out of me— sometimes, but not always. We joke and laugh about our edges and other things too fierce to mention. We have stopped saying: What’s wrong with you, or what what’s wrong with me? We are differently abled, as they love to say in the world of political correctness, but we have made a relationship of trust and mutuality that works. Not bad for intimate sibling enemies. It only took 75 years.

Still, I am naturally wired to look deep before I make any joy-leaps—wary. Christmas is the season of annoyingly excessive joy, and this Sunday is often but not always called Gaudete Sunday—designated for Joy. Some parishes signal Gaudete with a pink candle on the Advent wreath. “Rejoice in the Lord always: again I say rejoice. . .” (Philippians 4:4)

Joy is that anxious unsettling undefinable energy of anticipation. Something new will happen and it will be good—but not yet.  It’s very hard not to push the season.  Joy isn't happiness and no whoopee; rather it is deep within, nestled in the manger of every human heart. 

Recently I was in Harvard Square walking as I frequently do to get my hair cut for too much money, just because I so admire the owner who does hair and makes me look spiffy and massages my scalp with kind firm fingers.  

Because of a construction site walkers were diverted into a one-lane walkway. That’s when I encountered this beggar in his wheelchair. He wasn’t a new sight. I often give him a little money. He suffers from some crippling condition, possibly Cerebral Palsy. But on this day he, or someone of genius, has placed him directly in the path of the rush of oncoming pedestrians—a startling presence. 

He doesn’t walk or talk; he can only move one arm a bit. He is unattractive, overweight, unkempt, unshaven or badly shaven; his eyes seem a little crossed, but it’s hard to tell because his head stays drooped. He sits slumped in his chair in the same place along the sidewalk—omnipresent. He’s right in my path and I’m annoyed, in a hurry.

I open my wallet. He waits. I have forgotten to get change and have only two $20 bills. Damn!

“Well, look at that,” I say. “I don’t have any smaller bills so this is it for today.”  I retrieve a twenty and start to put it in his pouch. He spots the bill. He looks up. He grins from ear to ear, toothless as well. And then he speaks.

"Thank you, oh thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” I say, or some such vapidity.  I want to move on. But no, he wants to talk.

“You know what I was just praying for?” I shake my head no. “I was just praying for snow” He laughs loudly. “Snow!”

To wish for snow would seem the least likely thing for an outdoor beggar to wish for, and yet the joke about wishing for snow is common. It’s a New England thing. The last thing we wants is SNOW, ever. He knows this and delights in his joke. I react with the horror that is expected. “Oh no, not snow!” 

He motions with his one good hand for me to bend towards him. I lean down. He motions me closer. I follow. He grabs onto my arm and pulls me even closer. I smell his stale breath. I recoil a little. Then he kisses my cheek. The kiss is wet, sloppy,  drooly, and wildly authentic—a tiny moment. As I leave him I tell him I say: “Stop praying for snow, Okay?”  I can still hear his chuckle.

As I walked on I wanted to wipe away the wet kiss using all the proper rationales. But I did not, could not, wipe away this kiss I neither deserved nor expected. I will never forget this little big thing.  

What I tell you happened just as I have said. I dare not say more. So: Amen.

2017.12.10 How Do I Love Thee?

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints—I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life!—and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

"Sonnet 43: How do I love thee, let me count the ways" by Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Public domain.

“How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.”  This is an intimate marital joke. I invented it and it always makes us laugh. If we are in a snit about one thing or another, or even if only I am feeling impatient, largely because of something utterly inconsequential, such as he’s in my way as I traverse our small kitchen, I say: “How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.”

It’s impossible to laugh and snarl at the same time. The face won’t do it.

This is very far from romantic I know, but what is romance in 2017 in a world full of snark and public incivility even from the White House? Yet it is true that everyone has a love story—not always exotic but always authentic. 

Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning fell in love, and poetry was their language. Browning wrote: ”I love your verses with all my heart, dear Miss Barrett ... and I love you too." She wrote a long letter in return, thanking him and asking him for ways she might improve her writing. Barrett was an invalid, and was reliant on morphine, and it was some months before Browning convinced her to meet him face to face. Barrett's father didn't like Browning, and viewed him as a fortune hunter. Love and poetry prevailed and the couple eloped in 1846—off to Italy. Where else? Barrett never saw her father again.

