It happened overnight
Small bits of snowy white
Floating from heaven
Kissed this earth to sleep
Without wild winds
Or drifting piles
It spread its glowing comforter
Then tiptoed off to bed
***
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 6 Jan 2017
Image found at wallpapersafari.com
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Float
Last summer D and I, together with our daughter and son-in-law, enjoyed a two-week cruise down the Rhine, Main and Danube rivers. From Amsterdam to Budapest. We came back loaded with photos. I’ll be sharing some from time to time, partly as a cheery way to get through the winter! But also because it was a great adventure. Today’s photos focus on bikes.
We arrived in Amsterdam on an overnight flight from Philadelphia and were taken by bus to the cruise ship.
After a light breakfast/lunch buffet, a friendly, energetic guide kept us awake by trotting us around the city. Watch out for the bikes (and for cars and buses, of course)! No crossing the street unless the light is green.
Bikes flew by (too fast to photo) and were parked everywhere. Note locks and chains.
Our guide explained that old bikes are preferable to new bikes. They’re not as likely to be ripped off piece by piece, and are easier to replace. In addition, owners don’t always remember where they left their bikes. Hence a variety of sometimes eccentric add-ons or colors to give your wheels higher visibility.
As you can see, bikers can park virtually anywhere. However, the most impressive place to park is at the huge bike garage near the transportation hub of the city. If you can just remember where you left your bike.
To be continued from time to time. Stay tuned!
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 4 January 2017
Photo credit: DAFraser, July 2016 in Amsterdam
Crossings….
The word resonates with finality
Hints of danger and uncertainty
Sorrow and desperation
Weary clothes and
Hungry faces
One foot in front of the other
Backs burdened with life’s necessities
Bodies and bellies heavy
With tomorrow’s children
Silently pleading
They say our world is disappearing
Melting and boiling away before our eyes
Erupting into a chaotic crisis
Unknown in modern times
Are we ready for this crossing?
I can’t help wondering what lies ahead for this world and for us as citizens of this world. Our insular, isolated, boundaried ways of life don’t work well anymore, and our ways of governing seem to have reached their own point of no return.
Years ago I crossed a line of no return. I chose to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I don’t believe there’s a magic wand answer for any of this world’s upheavals. Yet I do believe we see a direction in the life, ministry and death of Jesus Christ. Not the superstar, but the human being sent to this earth to live and to die as one of us and as God’s beloved son.
Jesus made a crossing of no return when he came to live with and among us. He wasn’t president, emperor or chief. Nor was he a privileged member of the religious or political elite, or a child of God immune to human emotions and agony.
His life was short. Yet in his short life I find a direction that hasn’t changed even with our current global upheavals. Taking my cues from Jesus, I’m to love God, my neighbors and myself. Acknowledge my human limitations and need for others. Be ready to accept and offer hospitality from and to strangers. Bear the cost and share the compassion of being a follower of Jesus Christ.
Do I feel strong? Rarely. Do I feel ready? Rarely. Do I feel like giving up? Sometimes. Yet the steady, courageous, compassionate and steel-eyed clarity I see in narratives about Jesus’ life on this earth remains my True North. The one point on my compass that won’t change no matter what it takes to get from here to there.
What does this look like day by day? It’s all in my outlook. Each encounter might become an opportunity to ask for help or to offer help as I’m able and ready to identify myself as a follower of Jesus Christ. Most important, I’m not a savior. I’m another human being who won’t make it in this life on her own.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 4 January 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Crossing
~~Dickinson Homestead, Amherst, Massachusetts
In this narrative poem, Emily Dickinson seems to have a real destination in mind. Yet she focuses almost entirely on her internal fears and consternation. What’s going on? My comments follow.
I Years had been from Home
And now before the Door
I dared not enter, lest a Face
I never saw beforeStare stolid into mine
And ask my Business there –
“My Business but a Life I left
Was such remaining there?”I leaned upon the Awe –
I lingered with Before –
The Second like an Ocean rolled
And broke against my ear –I laughed a crumbling Laugh
That I could fear a Door
Who Consternation compassed
And never winced before.I fitted to the Latch
My Hand, with trembling care
Lest back the awful Door should spring
And leave me in the Floor –Then moved my Fingers off
As cautiously as Glass
And held my ears, and like a Thief
Fled gasping from the House –c. 1872
from an 1862 versionEmily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995
Emily doesn’t tell us precisely why she’s going Home. She’s been away for Years, and seems to have left something there–“a Life I left.” What might that mean? Perhaps she means she’s moved on and doesn’t want to become entangled in her old life. Or maybe she’s looking for something missing. I don’t know. She doesn’t get that far.
