2022.04.17 Little Easters Everywhere. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 4/17/22

O God of Love

    so high above

       so deep beneath

           you never sleep

                you always keep

                    your heat in beat

Your love of LIfe’s

alive in strife

You love, therefore I am.

I love, therefore You are. 

                   Lyn G. Brakeman

Bovine Salvation

Sturdy Ms Methane

staunch in her pose

She’s not vain

Just full of Methane

See how she stares

Her soft eyes engage

She’s gassing the planet

In peril it stands—yet

We’re changing her repast

De-scenting her gasses

She’s still very well fed

And we’ve nothing to dread

For the gasses she passes 

are now Methane-free. 

Lyn G. Brakeman

  

Does anyone imagine that God does not have emotions? I bet it is hard to imagine God’s own feelings, especially fear or anger, if you’re not in touch with your own. Still, we have for so long worshiped a Divinity so dominantly transcendent, so consistently almighty, and so exclusively masculine, that we really don’t know God at all. 

The Creator God of the Bible creates natural wonders of Life itself with excessive prodigality and excitement. This God has creative power and shares it radically with all Creation—natural world and human. God wants it all to thrive, and adorns it all with the freedom to do just that. 

We, according to ancient story, chose to do the one thing God knows will make trouble for us for the whole rest of our existence: we exercised our freedom to know both good and evil, and to choose either way. We exposed ourselves to evil as well as good, to moral as well as immoral. And thus this little mythic story explains why we have been at odds with ourselves, each other, and God forever and ever, amen. It takes courage to make choices, and more courage to undo or reset those choices that turn out not to be so good. It takes courage to suffer choices we do not make. 

It takes prayer and serenity and wisdom and love to realize that the binary God seemed to set up is much more subtle, much more demanding and much more rewarding, precisely because it is NOT a true binary. There is no such thing as a purely good choice OR a purely evil one. This, I believe, is why God Creator warned the Edenic couple to leave the fruit of that tree alone—and why they could not leave it alone. 

This little story never happened. This little story always happen. Outside the Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, in Jerusalem there is this giant sculpture. 

 

The wind was fresh, the earth was young,

the scent of life was everywhere

the garden lay a fruitful dream

and God enjoyed the evening air

Where are my loved? the Maker wooed.

The clay I shape and call by name?

The questions spread through stem and leaf,

but as God waited no one came. 

God’s loves were hiding, faces turned,

beyond the reach of breeze and Voice,

aware that sometime in the day

they’d made a dark, far-reaching choice.

The question lingers in the leaf

in barren branch and shrinking pond—

Where are my loves? The Maker calls,

still trusting clay may yet respond. 

Michael Hudson, Songs for the Cycle

* * *  *  

A wise old owl says: Now, my dears. Do hoot and cheer and never fear, I’m always here.  

Another wise owl stays far aloft. I look out for danger and for prey. I’m always here.

Both the guardian and the nurturer seek little easters everywhere. Both equally incarnate the Spirit of Love that simply never burns out. 

*  *  * *

EIN SOF

The first time I heard these words was on our 2012 trip to Israel—a two-week pilgrimage I shall never forget. It’s in my bones. It was sponsored by St. George’s College in East Jerusalem, led by tour guides who knew the land and the language in way that made it come alive. The course was called “The Palestine of Jesus” I shall never forget my experience there. I felt as if I’d walked right into the Bible. Ein sof is one of the phrases I learned there. It’s Hebrew to describe a mystical divinity I can’t possible explain, so I call it God before God—the infinite unknowable known or finite infinitude. You see, it makes no sense and yet we know it s presence. It come in Kairos time. God’s time or timing. 

No wonder sweet mortals went speechless when they experienced kairos. It does not submit to any containment or control. No wonder that before long we humans, failing to control Kairos, invented calendars and clock, for chronos, our own time and timing.

We watch a medical television sitcom, set in the busy ED in a big city hospital. Whenever a patient, despite heroic medical efforts dies, the doctors and nurses who have been working so hard suddenly get it. They all stop at once. One doctor calls it. God calls it simultaneously. 

“Time of death 13:30” says chronos. 

“Time of Life: 13:30” says kairos.  

Ein sof. 

