2023.12.10 Advent II. What's The Hurry? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 12/2/23

When you read the Gospel of Mark, it becomes obvious that this evangelist, the first one to advertise, in the town square so to speak, that he’d met the Messiah, the one God promised, the one we’ve all been waiting for RIGHT HERE NOW. Where? 

There is no doubt that this Jesus was, and still is, a presence to follow. It’s much much more than everyone becoming a Christian. NO, this urgency goes to the root of longing in all creation to begin anew to LISTEN with care to all voices. YES, ALL. It’s urgent! WE should listen and follow NOW. The Hebrew translation of the word radaph the word Jesus used in John’s gospel when he urged his disciples to FOLLOW. It doesn’t mean meander or dawdle, or, for God’s sake fight!! 

 

Listen to this Baptist guy. He seems to have caught the urgency. 

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So as I look out my window daily I watch the language of nature and take special note of squirrels. As a child I loved to watch the squirrels dash about in Central Park where I too played, skipped, and hid. 

  

Squirrels are the best icon of, yes, Holy Spirit Divinity!  They dash, stop dead in their tracks, hop, prance, chase, curl up in balls, nest quietly, chatter and crunch nuts faster than thought possible. Squirrels are mostly gray but they also come in albino white and black.They are urban and beyond. Squirrels are omnipresent, ubiquitous, speedy, adaptable, camouflage-able, fearless, vulnerable, mood-versatile, uncontainable, and fascinatingly mysterious. They are vociferous, insistent, never give up, and utterly true to their mission to BE.  

2023.12.04 Advent Apocalypse, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Someone’s coming for more than dinner. But we don’t know exactly who or when or even why. Did we invite this guest? Not really. Did this guest RSVP as required? No. 

Well, I tell you it’s a secret, but one I promise will be very very good for you and for all the world to remember who we are together. All you have to do is stay alert and pay attention. If it’s too hard then set up watch people and rotate their shifts. 

I remember when we were small children my little sister and I woke up early, before the sun. We knew the instructions. We had to wait—and wait. And wait some more. We had been told that only Santa knew, but I already suspected that “Santa” was really our parents. I also knew that I was not supposed to tell my little sister who was still a believer, even though I already knew that God was more real than Santa. I devised a plan whereby my little sister, being small and agile, would sneak down to peak. She was too scared so I tickled her into submission. We both started to giggle and shush, giggle then hush. The sun at last rose up to light the day, and our mother brought us our stockings full of oranges, and lady apples and little toys. Thus we rejoiced at our bounty, our small but trustworthy apocalypse.  

 

2023.11.26 Tears of Grace, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

This is the day on the church calendar when we are invited to remember Christ the King ( the one heart able to be benevolent no matter what or who). 

I can’t say too much for royalty, except I do love movie heroes like King Kong, simply for their bold chutzpah. Imagine hanging onto a screaming damsel, blonde of course, and thumping your chest with vainglory when you’re a kidnapper of malicious intent! Well, yes, I can imagine that kind of triumphalism. But I’m a brunette and always have been, so not for me. 

*  *  *  *

Christ the King Sunday was, in 1986,  the Sunday of my second marriage, this one to the parish rector at my home parish in the midst of a Sunday Eucharist. Our guest list was easy: the congregation and invited family. An unimaginably perfect setting with one objection I’d already voiced, my aversion to the KING image for Jesus: “Kings don’t work for me!”  “Calm down,”said Dick. It’s Matthew’s agenda. 

I could live with the King idea but still can’t imagine why I unexpectedly wept at my own wedding, right in the middle of saying my vows. My poor, as yet unvowed, fiancé looked stunned, rigid and trembling, so frightened that his mustache quivered. He thought, “This crazy woman!” 

My therapist was my witness. She stood behind me and rubbed my back. Dick’s witness stood behind him and put his hand on Dick’s shoulder. 

As for me, I still have no idea exactly why I lost control at this moment, except that I was vulnerable to floods of tears without provocation. My lines were simple and my heart was secure. Yes, we’d been through tough times, divorces. He was the priest of a small parish in a small town. I was awaiting the bishop’s approval of my own ordination.

All I can say is this: My idea of marriage had been shot through with holes; failure was still in my catalogue of fears. I was absolutely awed that we were vowing all this once again, and equally sure that no one would ever be my “king.” I guess the truth was that we loved each other, admired each other, and dared to try the impossible together, and that we were gathered around the mysterious sacramental grace of the Eucharist. 

I wept—not from feelings of failure or regret, but from the sorrow that accompanies a truth too deep to define: The human heart is a spacious vessel, capable of holding many loves and many pains, an infinity of feelings. The divine heart is even more spacious.  

2023.11.19 An Annoyingly True Balance, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The gospel story in Matthew 25 about what to do with gifts of money is quite clear if harsh.  You invest it and it multiplies. You hoard it or hide it away, it stays safe yet benefits no one, not even yourself.  Whichever way you chose there are consequences. That’s the idea! AND, if you invest and thereby multiply your wealth the “Master” is very pleased with you.  

The idea behind this harsh little story is obvious and not obvious. If you think of real money you’ll be frustrated and seek everything from stock market advice, much of it flawed. If you think of “money” as loving kindness you will fare much better.  

In what do you invest your heart?  Because where your heart is there also will be your money or other gifts. Simply so.

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Today is my youngest son’s birthday #53. I am grateful for his life, his one precious life he almost lost to ulcerative colitis when he was a young man. He had invested his time and energy in making a living, being successful, doing a job well. He was young and did not heed his bodily symptoms carefully enough. He suffered a brush with death. He survived this brush with death thanks to excellent surgical care, the love of his family, countless prayers, and a brush with what I can only call The Light of Christ, offering him a choice—not a sentence, a choice.  He chose to live.  

