God Is Not a Boy's Name: Becoming Woman Becoming Priest

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. Lyns memoir is a contemporary Journal of a Soul . . . only more so. It is the journey of a woman fully alive in body mind and spirit a journey into self history vocation community adulthood. Fiercely honest even shocking at times--at least to this monk--and often howlingly funny it speaks of faith betrayal forgiveness resistance and homecoming. Daughter wife mother feminist counselor priest--Lyns is a life offered in all its wonderful messiness and raw integrity touched over and over by grace. It is a mirror of our own messy journey into Christ. --Robert Sevensky OHC Superior Order of the Holy Cross Lyn Brakeman Episcopal priest and spiritual counselor invites us to join her on the path of reflection and remembrance as she tells us with devastating honesty and self-deprecating humor about her journey to the Episcopal priesthood and her parallel journey into the radical inclusiveness of the Gospel. She does this with grace and blessing--not pointing a finger but welcoming all. --Chilton Knudsen Eighth Bishop of Maine If Anne Lamott and Elizabeth Johnson had produced a literary love child it would be this feisty often funny and deeply wise autobiographical narrative of a spiritual quest from an alcoholic yet loving home through a marriage with four children divorce and the arduous journey to have her vocation to priesthood confirmed by the Episcopal Church. Brakeman combines Lamotts wit and grit with Johnsons theologically sophisticated imagination providing a gift for heart and mind. --H. John McDargh Associate Professor Boston College Department of Theology The Rev. Lyn G. Brakeman is an Episcopal priest pastoral counselor and spiritual director retired. She is the author of Spiritual Lemons: Biblical Women Irreverent Laughter and Righteous Rage (1997) and a blog.