2023.07.16 Dying or What?, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Readiness cannot be known. 

As a trained pastoral counselor and chaplain I worked in hospitals where the hurried and busy medical staff knew all the answers and had all the cures and all the medications. I felt useless because all I could do was listen and stay present. I learned two things. First, I was very much needed when a family or patient was sitting by terrified and knowing nothing. I could listen, and that presence counted alongside all the data.  

Next, I learned about humility. It is not self-abasement as if I were worthless. Nor was it self-aggrandizement as if I were the only true healer around. 

Humility is being right-sized—not too big and not too small. 

All I could do before, after, and sometimes during a dying was: Be present, pray a little, respect whatever cultural traditions families or religions kept, keep silence, listen, and wait. Yes, touch is the last sense to go when anyone dies, so, if you are the only one present, gently touch (not grasp and hold onto) a hand. You will know when to let go. There may or may not be any last words. 

Thou shalt never say: “I know just how you feel.”

You do not know how anyone feels even if you have been in similar circumstances. You do not know. It is emotionally intelligent not to assume or judge any feelings correct or incorrect.  

Nor do you know exactly when a person will die or how. Some people prefer to die alone. It’s okay to ask. Many people stay alive to take care of their loved one whom they assume will be devastated by their death.  They will. And they will be all right. 

Many people die just as they have lived. It’s a matter of personality, the way you are. My mother put on a fresh coat of lipstick, turned on her side, and said to her granddaughter: “This won’t take long, darling.” 

*  *  *  *

I have laughed at the parable story Jesus tells about the Sower who sows seeds wherever he goes. The seed falls on many kinds of soil. Some of it bears fruit, some not so much. The Sower keep on sowing anyway. So resist getting all mixed up in discerning what kind of soil you might be. 

In Israel, most of the soil is rough and unfriendly anyway. The anawin (peasants and poor people) had the worst soil to plant, the least likely soil to bear fruit to sustain and provide food for the hungry. This parable has an economic meaning. It is written to the poor, encouraging them that God, the Sower, is still sowing no matter what. It is also an admonishment to the wealthy to be humble, share and not hoard. 

How can you be a sower? 

                               *  *  *  *

You never know as much as you are sure you know. Be humble. Listen. Hope against hope. Assume nothing. Dying remains a mystery and readiness unknowable.

Honest to God, I once sat with a man who was dying. The family had said their farewells. It appeared as if this man was waiting for something  more. I asked. He said: “I had to wait for the priest to come anoint me. I can’t die until he gets here.” I nodded and I will not tell you my thoughts. We waited. Finally, the priest came running down the hall. I could hear his steps, his panting breath. He rushed into the room, fished a stole from his pocket along with a small vial full of anointing oil.  The patient was tightly blanketed lying in his bed. The priest fumbled to loosen the blanket at the bottom of the bed, reached under and, honest to God, anointed the man’s big toe with and the proper Latin words.  The man sighed with contentment and died.   Honest to God.

How little we know—how very very little.   

2023.07.09 Is Freedom Wisdom or Folly? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

I do not think one can be truly free unless one knows how also to be wise, how to practice  the loving-kindness most religions advocate, and most religions fail to practice. 

I know that sounds harsh. May I suggest a good book called Religion Gone Astray. What we Found at the Heart of Interfaith by Pastor Don Mackenzie, Rabbi Ted Falcon, and Imam Jamal Rahman. It was published in 2011, dedicated to  the memory of M.K. Gandhi who continues to illuminate the path to peace in a pluralistic world. 

These three men have honest and eye-opening conversations. They admit to great discomfort with patriarchal stances in all religions and their scriptures. Yet they together conclude  “As we awaken to our spiritual identity, it is simply obvious that equality is already real, even if not yet reflected in the world we share.”  Their egos flush with success as many people in interfaith gatherings nod agreement hearing their message that spiritual equality is already extant. The sweet odor of success soured at one such gathering of about 250 people, when a young woman raised her hand, spoke into the mike that was passed to her, and said “in a tone that carried as much as her words did,  Why isn’t one of you a woman? The energy in the room shifted. Our euphoria evaporated.”  (p. 107)

Of course interfaith spirituality is wise. Is it foolish to share it?  No. It might be foolish, however, to assume that the world of Religions today is ready to hear such a unitive message. On the one hand, the escalation of our present Armageddon-like world culture looks like a sign of disaster. On the other hand, it might  be a sign that the more we actually do begin to listen, to help each other on the streets and in our homes and with our international politicking, then the more people’s hearts are moved. It might, in fact, be unwise today to assume divisiveness is a sign of the end, when Wisdom points elsewhere—new jobs, new love for our Democracy, new respect for the iconic Lady Liberty Herself with her torch still ablaze and calling—not only y’all come, but y’all let your hearts be transformed.

