2023.09.03 Winners? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Do you ever wonder why those who experience deep suffering, for whatever reason are considered “losers” in our current American, if not worldwide, cultural narrative of WINNING? 

I recall an experiment some years ago that was conducted by educators. I guess you’d call it an experiment on reversals of expectations. Young kids were invited to run a short race at the end of which there would be a surprise of some sort. The kids ran their hearts out. Those who came in last and second-to-last got recognized as “winners.”  The uproar was intense, and the conversation about “fairness” even more intense. As I recall, one child was quite overweight, expending every ounce of energy and effort he could muster, to “win”. He did.  Everyone learned something, and I’d wager that everyone still remembers that paradoxical race. I do.   

Still, the more we love to win and fight to win, and start wars to win sovereignty and assert our own values, the more we actually lose. Our heroic self-esteem only lasts for a short time, and then we wonder once again who we are, do we really matter—for what and to whom?  Wars don’t work. 

Q: Who gets to be heroes in the biblical narrative?  A: Those who lose.  

The passionate Israelites, the children of Abraham, the tribe of the Northern kingdom, Israel, lose every battle, yet they are the “chosen” of YHWH—the Jews. In fact, it’s odd the way “losers”— even in baseball, even in Ukraine, even in  Afghanistan, “abandoned” by the U.S.A. in one more failed war, and even Jesus, unjustly murdered—are remembered as “winners” over time. 

Easy to shrug off the question and decide it’s all God’s will—then keep on fighting to win anyway. 

The biblical Job is not satisfied with pat answers that try to silence his fierce prayers. Job’s losses and sufferings multiply in unbelievable ways, causing him to besiege and batter God for answers to his ongoing prayers: Why me? Where were/are YOU?  Finally, God responds—not giving Job the answers to his quest and questions about WHY the “Almighty” divine powerhouse keeps on letting all this bad stuff happen. What does God do?  God takes Job on a tour of all creation—amazing panoramic beauty, sparkling with life abundant. God does not provide a rational, logical, obvious answer to Job’s questions; nor does God address moral issues like winning or losing or fairness or justice. There is simply an enormous revelation of the brilliant huge, glorious enormity of the whole. It’s not about blame or shame, but about  divine compassion. Could God change the way it is?  Would God? 

Can we see, and will we love it all, in spite of our own troubles? I don’t know, but I do know that sometimes Beauty comes my own way and breaks through but does not eliminate all my fears and doubts and struggles and pains. 

“Winners” don’t break open our hearts, “losers” do. It is they who elicit our deepest caring, promote our finest connections, heal sin—anything that separates us from the goodness in ourselves, others and God. The poet gets it. 

THE HOLY LONGING

by  Johann W. von Goethe

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,

Because the massman* will mock it right away.

I praise what is truly alive,

What longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of love nights,

Where you were begotten, where you have begotten,

A strange feeling comes over you

When you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught

In the obsession with darkness,

And a desire for higher lovemaking

Sweeps you forward.

Distance does not make you falter

Now, arriving in magic, flying

And finally insane for the light,

You are the butterfly, and you are gone.

And so long as you haven’t experienced this:

To die, and so to grow,

You are only a troubled guest

On the dark earth.

Written in 1814 inspired by a German translation of Persian poet Hafiz, labelled mystical and magical and above all “untranslatable.” A rhythmic challenge in English.   

*”massman”means something like everyman or one of the masses. 

©Lyn G. Brakeman, 2023 

2023.08.27 WATER, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The hardest thing I remember having to learn when I was a child was how to float—trusting the water to hold me up. This later evolved into a spiritual issue: Could I trust the divine Presence/Higher Power I call God to hold me up? 

Swimming has never been my thing, although as a teen, I did learn how to dive into ocean waves and jump off the high diving board holding my nose. I am not that good a swimmer, although I can manage an old-lady breast stroke across a heated pool, and I passed the college admissions test for entering freshmen (1956) to tread water for 15 minutes without drowning. NO idea what their rationale was! Maybe because there was a pond on campus, and maybe it was the era of crazed and sudden awareness of total fitness, not just intellectual/academic.  

Nevertheless, Beverley, my oldest daughter, now 60, has befriended water and swimming in a big way. She is a master swimmer, and long distance swimming is her sport of choice, as well as her pleasure. She swims across lakes and pools with style and elegance. She trusts the water and her own practiced skills—enough in fact that yesterday she sliced into the cold (58-64 degrees) rough waters surrounding Alcatraz, one-time prison placed on an island in San Francisco Bay to deter escapees from trying to escape and surely drowning. 

