Spiritual Formation | Telling the Truth

Misfit and Misbehaving

It’s the early 1950s. I’m about 11 years old. I’ve just taken my assigned seat in my 6th grade classroom at a private church school. I look around the room and it hits me in the eyes.

All but three girls are wearing matching white skirts with a bold flower pattern around the hem of each skirt. The flower pattern is in five rainbow colors with not one, but two skirts in each color. My two best girlfriends are wearing blue flowered skirts.

Our teacher, clearly caught off guard, says there must have been a fire sale on this particular pattern. The skirts are homemade. Obviously this was a planned event.

I’m mortified. Why didn’t I know about this? My mother is one of the best seamstresses around, and could have whipped one up for me. I try to make it OK in my mind. Especially since only three girls in the class aren’t wearing the uniform. The other two are the least popular girls in the class. Surely there was a mistake.

My two best girlfriends try to make it OK. I wasn’t left out because they didn’t like me. It was because the club had decided there could only be pairs, and I was the odd girl out. Besides, I was at least a year younger than they.

Which wasn’t the full story. Along with the other two misfits, I was a scholarship student. My parents couldn’t afford to pay tuition. It didn’t matter that I was bright, intelligent, interesting, faithful, truthful or any of that.

Things got worse during recess. The club had designated certain parts of the public park (a lovely downtown square in Savannah, Georgia) as their special places. They had rules about who could play with whom during the first part of recess, and where they would meet for regular club meetings during recess.

The following day was a ‘regular’ day which meant the club didn’t wear skirt uniforms to class. My friends talked the club into letting me join as a substitute club member. I would have to have a blue-flowered skirt. However, I could take part in activities in the park only if one of my two friends was absent that day. And I would have to vote the way my friend would have voted. That way the voting wouldn’t be off-balance.

Long story short: My mother agreed to make a skirt, but couldn’t find the same flower pattern. I wore my painfully obvious substitute skirt once or twice before the club disbanded.

In the end, this episode wasn’t about how smart, friendly or truthful I was. It was about white money and white family history. Which is to say the white Protestant pecking order and the subservient pedigree of white hens.

What I now understand:

It’s important to divide white women from each other as early as possible.
This will serve the goals of white male supremacy.
The tactics of divide and conquer are cheap, easy and effective in almost any setting.

Tomorrow is the beginning of Women’s History Month. I wonder how willing I am to refuse being divided in order to change history?

32 Comments

February 24, 2018

Don’t call me Sweetie

This morning I’m feeling backlash. Not from out there, but from inside. A reminder that I’ve moved into a new chapter of my life. It’s time to state yet again, for myself, who I am and who I am not.

Here’s my older version, written in response to my father’s insistence that I was less than this:

I am a mature, responsible adult woman.

Here’s my updated version, written last night. Longer, and in your face because that’s where I am right now. Strong, not all sweet and charming.

I am a mature, responsible, intelligent,
wise and sensitive adult woman of a certain age.
My name is Warrior or Elouise —
not Sweetie, not Cutie, not Little Old Anything,
not Over the Hill and
not Out of Order.

Finally, here’s my well-loved, frequently used mantra that’s good for all seasons:

I am God’s beloved daughter-child.

You can mess with me, but don’t be surprised if I mess right back at you. Not that I’m an expert on everything. I’m not. I am, however, a Fast Learner with nothing but time to lose. This is, after all, the Last Chapter of my life, and time is running out.

I’ve watched this past year as young women and young men of all colors and ethnicities have stepped up and spoken out on behalf of justice, mercy and sanity.

My generation cut its teeth on issues such as feminism, segregation and Viet Nam. Today’s young adults are dealing with their own laundry list of horrors, some passed on by my generation. For example,

random acts of violence against people of color, immigrants and targeted religious believers
mass murders in schools, towns and cities across the USA
the breakdown in local and national legislatures over how to protect the most vulnerable among us
sexual abuse run rampant for generations regardless of ethnic, national, economic or leadership status
bathroom wars and fears about who can use which facilities, especially but not only in schools
the power, abuses and addictive lure of social media and pain killers
steady rise in suicides among young people

I want to do what I can to support these young adults. And perhaps learn a thing or two. How? I don’t know. That’s part of the fun. I’m just going to keep writing and listening. And see what happens next.

