Telling the Truth

connecting the dots of my life

Tag: Vulnerability

December 19, 2017

mountain of sorrow

mountain of sorrow
strewn with graves of the slaughtered
cannot forget

I wrote this after watching a special report last night on the PBS News Hour. It included video of hastily dug stone-marked graves for men and boys slaughtered on Sinjar Mountain during genocidal war against Yazidis in Sinjar District, Iraq.

It caught my attention because it happened in the last several years, just ‘yesterday,’ right before our eyes. Genocide is an attempt by some human beings to disappear other human beings from the face of the earth. Uncounted numbers of men, boys, women and girls were found unworthy of belonging to the human race. Their crime: being Yazidis.

Advent has its dark side. A Jewish baby born to a young unmarried Jewish woman will one day be judged by his own people and others, and declared unworthy to belong to the human race.

His crime? Speaking the truth about people who populated his world. Sometimes it was unwelcome truth, delivered in unconventional ways. He didn’t hold back or grease the hands and reputations of religious leaders, politicians, or everyday human beings like you and like I.

Nor did he hold back in showing us how to live, speak, and die for truth. Especially when other human beings are being disappeared.

This challenges me. I don’t want to be among the disappeared. Nor do I want to collude in the disappearance of others. What does this mean for me, looking ahead?

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 19 December 2017
Photo found at thestar.com

18 Comments
Video | December 18, 2017

Advent and Lullabies

evensong
wraps today’s anguish
in lullabies

Living with unexpected physical challenges feels like a roller-coaster ride. Up one day, down the next. My short list of essentials for each day is simple: write, read, listen to or play music, exercise, rest, and prepare food as required for my diet. Sometimes my energy level is up, and I’m able to do everything and then some. Other days, I pare it down.

I’m not in love with this situation. Nonetheless, over the last two years I’ve accepted my wellbeing as my number one priority–not the way the house looks, or showing up for gatherings I used to attend regularly.

As the first-born of four daughters, I learned to neglect my own wants and needs in favor of caring for others. Today I often think of myself as the little girl I once was. I focus on listening to her and comforting her–acknowledging in the present that she still lives in me and still needs affection and affirmation.

All I have is one moment at a time–the precious gift of the Spirit of my Creator. Writing has been my best tutor when it comes to connecting with myself in the present. It’s demanding, but immensely rewarding when a haiku or poem begins to take shape on paper because it’s taking shape in me–echoing what’s going on inside me. The haiku above is a case in point.

Even Jesus wasn’t born into this world immune to tough choices or anguish. I can imagine his earliest comfort included lullabies. They also work for me. Especially when I sing them to myself as a way of bringing my past into the present.

The Christmas Lullaby tune above is “Restoration” from William Walker’s shape-note song book, Southern Harmony. It’s an old American tune, sung here by Doc Watson.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 18 December 2017
YouTube video found here 

Leave a comment
December 16, 2017

Listening to Extreme Poverty

An article this morning about Australian Professor Philip Alston’s survey of extreme poverty in the USA did me in. It’s Advent. A time for hope, joy and expectation. Yet for over 41 million Americans there is no expected arrival of anything but escalating hunger, despair, disease, death, and promises not kept. Professor Alston’s written report will go to the United Nations next May.

It’s easy to blame politicians and corporations. Or the super rich. But that doesn’t cut it.

Taking time to listen deeply is a spiritual discipline. I love pondering a beautiful flower or sunset. It’s something else, though, to ponder a problem this large. What is this reality trying to tell me?

There’s a growing divide between those who care to understand extreme poverty, and those who choose to ignore it or put the blame somewhere else. For example, we know charitable agencies, churches, outreach programs and governmental services work daily to ease the anguish and dehumanization of USA-style extreme poverty.

We may also believe that if extreme poverty isn’t addressed systemically, our personal efforts are mere bandages–a waste of time, effort and money. Yet the message of Christianity and other faiths includes the importance of showing hospitality to strangers. Especially those in distress.

So what can I do about any of this?

I don’t have answers. The easiest thing would be to shake my fist at politicians and super-rich ‘one-percenters.’

I’m reminded of Dorothee Soelle’s book on Suffering. What’s needed from me isn’t outrage, shaking my fist, or solutions to solve the problems of people trapped in extreme poverty. What’s needed is simpler than that, and a thousand times more difficult.

I need to listen in silence, the way Dorothee Soelle listened to victims of the Viet Nam war. That might mean listening to long, painful silence before words are found and haltingly spoken with anguish or rage.

