Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Category: Spiritual Formation

September 7, 2018

Taking Heart and Courage on Friday

A kind heart
Observant eyes
And empathy
For those you meet

These become you
Daughter of Royalty
Descendant of Eve and Adam
Follower of Jesus the Bold

Look into mirrors
And out of windows
With abandon
Follow your heart

Turn around
Or turn back
Take a side road
Or a trail to nowhere

Ache and cry
Lament loudly
Wonder how long
This too will last

Forget logic
Throw caution
To winds of change
Float on ebb tide

It’s the hour
Of cruel ironies
And the sweetest
Memories

Weedy fuzzy dust
Will be here long
After you are gone
Enjoy the sunset

Bits and pieces
from the scattered run-on journal of my mind
this Friday morning

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 7 September 2018
Photo by Sally Hale Photography, found at flickr.com
Ebb Tide at Jekyll Island, Georgia, USA

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September 6, 2018

The Survivors

From her wheelchair
The frail old woman
Repeats her truth

Over over and over
Eyes bright with recognition
Insist on being heard

He made me alive
He made me safe
He made me alive
He made me safe
(He didn’t kill me.)

Memory frozen with truth
And lies she survived
Trapped in her past
Body drowning yet again
In yesterday’s icy waters
At the hands of the man
Now standing before her
In the dock –
Drowning in truth

I woke up today thinking about this woman and the doctor who experimented on her body, as told in “Ancient History,” an episode of Kavanagh QC.

Both are Jews, deported and taken to the same prison camp. He, a medical doctor, accepts an offer to run horrifying medical experiments on prisoners, or die. She is one of his unfinished experiments, saved in the last days of World War II. At what temperature could a living human being be frozen in water and brought back to life?

There were no winners. There never are. In addition, there’s a strange bond between these two prisoners whose lives are thrown together in a hell-on-earth situation.

This doesn’t mean choices made in hell-on-earth situations don’t matter. They do. But not always in the ways we imagine.

Sometimes they may show the content of our character, other times they might not. They may, in fact, show how terrified and helpless we are at the hands of our tormentors. And how much we want to live and die without being compromised.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 6 September 2018
Photo of Russian Jews arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau; found at collections.ushmm.org

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September 3, 2018

My Best Boss Ever – Labor Day

Griswold Letter to ERF

This morning I woke up thinking about My Best Boss ever: Erwin N. Griswold, Dean of the Harvard Law School, and Solicitor General under President Lyndon Johnson. I worked for him at Harvard Law School for three short years, my first job after D and I married in September 1965.

Most of all, I thought about the letter Mr. Griswold wrote to me. It’s pictured above. A letter totally unlike any letter my father wrote to me. I’ve added a typed version of the text at the end of this post.

Mr. Griswold became my employer at the beginning of my marriage to D in September 1965. We’d just moved from Savannah, Georgia to Cambridge, Massachusetts. We didn’t know anyone. D began a graduate program at Harvard, and I needed a job.

I walked over to Harvard and filled out a form. Mr. Griswold’s office called me and I answered. The best boss ever, though I didn’t know it back then. After three years, I resigned to give birth to our first child.

So today I’m thinking about baby Marie, and how to get in touch with her first 10 months of life. That’s 10 months before The Intruder, my father, arrives on the scene. I want a cloud of witnesses, not to me as I am now, but to me as I’ve always been. I’ve already identified Diane, Sister #3 who died of ALS, as a witness, even though she was born later than I.

This morning I realized I have a strange surrogate father in Mr. Griswold. Why? He wasn’t simply the Best Boss Ever. He was like a father to me, though I didn’t realize it back then.

You can see this in the letter at the top (quoted below). His note stands out for reasons I can’t even explain, except for this: Mr. Griswold saw, named and celebrated the 10-month old child in me, now grown up. The Intruder didn’t destroy me.

Today is Labor Day here in the USA, a day to celebrate workers. I’m proud to have been a worker, and proud to say I worked for Mr. Griswold as one of his secretaries.

Below is the text of Mr. Griswold’s handwritten note.

