Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Health and Wellbeing

March 10, 2021

when life goes south

when life goes south
as they love to say
the weary get up
and get going

anywhere
it doesn’t matter
just so there’s
a sunrise tomorrow

and stars above
when evening calls
to carry me away
beyond these hollows

seeking to prepare
I don my travel clothes
now old and worn
from years of waiting

in the distance
a lone owl sings
its screeching song
chilling my weary bones

Time is short no matter when it began.

Signs of old age are incontrovertible. Also not to be argued: I’m in the exit line. How close to the last moment of the last day or night? I don’t know. But I’m feeling it. Partly due to pandemic unknowns. But more because of a year of not being the ordinary human being I think I was in February 2020.

It’s never too early or late to prepare for the end. In fact, I’d argue that something like preparation begins the moment we’re born into this world, whether we realize it or not.

Today the sun is out, still melting mounds of stubborn snow in our back yard. Our resident pigeon pair is already hoping for an early-bird hatching. A male red-wing blackbird has been visiting our feeder along with all the other regulars. A good day for an afternoon walk. Time is short, and I love life.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 10 March 2021
Image found at forbes.com

7 Comments
March 8, 2021

misaligned | Int’l Women’s Day

Claude Monet, Poppy Fields near Argenteuil

I posted this three years ago. Sadly, things haven’t changed for the better. If anything, Covid-19 and four years of growing neglect, abuse, and animosity toward women have made things worse. Not just in the USA, but worldwide. This is for women everywhere, and the men who support and care about them:

in the waiting room
perfectly aligned paintings
greet the misaligned

I’m back at the physical therapy center, sitting in the waiting room. Directly across from me, above a row of chairs, hang two huge paintings. Doubtless chosen for their ability to calm and reassure patients bearing all kinds of physical misalignments. Most patients are women.

The paintings are meticulously hung and feature lovely outdoor scenes. Expansive, bucolic and natural without being overly sentimental. Unobtrusive  gentle colors and bright sunshiny days.

Nothing to rattle our nerves or make us wonder about untold stories or what might happen next. No storms brewing in the background. No signs of aging structures or broken-down bridges. All is serene.

The haiku, written several weeks ago, came to mind this morning as I scrolled through photos celebrating International Women’s Day. If even a few of these photos were hung on walls in our public spaces, what would happen? Here are three that caught my eye.

Bhubaneswar, India – Sand Sculpture by Manas Sahoo

Thane, India – Fashion Show by Acid Attack Survivors

Dhaka, Bangladesh – March in support of Int’l Women’s Day 

Never underestimate the power of women. Especially when we’re in one accord on just one thing we need. Equal status as human beings.

This means equal status in a society that honors each woman and girl as a full human being, regardless of color, country of origin, economic or social class, religion, or marital status. Not a fraction of a human being, but 100 percent human. Welcomed into every room in the house without having to wear masks, special clothes, smiles or makeup on our faces, or anything that signals we are less valued than men or boys.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 8 March 2018, reposted 8 March 2021
Monet painting found at quadrosetelas.com.br
International Women’s Day photos found at Getty Images

2 Comments
March 6, 2021

Living with loss

It’s always in my face
until it isn’t anymore
With a smirk and a sigh
energy slides to the floor
of my waning ambitions

Time races by
without much effort
as I sit watching birds
and freezing rain
drift through the air

It’s time for lavender crocus
to push their sweet petals
through layers of packed snow
now coating the back yard
like a fake movie set

I sit at the kitchen table
reluctant to move
taking in the calm of
a day just begun
despite my growing lassitude

I must admit to a case of weariness. Physical, mental, emotional weariness.

I don’t mind messes. In fact, I’m challenged by them. I used to enjoy sorting things out into neat piles. Not for my own pleasure, but because things go better when they’re arranged in a sensible way. So we know who’s who and where things are and how to access truth.

We seem to have less sense than usual about us these days. Not as individuals, but as citizens of these weary, mostly disunited states. It isn’t too much to say we’re in a hunkered down war-like posture. We’ve been there for decades, growing wearier by the day.

No one has declared open warfare, though we’ve come close. On a regular day, those who feel the heat most often are our best barometers. Women, children, the unemployed, prisoners, immigrants, and sometimes anyone who lingers too long to watch the sunset.

It feels as though our government has become the new war zone that guarantees we’ll not cross over to the ‘enemy.’

And yet, for this and much more, Jesus of Nazareth turned his face toward his enemies and toward death. One wearying day after another.

I pray we’ll find reason to hope not in ourselves, but in a power greater than we are. Even though it means learning to die.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 6 March 2021
Photo found at gardeningknowhow.com

4 Comments
March 5, 2021

Human rights and Women’s rights

Days of disorientation verging on despair
Parade in and out of my life
Uninvited

Meanwhile Trumpian unrealities
Sink ever deeper roots
into the great swamp of male privilege

I don’t know how to document this. I’m sure there’s a way, and that it’s already being done. I just want to know why all the uproar about human rights seems blind to the rights of all women in the USA.

