2022.03.06 Ashes, Ashes of Truth, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 3.6.22

Ashes announce the first day of the season of Lent. Ash Wednesday is a holy day for Christians, beginning the time when Jesus was driven into the wilderness to, well, consult his soul and his God about his own choices. On this day priests, or laity if no priest is available, smear ashes onto each upturned forehead to remind us that we are mortal and beloved as such. The imposition of ashes is the ritual that  springs us into Lent, a season that has nothing to do with things borrowed or lent! It does have to do with one’s own willingness and ability to, let’s say, think things over—not as a life review, but as a way to spend more time in quiet and to ask yourself: Is there anything or anyone in my life that gently tugs at me, visiting my quiet contemplative time with worry, or wonder, or regret, or simple uncertainty—or any ongoing temptation to sin, understood as anything that separates us from the goodness in ourselves, God, or our neighbor.  

                                *  *  *  *

For the last two years I have had regular, often daily, conversations with an old friend and Episcopal priest, the Rev. Lee McGee-Street. Lee was my, and many other women’s mentor, in and through the ardors of the ordination process in the Episcopal Church in the late 1970s and 80s. Although we women were finally voted “ordainable” as priests in 1976, it took years for the “law” to settle into the minds and hearts of a people formed in patriarchal language and hierarchical politics. The process felt like wiggling a fat’n happy overweight man into a corset meant for a petite ballerina. 

Lee McGee, then an Episcopal deacon from Washington D.C., had been one of those courageous women (eleven in Philadelphia in 1974, and four in D.C. in 1975) who bucked the traditional system to get ordained priest, with the "Washington Four" before the official vote was taken. These ordinations were labelled “irregular”. They were not illegal, because a bishop carried out the sacramental rite. Still, these women had to endure another ceremonial liturgy to get “regularized” so that they could function as priests with sacramental authority: to bless, consecrate and absolve. 

The ordaining male bishops suffered no consequences of course. (Amazing what you can do after you retire, your pension is secure—and you’re a man.) Nevertheless, every institution has it rules and regulations to create a sense of order. The Church is no different. 

Lee, herself, had first been against the idea of pushing the Church into taking action on gender justice, but she soon changed her mind. She had a rich career as a chaplain, counselor, parish priest, and professor of pastoral studies at Yale Divinity School. She was very present to me and other women as we floundered into and through the journey to priesthood in Connecticut, encouraging us to persist, informing us about the dynamics of the double standard, and later helping us to understand how hard it was for male clergy, who had controlled the sacramental life of the Church for centuries, to lose that primacy and to suffer a “breach of collegiality”—aka old boys’ club. One meant loss of power, the other loss of intimacy. The Church today is not the only institution still learning to live with the idea of shared power. 

Dick and I had left Connecticut for Massachusetts in 1997, and in 2020 returned, just as the COVID pandemic was taking hold, to live in a retirement community in Simsbury. Lee and I resumed our connection and had daily telephone conversations, rich with humor and debates about church politics, and feminism. We were moving from our mentor/mentee relationship to good old friendship.  

In these last two weeks, I continued to call and leave messages, yet received no callbacks. This was not usual. I knew that, Lee as she aged, became housebound with painful arthritis, had regular caregivers, experienced some depression, was grieving the death of two husbands, and lived with a form of macular degeneration that had left her legally blind since her late twenties. I also knew that she was one of the more resilient women I’d ever known. She never talked—except I imagine to her therapist of years, her several beloved guide dogs, and perhaps God—about her disabilities. It was never easy to, well, be empathic or feel Lee’s own pain with her. She was always “fine,” and she always turned the conversation away from herself to me. Each time we talked, I pressed her a bit about how she was—really. She consistently assured me, “I’m all right.” I wondered. I doubted her “all-rightness” and felt helpless.

On Tuesday, March 1, I saw a message on an online site for Episcopal clergywomen that Lee, at 78,  had died on February 20, 2022. My heart crimped with grief, and also some anger. Why could she not have told me she was in that much decline?  I was slow to remember that this was how Lee had managed her difficult life all along. She helped others, period. My grief would have some ambivalence; no grief is ever pure. Nevertheless, Lee and I had been, and would always be, connected enough through God, our seminary, and our passion for the causes of women in the Episcopal Church, to make my grief whole and holy. 

Thank you, Lee McGee, and bless you always. 

