Vulnerability | Telling the Truth

November 13, 2017

Thank you, Anita Hill

In October 1991 I listened to your courageous testimony about Clarence Thomas. Your words took me back to my first boss. It was 1960. I’d just graduated from high school and was now a clerk in a bankruptcy court. We called the boss ‘Judge,’ though he was actually a referee in bankruptcy. He’d held this governmental appointment for years. He was about 60 years old; I was 16.

By 1991 I’d told only my husband the truth about my first boss. From the beginning, the Judge was on a mission to take me down a notch or two by way of sexual innuendo and outright inappropriate behavior toward me. He knew I was under-age, that my father was an ordained minister, and that I was a Christian. He said he was a Christian, too, and reminded me from time to time of his church membership.

I didn’t know what hit me. I got through three summers plus one full year, thanks to the friendship of other women working in the office, and the kindness of a few male attorneys who knew the Judge and witnessed some of his behavior toward me.

Back then the term ‘sexual harassment’ hadn’t been invented, or connected to Abuse of Power as an issue in the workplace. In addition, my childhood home where I still lived didn’t offer a safe place to talk about anything related to sex.

Flash forward to October 1991, and your testimony before the Senate Committee. I owe you a huge debt of gratitude for at least two things.

First, your personal account was the first I’d ever heard from a professional woman talking about repeated sexual innuendo and inappropriate behavior in the work place.
Second, your courage gave me courage to begin talking about this without fear or shame.

I’m sad this happened to you. I’m sad things happened to me. I’m sad things like this still happen every day to others.

Am I angry? Yes, I am. Angry that even in today’s reports from powerful women about powerful men, we’re still using the language of “if this is true.” Which conveniently overlooks the power imbalance that was in place when the alleged behavior happened. To say nothing of optics and the appearance of evil that seems now to be embraced, not avoided. Embraced, and laughed at in a zillion cartoonish ways.

We are not the world’s latest sleazy entertainment opportunity. We are women with every right to stand up and tell the truth about what happened and didn’t happen to us. And why it must stop now if we’re ever to be Great. Not again, but for the first time ever.

May God grant us serenity to accept what we cannot change, courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Thank you for showing me how this is done. Not just then, but throughout your professional career.

Respectfully,
Elouise Renich Fraser

For a 2016 PBS News Hour video discussion between Gwen Ifill and Anita Hill, click here. It’s outstanding.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 13 November 2017
Photo found at gq.com

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November 11, 2017

I was just a beginner…

I was just a beginner when it happened. In a supposedly safe place. I had a title and stature within an academic community.

From my childhood I’d experienced worse. Regularly. In ways that raised deep shame and self-blame in me. Bad girl.

But this was different. I was an adult. A colleague among adults who were followers of Jesus Christ.

It happened in a crowded hallway between classes. Without a whisper of warning. Just walking to my next class, in conversation with an adult man.

He wasn’t a stranger and he wasn’t my father. He professed to be a supporter of women’s full humanity, and our right to fair and equal access to theological education as students and as professors.

Perhaps he wasn’t thinking? I could give a thousand questions you might have asked me. None would have erased the sudden chill and shame of feeling an uninvited hand patting me on my butt.

I switched my briefcase to my right hand, moved over slightly and kept walking through the hallway as though nothing had happened. Indeed, it never happened again. I maintained my distance, without giving up my friendly demeanor.

My friend touched my body in a way I wouldn’t dream of touching his. It wasn’t a hand on my arm, but my butt. I believed that any attempt to draw attention to this would have made things worse. I felt trapped.

Don’t get me wrong. This is not my big #MeToo story. I’ve already told that in earlier posts—not just about the Shopkeeper, but about my father’s attempts to subdue me, and my first employer’s determination to humiliate me as a young woman just out of high school.

So why tell it? After all, it happened in the blink of an eye.

I’m telling it because we need to attend to the daily impertinences and seemingly small ways in which women, girls, boys and men who aren’t considered manly are reminded of their place and who has power over them.

I’m also telling it because there are millions of everyday people aching to let someone know what happened or is now happening to them. Are we able and willing to listen from our hearts? Without offering solutions or trying to re-write the stories we hear?

Sometimes silence and listening without judgment are the best gifts we give each other. In fact, to listen well is to follow well. The way I imagine Jesus Christ following us and being there when we’re ready for help.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…. (from Psalm 23)

I’m grateful for the women, men, young people and even children who have listened to my story, and shared with me their own experiences. In some ways, this is the table God has set before me in the presence of my enemies—who are more like I am than I could ever guess.

