2022.10.23 Naked Humility, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I’m spiritual, not stupid.  

You know this story in the Bible (New Testament Luke 18) about these two guys in the same holy Temple—both praying. One’s a Pharisee, respected religious leader of his day. The other’s an unpopular tax collector. Already we’re into stereotypes. It’s a set up. 

Then we listen in on each one’s prayers. The Pharisee thanks God that he is so holy and rich and lofty and so much better than the other scum of a guy. The other just asks for God’s mercy to forgive him all his sins. Now which guy do you think gets points for humility? Right, the sobbing sinner.  What think you?

Well, it’s in the HOLY BIBLE, you whine. So yes, we take it seriously—but not stupidly. 

Both of these praying men tell God exactly how they feel. Both of them tell the truth, the inmost truth. Neither lies. I’m grateful for all my wealth and hard work and disgusted at this other poor slob who is crying for mercy all the time, says the Pharisee. I’m scared and worried all the time that I’m unworthy, worthless, and unpopular. No one likes me, even God, says the tax collector.  

Both prayers are emotionally honest. And both are humble if that means simply telling yourself and God exactly what’s on your mind—your truth, your truth right now. That’s not easy to do. Prayer is come-as-you-are. To stand naked of soul before God is humble, even if what you say gets condemned by yourself or others, and you decide that such condemnation is of God. It’s not. Judgments, positive or negative, imposed from without, even those put into the mouth of Jesus, as Luke does for his own purposes here, cause us to feel either superior or inferior. That’s not God’s assessment. It’s ours. Simply so.

Be spiritual, not stupid. 

Neither beg nor brag, just be. 

Stand naked of soul before God. 

2022.10.16 Importunity

Sometime you just need to give something, or someone, or yourself a kick in the butt—or a knock on the knuckles.

During my young and naive years, that is, before I hit the midlife skids, I’d sit in church pews, listen to the gospel parable called,“The Unjust Judge and the Importunate Widow (Lk.18) and think that “importunate” meant important. I’d wonder how a widow got to be so important—enough to change a high court judge’s decisions about who should be awarded damages and whom be denied. This judge was godless and corrupt—not motivated by justice at all. Still, a mere widow turned his head? She had to be a little important—even to him. 

After I found out that the word importunate means persistent to the point of annoyance and is derived from the Latin importunus meaning inconvenient or unseasonable, I still thought to myself: But a widow? Really, of all the weak sisters to choose as the star of a parable. But then Luke was probably encouraging the Gentiles to engage in importunity to get into the emergent early Christian church.   

I still wonder about widows. I often think about how much I do not want to become a widow—or any variation thereof. I have some female friends who are widows, one twice widowed, one divorced, remarried, then widowed, one too young and alive to be a widow, and one an aspiring widow. They are all lovely, loving, and wiser than ever.  In Scriptures, widows are plentiful and to be pitied, first on the list for charitable giving. The Indo-European root meaning of widow is be empty. Still, God loves them. 

I learned how to be importunate, thanks in part to this little widow and her unjust judge. Such nagging, near-bullying behavior, entered my behavioral repertoire as I was bounced about among a few bishops and committees just trying to be ordained in the Episcopal Church at a time when it was being beset by women—yes, some widows among them. Like the widow in the parable, women wanted justice. The fuel behind my importunity was anger—very far from self-righteous anger, because I knew my own sins and failings, but anger at feeling shut out. I’ve never like slammed doors, and feelings of shame, and fury boiling inside. The Episcopal Church turned out to be pretty lithe for an institution. It changed for justice's sake. 

Every story has transformative power, usually many layers of it, if you read it carefully, then let its many layers of meaning sink deeply into and under your own skin. Every story has its own brand of importunity. 

This biblical story ends with the punch line: “I tell you God will give them swift justice.”  

Still, I do not want to be a widow.   

The Road Called Creation, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 10/09/22

Creation is not a hurdle on the road to God; it is the road itself. 

I quote from  The Writings of Martin Buber, a Jewish mystic and scholar, Austria-Hungarian and Israeli philosopher. He’s famous for constructing a relational spirituality called “I-Thou”.  His book on this idea was translated from German to English in 1937.

