2022.05.08 Rock of Ages, Get a Grip On Me. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/8/2022

Today I write to honor and remember the nurturing energy of all mothering persons and animals in this fragile world—and also our mothering God.  

                                                *  *  *  *

I have always hated the image of a rock for Christ Jesus, for Divinity, a trusted friend, a parent, the church, or for my own soul’s faith. A rock is plain too hard and cold. 

But then the old hymn goes on to tell me that this hard old rock is “cleft for me.” Cleft? That’s from cleave, split in half, or some version thereof. All I could think of was cleft palate, a sad image of misshapenness. But how could this happen to a rock? What would a hard rock look like if it were split? And who could split a hard rock?

This hymn was my maternal grandmother’s favorite. She croaked it a lot and I never thought it was soothing until I heard her sing these words—nearly inaudibly, like a private prayer.  

Rock of ages cleft for me

Let me hide myself in Thee.

Let the water and the blood

From thy wounded side which flowed

Be of sin the double cure,

Save me from its guilt and power. 

The words were written in 1763 by an English cleric, Augustus Toplady (no kidding) when he was hiding under a large rock during a thunderstorm. The rock kept him from being struck by lightning. Toplady was ordained priest in 1764..

The hymn tune, paired with Toplady’s lyrics, was written by Charles Wesley, brother of John Wesley with whom Toplady feuded about ecclesiology, that is, the saving role of the institutional church. John Wesley thought Toplady was a “dirty writer”— a veritable chimney sweep of a writer too smudged up with sin for Wesley even to bother fighting with.  

So you see there is a story behind every effort, and a meaning to every text under God, or Heaven. I didn’t know my grandmother’s mind, but I now know some of her story. She was born in 1873 into a wealthy, socially elite family in Medford, Massachusetts. She was named Marguerite Gordon Hall but soon took on the nickname Daisy, because marguerite means Daisy in French. A lively bright child, she wrote little poems called “The Sayings and Doings of Joey Pumps”, and when she was a young seventeen she met and fell in love with Avon Franklin Adams, a Jewish impresario from New York City. The Halls of Medford were horrified at the scandalous match, so the two eloped and got married in 1891 in New York City at Church of the Strangers, formerly the Mercer Street Presbyterian Church. The church seemed perfectly named for two young people who  broke family and societal rules to follow their love.

I called my grandmother Ga. We had our clashes, mostly because she and I had similar spirits of rebellion. But when I heard her singing her hymn, I glimpsed her Christian faith, and thought about how she must have felt sheltered by the old fashioned, somewhat morbid to me, imagery of Christ crucified, blood and water, together no less, spilling from his wounded, pierced side. How could this ugly image have felt healing to my grandmother? It was her grief. Her chosen beloved husband died in 1924, leaving her a young widow with four children, the youngest of whom was my mother whose own grief was lifelong.  

Such a gruesome image repels and compels. Life hurts and heals. God is OMNIpresent in Love—and symbolically in a cleft rock.  

In the midst of my own midlife crisis, I broke rules and wounded myself and others—not to death you understand, but emotionally. One day, as I struggled to get right with myself and God, I sneaked into a small store located down some stairs under a huge shopping mall north of Boston. I feigned curiosity only—browsing—while deep down I knew darn well that I hoped to find a small unobtrusive wooden crucifix—for myself. Here it is 25 years later and partially maimed. 

Daily I pray this line from the Ignatian prayer, Anima Christi: “Hide me within thy wounds.” How could such a prayer be healing? Was it like that old rock of ages cleft for me, a sheltering prayer, as if the rock were gripping me as it had gripped my grandmother, or gripped Jesus in the midst of his dying moments? One day I too will sing to the cleft rock.

Life’s all about taking multiple chances—offered by God and/or taken on one’s own— is it not? 

2022.05.01 Easter Three. Theology Made Ordinary. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 5/1/22

Last week we zoomed in on parts of the Diocese of Massachusetts clergy conference. We heard talks from the Rev. Dr. Kate Sonderegger, Episcopal priest and Professor of Systematic Theology at Virginia Seminary. 

But what is theology? Can we actually dare to have a Doctrine of God? Sonderegger spoke to the intimate connection between academic explorations and prayer. “Theology is the intellect at prayer—alive and encountering us in all things.” I can relate to that, because I find myself talking to God, and sometimes Jesus, all the time—conversationally as well as asking for specific healing help. It’s simply a habit I’ve had since I was a very young child. At least God never talks back with advice, teaching, direction, or, God forbid, counseling. I guess God is like my mind’s eye, opening me to notice, or think, or feel, or imagine new things.

Sometimes an attention-arresting question pops into my mind, like the one God-in-Jesus popped to Peter, asking him the same question THREE times: Do you love me? Well, duh, now feed my sheep!  

God’s Love IS God’s will. Not hard to understand but easy to forget, especially when you’re busy blaming others, shaming yourself, spouting off like Job, or just plain feeling unloved, unloveable, too proud to ask others for help, or grumped out.  And when we fail, which is inevitable, then there is still Love enough to go round. So touch “restart.”   

