Such Visions, Quests and Questions? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

She’s six feet tall

striding the mall

Thin as a rail

leaving a trail

Shoppers awake

each one agape

Is her skin white—

hardly, though light

What does she want?

What doesn’t she want?

Why is she here?

What is her gig?

What’s her m.o.?

Is she a robot?

No . . . but

are you?

I must have glimpsed the above image somewhere among the array of online images that fly past my eyes as I skim quickly down the line of internet posts. Was this from an ad? I have no idea, but I woke up with this image dancing before my mind’s eye this morning, and these words followed, so I jotted them down. What? The thought that I may be going daft, or demented, or any number of strange ailments, crossed my mind, because I could not make sense of this image, or analyze its meaning.  

*  *  *  *

Another image came to mind without warning. It was an analogy articulated by a patristics (studying the early theological writings of the old boys) professor, the late Rowan Greer of Yale Divinity School, back in the early 1980s.  He told us students, emphasizing the intellectual futility of any analogy of course for how Creator God interacts with Creation, that the relationship between divine grace and human free will or agency was like sailing. 

Grace is like the wind, available at all times for better or worse, and free will was like the sailor (or crew). The tighter you pull the sails in, the less play you give to the wind, and the more likely you are to capsize the sailboat, and possibly drown. Conversely, if you let the sails flap wildly in the wind, you and your boat will flounder aimlessly about, getting nowhere. The wind is always there, to one degree or another. Your job is to cooperate with the wind, to allow its omnipresence to work with you and for you.

Your job is to manage the sails/your life artfully. It won’t happen well if you’re too uptight, or too loosey goosey, about your choices and your destinations. Ya gotta know what you’re doing and be careful doing it. Freedom is a precious and extremely difficult gift to manage—and you’re not alone. Ever. 

This as many of you know had been my experience from early childhood, and believe me I’ve been pretty awkward at times managing those “sails.” But I managed them through storms and painful losses and trauma—sometimes very close to capsizing altogether, giving up my own desires and passions to traditional roles. On occasion I have felt  becalmed, abandoned by God and everyone else, even myself—too helpless to go on.

Still, I always picked up the ropes of those life-sails again, and managed to go on. 

* *  *  * 

I may never fully understand the flash image that came to me this morning, but I am pretty sure the tall woman is not a robot, nor am I.  And I’m pretty sure she has life to live, and that she will live it with grace—no matter what. 

*  *  *  *

The last morning image that ran into my mind’s eye this morning was another remembered  image of children at play. These kids were in a Palestinian refugee camp in Israel. Unlike the well groomed, privileged children in Cambridge, these refugee children were unkempt, often scantily clad, living with anxious parents, unfree, and scared.  And still they played with vigor and passion enough, I pray, to, set “sail” even in the face of political and economic upheaval, not of their doing. 

*  *  *  *

Many are fond of bemoaning God’s absence, less fond of praising that presence when things go wrong. They ask: Where was God?  Others are fond of using most all their energy, individual and collective, to praise God’s presence, less fond of expending much of their own energy on the task at hand, be it recovery from trauma or grieving one’s losses with grace. God asks them: Where were you?  

I dare to believe that all these images came to me this morning to spark hope for this world. It’s irrational, I know, but I also know that God does not solve problems. We do, with the help of God whose grace lives within us—in our flesh, as well as beyond us. BOTH/AND.  

What if there is no either/or, but only both/and? 

Still, I do know that God's Spirit does send sparks of energy my way— doses of trust in that windy presence I call God.  

2022.02.13 I Saw It On The Playground. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 2/13/22

One of my own happiest memories from growing up in Manhattan was the daily trip to the Central Park playground at 94th Street. To my delight, there in our North Cambridge neighborhood just blocks away from where we lived for the first ten years of our retirements, was the “queen” of all playgrounds, Danehy Park, a 55-acre park named after a former mayor. Not only is it spacious, with several athletic fields, three tot lots for young children, walkable paths throughout, with benches along the way for chats or rest, and of course a sprinkler, because there must always be water play for cooling off and wild splashing. 