When you heed the Great Commandment, basically true in all religions, to love your neighbor as yourself do not forget yourself! 

 

2023.11.12 Light Stretches, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post, 11/12/23

BEHOLD the American Purple Gallinule of Florida Everglades Park! This crazy lady stretches and reaches everywhere at once. Can we?  

I know that the parable of the “bridesmaids” and their “lamps” is to be an analogy for the arrival of the Heavenly Kingdom to earth, ushered in by the light carried by these girls. Some girls were ready and some were in disarray. It’s a lesson in preparedness. 

First, in the ancient world there were NO oil lamps. Also there were NO “bridesmaids,” and NO messianic “bridegroom” ever arrived to “save” the cosmos in chaos, governed by WARS, VIOLENCE, CONQUEST, AND SUBMISSION. 

Why do we pray, “Thy Kingdom Come”—over and over?  Our kingdom has not come! Neither has God’s—by the looks of it. 

The left-behind girls in this biblical parable were not prepared. There is some advice about readiness and preparedness in this story, yet who is ever “ready” for Divinity? And the God of all faith never leaves anyone behind! Not even a Gallinule!  

So let’s rethink our ways a bit. Most of us want a peaceful world. We all in our hearts want Love—of God, self and neighbor—to work, to enliven and enlighten. Everyone has slightly different recipes, rules, but how REALLY do we make a kingdom a “kindom”?

One way is for each of us to stop (all the running around), sit down (rest) and shut up (create silence).This is one way to acknowledge there is a larger, deeper Presence available to us all and in our midst.

Now begin to engage in conversations, especially with those with whom you disagree politically or religiously. Listen to yourself and to these others closely. Do this more and more. I know a story, told by a Christian thinker, Brian McLaren, of four young women friends with radically different religions, points of view, ethnicities, class, and political persuasions. They were, like the girls in the parable, each trying to figure out the best way to remain friends and bear light and peace into their war-torn world. They had to STRETCH—each and all.

"These four women did something too rare: they sat with their complexity, shared, and heard honest and vulnerable feelings. They listened across difference to express their own humanity and affirm the humanity of one another." 

Light stretches, right? 

2023.11.05 How Bold Is Bold? Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Children often color outside the lines on impulse, when they feel inspired. Often the “fancy” spiritual word for such impulses is “call.” We feel “called” to do something different, out of line—bold.  Is it disobedience? Maybe. Is it insanity? Some say so. 

Many teachers correct such impulses. Why? Because I suppose they think that there is a right way, a neat and orderly way, a best way, or simply the way they want kids to do it, or the way they themselves have been told to do it.   

I suppose this is why many religious authorities and teachers of Jesus’s day thought he was way out of line, opening access to Divinity up to everyone under the sun and then some. And on top of that Jesus called for obedience to this way. Obedience is not just mechanical saluting like wind-up soldiers. The word itself comes from Latin ob (in the direction of)  + audire (hear). It is heart-listening. 

Do you know someone who is deaf? If so, you often can watch them speak rapidly with their fingers in sign language. When there is someone up front signing for (speaking to)  deaf people, I watch them with my eyes as I listen with my ears. I discover I need both. 

I don’t know sign language, but I do know that the signer often will place her hand on her chest, then up towards the sky, then back to her lips, then in a circular motion. The gestures tell me that my heart is connected to heaven above, then to my own lips, straight back down, and all around to everyone else, including me. The Great Commandment! 

I cannot tell you why I weep, simply that I do.  

2023.10.29 It's In The Mail! Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

The whole idea of there being a divine kingdom, or of God being a King, has always made me restless, full of discomfort about throning divinity in any one place anywhere. 

It feels distancing to me, the same way Santa Claus felt to me as a young child. Why did they seat him on a big chair, like a throne, in the middle of a crowded department store, playing Christmas music at high speed in the background, and telling us little kids we should sit on Santa’s lap and we might, or would, get all the stuff we wanted for Christmas? I hung back.

Even now, I call the “kingdom” of God the reign of God. This keeps God’s godliness  mobile and accessible. In fact, the more I allow my mind to detach itself from the omni-ness of divinity, the more potent, powerful, present, wise, and truly loving this one God becomes.  

All it takes to know this expansiveness of divine love is a true story, full of heartache, heartbreak, and hope—everywhere for everyone, and told over and over.  

*  *  *  * 

A four-year old girl wrote a letter to God about her beloved dog Abby who had just died.  She wanted to make sure God would recognize Abby when she got to heaven. With help from her mother, Meredith wrote the letter and inserted a picture of herself with Abby.

Dear God, Will you take care of my dog? She died yesterday and is with you in heaven. I miss her very much. I’m happy that you let me have her as my dog even though she got sick. I hope you play with her. She likes to swim and play with balls. I am sending a picture of her so when you see her you will know that she is my dog. Love, Meredith. 

Before long a package arrived for Meredith. It was wrapped in gold paper. The original letter that had been opened was taped to the package which contained a book by Mr. Rogers called When a Pet Dies. There was also the photo and another letter. 

Dear Meredith, Abby arrived safely in heaven. Having the picture was a big help and I recognized her right away. Abby isn’t sick any more. Her spirit is here with me just like it stays in your heart. Abby loved being your dog. Since we don’t need our bodies in heaven, I don’t have any pockets to keep your picture in so I’m sending it back to you in this little book for you to keep and have something to remember Abby by. 

Thank you for the beautiful letter and thank your mother for helping you write it and sending it to me. What a wonderful mother you have. I picked her especially for you. I send blessings every day and remember that I love you very much. 

By the way, I’m easy to find. I am wherever there is love.    Love, God