  

According to Dean Andrew McGowan of Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, true Wisdom is not an “it,” a body of knowledge to be acquired and manipulated, but a person, whose nature is revealed by his practice, and by extension our relationship with that person and our following him—or her.  Many will know that this divine Wisdom with which Jesus identifies himself was not only personified (see Proverbs 9), but that in both Hebrew and Greek was feminine in gender. This becomes the basis, both in scripture and tradition, of imagining Her as a generous host whose hospitality is offered to those who seek Her.  

In the last parish where Dick and I concelebrated Holy Eucharist we used the ancient Hebrew words of blessing and occasionally held up the consecrated elements of bread and wine to invite people to come and share, using these expansive welcoming words in the Wisdom tradition of the Bible: 

Come, eat of my bread,

and drink of the wine I have mixed

(Proverbs 9: 5)

Was that wise? I don’t know, but I know that as soon as the next priest came it was eliminated. Did people miss it? I don’t know, but I do know that some remember, and some hearts were moved. Speed isn’t always wise. It is always sure.  

 

2023.07.02 NO! Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

A child, about six or seven, once asked me after church, after hearing the grim story in Genesis 22 of Abraham preparing to make a burnt offering of his only beloved son, Isaac.

“Did this really happen?”

“No,” I answered.

“Then why do we read it in church?”

“The biblical readings are meant to teach us something about God.”

“I learned that God was a really bad Dad.”

“Why?”

“Didn’t you listen? God told Abraham to burn up his own son.

“But Abraham didn’t do it, did he?”

“No, but it was close.”

“Why didn’t Abraham do it?” I asked this delightfully inquisitive child. 

I waited and wondered what the child would say next. There was a long, long pause. I stayed quiet. The child was waiting for me to solve this problem for him. I waited. Maybe five minutes passed before the child said anything. He looked up at me before he finally said.

“Because God finally said NO Way?

I nodded.

“Still it took God waaaay too long, right?”

“Yes,” I said.  

*  *  *  *

Back in the late 1980s, it took me a long time to say NO to significant pressure I thought was from God but which really was from the diocesan bishop’s expectation that, after ordination, I would go into full-time parish ministry to help with the shortage of parish clergy. I tried. The parishes I served were authentically appreciative of my ministry with them. I wasn’t bad at the task of managing a small business on volunteer giving the Church calls “stewardship.” I felt as if every sermon secretly functioned like a report card. Whether that was true or not, I knew parish ministry was not for me. I only wanted to be a priest of Word and Sacrament, not a rector. So I said NO. When I left that parish and parish ministry, they presented me with a white stole, hand sewn and delicately embroidered with dates and gratitude for my ministry with them and blessings for my future. 

*  *  *  *

When you go against traditional expectations as Charles Darwin did, you take huge risks. Darwin published his 1859 book On The Origin of Species, saying NO to scientific and religious declarations about his sanity, and NO to the theology of his day that insisted on the omnipotence of God, Creation being the evidence of the same. Darwin went as an unpaid companion on an expedition with Robert Fitzroy, Captain of the HMS Beagle. On the journey to South America, they landed in Rio and stayed till June, 1832. Darwin became ill in sweltering 103-degree temperatures in the tropics but was cured by “cinnamon and port wine.”  This remedy still works I’m told!

On the trip he sampled all kinds of animals, even iguanas, armadillos and agouti rodents, proving that his species could survive and evolve, alongside all kinds of others evolving by natural selection. Darwin’s theory has been misconstrued to mean the survival of the fittest, but he wrote about naturally evolved ingenuity, the development of new traits, and the willingness of the human species to ask questions, take chances, observe closely, and realize that the ONE God created and blessed ALL of it to co-exist. (I confess to swatting mosquitoes, trapping mice, and squishing some wee crawling bugs. I notice they all seem to increase and multiply anyway.)   