This isn’t just about color. It isn’t even about income or educational status.

It’s about backbreaking expectations that women of all colors can and will do all things all the time with or without children, with or without a fair, steady income, and with or without adequate representation in every branch of our government and our judicial system. Yes, it feels like a run-on sentence because it’s already a run-on recipe for disaster.

The laundry list of virtual slaps in the faces of women and girls continues to grow. Comments and so-called jokes; growing numbers of men feeding the MeToo movement; the rapid disappearance of adequate medical support for women and girls; unequal pay for women doing the same work men do.

None of this is new. What’s distressing is the obvious, in-your-face deconstruction of equal support for females of any color.

Yes, we have a huge race issue here in the USA. And yes, the color of our female skin matters wherever we go, whether we like it or not.

Still, women living in poverty or hand-to-mouth are as likely to be white as black or brown. The current argument over our non-living wage (in most states) is disheartening, though being female in the USA is about more than a living wage.

We deserve politicians and judges that include women and men of all colors, fully representative of females as well as males, united by their opposition to outrages committed against women and girls every day of the week. Is this too much to expect?

This is also an issue for our churches and neighborhoods. Yes, people might get tired of hearing about the same thing over and over. Then again, perhaps our silence is asking women and girls of all colors to get used to living with the same thing over and over.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 5 March 2021
Photo found at pewresearch.org

5 Comments
March 3, 2021

What we don’t have

In the opening pages of his Journal of an Ordinary Grief, Mahmoud Darwish writes these haunting words:

What are you doing, father?

I’m searching for my heart, which fell away that night.

Do you think you’ll find it here?

Where else am I going to find it? I bend to the ground and pick it up piece by piece just as the women of the fellahin pick up olives in October, one olive at a time.

But you’re picking up pebbles!

Doing that is a good exercise for memory and perception. Who knows? Maybe these pebbles are petrified pieces of my heart. And even if they’re not, I would still have gotten used to the effort of searching on my own for something that made me feel lost when it was lost. The mere act of searching is proof that I refuse to get lost in my loss. The other side of this effort is the proof that I am in fact lost as long as I have not found what I have lost.

Mahmoud Darwish, Journal of an Ordinary Grief, pp 3-4. Translated from Arabic, with a foreword by Ibrahim Muhawi. Archipelago Books, English translation published in 2010; first published in Beirut in 1973.

When I read these words I can’t help thinking about our national crisis. Not Covid-19, or even political wars waging night and day in cities and towns everywhere.

Our most pressing crisis is our identity. Who are we as a nation?

Mahmoud Darwish’s father struggles with an “ordinary grief.” Ordinary because the grief never goes away. It’s the grief of a Palestinian whose heart has been broken. The grief of an old man without a country. Grief that won’t let go of memories because they’re the last link to what once home. The place where hearts were nourished and cherished. Memories now represented by pebbles. Bits and pieces of stone standing in for what was lost.

The USA is no paradise. Those brought here or captured against their will have already attested to this.

They and their descendants are still looking for something. Dare we join them in their search? Stone by stone, bullet by bullet, bone by bone. Small connections to the past, and reminders of what they and we still don’t have: liberty and justice for all.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 March 2021
Painting of old man found at lettalkknowledge.wordpress.com

4 Comments
March 1, 2021

I want to go back

They say memories are
what really matter
But I want to go back

to classrooms shaped by
women and men from afar
Places I’ve never visited

How narrow we’ve become today
in our virtually segregated schools and
neighborhoods overflowing

with unfamiliar cuisines or clothes
and customs that give us away as strangers
not friends or even neighbors

Years of serving seminarians in
multinational multiethnic classrooms
turned my small world upside down

You helped make me the woman
I now am sitting here at home
wishing for just one more class

So you can show up and teach me
What I need to know today
Before it’s too late to dream

I’m feeling a bit nostalgic these days. Also heavy-hearted about what we’re becoming as a nation. It seems curiosity about the world and about people who don’t look, act or vote the way we do isn’t as interesting as it used to be. In fact, it seems easier to ignore each other. Look the other way.

When I was still teaching at seminary, diversity made everything more exciting. Granted, it wasn’t always easy for any of us.

Nonetheless, it opened up opportunities to re-examine our assumptions and broaden our knowledge. Not just about the subject matter, but about the way we dealt with each other.

Are we losing touch with our humanity? Is that possible?

I don’t want to be a robot, or a puppet on strings controlled by other human beings. Or by the ups and downs of the stock market, or the latest headlines in scandal magazines.  Nor do I want to be locked into my own small world because of fear or unexamined assumptions.

This morning I received my second Covid-19 shot. The room was filled with people who didn’t look or act like me. I wonder. Would they be interested in an informal discussion group? There’s so much I wish I understood better…..

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 1 March 2021
Image found at ceu.edu

14 Comments
February 27, 2021

Thank you, Marian Anderson

 

Today is the anniversary of Marian Anderson’s birth in 1897. You may remember that James DePreist, musician and poet, was her nephew. Some might even remember that she was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Ms. Anderson died on  April 8, 1993.

