2022.03.27 A Prodigal Homecoming. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 3/27/22

This wonderful drawing by Tim O’Brien on the cover of the winter, 2021-2022 magazine, Columbia momentarily brought me home to my self, my soul, and divine omnipresence. 

I have so many memories of walking/trudging through all kinds of weather to night classes to earn my Masters degree in Spanish Language and Literature at Columbia. I used to wave and practically genuflect at the majestic steps leading into the halls of academe. I would have knelt before a statue like this one—to pray that I wouldn’t flunk out, or end up divorced before I even figured out what marriage was,  not to mention sex and procreation. 

I was newly married to Bill Brakeman in 1961 after a trip to Spain and a year of teaching Spanish to Smith students. We spent our first year in a small, one-room apartment on Claremont Avenue, on N.Y.’s upper west side. After eating dinner, prepared by this new “bride” who had ordered groceries delivered from a small local store and cooked one of five basic options, (chicken in some form, smothered in some soup, ham steak, pork chops, hamburger patties or meatloaf, minute steaks).  Then we went to bed, such as it was. We rolled into one another on a small pullout sofa bed and parted early each morning with a hug and a kiss. Bill would commute out to Connecticut to his engineering job, while I studied myself into oblivion, then walked over to campus for evening classes. I mean, after all, they awarded me a Danforth grant to get this degree, so I could teach Spanish. I’d better perform.  

We newlyweds must have had some conversations, but most of what I remember is exhaustion from studying, fretting over my distinctly inadequate culinary skills, and wondering if I was doing the right thing. I mean shouldn’t I be married AND pregnant by now, like it’s  supposed to happen? Be a mother?  A proper wife? Also can one get pregnant without orgasms?

Even now as I remember, I close my eyes tight and imagine myself into this wintry scene, transporting myself backwards into total student mood, a favorite fallback over the years. I wanted children, and what if my uterus suddenly aged too fast? Worrying was another fallback mood, as you can tell. Essentially, I felt pretty small and lonely and scared, like the bird—a Cardinal no less—on this cover art for the issue devoted to climate change. My imagination flew me into the wintry scene where I met my own Cardinal. 

 

Well, hello big guy.  Watcha doing?

Silence

Oh, your reading your texts or something, right?  I wish I had a phone like yours. Hey, I’m talking to you. 

Hmph

Thinking up a storm, I see. 

Little bird, little bird, do shut up. You’re casting a shadow on my phone. 

It’s snowing you see, and I just need a perch. Also, I’m lonely and bored out here.

Why won’t you talk to me? I’m pretty much of a standout feature in my flashy red suit. Like it?

I’m thinking. 

About?

Are you a Cardinal?

Yup, none other, or so they say. What other guy do you know who has such a handsome coxcomb? Hey, smile why don’t you, Mr. serious guy. What could be more fun than a conversation with another proud male in the snow on a moonlit evening in the midst of academia’s crowning jewel itself? Hey, are you grinning? 

Little Bird, little Bird where were you when I took myself so seriously, almost lost my way, or drowned in my own mind?

I was here, you just couldn’t see me. I am your imagination. I open you to create wonder and spy on God, to whom I introduced you to when you were a small child. Remember? You thought I was prodigal. But I was never wanton or wallowing in extravagance. I, like you, was just  explorative—searching out, crying out, longing, reaching—and sinning along the way.   

Cheerleading life itself, eh?  Well, thanks for the company out here in the snowy cold. 

Sure thing. I travel well. In Christian lore, I’m a symbol of vitality, sometimes a messenger. Church Cardinals dress all in red, strut their stuff, get stuffy. I do that too. So do you. Now cheer up. You can do this, even though you’re just pregnant. 

What? 

Oh, you didn’t know? Hit those books. Keep on going and next winter you’ll be trudging to the big city to take your comprehensive examinations here—great with child. I’ll be with you. 

So that was how I got through, got pregnant, received a Masters degree, and relied on my comprehensive imagination in its latest incarnation—a red male prodigal bird-angel—to remind me, once again, even now, to trust this Omnipresent One.   

2022.03.20 Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. Spiritual Lemons, Lyn G. Brakeman, blog post. 3/20/22

The Bible is a source of frustration to many, a source of wonder to some, and a source of trembling awe to others. To me it is a source of all of these aforementioned states of mind and heart. 