Instead, she describes the gripping, painful internal storm that erupts as she approaches the front door, prepared to ask her leading question. It’s as though she suddenly realizes the importance of this event—what it might cost her. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea.
Emily’s poem reminded me of an experience I had several years ago. Though the circumstances differ, the experience raised similar feelings in me.
I was in Savannah for Dad’s memorial service. That afternoon a number of family members drove out of the city to my favorite childhood home, the scene of happy and unhappy memories. The old colonial-style house looked out over a tide-water river that still beckons to me.
Hoping for a glimpse inside the house, a few of my younger relatives went up to knock on the door and ring the bell. My heart froze with a feeling I can’t even name. What would I say if someone came to the door? I felt fear, confusion and consternation.
No one came to the door. I breathed a sigh of relief, yet still felt strange until we got in our cars and drove away. Though I loved seeing the river and the outside yard, I had no desire to meet the new owners or see the inside of this house. It contained too many convoluted memories and secrets.
Emily begins by calling her destination Home. By the time we get to the end of the poem, this Home has become a House. No longer the place it was, and not a place she needs to revisit.
The ending might sound comical if it weren’t for the magnitude of her fear. Fear, it seems, that she or her life might get high jacked in the process. And so she flees like a thief.
I’m left wondering whether something was stolen from Emily in that House she first called Home. Or perhaps she left that life behind and doesn’t want to lose the life she now has. Either way, I applaud her courage.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 2 January 2017
Photo of Dickinson Homestead found at wickipedia.org
shimmering hope sprung
eons ago lies dormant
frozen underfoot
trampled beneath scornful words
it wonders and waits
***
A little poem for you, my friends,
with prayers for a Meaningful New Year of growth,
unexpected beauty, strength of character,
and creative resourcefulness when things don’t go exactly as planned!
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 31 December 2016
Photo credit: DAFraser, July 2016
Kinderdijk, South Holland – wild flowers beside the river path
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Hopeful
I loathe this word I don’t want to say
Nothing about it attracts me
Or suggests anything to say about it
Much less use it in a sentence
My abhorrence lies in its power
To bring images to mind —
Images that compound this world’s evil
Leaving no peace for victims
Yet one image alone gives me hope
It’s stronger than these robbers —
The image of Jesus Christ
Whose birth we just recognized
I imagine JC—not the Superstar
And not Jesus meek and mild
Rather, JC storming the bastions of hell
Within and without
Cleaning out the stench of our stables
Knocking relentlessly on our doors
Anointing our scars and wounds
With oil of healing and compassion
JC turns pillaging on its head
Inside out and upside down
Not with the flick of a magic wand
But in his life of full allegiance
To the One who sent him to our aid —
Victims and perpetrators alike
How can we not welcome his appearance?
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 28 December 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Pillage
~~~Eastern Hemlock and White Pine, Tiadaghton State Forest, Pennsylvania
No applause and no honors
Just the ignominious grinding
Of metal on wood
The thud of heavy bodies
Hitting the ground
Two old warriors
Honor intact
Upright as ever
Hospitable and welcoming
Home for the homeless
Food for the penniless
Grubs for the grubbers
Free and plentiful
Now deemed dangerous
Too unpredictable to ignore
Lest they do irreparable harm
Not of their own choice
This morning at 8am sharp the execution squad arrived. No ovations for them, be they ever so skillful. They came to take down two loyal friends who stood by me day and night for decades. Quietly and gracefully they shared their beauty, their shady branches and their contribution to the ecology of my life.
Their health, despite insect attacks, became their downfall. Too tall, too massive and too dangerous to stand between neighboring houses. And yet…home to squirrels, any number of small native and migrating birds combing their trunks for insects, and their branches for cone seeds. Eastern (Pennsylvania) Hemlocks.
I didn’t keep count of how often I woke up to a catbird, cardinal or wren perched on a limb just outside my bedroom window, singing a morning song. Or squirrels chasing each other up and down their trunks, chattering incessantly. Or the times I was up in the night during windstorms, watching their branches swaying to and fro, huge trunks tilting with the wind—dancing in it, unafraid.
I gave my towering friends a small ovation this morning—even though they were about to be taken down. I’m not a card-carrying tree hugger, but I have hugged trees in my lifetime. Large trees just like these. The kind that never get replaced in a lifetime.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 December 2016
Photo found at wickipedia.org
Response to WordPress Prompt: Ovation
gray overwhelms
dreary drab
shades of life
without color
body aches
tears pile up
unable to retreat
one more day
one more year
lost forever
bar clanks shut
on doors creaking
weighted down
heavy chapters
in a book
never written
***
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 26 December 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Retreat
Telling the Truth 