2025.09.07 PRAISE FOR ALL WHO LABOR? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post,

I have always detested this holiday we call Labor Day, not because I do not appreciate people who work hard to make their own living worthy and helpful for all of us, but because of a hymn! 

 “Come Labor On” # 541 in the 1982 Hymnal, The tune name is Ora Labora, written no less by a woman, Jane Laurie Borthwick (1813-1897) in 1859. Another woman, Mary Jo Latham, wrote the laborious lyrics. “Come labor on. Who dares stand idle while all around waves the golden grain, and the Master (boss) nags: “Go work today. . .”

It is a painful text for women who lose their lives and/or their infants when birthing, or for those who for whatever reasons bear no children. It is a horrifying text in times of job shortages and rampant unemployment —not to mention the slavedriver portrait of Divinity. Are you inspired? 

Besides, who claims to know exactly what the divine will is?  There is only one biblically-recorded good outcome of all this forced laboring, and that is in the Book of Ruth, because she, a starving abandoned widow, crawls along the edges of the field and gets to gather up the leftover pickings at the side of the path and thus not starve! Okay YHWH (Yahweh) thanks!

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We live in a residential retirement community—aging as we go. It is not difficult to contact the village office and request some help even to hang a heavy-framed picture. You used to do all this stuff, which in this house meant get my husband to do stuff, but do NOT risk it. Ladders are no longer friendly; neither are hammers. The expression “all thumbs” is serious!! 

Aging in place is one thing, but to try to do it “independently” is quite another. Today I am grateful we have a very good maintenance team,  a very good spouse who is not too proud to admit he’s too old, and a balanced spirituality that steadies my heart.     

2025.08.31 AN ODD LITTLE CHRISTMAS MIRACLE IN AUGUST, Lyn Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I do not refer to my oldest son Rob’s birthday 58 years ago, although that was a miracle all by itself, taking hours and much pushing and pain, with the assistance of me and the doctor, he emerged and began to howl after being held upside down and smacked. Isn’t birth a trauma all round?! It is also a blessing! Rob Brakeman was and remains one of the best miracles in my life!!

I will share another less spectacular but equally strange miracle that just happened. Five years ago we bought online a tabletop tree to honor Christmas. Our apartment was too small for a great big tree, but our wee one had strings of wee lights on it and sat atop a bookcase in its balled-up burlap holding its fake roots. At Christmas we adorned it with balls and the correct trimmings. BUT once we took off all the ornaments, our little tree still had majesty and beauty, so it remained. It lightens/brightens up our evenings all year long. In and upon it we have lodged a beautiful butterfly and several owls (totems of wisdom). To say that we’d fallen in love is an understatement. Every night we plug our tree into the wall and she brightens right up. Christmas miracle all year long!! 

Then — what to our wondering eyes should appear last evening but the sudden brightening of the upper lights on our little tree. Had we really seen? Yes. We watched and wondered as their brightness grew brighter. Then suddenly they all went out at once, leaving the lower lights on.

We sat startled, and then Dick commented: “Well that was the upper two strings only. How odd.”  I of course thought it a holy sign. Perhaps it is the way we all die—a swift brightness and then gone!

We stared for a bit, then, following the wisdom of the owls, decided that we would get another wee tree the same as this one. Dick remembered he had ordered it some years back from “Amazon the almighty”—of course!  

Whatever we get, the truth will remain in our hearts. The first little tree and all its blessings over five years, will never be forgotten, even if we find another just like her, well, it will never be the same.  

2025.08.24 What Do We Say About Us? Spiritual Lemons blog post, Lyn G. Brakeman

 According to Heather Cox Richardson, my chief and most reliable source of news, there are in the developing process of our national self-image two chief storylines we tell ourselves and others about this country and its history. Richardson is clear that these observations below are her own.  

        1)  We’re ALL EQUAL with equal rights and freedoms, including equal access to public attention, according to our constitutional guidelines and the law. 

        2) Although we ALL ARE equal by law, there lingers a fear of losing out, or being left out. Such lingering fear impels/compels/invites just ONE to stand out, no matter what the costs. This is the storyline followed by MAGA, and it is faltering, thus leaving more room for the other storyline to reassert itself.

YES! Even after nearly 200 years WE are still the people, and WE can do it AGAIN!

I agree with this assessment of our present situation. The MAGA group’s attempts at attention-grabbing are waning, losing momentum and grasp, yes grasp! 