On this Sunday in Lent, the biblical readings from the Hebrew Scriptures, from St. Paul of many words and even more semicolons, and from the Gospel, according to Luke, all artfully bombard listeners with one central theological theme: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, Hebrew for “I am as I am”—no more and no less. I am is God’s personal name: I am I Am. God’s name is the verb To Be, a verb that indicates presence. God is present—no matter what.  

Ehyeh asher Ehyeh

Not too many or of us will ever see a burning bush that is not consumed, because fire always consumes, burns up. Nevertheless, many of us see something like a burning bush, something that communicates to us the omnipresence of God as Being itself.  I memorized many omni- words in Sunday School. The only one that stuck to my soul was omnipresence, because it always proved true, even in the worst most dreary or painful times—time in which I could see no way out, no place for me, no clarity for my hopes and dreams. Once years ago I was staring at a liturgical calendar on which the special, holy days—Easter days— were marked in white. Logically, it was the Easter season. Illogically, I suddenly saw all the days’ numbers appear as white. I tried to blink away what I saw, decided I could be going mad, and then, like Moses, shed my doubts. (And did you know that the verb for “shed” is the same in Hebrew as the word used for a snake’s shedding its skin each year, without which shedding the snake could never grow?)  So I shed my doubts and shrugged: “What the crazy hell, it’s all white, every day!” I’m okay. 

Ehyeh asher Ehyeh

Just last week I saw a small, round, completely white snowy owl perched atop a tall tree outside our window. I rushed to get the binoculars. We always try to prove our vision, don’t we? But this one was provable. There she was, pure white just waiting to be joined and blended into the big snow blizzard that would be upon us that evening and into the next day.  Then suddenly she was gone. Up and away, she flew, leaving only the impression of her presence behind my eyes. 

Ehyeh asher Eyheh

As Paul writes to the grousing Corinthians, read any of us much of the time: Hey you, stop grumbling. There isn’t much happening to you that has not happened to others. There is not a test you cannot survive, for God will provide you the way out, as well as the strength to bear it. This is often quoted, sometimes flippantly, as if this truth is obvious when you’re in the middle of great grief and fear. Well, it is not obvious at all, and should always be taken lightly and spoken gently with one hand on your own heart  and another hand on the heart or head of the other in your presence. It is terrifying to be present like this. I’ve been with dying people and suffering ones in the hospital, and I want more than anything else to flee. But I remember, I’m not alone. 

Ehyeh asher Eyheh

And in the gospel of Luke (13:1-9), Jesus makes a bit of fun of us “poor me” types who imagine our own suffering to be the worst of all, our own guilt the most unbearable, our own failings the most, well, deserving of grace. Nonsense, Jesus tell them. We all fall to the same fate  equally. Get some new perspectives. Change your viewpoint. Jesus offers a parable of a fig tree that, year after year, has failed to produce. The owner is angry and orders this one tree to be cut down, for it is useless trash. But the vinedresser, the one who cares for this vineyard and knows all the trees and their vines intimately, calls for reprise: Give this one another year. I will hoe around it and fertilize it, and if it bears fruit another year, fine. If not let it be cut down. I am tempted to excise that last line, because I am sometimes afraid of dying, afraid of being useless, think that all my efforts have been fruitless. But then. 

Ehyeh asher Ehyeh

2022.03.13 Unlikely Friendships. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 3/3/22

Like these unlikely animal pairs, we human beings are also capable, though far less likely to  exercise the privilege, of forming unlikely friendships. It’s safer to stay in our herd—also less transformational, less challenging, and possibly boring. 

                            *  *  *  *  

 A teacher at the Gorilla Foundation had taught an ape named Koko sign language. One day Koko signaled by drawing two fingers across her cheek like whiskers, that she wanted a cat—not surprising because her keeper had also been reading to the ape whose favorite stories were “Puss in Boots” and “The Three Little Kittens”.  Stuffed animals, however, did not satisfy Koko, so her trainer offered her the pick from a litter of stray kittens. Koko was smitten with this tiny male tailless kitten whom she named All Ball. Aren’t they a pair?

 

Koko treated Ball as any mother of  babies would—cuddling, carrying him tucked in her thigh, even playing little games—done with the utmost tender care, and all received with utter joy. Tiny Ball, alas, escaped from the enclosure one day and was hit by a car.  People working with Koko witnessed the ape’s emotions—the tremendous silence of deep grief. It showed in her face, and, pointing to a photo of Ball, she signed with her huge hands: “Sleep cat. Cry, sad, frown.” 

Now, anyone could make a case that this all was because apes and their ilk are more advanced than other animals—more like us. Or, you could make a case for maternal instincts alone. 

