Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Nature

December 14, 2017

bleak winter knocks

bleak winter
knocks on the door –
my heart leaps

We’re in the middle of an unusually cold, windy December. Too cold to do my normal outside walking. Gusts of wind rattle our old house, toss garbage cans around in the driveway. Our cat Smudge goes on high alert.

It’s also Advent, time to prepare for the coming of the Messiah. I can’t help making the connection between our bleak winter and one of my favorite Christmas carols, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” words by Christina Georgina Rossetti.

The last verse is my favorite. I memorized it when I was a child.

What can I give Him,
Poor as I am? —
If I were a Shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part, —
Yet what I can I give Him, —
Give my heart.

As a child I didn’t understand what it meant to give my heart. Today I understand more, but not everything. It’s comforting to give my heart to the One who knows me best. Especially when bleak winter comes knocking at the door in the midst of uncertainty and change. Perhaps my small heart will warm and comfort this Child who is so like and unlike I am.

Advent blessings to each of you, from my heart to yours.♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 14 December 2017
Photo by David Byrne, found at http://www.85mm.co.uk
“Bleak Winter,” Scotland

9 Comments
December 13, 2017

startled birds

startled birds swerve
surfing updrafts and downdrafts —
thick tree trunks sway

As seen early this morning. Birds and trees dealing with a turbulent, invisible ocean of air.

I’m looking out a window in our heated house, wondering whether I could survive outdoors. It’s hard enough to survive inside.

Life is turbulent. It isn’t easy to surf icy blasts of unexpected change and disorientation. Witness the last few weeks and years, with more to come.

Sometimes I wish I were more like birds riding updrafts and downdrafts, swerving and turning with the wind. Or like huge tree trunks that sway precariously, yet survive virtually unscathed.

Then again, maybe they figured it out ages ago, and have tried for decades to show me how it’s done. I think I’m beginning to catch on, though it still takes my breath away.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 13 December 2017
Photo found at pinterest.com

8 Comments
December 11, 2017

disappeared


disappeared seeds
sown in haste germinate –
my heart skips a beat

It’s the late 1950s. I’m a young teenager, sitting at the supper table with my parents and my three sisters. I’m teary, feeling crampy and a bit nauseous. Not eager to eat anything.

My father tells me to stop crying and eat my dinner. I can’t stop crying, and my stomach ache isn’t going away.

My father tells me to stop this nonsense immediately, or he’ll give me something to really cry about. I burst into loud tears and run upstairs to my bedroom, sobbing my heart out.

My childhood, youth and adulthood are littered with occasions that replicate or echo these dynamics. My biggest problem, so it seems, is that I’m over-emotional and haven’t yet learned to control myself.

I learned to ‘disappear’ myself by choking on my emotions, swallowing them, eating them alive, or trying to paste a happy face over my true face.

When I wrote about the pain of retirement, I said I feel ‘disappeared.’ I didn’t hear it then as a loaded word. But now I do. A cue of sorts. The kind that suggests the opposite of what it seems to say. Following is my un-disappeared, crystal clear comment about myself.

No, I do not feel sorry for myself. No, I’m not stuck in a gear I need to shift out of. No, I’m not simply repeating myself over and over and over again.

My words are my words. My feelings are my feelings. I’m as entitled to them as anyone else is to his or hers. I dare not sit on them, deny them, modulate them to suit your ears, or beg forgiveness for not living up to what you believe should be the standard for my life.

I’ve never understood why some men (also some women) have, throughout my life, felt free to give advice about how I should NOT be. Or about what I should be ‘over’ by now.

My father buried and tried to smother in his body and soul the very things he demanded I bury in my body and soul. Not because they would harm me, but because they made him uncomfortable, or didn’t fit his view of the woman he wanted me to become. Or the man he thought he was.

I’m grateful for my feelings. I admit to feeling uneasy sometimes about letting them show. Yet overall, I’m grateful to be a highly sensitive woman of a certain age. Unleashed, untamable, not prone to shame or responsive to scolding.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 11 December 2017
Image  found at ucg.org

5 Comments
December 10, 2017

the morning after first snow

snow cones perched
on back porch rail posts
reach for blue sky

yew decked out
with thick white icing
bows gracefully

oak leaves lie hidden
beneath heavy white carpet
glistening in sun

I sit behind glass
basking in wonderland
this fine Sunday morn

I took the photo with my iPad – not quite as spectacular as the real thing, but good enough. I’m enjoying an Emily Dickinson Sunday morning in Nature’s cathedral—as seen from my kitchen window, with the heat turned up.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 11 Dec 2017
Photo taken by me from my kitchen window

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December 8, 2017

afternoon sun

late afternoon sun
warms exposed tree limbs
waiting for winter

Yesterday afternoon I walked outdoors in bearably cold weather. The bright sun was low in the sky, already dropping beneath tree tops. I could feel the warmth on my face, and wondered whether tree trunks and branches also felt the warmth.