When in seminary in the 1980s I first read Buber. As I read I felt a great surge of sheer aliveness rise up from within me like a giant blush. As a student of language I know that the pronoun “YOU” has two forms, one more formal to use with someone you don’t know very well or are just meeting, the other for your own beloved, a good friend, a family member, or, dare I say, God.  

In Spanish usted is you-formal and tu is you-informal; in French it’s vous and toi. I was surprised when I lived for a while with a family in Spain and heard in their family prayers the “Hail Mary” (many more times than I thought necessary) using the familiar pronoun for the BVM. 

“Blessed art thou among women” was “Bendita tu eres entre todas las mujeres.”  Notice that the English pronoun in the Hail Mary is also THOU, Blessed are thou among women.” AND in the traditional “Our Father” —Hallowed be THY name, THY kingdom come, THY will be done.  I sometimes think all our pronoun problems would be solved if we just went back to using thee and thou and and thine.  And would that in fact, and in spite of contemporary usage of YOU and YOUR, be more honest to our gospel of divine Love?

Which brings me back to Buber and his ethic of I-Thou relationships. Essentially, that means that each individual being regards every other being as worthy of the same respect each accords the other. You see how tangled up in pronouns I get, but you get the idea. Buber advocates I-Thou as a model for effective mutual dialogue. Often relations become monologues, which Buber calls I-It relationships—deaf self-talk. Otherwise, supposed conversation become monologues—deaf.

So do we dare consider such intimacy with God? Most would say NOT. But I wonder if God alone is bold enough to shed his almighty power in favor of  I-Thou  relations with all Creation?  

The parable Jesus tells in Luke’s gospel tells us about his healing TEN lepers who all go leaping away in joy, free of ugly sores and disease. ONE leper returns to thank Jesus for this healing. Jesus asks: Where are all the others? Were they not healed as well?  (Luke adds to the story that the one who returned with gratitude was a Samaritan, that is, a foreigner, a reject, a gentile—enemy of the Jewish majority Jesus addresses.) 

Please note that Jesus praises the grateful one, does NOT condemn all the others, AND proclaims that the reign of God is already in our midst. THIS DOES NOT MEAN HIMSELF, (Christians, take note) BUT RATHER THE JOY OF HEALING ITSELF AS WELL AS THE GRATITUDE FOR IT. 

This story teaches us all to be I-Thou with ALL today’s “lepers”—those we secretly imagine and secretly fear, to be the “It” to our “I”?   

Who on this road of Creation would you avoid?—a Republican? a Democrat? a Muslim? an anti-vaxxer? an Evangelical? an immigrant? a Queer or Trans? a trillionaire/fat cat? a criminal? a feminist? a schizophrenic? a Jew? an addict? a Pope? a demented one? a dirty street urchin? a beggar?  or, God forbid, someone whom you cannot call THOU? 

2022.10.02 Mercy By The Sea, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Last Sunday my beloved spouse and I attended the 50th Mercy celebration of the retreat and conference center, Mercy by the Sea—a place where we both had experienced the grace of divinity and humanity in long hours of retreat silence and solitude in a contemplative setting—merciful to body and soul, inside and outside. We had not been there for retreat in some twenty years. It was a long, tiring day, and worth the renewal.  

It was lovely and quite wonderful for me to roam the bounds of this cherished place, heart of my spirituality and place of my deepest self-knowing and God-knowing. After fears of financial ruin, Mercy by its small portion of seashore lives!!  I belong there, not as a nun but as a one-time wannabe nun turned Episcopal priest and Mercy Associate. Somehow the enormous grandeur of the Weeping Beech Tree overlooking the entrance to Mercy Center will always be to me an icon of Creative Divine Mercy.

How Divine Mercy Recently Whupped Me Upside The Heart!

An odd little healing story from my own life helps me find deep Mercy within a small sliver of realized connection.  

My mother suffered a great loss at age twelve when her Jewish father died. She grieved but never told me and my sisters about their Jewish grandfather, save to say how much she adored him, and that he loved music and worked in New York City as an Impresario who imported European musical talent to the United States. We learned of her secret from a cousin. The knowledge was, frankly, thrilling, but my mother couldn’t share this because she was dead.

