2024.04.28 PRAYER-ing. Sorting Out Baloney. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

What is—or isn’t—so much baloney about prayer?  

-lists of gripes—one or two is enough, one at a time

-asking God to do something you can do yourself—escapism

-blaming God for causing everything when some things are simply inherent to our humanity or genetically inherited

-expecting miracles and resenting outcomes as if God owed you something, or as if God interfered with the gift of human freedom

-always pray with total emotional honesty, and never condemn your true prayers 

Prayer is most alive when it is in the context of your life—what matters most to you. Make prayer a constant conversation by which you keep in touch with your own longings and desires, then trust God enough to share them all as you would with a trusted friend. Divine power is relational not interventional. Really?

So how do I know this?  Well, because God listened. I read about this amazing God in a kid’s book, plus my mother told me I came directly from God. This was baloney and not a particularly good thing to hear, since she’d told me I came from her and Daddy, like spontaneous combustion or something called “making love.” Not until I got to church, sang in the children’s choir, and actually knew I really was an angel of sorts, did I discover that God made rules, stood up high looking down on everyone, gave lectures and had great expectations for us all, all of which my mother ignored in favor of thinking I was already perfect. More baloney. Still, I chose the impossibly imperfect route, obeyed most rules, got married, had four children, divorced, remarried, and eventually got the Episcopal Church to ordain me against traditional rules, which, it turned out, were baloney.  

So how midst all this baloney did I learn to truly love myself, no baloney?  

-my mother lived through her own baloney and forgave me mine 

-my dad followed me to church  

-my second husband listened to me and waited for me to catch up or share the lead

-all my children listened to me, laughed with me, cried with me, foolishly followed me, still love—my baloney and theirs

-my therapist told me it was damn good to be a raging bull

-my spiritual directors confronted my baloney with Jesus and some of his living life as a prayer

-my younger sister shared her baloney and still does

-my youngest sister once asked me if I too felt guilty after I hung up from a conversation with our mother

-my consistently listening women friends

-my teachers taught me I was smart, baloney aside

-my Bible revealed its own baloney—slowly and gently

-my own reading and writing which cherished all my baloney—except arithmetic

-my publishers published my baloney

And finally, in ancient news, the oddest no-baloney teacher of all: the official Preface to The Book of Common Prayer, according to the use of The Episcopal Church, ratified in 1789:  “. . . thanks to “the liberty with which Christ has made us free . . . this book may be altered, abridged, enlarged, amended and otherwise disposed of as may seem most convenient for the edification of the people, according to the various exigency of times and occasions.”  

2024.04. 21 The Law Weighs In. Gospel Stays Steady. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

One of the very first little ditties, written for “little children weak and small,” I learned in Sunday School. It went like this:

Jesus loves me.

This I know.

For the Bible tells me so.

Little ones to him belong

They are weak but he is strong 

Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

The Bible tells me so. 

Now I am an aging adult still rooted in this childhood chant. It makes me laugh and cry at once. It is true and false all at once. It’s as “gospel” as the latest excerpt from a recent H.C. Richardson report:  "Many congress members have left Washington, D.C., since Friday was to be the first day of a planned recess. This meant the partisan majority on the floor fluctuated. Olivia Beavers of Politico reported that that instability made Freedom Caucus members nervous enough to put together a Floor Action Response Team (FART—I am not making this up) to make sure other Republicans didn’t limit the power of the extremists when they were off the floor."

FART for freedom? It actually might clear the air, especially if we add to it the little gospel ditty above. Can you imagine a divine fart?  We could call it the Big Bang. Laughter is down-to-earth embodied laughter. 

I stay clear of most political commentary, and yet........  I am drawn to the clarity of prosecuting attorney, Alvin Bragg. You can see his story in Sunday's NY Times magazine of 4/14/24. The sliver of hope I feel gently tugging at me is this: hush money payments are immoral and slimy but not illegal. HOWEVER, if the Republican presidential candidate running for election as President this November used money from his campaign donations to make such payments, that IS illegal.  Bragg steadfastly declined comment until he had thoroughly read everything. Only then did he choose to take this case, pronouncing himself "pleased."  It was the Law. 

His spokeswoman confessed later that "it was a struggle to get him to say even that.”

Such careful, undramatic, grounded, simple, and deliberate discernment I trust. Law and Gospel reconcile. 

