Lyn Brakeman was among the first women to enter the ordination process in the Episcopal Church just after the General Convention voted in 1976 that women could be priests. The bishop of her diocese had voted against ordaining women priests and hospitality towards female aspirants was guarded at best. So why would a forty-year-old institutional naif, suburban housewife, and mother of four enter such unfriendly territory to seek priestly ordination at a time when her personal life was in chaos? Things would have been easier had she been a man and had she not read Betty Friedan, not been headed for divorce, and not engaged in sins beginning with "a." How did she manage to stay this course? Brakeman offers no easy answers but tackles difficult issues--addiction, death and grief, divorce, the nature of priesthood, church politics, Christian feminism, and Jesus the Christ--with candor. Her story is held together by her spiritual connection to the voice of God from within and her growing conviction that the nature of divinity is gender-free; hence, theological language in sanctuary and classroom must reflect this truth in a balanced way.
Putting body and bones to the biblical stories, Brakeman explores the passions of biblical women, such as Sarah's laughter, Jephthah's daughter's anger, and Martha's envy. Each of the eight chapters probes what these women might have felt and encourages women to name and claim their feelings. Includes suggestions for personal prayer and meditation, and ideas for group exercises.
Connecting. . .disconnecting. . .reconnecting So goes the ageless pattern of relationships. We love/hate, hurt/heal, fight/forgive and we turn to TV talk shows, therapists, friends, and books to help us understand our relationship problems. Lyn Brakeman, a therapist herself, looks to the stories of ancient Scripture for fundamental clues to healing our relationships. Using the Jewish interpretive storytelling technique known as midrash, she brings to life a God who is “in the middle of things.” Her unusual take on the God Between Us, the Great connector who reconnects us with the love and the faith to go on, takes lively form in six relationship studies—of mother/daughter, marriage partners, man/woman, mother/son, two men, and a group of women. Reflection questions at the end of each chapter add a rich dimension for individual or group use.
Connecting ... disconnecting ... reconnecting. A very familiar pattern in our mobile lifestyle today and in our relationships.By going back to the age-old biblical stories -- in which people notoriously had their share of disconnections with each other and with God -- Rev. Lyn Brakeman proposes we can discover healing patterns for our own relationships.Starting from the rather extraordinary perspective that God is not the central character of the Bible, nor humanity, but the relationships between them, Brakeman draws us to take a deeper look at the universal cycle of breaking up and getting back together again.Using the Jewish tradition of interpretive storytelling known as midrash, Brakeman explores the relationships of some well-known -- and others not so familiar -- biblical players: Adam and Eve (the marriage relationship), Esther and the eunuch (a man/woman platonic relationship), Mary and Jesus (mother/son relationship), Herodias and Salome (mother/daughter relationship), David and Jonathan (men's relationships), and the women at the tomb (women's relationships).In our current culture of deepening social isolation, Brakeman's fresh insight into the patterns of these biblical interpersonal relationships offers fundamental keys to the healing of our own relationships. The God Between Us speaks to all religious traditions, and the addition of meditations, prayers, and questions for self-reflection at the end of each chapter add a rich dimension for individual or group use. Eminently useable for seminary and women's study programs.
Putting body and bones to the biblical stories, Brakeman explores the passions of biblical women, such as Sarah's laughter, Jephthah's daughter's anger, and Martha's envy. Each of the eight chapters probes what these women might have felt and encourages women to name and claim their feelings. Includes suggestions for personal prayer and meditation, and ideas for group exercises.
Lyn Brakeman was among the first women to enter the ordination process in the Episcopal Church just after the General Convention voted in 1976 that women could be priests. The bishop of her diocese had voted against ordaining women priests and hospitality towards female aspirants was guarded at best. So why would a forty-year-old institutional naif, suburban housewife, and mother of four enter such unfriendly territory to seek priestly ordination at a time when her personal life was in chaos? Things would have been easier had she been a man and had she not read Betty Friedan, not been headed for divorce, and not engaged in sins beginning with "a." How did she manage to stay this course? Brakeman offers no easy answers but tackles difficult issues--addiction, death and grief, divorce, the nature of priesthood, church politics, Christian feminism, and Jesus the Christ--with candor. Her story is held together by her spiritual connection to the voice of God from within and her growing conviction that the nature of divinity is gender-free; hence, theological language in sanctuary and classroom must reflect this truth in a balanced way.
Connecting. . .disconnecting. . .reconnecting So goes the ageless pattern of relationships. We love/hate, hurt/heal, fight/forgive and we turn to TV talk shows, therapists, friends, and books to help us understand our relationship problems. Lyn Brakeman, a therapist herself, looks to the stories of ancient Scripture for fundamental clues to healing our relationships. Using the Jewish interpretive storytelling technique known as midrash, she brings to life a God who is “in the middle of things.” Her unusual take on the God Between Us, the Great connector who reconnects us with the love and the faith to go on, takes lively form in six relationship studies—of mother/daughter, marriage partners, man/woman, mother/son, two men, and a group of women. Reflection questions at the end of each chapter add a rich dimension for individual or group use.
Little Book of Memories includes the precious child-centered, family-oriented stories of My Neighbor's Tree, Night Train, Roses for Sarah, and Broken Kitty. A pudgy, freckle-faced ten-year-old girl is afraid she will always be short in the short story My Neighbor's Tree. But her life is suddenly and forever changed through an encounter with a lovable, eccentric elderly next-door neighbor, whose odd obsession with planting and nurturing a dead twig of a tree becomes too intriguing to ignore. Through this unsuspecting encounter, she learns the true meanings of faith; and that quite often, if we don't rush the outcome, keeping faith holds some lovely surprises.
Wall Street Journal’s Five Best Books About Cults For five days in December 1908 the body of Cyrus Teed lay in a bathtub at a beach house just south of Fort Myers, Florida. His followers, the Koreshans, waited for signs that he was coming back to life. They watched hieroglyphics emerge on his skin and observed what looked like the formation of a third arm. They saw his belly fall and rise with breath, even though his swollen tongue sealed his mouth. As his corpse turned black, they declared that their leader was transforming into the Egyptian god Horus. Teed was a charismatic and controversial guru who at the age of 30 had been "illuminated" by an angel in his electro-alchemical laboratory. At the turn of the twentieth century, surrounded by the marvels of the Second Industrial Revolution, he proclaimed himself a prophet and led 200 people out of Chicago and into a new age. Or so he promised. The Koreshans settled in a mosquito-infested scrubland and set to building a communal utopia inside what they believed was a hollow earth--with humans living on the inside crust and the entire universe contained within. According to Teed’s socialist and millennialist teachings, if his people practiced celibacy and focused their love on him, he would return after death and they would all become immortal. Was Teed a visionary or villain, savior or two-bit charlatan? Why did his promises and his theory of "cellular cosmogony" persuade so many? In The Allure of Immortality, Lyn Millner weaves the many bizarre strands of Teed's life and those of his followers into a riveting story of angels, conmen, angry husbands, yellow journalism, and ultimately, hope.
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