 

2022.04.10 Solo Flight: Meditation on Palm Sunday. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 4/10/22

I sagged with exhaustion not knowing how I was going to get through this holiest of weeks, at least to Christians. Why did I ever want to get into this priestly vocation in the first place? I didn’t remember. I walked down the aisle, checking pews, gathering leftover palms. I slumped down in the last pew and closed my eyes. I could almost hear echoes of  cheers—exuberant Hallelujas, or was it Hosannas, zinging about in the empty sanctuary. What is the point of all this anyway, I asked myself? 

What’s the point? 

My father often said, “What’s the point?” It was his favorite phrase when he felt defeated by life. I don’t think he expected an answer. In fact It was the last thing he said to me before he died. I was standing at his bedside, taking my turn in the death watch. I don’t know what any or us, his family, expected could come out of this death watch, but my mother, my younger sister, and I took turns sitting vigil at his bedside. 

I stood over the bed and looked down at the haggard, pale, familiar face of Daddy, the one whose affection I’d zealously sought in competition with the martini glass, the one I’d loved all my forty-four years, no matter what. Now his dark hair splayed out over the white pillow case as he groaned out his salvation, wrestling his demons into submission. Then silence.  Was he dead? 

“What’s the point?” he asked. 

“I don’t know, Dad,” I said. Then, seized by a sudden wave of guilt, I took his hand and added. “But if you find out, come back and let me know.” 

It took my father several more days to die.  It took me several more years to mourn, and even longer to forgive my looming pastoral burnout. 

Now I sat in the church asking myself his old question. What, dear God, is the point? 

I closed my eyes, hoping to doze off, not into death, but into some kind of tranquility, some sweet detachment. It was then that I heard some steps, almost inaudible, as if someone were sneaking into the darkening sanctuary. I looked up. A young boy entered the sanctuary, its doors still hospitably open.  I watched. He looked around as if to check his surroundings or adjust his eye to the gloom. The he walked forward toward the altar, pausing along his way to look around. I stayed quiet and watched.The boy walked all the way up the aisle and bent over. What was he after? He picked up a lone green palm. It was lying in wait at the foot of the steps up to the altar. How had I missed it? 

The boy picked up the solo palm. He walked the two steps up into the Choir, and then two more steps to the high altar. He placed the palm onto that high altar, gazed up at Jesus ghoulishly nailed to a cross exalted, stood for a minute or more. I watched—breathless. 

Then the boy spun around and ran back down the center aisle and out into the dusk. 

©Lyn G. Brakeman, 2022

2022.04.03 A Humanitarian Politics. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, 4/3/22

 

How sad and defeated I feel when something I prayed for and wanted so much to come about does not. Yet sometimes, I discover that God, or the powers of Mystery alone, or whatever strikes your fancy to call a Power Greater Than Yourself, has a broader vision than mine—a healing vision. 

What all this means is  that I am profoundly disappointed in my political party. I am profoundly disappointed in the other political party in our two-party system, and in the rigidly bipartisan structure of American democracy.  

So I have made a decision to stop believing in politics in its currently polarized condition. Politics is simply the way we the people choose to interact for the sake of sane governance and to legislate laws for the sake of good order. Politics, however, is not God or even godlike. 

I do believe in a political process, but I no longer believe in parties. I call my politics  Humanitarian. I will continue as a registered Democrat, so I can vote in local primaries and preserve the vision of a government that helps the people treat everyone with respect. I will always vote in national elections, because it is my privilege to do so, but I never again will automatically pull a party lever to vote for all the candidates in one party. This means that I will have to educate myself about the people who run for office, rather than  to react to, or assume, anything about their integrity from their party affiliation—one way or another. 

Blue AND red remain my favorite colors; together they make purple or scarlet. I am also proud of how our current president is heroically managing the mess he was handed. I blame no one, not even one party, for this current situation of systemic disorder. 

Because I do believe in systems theory, in which the whole is not simply the sum of its parts, but more— just as a poem is more than the list of the words in it. I seek a vision of the whole. I seek an image for a politics of the human, not the partisan. 

So what does the whole human system look like to me? What is the vision behind the particulars?  Here is one image, called “Motherland” by Spanish artist Ana Juan. It is set against a background of weaponry, soldiers, violence, and flames of war, meant to re-present the 2022 Russian assault of Ukraine. It is female, but not sexist or feminist. Everyone can mother. Mothering matters. Every mothering relationship must include wisdom, encouragement, nurture, and freedom. No one, and nothing, embodies this image perfectly. I see God in this image—God of soul, not denomination. God manifest in all religions, not a single religion. God of love embodied/intimate, not almighty/ascendant. 