Praying you have a wonderful Sabbath rest.
Elouise ♥

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 11 November 2017
Photo found at theanvilnewsletter.blogspot.com
Daily Prompt:Neophyte

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November 6, 2017

ready for harvest

Ripe and ready for harvest
The meadow lies before me
Still standing yet stripped
Of all but essentials

The sum of my present life
Waits for release into new life
Seeds dropped here and there
With no guarantees

There is no cure for death
The goal toward which
Every heartbeat has driven me
The home for which I long

I feel only loneliness and sorrow
At leaving behind loved ones
And this beautiful threatened world

D took this photo on our last visit to Longwood Gardens. No more stunning meadow flowers, and not so many joyous birds and butterflies. Instead, it’s full of late term life, ready to give its well-aged beauty to anyone willing to spend time looking and listening.

It isn’t as perky as it was just a month ago. Still, it isn’t ugly, or a sign that all is lost. Rather, it’s a sign that life is brief and fragile, and that it’s important to love it while we have it. One way or another, death comes to each of us sooner or later. With or without time for last goodbyes or heartfelt conversations.

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 6 November 2017
Photo taken by DAFraser, 28 October 2017
Daily Prompt: Panacea

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November 3, 2017

weapons of warfare

intention to harm
shot from loaded heart and tongue
backfires brilliantly
exposing raw self-contempt
seething beneath thin skin

What will it take to give us, as a nation, eyes to see beneath the surface of bully tactics?

The best solution I’ve found is to stand before the mirror of my loaded heart and tongue. I’m still learning to acknowledge, comfort and care for deep wounds inflicted upon me by others and by myself. The cost, however, is high. I have to let others in, allowing them to see and love me in my self-contempt, sometimes showing me how it’s done.

Is this lifetime skill of loving ourselves as damaged yet unspeakably valuable persons modeled in our homes, our churches, our schools? Do we know how to see into bullies without being hooked by their bows, arrows and buckshot ways? Do we know how to value them without giving up the duty of holding them accountable for the harm they do us and others? No matter who they are?

Our nation is drowning in an epidemic self-contempt raging across every boundary on our maps. It festers and erupts within national and state politics, and within the homes and streets of our neighborhoods. Directly and indirectly it fuels every shot of every firearm ever invented. How do we address this crisis? Or even begin to acknowledge it as a national emergency that touches each of us, whether we realize it or not.

©Elouise Renich Fraser, 3 November 2017
Image found at theodysseyonline.com
Daily Prompt: Simmer, Neighbors

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October 27, 2017

It doesn’t have to be the blue iris

It’s the end of a busy week, and we’re hoping to visit Longwood Gardens tomorrow (yay!). One thing that helped me stay focused this week was Mary Oliver’s poem below. My comments follow.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Mary Oliver, Thirst, Beacon Press 2006

Mary Oliver invites me to attend to small things right before my eyes, often at my feet. Pay attention. So much attention that I can’t stop thinking about it/them.

One small thing caught my attention this past week. At first I didn’t see any connections. Or hear any voices speaking into my silence. Yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

‘It’ is a small, striped-tail chipmunk (ground squirrel) that regularly sits on a cement block wall just along the edge of our backyard driveway. He or she? I don’t know. I do know it’s often sitting or lying on that wall in just the same spot. And has been since the wall was completed several years ago.

Sometimes it runs down the wall and jumps into our pile of yard trimmings, looking for food. When the weather is chilly, it stretches out on top of its favorite cement block and soaks in the sun. Other times it sits there alert, watching for possible intruders.

I think it has a nest inside one of the cement blocks—on the unfinished back side of the wall. Sometimes when I walk by on the way to the garage it quickly races into one of the cement blocks.

Several kinds of hawks frequent our area. I’ve watched them swoop down into our back yard to surprise a large gray squirrel, a slow sparrow or a dove. I’ve also heard our small chipmunk squawking out the alarm, joined by other small backyard creatures. Sometimes the hawks have their way.

We live in unsettled times. It takes determination to focus on simple things that inhabit our lives. Especially when there are hawks out there with their beady eyes scanning the ground for juicy tidbits.