Given the social contexts and cultures in which Mom grew up, as well as her aspirations to marry into a wasp-ish family, and live in Darien, Connecticut, it is understandable that she hid her Jewish identity. The consequence of her hiddenness tailored her extraverted personality to be bright and happy on the outside and vulnerable and pained on the inside. As her oldest daughter, I received extravagant praise while I longed for her warm heart. The inner cool of her secret made her unable to hug, hold close, and nurture with open-hearted warmth. Her own heart I suppose needed inordinate attention. My sisters felt this distance as well. The grandchildren loved her fun-loving cheer and the attention she lavished on them all, especially the girls. 

All my life I have searched for that warmth in myself and in other relationships while also grieving my mother’s distance. Recently, I saw a television special on Stephen Spielberg in which his story revealed that many, many Jewish musicians, created and gave yiddish chutzpah to the Broadway Musical genre. Think Irving Berlin, Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Spielberg, Stephen Sondheim, George Gershwin, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern, and more. Who will ever forget the yiddish flavor of Tevya singing the song “Tradition” and the mournful plaintive tones of the fiddle in“Fiddler on the Roof”?  

Mom pushed Broadway musicals and had a profound affection for Broadway. In college I fell in love with classical music, some of which my grandfather brought to America from Europe. Both of us, I think, paid tribute to our Jewish roots and to Mom’s father, Avon Franklin Adams, who, as a young boy, emigrated from Prussia to America with his father Adolph Adams and his Polish Roman Catholic mother, Marie Kaleski. A curious second cousin and I researched and actually found Adolph’s gravesite in a cemetery near Boston, Massachusetts, as well as the marriage certificate of my mother’s mother, Marguerite Hall of Medford, Massachusetts, married to Avon Franklin Adams in an obscure chapel in NYC. All hidden yet all blossoming through music. 

It occurred to me recently, in the way sudden flashes of intuitional insight happen, that my mother found her father’s love of music and his Jewish soul in these musicals. No wonder my mother was so attached to the. Every time she went to a show she heard her father and her own Jewish soul call out. 

No one, of course, can prove the factual truth of an intuitive insight yet everyone can experience the joy and the healing mercy that accompanies an awakening.  Aha!  

2022.09.23 Listen to Impossible Possible Dreams, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I know I tell my small story many times over. It is, however, important to re-tell, re-member, re-live, re-love. This process itself re-generates that original connection with the God, both immanent and transcendent, who listened, listens, and re-listens—always—to any and all dreams and hopes.

*  *  *  *

The “dream” chats I had as a young child were not childish, nor did they die. We all have such dreams and they can expand and mature and modify themselves into vocations or life paths—even great visions, movements for love or justice, or perhaps happily imperfect marriages and parenthood. Favorite childhood books often provide clues about inmost dreams, heart’s-desires, hopes, and actual futures—all derived from early dream particles.

My childhood dreams were not of being president, or a high-hatted church bishop, or Pope, or even God. All I wanted was to be listened to. It wasn’t an impossible dream like Don Quijote’s. It was just a small girl’s peevish protest at having to play second fiddle for a short time each evening to the primacy of Dad's triangle-shaped martini glass. I couldn’t compete with such omnipotence, so I dreamed simply of an attentive listener.

That’s how I first met God. God, the one on the cloud who listened to all the sounds of Earth according to my own favorite book. That God listened to me, too. That’s how I first learned that I mattered, that listening itself mattered as much as talking, even though I did most of the talking. I still do, and I’m 84!  

My listening God, I must add, did nothing at all to make all my little requests come true, according to my expected time table. As I grew up I continued to talk to my listening God and called it prayer. It turned out it was much harder to get the institutional Episcopal Church to listen to my dream-prayers of being a priest of pulpit and altar when I was also the mother of four beloved growing children, than it was to get God to listen. I never stopped my talky prayers, and God kept listening. As the years passed, I too started to listen to God, and seek God’s presence in myself and everywhere. You’d be amazed at how immense God is. I was.  

*  *  *  *

As to the Martini glass? It disappeared over the years. You get sick of things that make you sick after a while.  