I am praying that ALL our elected representatives in Congress will stand up and act on their rights, collective and individual, to be heard, to lobby, and to vote in accordance with, and justified by, storyline #1.  Thanks.

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ALSO... Happy114th Birthday to you, dear Dad!  Say “hi” to the heavenly host! 

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

2025.08.17 GRIN AND GROWL, blog post, Spiritual Lemons

 

This amazing picture was a gift to me from a dear friend who has just died. She knew how to growl and grin with amazing clarity and dexterity—and at the right time. Today I am grieving her grins and her growls. Today is a grOWLing day, both for personal grief and for world politics just now.   

I know grins will return soon.  

2025.08.10 IT'S A BIRD! IT'S A PLANE! IT'S MCLEAN, aka SOULS-IN-FLIGHT/FIGHT MODE?

These days life in a costly, supposedly luxurious residential retirement community defined as “Independent Living/Aging-in-Place” everyone is actually dying-in-place—uniquely and dependently. People are truly quite creative— in their fashion, darling!  

The only essential qualification for this kind of daily drama/trauma is a sense of humor, such as: Q “Hey what was for dinner to night?   A: You know, it’s really hard to tell you except it was unrecognizably stew-ISH. Quite pleasurable to the well-trained eye. Looked like a Renoir in the dadaism style of Paul Klee. Q: Rembrandt, eh?  A: Possibly one of the daughters."  

Since everything is impressionistic here, I am free to elaborate at will. Whatever it was it looked like death-on-the move, or movement. Balletic in fact. 

To be quite serious, most of us do not care much about food and other pettinesses, yet we do care seriously about every neighbor inside and out. Thus the flow of life goes onward and inward and outward all at once.  BRILLIANT BALLET, NO? 

clapclapclap……….………….trap

 

2025.08.03 SPIRITUALITY 101, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

As I look out my window and stare at the natural beauty all around us, I wonder how much the divine Creator appreciates this particular piece of art?

The way many of us treat our beloved earth, the way we too often treat each other with scorn or neglect, and our financial excesses, all cause me to wonder.  If I could I would sign up for yet one more academic class in Art 101, Music 101, or World Literature 101. AND I would start a new course called Spirituality 101. 

Oh, how unbearably trite, and yet…………….what is it that makes your very soul ache or your mind go blank even as you feel  surges of joy?  ALL AT ONCE!

The entire display of Creation is at risk, and it is the most beautiful gift Divinity ever gave us. Do you know this? The Earth all by itself is at risk, and it is the most beautiful gift Divinity gave us. Do we know this? The Earth all by itself has charisma—grounded charisma. Charisma derives from a Latin word for kharis which means favor or grace.

In ancient biblical tradition, the patriarch of all things spiritual, Abraham, asks, then begs the Creator for this gift—a better understanding of the divine mind. God ignores Abraham’s begging as a good parent ignores a child’s pleading for just one more cookie—pleeze, puleeze.

This is how I feel these days when I pray and get confused between what I want, what someone else wants, what supposed experts say they want, and what I THINK God might want. Then I create a prayer and make a choice—with hope. 

2025.07.27 ALL Time Perspectives ALL AT ONCE! Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons blog post

Forgive. Forget. Look Ahead. Move Forward.    

As a writer of memoir I remember time mostly from the point of view of the past into the present. I’ve paid too little attention to the future. Luke’s gospel tells/warns us never to look BACK but to go forward.

Today in my aging I think that if we do NOT look ahead and move ahead we all, the entire community of Life on Earth, will stagnate collectively. We will eliminate ourselves. No one is able to thrive on memory alone. 

The only biblical writing that suggests such a forward-looking vision is the book of Job. Job has been critiqued and analyzed and “scholarized” practically to death— and yet it remains alive and well! 

I live now in a community of retired whities. We don’t talk about religion, yet when I dare to wonder about it, some people tell me they do not even have a Bible. So get one and read Job, I suggest.  What’s Job?  One resident ordered a bible, found Job and read it. Within weeks she reported with a grin: “Job and I are okay.” 

My theory? The Book of Job contains and lauds ALL of Creation and includes ALL the time values. It carefully and fully articulates the past history of this character, including all the sins and bad stuff alongside every critical perspective possible within Job’s own life, his autobiography. AND it tells us the envisioned future. 

The best part is that scholars and casual readers alike all are fascinated. Job has more written about it—more plays, works of art, scholarly texts, and so on—than any other work of art, literature, music, on and on. It covers ALL the time values. 

Forgive. Forget. Look Ahead. Move Forward.