Mary Oliver’s poem invites me to pay attention to the chipmunk. To hear our Creator’s voice speaking through the simple things of life. Not giving up, but staying alert, living each day simply and fully. Which can be a way of saying thank you. Without fancy gestures or heavy words laden with heavy thoughts. This isn’t a contest.

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October 25, 2017

Old before her grownup time

Old before her grownup time
A little girl in adult mode
Within her childhood body
Performs an adult’s duties

Reserves once bright diminished now
She wills her youthful girlhood back
To fuel her lagging body

Perhaps she’ll wake up one bright day
And find those long-lost years
Held in reserve for later use –
Life savings locked within a vault
Accumulating dividends

I woke up a few days ago with a thought flitting around in my head: What if all my unspent childhood energy—lost to adult responsibilities before my time—is sitting somewhere waiting for me to reclaim it? You know–to fill in energy gaps that crop up when least expected or welcome.

After nearly 74 years, surely I’m entitled to reap something from all that premature investment in adulthood. Not just in my spirit, but (especially) in my body.

Now wouldn’t that be something to shout about? I might even put one of those giant trampolines in my backyard to burn off the energy!

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October 23, 2017

Going home

Maybe it’s the steady march
of autumn fading into brown
Or birds migrating south
in twos and threes and twelves

Then again it may be nothing
more than daylight diminishing
into shades of deepening night

Unexpectedly I wake up
anticipating the unthinkable
bidding farewell to this world
sinking below and beyond
the horizon into unending day
finally at home and at peace

Writing these words troubles me
Has deep discontent wormed its way
into my soul?

Yet there it sits.
This world of aching beauty and sorrow
will not be my home forever

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 23 October 2017
Photo found at pinterest; taken by David Allen Photography
Sunset from Clingman’s Dome, Great Smokey Mountains, North Carolina

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October 20, 2017

Moments

Death
Sudden release
Followed by startled grief
Most deeply felt
In waves

Calm
Release of pain
Blood pressure dropping
To a measurable
Sum

Joy
Knocks at my door
Sweeps emptiness aside
For a shining moment
Lingering

Peace
Unannounced
Arrives on the doorstep
Of my heart
Singing

15 Comments

October 12, 2017

Evening Prayer

I’m weary this evening, Lord —
All I want is Your smile.

Daylight faded hours ago —
The choir sings to a congregation of one.

I jotted down these words last night while listening to an old hymn, “Abide with me; fast falls the eventide.” The end of a slow day, quiet and unimpressive with the exception of two encounters.

One was with a neighbor when I was out walking. She was standing on her front porch, waiting for a taxi. We talked about her recent illness, her cat, and the woman who died across the street and down the lane just last week.

Later during my walk I saw a couple I’ve known for years. They were out walking, too. About my age, both retired and in good shape with the exception of her fractured ankle and torn ligaments still on the mend months later.

I’ve been focused on prayer lately. Especially since my friend Margie died and left a huge void when it comes to prayer for others. My list grows daily. Not in leaps and bounds, but in small increments. Everyday people with difficult challenges and heartaches.

I haven’t figured out how to pray in a pointed way for the big stuff that hits the news every day. Not that I don’t know what to say. It’s more about not having a personal connection, or being so incensed that I don’t want to pray ‘for’ this or that. I just want to rage against it.

Perhaps things aren’t really worse than they used to be. In some ways, I’ve seen this country in worse shape than we’re in now. Yet in other ways we’re simply reverting to what I’d hoped we left behind. This, too, is a great weariness.

Maybe that’s where I need to begin. With things like the opioid crisis, the result of fraud on multiple levels over many years–perpetrated on people in chronic pain. People just like you and just like me. I wonder where in my neighborhood it’s making its mark today?

14 Comments

October 11, 2017

tiny drops of dew

We exist only because
God believes in us
And risks everything on our account

And who are “we”?
We are not the United States of America.
We are not any country on the face of this earth.
This is not our earth; not even our good earth.
It too belongs to God who believes in us
Not as the exceptional stars of God’s show
But as the everyday gardeners whose sole duty
Is to plow the ground and harvest the fruit
Of God’s great Harvest most of which
We will never see in our lifetimes.

We are not the stars or the sun or even the moon.
We are reflections of God’s great glory shining
Beyond light into our darkness filling our cups
To overflowing with tiny drops of dew each morning
Enough for this day when given away before it
Evaporates and returns to God who sent it.

I exist only because
God believes in me
And risks everything on my account

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Tag: Vulnerability

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