The Solicitor General, Washington

Erwin N. Griswold, August 12, 1968

Dear Elouise,

I am sorry that I could not be at your farewell party at the Law School, and I do want to send you this note in honor of the occasion.

In all my years at the Harvard Law School, I expect I had close to twenty girls working for me. All were good, some were better, a few were extraordinarily good, indeed, and of all of them you were the best. Your ability was of the highest order, your intelligent contribution to the work was unexcelled, and your calm and matter of fact and unperturbed approach was unique. I was blessed in many ways at the Harvard Law School, but that I should have had you to work with the last two years was more than I deserved.

If there had been any prospect that you could stay on, I would have done all I could to push you on and up. You were worthy of the highest recognition—and always, without fail. It was a very satisfying experience for me and I cannot begin to tell you how grateful I am.

Now you go on to a new phase of your life where I know that you will excel, too. But as you go on, I hope it will give you some satisfaction to know that I thought your were superlative—both as a secretary and as a person.

With best wishes to you and David, and my very great thanks.

Erwin Griswold

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 September 2018

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August 30, 2018

Searching for what we’ve lost

Sit with it
Let it sink in
Recall the day and hour
The occasion

Sounds and faces
Sunday meeting clothes
Dressed up but not too much
For his memorial service

It’s already late in the day
Hungry for time
We linger with each other
Searching for what we’ve lost

Are we ready for this
What will we do now
His passing long anticipated
Sinks with the setting sun

How are you
I’m so glad you came today
I thought this nightmare
Would never end

Written after I looked at family pictures from my father’s memorial service. I wanted to distract myself and stop the tears that welled up. Instead, I decided to write it out.

My father’s dying was long and tormented. Chiefly due to his stubborn insistence on doing things his way, even though his body wouldn’t go there anymore. I often wished he had gone first, before my mother. But that didn’t happen. He was 96 years old. I was 66. The year was 2010.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 30 August 2018 

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August 29, 2018

Relics of my past and present

Every day I’m surrounded by relics of my past that reach into my present. Then there’s the odd relic I buy for myself because I know I need it. Even though I don’t know where it will take me. The photo above shows three of my relics.

The big furry raccoon is a gift from two male seminary students. Unannounced, they came to my faculty office the week of their graduation in 1986/7. Each had taken multiple courses from me. Yet to their sorrow, they had been less than supportive my first semester of teaching. They came bearing a gift of contrition and gratitude. Their way of making amends and reaching out to acknowledge complicity in my first-year trial by fire.

I promptly, there and then, gave this furry beast his name: Klein Calvin. That’s Calvin for  Reformed theologian John Calvin, not Calvin Klein. And Klein for the German word for small. Again, not for the clothing brand Calvin Klein.

Over the years, Klein Calvin has occupied seats of honor in my house. From these exalted seats he has given my grandchildren tons of fun and caused Smudge, our rescued cat, moments of extreme consternation.

The smaller white teddy bear with a heart is also a gift. This time from my theology class in spring 1999. A surprise gift the week I returned to class after time off following my mother’s death. The class hadn’t been particularly easy. These were the years after our new sexuality policy was approved by the Board, giving aid and comfort (in my unchanged opinion) to those who were on the lookout for deviation.

Yet here was this totally unexpected gift, made possible because of human ties that bind us. When I was a child I never owned a real teddy bear. This is my teddy bear. She’s been sitting on the sofa in my office for years. Sometimes hugged close when I’ve felt overwhelmed about not having my mother present to answer at least a thousand questions.

Finally, right there in the middle is my newest cuddly friend. I’ve christened her Baby El. A likeness of me. When she arrived two weeks ago, I wasn’t sure what to do with her.

For now, I’m certain she is not about my father. She’s about me. I want to know myself better and honor myself. Especially, but not only, that little girl who still resides in me. Now woven into every fiber of my being.

If I just think about getting to know myself (and that little girl…), it won’t happen. I need to practice honoring myself for real. And Baby El is my partner in this. She’s real. She’s present. And she always welcomes me with a smile.