12 Comments

February 22, 2018

How I’m praying about Mr. Trump

Gingerly. Yet with more conviction than ever.

Everything I see ‘out there’ is a microcosm of my heart. Not always in the same form, but always about the same kinds of issues. My desire to change situations. My need for affirmation and affection. My love of power and control. My constant preoccupation with security and survival. And, I might add, my Greatness.

“Your kingdom come; Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” was never so difficult to pray as it is right now, given what we see and hear every day. This includes what I see and hear in my own thoughts and feelings.

Whether I look into my heart or see it on TV or on my iPad news feed, I’m reminded daily that I have limited power, control, security, and hope for survival.

My prayers don’t guarantee that justice will be done immediately. They do, however, help me stay focused on what really matters to the Most High God, the Creator of heaven and earth, the One who chose to become one of us. To show us how true leaders lead, and how true followers follow.

Below is a Psalm that clarifies exactly what is both needed and woefully rare in politics today. It also clarifies the outcome for leaders who fail to deliver the itemized goods.

In the Psalm, I take the term ‘god’ to mean rulers and leaders who must answer to the Most High God. I strongly suggest you read it out loud, with anger/distress/disbelief or whatever emotion you are able to draw upon from your own experience of injustice and wickedness.

Whatever you do, don’t try to dress it up all pretty and nice. Or explain it away. It’s truth, not fiction or a make-believe game about another time and place. It’s about now. With plenty of comfort and hard words for each of us.

Psalm 82, A psalm of Asaph. (NRSV, small edits by me)

The Most High God presides in the great assembly;
Rendering judgment among the ‘gods’:

“How long will you defend the unjust
And show partiality to the wicked?
Defend the weak and the parentless;
Uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed.
Rescue the weak and the needy;
Deliver them from the hand of the wicked.

“The ‘gods’ know nothing, they understand nothing,
They walk about in darkness;
All the foundations of the earth are shaken.

“I said, ‘You are ‘gods’;
You are all children of the Most High.’
But you will die like mere mortals;
You will fall like every other ruler.”

Rise up, Most High, judge the earth,
For all the nations are your inheritance.

16 Comments

February 21, 2018

hanging out

morning sun
hangs out behind a curtain
of glowing fog

Yesterday was glorious. Foggy and gray at first, before turning into a bright sunshiny day that included tea with a friend in the afternoon.

Hanging out doesn’t come naturally to me. From very early, my parents programmed me to keep my little hands busy because the devil might find work for idle hands to do. In addition, my later commitment to running away on the inside discouraged me from doing ‘nothing.’ The enemy was always just one step or one breath behind me.

So race on I did. One step after the other. With time out only when forced to take it.

The year after I left the dean’s office I had a full year sabbatical. Glorious! I decided early that I wanted to write more. So I began working through Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. Fortunately, most of her assignments required that I write.

Unfortunately, one did not. It stuck its ugly neck up at the end of the first chapter, in a list of tasks to accomplish.

Task #1 was to write morning pages first thing every morning. Stream-of-consciousness. No problem. I was like a duck playing in water. Next came

Task #2.
Take yourself on an artist date.
You will do this every week for the duration of the course.

Fortunately, Cameron lists several sample ‘dates’ for the socially challenged who prefer to stay in our little dens. All these ‘dates’ will be fun, silly or even outrageous. If we had to learn how to do this, so be it! I felt awkward and more than silly at first. But then I got into it—for a while.

Big sigh. So yesterday morning I decided to resume weekly artist dates with myself. I inaugurated this by spending the entire day with no agenda except fun things I wanted to do strictly for myself. Which included tea in the afternoon with my friend.

The day was beyond wonderful. I know the sun won’t come out every day. Yet the freedom my body and spirit felt was remarkable.

