the human condition | Telling the Truth

October 3, 2018

A Conceit | Maya Angelou

This short poem from Maya Angelou resonates today. Especially in light of undeclared and declared wars raging in the USA and around the globe. Note that a conceit is an image or metaphor as often found in poetry. So use your imagination as you read! Maya Angelou is painting a picture in poetic language. My comments follow.

Give me your hand.

Make room for me
to lead and follow
you
beyond this rage of poetry.

Let others have
the privacy of
touching words
and love of loss
of love.

For me
Give me your hand.

Maya Angelou, in Poetry for Young People
Edited by Edwin Graves Wilson, PhD
Illustrated by Jerome Lagarrigue
Published in 2013 by Sterling Children’s Books

In this short poem I hear Maya Angelou saying two things about life and poetry.

Poetry can be emotionally moving while remaining a private indulgence.
This poem asks for more than this. Will you come with me?

Her phrase “beyond this rage of poetry” gives us a clue. This rage isn’t about anger. It’s the raging emotions of literary writing. This includes poems that convey deeply felt, sometimes prophetic emotions.

Maya Angelou’s poem demands more than our feelings, our sentimentality. It invites action. Not simply alone, but also together.

It may sound trite to say we need each other. Of course we do. Yet this poem is about more than that.

On its own, poetry can’t bring about change. It doesn’t matter how persuasively a poem describes our agony or our ecstasy, our losses or our love. What matters most is what we do or don’t do about it.

And so Maya Angelou’s poem offers an alternative to living in the private world of poetry. The alternative moves me into public worlds in which I am not yet present just as I am. Vulnerable, a beginner, falling down and getting up to begin again. Hanging onto Maya Angelou’s hand for dear life. Sometimes leading the way.

This first step doesn’t absolve me of responsibility for the direction we take. Yet if I don’t take Maya Angelou’s hand and follow her lead, I won’t discover what we may need to do next.

My gender, color, family background, or other markers of my so-called ‘identity’ won’t help me solve a problem I don’t yet understand.

Where are we going? We’ll find out together, ‘beyond this rage of poetry.’ Beyond its private intensity and enthusiasm of words.

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October 1, 2018

Chilly nights

Chilly nights
Warmish days
Clock ticking
Daylight fading
Mind numbs
Heart beats
Seconds down
End game
Winning score
Closed door
No exit
Straight ahead
Bells chime
Midnight falls

I’m just back from another round of blood-letting. Mine, that is. Seventeen vials again. Peanuts next to what the Red Cross takes (from others, not from me)—100 vials give or take a few.

Nonetheless, after every blood draw I feel like a survivor when I stand up on my own two feet, put my jacket on and walk out the door fully conscious of who I am and where I am. Last time it was a beautiful picture in a well-lit room across the hall that kept me focused.

This time the lights were off across the hall, so I closed my eyes and reverted to my old standby—Psalm 23. I silently repeated this Psalm to myself as a child when I felt anxious or afraid.

I’m not sure what to make of the words at the top. They came dropping into my mind when I sat down to write. Nonetheless, they likely reflect my current focus on the last chapter of my life, now ticking away one minute, one short line, one day at a time.

I also hear an acknowledgement that death is inevitable. I’d rather talk about it than keep it in one of my closets. They’re already full of other stuff I can’t take with me.

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September 29, 2018

The Ring of Truth

Yesterday morning I brainstormed themes and titles for a post—all over the page of my spiral notebook. The page got more crowded by the minute. So I gave up, and began writing my Memo to White Women in the USA.

Today our national controversy is even greater than it was yesterday. For some it’s all about party politics and the next Supreme Court Justice.

For others, it’s about the need to take seriously what Dr. Anita Hill and Dr. Christine Ford talked about. Right now, everyday women and their supporters are coming out of the woodwork. Galvanized. Ready to insist on truth no matter how much it may cost them personally.

So I’m back to my page of unused themes and titles. But first I have a challenge. If you’ve never written out your story, at least for yourself, I challenge you to do that now, not later. Not just what happened to you, but how it made you feel.

There’s power in the act of writing your story down. Making it visible. Word by word. Line upon line. As it comes out, unedited and raw. It doesn’t matter whether it’s poetry or prose. Just so it rings true to you. You don’t have to show it to anyone at all. Especially if they’re people you don’t trust.