But no……………

Picture an English Spaniel named Sophi and an owl named Bramble from a birds-of prey conservation center in Cornwall, England. This is an amusing reversal of traditional names. Owls are usually considered wise, and Spaniels by nature are eager to hunt and retrieve felled birds of prey in their jaws, not befriend them. Still when Bramble was young the owner of the center brought him into her home. The curious three-year-old Sophi immediately started to lick Bramble’s beak. This became a daily ritual, and whenever Sophi was around, Bramble jumped about and flapped to be let out of her cage to join Sophi for a cuddling and cleaning session. This ritual became mutual as Bramble “beaked” Sophi in return for Sophi’s “kisses". Even after Bramble went off to the aviary he would swoop down to visit Sophi for their grooming sessions. They were a couple. In love? 

 

So who says animals don’t have feelings?

Then there’s the  Kookaburra and the duckling. 

I always wondered what a Kookaburra was, because my mother used to sing some goofy song about a Kookaburra sitting in an old gum tree. It was an Australian nursery rhyme. Kookaburras are not necessarily nice. They have a high-pitched cackle, sort of like, well, “girls’ night out” in a local bar. And Kookaburras often eat their young. But a wildlife center on the Isle of Wight, England, managed to breed and save some hatchlings, one of which they christened Kookie. 

This same staff had also rescued a tiny Madagascar teal duckling. To alleviate possible loneliness, they thought to pair Kookie with the wee duckling. The two oddly, became pals. The duckling burrowed its fluffy body under Kookie’s wing for warmth. The duckling, when separated for the night, jumped up and down, eager to get back to the blasé Kookie who showed no aggression. In time another litter of ducklings hatched and Kookie babysat all three. As Kookie grew up and into his adult voice, he could, and would, emit his wild guffawing and scare the feathers off his duckies—or not. 

No one really know how or why such youthful bondings form, but experts do know that they last. 

*  *  *  *

Do you remember such friends when you were a young child? I do. I also remember that there was little fear about differences until I got older and had been “carefully taught” to fear. Again, it is young children who will lead this world along the way into and through this fearful time in our history—a time when we are called to abandon cherished biases, flawed values like individualism and independence, favored warlike strategies of survival. It is time for a politics that is humanitarian not partisan, and a spirituality that re-embodies an ancient wisdom:  ALL LIVES ARE PRECIOUS IN GOD’S SIGHT.   

(I am indebted (photos and data) to Jennifer Holland’s amazing book, Unlikely Friendships about the power of friendship, in true stories from the animal kingdom.) 

2022.03.06 Ashes, Ashes of Truth, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 3.6.22

Ashes announce the first day of the season of Lent. Ash Wednesday is a holy day for Christians, beginning the time when Jesus was driven into the wilderness to, well, consult his soul and his God about his own choices. On this day priests, or laity if no priest is available, smear ashes onto each upturned forehead to remind us that we are mortal and beloved as such. The imposition of ashes is the ritual that  springs us into Lent, a season that has nothing to do with things borrowed or lent! It does have to do with one’s own willingness and ability to, let’s say, think things over—not as a life review, but as a way to spend more time in quiet and to ask yourself: Is there anything or anyone in my life that gently tugs at me, visiting my quiet contemplative time with worry, or wonder, or regret, or simple uncertainty—or any ongoing temptation to sin, understood as anything that separates us from the goodness in ourselves, God, or our neighbor.  

                                *  *  *  *

For the last two years I have had regular, often daily, conversations with an old friend and Episcopal priest, the Rev. Lee McGee-Street. Lee was my, and many other women’s mentor, in and through the ardors of the ordination process in the Episcopal Church in the late 1970s and 80s. Although we women were finally voted “ordainable” as priests in 1976, it took years for the “law” to settle into the minds and hearts of a people formed in patriarchal language and hierarchical politics. The process felt like wiggling a fat’n happy overweight man into a corset meant for a petite ballerina. 

Lee McGee, then an Episcopal deacon from Washington D.C., had been one of those courageous women (eleven in Philadelphia in 1974, and four in D.C. in 1975) who bucked the traditional system to get ordained priest, with the "Washington Four" before the official vote was taken. These ordinations were labelled “irregular”. They were not illegal, because a bishop carried out the sacramental rite. Still, these women had to endure another ceremonial liturgy to get “regularized” so that they could function as priests with sacramental authority: to bless, consecrate and absolve. 