I loved to walk over to the park, sit on a bench, watch kids play on swings, slides, and climbing devices, witness the occasional spill, rejoice with their exuberant shouts, often in several languages, for praise: “Look at me, Daddy, Papa, Auntie, Grandma” as their small legs pedaled trikes at astronomic speeds. Play that includes daring challenges like monkey bars is essential for the souls of children, if somewhat nerve-wracking for parents or caretakers. Probably the most frequently heard adult shout to a child was: “Be careful!! You’ll get hurt if….”  Hurt happened, yowling in pain happened, bloody knees and noses happened, even the occasional spat about whose turn it might be. Without exception, some kind of rescue, comfort, arbitration happened as well. I did not see much scolding, lecturing, shaming, or punitive consequences. The kids were comforted, cleaned up, and off they sprinted right back to play exactly as they had been—not a single warning heeded. And often children themselves stopped their games to make sure a playmate who fell was okay. I also saw gracious sharing of food. I mean most kids know what to expect in their lunch bags, they know what their own preferred adult would have prepared for them to munch on. But other parents, of course, made better snacks. One must learn, after all, to develop one’s cuisine—an appreciation for different foods and fluid ethnicity. I’m sure I missed ambulance arrivals and more, but I never saw them. I’m also sure that I am an idealist, yet I will not deny that what I did observe lifted my hope quotient, reinforced my faith in God, and warmed my heart.  

What I saw on the playground was children’s playfulness let loose. There were children of many colors, languages, and cultural or religious dress in this neighborhood. Such diversity must be the gift of this USA, I thought. If only we could honor this gift. If only we could, well, NOT grow up and into the prejudices of our assigned group. No wonder Jesus pointed to a young child and told his followers to be like a child in order to realize the poignant words many of us so glibly, thoughtlessly, pray: “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” 

My limited yet profoundly real experience in this playground led me to think about play as a spiritual gift, a blessing best embodied by young children. I saw mutually enlivening play. I saw such play as proof of the sanctity of Being itself—proof as well that our cherished biases, and all -isms, are not inborn, but they are taught and learned as if they were hard and fast and aggressive social rules—reasons to justify ignorant enmity and war. But they are not present in young children at play. 

 

Mutually enlivening play is a passport to Heaven, understood as a metaphor for complete, all-embracing, no-holds-barred Love. Only in heaven can you ride a trike at Mach whatever. And be caught if you fall by an angel just your size. 

2022.02.06 Paschal Mysteries, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The Christian Church’s central proclamation is called The Paschal Mystery, in caps to make sure everyone knows it’s of ultimate importance—and, well, crucial to my own wellbeing, now and forevermore. 

I remember once asking a church official with a higher title than mine: What really IS the Paschal Mystery anyway?  He coughed, cleared his throat, looked down on me and said, “My dear, you should know that one!”  Then he walked away, leaving me feeling ashamed and angry.

Why then am I wondering and worrying over this doctrine now? Because I’m 83.

I’m a word person, so I make sure I know, again, that “Paschal” means pascha Passover/ Easter, from Greek pascha, from Hebrew Pesach  or Passover. Good, it’s Christian and Jewish, nicely inclusive. My maternal grandfather was Jewish, so I’m all in, saved from all sides. Yes, but, I already learned all this in seminary, drank it into my flesh, practiced it regularly for 34 years as a priest at the altar of the sacrament, and wondered at its power. The Paschal Mystery. The Mystery part of it, I notice, is taken for granted. It’s like a way to field and discourage too many annoying questions like mine. Yet here I am asking it again—not because I doubt it, exactly, but because I doubt it, sort of. Am I saved, and if so, will it hurt much? 

What helps my old-age distrust, when words grow tiresome, is graphic art, pictures that tell me more than words, images that call my heart to attention.   

In this superb painting, called Creation and painted between 1508 and 1512, by Michelangelo Buonarroti Simoni for the Sistine Chapel, I at first see what I’ve always seen, even in Italy: the old man God, his anatomy delicately draped in a swath of cloth, looking feminine save for the beard, and surrounded by many cherubic faces in the clouds, creating the handsomely sinewed Adam, apparently on earth though not very distant. I’m fascinated. As I stare, my eyes fall on HANDS. I look down at my own hands wrinkled with veins, more blue and evident than they were when I was younger. Just now all I see in this painting is those two hands with perfectly drawn muscles, reaching, stretching, both together each one reaching with all its might, toward the other, their forefingers not quite touching—not quite. I stare and wonder at the depth of this mutual yearning between God and Humankind, between God and me, perhaps all Creation.

This, I think, or rather feel through my tears, is how much I, and maybe all human beings, yearn for connection with God—and how much God yearns back. And sometimes we do connect,  just lightly, just briefly, through a kiss, a laugh, a smile, a touch, a poem or music, a child, a ninety-some year old woman who misses her mouth with most every bite, chuckles, and keeps on going, the sight of a tiny bird swooping by outside, or a ladybug crawling about on the window ledge, going nowhere. Then each night, as I snuggle down for sleep, I reach my hand towards Dick’s. Aways warm, his hand reaches back.

