spring’s torrential rains
by Elouise
spring’s torrential rains
reshape the inner landscape
of my old-soul heart
Where am I?
What’s going on?
I feel lost on my own home ground
or is it found?
I keep asking myself
Why aren’t you happy? Relieved?
Eager to press on?
Aren’t you getting closer to what you long for–
Laying down your heavy load of
self-blame, shame, and
deeply rooted need to protect your father?
Yes, but I’m tired.
Torn between hope and anguish.
The old landmarks aren’t there.
Were they ever there?
So much lost to the floods.
Maybe I should just
Stop Now.
Fighting to stay awake, half-way alert yet
Clear about the work ahead,
Longing to lay it down
Rousing myself once more
I can taste, touch and smell the prize.
Almost.
Time for a long walk outdoors in this world–
the world God loves so much.
Haiku written 20 May 2014
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 20 May 2014
Telling the Truth 
I hear your weariness & appreciate the long walk in the outdoors – the beauty of God’s creation, especially at this time of year, can be wonderfully restorative. Remember that the world God loves so much includes the Elouise he loves even more.
I appreciate very much James Wilhoit’s Spiritual Formation as if the Church Mattered: Growing in Christ through Community – a well-grounded and thoroughly gracious book. In light of the long marathon of life, he writes of “a willingness to see sin as a grievous problem that we cannot simply will away and to recognize that the tragic is present in life and that this side of heaven we will always feel ill at ease”. He calls this orientation “optimistic brokenness” – optimistic because there remains hope over the power of grace to set things right (though not in whole this side of glory). His section “Longing for Home” opens after a number of wonderful quotes with “We are born homesick…” Too many good thoughts to include here, so I commend the section to you when you have time. Many chapters later, he closes the book with several pages on forgiveness, a topic I continue to ponder out of one of your earlier posts.
When you describe the deeply rooted need to protect your father, I wonder if it also means trying to “protect” God. Forgiving your father, in some ways, means forgiving God – or at least posing the question, “Where were you when my father – your representative in our family – beat me?”
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Meg, Thanks so much for this response. There’s much to ponder in your comment. Yes, I believe we’ll always be ‘off balance’ in this world–getting there but not quite there. I also look back on my life, see how far I’ve come and scarcely recognize myself! Somehow one side feeds and nurtures the other. And yes, even the weariness–that shoves, pushes, pulls me outside myself into something larger than I am. Thanks again.
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What I have appreciated so much in your explorations is an absence of bitterness. Perplexity, anger, frustration perhaps, but not a bitter spirit. You are much to be commended for that!
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Thanks, Meg. Much appreciated! Elouise
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