Every love of any kind comes with its shadow. In spiritual terms, cross and cradle remain inseparable—not for doom but for truth. We all crave solution and resolution, and we sentimentalize love to rid it of fear. Every prophet in every religion fiercely cries out against falling in love with illusory glitter. Yet we do. So? God is still falling in love, still ready to elope, still ready to be born and to die. 

I offer this wisdom at all costs and anyway: Tell the bold, bare, fierce truth about hate and sin and rage and outrage. Then keep going. Be John the Baptist. Be Jesus. Be both. Go where the love is and invest with courage. So what if it can’t last or be perfect? Go for it anyway. God does.

2017.12.03 Advent of Sexual Harassment?—Always in Season

In the midst of this avalanche of allegations about sexual harassment, I asked my beloved priest spouse: Have you ever sexually harassed anyone?

Answer: Besides you?

What I keep on recalling, not as excuse but as cultural history, is that sexual harassment has been acceptable behavior for centuries. It was almost expected, and both men and women learned to live with it, their roles and rules clear: men pinch and comment; women demure, blush and dodge.  Feelings about it weren’t important.

So had I ever been sexually harassed in my work place, which was in the church? That includes volunteer work.

Once a priest commented on the movement of my body as I turned the drum of one of those old mimeograph machines. He liked to watch it, my butt not the machine. God forbid, I was flattered. I also felt uncomfortable. That was mostly because I worried that my behind was too fat or too flat, or whatever other idiotic body judgment I imposed on my body. Really? Yes.

What I experienced a lot was something I’d call attitudinal harassment. A bishop once towered over me and queried: “And WHO will take care of the children?” It wasn’t exactly harassment but it was shriveling and left little room for my perspective, let alone my answer. His assumption was that I couldn’t leave home. Mine was that my children would benefit from less not more parenting as they grew.  

My role in the church was limited to set up, clean up, ogle the altar, and in time, administer the chalice at the communion rail (a much trickier maneuver than passing out the bread/wafer), read from scripture on a Sunday, and serve on the vestry. I shoved my way along toward more and more leadership roles, ending up as Dean of our regional deanery, until finally the Church voted in 1976 that women could be ordained priests. Full acceptance of women in leadership is a work-in-progress.

Context is important—always. Some of this ongoing mess we’re in is a matter of interpretation, according to different times and different circumstances…and just plain evolution. My dad, for example, was a “mad man” in the 1950s. He had an affair with his secretary. Maybe more, though he was penitent and confessed his dalliance to my mother. What startled me most was that she told us daughters about it. Was that hostile? To whom?

In high school in a Connecticut shore town famous for gentlemen’s agreements (antisemitism in real estate, Christian/white elitism), I observed that lots of flirting went on amidst the cocktail party set. My mother wasn’t innocent. I learned from her that flirting was power—dangerous power. But my mother flirted with style. Is flirting sexual harassment of a sort?  What about flirting in the work place?

But these were the rules back then in the 1950s: men got handsy not just at parties but in work places. Women were supposed to overlook it or find clever ways to avoid office rape. It was a predator/prey culture, the assumption being that boys and men couldn’t help it—all that testosterone you know. Women had to work around it. These have been the rules over centuries, and they remained the rules.

Until 2017?  Well, we’ll see.

The point I want to make is that I still loved my dad and saw other good things in him. He never sexually harassed me with comments or looks. I felt proud when he retired early because advertising was becoming unethical, he thought ie. false advertising.

Plenty of great artists (Picasso for one, Woody Allen for another) have treated women in abusive exploitive ways. Does that discredit their art, their gifts?  How do we separate and sift all this while at the same time reshaping our collective mores/morality for the common good? Gawd, look at most all our presidents! Not to mention many saints and bishops!! Does their behavior toward women discredit their skills and accomplishment?

I’m a big-picture, person, for better or worse, so I see that it is increasingly incumbent on ALL of us to work together to end the abuses across the board born within a deeply entrenched, centuries-old patriarchal system of social organization. What was overlooked by everyone, men and women alike, really is now impossible to overlook. Or is it? American politics, religion, economics, morality across the boards, has been corrupted/contaminated by a silent consensus to ignore or deny unconscionable behaviors. Most painful to me is the fact that all this has as its underpinning the strong belief that women are not people, I mean not really people! 