Which, by the way, is helping free me from making D into the bad man he is not, or even into a very large version of Baby El.

I used to think I could work it all out in my head or in my writing. Both are important. Yet having a concrete stand-in ally (who represents me) makes all the difference. It doesn’t matter what’s going on in me: shame, fear, the need for comfort, discouragement or wanting someone to share my joy. She’s there for me, and I’m there for her.

I also want you to know how I came to this point. It’s all about a book I just finished. More on that later.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 29 August 2018
Photo taken by ERFraser, 29 August 2018

12 Comments
August 28, 2018

Complicity and Rotten Apples

For decades I’ve listened to well-meaning friends and strangers telling me to get over it. They weren’t always that blunt, but I knew what they meant. Something like this…magnified through my own shame-based filters:

It’s time to move on with your life. We’re tired of hearing about the same old struggle. When are you going to get a life? Can’t you see how easy it is?!

I don’t fault friends or strangers who’ve urged me to move on. They want the best for me. All I have to do is walk away and don’t look back. The way many of them did.

Yet it seems I have nothing to walk toward except more of those heart-breaking, mind-bending head trips I’ve been on all my life.

Besides, it doesn’t matter what others think about me. What do I think about myself?

From grade school on, academic pursuits were my salvation. They kept me busy. They gave me something tangible to hang onto, plus a fleeting sense of self-worth even though I was running away or lost. I’ve known this for years. Nothing new here.

Recently a friend of many years suggested I’m still complicit with my father’s shaming and silencing of my voice. It still eats me up, from the inside out. Like a rotten apple, it tries to spoil the entire barrel.

She was correct. The shamed-based atmosphere in which I grew up now lives in me, passed on by my father. I have no doubt this is a generational gift of poison.

So I’m back to my childhood with this correction: I did not have a childhood. It was stolen from me before I knew what was happening. Instead, I became a substitute mother (to my three sisters), and grew up labeled as a ‘rebellious, stubborn’ eldest daughter who needed to have anger beaten out of her.

Furthermore, though I enjoyed my children as they grew up, joining in their childhood games didn’t give me the childhood I never had.

So…how do I find what I didn’t have, and how do I stop my internal voice that wants to shame me into silence?

Meet Baby Elouise! No, I don’t have a picture. I bought her over a week ago. Why? Because I’m determined to find and take back what was stolen from me.

My job is to love and listen to the little girl and adult woman I am despite all efforts, including my own, to silence or redirect me. Baby Elouise is helping me move in the right direction.

To be continued….

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 28 August 2018
Photo taken by Sherry Fraser Seckington, June 2016 – from their garden

17 Comments
August 27, 2018

Children at Longwood | Photos

On Saturday afternoon D and I helped celebrate family birthdays–four of them, within the space of one week! Our son (his big 50), twin granddaughters (18 years old, seniors in high school), and daughter-in-law (I’m not telling). Only their young son gets his own special day later this fall (15 years old).

All this family stuff got me a bit nostalgic. Hence these Longwood Garden photos taken in late April 2006. As I recall, this was our granddaughters’ first visit to Longwood. These were also the golden years when I was Queen Elouise and carried a sun parasol to mark my exalted status.

Looking at these photos reminds me of the tough work our son and daughter-in-law did to honor their children’s gifts and personalities. It’s never easy.

Yesterday I heard this on the radio: Having children doesn’t make a man a father. The statement clicked with me instantly. To it, I would add this: Being a ‘father’ or ‘mother’ of the church (as in padre, nun, priest, bishop, archbishop, pastor, youth minister) doesn’t confer or guarantee the ability to relate honorably to children or young people.

In the news last week: the Pennsylvania report about child abuse at the hands of Roman Catholic priests and their superiors. All of it covered up by people and a system that took care of its own. Plus, a few days later, reports about the Pope’s visit to Ireland and the legacy with which that nation’s population lives–as do many others.

I only wish it were possible to track similar behavior in Protestant churches here and elsewhere.

All this and more brought back my relationship with my father. He was an ordained Protestant clergyman, sporadically under the loose oversight of a governing body. I have more work to do.