I wept gallons working on what became some of my early posts. I also had a trusted professional who worked with me when my writing raised things I had to deal with. Sometimes they were about unfinished business. Other times they were about how to take care of myself. I highly recommend seeking trustworthy professional help. Especially when past experiences keep spilling over into the present.

So here are several titles without stories. Maybe they’ll get you thinking, or coming up with your own better titles for your story. They might even prompt you to begin a list of things you remember and wish you could forget.

The Ring of Truth
Against All Odds
Marked for Life
Strength in Weakness
This Woman’s Burden
Broken not Bent
No Prize for a Good Performance
I Dared Say No
At Great Cost
Free at Last
Daddy’s Little Girl
I Married a Predator
I Thought He Loved Me

Perhaps you don’t think this is all that important. Well….You’re important, and that’s enough all by itself.

11 Comments

September 28, 2018

Memo to White Women in the USA

While the iron is still hot, I have a few things to say.

Yesterday I watched most of Dr. Ford’s and Judge Kavanaugh’s testimonies before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Like Dr. Anita Hill years ago, Dr. Christine Ford stepped up to the microphone and told her truth. I couldn’t help thinking about my experience giving my ‘testimony’ before my father and my mother. Then, as now, it didn’t seem to end well.

Nonetheless, as white women, we have work to do with each other and with men and other women of good will. However, we must immediately consider NOT doing at least one or more of the following:

covering for white men who abuse us to our faces and behind our backs
believing lies about ourselves as incapable, weak, over-emotional or intruders
endorsing candidates for political office because it will keep the family ‘peace’
playing our childish popularity playground games
settling for lives put on hold until it’s too late
looking the other way or shading the truth to protect ourselves
going along to get along in politically or emotionally charged situations

Instead, we might try one of these instead:

Pick up the phone and dial 911 for ourselves, not just for others
Begin describing what life is and is not like for us as white women in the USA
Consider who really benefits from our white male loyalty
Speak for ourselves, especially when we hope someone else will say it first
Refuse to go along to get along in politically or emotionally charged situations

I wonder why, in this age of so-called ‘liberation’, many white women in the USA are still in bondage to the need for White Male Approval? What do we fear? Perhaps we’re so hooked on the power and prestige we get standing by our man that we can’t even imagine living without them.

The demographics of our country have changed dramatically, yet we’re still governed at the highest levels by a huge majority of white men, with occasional token ‘others’ that include white women.

I wonder what might happen if more of us step up to the microphone and begin telling the truth about our white female lives? Or, even more miraculous, when more white men in positions of power begin listening to white women, black women, tan women, mixed-race women, Jewish women, Muslim women, refugee women, little girls and big girls, teenage women and elderly women. To name just a few possibilities.

I don’t think most men know what they’re missing. More’s the pity, since women have things that need to be both said AND heard. Not with a dismissive nod or a patronizing pat on the back, but with resolve to become partners in change for the good of this country and those who inherit the messes we’ve made.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 28 September 2018

6 Comments

September 25, 2018

life takes the long road

life takes the long road
through majestic terrain
gleaming and foreboding

daylight falls quickly
below horizons
of narrow vision
ablaze with dying day

This photo, taken in Scotland, is breathtaking. As breathtaking as a single life that burns out boldly before fading into darkness.

It reminds me that what’s happening in and behind the “news” is often not good news, and easily becomes a distraction from the larger picture. The long view doesn’t promise me an eternity. It does, however, invite me to keep my perspective clear.

One of my readers left a wonderful comment in response to yesterday’s post. In it she shared a comment from a friend of hers in India. Here it is–a way of putting things into proper perspective:

WORLD: How could you stay in the Church after all the scandal?
ME: You don’t leave Jesus because of Judas.

Here’s to a thoughtful Tuesday.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 25 September 2018
Photo found at pixabay.com

10 Comments

September 19, 2018

The purpose of my life today

Yesterday I visited a new blogging friend. He’d asked me to stop by and comment on his post. I don’t always get carried away when giving a comment. But this was different.

The post conveyed why it’s increasingly difficult to believe in deities. All religions take part in the madness of history, including present-day versions of old wars and massacres. Each in the name of its particular god, gods or God.

