Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: the human condition

January 9, 2017

Shine on!

this-little-light-of-mine-2

Do you remember this old song? It went on forever.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna let it shine! ….
Shine all over the neighborhood; I’m gonna let it shine! ….
Shine all over the whole wide world; I’m gonna let it shine! ….
Don’t let Satan blow it out; I’m gonna let it shine! ….
Let it shine ‘til Jesus comes; I’m gonna let it shine! ….

Here, brother
Here, sister
Here’s a little light
Just for you
From me

Who are you?
What do you want?
Did I ask for your help?
Why should I trust you?
Why are you doing this?

Why indeed.

Our little childhood song made it all sound easy. Just shine your little light, Elouise! Small deeds of kindness and compassion. That’s all it takes. Just get out there with your little light and Shine On. Make a difference!

I laugh now—though it isn’t funny at all. In seminary we regularly reminded each other that we weren’t put on this earth as little messiahs. As though we’re sent to make all things new or solve every problem and climb every mountain.

No, we’re mere human beings. Quite wonderful, actually. Just like everyone else. Needy, limited, proud, hungry, beautiful, happy, angry, outraged, duped, out of touch and in denial. Plus a whole lot more.

I’m not against shining our little lights. In fact, I believe it’s the only way we can together make a difference. But there’s the rub.

What does ‘together’ mean? My little childhood song was heavy on each of us doing his or her thing. This usually meant obeying our parents, being nice to people who didn’t treat us nicely, and being sure to tell people about Jesus.

The song also seemed to suggest I should already know what to do when, and would be able to carry it out. Well…not only do I not know what’s best for other people, I often freeze in my boots when it comes to actually doing something.

Hence the need for togetherness. The kind many have experienced in successful 12-step programs. This means meeting regularly with like-minded people, radical surrender to a higher power, and unblinking willingness to face our shortcomings and failures and try again.

No miracles guaranteed. But I’m a witness to the power this way of life has to bring people together. Especially those of us who’ve tried to go it alone and failed, or who live in fear that we’ll be exposed for the failures we believe we are.

Why shine on? Because it lets someone know that you’re there for them, if only for a moment. It also acknowledges your need for others in your life. Not as decorations, but as welcome travel companions—if only for a moment.

That’s what today’s word brought to my mind. That, and the ways you shine in my life.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 10 January 2017
Image from pinterest.com
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Shine

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January 4, 2017

Crossings of No Return

Crossings….

The word resonates with finality
Hints of danger and uncertainty
Sorrow and desperation
Weary clothes and
Hungry faces

One foot in front of the other
Backs burdened with life’s necessities
Bodies and bellies heavy
With tomorrow’s children
Silently pleading

They say our world is disappearing
Melting and boiling away before our eyes
Erupting into a chaotic crisis
Unknown in modern times
Are we ready for this crossing?

I can’t help wondering what lies ahead for this world and for us as citizens of this world. Our insular, isolated, boundaried ways of life don’t work well anymore, and our ways of governing seem to have reached their own point of no return.

Years ago I crossed a line of no return. I chose to be a follower of Jesus Christ. I don’t believe there’s a magic wand answer for any of this world’s upheavals. Yet I do believe we see a direction in the life, ministry and death of Jesus Christ. Not the superstar, but the human being sent to this earth to live and to die as one of us and as God’s beloved son.

Jesus made a crossing of no return when he came to live with and among us. He wasn’t president, emperor or chief. Nor was he a privileged member of the religious or political elite, or a child of God immune to human emotions and agony.

His life was short. Yet in his short life I find a direction that hasn’t changed even with our current global upheavals. Taking my cues from Jesus, I’m to love God, my neighbors and myself. Acknowledge my human limitations and need for others. Be ready to accept and offer hospitality from and to strangers. Bear the cost and share the compassion of being a follower of Jesus Christ.

Do I feel strong? Rarely. Do I feel ready? Rarely. Do I feel like giving up? Sometimes. Yet the steady, courageous, compassionate and steel-eyed clarity I see in narratives about Jesus’ life on this earth remains my True North. The one point on my compass that won’t change no matter what it takes to get from here to there.