In all these small ways I learn again that The Paschal Mystery is not tie-downable (lovely new word). It’s not even strictly Christian, nor magically distant. It is plural. It is perennial—within the enchanting repetitive cycling of life-death-new life—and again—each cycle more beautiful than the last, each spark of life a brief affirmative certainty.

2022.01.30 Holy Scripture—How Holy and Whose? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/30/22

I do not believe that Holy Scripture should be taken literally, as if everything that is in it happened just the way it was/is written, as if there is no room for interpretations and ongoing scholarly research, study, and prayerful discernment. 

How can one embrace something called “Holy” without acknowledging as well the grandly attracting Mystery, not for me to attain but for me to receive, love, and appreciate like the rays of the Sun. 

Having said all that, I do take Holy Scripture, which for me is the testaments of the Holy Bible, seriously. In fact, I take it too seriously to take it literally. I love it too much to demean its depths and flexibility, by insisting that there is only one single way to understand its various parts. I value divine spiritual mobility too much to limits its wisdom to a single holy document, no matter how canonized it may be. I also respect Holy Scripture too much to make it the single measure of my faith in God.  

And yet, I take Holy Scripture too seriously to take it, or any portion of it, as THE Word of God, as if God dictated it word for word, while some speedy ancient stenographer/scribe wrote it all down, or as if its contents and revelations were static, the sole source of divine holy Word to faithful communities.

Still, every Sunday in many Christian churches, worshippers hear the lector say, The Word of God, to which they all respond, Thanks be to God after a biblical reading from anywhere in the whole Bible. Is this word the only holy one?  Or is it just for now? I’m grateful that alternative, more flexible options are offered in our Episcopal tradition, so a reader can say, Hear what the Spirit is saying to God’s people, to which we respond, Thanks be to God. 

Fulsome holiness, praise, and thanks, are reserved for the portion of the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ from Mark, Matthew, Luke or John, read each Sunday. The gospel gives a special shout out to Jesus the Christ whose story is, well, gospel. Most preachers focus on the Gospel in the sermon. This top billing makes sense, because Jesus is, to Christians, Lord, Savior, Son of God—our raison d’être. But this story is not considered holy for those outside the Christian tradition. Holiness is not just Christians. Jesus was Jewish. Many others have holy stories. 

I am not unique in my thoughts and queries, although I have wondered if I am a sinner, maybe a heretic, fooling myself for the sake of my own egotistical meanderings, ideas that energize and revitalize me. I conclude each time of self-doubt and recrimination by returning to the roots of my own childhood story. My mother read me The Little Book About God by Lauren Ford when I was 3 2/3. (I’m sure of my age, because my sister wasn’t born yet). Mom also told me I was a miracle and a gift from God. I was already inquisitive to the point of annoyance. Hence, when this book and my mother’s own joy collided with my natural curiosity, I just had to meet this God. I found the necessary  privacy for my monumental quest under our large dining room table with a cloth to the floor. There I set up a child’s inquisition for God—something like, I’m here and I want my parents to pay more attention to me, but what I really want to know is who are you? I got no answers, only the sound of my own imagination pounding silently away at God’s absence. God never said a word, nor did God grant any of my several wishes, such as banishing my mortal enemy, the martini glass. What God did do was to listen without advice. This way I learned that I mattered.  

It is to this God that I still pray. This God I followed to the church altar—not to be a bride but to become a priest at the altar. This God I discovered in the Holy Bible, a collection of stories about people to whom God spoke, and to whom God listened.  And it is this God who in time finally spoke to me with the simplest and dumbest question imaginable: Why are you doing this? (I was just baking chocolate chip cookies for my children who loved them.) 

Yet this question awakened me with words I knew were not my own, words that stunned me, words whose meaning I felt compelled to explore, words that brought me up short, that forced me to, well, check out my depressed mood with a therapist. From this God, I learned that not only can God listen to little girls, but God can ask dumb questions, and is no bully. In fact, God waited over ten years for me to address just this one “dumb” question—to wrestle an answer out of myself. I felt as if I were writing my own scripture, maybe not so holy, but my best effort.  

This God is why I believe that small stories of deep meaning come to each one of us, in all religions and all spiritualities, ancient and modern. From such inaudibly audible communications come stories, both tender and fierce, mobilized by Love. This is how I first knew that I mattered, and this is how I still know that all living things in heaven and on earth live, and move, and have their being in God. (Acts 17:28) 

Here’s a story, told about the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, a man to whom God spoke in deeply holy ways, ways that engaged his own emotions and questions, ways that shaped Heschel as a theologian who told stories about God as an intimate presence. Both Heschel’s spirituality and his social-justice activism grew from prayer within this intimate God’s presence. There was no separation between Heschel’s religious faith rituals and his politics. To me, Heschel is a spiritual giant, although he was aman short in height.  

