Laurie Klein, Author at Laurie Klein, Scribe

Sanctuary

Can one person be a bird sanctuary?

June 3rd marks the feast day for Irish monk St. Kevin and his legendary blackbird. T’is a fine time for admiring flight, I’m thinking. Or savoring an omelette.

Celtic legend describes Kevin at prayer in his one-monk hut, an arm extended through the window, his palm raised.

Enter the Emerald Isle’s elite songster: a blackbird (not to be confused with big-mouth American blackbirds).

American blackbirds—especially en masse—can be bullies: strident, messy, a threat to crops and property.

Kevin’s songbird, on the other hand (literally), alighted gently, perhaps on his thumb. Finding his warmth congenial, she settled in, laid eggs.

Motionless, wonder-struck, Kevin offered her sanctuary. Day after day, so the legend goes.

Why sacrifice plans (and personal space) for a bird?

At home in the Temple

Psalm 84:3-4 celebrates those who dwell in God’s sanctuary—including birds. In ancient Israel’s temple, a swallow built her nest near the altar. Religious leaders with opinions and brooms probably gathered.

What message did that nest send? Shoddy upkeep? Lazy priests?

Or perhaps, more inclusively, Creation’s feathered counterpoint to the Levite choir?

The nest remained, an audio/visual for the radical hospitality of the One who knows when a sparrow falls to the ground.

Becoming sanctuary

Kevin’s hand graciously cradled one small bird—his spirit already a sanctuary for God’s presence.

Confined to his hut, the man’s surrender to the unexpected inspires me.

St. Kevin’s Blackbird

Outstretched in Lent, Kevin’s hand
did not expect
the blackbird’s egg, its speckled warmth,

new-laid, in his uplifted palm. Think prayer
as nest: an intimate travail whereby
fledgling hopes, like birds, leave behind

a kind of grave. Amen, seeming
premature, the saint-in-waiting
dovetailed faith with knuckles.

Faithfulness takes time. We knuckle down to wait, in hope, for things as yet unseen.

Cue impatience and hunger and the cramp of muscles and numbness and pins-and-needles. Cue ongoing attitude adjustments.

Had it been me in that hut, Mama Bird would have been relocated ASAP.

Saint Laurie, however, prefers to imagine catching aphids for her with my free hand. Naming her something mystical. Learning her song (while suppressing that niggling yen for applause, modest fame, a personal feast day).

Then, having waved farewell, I would weep (beatifically).

And afterward, did Kevin save those eggshell bits,
adorn his windowsill with each goodbye
the smallest beak ever made?

He never said. Nor will he
know these hearts of ours,
more shell than shelter…

Much as I want to faithfully be a safe place for those God sends my way—human, animal, avian—I’m bound to crack, then lament my frailty.

And then begin again, remembering He who was first broken for us will always lovingly
…know these hearts of ours,
more shell than shelter

as they fissure, let in light enough
for Christ to enter. Yes,
let grief be, with every breath, a readied womb.

How do you practice offering sanctuary? I’d love to know.

Click to hear “Lord, Prepare Me”
(sung by Kent Henry, written by Randy Scruggs/John Thompson)

Click to hear the European blackbird’s song

Click to watch blackbirds feeding their young

“St. Kevin’s Blackbird,” from Laurie’s book, Where the Sky Opens

Alternatives: Shoehorn Rejuvenation Method

by Laurie Klein 10 Chiming In

ALTERNATIVES, noun, definition:

1: options, choices, other possibilities.
2: existing or functioning outside the established cultural, social, or economic system

Day after day, exponential rain. Multiple weekly appointments, and miles logged. Then the waiting. Driving again. More rain.

Aerobic walks? Postponed. Eventually shelved. Rehab for Dreamer (and chauffeur) is time-intensive.

And something’s missing . . .

[Read more…]

Love and the Stork’s Apprentice

by Laurie Klein 18 Chiming In

Some stories are so tender, they’re meant for only a few eyes. This story reveals hard things, and hopes long-guarded. I’ve covered the heroes so you can see their goodness, but they won’t feel the world’s glare in their faces. I trust you to do the same.

###

Can a young, single, entrepreneurial girl be almost full-term—and not know it?

Let’s call her Larkin: Girl-on-the-move, literally and figuratively, traveling across country with a new boyfriend. Unexplained pain prompts their detour to our city’s Emergency Room. [Read more…]

Kissing — Actual, Metaphorical — Changes All

by Laurie Klein 17 Chiming In

Kissing: Can it reboot the soul?

Think of things that disappear . . .

writes poet Naomi Shibab Nye

Things evanescent as infancy, childhood, youth,

a glass of wine,

a kiss.

Think of beings, or moments, that blend in so well we seldom notice them.

You might miss a person, or a pet, whose company you’ve cherished. Perhaps they’re gone now, or changed in some essential way.

You might miss what once defined normal days. Time and circumstance have dumped your files, deleted your template. (Feels that way at our place.)

Biologically alive, like the Greek word, Bios, we’re living, breathing, functioning, coping. Even laughing.

But fully alive?

Fleeting recognition

Centuries ago, William Blake, another poet wrote:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise

What is “kissing the joy as it flies” if not delighting in the mundane?

“‘Delight‘ is a word that might scare people,” a friend of mine once wrote. “If I heard it in a disengaged conversation in a crowded room, it would probably snap my head around.”

After reading my last post, he (gently) re-sent me his essay. (A friend notices when we lose touch with “kissing the joy as it flies.”)

My friend spoke about “the person who has made a conscious decision to not only find more joy in her own life, but to make her zest available to others, while not jamming it down their throats.”

Recognition flared in me, charged as air after a lightning strike. Point (gratefully) taken.

Puckered up

Into our humdrum, getting-it-done, daily mindsets a small recognition arrives, freighted with meaning. We feel lucky, even rich, having brushed up against Beauty.

Pause, exhale, savor each tiny, once-in-a-blue-moon event.

Zoe, the Greeks call this: vital, abundant, eternal aliveness.

(Poet Nye again:)

Think of what you love best,
what brings tears into your eyes.

Something that said adios to you
before you knew what it meant
or how long it was for.

Last weekend a soap bubble at our grandson’s birthday party kissed my imagination awake: another invitation to Zoe.

. . . Lessons following lessons,
like silence following sound.*

More kissing

The kissing theme re-appeared when I recently read a poem for Seattle NPR: “Maple Grove” describes a kiss (Read, or listen, here, or below.) A year ago, the poem languished in my Compost File. Time plus distance revealed the gap; then, something to fill it.

Poet Nye seconds this observation:

“I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late—there’s that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantime . . .

“Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”

Absorb today’s abundance, I tell myself—before it disappears.

What joy is flying past you this week? Might it want to grow into something more?

*”Adios,” by Naomi Shibab Nye

“Eternity,” by William Blake

“Maple Grove,” by Laurie Klein

Stalled, Halfway Down, or Do I Mean Up?

by Laurie Klein 33 Chiming In

Stalled, half-spent, a balloon bouquet rustles, snagged in our pine tree.

“Party!” it must have recently signaled from somebody’s mailbox. Before it was stranded.

I recognize that wilted, half-mast look. I’m my husband’s caregiver, post-surgery—wishing I could muster something so buoyant as we navigate recovery’s prickly demands.

I didn’t expect to deflate so soon.