What does this look like day by day? It’s all in my outlook. Each encounter might become an opportunity to ask for help or to offer help as I’m able and ready to identify myself as a follower of Jesus Christ. Most important, I’m not a savior. I’m another human being who won’t make it in this life on her own.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 4 January 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Crossing

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January 2, 2017

Interior space

Interior space
Unsettled body
Dreams bizarre
Young men
Novices
Uncertain
What to do next
I don’t know
Who to trust
Flying this plane
Murky fog
Lingers
Gives cover
The solace
Of not knowing
Slow drip
Of rain drizzles
Hazy unclear
What comes next
Is this the end
Or am I
Being born
Yet again?

No way I could capture this dream in prose. The sad overflow of a toss-and-turn night? No apologies. Glad to be awake and alive.

Maybe a weather front ambushed me. Or too much happiness yesterday. Whatever. The up-and-downness of recovery took a little dip. Trying to find my balance.

In my bizarre dream the little plane lurched out of the clouds without warning and landed on a beach in Florida. Sunny sky, gorgeous water rolling in, crowds of ice and snow refugees arriving, basking in the sun in the middle of winter. All a bit surreal.

Happy New Year, Day 2!

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 2 January 2017
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Interior

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December 29, 2016

Don’t lose heart!

Renewal: urban renewal, spiritual renewal, book renewals (from the library), renewed vision, renewed strength, and renewed energy.

A-ha! Renewed energy! I long for it, yet experience it these days in tantalizing bits that often dissipate overnight.

From the day I was born in 1943, I began dying. Stranger still, everyone around me thought I was just revving up. Maturing. Developing. Becoming a mature, responsible adult woman.

Which means on my way to death. Right?

No one lasts on this earth forever. How dismal can it get? I’m not a pessimist, but I’m also not a gung-ho optimist, so finding my balance from day to day is dicey.

My tock is ticking down. Relentlessly.

Yet I feel more myself than ever before. More at peace with who I am, if not at peace with everything that happens to me. And yes, I want to be renewed. Who doesn’t?

Renewal hurts. Something has to go. Or be altered. Even then, renewal isn’t guaranteed. Especially if I think I’ll get back what I just lost. So that my life can go on ‘as usual.’

Things falling apart is usual. Making do is usual. Total restoration of all bits and pieces of me is neither usual nor guaranteed in this life.

This past year, things fell apart. Unexpected visitors (heart problems, broken jaw, Lucy pacemaker) moved in to stay. When I’m willing to stop, accept, and listen to them, they free my spirit and my writing voice in ways I don’t understand.

So I haven’t lost heart, and I pray you haven’t either. For me, renewal is happening alongside things falling apart internally and externally. Especially renewal of my inner-woman voice that leaps out of my fingers when I sit down at my computer.

Thanks for reading and listening!

Elouise ♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 29 December 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Renewal

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December 28, 2016

Pillage: I loathe this word

I loathe this word I don’t want to say
Nothing about it attracts me
Or suggests anything to say about it
Much less use it in a sentence 

My abhorrence lies in its power
To bring images to mind —
Images that compound this world’s evil
Leaving no peace for victims 

Yet one image alone gives me hope
It’s stronger than these robbers —
The image of Jesus Christ
Whose birth we just recognized 

I imagine JC—not the Superstar
And not Jesus meek and mild
Rather, JC storming the bastions of hell
Within and without 

Cleaning out the stench of our stables
Knocking relentlessly on our doors
Anointing our scars and wounds
With oil of healing and compassion 

JC turns pillaging on its head
Inside out and upside down
Not with the flick of a magic wand
But in his life of full allegiance
To the One who sent him to our aid —
Victims and perpetrators alike

How can we not welcome his appearance?

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 28 December 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Pillage

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December 26, 2016

elusive retreat

gray overwhelms

dreary drab

shades of life

without color

body aches

tears pile up

unable to retreat

one more day

one more year

lost forever

bar clanks shut

on doors creaking

weighted down

heavy chapters

in a book

never written

***

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 26 December 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Retreat

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December 18, 2016

Advent and Post-Election Questions

light-shining-in-the-darkness

The votes are cast; the election is over. I feel lost. Not because of changes in me, but in my context. Who am I now? Which way will I go? What about tomorrow?