The ordaining male bishops suffered no consequences of course. (Amazing what you can do after you retire, your pension is secure—and you’re a man.) Nevertheless, every institution has it rules and regulations to create a sense of order. The Church is no different. 

Lee, herself, had first been against the idea of pushing the Church into taking action on gender justice, but she soon changed her mind. She had a rich career as a chaplain, counselor, parish priest, and professor of pastoral studies at Yale Divinity School. She was very present to me and other women as we floundered into and through the journey to priesthood in Connecticut, encouraging us to persist, informing us about the dynamics of the double standard, and later helping us to understand how hard it was for male clergy, who had controlled the sacramental life of the Church for centuries, to lose that primacy and to suffer a “breach of collegiality”—aka old boys’ club. One meant loss of power, the other loss of intimacy. The Church today is not the only institution still learning to live with the idea of shared power. 

Dick and I had left Connecticut for Massachusetts in 1997, and in 2020 returned, just as the COVID pandemic was taking hold, to live in a retirement community in Simsbury. Lee and I resumed our connection and had daily telephone conversations, rich with humor and debates about church politics, and feminism. We were moving from our mentor/mentee relationship to good old friendship.  

In these last two weeks, I continued to call and leave messages, yet received no callbacks. This was not usual. I knew that, Lee as she aged, became housebound with painful arthritis, had regular caregivers, experienced some depression, was grieving the death of two husbands, and lived with a form of macular degeneration that had left her legally blind since her late twenties. I also knew that she was one of the more resilient women I’d ever known. She never talked—except I imagine to her therapist of years, her several beloved guide dogs, and perhaps God—about her disabilities. It was never easy to, well, be empathic or feel Lee’s own pain with her. She was always “fine,” and she always turned the conversation away from herself to me. Each time we talked, I pressed her a bit about how she was—really. She consistently assured me, “I’m all right.” I wondered. I doubted her “all-rightness” and felt helpless.

On Tuesday, March 1, I saw a message on an online site for Episcopal clergywomen that Lee, at 78,  had died on February 20, 2022. My heart crimped with grief, and also some anger. Why could she not have told me she was in that much decline?  I was slow to remember that this was how Lee had managed her difficult life all along. She helped others, period. My grief would have some ambivalence; no grief is ever pure. Nevertheless, Lee and I had been, and would always be, connected enough through God, our seminary, and our passion for the causes of women in the Episcopal Church, to make my grief whole and holy. 

Thank you, Lee McGee, and bless you always. 

So what has this remembrance  to do with Ashes and Lent? 

*  *  *  * 

I suppose I will never get over the allure of ashes, black smudges on the forehead in the shape of a cross. It is a powerful ritual to acknowledge the beginning of Lent, yes, and also to remember how small, silly, and yet how beloved we all are in God’s eye.

When I worked in the 1980’s as a chaplain at Hartford Hospital, a big bustling city hospital, and later at an addictions treatment hospital, I used to bring a small vial of blessed ashes to work on Ash Wednesday. I was astounded at how many people, staff and patients, wanted me to smear their forehead with ashes. They chased me down. When each one stood before me, some much taller than I, I tiptoed or they bent. I said to each: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  Oh, how I wanted to add a little phrase of reassurance, something silly like, like don’t worry, God always loves you and will resurrect your soul forever. Oh, how fearful so many of us are of dying and being gone—just gone. 

On Ash Wednesday I felt, and feel, like a small child again, hoping someone will just pick me up and hug me forever close. All I can do is grieve for my friend, Lee, and ask another friend to smear my own forehead with black ashes and remind me. 

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return. 

There is something astonishingly unifying about this visible ritual—an outward gesture of our common humanity, the tattoo that marks our common nature. Without exception.    

Either/And/Both/Or? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 2/27/22

We seem to have trouble in this “united” states of North America deciding whether to be pluribus or unum, but rarely both. It’s the same with religions and political parties. 

I am Either

shake my hand

I am And

All hands are banned

I am Both

Full of sloth

I am Or

Without an oar

Wishing more

Daring less

I confess

Oh, do stop playing silly games

We have no time for fuss or fame

We’re all the same

In this raggedy game

both tag or tag-along

and either will do.

*  *  *  *

At the end of my February 20, 2022, blog post, I posed this question: What if there is no either/or, but only both/and?  And what if there is neither but all? 