And the Bible does tell us so:

        Beloved, let us love one another

because love is of God;

is begotten of God

and has knowledge of God.”   (I John 7:10)  

2024.04.14 In Whom To Trust? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Watch what you say and to whom, especially if you are an authority figure. Watch whatever news you think is recent, even when it’s horrifying. Listen to people you trust with your one small precious life. Inconvenient as it is, you have to trust your own wisdom and divine Immanence alive within you—both/and. Follow your tears. That’s what the women who crept back to check on the dead Jesus did. It’s what all disciples do when they are afraid to trust. 

*  *  *  * 

It took nearly thirty years before I fully digested and embodied the personal implications of global warming/warning in my ongoing suburban life. By the 1970s, political furor about shortages of fuel meant that we had to wait in long lines to get gasoline for our car. Restless children wondered why we had to wait so long to get to—anywhere in our car. Delay was annoying. It was revealing. It was predictive. It was inconvenient. It was omnipresent. 

I bet the disciples of Jesus took a long time to figure out that Jesus’s gospel contained good and bad news together. He was telling them something that mattered on earth and in heaven, even though they didn’t understand or trust it. 

But right now it’s Easter, and Easter season lasts 50 days. Do we weep or rage or both?

All I hear and see in the “news” are images of war and poverty, dying children, and leaders who bully. I feel sad about getting old, sad about the pull of temptation to avoid my own sorrow. I am not afraid of dying as much as I am of losing faith in the vocation I struggled to fulfill.  In a word, I need  to trust Christ alive. I need blessed food. I need the depths of music and worship that hallow life itself—everywhere. AND I despise/distrust evangelical-ISM, as if Christianity were THE ONLY WAY for the whole world.

*  * *  *

The joy of Easter, whether I feel it or not, lifts me. It lingers in the air, on television, plastered on Facebook and also stuck in my heart, visible on my face, even in my tears. Great and unexpected joys are small and large, and they still happen. I don’t long to sit in a pew for worship. I do miss the soul of it—the hullabaloo, the Hosannas and Hallelujahs, the joyful ingredients alive and well and rising always everywhere—no matter what. Why Easter? Well, because Easter matters—on season AND off season! Day AND Night.

The Alleluia hype matters—for its own sake. For its own sake. It’s always present. 

2024.04.07 Wondering/Wandering/Weeping. The Rev. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

This compelling image by Italian freelance illustrator, Andrea Ucini, appeared back in July, 2023 in the New York Times Book Review. It was the illustration for a piece on global warming by Zoe Schlanger, novelist and staff reporter at The Atlantic.  

I cut it out and saved it. Why did it make me cry? Why right now?

Of course I’m concerned about the issue of global warming, labeled “an inconvenient truth.” by former President Bill Clinton’s, Vice President, Al Gore, Democratic Senator from Tennessee. Gore was a Rhodes scholar and a 1973 graduate of Yale Law School. He ran for President unsuccessfully in 1988 and 2000. In 2000, Gore won the popular vote by 500,000 votes, but lost to Republican George W. Bush, because the Supreme Court intervened in Florida. The result was Bush’s win via the Electoral College outcome rather than by the popular vote. I bet Gore cried, but he didn’t give up. 

Gore made his documentary, film “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006, four years before I retired from active professional ministry myself, and just after I was diagnosed with emphysema. I had been tested by a Boston pulmonologist who glanced at my test results and said, “Well, I don’t see emphysema.” Feeling free and rejoicing, I went out to lunch with a good friend to celebrate. As we dined my phone rang with a call from the Boston doctor to tell me that I did, in fact, have emphysema. I heard nothing more than that. My tears flowed as I hung up, saying “thank you” of all things. 

When I saw Gore’s movie I cried. Suddenly, I saw that our Earth breathed —inhaling Oxygen and exhaling Carbon Dioxide. When the exhale of CO2 exceeds the inhale of O2, the planet has trouble breathing. It has emphysema. We earthly residents are only now beginning to understand and to weep, even as we rejoice at the Easter message. 

Below is the perfect icon—a crucifix without a body—to capture the Easter paradox. 

The more we Christians grieve the death of the earthly Jesus, the more we experience the Risen Christ alive in our midst, in our own fleshly hearts. It is surely an inconvenient truth. 

    

2024.03.31 EASTERING, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Way back in 1964 I gave birth to my second daughter  on 3/31/1964. She, I had hoped, would be born on Easter Day but that year Easter was later. It didn’t matter really, because her birth was so smooth, so quick and quite pain-free, her weight nicely moderate at under 8 pounds. I rejoice on this day as Jill turns 60—ON Easter Day this year, 2024. Alleluia! Here are Jill's beloved pugs, Olive and Jaelee, sitting in her office chair. 