For today, I commend men and women who work hard at parenting and foster-parenting. Especially when they don’t have many models or cheer leaders when things get more than a bit crazy.

Elouise♥

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 August 2018
Photos taken by DAFraser at Longwood Gardens, April 2006

11 Comments
August 22, 2018

What I’m FOR today

There’s so much going so wrong today that I decided to make a roll call of what I’m FOR on this remarkable day. Remarkable because I lived to witness it! Including, in my past, this river and dock-life when I was growing up. Plus at least the following other items for which I’m grateful:

  • this beautiful world in places touched by human tragedy
  • family members more distant in miles than ever, yet closer to my heart
  • churches standing up to tough challenges without capitulating to visions of grandeur, glory or isolation
  • real places that offered me refuge and peace when I needed solitude and reassurance that my life matters
  • our son who turns 50 today and reminds me why I risked everything with my parents on the eve of my 50th birthday
  • our daughter who lives on the other side of the USA yet is present to me in ways I was never present to my mother
  • the Carolina Wren, Chickadees and Cardinals singing and chirping, plus the small ground squirrel who sits on our back yard wall surveying his spacious kingdom
  • courageous women, men and children who speak out and work for a better world for all of us
  • my neighbors: Roman Catholic, Muslim, Jew, Protestant, or Nothing at All who greet me, invite me into conversation, groan and smile with me, and offer me tea
  • my dear husband who I sometimes thought might be the wrong man for me, yet has become precious beyond words
  • my local church with its challenging mix of cultures, ethnicity, political persuasions, youth and decrepitude
  • days of such unexpected delight that I don’t want them to end, yet can let go because I love my water-bed and the partner swimming in it with me
  • my body and the way it’s leading me deeper into and out of myself in these last days of summer 2018.

And of course, I’m for you, my wonderful readers–an invisible family loosely held together somewhere out there beyond our control.

Elouise♥

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 22 August 2018
Photo found at pinterest; Skidaway River, Isle of Hope near Savannah, GA

12 Comments
August 20, 2018

cool midsummer breeze

cool midsummer breeze
reminder of things to come
balm for my body

Out this morning for a walk with D. Taking advantage of an unexpected change in the air. Thinking about what’s going on here in the USA and abroad. Especially in churches and religious communities.

Recent revelations of clergy sex abuse of more than 1000 minors in Pennsylvania have sent our state and religious communities reeling. Not a moment too soon, yet decades too late for victims robbed of their childhood, adolescence, and sense of worth as children of God.

This time it’s about priests, bishops and the highest governing bodies of the Roman Catholic Church. It could easily have been about ordained leaders in conservative and liberal churches of all Christian denominations, including those that claim not to be denominations.

Abuse of power has no boundaries.

In the meantime, thousands upon thousands of children, young people and adults wonder when and how this madness will end. Everything in us cries out for freedom, though many of us have believed the lies of our perpetrators:

  • This is for your own good.
  • You made me do it.
  • God told me to do it.
  • I can’t help myself.
  • This will bring you closer to God.
  • No one will ever find out.
  • This is our little secret.
  • You should be ashamed of yourself.
  • I can help you with your career.
  • If you tell anyone, I’ll kill your brother.
    …..

Our lives are precious. We’re here for a purpose. What’s yours?

Today mine is to spotlight the reality of this rampant non-secret that’s eating away at families, communities, religious and secular institutions. To think these things don’t matter in public life is to live on another planet. These aren’t private matters. They are public and private relations disasters at every level.

No, I haven’t given up on following Jesus. I have, however, given up the notion that what happened to me in my youth and childhood should be over and done by now. It’s never over and done. Especially when there are millions of other victims out there. Overlooked, uncounted, discounted and left to their own devices. From the outside, some get along better than others. Yet deep inside, competing voices vie for everlasting attention.

I know, because I’m still doing battle, though not without hope. My purpose today is to tell the truth, without loss of hope and with the most powerful voice I have–my writing.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 20 August 2018
Photo found at kalynskitchen.com

9 Comments