So what has this remembrance  to do with Ashes and Lent? 

*  *  *  * 

I suppose I will never get over the allure of ashes, black smudges on the forehead in the shape of a cross. It is a powerful ritual to acknowledge the beginning of Lent, yes, and also to remember how small, silly, and yet how beloved we all are in God’s eye.

When I worked in the 1980’s as a chaplain at Hartford Hospital, a big bustling city hospital, and later at an addictions treatment hospital, I used to bring a small vial of blessed ashes to work on Ash Wednesday. I was astounded at how many people, staff and patients, wanted me to smear their forehead with ashes. They chased me down. When each one stood before me, some much taller than I, I tiptoed or they bent. I said to each: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Oh, how I wanted to add a little phrase of reassurance, something silly like, like don’t worry, God always loves you and will resurrect your soul forever. Oh, how fearful so many of us are of dying and being gone—just gone. 

On Ash Wednesday I felt, and feel, like a small child again, hoping someone will just pick me up and hug me forever close. All I can do is grieve for my friend, Lee, and ask another friend to smear my own forehead with black ashes and remind me. 

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. 

There is something astonishingly unifying about this visible ritual—an outward gesture of our common humanity, the tattoo that marks our common nature. Without exception.    

Either/And/Both/Or? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 2/27/22

We seem to have trouble in this “united” states of North America deciding whether to be pluribus or unum, but rarely both. It’s the same with religions and political parties. 

I am Either

shake my hand

I am And

All hands are banned

I am Both

Full of sloth

I am Or

Without an oar

Wishing more

Daring less

I confess

Oh, do stop playing silly games

We have no time for fuss or fame

We’re all the same

In this raggedy game

both tag or tag-along

and either will do.

*  *  *  *

At the end of my February 20, 2022, blog post, I posed this question: What if there is no either/or, but only both/and?  And what if there is neither but all? 

I wonder if connective and oppositional words are simply of no use in a world that continues to insist on conflict no matter what. We create wars, presumably for the sake of promoting our ideals, and for helping to liberate other radically uneven and unfree societies, and yet war accomplishes neither. War only sows all seeds for more war. In fact, power and might over against self or others for purposes of change toward a shared outcome, such as peace or communication, does NOT strengthen mutual growth, but retards it, breeding only resentment and humiliation. Ask any parent.

For example, Harvard instructor, and researcher, Jessica Stern, herself a victim of rape and the author of a memoir, Denial, interviewed terrorists in an effort to understand their violence. She uncovered consistent underlying feelings of humiliation—the emotional underpinning of terrorism. 

There is a community ritual practice in South Africa called Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a way of thinking about humanity. Young boys are trained in this practice, probably to ensure tribal survival. Ubuntu derives from the Zulu language and roughly means: “I am because we are.”  I became acquainted with this process and practice from church gatherings. I know it has to do with the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.

Even enemies? Or terrorists and rapists? Neither? Both? 

While I was reacting with rage and disgust to the recent Russian invasion of the Ukraine, I thought of ubuntu. I also thought of Jesus, of whom I am quite fond. He not only  advocated for non-violence but also prayed for enemies. All of them? Some days I think Jesus was absolutely nuts! How could I pray for Russian president, Vladimir Putin? Prayer, I discovered, makes me uneasy more times than not. I finally settled on asking God to soften Putin’s heart toward his own humanity and to that of his people. Economic sanctions, after all, hurt innocent Russians as much as war hurts innocent Ukrainians. 

Now I needed comfort. Oh, send me something terrific, I begged. 

And God sent me the Pope. What, you expected a Transfiguration? 

On St. Matthias Day, February 24 of 2022, there was a conference called “Building Bridges: A Synodal Encounter Between Pope Francis and University Students.” Matthias, was the Judas replacement, duly elected by Jesus’s disciples after his death, because of course the work must go on, and they needed to have the correct number: 12 (tribes of Israel, apostles of Christ). The Bible is nothing if not organized disorganization. 

We have 12 grandchildren—irrelevant here but lovely.   

And so I watched the Pope and the young students assembled from all the Americas, including Mexico, and Canada. Was this my consolation from God, or was it one more distractor in my spiritual journey? But I like bridges better than tunnels so I tuned in. The meeting was sponsored by Loyola University’s Institute of Pastoral Studies in Chicago.