I should I suppose on Easter be cheering for Christ’s resurrection but……………well, that is God’s work to do after we die. “Passed away” sounds weak and inaccurate. Yes, I realize “passed” may soften the harsh reality and finality of death, or it may postpone grief’s sting. Still, the mystery we call Resurrection is God’s business after death—a dead body its prerequisite. This is also why the most difficult death to grieve is MIA (missing in action). It is also why some people have pain at Easter, because they know they must celebrate Resurrection but their hearts are still in Good Friday. So if you have a Good Friday heart for Jesus, or anyone else, let it sorrow without judgment. The most authentic things in life always have mixed feelings anyway.  

*  *  *  *  

For myself, I grieve the almost daily pileup of weaknesses, great and small, as I age. I get medical help and attention for which I’m grateful, and I also try to carry on as best I can. Humor helps when it pops up, and so do friends and family who love you no matter what, as does our being able to take my almost-born-on-Easter daughter and her husband, Lee, out for a sumptuous lunch full of laughs and love.

For years I would always have to be presiding or preaching in a parish Church, but now I am retired and free. I do miss some communal worship and hymns. I do not miss going out to church. I do not miss my alarm clock. I do not miss the stiff white collar I lusted for in the 1970s. Now it makes my aging chin double up. And I do not miss having to cheer when I have a Good Friday heart, so I mutter, “Alleluia Anyhow.” (the late Bishop Barbara C. Harris’ favorite wisdom and the title of her memoir.) 

I rejoice that my spouse and I can celebrate a Eucharist together at our dining table. We sing hymns off key, and wear casual clothes. We can say things when we preach to each other that we could never say to a congregation. AND we have no pulpits to ascend. 

Some people bring their own internalized “porta-pulpits” where’er they go. But we aren’t traveling evangelicals. We laugh and we cry and we argue. No one wins. Then we eat M&M’s, not jelly beans.

Our home Holy Eucharist and prayers continue to nourish us both—casually, eloquently, perfectly. 

2024.03.24 Stethoscopic Listening, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

If you want to hear the pulse of the universe, you have to BE a stethoscope, listening not just hearing. Turn off your urges, your longing for security. Move out of the eager parade, such as the one so many Christians try to reenact on Palm Sunday, the tragic walk towards what everyone imagines will bring ultimate satisfaction to that longing to belong. Surely it will become obvious—atop a mountain, in a procession of Palm-waving, by Easter for sure? Surely. 

                            *  *  *  *

Once upon a time a very old— ancient by any measure—snake called Rock-Dweller was born in my imagination at a writers’ retreat at a very holy monastery, when this very famous spiritual director named Madeleine told us all: Think of someone in Holy Scripture who was angry and write about it.  The snake in Genesis popped up. She was furious, asking: “Why do women hate snakes? Why, for that matter, does God?” Was there no grace for the snake? My snake prayed fervently, doubted even her own doubt, discovered her own secret shame, and laughed at divine folly. Eventually, my snake dozed on her “sun-warmed, soul-soaked rock”. (Spiritual Lemons. Biblical Women, Irreverent Laughter and Righteous Rage. Augsburg edition, 2005.) 

One recent morning, I did not want to wake up and face another day of what is called aging-in-place. I missed my get-up-and-go self. I felt angry and helpless, damning all self-help baloney, including my own. I lay still and listened stethoscopically—underground, beneath my heart’s resistance, my mind’s curse. 

“It has to be Qoheleth!” I finally said to my slowly-awakening spouse who groaned. 

                                *  *  *  *

Qoheleth is the Hebrew translation for the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament. The name translates as teacher/preacher/messenger, sometimes collector of sayings. Ecclesiastes was written after the exile (450BCE) at a time of tremendous economic growth accompanied by the politics of, let’s say, acquisition of wealth for its own sake and its attendant temptations. Much like today, the poor got poorer while the rich got richer—and the gift of divine grace got, well, undermined, taken for granted, forgotten. In this socioeconomic situation Qoheleth struggled to find God. He asked: Is everything vain, futile, spiritually bankrupt?   “What’s the point?” 

“What’s the point?”was my own father’s deathbed question in 1983. We stood, my sister and I, on either side of his bed as he groaned out his last breaths. Dad was only 71! 

There is never a clear answer to such a question or quest. Qoheleth stayed open-ended—wise enough to continue to question himself, his world, life itself, and the divine intention. Also wise enough to be reverent and skeptical at once. I aspire to do likewise—with my imaginary stethoscope. 

For everything, the inquisitive one concluded, there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven—birth/death, hate/love, mourn/laugh, silence/speech, war/peace.