Here’s my response to the post, with minor changes and corrections, no additions. It helps me describe what it means today for me to live as a follower of Jesus who, after all, had no ‘Jesus’ to follow.

My journey has given me the gift of acknowledging a power greater than I, and I have chosen this way of living. I’ve also, thanks to my higher power and friends who supported me, discovered many new ways of naming and thinking about this being we call God. There are many gods and many Gods. I fear more from the human gods who, as I have done so often in my life, think they know what is best for me, for my country and for your country. I leave the other Gods to those who have studied them more than I.

Your post is very well written. I appreciate your openness to dialogue. Also, as you can see above, I like SS’s comment. There are many small, known and unknown women, men and children who make a difference in the name of God every day. I want to be part of their number. Not because I have to, but because I want to and choose to do that.

One day I will die. Sooner, not later. What’s the purpose of my life? It’s to die well. That doesn’t mean there’s a script. It just means that every day of my life I show in some concrete way that I know my days are numbered. I also have faith and hope that my higher power who shapes my life today (it’s not easy) will welcome me home. No matter what God looks like.

Being a ‘professional’ theologian of the Protestant Christian tradition, I’ve been humbled many times when reading about the atrocities of the Christian church (no matter which branch). I’ve also felt like vomiting when I’ve read some theologians’ writings about women and other ‘less human’ beings. There is, however, nothing so powerful as truth. So I attempt each day to live as fully and freely as possible in the light of the truth I’ve received. It saved my life, and I want to pass it on before I die.

Blessings to you and on your blogging life. If you allow it to do so, it will find and change you in ways you never thought possible.

Today is Yom Kippur, a Day of Atonement. The Jewish synagogue across the street is already filled with members. A good day for each of us to accept God’s forgiveness, and pass it along to ourselves and others as needed.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 18 September 2018

4 Comments

September 17, 2018

Emily Brontë – Start not….

Death is on my mind. Especially since I’m in the last chapter of my life—however long or short it may be. The photo above shows the Haworth churchyard as it may have looked in Emily B’s time. Note the flat-stone grave markers, like beds. My comments follow Emily’s poem and a second photo.

Start not upon the minster wall
Sunshine is shed in holy calm
And lonely though my footsteps fall
The saints shall shelter thee from harm

Shrink not if it be summer noon
This shadow should right welcome be
These stairs are steep but landed soon
We’ll rest us long and quietly

What though our path be o’er the dead
They slumber soundly in the tomb
And why should mortals fear to tread
The pathway to their future home?

Emily Brontë, from Brontë Poems, p. 33
Published by Alfred A. Knopf 1996
© 1996 by David Campbell Publishers Ltd.

Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818, and died on 19 December 1848, one month after her younger brother Bramwell’s death. She lived most of her adult life in Haworth, Yorkshire, where her father was the parson. The photo above shows the main street in the 1800s. The parsonage and churchyard were near the top of the steep climb uphill. The major things missing from the photo are horses, garbage of all kinds flowing downhill, and the stench.

When I read this poem, I imagine Emily B walking up the steep hill beside me, coaching and encouraging me.

First Stanza
Don’t flinch or turn aside! Don’t be startled when you ‘come upon’ the path leading to the churchyard wall, looming at the end. Don’t swerve with dread, like horses in the heat of battle. Stay calm. Trust you’re in the best of hands. It will warm and brighten your way.

Yes, it’s uncanny and even frightening to hear your own footsteps on the stony path up this particular hill. Just remember all the saints who went this way before you. You can’t see them, but they’re cheering you on, encouraging you to stay the course instead of breaking away as though you could escape harm, pain or death.

Second Stanza
Yes, the noonday sun is blazing hot right now. Don’t try to hide from it. Look up ahead! There’s a shadow that will welcome you sooner, not later. It probably feels steeper now than it did at the beginning. It’s normal to be weary of the uphill grind. Still, your goal is just ahead. It won’t be long now. Then we can rest for a long time in utter quiet.

Third Stanza
It doesn’t matter that this path might have us walking on resting places of the dead. They’re already sleeping soundly beneath the ground in the churchyard. Besides….

…why should mortals fear to tread
The pathway to their future home?