In this brief and fascinating two hours I learned nothing new and everything renewed. First, I had to look up synodality. A SYNOD is a meeting, an assembly of clergy and appointed or elected laity. Such meetings make decisions for everyone else. They are usually boring. But this one wasn’t. 

I felt comfort from God through Papa Francisco, as the young, bright, and brisk Roman Catholic students called him. This group of 20-somethings was diverse in gender and race, and eager for just what I myself longed for at 80-something: a little affection with clout. 

The “Papa” began his time with the students by telling them he would speak to them as a priest—not as bishop or pope. He acted friendly—yes, like a friend.

I heard many things. I listened to a few. I comprehended even fewer. I retained some:

-The Pope feels like a fish in water. A fish, he said, runs and exercises very fast. He wiggled his hand like a fish. “I feel like a fish”  And so he was— swimming with us all in the same waters, seeking and seeking, just as we all are.  

-On migrants: “A migrant is a person. I was alone and you welcomed me. First, eliminate the stigmatization. I am a migrant. So are you. It is very important that all of us know our deepest roots. The old ancestors gave us base for the tree, and now you are young, and you must grow the tree.”

-“We say violence for violence. There must be NO violence. Violence destroys. It never constructs.” At Easter, you offer the other side of your faith.” (Remembering the gospel saying about turning the other cheek, I took this to mean that one should never get one-sided and rigid about one’s religious faith. 

-Several students expressed concern about the distance they felt from their clergy. No one speaks to us from the pulpits about climate change and other things that we care about, they told Papa who responded: “The pastor must not manage, but be in front, in the middle, and behind the people.”

-One young woman made this plea: “Please don’t close any more churches. Transform them into our homes.” The Pope grinned and nodded. 

- Most of us have heard the metaphorical image of Christ knocking at the door of the church, or of our own hearts—trying to get in. “The Church must knock at the door from the inside. We have to go out, to change from the inside out.”

-Finally, a theological question, implied throughout but stated by one student: We are to replace violence with goodness. How?”

-Answer: “How is God?  Close, merciful, tender, and compassionate.” 

As he left, the Papa’s zucchetto shifted on his bald head. He resettled it. No bobby pins!

*  *  *  *

So I guess that God is neither AND all. Amen.  

Such Visions, Quests and Questions? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

She’s six feet tall

striding the mall

Thin as a rail

leaving a trail

Shoppers awake

each one agape

Is her skin white—

hardly, though light

What does she want?

What doesn’t she want?

Why is she here?

What is her gig?

What’s her m.o.?

Is she a robot?

No . . . but

are you?

I must have glimpsed the above image somewhere among the array of online images that fly past my eyes as I skim quickly down the line of internet posts. Was this from an ad? I have no idea, but I woke up with this image dancing before my mind’s eye this morning, and these words followed, so I jotted them down. What? The thought that I may be going daft, or demented, or any number of strange ailments, crossed my mind, because I could not make sense of this image, or analyze its meaning.  

*  *  *  *

Another image came to mind without warning. It was an analogy articulated by a patristics (studying the early theological writings of the old boys) professor, the late Rowan Greer of Yale Divinity School, back in the early 1980s.  He told us students, emphasizing the intellectual futility of any analogy of course for how Creator God interacts with Creation, that the relationship between divine grace and human free will or agency was like sailing. 

Grace is like the wind, available at all times for better or worse, and free will was like the sailor (or crew). The tighter you pull the sails in, the less play you give to the wind, and the more likely you are to capsize the sailboat, and possibly drown. Conversely, if you let the sails flap wildly in the wind, you and your boat will flounder aimlessly about, getting nowhere. The wind is always there, to one degree or another. Your job is to cooperate with the wind, to allow its omnipresence to work with you and for you.

Your job is to manage the sails/your life artfully. It won’t happen well if you’re too uptight, or too loosey goosey, about your choices and your destinations. Ya gotta know what you’re doing and be careful doing it. Freedom is a precious and extremely difficult gift to manage—and you’re not alone. Ever. 

This as many of you know had been my experience from early childhood, and believe me I’ve been pretty awkward at times managing those “sails.” But I managed them through storms and painful losses and trauma—sometimes very close to capsizing altogether, giving up my own desires and passions to traditional roles. On occasion I have felt  becalmed, abandoned by God and everyone else, even myself—too helpless to go on.