As to my focused aspirations?  The Episcopal Church, not the church in which I grew up, finally arranged itself to ordain women priests, and then to ordain me priest in 1988, a scant five months before I turned fifty, not my plan but my joy anyway.

As to God? Well, God still listens with care, and, according to me, takes her/his/their own sweet time getting all religions to figure out how to eliminate all those masculine pronouns that simply don’t fit to describe Divinity. I write and pray this dream: that women, all genders, and all ethnicities will be welcomed and included at all levels of institutional functioning. You’d think that by now God would have acted out in wrath at all this torpor, but God doesn’t do such things, even if lots of good people think God does. I knew that by now. 

As to listening?  It is not an auditory function, it is spiritual—divinely endowed and meant to enliven the collective well-being of all Creation. You listen with your whole being. I try. 

*  *  *  * 

What about God’s own dream? That we all love, respect, listen, and promote the dignity of all humankind as well as the whole created order. Our part is to LISTEN—not agree, assume, persuade, approve, critique, argue, snipe, elect, fight, or shoot. My dream is that we listen with open-mindedness to ourselves and others, even supposed enemies, the insane, the criminal, the rich and the poor alike. I try. 

2022.09.18 God's Wealth, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

 

Jesus, a good rabbinical teacher, is remembered as telling his listeners realistic illustrative stories that often challenge long-held, traditional assumptions. No one goes away unmoved after listening to one of his parables; everyone is called up short.   

The parable in Luke (16:-13) about a businessman of great corporate wealth who suspects his business manager of squandering his properties and profits and threatens to fire him, is one that always leaves me reeling, gets me twisted in knots. Business as usual is obviously not an option in God’s economy. But what is?  Christian scholar and theologian, John Dominic Crossan, calls this story a challenge parable—not morally obvious but spiritually unsettling. Money tends to do that to most of us. 

*  *  *  *  

Once there was this business manager who panicked at the thought of losing his job. He devised a scheme whereby, if he is fired he will be taken care of by those who can least afford to do that. Why can’t he take care of himself? Because he is not strong enough to work, too ashamed to beg, and just plain scared. So he schemes.

The scheme: When debtors come to repay their legitimate debt to the boss, the manager tells each of them to halve the amount due and pay only that. Thus he cheats the boss out of his legitimate profit, and gains some money for himself as well as good will around the neighborhood.

 

He imagines that his “generosity” to the poor debtors might also please God who, according to Jesus’s teachings, likes open-hearted generosity. But Jesus tells the story to warn listeners that wealth accrued by cheating, even if you think the businessman has too much wealth, is itself dishonest behavior not pleasing to God. 

One cannot, Jesus teaches, “buy” friendship with money, and wealth accrued by dishonest means is an insult to the ways of God, or divine economics. And here Jesus delivers one of his best, and probably least heeded yet most preached, one-liners: “You cannot serve two masters, both God and wealth/mammon”  

The semitic translation of “mammon” is “that in which one fully trusts.”  Frankly, I do feel more secure when there is money in my wallet, and in my bank, and a credit card in my bag.   But what good would that do me if my purse were snatched, my wallet and checkbook gone. I’d feel naked, unsafe. I’d report everything. I’d pray. I’d give thanks that I was alive and that my wee phone was still safely tucked away in my back pocket. I would also know that this all was not what God would like at all, and not because of the money I lost.  

*  *  *  * 

God obviously does not despise money or wealth itself. What God despises are two things: first, putting your whole trust in your wealth, as if wealth could save you, or love you, or even give you emotional comfort; and second, the regular practice of “dishonest”—half-hearted— generosity. Pop a coin in a beggar’s cup, but never a paper bill. 

The mental calculation might go something like this: AFTER I have my yacht, my mansion, my diamonds, my fortune, my business, my high moral standing, my religion, my politics, my comfort, THEN I will become a philanthropist and give generously and unconditionally to works of justice, the arts, and the needs of others.

Is philanthropy, the name we often use to describe the generosity of BIG donors to benefit  good causes, and a word derived from philos + anthropos, meaning man-loving or human-loving, in line with divine open-hearted generosity? Or is God’s generosity something we desire but that we are sure is unattainable, because, after all, we are only human? Ah yes, and we are also rich with grace, beauty, love, wisdom, and hope. Are these not the riches of God?