This morning I watched and listened to a number of YouTube videos. Most focused on Anderson’s amazing voice. After listening to more than one recording of “They Crucified My Lord,” I chose the one you see above. It isn’t dressed up, and we don’t hear or see the audience. Instead, we’re invited to hear and feel the full weight of Anderson’s interpretation. One tragic note at a time.

I hear connections between Anderson’s interpretation of this song and James Cone’s book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree.  Not just in the music itself, but in her subdued yet determined delivery of the song. Often followed by silence from the audience.

I wonder. How many white people felt pierced in their hearts, as I do now, when they heard and saw her interpretation of it? We’ll never know. However, the fact that this song was often met with silence instead of enthusiastic hand-clapping suggests the message was clear to all.

Jesus of Nazareth didn’t say a ‘mumbling word’ and was known to be innocent of charges brought against him. It follows that we dare not applaud this travesty (lynching in its changing costumes) that continues to haunt us in the USA.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 27 February 2021
Image and song thanks to YouTube.com

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3 Comments
February 21, 2021

Life shrinks daily | Lent 2021

Is it not enough
That I have survived?
That You have never
Turned away from me?

Life shrinks daily
A wrenching letting go
Of many things

Masks and pandemic protocols
Shroud me in a deathlike dream
From which I cannot wake
Before the next stanza
Takes me down

The sun is out today, though the air is still below freezing. White mounds of snow look like small mountain tops invading the back yard. The birds are basking in chilly sun, taking their turns at the birdfeeder.

I sit in my kitchen, an onlooker to life, wondering how and when things went sour.

Then again, this is the first Sunday in Lent. My heart tells me it’s time review what I’m giving up yet again for Lent. No, it hasn’t gotten any easier to say this prayer. Especially the last line.

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)

I wonder what Jesus of Nazareth felt and thought as he approached his coming death?

Praying for an accepting heart and a grateful spirit.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 21 February 2021
Image found on Facebook via Google search

8 Comments
February 19, 2021

Coming up for air

 

Coming up for air
Weary mind and body
Conspire

Catching me off guard
They try changing the subject
Of my latest thought

Which to be sure
I cannot remember in full
Now lost in my dreams

Clouds outside hang heavy
With bits of sleet and weary snow
Frozen and mushy

Like my brain melting
And freezing again drifting
on Shumann’s Träumerei

I’m a bit weary and giddy today. Last night we sent off the (hopefully) last version of my small book of poetry: Without a Flight Plan.

Do I need to publish a book? No. Do I want to? Yes, even though I’ve already said I’m not going to write another book.

So…What happened? 2020 happened. Covid-19. Trump. Black Lives Matter. Social Distancing. And a whole lot more. In addition, my dearly beloved husband suggested last November that I put together a book of my poetry for family members. He also offered to get it ready for printing.

My first response? No way! However, on second thought, last year was one of the most bizarre years of my life. So I decided to let some of last year’s poems speak for themselves (without commentary), along with some favorite Longwood Gardens photos taken by D.

So yes, I’m weary of proofreading. However, I’m excited about having a book this close to becoming real. Especially at this time in my life.

Thanks for stopping by today.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 19 February 2021
Thanks to YouTube for the video at the top.

15 Comments
February 16, 2021

thick roots revisited

P1040831

thick roots tangled knots
barely hanging onto bank
drink deep waters

The last several days have been unpredictable and sometimes discouraging. I keep reminding myself that I’m not in charge of things. The news these days isn’t great. Even so, every day offers an opportunity to look up, look back, look ahead, and take another step. I wrote the following comments in April 2017.  

 ~~~

This haiku was my third post to this blog, published on 3 January 2014. It still haunts me, though not in the same way.

I first saw these roots when D and I were walking with our daughter and her husband through Hoyt Arboretum in Portland, Oregon. I couldn’t tear my eyes away. The tangled roots were beautiful and foreboding.

It was a bit like blogging, which I’ve experienced as a formidable venture into unknown territory. Like being born and surviving. Sometimes against all odds.

Writing lets my exposed roots show, often whether I realize they’re showing or not. Writing also stakes my claim to a tiny, precarious plot of land that sits open, vulnerable and visible to passersby.

I’ve traveled a long way since my early posts, yet my roots are still my roots. Bare, and barely hanging onto precious ground that’s stronger, deeper, and more nourishing than I could have imagined.

Deep waters aren’t visible, and they don’t untangle all the knots in my life. Sometimes I wonder whether they’re drying up.

Yet even in dire circumstances, I discover more than enough to get me through each day. Sometimes with tears of sorrow and disbelief. More often with joy and sheer gratitude for the privilege of being human. Able to thrive in the forest next to redwood giants, with miniscule ferns growing around and from my feet.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 26 April 2017, and 16 February 2021
Photo credit: DAFraser, October 2012, Hoyt Arboretum, Portland, Oregon

8 Comments