Finally, for those out there who don’t quite see what the problem is, I’m positive you’ll read this and feel nothing but good-will for the rest of us. If not more understanding or empathy. For which we are grateful.

Elouise♥

5 Comments

February 19, 2018

Am I ready?

Hesitating
My fingers languish
On the keys

Life
Flashes before me
Inviting my company

My heart
Skips a beat
Am I ready?

Dear Friends,

This past week was wonderful. Going through old files and notebooks told me more about my past than I’d remembered. And I didn’t get through everything yet.

Thankfully, my home office is about half transformed! I focused on files and piles, not books and drawers. Breaking my jaw nearly two years ago brought ‘normal’ life to a sudden halt. And the piles began getting larger and larger….

Hidden in all the files and piles, I found several gems. Things I hadn’t read for years. I even read one piece out loud to myself. It was the Sunday morning ‘sermon’ I gave at our last Renich family reunion in 2012. I wrote it so young children in the room would know exactly what I was talking about.

That was the first time I’d ever talked to my extended family about my troubled relationship with my parents. The room was full of family members from at least four generations. I was a trembling wreck after I finished and sat down. I hadn’t yet begun blogging. I just knew I it was time to do this.

Now I’m at another milestone—still blogging, and with the end of my life approaching more visibly than before. ‘The last chapter’ sounds ominous. However, I see an opportunity to write about things I’ve not written about before. Some new, some old. None of it easy.

During the past week I wrote a haiku on most days. I don’t plan to stop that discipline, or writing poetry. I want to let my heart speak to other hearts. I believe that’s what drove Jesus of Nazareth, though some of his words were difficult to hear.

What I practiced giving up for Lent last year is still relevant. This year I’m thinking about it in terms of my writing voice and my desire to let my heart speak to other hearts. I’m using the same litany as my guide:

I let go my desire for security and survival.
I let go my desire for esteem and affection.
I let go my desire for power and control.
I let go my desire to change the situation.

Quoted by Cynthia Bourgeault in Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, p. 147 (Cowley Publications 2004)

As always, thanks for listening.
Elouise♥

11 Comments

February 10, 2018

Taking a break to dream

Dear Friends,

I need a break. Not from you, but to listen to my heart and body. I’m serious about being in the last chapter of my life, and want my writing to reflect this without being morose, and without chasing after things that don’t matter that much on any given day.

For several years I’ve wanted to reorganize my home office to make it user-friendly for me as a writer. Today it still reflects my past as an academic and volunteer against human trafficking. Too much stuff hanging around!

So this week, with D’s good help, I’ll get going on that. Most of all, I want to dream about where I’m headed with my writing in the next months and years.

Here’s the bottom line:
I’m not closing down my blog
However, I won’t post anything for at least this coming week

In the meantime I pray that Lent, which begins on Valentine’s Day, will draw us closer to ourselves, to each other and to our amazing Creator who still chooses to walk with and among us daily. Incognito.

Thanks for being here, and for your encouragement.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 10 February 2018
Image found at barbarabenedettelli.it

10 Comments

February 8, 2018

There is a pain — so utter —

Emily Dickinson suggests there’s a pain that’s better left lying, almost forgotten. Else it would destroy the victim, one painful piece at a time. My comments follow her poem.

There is a pain – so utter –
It swallows substance up –
Then covers the Abyss with Trance –
So Memory can step
Around – across – upon it –
As one within a Swoon –
Goes safely – where an open eye –
Would drop Him – Bone by Bone.

c. 1862

Emily Dickinson Poems, Edited by Brenda Hillman
Shambhala Pocket Classics, Shambhala 1995

Emily suggests that in spite of extreme pain, we get by thanks to Trance. Like a bandage, Trance covers the wound and the depth of our pain so that Memory can walk safely around or over it. Our eyes are spared the full extent of our pain.

Emily likely has her own pain in mind. In fact, this poem raises again the possibility that someone victimized her when she was a young woman. If so, perhaps her poem is one way of dealing with the horror of seeing (feeling, remembering, reliving) what happened to her. Bone by Bone. One terrifying moment after another. The slow-motion dismemberment of a human spirit, a human being.