When Darwin came across a parasitic wasp laying eggs inside a live caterpillar, to be eaten alive by the grubs after hatching, the event alone challenged his belief in God. He wrote:  “There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the [parasitic wasp] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars.” 

So Darwin said NO to this omnipotent Divinity and YES to the God who chooses Love over Control. Darwin risked prison time when his theory was published. Was it denying God as THE Creator? NO, it advocated the growth of ALL creation. I, centuries later as a 21st century woman, believe that the one God delights in the evolving of all Life including its risks and uncertainties.  

Apparently, so did the Buddha. Hermann Hesse, born in Calw, Germany, in 1877, took a trip in 1911 to India and started studying Eastern religions, and ancient Hindu and Chinese cultures. His travels inspired his novel Siddhartha, about the early life of Gautama Buddha. It became popular among the counterculture movement of the 1960s, more than 40 years after it was published. He wrote: "The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.”  I said YES.

As a parent I learned this lesson early. If I prevented every fall a toddler took while she or he was learning to walk, he or she would never have learned to walk or how to fall and then get up. I also learned how hard it is to love and let go, hard to say NO. I made many mistakes trying to balance the two. I often erred on the side of permissiveness. In time, I said NO to over-mothering, did plenty of under-mothering and exercised my own God-given freedom to evolve.

*  *  *  *

P.S. No God in His Almighty right mind OR heart, would ever authorize the kind of stupid parenting Abraham tried to exercise by sacrificing Isaac. 

God said NO! 

 

How Do I Fight? Sounding and Grounding, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 6/25/23

Jesus insisted (Matthew 10:34ff.) that this idyllic Kingdom he preached would not be, as some traditional pastoral pundits suggest, all peace and love. There would be violent fighting. Fight is a word, btw, that I detest, because it’s combative, inimical, dangerous, often weaponized. I aspired to “kingdom” membership, so I found a way to fight for it without fighting.

*  *  *  *

Over my lifetime I’ve learned to fight for myself more than against others. I often fail. Still, I know that I can’t do this well, or with accuracy, without, yes, my anger—my fuel, my energy supply. 

I’ve come to call my “fighting” process sounding and grounding. 

Sounding means clarifying my deepest desires, values, yearnings, fears by talking openly to trusted friends, family, professionals. 

Grounding means making sure my emotions—my energy suppliers—are firmly planted in the soil of my own flesh, not flying all over the place. 

I learned how to fight back in the 70s when I didn’t get what I wanted, which was to be ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church. I just kept knocking on doors as if begging for alms of understanding. Some women helped. Some men helped. Family helped. Acting out helped. Love and sex helped. Prayer helped. Good trainings, therapy, and chaplaincy jobs helped. Most of all, my Crockpot helped, because it cooked very slowly and taught me to simmer. 

Simmering, ordination, new love, were not quite enough. I needed to explode. 

I told my therapist I felt restless inside.

She asked if my energy were an animal.

I assessed her as crazy.

She turned away and went to her desk.

Stunned, I pulled out my checkbook to pay for the session.

As I wrote, the bull, unbidden, burst into the scene.

I snorted.

I roared.

I bellowed.

I pawed the rug with my foot.

ROAR.

RAGE.

CALM.

PEACE.

My rage receded, as most storms do. I felt fully grounded inside myself, and fully sounded out by this therapist who had returned to her seat and sat in front of me with a smile—becalmed.

For the very first time—the very first time in a couple of years—I noticed that this woman, this therapist named Carol, was, yes, beautiful, radiantly so.  

On The Surface Only—Words and Meanings Together. Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 6/18/23

Many contemporary Christians say that adequate, informative, clear language is a “surface issue only”, or they say, “It’s just window dressing.” I mean does Jesus really mean it when he is remembered as telling his followers to eat with “tax collectors and sinners”—the notably unworthy/socially unacceptable dinner companions— of his day? It would be like inviting all the street people to your house for dinner. Heaven forfend!  

Such biblical wisdom is not meant to be taken literally of course. Or is it? And what parts? It’s only a story, we say. Stories depend on language that says what it means.    

