Castle Fraser — Front drive leading to formal entrance under the arch.
Dear Dad,
The 102nd anniversary of your birth came and went last week. For the first time since you died in 2010, it didn’t trigger a downward spiral in me. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve been in a ferment since Sunday evening. The kind that begins with strange dreams I can’t remember when I wake up. They aren’t frightening or foreboding, though they’re regularly about circumstances that Read the rest of this entry »
Several things stand out in my dream:
Assumptions I’ve made:
Two questions came to mind right after I woke up:
Here’s how I’m thinking about the dream today.
I’m one of Jesus’ reclamation projects. I also have countless others to thank for helping pick me up from various trash heaps.
Some trash heaps were designed specifically for women. Sometimes I seem to have chosen a trash heap on my own. I say it that way because part of being reclaimed means understanding the dynamics of coercion, seduction and being set up for failure. Nonetheless, I’ve been reclaimed many times over.
In fact, it’s reassuring that this team is going to look for discards (people). I’m happy others are out there looking. Maybe they’ll find me again someday.
My father was a great improviser. Not of music, but of solutions to things that didn’t work properly (machines, not people). He kept a shed and back yard full of what some people would call ‘junk.’ The kinds of things Depression-era women and men valued for their as yet unknown future use.
So here I am, a reclaimed woman, musician and now a blogger who happens to be a theologian. What do I offer women and men who visit and read what I write? And where does my ‘junk’ come from?
I offer the mostly improvised music of my heart, mind and soul. I use memories, bits and pieces of knowledge I’ve collected, old photos, new photos, and other people’s writings that move me. I also use my experience, including what happened and happens to me on the inside. Things like secrets and less-than-beautiful behaviors.
I can’t do this alone. I need others who show me how they do it, or who ask me tough questions. I need to hear them play their music. It doesn’t matter whether it’s overtly theological or not. If it moves me, it rings true. It brings joy, tears, thoughtfulness, challenge, clarity of sight, grief and sadness, or the knowledge that I’m alive and not alone.
As a blogger, my reclamation project is about recovering parts of my life that got trashed along the way, internally and externally. It’s also about being alert for pieces of your lives that inspire me to write yet more unscripted posts that reclaim some of my personal ‘junk.’
Whether it comes from you or from me, it’s music. It doesn’t banish the pain of life, or focus only on what’s beautiful to divert attention from what’s real. Rather, it’s music that accompanies all of life, inviting both sadness and joy to be heard, heeded and shared.
My father’s unexpected improvisation on his guitar is a sign. It shows what can happen when other music, especially from strangers, inspires me to improvise songs I didn’t know I’d lost along the way.
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 26 August 2015
Image from 123RF.com
This morning I had a dream just before waking. The kind I can’t forget. Here it is, with nothing omitted. I have some ideas about it, but first, here’s the dream.
It’s early in the morning. The sun is just beginning to rise. I’m walking up a street on a slight hill. I notice about a dozen vans parked on the street and in an outdoor parking lot. They’re all black, with simple white logos. Each logo is slightly different from the others, and is accompanied by a team name. I’ve been given a task to carry out with one of the teams. I hadn’t realized there were other teams.
I approach my destination, walking toward the building where I’m to meet the team. I hear music playing. It sounds like a jam session. The building is open-air style on the ground floor next to the street, so I can see what’s happening inside. A team of women and men are playing music together. Each seems to be playing a different instrument. I don’t see a formal conductor. Some team members are arriving at the same time I’m getting there.
The room they’re in is next to another building, also open so I can see who’s in it. Right there, up against the wall adjoining the musicians’ building, I see my father. He’s leaning against the wall, sitting, and playing a guitar. In fact, he’s playing along with the other musicians. I never knew he played a guitar! The other musicians can hear him but they can’t see him. He’s much older than they are, and doesn’t see me.
I wonder whether my father knows what he’s doing. He’s not part of the team still gathering next door. Fortunately, he’s picking the guitar softly, trying to connect with the music coming from the next space over. I hear the music coming close to ending. As it does, I already know somehow that the guitar will be the last instrument heard.
So far the music has been similar to jazz improvisation. My father doesn’t know much about jazz. So I’m surprised that as the performance winds down, his guitar playing becomes crystal clear and creative. I can scarcely believe my ears. It’s beautiful. My father never looks up to see me, and I don’t stop to say anything. It’s as though he’s in a different world.
I’m here to meet this team of recently employed workers. I didn’t know they were musicians. That’s not the job they were hired to do. I tell them how beautiful their music is and how much I enjoyed hearing it as I walked up the hill. I can tell they already work well together.
Just then one of my sisters joins the group. I’m surprised and happy to see her. I’m not sure which sister it is. At first I think it’s Sister #2. Then I take another look and think it might be Sister #4.