I took this photo of  The New Yorker magazine cover, 3/21/22. I wrote to the artist, requesting permission to use her illustration for my blog: “I am an Episcopal priest, spiritual director, and author, retired and living now in Connecticut, USA. I am also a mother of four adult children and grandmother to three boys and three girls. I write to request permission to use your image, Motherland” on my blog of 4/3/22. 

I see it as one of many different possible of the Divine—this one most beautifully female though not feminist, imaging a God of love embodied. My blog appears weekly with the theme that sometimes what the world sees as sour and ugly, God may see as beautiful. I spent a graduate summer (1960) with families in Spain, Madrid and Santander. I’ve forgotten most everything except my great love for this country. Mil gracias. Lyn G. Brakeman”

Ms. Juan responded in this lovely way: “Of course, you have the right of using my image“Motherland” for your Blog of 4/3/22. I wish this image will be like the hug we all need in these dark times.  Warm regards from Spain.  Ana.” 

2022.03.27 A Prodigal Homecoming. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 3/27/22

This wonderful drawing by Tim O’Brien on the cover of the winter, 2021-2022 magazine, Columbia momentarily brought me home to my self, my soul, and divine omnipresence. 

I have so many memories of walking/trudging through all kinds of weather to night classes to earn my Masters degree in Spanish Language and Literature at Columbia. I used to wave and practically genuflect at the majestic steps leading into the halls of academe. I would have knelt before a statue like this one—to pray that I wouldn’t flunk out, or end up divorced before I even figured out what marriage was,  not to mention sex and procreation. 

I was newly married to Bill Brakeman in 1961 after a trip to Spain and a year of teaching Spanish to Smith students. We spent our first year in a small, one-room apartment on Claremont Avenue, on N.Y.’s upper west side. After eating dinner, prepared by this new “bride” who had ordered groceries delivered from a small local store and cooked one of five basic options, (chicken in some form, smothered in some soup, ham steak, pork chops, hamburger patties or meatloaf, minute steaks).  Then we went to bed, such as it was. We rolled into one another on a small pullout sofa bed and parted early each morning with a hug and a kiss. Bill would commute out to Connecticut to his engineering job, while I studied myself into oblivion, then walked over to campus for evening classes. I mean, after all, they awarded me a Danforth grant to get this degree, so I could teach Spanish. I’d better perform.  

We newlyweds must have had some conversations, but most of what I remember is exhaustion from studying, fretting over my distinctly inadequate culinary skills, and wondering if I was doing the right thing. I mean shouldn’t I be married AND pregnant by now, like it’s  supposed to happen? Be a mother?  A proper wife? Also can one get pregnant without orgasms?

Even now as I remember, I close my eyes tight and imagine myself into this wintry scene, transporting myself backwards into total student mood, a favorite fallback over the years. I wanted children, and what if my uterus suddenly aged too fast? Worrying was another fallback mood, as you can tell. Essentially, I felt pretty small and lonely and scared, like the bird—a Cardinal no less—on this cover art for the issue devoted to climate change. My imagination flew me into the wintry scene where I met my own Cardinal. 

 

Well, hello big guy.  Watcha doing?

Silence

Oh, your reading your texts or something, right?  I wish I had a phone like yours. Hey, I’m talking to you. 

Hmph

Thinking up a storm, I see. 

Little bird, little bird, do shut up. You’re casting a shadow on my phone. 

It’s snowing you see, and I just need a perch. Also, I’m lonely and bored out here.

Why won’t you talk to me? I’m pretty much of a standout feature in my flashy red suit. Like it?

I’m thinking. 

About?

Are you a Cardinal?

Yup, none other, or so they say. What other guy do you know who has such a handsome coxcomb? Hey, smile why don’t you, Mr. serious guy. What could be more fun than a conversation with another proud male in the snow on a moonlit evening in the midst of academia’s crowning jewel itself? Hey, are you grinning? 

Little Bird, little Bird where were you when I took myself so seriously, almost lost my way, or drowned in my own mind?

I was here, you just couldn’t see me. I am your imagination. I open you to create wonder and spy on God, to whom I introduced you to when you were a small child. Remember? You thought I was prodigal. But I was never wanton or wallowing in extravagance. I, like you, was just  explorative—searching out, crying out, longing, reaching—and sinning along the way.   