In 1968, Heschel was engaged in protest marches and demonstrations against the Vietnam War. One Sabbath his brother protesters and friends, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., came to Heschel’s apartment and were greeted with this welcoming exuberance: “You are just in time for the last bit of disengagement from the world we have to change . . .  Shabbat!”  Heschel let Coffin hold the ritual spices and King the candle while they chanted the prayers, smelling the spice box and collectively drinking a sip of wine. Then Heschel told Coffin and King the story of the wise men of Chelm who deliberated over whether people grew from the feet up or from the head down. The answer was neither. Quoting the va-yetel el echav, he said that individuals grow from within and eventually move beyond their own egos towards other people. “Here’s to the world’s outgrowth of selfishness towards the humanities . . . L’Hayim!”  The Rev. Daniel Berrigan a Roman Catholic priest, called Heschel’s practice of uniting prayers and social action for justice “an ecumenism I could take seriously.” (p.195 Abraham Joshua Heschel. A Life of Radical Amazement, biography by Julian Zelizer, 2021)

Holiness belongs to everyone everywhere always. 

It grow from within. You’ll recognize it. 

2022.01.23 In Praise Of Women Who Read—and More

So here’s a small story—a joke and not a joke. 

One morning a husband returns to the cabin 

after several hours of fishing and decides to take a nap.

Although not familiar with the lake, the wife

decides to take the boat out, since it is such a beautiful day. 

She motors out a short distance, anchors, and reads her book.

Along comes a game warden in his boat.

He pulls up along side the woman and says, Good morning, Madam, what are you doing?”

“Reading a book” she replies, (thinking, “Isn’t that obvious?”)

“You’re in a restricted fishing area”, he informed her.

“I’m sorry, officer, but I’m not fishing, I’m reading.”

“Yes, but you have all the equipment. I’ll have to write you a ticket.”

“For reading a book,” she replies.

“You’re in a restricted fishing area,” he informed her again.

“But officer, I’m not fishing, I’m reading.”

“Yes, but you have all the equipment. For all I know, you could start at any minute. 

I’ll have to write you up a ticket, and you’ll have to pay a fine.”

“If you do that, I’ll have to charge you with sexual assault”, says the woman.

“But, I haven’t even touched you,” says the game warden.

“That’s true, but you have all the equipment.

For all I know you could start any moment.”

“Have a nice day, ma’am”, he said, and departed immediately.

MORAL: Never argue with a woman who reads. It’s likely she can also think. Sure, God created man before woman. But then, you always make a rough draft before the final masterpiece.

We Christians hear a lot about the mission of Christ, the human manifestation of Divinity on earth. We think it’s a mission to convert everyone in sight to Christianity—my brand of course. Some of us think Christ is only a title for Jesus. But I’m sure this mission is more expansive—a mission to enliven all Life everywhere. A mission to unite us all.

How? Follow the Golden Rule— golden because, it’s not a business deal; it has no value, is often costly, pays little interest, and, more often than not, you don’t see much payoff.  It is simply how we get along, and it requires grit, chutzpah, grace and a wicked sense of humor with a twist. The biblical version of this rule of life is in the biblical book Leviticus 19:18: “. . . you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” End of conversation. Jesus the Christ grew up with this rule and studied it like all good little Jewish boys. It was Holiness School; it was his credo. All religions advocate this way of life and, in spite of the tedious, rule-bound elaborations in Leviticus, this rule abides. 

So here’s a story about Leviticus—no joke yet funny. A boy of fifteen approached his grandmother with a pressing question she alone, the boy thought, could answer. He thought this because his grandma went to church and studied the Bible. The boy had searched for advice in the Bible and read in Leviticus (15:16, 32) that having a nocturnal emission of semen was against the law of God and could render him unclean, rejected by God—horrifyingly, to this teenage boy, the end of all sentient life. The grandmother chuckled inside herself, recognizing the boy’s urgency over what moderns would call a wet dream, but she answered with serious aplomb: “Well, my dear, you are a wonderful boy with normal inclinations. I love you. Stop reading Leviticus.” And from that day on forevermore, this boy was known to his grandmother and her closest friends as Leviticus.  

MORAL: always trust a wise old woman who reads the Bible. It’s likely she takes it seriously with her tongue in her cheek and you in her heart.

