2023.06.04 Trinity and Transcendence, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

It’s Trinity Sunday, a day when Christians celebrate the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.This  is an ancient discernment that Divinity itself is ONE with three distinct self-expressions, all divine and mediated through Creation, through the Created, and through a Holy Spirit, traveling music for the unitive flow of energy. I guess this is why one of the lectionary readings for this Sunday is from Genesis 1:1–2:3—the entire Creation account according to the ancient priestly writers. 

I recall one professor loudly proclaiming: “Yes, the trouble doesn’t start till Genesis 2:4b when God foolishly decided to create us earthlings in the divine image and gave us freedom to choose good and evil.” We can choose God or not.                                                                                           

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What better Sunday than Trinity Sunday to weave a new tale of coherence in the Christian faith I embrace, the faith that, according to Mother Teresa is the Christian FAITH not the Christian Certainty.  

Andrew McGowan, Dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, wonders about the Genesis reading for Trinity Sunday. He points out that Genesis as a trinitarian story is not just because God is called “we” in Genesis, but because Genesis is about “the complexity of divine purpose, action and presence” throughout. Genesis never stops, I’d say. 

Still, I’m not a scholar/professor, and this is not a lecture with grades for superb parroting.  Also, doctrine is not the same as dogma. No one knows precisely what the nature of Divinity is. Some of us, of course, think we do, then set up prohibitive fences like certitude, to protect our own interpretation. What the Trinity does is to keep God alive and bristling with energy, available to all—inclusive and not mediated by any single religion, viewpoint, or source.

We are endowed with unique gifts: imagination, intuition, creativity, and yearning. We also get signs, hints, intuitions, dreams and occasionally a cattle-prodding wallop from a source we do not control but which we recognize as not entirely of our own making. These signs we label Mystery. I call them God-incidences.                                                                     

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A good friend and wise professor recently commented that a Mystic was someone who experienced the divine, aka God, without mediation. My immediate thought was: there’s no such thing as an unmediated experience. It can only come to us through us—our prayers, senses, intuitions, imagination, even our unconscious as vision. Of course such an experience can come to us from outside us, but it still comes to us through us. It is Divinity Immanent. 

Helen Keller learned to know the world through touch. When her teacher Annie wondered aloud how to communicate God to Helen, Helen answered: “Oh, I already know God.”  

In the 1970’s, when I was a young mother of four growing children from fifteen to eight, I was in the midst of baking whatever number batch of chocolate chip cookies I’d baked as part of my maternal repertoire. I’d meticulously laid out all the ingredients. There were no cookie mixes then, or if there were I deemed the use of them as cheating. On what? Oh, on the ideal image of the contented housewife. As I plodded through this routine, I thought with affection of the children who would delight in my cookies. I was also bored. I felt like a metronome, not missing a beat of the the musical score written for my role. In my mind I heard my children’s lilting voices and saw them dashing into the kitchen, lifting my mood, grabbing a cookie then running out to play in whatever weather was available, their exuberance a guarantee of my maternal worth and my love. They were a delight. My ennui was not their fault in any way. Nor was it mine. Nor was it my husband’s who worked hard to make sure we were financially secure. 

Still, I knew there was something missing. Suddenly I smelled the odor of burned cookies. I jumped into action to save my cookies. As I did, I also heard a voice from deep within me, or from far beyond me. It was not harsh or confrontational. It was firm and gentle. It grabbed my attention. I wept.

Why are you doing this? 

I had no idea how to answer the question. I knew it didn’t sound like my own voice—exactly.  I knew I had to answer. Was this the voice of God? Possibly. Am I a mystic? No. But I knew this question interrupted my boredom, my uncertainty. I knew it was mediated through the odor of burning cookies and the depth of my own soul’s discontent. I also knew it was not from far away or high above, but deeply embedded in the ongoing, immanent trinitarian process.  It was not Divinity Transcendent.                                                                                 *  *  *  *  

P.S. I cannot resist now sharing the thought that popped into my head this morning: Gallia est omnis divisa in tres partes. (Gaul was the region we know as ancient western Europe.)  My Latin teacher would recite this magically as if we should remember it. AND Gaul is still one Gaul.  How galling.  

2023.05.28 PENTECOST, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I’ve loved and trusted the Presence of God since childhood, but I’ve never felt the urge to evangelize as we Christians are supposed to, right?  To me Pentecost was/is not the birthday of the Christian Church, nor the arrival of the Holy Spirit for the first time ever, but rather a stunning advertisement for the steadfast loving Spirit of God, present broadly, deeply, and wildly to all sorts of people the world over. Will they all be Christians? Not likely. Will they all be endowed with divine grace? Yes. Is that enough salvation? Yes. Is it the only way of salvation? No.