Cheerleading life itself, eh?  Well, thanks for the company out here in the snowy cold. 

Sure thing. I travel well. In Christian lore, I’m a symbol of vitality, sometimes a messenger. Church Cardinals dress all in red, strut their stuff, get stuffy. I do that too. So do you. Now cheer up. You can do this, even though you’re just pregnant. 

What? 

Oh, you didn’t know? Hit those books. Keep on going and next winter you’ll be trudging to the big city to take your comprehensive examinations here—great with child. I’ll be with you. 

So that was how I got through, got pregnant, received a Masters degree, and relied on my comprehensive imagination in its latest incarnation—a red male prodigal bird-angel—to remind me, once again, even now, to trust this Omnipresent One.   

2022.03.20 Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. Spiritual Lemons, Lyn G. Brakeman, blog post. 3/20/22

The Bible is a source of frustration to many, a source of wonder to some, and a source of trembling awe to others. To me it is a source of all of these aforementioned states of mind and heart. 

On this Sunday in Lent, the biblical readings from the Hebrew Scriptures, from St. Paul of many words and even more semicolons, and from the Gospel, according to Luke, all artfully bombard listeners with one central theological theme: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, Hebrew for “I am as I am”—no more and no less. I am is God’s personal name: I am I Am. God’s name is the verb To Be, a verb that indicates presence. God is present—no matter what.  

Ehyeh asher Ehyeh

Not too many or of us will ever see a burning bush that is not consumed, because fire always consumes, burns up. Nevertheless, many of us see something like a burning bush, something that communicates to us the omnipresence of God as Being itself.  I memorized many omni- words in Sunday School. The only one that stuck to my soul was omnipresence, because it always proved true, even in the worst most dreary or painful times—time in which I could see no way out, no place for me, no clarity for my hopes and dreams. Once years ago I was staring at a liturgical calendar on which the special, holy days—Easter days— were marked in white. Logically, it was the Easter season. Illogically, I suddenly saw all the days’ numbers appear as white. I tried to blink away what I saw, decided I could be going mad, and then, like Moses, shed my doubts. (And did you know that the verb for “shed” is the same in Hebrew as the word used for a snake’s shedding its skin each year, without which shedding the snake could never grow?)  So I shed my doubts and shrugged: “What the crazy hell, it’s all white, every day!” I’m okay. 

Ehyeh asher Ehyeh

Just last week I saw a small, round, completely white snowy owl perched atop a tall tree outside our window. I rushed to get the binoculars. We always try to prove our vision, don’t we? But this one was provable. There she was, pure white just waiting to be joined and blended into the big snow blizzard that would be upon us that evening and into the next day.  Then suddenly she was gone. Up and away, she flew, leaving only the impression of her presence behind my eyes. 

Ehyeh asher Eyheh

As Paul writes to the grousing Corinthians, read any of us much of the time: Hey you, stop grumbling. There isn’t much happening to you that has not happened to others. There is not a test you cannot survive, for God will provide you the way out, as well as the strength to bear it. This is often quoted, sometimes flippantly, as if this truth is obvious when you’re in the middle of great grief and fear. Well, it is not obvious at all, and should always be taken lightly and spoken gently with one hand on your own heart  and another hand on the heart or head of the other in your presence. It is terrifying to be present like this. I’ve been with dying people and suffering ones in the hospital, and I want more than anything else to flee. But I remember, I’m not alone. 

Ehyeh asher Eyheh

And in the gospel of Luke (13:1-9), Jesus makes a bit of fun of us “poor me” types who imagine our own suffering to be the worst of all, our own guilt the most unbearable, our own failings the most, well, deserving of grace. Nonsense, Jesus tell them. We all fall to the same fate  equally. Get some new perspectives. Change your viewpoint. Jesus offers a parable of a fig tree that, year after year, has failed to produce. The owner is angry and orders this one tree to be cut down, for it is useless trash. But the vinedresser, the one who cares for this vineyard and knows all the trees and their vines intimately, calls for reprise: Give this one another year. I will hoe around it and fertilize it, and if it bears fruit another year, fine. If not let it be cut down. I am tempted to excise that last line, because I am sometimes afraid of dying, afraid of being useless, think that all my efforts have been fruitless. But then. 

Ehyeh asher Ehyeh