To speak theologically, which I can’t resist: Sin is a condition that develops when anyone or ones become disconnected from the goodness in themselves, God, and their neighbors. And there you have it. Sin is always in our reach, which is why the system murdered Jesus for not recanting his politics and his image of God rich in compassion for the poor, the sick, the needful, the preyed upon, the underbelly of society—and women. Sin is endemic and inevitable, which is why all of us need to try to be Christ-like, to understand what that means, and to remember that every week in Eucharist we are re-Christified.

Will it be different now, or is it really going to be different now with all the latest revelations and fierce confessions?  I hope so. I pray so. You know my death throes of patriarchy theory. Godde knows!

2017.11.26 Thanksgiving—A Love Sabbatical

On Thanksgiving day this year we celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary. That’s not such a big deal, but it’s not bad mileage for a second marriage, or for two Leos living under one roof roaring.

Today is Christ in Majesty (aka Christ the King, but that's too limiting) Sunday. We were married on this Sunday in our parish church during the Eucharistic liturgy, November 23, 1986.

We celebrate our anniversary and Thanksgiving every year in southern Maine. But isn’t that family time? Yes, and the gift we chose to give ourselves was some time just for us—time away from professional duties, home, and yes, from our very large extended blended exuberant family. 

Yes, we miss them, and yes we love them all. And yes, we always call them all. And yes we (I) have felt guilty. They in turn are relieved of having to manage the holiday to include one more family— besides their own, their in-laws’ and that of former spouses, not to mention any aunts, uncles or cousins— in the Thanksgiving rituals.

To ease my guilt about breaking tradition, being selfish or abandoning, or thusly accused, I told myself for years that it was good for our progeny that they didn’t have to worry about us—including us, or not, or where. Thanksgiving after all is only one day, not an easily moveable feast. That was my assumption, not necessarily their desire or convenience.

But this year I tell the truth without excuses. This love sabbatical from the beginning has been our choice, a mutual choice made, only in part to escape family chaos, but mostly for our own benefit. Oh, yes, we are retired now. And yes, we aren’t living geographically on top of most of our offspring. And yes, we are able to see some old friends living in Maine. And no, this isn’t where we honeymooned. And no, this sojourn is not a glamorous vacation or getaway. Our choice has little to do with these factors.

So why do we do this?

We do it because we like coastal Maine and wintry sea, and the little humble unglamorous Seaside Inn bed-and-breakfast with large rooms and teeny bathrooms, we have stayed at for years. We do it for quiet, to catch up on reading, to avoid the temptation of over-checking emails, texts, phone calls. We do it for memories. Mostly—truly, deeply, really— we do it for love. We do it so we can enjoy each other’s company—just the two of us. We do it so we can stay in love. I am grateful we have enough health and resources to nourish our love and marriage this way.

As always the poet best captures the value, both ultimate and temporal, of love.

THAT I DID ALWAYS LOVE

That I did always love
I bring thee Proof
That till I loved
I never lived - Enough -
That I shall love alway -
I argue thee
That love is life -
And life hath Immortality -
This - dost thou doubt - Sweet -
Then have I
Nothing to show
But Calvary -
        Emily Dickinson

2017.11.19 The Music of Noble Grief Untold

Here's a small inside story, lean but robust. It’s about a saxophone player, the father of a little six year old girl named Ana. It’s about another father who has two daughters—and very long arms. The saxophonist is Jimmy Green. The man with long arms is President Barack Obama.

The public facts to this story most Americans know and remember with varying degrees of shiver and sorrow. On December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, twenty small children and six staff were murdered —mercilessly, without warning, and arbitrarily— mowed down by a gunman with a rifle.

When I heard about this massacre my first reaction was similar to my reaction when I first heard about the 9/11 terrorist attack in New York: “Come on!” I laughed, as if such things happened regularly—and never. I could access neither fact nor feeling—for days. After the Newtown tragedy, President Obama addressed the nation—with tears and grace— at a memorial gathering. Only then could I cry and, oddly, relax.

President Obama flew right away that same day to Newtown, to the school. This is the duty of a president, the letter of the law one could say. The spirit of that “law” revealed a man’s heart. President Obama is a man who is able to govern and to weep, to take authority and to let his heart break visibly, to wage war and to make peace. On occasion politicians can be heroes.