*  *  *  *

Recently at a sacred music concert taking place in an enormous church sanctuary, a listener turned to me and said bluntly: “What’s a mystic?” As if I knew! People ask clergy the most annoying real questions just because we are clergy. Clergy are NOT God, thank God!  

Still, the question got me wondering: What IS a  mystic really?  

A prayer practitioner. 

Pop-up answers seem foolish, I know, yet they are the kind of answers that force my attention away from my ego and all my educated answers. A prayer practitioner?  

Who, what, where, when, and why? 

WHO is a prayer practitioner? Anyone hoping, perhaps longing, to deepen their relationship of love with self, God and neighbor.  

WHAT is prayer? Being silent, preferably in solitude, while willing to open up to inner thoughts and feelings, to listen for God in your soul or notice God sitting on the branch of a tree. 

WHERE? At a place of deep quiet usually but not always at a monastery or a convent, run by monks or nuns whose ministry is to provide and maintain space and hospitality for prayer practitioners. 

WHEN? As soon as you admit to yourself that you need well, to know what the hell you are doing with your life.  And when you decide to sign up for a silent directed retreat for 3 days, then for 5 days and eventually for a whole week or 10 days. And when you submit to talking about your innards with a wise and trained Spiritual Director who listens and makes suggestions about things to use from Scripture or, annoyingly, recommends more silence. That’s when you take a walk, fume to God about all this damned silence, return to your room and sleep like a champ. 

WHY?  Because I said so.  On my first silent directed retreat, I stared for a very long time at a huge portrait of a rose. I loved its sheer size, its astounding beauty, elegance, and all its petals. I went to the greenhouse and asked if the man I met there was the gardener, just like Mary Magdalene had asked the Risen Christ who appeared to her as she wept at Jesus’s empty tomb in the gospel story in John 20:15.  In my case, this guy in the greenhouse actually was the gardener. He gave me one rose. I took it back to my room and dissected it, one petal at a time. The bright red petals were strewn all over the floor. There were only about 29. I left the petals and slept. The next day I returned to the chapel where the rose portrait hung. This time I noticed its long stem. There were thorns, sharp and pointed all along the stem on both sides.

 The thorns were hard. I frowned.

The petals were soft. I cried.

The petals far outnumbered the thorns.  I laughed.

  

2023.05.21 What Is Eternal Life? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

How much reassurance do we need? I have no idea, only clues.

Shut your mouth and listen

Shut your eyes and see.

Shut your ears and hear. 

Shut your mind and feel.

Make a fist

Then kiss it open. 

Have we not too much heaven on our minds?

Can we not feel with each heartbeat 

 a sighing,

               groaning,

          sobbing

Earth—swollen with glory and abundance?

Live it well.

Learn it well.

Love it well.

Immortality we pray for

Immortality is all around us—

not hidden as we’ve imagined—

But creating itself 

  recreating itself 

For God’s sake, wake up, work, and pray.  

Pour out your gratitude over all earth (Psalm 67)

Your tears will heal.

Make eternal life now.

Stretch. 

Eternal life is loving those

the Spirit sends our way,

and holding dear the wealth God hides

in every pinch of dirt.   (Michael Hudson hymn)

    ©lyngbrakeman 2023

 

2023.05.14 Be a Poem, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

To be a poem is not the same as to write a poem. Being a poem takes lightness of mind and soul, weightless wisdom, boldness of heart. In other words, the branches are less weighty, but more supple, lithe, and limber than the vine. Together they create great spiritual choreography. Such is the embracing way of our mothering God.

*  *  *  *  

She had some horses she loved.

She had some horses she hated.

They were the same horses. 

Joy Harjo

A NAME

When Eve walked among

the animals and named them—

nightingale, red-shouldered hawk

fiddler crab, fallow deer—

I wonder if she ever named

them to speak back, looked into 

their wide wonderful eyes and

whispered, Name me, name me.  

Ada Limón

INSTRUCTIONS ON NOT GIVING UP

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out

of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s 

almost obscene display of cherry limb shoving

their cotton-candy colored blossoms to the slate

sky of spring rains, it’s greening of the trees

that really gets to me. When all the shock of white

and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave

the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,

the leaves come. Patient, plodding,  green skin

growing over whatever winter did to us, a return

to the strange idea of continuous living despite

the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,

I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf

unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

Ada Limón

BREATH IN ME

Breathe in me, breath of God

healing my lungs’ disease

So that I may in purest love

breathe in, and breath out with thee.