Yesterday’s challenge event was called “The Sharkfest Swim”. Swimmers can publicize and ask for sponsorship donations to their favorite charity. Bev chose The Red Cross. We donated in her name. I confess that I engaged in gentle worrying even though I trust Bev’s prowess. I also knew there were rescuers on hand. Bev trusts the water. She was accompanied by her friend Geoffrey Matesky, a heroic man familiar with life challenges. Here they are on the plane. 

After the swim Bev wrote: “I’m going to live the shit out of the rest of the time I have in this life.” Such is the headline on her “bucket list”. After training for eight months, Bev took the plunge. There were 600 other swimmers, kicks in the face, sizable waves, and swallowing lots of salt water—but no fins in sight.  Bev came in fifth in her age group and 127th for all women who swam. 

She swam these choppy waters not to escape to freedom but rather to celebrate the joy of freedom for its own sake. Here she is just after she came to shore. 

This mother’s pride is blooming at her daughter’s athletic prowess—also trembling about what she will take on next. 

I too plan to “live the shit out of the rest of the time I have in this life”—though not in the water.

Grit and grace to us both.   

YES! Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 8/20/2023

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. 

Yea in this case, does not mean YIPPEE. It is an ancient form of YES—an affirmation rather than a negation? Of death? No, simply the shadow of death in which we all walk daily as we age and grow and love and play and sorrow and groan and keep walking on crutches or in wheelchairs—or simply sit quietly and look out the window to watch birds fly, thus knowing that we all are winged of soul. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

In this shadow we fear no evil. Why? Because God walks alongside us. We do not see God exactly, but we intuit the closeness of a Presence, perhaps even within our own depths, like a soul.  Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author of the book When Bad Things Happen To Good People, wrote with clarity and courage about his pain having a son with the condition called progeria, premature aging. I heard Rabbi Kushner speak once in a hall near Boston.  Kushner invited us to notice that the psalm is all about God who is my shepherd. God guides, guards, pokes and prods, nurtures, and restores my soul daily.  

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.

Kushner pointed out that the third person He for God in Hebrew changes to the second person familiar Thou. I fear no evil For thou art with me. It is not He who is with me but thou. The change startles. God is intimate, closer than we’d imagined. Only at death? No. Every single day of Life always shadowed by death.

Bad things do happen to good people all the time. Does it mean there is no evil? No. No death? No. Does it mean that God doesn’t care? No. Does it mean that God chooses not to control evil?  Yes. Does it mean that we can control evil? No. It simply means we are never alone on the hazardous path we call Life. 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. 

God neither prevents nor eliminates evil. God simply stays with us, provides a presence of lovingkindness. God chooses loving connection over control. Would you rather have a God who offers total safety, protection from any of life’s many hazards, from the worst to the minor, or would you rather have a God who is familiar enough with you to call you THOU as you call God THOU??

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. 

2023.08.13 Will You Come Join Me? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I can’t walk on water, unless you count skating and careening about on frozen ponds with my skates strapped on—and even then I once ended up flat on my back and my head went CRACK. It stayed intact but my dignity did not.  

The biblical gospel of Matthew records that Jesus walked on the water, then beckoned Peter to follow him in faith. Peter headed out and started to sink. He called out in fright, and Jesus, rather than laugh at Peter’s bravura, simply reached out his hand for Peter to grab. Then he pulled the sopping and perhaps sobbing Peter out of the water to safety—and from fear to faith.  

I probably would not try to walk on water, but I can wade in it and play with it and occasionally swim through it. There is a Spiritual called “Wade In The Water”  Come on children, wade in the water. It was a signal song to assist black slaves running to escape from enslavement—running  toward freedom. They knew that the song wasn’t innocent. It meant much more than playful wading. It was a signal to head for the water and wade right on in, because the hounds of their enslavers who were chasing them would lose the scent as soon as the runaways hit the water.

Perhaps that old Spiritual is today a signal that we all should “wade in the water” to follow the faith of Jesus to freedom, whatever that may look like to you. The faith OF Jesus is not a call to become a Christian. It is an invitation to wade in the waters of Jesus’s own faith. To do what he did, to simply love yourself, God, and your neighbor whoever that might be, no matter how scared and hesitant you might be, no matter your swimming skills, no matter whether you go against the grain of traditional teachings. Just GO. Just WADE ON IN.

Sometimes what you imagine will “drown” you, or devour you, might not be as fierce as you have imagined.  Fear not. 

 

2023.08.06 GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Give us this day our daily bread.

New Testament stories about Jesus’s promotional campaign for the Reign of God or Heaven, are always about FOOD. 

Give us this day our daily bread.  