Elie Weisel (1928-2016). Romanian-born American, Nobel prize winner, Holocaust survivor, activist, and Professor, told students in Boston that what kept him going after the Holocaust was “learning” and his lifelong calling as a “teacher.”  Stories, he said, are essential vehicles, and stories of course require language. “Our task now,” Weisel told students is “to liberate language, to name things as they really are. Don’t say income equality when you can say hungry child. Don’t say racial tension when you can describe rocks thrown at a family. We cannot liberate reality if we distort language”  (Weisel quotes taken from Witness. Lessons from Elie Weisel’s Classroom by Ariel Burger.)     

*  *  *  *

A medical visit—literally

-I spot a small bump on my forehead.

-I wait to see if it disappears on its own.

-It doesn’t. 

-I phone for an appointment with dermatology, the gospel of skin.

-The assigned time is two weeks hence.

-Two day before the appointment I get a text reminding me to confirm.

-I click C for “confirm”.

-I receive a snapback text re-reminding me of my appointment .

-I call to confirm.

-I receive the same snap-back text.

-I REcall.

-I press each of the various options offered.

-I receive the same snap-back text. 

-I long for a flesh and blood person with a literal voice.

-I decide to go anyway. 

-I tell the receptionists that they need to hire a business manager.

-Receptionist #1 cocks her head, puzzled. 

-I repeat, feeling like a robot. Receptionist #2 nods in agreement. 

-I pay my co-pay.

-I wait 15 minutes.

-I’m ushered into the inner sanctum by a medical technician. “How are you?”

-I say “Fine.” I remember the spot on my forehead. She writes that down. 

-I tell her about my complaint. She looks incredulous and leaves.

-I wait. 20 minutes, listening to sounds of whooshing ocean waters.

-I am not soothed, imagining possible drowning—mine.

-The “real”clinician enters, with a cheshire grin. 

-I tell her about my bump. She mentions the sun, smiles again, and exits.

-I wait.

-She returns with a tool resembling a pneumatic drill.

-This may sting she tells me. I nod. It does sting. Use vaseline.

-An hour has passed.

-The doctor closes with blessed assurance: “Don’t worry we NEVER cancel appointments.”

I laughed all the way home: They NEVER cancel appointments? If so, then why all these reminder texts, and phone messages advertising that there will be an additional charge of $50 for a missed appointment. Which part do I take literally?  Or is it only the gist that matters? 

It’s both. 

Accurate language tells the whole truth. Someone recently said to me “I’m not hearing impaired, I’m deaf!” I’ve learned from urban ministries to the homeless, not to use the word “homeless” but “unhoused.” You can hear—and FEEL— the difference. 

Both. 

Take it all literally. Give to all the street beggars without judgment. You don’t know why they are out there. And if you ask they would decline a dinner invitation, unless it was on their terms, money enough for them to buy their meal. Once I did give $20 to a city beggar when I could have dropped loose change into his cup or walked on by without looking—an action I seriously debated. I could have. I took him literally that he needed some money—for his good reasons. His tearful gratitude and my relief told me so.

Both.  

Racing for Life/Slowing for Life, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 6/11/23

Are we racing to catch up with God? Or, is God racing to catch up with us? Either way, we are usually moving too fast, possibly fueled by anxiety, a very efficient fuel when we were young. And now?  

Small boys and big boys love their cars. Speed, control, daring, and too often crippling and death. 

Jesus is remembered as falling asleep in the midst of a storm when the winds kicked up and the boat wobbled, threatening to capsize? How come he says fear not at such moments?  Does he overdo that message of assurance, advice to trust in God when beset with life’s many “waves”?  How can he imagine that forgiveness of our sins matters when all we need is a good car, cautious teenagers, and a paid mortgage? 

It’s antimony—a truth that defies logic. 

Just remember the little paper plate cars you loved that empowered you. Yes, this energy is still in you, around you, above you, and beneath you, as close to you as your own heartbeat. Listen up. Keep on keeping on. Inside, be the boy with his toy cars. Keep driving, beloved.

Boys and Their Cars

Why do boys love cars?

ejective—boom

projective—zoom

propulsive—vroom

I’ve wondered about this a lot.

Could be anatomy

or e’en the academy

But no.

It’s love on wheels.

It’s speed on speed

It’s vrooming

Zooming

Vroom vroom with paper plates

sweeping clean the kitchen floor

Zing zinging with Matchbox minis

Panicked cries when one goes missing

Is there more?

Ah yes,

it’s freedom beckoning

warring duty’s reckoning

There is more, my love,

Just round the bend.

No hurry

Keep driving