How odd that trees shed their protective leaves for winter and face wind, sleet, snow and ice with bare limbs. We humans, however, pile on layers so thick that we’re scarcely recognizable in our winter combat suits. Especially as we age.

It’s challenging to see trees accept the coming winter stripped down. Naked. All their graceful, awkward or broken architecture clearly on display. Not as a sign of aging, but of strength. Perhaps even courage?

I’d like to think so. In part because I’ve always wanted to be a tree — or at least a poem lovely as a tree. A tree with roots sunk deep into the ground, finding rivers of water in underground sanctuaries untouched by human hands. Still producing fruit in its season.

Happy Friday and happy walking!
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 8 December 2017
Photo found at Shutterstock

9 Comments
December 6, 2017

roughing it

thin whistle
of white-throated sparrow
hangs in mid-air

The first I’ve heard this December. A sign of cold weather ahead? I’m never sure how to interpret this one-of-a-kind winter song. It’s always thin and high-pitched, and often trails off as though frozen in the air. Nothing like the full-throated winter call of the tiny house wren.

Is the sparrow announcing its presence? Maintaining boundaries? Better, perhaps it’s defying all preconceptions about its stamina, determination, survival instincts and importance in the greater order of this world. Reminding me life is greater and perhaps more precious than human existence inside a pre-heated igloo full of comfort and convenience props.

I love my heated dwelling and all my squirreled-away survival rations. I adore the sound and feel of precious radiator heat on a cold morning. I willingly tolerate the heart-stopping roar of my morning Vitamix machine. It enables me to sit at my kitchen table looking out the window, listening for sounds of outdoor creatures and imbibing my half-digested breakfast. Imagining I’m roughing it.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 6 December 2017
Photo found at Audubon.com

6 Comments
December 5, 2017

autumn elegy

spent oak leaves
spiral to the ground
dancing a sad song

Today was dismal and gray. Rain coming tonight, followed by a fierce cold front moving in later this week.

It took a while for this haiku to take shape. The sight of brown oak leaves spiraling down from their high branches did it. If an elegy were a dance, that’s what I saw as they spun slowly to the ground now littered with them.

I felt torn. The ache of falling leaves is inevitable. Yet it’s also beautiful and, in this case, graceful.

I want to be a graceful oak leaf, pirouetting to the ground—having spent all I have to become and live faithfully as the child of God I am. Not without defects, but content. Using the voice my Creator placed in me not to be silenced or hoarded, but to be heard.

This time of my life is filled with aching beauty everywhere—including yours and my own. Thanks for stopping by.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 5 December 2017
Photo by Joel Sartore found at fineartamerica.com

7 Comments
December 4, 2017

twilight

twilight
blankets earth
with silence

This morning I’m a bit slow, still trying to shake off weariness and a feeling of heaviness. No obvious cause or solution. Except to do what I can to keep moving today. One foot in front of the other. Or not.

Twilight can be a magical time of day—as it was yesterday evening when we were out for a late afternoon walk.

Then there was this morning’s twilight. I felt rudely awakened by light leaking through the window blinds. I wanted to pull the covers up over my head and go back to sleep. Which I did for a bit.

I’ve stopped trying to diagnose my body’s reasons. Instead, I’m going with the flow of today—slowly, without high expectations. Enjoying what I can, reading as I’m able, listening to music I love and believing today is important. Not simply for me but for you and for our Creator who loves this tired old world from the inside out.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 4 December 2017
Photo found at pexels.com

9 Comments
December 3, 2017

Advent haiku and more

a day
unlike all others
wakes unannounced

During this Advent season I’m participating in an on-line retreat. An opportunity to slow down, listen with my heart, notice what’s happening in my body, and rest in the person I’ve become after all these years.

Writing haiku is an exercise in listening. Slowly. Without preconceptions. Without urgency. Without wondering when the alarm will go off to jolt me into action.

I readily admit that being retired is an advantage. Yet my internal life doesn’t always remember what it means to be retired. Much less where to focus long, patient listening that does more than take me in circles.

The on-line retreat invites me to write one haiku a day not just during Advent, but for the next six months. As a daily exercise it puts the brakes on my urge to do something. It turns my attention toward nature and our Creator, and invites me to make connections.

The haiku above suggests life is a daily gift from my Creator. A page-turner. An open, still-being-written adventure lived one day at a time. A puzzler without answers or clues at the back of the book. One of a kind.

Today I’m enjoying Sabbath rest at home—taking care of a head cold that began Thanksgiving Day. Wishing for each of you quiet time to listen with your heart and rest in the one-of-a-kind person you are.

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 December 2017
Photo found at pinterest.com, Sunrise in North Dakota

4 Comments
December 2, 2017

daybreak in two parts

I.
rosy dawn
streaks across sky –
clouds blush

II.
morning sun
kisses clouds –
early frost bristles

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 2 December 2017
Photo found at mulierchile.com; taken from Clingmans Dome in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina

3 Comments