Yet if I don’t learn to listen patiently for the story of a person trapped in the despair, humiliation and disenfranchisement of extreme poverty, I won’t understand my story. ‘Their’ story is another piece of my story, whether I like it or not. It’s also part of the story of the USA, whether we like it or not.

The photo at the top shows the sanctuary of a church in San Francisco that opens its doors weekdays from morning through mid-afternoon for homeless persons to rest and sleep. It came from the article I read this morning.

Praying each of you will have a hope-filled Sabbath rest.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 16 December 2017
Photo of St. Boniface in San Francisco found at msn.com in “A Journey through a Land of Extreme Poverty: Welcome to America” 

8 Comments
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 9, 2017

This isn’t what I expected

I wrote the free-verse poem below last night after writing a long journal entry about the current state of my life. The poem is an open letter to my Creator. An attempt to lay it out just as it is, given unexpected health events of the last few years that seem to have hemmed me in.

This isn’t what I expected
This endless run of days and nights
Wondering why this and not that

Retirement was a golden orb
A sparkling promise that kept me going
Until I couldn’t go any longer

There’s so much to love about it
That it feels like betrayal to say this:
I don’t feel retired; I feel disappeared.

Disappeared from what’s happening
Disappeared from minds and memories
Disappeared from action, whatever it is today

I wake each morning wondering
What will be the meaning of this day?
What will it add up to when the sun goes down?

Writing is a gift and blessing I gladly receive
Not going to work each day is also a blessing
Until I no longer have any ‘real work’

No need to be somewhere at a certain time
No collaboration about things that make a difference
Or participation in discussion about things that matter

And there’s the rub—this strange reality of just being
Instead of measuring myself by what I do
Or how many people are counting on me to ‘be there’

Is it really enough to take care of this tired old body
With its growing list of limitations and special needs?
Is this the meaning of my life at this time?

Please advise.
Elouise

P.S. to my Dear Readers: I’m grateful beyond words for your presence in my life. Blogging is my lifeline. I can’t imagine the last several years without it. Thank you for being here—many of you from the beginning. I pray you’re finding hope and peace this Advent season, no matter what your current circumstances may be.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 9 December 2017
Image found at rccbonsecours.com

8 Comments
December 9, 2017

breathless air

breathless air hangs
beneath steel-gray sky —
birds take cover

That’s what I saw outside our kitchen window this morning. Not the little bird, but the calm before a snow storm making its way up the East Coast. Right now the first flakes are coming down steadily. And I’m going into hibernation mode!

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 9 December 2017
Photo found at pinterest.com

5 Comments
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 7, 2017

yesterday’s ghosts

yesterday’s ghosts
stir in their graves
dismembered

They want to shame and blame me. Turn me into the problem I am not. Make it my fault. Or the fault of my overactive emotions or hormones run wild.

And the tears. If I would just stop getting all emotional about it. It’s over and done with, Sister. Get used to it. This is the way of the world. If you don’t like the heat, don’t stand so close to the fire.

I’m proud to be a thriving survivor. Like other women and men, I’ve been sexually harassed, humiliated and punished physically, verbally and emotionally. Sadly, the patterns of my childhood and youth didn’t stop when I became an adult woman — a supposedly mature, thoughtful, educated, gifted, responsible, compassionate, dependable, reliable woman, true to her word.

My recent nightmare with its scoffer’s row of men intent on intimidating me brought it all back. As did my recent review of private journal entries from my years as a seminary professor and dean. To say nothing of public figures coming forward to talk about their experiences.

Where will this lead? Is it simply the media event of the year? I pray it is not.

My father set the stage early in my life. He was the boss. I was not. He wore his medals proudly: Male, Ordained, Father, The Boss.

Instead of learning to stand on my own two feet without apology, I was subjected to formation in unquestioning submission to men (unless they were obviously ‘bad’ men), submission to my teachers, submission to my employers, submission to the governing powers, and submission to God as a disobedient, rebellious, stubborn and angry little girl.

My father also formed me in the sick opposites of these submissions. These included lack of respect for my female body, female voice, thoughts, instincts, intuitions, emotions, and my identity as God’s beloved daughter child. They also included formation in going along to get along.

  • Smiling whether I wanted to or not
  • Being polite instead of truthful
  • Not hurting other people’s feelings
  • Not embarrassing myself or others in public
  • Doing as I was told, without asking questions or grimacing

Today I’m holding out for women and men who won’t allow their ghosts to rest in peace until justice is done. Not for us, but for all the children of this world, especially those without safe allies. Otherwise, this will indeed become a passing fad–for all but the powerful few.

I’m in this  for the long haul. How about you?

Elouise♥

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 7 December 2017
Image found at raisingintuitivechildren.com

4 Comments