I wonder if connective and oppositional words are simply of no use in a world that continues to insist on conflict no matter what. We create wars, presumably for the sake of promoting our ideals, and for helping to liberate other radically uneven and unfree societies, and yet war accomplishes neither. War only sows all seeds for more war. In fact, power and might over against self or others for purposes of change toward a shared outcome, such as peace or communication, does NOT strengthen mutual growth, but retards it, breeding only resentment and humiliation. Ask any parent.

For example, Harvard instructor, and researcher, Jessica Stern, herself a victim of rape and the author of a memoir, Denial, interviewed terrorists in an effort to understand their violence. She uncovered consistent underlying feelings of humiliation—the emotional underpinning of terrorism. 

There is a community ritual practice in South Africa called Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a way of thinking about humanity. Young boys are trained in this practice, probably to ensure tribal survival. Ubuntu derives from the Zulu language and roughly means: “I am because we are.”  I became acquainted with this process and practice from church gatherings. I know it has to do with the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.

Even enemies? Or terrorists and rapists? Neither? Both? 

While I was reacting with rage and disgust to the recent Russian invasion of the Ukraine, I thought of ubuntu. I also thought of Jesus, of whom I am quite fond. He not only  advocated for non-violence but also prayed for enemies. All of them? Some days I think Jesus was absolutely nuts! How could I pray for Russian president, Vladimir Putin? Prayer, I discovered, makes me uneasy more times than not. I finally settled on asking God to soften Putin’s heart toward his own humanity and to that of his people. Economic sanctions, after all, hurt innocent Russians as much as war hurts innocent Ukrainians. 

Now I needed comfort. Oh, send me something terrific, I begged. 

And God sent me the Pope. What, you expected a Transfiguration? 

On St. Matthias Day, February 24 of 2022, there was a conference called “Building Bridges: A Synodal Encounter Between Pope Francis and University Students.” Matthias, was the Judas replacement, duly elected by Jesus’s disciples after his death, because of course the work must go on, and they needed to have the correct number: 12 (tribes of Israel, apostles of Christ). The Bible is nothing if not organized disorganization. 

We have 12 grandchildren—irrelevant here but lovely.   

And so I watched the Pope and the young students assembled from all the Americas, including Mexico, and Canada. Was this my consolation from God, or was it one more distractor in my spiritual journey? But I like bridges better than tunnels so I tuned in. The meeting was sponsored by Loyola University’s Institute of Pastoral Studies in Chicago.

In this brief and fascinating two hours I learned nothing new and everything renewed. First, I had to look up synodality. A SYNOD is a meeting, an assembly of clergy and appointed or elected laity. Such meetings make decisions for everyone else. They are usually boring. But this one wasn’t. 

I felt comfort from God through Papa Francisco, as the young, bright, and brisk Roman Catholic students called him. This group of 20-somethings was diverse in gender and race, and eager for just what I myself longed for at 80-something: a little affection with clout. 

The “Papa” began his time with the students by telling them he would speak to them as a priest—not as bishop or pope. He acted friendly—yes, like a friend.

I heard many things. I listened to a few. I comprehended even fewer. I retained some:

-The Pope feels like a fish in water. A fish, he said, runs and exercises very fast. He wiggled his hand like a fish. “I feel like a fish”  And so he was— swimming with us all in the same waters, seeking and seeking, just as we all are.  

-On migrants: “A migrant is a person. I was alone and you welcomed me. First, eliminate the stigmatization. I am a migrant. So are you. It is very important that all of us know our deepest roots. The old ancestors gave us base for the tree, and now you are young, and you must grow the tree.”

-“We say violence for violence. There must be NO violence. Violence destroys. It never constructs.” At Easter, you offer the other side of your faith.” (Remembering the gospel saying about turning the other cheek, I took this to mean that one should never get one-sided and rigid about one’s religious faith. 

-Several students expressed concern about the distance they felt from their clergy. No one speaks to us from the pulpits about climate change and other things that we care about, they told Papa who responded: “The pastor must not manage, but be in front, in the middle, and behind the people.”

-One young woman made this plea: “Please don’t close any more churches. Transform them into our homes.” The Pope grinned and nodded. 

- Most of us have heard the metaphorical image of Christ knocking at the door of the church, or of our own hearts—trying to get in. “The Church must knock at the door from the inside. We have to go out, to change from the inside out.”

-Finally, a theological question, implied throughout but stated by one student: We are to replace violence with goodness. How?”

-Answer: “How is God?  Close, merciful, tender, and compassionate.” 

As he left, the Papa’s zucchetto shifted on his bald head. He resettled it. No bobby pins!

*  *  *  *

So I guess that God is neither AND all. Amen.