It is a phrase we privileged folk deny, despite the daily news. Not me. Oh, it’s just a temporary shortage or “food insecurity”.  I don’t watch the news any more. What’s the matter with the markets? They should get jobs. The food tonight in the dining room was pretty bad. The pictures of starving children, women begging for help, men in tears are right here—beautiful downtown Connecticut. Our neighbors. Where the hell is God?  And so we pray.

 Give us this day our daily bread.

The sight of starvation is ugly. It is terrifying. It is encroaching all over the world alongside war and violence, young children falling out the window—fewer mouths to feed, women black and blue.

We can no longer avoid this spreading scourge. I am very used to understanding my “daily bread” as emotional food—the love and security of my family and my husband breathing easily next to me in bed—comfort, daily bread of security, not to mention my own security.  And so I pray.  

Give us this day our daily bread.

Cyndy McCain, widow of the late Senator John McCain, is an activist working hard to end hunger. She gave me a good diagnostic phrase for the way I feel: donor fatigue. This diagnosis actually inspired me to give MORE to relevant causes.

And for hope ongoing, the gifted theater talent Judi Dench who is no longer able to see scripts because of age-related macular degeneration, offered this wisdom: “In my mind’s eye, I’m 6 foot and willowy and about 39.” My own mind’s eye envisions a banquet enough to feed all creation—emotionally and bodily. Still, I pray.

Give us this day our daily bread.

But I ponder:  what is this feeling of discomfort I feel because I have bread enough and more? It is COMPUNCTION, a word derived from Latin, compungere (com + pungere to prick.)  It means “to prick sharply.”   It is not guilt as if I hit someone with a bat on purpose or carelessly while swinging.  It is not empathy as if I suffer the same. It is not shame as if I’m ashamed of my limits. 

No, compunction is true heart-squishing sorrow the kind that transfigures my heart. I am limited with resources and conscience. I cannot do more. Even my prayers are not enough. I am totally dependent on the good will and energy of those—near and far—who heal wounds, provide humor and smiles, feed the poor, maintain emotional intelligence, manage governance, and make decisions about food for peace and peaceful policies, locally and worldwide.  And of course I can still VOTE. And I will still pray. 

Give us this day our daily bread.

It is only by faith with compunction that I continue to have faith/hope/love in a God who is close and caring and incarnate/indwelling in all things animate and inanimate—no matter what.

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD.  

2023.07.30 Leavening The Soul, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Sometimes, the smallest seemingly insignificant acts implant the most enormous transformations in the least expected places.  

According to Andrew McGowan, Dean of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, parables are not what they seem, and words changed to fit the modern ear may not evoke the spiritual power that Jesus desired. The word “yeast” used in the story of the woman who baked bread is better translated as it would have been in the ancient times, as leaven. Leaven is a sourdough starter. McGowan suggests that we read this parable when we’re actually hungry. Even as I write this my mouth waters and I check the clock to see if it’s dinner time yet? And too, I feel my heart pumping with eager hope. 

Take the story of the woman who leavens her bread with a pinch, and it suddenly swells, enough to feed not only the body but the family, and the soul. Well, I bet if you read these little stories of Jesus when you’re really hungry, any reference to good food, not gourmet or fancy but basic, makes your mouth water, and your heart leap with hope. 

Think of this tiny rising as a prayer, and remember that the outsized God we often envision comes most often in very small pinches of joy and truth—leaven for the soul.

                                        *  *  *  *

I just listened to the the Smith College 2023 commencement speech by Rashma Saujani, younger than my youngest child, attorney, author, politician. She leavens the huge gathering of female grads and guests. She says that there is no such thing as “imposter syndrome” because women are not imposters. 

And furthermore, the strong ongoing resistance to our equality is “not because there’s something wrong with us, it’s because there’s NOT.” 

Now that’s good leaven!

Here’s a tiny story about leaven that happened in my own kitchen over 50 years ago. I remember it as if it were yesterday. It still leavens my heart. When my youngest son was about three, he and his cousin decided to create a “wedding” in front of our house. For authenticity, they bit off all the newly risen tulips and strewed the petals all over the lawn. Such a wedding!!  

I knew that we parents had labored hard to plant and nurture these tulip bulbs to adorn our barren hillside. When they came up we were thrilled.“Daddy” would be furious when he came home that evening and found the tulip disaster. I’d reprimanded our son already and, like any good mother would, put extra wads of night diapers on him as we awaited the father’s homecoming. 

When Dad came in the door, already fuming, his tiny youngest son ran (waddle-toddled) to meet him. He stood, hesitated, and looked up at his father with the sweetest look I’ve ever seen, and said. “I love my daddy.”   

Even the weeniest leavening softens the heart, and signals the presence of God.