Yet this pain is also generic. Not simply something that happened to Emily, but what happens to each of us and all of us. Individually and together. In a thousand permutations.

Perhaps we’re in a Swoon, awake just enough to navigate each day without being brought down by our pain, living in Trance mode. Semi-reality. Semi-truth. Which amounts to untruth, and thus unreality.

I think of the USA and our preference for letting pain lie deep underground while we make our way across and around it. As though it never happened or weren’t that important. Slavery has caused unrecorded, unheard pain to millions. Yet here we are in African American History Month, still unable as a nation, beginning with our leaders, to face this history face-on, with eyes wide open.

We find ways to get by without acknowledging the depth and horror of this and other examples of our national pain. Yet it’s right beneath our feet. Beneath the surface history of our current state of disunion. It seems we’re living in a national epidemic of Trance. We get by, or so we think, without acknowledging the depth and horror of our pain.

Emily seems to have personal pain in mind. Yet personal pain feeds on and adds to our collective pain. As a nation we like to think we’ve come a long way, and are now beyond the worst. Nonetheless, I see us living the sad and sorry outcomes of unexamined pain lying just beneath the surface of Trance.

20 Comments

February 7, 2018

Living and Loving the Last Chapter

No more unlived history for me. I’m in the last chapter of my life. Which means my last opportunity to live a full life instead of the half-life I’ve often pursued as a good girl/woman.

First, in honor of my mother, I owe myself at least two changes:

I must fall in love with myself. For better and for worse; in sickness and in health; for as long as my life shall last; honoring and respecting myself; cherishing my body and honoring my spirit.

I think of it as marrying myself. Loving myself the way God loves me—just as I am. And the way D promised to love me—just as I am. If I can’t do this, my ability to love my neighbors as I love myself is greatly impaired if not dealt the kiss of death.

I must relentlessly pursue my dream of being a writer. Not past dreams, but my dream for right now. For this last chapter of my life.

All my adult l life I believed in my skills to help others attain their dreams. I did not believe in my ability to go for large dreams of my own. I was ‘too busy.’ Especially when it came to writing. I was busy giving in to fear, disbelief, and the call of tasks needing to be done.

My mother’s later years included several strange episodes during which she lashed out against my father with language I didn’t know she possessed. To my shock, he backed down. I’m hanging onto those few brilliant moments when I believe my mother put her own well-being and her own wishes first and communicated this in no uncertain terms.

I don’t foresee a fight like this with D. I do, however, foresee standoffs with myself for which I’ll need grit and guts.

Second, I must do for myself what I did for all those 15 boys and men I wanted to impress.

For years, beginning as early as 5th grade, I offered them a list of invaluable services. No cost and no contracts. Why? Because I desperately wanted to feel needed, alive, appreciated, attractive (at least not repulsive), and less lonely.

So what did that look like?

A listening ear, empathy and feedback
A sounding board for men’s ideas
Interest in their lives and their dreams
Affection and emotional support
Admiration and affirmation of their importance
New ideas—mine—free of charge!
Proofreading and editing skills
Feedback on how to improve their arguments, their writing, their sermons
Uncounted smiles and nods of agreement and understanding

In other words, like millions of other women, I gave away what I desperately needed for myself.

Ironically, even though these men affirmed me, I didn’t believe them. Not because they weren’t telling the truth, but because I didn’t believe that in the long-run, what I had to say or write really mattered that much.

Today I’m offering and making available to myself the same tangible and intangible services. Yes, I still have D. His love and loyalty are in place. The missing person in this picture isn’t D. It’s Elouise.

6 Comments

February 3, 2018

fake smoke and cold mush

fake smoke
wafting from a thousand fires
signifies nothing

yesterday’s hot memo
is today’s cold mush
tasteless

Is this speaking truth to power? I don’t know. I do know it’s a reminder to myself that my voice matters. Especially now. Not as a way of manipulating reality, but as a way of staying honest and getting on with life at the same time.