Still, I always picked up the ropes of those life-sails again, and managed to go on. 

* *  *  * 

I may never fully understand the flash image that came to me this morning, but I am pretty sure the tall woman is not a robot, nor am I.  And I’m pretty sure she has life to live, and that she will live it with grace—no matter what. 

*  *  *  *

The last morning image that ran into my mind’s eye this morning was another remembered  image of children at play. These kids were in a Palestinian refugee camp in Israel. Unlike the well groomed, privileged children in Cambridge, these refugee children were unkempt, often scantily clad, living with anxious parents, unfree, and scared.  And still they played with vigor and passion enough, I pray, to, set “sail” even in the face of political and economic upheaval, not of their doing. 

*  *  *  *

Many are fond of bemoaning God’s absence, less fond of praising that presence when things go wrong. They ask: Where was God?  Others are fond of using most all their energy, individual and collective, to praise God’s presence, less fond of expending much of their own energy on the task at hand, be it recovery from trauma or grieving one’s losses with grace. God asks them: Where were you?  

I dare to believe that all these images came to me this morning to spark hope for this world. It’s irrational, I know, but I also know that God does not solve problems. We do, with the help of God whose grace lives within us—in our flesh, as well as beyond us. BOTH/AND.  

What if there is no either/or, but only both/and? 

Still, I do know that God's Spirit does send sparks of energy my way— doses of trust in that windy presence I call God.  

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

2022.02.06 Paschal Mysteries, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The Christian Church’s central proclamation is called The Paschal Mystery, in caps to make sure everyone knows it’s of ultimate importance—and, well, crucial to my own wellbeing, now and forevermore. 

I remember once asking a church official with a higher title than mine: What really IS the Paschal Mystery anyway?  He coughed, cleared his throat, looked down on me and said, “My dear, you should know that one!”  Then he walked away, leaving me feeling ashamed and angry.

Why then am I wondering and worrying over this doctrine now? Because I’m 83.

I’m a word person, so I make sure I know, again, that “Paschal” means pascha Passover/ Easter, from Greek pascha, from Hebrew Pesach  or Passover. Good, it’s Christian and Jewish, nicely inclusive. My maternal grandfather was Jewish, so I’m all in, saved from all sides. Yes, but, I already learned all this in seminary, drank it into my flesh, practiced it regularly for 34 years as a priest at the altar of the sacrament, and wondered at its power. The Paschal Mystery. The Mystery part of it, I notice, is taken for granted. It’s like a way to field and discourage too many annoying questions like mine. Yet here I am asking it again—not because I doubt it, exactly, but because I doubt it, sort of. Am I saved, and if so, will it hurt much? 

What helps my old-age distrust, when words grow tiresome, is graphic art, pictures that tell me more than words, images that call my heart to attention.   

In this superb painting, called Creation and painted between 1508 and 1512, by Michelangelo Buonarroti Simoni for the Sistine Chapel, I at first see what I’ve always seen, even in Italy: the old man God, his anatomy delicately draped in a swath of cloth, looking feminine save for the beard, and surrounded by many cherubic faces in the clouds, creating the handsomely sinewed Adam, apparently on earth though not very distant. I’m fascinated. As I stare, my eyes fall on HANDS. I look down at my own hands wrinkled with veins, more blue and evident than they were when I was younger. Just now all I see in this painting is those two hands with perfectly drawn muscles, reaching, stretching, both together each one reaching with all its might, toward the other, their forefingers not quite touching—not quite. I stare and wonder at the depth of this mutual yearning between God and Humankind, between God and me, perhaps all Creation.

This, I think, or rather feel through my tears, is how much I, and maybe all human beings, yearn for connection with God—and how much God yearns back. And sometimes we do connect,  just lightly, just briefly, through a kiss, a laugh, a smile, a touch, a poem or music, a child, a ninety-some year old woman who misses her mouth with most every bite, chuckles, and keeps on going, the sight of a tiny bird swooping by outside, or a ladybug crawling about on the window ledge, going nowhere. Then each night, as I snuggle down for sleep, I reach my hand towards Dick’s. Aways warm, his hand reaches back.

In all these small ways I learn again that The Paschal Mystery is not tie-downable (lovely new word). It’s not even strictly Christian, nor magically distant. It is plural. It is perennial—within the enchanting repetitive cycling of life-death-new life—and again—each cycle more beautiful than the last, each spark of life a brief affirmative certainty.