  

2022.01.16 Amaryllis Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/16/22

 

This image is like an icon to me— an image through which I experience the wonder, beauty, glory and relentlessly ongoing creativity of God. This one, a gift from a daughter, was born at Christmas and with a little water, affectionate gazes, stakes to sturdy and steady it, this beauty should it feel floppy, it has already grown to four feet and has three blooms all on top. The little one at the bottom fell off the stalk but we placed her back into the soil, because you never know what can happen. Also, there are a few eager ladybugs burrowing about in the fertile soil. They are the eagerly beloved—like us. 

Amaryllis belladonna is a bulbous plant, native to South Africa. She got her name from the shepherdess in the poet Virgil’s pastoral Eclogues, from the Greek word amarysso, to “sparkle” and “amarella” for the bitterness of the bulb. All honest people know that bitterness and beautiful sparkle coexist within life’s vulnerability. Belladonna, beautiful lady, is also a chemical used in medicine as atropine, a muscle relaxant, too much of which is paralytic. 

Our work is to notice the Beauty and find ways to manage the bitterness. Talking to others who listen with love helps a lot, sometimes more than medicines. I use both. 

2022.01.09 Epiphanytide, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 1/09/22

Let There Be Light

At this time of winter solstice

In the nadir of the night,

Let us turn to one another

And appreciate the light.

Share the light of loving laughter

In the company of friends,

Light of dawning understanding

After nights of fear and doubt,

Light of simple, precious pleasures,

Newborn’s smile or kitten’s purr,

Lights on trees or light of candles

In our homes where families gather

Celebrating and sustaining

Mutuality of love.

For all in deprivation,

Let us strive to bring relief

Let the light of hope restore us

Lead us on the paths toward peace.

May the light provide us comfort,

Health, and safety through the year,

And the blessings of the season

To all those whom we hold dear. 

©PeterDalNegro

This beautiful poem was written by a friend who is a poet far too modest to boast. So someone needs to shed light on his work for him. That is I, by self-appointment. Thank you, Peter. 

Now of course, because I am one who presses to see all sides of people places and things, I seek the darkness alongside the light. The bible says we “walk by faith not by sight.” (II Cor. 5:7) It also says that the darkness, called Night, is not overcome by the Light, called Day. They coexist. Now that’s wise, and yet possibly annoying/angering to anyone who has lost their eyesight or is losing it. How many stories are there in the “Good Book” about blind people being healed by the touch of God through Jesus the Christ? Countless, I bet. But not everyone who asks receives what s/he/they desires. I don’t know why. 

I also remember the Magi or the Wise Men, seers, in pageants. My kids, and others over the years, having argued vociferously about who would get to wear the biggest crown, and who carried gold, because Myrrh was stoopid, and Frankincense was not pronounceable. The eager children jostled into position to march proudly up ( or is it down?) the aisle while the congregation sang the carol, “We Three Kings of Orient Are.”  The procession of these three came AFTER the "dumb angels,”  because the last is really the first, they'd heard. I also recall some fuss about the huge star on a stick that was carried in by an older child, a girl, or even a female Sunday School teacher, and without whose great light no one, apparently, went anywhere at all. That was how it went. And "almighty" God felt less "almighty" than usual—but more in love than ever. 

The loss of any of the five senses often causes one to lose faith in God, if such faith was ever there in the first place. Many still ask the classic unanswerable question we all keep on asking—secretly in the dark or out loud in the fury of light. 

Q: Why would a good God create evil and crime, and murderous weather, and blindness, and on and on. A: God didn’t. We did. Q: But why doesn’t God step in? A: I don’t know.

God only created Love. How useless is that?  And yet which would you prefer when you are in pain, or great fear, or all-consuming anxiety, or guilt/shame— a loving ear to listen to you all day and all night, a warm hand to touch yours, a medication that relieves pain and calms nerves, a gentle word of compassion OR the silent darkness of being alone?   

The best love poem I ever read is one by Emily Dickinson, written in a time when she was 56 and near death from disability, possibly epilepsy. Her poem, “Possibility”, tells it all. Why? Because she tells the truth: there is no clear answer, so we live with possibility. 

I dwell in Possibility --

by Emily Dickinson

I dwell in Possibility—

A fairer House than Prose—

More numerous of Windows—

Superior—for Doors—

Of Chambers as the Cedars—

Impregnable of Eye—

And for an Everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky—

Of Visitors—the fairest—

For Occupation—This—

The spreading wide of narrow Hands

To gather Paradise—

Possibility, or potentiation, is a gift of the Heart, the pulse of life within, and it keeps us alive in spite of our gloom, our darkness, our deafness, our blindness, or our disease. Still, we cannot see it, touch it, make it happen. All we can do is ask for it. And wait.  

for the light

for the hands

for the insight

for the grace of God alive within.