Breathe in me, breath of God,

For when my life is done

And my sweet lungs lose all their pow’r

My last breath and yours are one.

Lyn G. Brakeman (after Hymn #508)

And then the plant, fresh charged, would be

itself a vein of grace,

a way the keeper might extend

a hopeful, green embrace,

connecting child and foe and friend,

co-mingled and entwined,

to be and bear the fruit of god

in one life-giving vine. 

Michael Hudson

* * * *

And such are the many and varied ways of affectionate naming, guiding, breathing, mothering we recognize and celebrate on this 2023 MOTHERS’ DAY. 

2023.05.07 Mansions of God, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

In my Father’s House there are many mansions. If it were not so I would have told you. (John 14:2)

I’m getting your room ready as we speak. 

*  *  *  *

When I was a child I heard this promise proclaimed in a solemn preachy voice drifting  down upon me from a skyscraper pulpit. I also imagined my own room. If Jesus said so it must be true, right?  I wondered, curiously prying child that I was. God I knew and trusted, but Jesus?

Mansions, I thought, were palatial houses owned by very rich people and located in the Hamptons somewhere. Or Hollywood. I was sure that mansions were to be avoided at all costs. My father said they cost a fortune and had to be very taxed—unfairly. He also told me his family once lived in a mansion, on a hill called Tower Hill in Morristown, New Jersey. From that hill one can see the skyline of New York City. 

“But Daddy, that’s not where Grahmy and Grahmpy live. I’ve been there and it’s not really a mansion, is it?”  In fact, it was only the post-depression step-down house with no fewer than twelve bedrooms. No answer from Daddy. Either Daddy or Jesus must be wrong. Jesus, I figured. Then again, do you know what amazing fun I’ve had imagining what room I would design in God’s “mansion” It would be a library in pink, filled with “banned” books with a huge dining room table in the center of it—maybe some Ritz crackers, but you don’t need much food in mansions because there are servants, or angels.

*  *  *  *  

I grew up and studied the Bible—a book with many, many translations. I learned that the latest scholarly translations of the New Testament substituted dwelling places for mansions. I missed the mansions. As an adult and an Episcopal priest I went exploring in New Jersey. I wanted to see this putative family mansion, this Tower Hill.    

Lo and behold! Tower Hill is a mansion—elegant and with many rooms. It’s too big for one family. My father’s father grew up there, and today, if you drop the family name you can get a private tour. Roman Catholic nuns of the Sisters of the Filipini bought and fitted up the mansion to be a school for girls. How perfect. I gawked at the hand-carved mahogany ceilings and fireplace mantels. There was a special room for music and, imagine, my paternal great-grandmother summoned the family there for prayers every evening—Presbyterian prayers no less. This indeed was a mansion. 

*  *  *  

Jesus’s “mansion” I’m sure, is, yes, spacious enough to house ALL creation without condition.

And no, not the result of works or wealth, inherited or earned, but rather of a freely given divine grace. 

Still, do feel free to design a room of your own.  

2023.04.30 Know Any Sheep? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

When we traveled in the northern isles into Scotland and Wales, we saw sheep—lots of sheep. They stood around grazing and munching on the green hillside. We used to joke that the sheep were grazing and munching on the green hillsides at night when it got dark and we turned in for the night. In the morning when the sun loomed skyward enough that we could see in the morning light, the first sight we saw were those same sheep still grazing on those same green slopes chewing their cud in the side-to-side way such ruminating ungulates do. 

I always looked for shepherds and I never saw any on those hillsides. It led me to believe that sheep really didn’t need shepherds as much as we think, and possibly in the ways we assumed. In fact the locals would spat about the cantankerous, bellicose personalities of the Irish sheep, as opposed to the placid peaceful Scottish sheep. All of this was good humor, possibly to cover up for underlying hostilities between neighbors—the politics. 

*  *  *  *  

And then in Christian churches I heard a lot about Jesus as a—no THE—Good Shepherd, guiding, prodding, cajoling and scolding all the dumb sheep to make sure they followed him, and him alone. At this idea I bleated and balked, and refused to follow. 