I want to plead with God for a different outcome. But heaven is silent. The votes were cast, and the election is over. Read the rest of this entry »

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December 15, 2016

How to be Wise, not Good

I grew up believing the Bible would teach me to be a good girl. The other option? Ignore the Bible and grow up to be a bad girl. I just needed to read the Bible, study it, and take it to heart. 

Maybe I’m trying to split a hair, but I don’t think being ‘good’ is the same as being ‘wise.’ Many ‘good’ girls grow up to be like fools. Not all the time, and not by choice. Sadly, they weren’t encouraged to learn the meaning of wisdom—not just as an idea, but as a way of life.  Read the rest of this entry »

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December 10, 2016

Abide with me

From the moment I saw the daily prompt, I couldn’t get it out of my mind: Abide.   One of those old-fashioned words I learned early in life. Not in school, but from singing a beloved old hymn over and over, “Abide with me.”

Stay with me. Dwell with me. Don’t leave me alone. I need your presence, especially now.

Is it my age? Possibly. But it’s more than that.

It’s Advent. I can’t get out of my mind the image of Jesus coming to abide then and now with us as human beings. Especially in times of distress, change and upheaval. A baby comes to abide with a family he didn’t choose and never met before birth. As a young man he gathers a group of children, women and men, perhaps hoping they’ll abide with him until he meets his end. Indeed, one of them promises never to leave him. And yet….

It isn’t just that I feel better when someone abides with me. It’s that I don’t want to be abandoned in this life. At any point along the way, and especially at the end. Anyone will do. Anyone who will abide with me, even for a little while. Jesus understands this longing, this need for other people willing to be present, to remind us physically that we’re not alone. Especially, but not only during hard times.

And so this old hymn resonates for me. There’s One who is already there for me up to and beyond my farewell to this earth. My head knows this. My heart yearns to see what I cannot see. Touch what I cannot touch. And so I sing….

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide;
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day,
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away,
Change and decay in all around I see;
O thou who changest not, abide with me.

I need thy presence every passing hour;
What but thy grace can foil the tempter’s power?
Who, like thyself, my guide and stay can be?
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me.

I fear no foe, with thee at hand to bless;
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness.
Where is death’s sting? Where, grave, thy victory?
I triumph still, if thou abide with me.

Hold thou thy cross before my closing eyes;
Shine through the gloom, and point me to the skies;
Heaven’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee:
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

Amen.

Words: H. F. Lyte, 1847
Music (Eventide): W. H. Monk, 1861

Text copied from The Hymnal of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of American, published by The Church Pension Fund 1940, 1943

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 10 December 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Abide

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December 5, 2016

They fly, forgotten

…as a dream dies at the close of day.

This line from Isaac Watts’ well-known hymn popped into my head when I saw the prompt for today.

When I looked up all stanzas of “Our God, Our Help in Ages Past,” I was surprised to see several that aren’t included in most hymnals today. Without them, Watts’ meaning is changed ever so slightly.

To illustrate, here’s a lightening-quick look at one of the omitted stanzas, sandwiched between the last two familiar stanzas of the hymn.  First, a familiar stanza.

Time, like an ever rolling stream,
Bears all its sons away;
They fly, forgotten, as a dream
Dies at the opening day.

I hear this as primarily a reference to those who serve gallantly and die in loyal service to their countries, daughters as well as sons.

Yet the very next [now omitted] stanza catches my eye. Watts had something bigger on his mind. Imagine singing this in your church or other place of meeting.

Like flowery fields the nations stand
Pleased with the morning light;
The flowers beneath the mower’s hand
Lie withering ere ‘tis night.

I hear an invitation to check false national pride at the door. False pride that believes my/our nation is intrinsically superior to other nations and thus more enduring. Some call this exceptionalism.

Isaac Watts reminds us that all nations, like human beings, are flowers of the field that wither and die. Sooner, rather than later. Hence, the comforting and sobering truth of the last familiar stanza:

Our God, our help in ages past,
Our hope for years to come,
Be Thou our guard while troubles last,
And our eternal home.

~~~

As for us, our life is like grass,
We grow and flourish like a wild flower;
then the wind blows on it, and it is gone –
No one sees it again.
Psalm 103:16 (The Good News Translation)

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 5 December 2016
Response to WordPress Daily Prompt: Vanish

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