2022.01.30 Holy Scripture—How Holy and Whose? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/30/22

I do not believe that Holy Scripture should be taken literally, as if everything that is in it happened just the way it was/is written, as if there is no room for interpretations and ongoing scholarly research, study, and prayerful discernment. 

How can one embrace something called “Holy” without acknowledging as well the grandly attracting Mystery, not for me to attain but for me to receive, love, and appreciate like the rays of the Sun. 

Having said all that, I do take Holy Scripture, which for me is the testaments of the Holy Bible, seriously. In fact, I take it too seriously to take it literally. I love it too much to demean its depths and flexibility, by insisting that there is only one single way to understand its various parts. I value divine spiritual mobility too much to limits its wisdom to a single holy document, no matter how canonized it may be. I also respect Holy Scripture too much to make it the single measure of my faith in God.  

And yet, I take Holy Scripture too seriously to take it, or any portion of it, as THE Word of God, as if God dictated it word for word, while some speedy ancient stenographer/scribe wrote it all down, or as if its contents and revelations were static, the sole source of divine holy Word to faithful communities.

Still, every Sunday in many Christian churches, worshippers hear the lector say, The Word of God, to which they all respond, Thanks be to God after a biblical reading from anywhere in the whole Bible. Is this word the only holy one?  Or is it just for now? I’m grateful that alternative, more flexible options are offered in our Episcopal tradition, so a reader can say, Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people, to which we respond, Thanks be to God. 

Fulsome holiness, praise, and thanks, are reserved for the portion of the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ from Mark, Matthew, Luke or John, read each Sunday. The gospel gives a special shout out to Jesus the Christ whose story is, well, gospel. Most preachers focus on the Gospel in the sermon. This top billing makes sense, because Jesus is, to Christians, Lord, Savior, Son of God—our raison d’être. But this story is not considered holy for those outside the Christian tradition. Holiness is not just Christians. Jesus was Jewish. Many others have holy stories. 

I am not unique in my thoughts and queries, although I have wondered if I am a sinner, maybe a heretic, fooling myself for the sake of my own egotistical meanderings, ideas that energize and revitalize me. I conclude each time of self-doubt and recrimination by returning to the roots of my own childhood story. My mother read me The Little Book About God by Lauren Ford when I was 3 2/3. (I’m sure of my age, because my sister wasn’t born yet). Mom also told me I was a miracle and a gift from God. I was already inquisitive to the point of annoyance. Hence, when this book and my mother’s own joy collided with my natural curiosity, I just had to meet this God. I found the necessary  privacy for my monumental quest under our large dining room table with a cloth to the floor. There I set up a child’s inquisition for God—something like, I’m here and I want my parents to pay more attention to me, but what I really want to know is who are you? I got no answers, only the sound of my own imagination pounding silently away at God’s absence. God never said a word, nor did God grant any of my several wishes, such as banishing my mortal enemy, the martini glass. What God did do was to listen without advice. This way I learned that I mattered.  

It is to this God that I still pray. This God I followed to the church altar—not to be a bride but to become a priest at the altar. This God I discovered in the Holy Bible, a collection of stories about people to whom God spoke, and to whom God listened.  And it is this God who in time finally spoke to me with the simplest and dumbest question imaginable: Why are you doing this? (I was just baking chocolate chip cookies for my children who loved them.) 

Yet this question awakened me with words I knew were not my own, words that stunned me, words whose meaning I felt compelled to explore, words that brought me up short, that forced me to, well, check out my depressed mood with a therapist. From this God, I learned that not only can God listen to little girls, but God can ask dumb questions, and is no bully. In fact, God waited over ten years for me to address just this one “dumb” question—to wrestle an answer out of myself. I felt as if I were writing my own scripture, maybe not so holy, but my best effort.  

This God is why I believe that small stories of deep meaning come to each one of us, in all religions and all spiritualities, ancient and modern. From such inaudibly audible communications come stories, both tender and fierce, mobilized by Love. This is how I first knew that I mattered, and this is how I still know that all living things in heaven and on earth live, and move, and have their being in God. (Acts 17:28) 

Here’s a story, told about the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a man to whom God spoke in deeply holy ways, ways that engaged his own emotions and questions, ways that shaped Heschel as a theologian who told stories about God as an intimate presence. Both Heschel’s spirituality and his social-justice activism grew from prayer within this intimate God’s presence. There was no separation between Heschel’s religious faith rituals and his politics. To me, Heschel is a spiritual giant, although he was aman short in height.  