Granted, this is life in a strange key. Academics and analysts who study patterns say we in the USA have been moving toward this social/political stand-off for a while. Still, current events are disconcerting. Sometimes it feels like a slow-motion, high-impact train wreck.

Hence my verses above. Spoken because for me, silence won’t do in this climate of intimidation tactics, fake smoke, hot memos and cold, tasteless mush.

Have I given up? Only if I fail to use my voice and cast my vote. And only if I act as though I or some other human being were God or even God’s Special Agent as defined by me.

Sabbath rest sounds like a good idea. Time to acknowledge I’m not in control, and that my voice matters. As does yours. Or, put another way, it’s time to let our lights shine.

Thanks for reading.
Elouise♥

6 Comments

February 1, 2018

Haunted by unlived history, #3

Renich Reunion in Newton, Kansas. I’m in back, just left of center. My first cousins as of July 1958 (more on the way!)

I grew up thinking love would heal everything. I also grew up believing no man in his right mind would ever love me enough to marry me.

I wasn’t a flirt or a party girl. Though I didn’t feel ugly, I didn’t consider myself pretty. I was a quiet and diligent student, a budding musician, intelligent, pleasant, and deeply ashamed.

Ashamed of the way my father treated me
Ashamed that most people didn’t seem to want me as a close friend
Ashamed when teams were chosen and I wasn’t anyone’s first choice. I was better than the last choice, but not by much.

I was also ashamed of our family’s social status. Yes, my father was an ordained pastor. No, he wasn’t a regular, full-time pastor. No, he didn’t have a regular, full-time income.

I sometimes thought about becoming a single missionary like some of the women missionaries I knew. That way I wouldn’t have to bother about all that social stuff. Or men.

But then there were those few boys and men who seemed to like me. Sometimes whether I liked them or not. Maybe the love thing could work for me. Maybe I didn’t have to be single all my life. But aren’t there better choices out there?

This was the beginning of my up and down history of secretly falling in and out of love with men. In no way did I want to appear needy, or look like I was chasing after them.

In the early 1990s, as part of an assignment for survivors of sexual abuse, I made a list of 30 men and boys who made an impression on me from childhood.

Then I began studying the list, looking for patterns. Of the 30 men and boys,

16 were romantically attractive to me
15 were men or boys I wanted to impress in some way
14 were artists, poets, musicians, and/or actors
13 appreciated and loved to listen to my piano playing
12 pursued me (I didn’t pursue them)
12 affirmed me as an individual, not as an object of their self-interest
10 were ordained ministers or leaders
6 were employers/supervisors
6 took advantage of me
4 raised fear in me
4 were pursued by me
4 I disliked intensely
4 were ‘soul mates’
3 overtly punished or humiliated me

Thinking about my relationships with these men and boys helped me make large and small changes in my relationships with men. For example,

I changed some unwise habits in order to maintain healthy boundaries as a professional educator and a church member.
I learned to recognize and honor my intuition when things didn’t feel quite right.
I recognized that being an agreeable, good girl woman was getting me in trouble by feeding unhealthy patterns of overwork and exhaustion. Though I made progress on this one, it wasn’t resolved until I retired in 2011.

I’ve written earlier about not having dreams for myself. Big dreams. The kind that orient life in a clear, even exciting direction. Most of my life I’ve lived by lists. Checking off long to-do lists with no big dream at the end. Just more long lists.

I want something better for myself. Today I hear my history with men fairly screaming something I couldn’t hear back then.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 1 February 2018
Photo taken in Newton, Kansas, July 1958 – Not yet all my first cousins on my father’s side.

5 Comments

Telling the Truth

Category: Spiritual Formation

February 28, 2018

Misfit and Misbehaving

February 22, 2018

How I’m praying about Mr. Trump

February 21, 2018

hanging out

February 19, 2018

Am I ready?

February 10, 2018

Taking a break to dream

February 8, 2018

There is a pain — so utter —

February 7, 2018

Living and Loving the Last Chapter

February 3, 2018

fake smoke and cold mush

February 1, 2018

Haunted by unlived history, #3

Category: Spiritual Formation

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