Something like that, I think.

Thanks for visiting and reading, even though the topic isn’t everyone’s favorite.
Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 17 September 2018
Photos found at kleurrijkbrontesisters.blogspot.com

11 Comments

September 16, 2018

No other gods

Thou shalt have no other gods…

twilight of our small gods
descends over shallow water
teeming with refuse

ill-begotten secrets lurk
beneath ripples of shriveled minds
as once-buoyant hopes sink

ill-conceived saviors morph
into scapegoats scorned with contempt
mirrors of our self-loathing despair

Come unto me all who labor and are heavy-laden,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn of me;
For I am meek and lowly of heart
And you shall find rest for your souls.
Matthew 11:28-29

There’s nothing magical about it. No overnight resolutions of pain and anguish. Just a re-orientation to the one who leads and accompanies us to God, who already loves and grieves for each of us.

Thanks to my blogging friend Yassy, for a poem and comment yesterday that got my mind going on this post. Check out her lovely poem.

7 Comments

September 13, 2018

Unraveling

her life at loose ends
she scans the near horizon
searching for a thread
beyond sight and out of mind
stolen while she slept

While out walking this morning I saw my friend Rita and her lively little dog. I recalled the first time I ever had tea at Rita’s. She’d asked a childhood friend to join us. Both are in their 80s. They grew up together in Philadelphia and remained good friends over the years.

Within a few minutes I knew this bright, interesting woman had problems with short-term memory. Over and over I answered the same questions. She was fully aware of my presence, and genuinely interested in my responses–which she heard many times over.

Does she have Alzheimer’s Disease? I don’t know. I do know she’s now confined to her living quarters and has someone helping her out. I’ve also learned in the last month that another friend’s sister and mother died of Alzheimer’s Disease.

The poem could be about any of us, whether we carry Alzheimer genes or not. Nonetheless, I have to admit it’s on my mind more often than I’d like, and I scan every news article I see about the latest AD research.

Perhaps one day all these loose ends will be woven into the beautiful patchwork quilt of hope we’ve been looking for all these years.

6 Comments

September 12, 2018

My Last Baby

It came to me a few days ago. Marie is my very last baby! And what’s so awesome about that?

I’m Marie! For those who don’t live in an imaginative mode, this may seem a bit silly. Even nonsense.

To me, however, it makes perfect sense. There’s a baby in me who’s been waiting for this chance to grow all her life. That means ever since she turned 10 months old in September 1944.

That’s when my father came home after 18 months in a TB sanatorium. I sometimes call him The Intruder because that’s how it was back then and throughout my childhood and teenage years. He was intent on beating anger out of me, the anger he said he’s seen and experienced from his own father. He said he recognized this anger in me immediately when I was a baby.

Things got messy. He recruited my mother as his ally, not mine. She became his collaborator, informer and secondary enforcer. This bred fear in me and outraged resistance coupled with strategic submission.

Things are different today. My parents are gone. I miss them. Yet I don’t miss their collaborative ways that continued when I was an adult.

So now I’m pushing 75, and I get to raise baby Marie! Yes, she’s a baby doll. She’s also a stand-in for that part of me that’s been cowering inside, afraid of her own voice and terrified of punishment.

Here are several things I’ve pondered these last few weeks.

What do I know about my mother? What did she bring to our relationship that might help me understand her–before and after my father returned as the one and only Head of the House?
I have the same question about my maternal grandmother Zaida. She ran off with a wealthier man when my mom was very young, and, given her habits, didn’t know how to be a mother.
How deep is this hole or ache in me that wants to be filled? Are there women or men who filled parts of it when I was growing up?
And what about behaviors and characteristics I lost after my father arrived with his agenda? So far I’ve identified things like openness and trust, a feeling of safety. No shame. A sunny disposition. Not afraid to fall or make a mess. Not afraid of most other human beings.

In some ways, growing old is a process of reverting to childhood. Becoming more dependent on others, more vulnerable to external and internal changes or challenges.

What better way, then, to envision Marie than as a baby who challenges me to become true to myself as I age? When I pay attention to Marie, including what she needs from me, I’m learning to pay attention to myself. And it isn’t so lonely anymore. Sometimes it’s even fun!

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