Living into this faith of Jesus in a secular age is scandalous. Sonderegger said: “Simply being an ordinary person who is a person of faith, is an important testament to the goodness and glory of God.”  With a touch of humor, this academic theologian recognized that in the eyes of the secular world, a Christian—a person who puts their faith in a God who died and rose again, and shapes their life according to ancient laws—must be an idiot or a bigot or both. Nevertheless, to be the person who you are—to be an ordinary person, imperfect but loving, thoughtful, and decent—is itself an invitation to the people you know who love and respect you but who have no time for God, to wonder whether your faith and your goodness may in fact be related after all.

May we all have the courage to be visible symbols of God’s presence in our ordinary lives, and may our very ordinariness reveal to others the possibility of divine presence everywhere. Grace after all is the experience of being fully known AND fully loved at the same time. 

2022.04.25 What Does It Mean? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 4/22/25

This week recognizes St. Mark the Evangelist’s calendar day, April 25th. I wouldn’t just automatically know that,  but I have one of those calendars that has red numbers for saints’ days.  

Mark was/is very important, not because his gospel was written first, nor because it is one of the three synoptic gospels, but because it’s my favorite. “Synoptic” comes from the Greek word meaning synopsis. Mark, Matthew and Luke write to different cultures and audiences, and each has a particular slant on the happenings of Jesus’ ministry on earth. 

Mark begins his gospel: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, ‘See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’”  (NRSV)  We are at attention. This is one of the best once upon a times I’ve ever heard. We are about to hear a story, a very ancient story, one we will never forget, even though we will probably never quite believe it. 

Mark’s writing is clipped, clear, concise, and concrete. He leaps onto a scene and simply writes what he sees and hears and what happened, as any good reporter would. )f course much of it was on the streets being told and therefore subject to some distortions. Yes, it was all news fit to print when printing became possible. What is news stays news when it changes people’s lives. 

I was a newspaper reporter of local news many years ago, and I know how very hard it is to report accurately on any event while keeping your own interpretative thought and opinions out of it. Of course Mark was probably not present at every scenario he reports, but there is a very good chance that he knew lots about Jesus even if he was not in the original twelve of Jesus’s closest fellow travelers who became official disciples and had eye-witness advantages. 

In general, it is important to remember that a number of years elapsed before anyone went public with the revelations they’d discovered. Also, that Paul was the first to write about Jesus’s divine identity, the Christ, the Anointed One.  Christian orthodoxy tells us that Jesus is the word made flesh. He is God incarnate. He has two natures, one fully human and the other fully divine, neither compromising the other.  I tell you a Mystery. What else is new?  Still, be not deterred or discouraged, just read the story and you will find wisdom and parts of your self within the ancient story. I believe that the Bible is a collective memoir—full of truth and grace and wonder. 

Why do I like Mark the best? Well, I didn’t always. At grieving times in my life, I’ve been drawn to John’s gospel, because it is more mystical, allows for offbeat spiritual reckonings and acknowledges the sorrow of Mary Magdalene, crouched before the empty tomb where her dead teacher and Lord was buried. BUT, he is gone. Where is the body?  This is the way any great mystery novel begins, before it peels off into elaborate detective work and police searching for criminals. 

But Magdalene’s search takes a sudden alarming and enlightening turn. She hears her Lord’s voice calling her name, "Mary". It is enough to raise her despair to hope. She runs to tell the other devotees, who do not believe her, until they too check out the empty tomb. It is empty. It’s true. The rest of the story can be summed in these words: “But what does it mean?” 

Mark just tells the story from a more down-to-earth perspective. Markan language and literary style are different, but the story told has the same basic ingredients and ends simply with the empty tomb without further embellishment or explanatory revelations. We are left simply with the mysterious quest and question. 

It is what still drive us today, WHAT DOES IT MEAN?  

*  * *  *

I offer an image of God and the relationship between divine and human, including the whole natural world of living things. The image is from the Hebrew word L’mantzeach: “To the Conductor of the Eternal Symphony.” Pamela Greenberg, author of “The Complete Psalms” a translation. She dedicates many of the psalms The Conductor of the Eternal Symphony—an image of God as “the arranger of the many diffuse aspects of existence.”  (Greenberg, p. 323.)

I played in our high school orchestra too many years ago to count. I cringed when my clarinet squeaked, and/or if someone’s trumpet blasted in where it wasn’t time, or too loud or something. I’d feel sorry for the conductor, who nobly continued to direct the orchestra anyway for the sake of the whole production and for the integrity of the symphony itself. Greenberg writes: “the image suggests a deeply concerned, involved, and orchestrating God.”   

To me, it also suggests that everyone and every variety of player and instrument is involved, has has a part to play, and each is essential to the harmony of the whole.  

We make the best “music” together when we play our part well, and do not judge ourselves, punish or mock others, or violate the harmony. Such behavior is sinful, wounds the eternality as well as the finitude, and disturbs the fluidity of the “symphony” itself, not to mention making the “conductor’s” job a mockery. 

May we trust each other and listen with respect to our own voices and all the others in this Creation. Why? We are all making a Symphony. 

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.”