In 1968, Heschel was engaged in protest marches and demonstrations against the Vietnam War. One Sabbath his brother protesters and friends, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., came to Heschel’s apartment and were greeted with this welcoming exuberance: “You are just in time for the last bit of disengagement from the world we have to change . . .  Shabbat!”  Heschel let Coffin hold the ritual spices and King the candle while they chanted the prayers, smelling the spice box and collectively drinking a sip of wine. Then Heschel told Coffin and King the story of the wise men of Chelm who deliberated over whether people grew from the feet up or from the head down. The answer was neither. Quoting the va-yetel el echav, he said that individuals grow from within and eventually move beyond their own egos towards other people. “Here’s to the world’s outgrowth of selfishness towards the humanities . . . L’Hayim!”  The Rev. Daniel Berrigan a Roman Catholic priest, called Heschel’s practice of uniting prayers and social action for justice “an ecumenism I could take seriously.” (p.195 Abraham Joshua Heschel. A Life of Radical Amazement, biography by Julian Zelizer, 2021)

Holiness belongs to everyone everywhere always. 

It grow from within. You’ll recognize it. 

2022.01.23 In Praise Of Women Who Read—and More

So here’s a small story—a joke and not a joke. 

One morning a husband returns to the cabin 

after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap.

Although not familiar with the lake, the wife

decides to take the boat out, since it is such a beautiful day. 

She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads her book.

Along comes a game warden in his boat.

He pulls up along side the woman and says, Good morning, Madam, what are you doing?”

“Reading a book” she replies, (thinking, “Isn’t that obvious?”)

“You’re in a restricted fishing area”, he informed her.

“I’m sorry, officer, but I’m not fishing, I’m reading.”

“Yes, but you have all the equipment. I’ll have to write you a ticket.”

“For reading a book,” she replies.

“You’re in a restricted fishing area,” he informed her again.

“But officer, I’m not fishing, I’m reading.”

“Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know, you could start at any minute. 

I’ll have to write you up a ticket, and you’ll have to pay a fine.”

“If you do that, I’ll have to charge you with sexual assault”, says the woman.

“But, I haven’t even touched you,” says the game warden.

“That’s true, but you have all the equipment.

For all I know you could start any moment.”

“Have a nice day, ma’am”, he said, and departed immediately.

MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It’s likely she can also think. Sure, God created man before woman. But then, you always make a rough draft before the final masterpiece.

We Christians hear a lot about the mission of Christ, the human manifestation of Divinity on earth. We think it’s a mission to convert everyone in sight to Christianity—my brand of course. Some of us think Christ is only a title for Jesus. But I’m sure this mission is more expansive—a mission to enliven all Life everywhere. A mission to unite us all.

How? Follow the Golden Rule— golden because, it’s not a business deal; it has no value, is often costly, pays little interest, and, more often than not, you don’t see much payoff.  It is simply how we get along, and it requires grit, chutzpah, grace and a wicked sense of humor with a twist. The biblical version of this rule of life is in the biblical book Leviticus 19:18: “. . . you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” End of conversation. Jesus the Christ grew up with this rule and studied it like all good little Jewish boys. It was Holiness School; it was his credo. All religions advocate this way of life and, in spite of the tedious, rule-bound elaborations in Leviticus, this rule abides. 

So here’s a story about Leviticus—no joke yet funny. A boy of fifteen approached his grandmother with a pressing question she alone, the boy thought, could answer. He thought this because his grandma went to church and studied the Bible. The boy had searched for advice in the Bible and read in Leviticus (15:16, 32) that having a nocturnal emission of semen was against the law of God and could render him unclean, rejected by God—horrifyingly, to this teenage boy, the end of all sentient life. The grandmother chuckled inside herself, recognizing the boy’s urgency over what moderns would call a wet dream, but she answered with serious aplomb: “Well, my dear, you are a wonderful boy with normal inclinations. I love you. Stop reading Leviticus.” And from that day on forevermore, this boy was known to his grandmother and her closest friends as Leviticus.  

MORAL: always trust a wise old woman who reads the Bible. It’s likely she takes it seriously with her tongue in her cheek and you in her heart.