*  *  *  *

Can we, in partnership with God,

be trusted then to waste,

to lavish, spread, fling far too wide

the riches of God’s grace?

-hymn text by Episcopal priest, Michael Hudson, Songs for the Cycle, 2004 

2022.09.11 Lost? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

God is tender, gentle and compassionate. So said Pope Francis, Bishop of Rome, and such is my own experience. These ARE the qualities of almightiness, divinity, and supremacy—lest anyone should think otherwise, according to traditional human projections onto God. Nothing is lost in God’s compassionate heart. 

*  *  *  *

Ever been lost? Lost your way, your direction? Lost a precious possession? A cause you fought for and lost?  Your very soul?  Apparently, the biblical God loses stuff all the time: the cause of justice and mercy, the divine temper, all followers, the entire promised land, a lamb, a beloved son. 

That’s tough going. God rages with deep grief and tears. 

Stories that portray God as a loser, that show God having tender moments and painful feelings, like grief and longing, that dethrone God from perfect Love and Almightiness, are the very stories that “find” me whenever I feel lost in some way. 

I am of course remembering today the event of 2001 in New York city, my hometown. We call it  “NINE-ELEVEN”— a murderous event with many (3000 people) tragic losses that sent waves and shivers of grief and fear throughout our land and beyond. Yes, I can still see, in my mind’s eye, the flaming planes shearing off the top of the towers. Memorials are erected and many still weep. So does God. Why didn’t God prevent this loss? Because God didn’t do it, we did. God grieves and grief  helps us claim life anew. God lives in the grief and in the tears of ALL, and in the lingering fears, and in the many ways all living things, Nature and Human Nature alike, get lost. 

*  *  *  *

People worldwide weep, remember, and grieve collectively over the recent death of Queen Elizabeth II of England. Why? She was their steadfast monarch of 70 years, not ours. Not mine some say, and turn away. They were our enemies. Why should I care? Because God cares. Elizabeth was the world’s royal symbol of steadfast presence through a life full of loss and pain and family chaos—just like us all.

One of my top hits when I was a small child was a song I called “Dom Ring”:

My country, 'tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing;

Land where my fathers died,

Land of the pilgrims' pride,

From ev'ry mountainside

Let freeDOM RING!

The text of this verse was written by Samuel Francis Smith, 1831, student at Andover Newton Theological School in Andover Massachusetts, now located on the campus of Yale Divinity School from which I graduated in 1986.  

As a child I knew nothing of patriotism. These men were not my fathers. I didn’t know any pilgrims on mountainsides. I knew however that this song meant wonderful things. So I lustily sang. 

The tune is the same as the one England sings, now and always, on all occasions of life and death, for their country and their royalty: “God save our gracious queen ….”  All history required of them was to change the gender role from King to Queen. But the tune remains the same. 

God save our gracious QUEEN!

Long live our noble QUEEN!

God save the QUEEN!

Send her victorious,

Happy and glorious,

Long to reign over us,

God save the QUEEN.         Let freeDOM RING.   

The hymn and the anthem were written at times of war between enemies, both fighting for freedom and power or whatever other foolishness we human connive at. Still, the music itself binds, carries. It never takes side. Nor does God who keeps on singing, grieving, weeping, losing and finding us all in us all. Sing on!

*  *  *  *

FINALE:  The Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, conducted by Canadian/Ukrainian, Keri-Lynn Wilson, and including some recent refugees, some of whom shed tears and spoke of how hard this emergent orchestra was at first, because, as a young women bassoonist said, “We had never played together before. It was a mess, but then we took off.”  One violinist said he was so bereft he had no idea what he could do, feeling the loss of his parents and others still trapped in Ukraine. Then he remembered he was a musician. He had a gift to give. And they played with tenderness, gentleness, and emotional depth.  Ms. Wilson.

I heard their concert last night from Lincoln Center in, again, my home town. The music took my breath away, kept me spellbound, drew many tears to my eyes and down my cheeks, and reassured me, once again, that nothing is lost in God’s compassionate almighty heart—NOTHING.