Then I heard a sermon about the parable of the sheep and the goats presenting an image of Jesus, acting on God’s behalf, sitting on a throne separating sheep from goats. He cast aside the goats, designating them to perish in Hell, and adopted the sheep, designating them for salvation as God’s chosen ones. The Gospel was read. The people in the congregation settled into their pews—some ready to listen, other ready to critique, others settling in for a doze, imagining that no one could notice their drifting off. (A preacher in a pulpit or preaching from the crossing, can see all the dozers, believe me—just as we could see all the nonchalant sheep grazing inattentively day and night.)

This particular sermon began: “Some people think this Good Shepherd image for God is bogus.” 

Everyone quickly woke up from dozing or grazing and paid attention. This preacher went on to debunk the “bogus” image of God as Judge. This preacher I fell in love with. I knew he knew how to love everyone equally—goats and sheep—impartially, inclusively, gracefully. This God I loved as well, good goat that I was.   

Apparently, so did some members of a search committee, getting a preview of a priest who might be a candidate for their own parish. They were buried, anonymously, in that morning’s congregation. They too wanted a God who embraced both sheep and goats without prejudice. They elected him as their next rector. In time, I followed.  

On The Road—Again, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 4/23/23

The biblical story, as reported in Luke’s gospel (24:13-35) about what happened on the road away from Jerusalem and towards Emmaus is a classic story: something so radically outside the realm of our expectations happens that we can’t believe it. We can’t believe our eyes, our ears. These followers of Jesus knew that he had died—dead and gone. 

I remember such a feeling when I saw the bare body of my dead father, his frail bony legs hanging limply over the arms of the big burly funeral director who carried him from his home. I knew he was very sick with esophageal cancer. The surgery to remove the tumor had left him unable to swallow. I knew he was going to die. He was only seventy-one. I knew I’d received a call from my mother early that Sunday morning that “Daddy died.”  I, with my sister and mother, had kept vigil, taking turns for days as my father moved through his dying process. It took nearly a week. I timed his groans— every fifteen minutes as he tossed and turned on the pillow. The nurse said he wasn’t in pain. Was he wrestling with “demons” or himself or God?  I thought I would die from helplessness just listening and counting. I knew my father was dying, yet when I saw him dead I did not believe it. I could not believe it. My love was not ready for this death.

*  *  *  * 

A neutral Jewish historian at the end of the first century reported: “When Pilate, upon hearing him (Jesus) accused by men of the highest standing amongst us, had condemn him to be crucified, those who had in the first place come to love him did not give up their affection for him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. (from “Overture” The Gospel of Jesus, by scholar John Dominic Crossan.)

Does this mean that these early Christians were stunned by their disbelief as if it were a delusion, or did it mean that some kinds of love never dies? I don’t know. But I do know that Emmaus-like experiences happen all the time. The couple in this Emmaus story left the crucifixion scene and walked along the road, incredulous. Of course they talked, trying to understand the incredible death. The gossip and the wondering ran wild. Who do we believe? How will we know? A stranger came along and asked them what they were talking about. They told him of Jesus’s death, and their incredulity. 

Later that evening they invited this stranger to join them for more conversation and a meal. In the meal, the breaking of the bread, they recognized the meal we now call the Communion/Eucharist, the meal Jesus had told them to keep on doing for remembrance and for ongoing sanctification of Truth. Suddenly, they remembered all they had experienced in their travels with Jesus. Yes, he was dead and yes, he still was alive with them in this meal. Only then did they race back to Jerusalem in high spirits, proclaiming the aliveness of Jesus the Christ/Messiah.  

Crossan wrote: “The symbolism is obvious, as is the metaphoric condensation of the first years of Christian thought and practice in one parabolic afternoon. Emmaus never happened. Emmaus always happens.”  

*  *  *  *

Some time after Dad died I rummaged through his drawers to find some kind of memory. I found his old faded golf sweater. I put it on. Its sleeves hung down well below my hands. I smelled the scent of his cigarettes, poked my fingers into the little holes made in the sweater by cigarette ash. I wore that old sweater on and off for some years, until one day, I knew I would never forget my father and his dumb toxic habits, nor his love for me and mine for him. That day I rolled up the sweater and placed it gently into the trash basket with a gentle pat. My father was dead. My father remains alive in my heart. 

Will I see him again? I don’t know, nor do I much care. Remembering is enough. Loving and writing the memories is enough. Continuing to celebrate the sacramental meal Jesus instituted in God’s name is enough to keep the Love he preached alive—to trust and reenact its potency always.  AMEN.