I explain that I’m here to take the team through the last phase of their orientation. They have one last task before they go out to do their work. Each of them is to write a brief personal statement about how and why you do this work, connecting it with something significant that guides the way you actually do the work.
I already know the nature of their work. They’ll be going through the neighborhood collecting things that have been thrown away. Each of them needs to tell me how and why they do this. For example, they might say, “I work in this way (describe it) because it connects with the way Jesus worked.” I have in mind a reclamation project.
I wake up happy, wondering what this dream is saying about me.
To be continued. . . .
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 25 August 2015
Image from chickhughes.com
My Number One Surprise this past year? Coming to terms with my mother’s role in my life. For years I’ve harbored cold resentment toward her. Much more than I have toward my father. Yet in this first year of blogging, I’ve done an about-face.
Here’s a dream I had about her in August 2012. In the dream Mom is an attractive, even endearing figure. Where did this come from? I’m still not sure, but here it is, followed by some of my reflections.
17 August 2012
I’m in a rink-like area with other women. A woman in the rink is telling us about the new surface that’s just been completed. It’s so smooth that no ice or roller skates are required. Just regular flat shoes. Several women are trying it out.
I’ve just arrived, and know my mother is nearby. I call out for her to come and see. The minute she hears how it works she gets in the rink and takes off in a graceful glide around the far end of the rink. She does a beautiful leap, turn, and ballet-like move, lands smoothly, and keeps going.
She’s smiling, happy and totally healed in her body. Her hair is cut short. It’s dark auburn, wavy, and lovely. She’s wearing a skating/ballet-like outfit with a short full skirt that floats into the air as she leaps and comes back down. She looks youthful and mature—perhaps in her late 20s or early 30s. She’s beautiful and obviously accomplished. I feel proud that she’s out there doing her thing.
Is this Mom?
When I wake up from the dream I feel surprised, happy and sad all at the same time. I recall a fragment of another dream I had several days earlier. I’m in a room. I don’t know where. I’m standing behind a woman seated in a chair. Her back is toward me, and she’s leaning over something she is creating—a work of art? I’m not sure.
My attention goes to her beautiful hair—just like the hair I see on my mother in the skating rink dream. However, in this earlier dream I don’t recognize the woman right away as my mother. I know I’ve seen hair like that before, and when I look at the sliver of profile on the right side of her face, I’m surprised and delighted to see this is my mother. She seems totally at ease with herself and focused on what she’s doing, even though others are in the room.
I don’t recall many pre-polio dreams about Mom or about her looking this young, content, rested, and energetic. When she married my father, she seemed to accept the world she entered. Yet my writing project highlights not simply how damaging that world was to me, but how damaging it was to her. Yes, she was my father’s collaborator.
If, however, I put her role in the context of human trafficking, she becomes a victim collaborator—like other women victims who earn the trust of their male ‘owners.’ It seems they survive by denying human bonds of affection or compassion for the victims over whom they are given limited power.
In Our Backyard by Nita Belles includes a chilling story that suggests this. A daughter and then her mother get lured into human trafficking via a modeling agency. The mother eventually becomes trusted enough to pave the way for new recruits, and is allowed limited ‘freedom’ to carry out tasks on behalf of her traffickers. One day, this mother sees an opportunity to escape, and takes her daughter along.
It seems only a mother would remain connected enough by human bonds to even dare this—risking her own freedom and life by bringing her daughter along. Ironically, however, this tiny crack in their prison was made possible by first demonstrating she could and would treat her daughter no differently than she treated all the other young women.
Though my mother collaborated with my father, she retained her capacity to relate to me, especially after I was married. I’ve often regretted that she died before my father. Perhaps a bit of my stumbling courage when I confronted my father openly in 1993 gave her permission to own her own humanity and womanhood.
A New Year’s toast to Mom: My Number One Creative Ally!
© Elouise Renich Fraser, 28 December 2014
It’s April 2011
Diane is in my dreams—
tall, beautiful
wearing a long, full
light mocha winter coat
that’s gently flared
in the back.
I see her
from the back,
looking over her left shoulder,
smiling at me. Read the rest of this entry »
September 2009. I’m still working on Week 1 in The Artist’s Way by Julie Cameron. The writing exercise asks me to name the voices of my Allies and Enemies. Not imaginary voices, but voices of real people who in one way or another encouraged or discouraged my creative self-worth.
My top three Enemy voices
When I was young I never told anyone I wanted to be a writer or an artist. Read the rest of this entry »
“No, I will not do that.” Tough words, particularly when I’m not clear about what I will do. Many times I’ve ended up making excuses or Read the rest of this entry »
God must be laughing right now. Not at me, but with me. It finally happened. Read the rest of this entry »
Telling the Truth 