Joshua Dubois (b.1982) head of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in the Executive Office of the President of the United States from 2009 to 2013, wrote about that day in “The President’s Devotional: ‘What Obama Did In Secret In Newtown.”  The staff coordinated details, but the president did the difficult pastoral work. The families gathered in classrooms. The president, briefed on names, moved unhurriedly from room to room. He gave each person a hug and asked “Tell me about your son, or daughter.” He looked at and held photos of every dead child. He listened to descriptions of favorite foods, television shows, the sound of the child’s laughter. Younger siblings were tossed in the air, laughing, and then received a box of White House M&Ms. Who knew there was such a thing?

“In each room, I saw his eyes water, but he did not break,” Dubois wrote. Some small measure of love was given to every single bereaved family member: “The same hugs. The same looks, directly in their eyes. The same sincere offer of support and prayer.”  Over and over, for hours.

How can one sustain such authentic tenderness over an extended time—knowing that no amount of comfort or prayer, even from a president, even from God, could be adequate consolation?

According to Dubois, President Obama never spoke about these meetings. “He was nearly silent on Air Force One as we rode back to Washington, and has said very little about his time with these families since. It must have been one of the defining moments of his presidency, quiet hours in solemn classrooms, extending as much healing as was in his power to extend. But he kept it to himself—never seeking to teach a lesson based on those mournful conversations, or opening them up to public view.”

What is not so public is that Obama went to Newtown a second time, just months after the tragedy, to visit the families in their own homes. I am privileged to know some of one of those visits: the one made to Jimmy Green the professional saxophonist and his wife. 

Think of a saxophone and its sound. Is it not the most lugubrious? Although usually associated with jazz, the saxophone can wail out the mourning night—a long sound, the sound of grieving parents, the eternal sound of God’s grief.

Jimmy Green was in Rockport, Massachusetts last summer as a visiting artist for the Rockport Music Association’s Jazz Camp, an educational jazz program for children.

                                     (Green with his saxophone.) 
A good friend of mine hosted Green and asked him, naturally, about his children. She was taken aback first  to hear that he was the father of a six year old girl named Ana who was murdered in Newtown. Ana, he said, loved music and dance, and she loved to love. Here she dances with her daddy.

About Obama, Green said,  “I knew the guy was tall, but I didn’t realize he had such long arms. He just sat with us (Green and his wife) on the couch and held us both together.”

Grief requires a long reach, a reach only heroes can summon. Heroes are people who do good anytime anyhow.  It is particularly hard for very public people—people who have to be constantly conscious of themselves…like being on camera 24/7— to be heroes of this kind. That takes courage, not just feelings, and not simply military action. Heroes touch the heart of God. Heroes keep us alive and wanting to live.

2017.11.12 Green Eggs and Ham

Dear Doctor Seuss,

Today I craved eggs for some odd reason. There was no time to make them before breakfast or after church either, but I could eat them anywhere.

Our parish had a church harvest fair. There we sold a Cook Book, among other items. I had stolen recipes about your green eggs and ham from all over and one got into the cookbook. It's nothing compared to the marvelous recipes therein and all for the love of God—as is your prose poetry. Thanks.

I would eat this in a plane, I would eat this in the rain. I would eat this here or there, I would eat this anywhere. I do so like green eggs and ham I do so like it Sam I am!

Ingredients

2 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 thin ham steaks, quartered
10 large eggs
3 tablespoons whole milk
1/4 cup store-bought pesto
1 cup fresh cut asparagus
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

       
Instructions

    1.    Set a large non-stick skillet over medium heat with 1 tablespoon butter. Once melted, add the ham pieces and cook until browned on each side, about 1 minute per side. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
    2.    In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk and most of the pesto (leave about 2 tablespoons out). Set aside. Wipe out the skillet and add the remaining butter. Once melted throw in the asparagus. Cook until the asparagus is soft and tender, about 4 minutes.
    3.    Add the whisked pesto eggs to the hot skillet and cook until soft scrambled. Add the cheese and cook until the eggs are somewhat firm and the cheese has melted. Serve by placing a few slices of ham on each plate and then adding a few spoonfuls of egg on top. Garnish with a bit of the reserved pesto on each. Cook 25 minutes.

If I were you here’s what I’d do. I’d sneak in green is what I’d do. I love the eggs but only green.
I add green dye behind cook’s eye. I do so like my green eggs green with ham—like Sam I am.

Submitted in praise of Dr. Seuss, the late Theodore Geisel (1904-1981) by Priest Associate—
irreverent Rev. Lyn who so likes green eggs and tells secrets for Seuss who pronounces it Zoice—       a remarkable voice.