Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Both Sides Now

What did you collect as a kid? Might there be a vital clue buried therein? A small truth worth pondering all these years later?

I cadged Lipton tea tags, those one-inch squares stapled by string to pleated, porous bags—after Mom steeped them with lemon and sugar.

I loved those tags, counting them, aligning their edges, shuffling them to hear that singular papery whisper. They seemed quietly ripe with promise, like tickets to a secret club: Admit One.

Treasures, with no strings attached.

Author Tim McCreigh writes: “Since our first days, we know the world by touching, our network of senses completely enclosing us like a web of awareness drawn up from the soles of our feet to the follicles at the top of our head.”

How ingenious, these God-given neural networks that collect and curate incoming sensations!

More often than we realize, perhaps, we still find our way forward via what we feel. And by what touches us. This is one of the ways we measure relationships, gauge surroundings and opportunities. We probe our latest experience. Suss out new boundaries, mining their essential substance.

Perhaps we ache over a poignant story, simultaneously awed as we intuit God’s interactive presence.

Two of my dear friends, both of them believers and sublime poets, are currently beset by ravaging cancers and perilous complications. Their treatments, which involve painfully invasive procedures and disagreeable temperatures as well as textures, alarm and worry me.

Heartache crops up.

Yet the radical grace these women communicate through their words and faith and outlook—despite being steeped in protracted suffering—also inspire me, nudge my faith onward. Because of them, I’m seeing both sides now, and I thank God for their example and the practical ways I see them maintaining an immovable stance of gratitude.

Gratitude, so often, is one part awe, one part ache.

No wonder ache and awe are kin, etymologically. Other word-cousins include awful and achilles—as in heel: according to myth, an area of chronic, lifelong vulnerability.

I’ll bet that you, or a friend or family member also see, then collect glints of unexpected treasure amid life’s inevitable horrors.

Let’s keep sharing this wealth freely, no strings attached. Let’s offer one another a ticket to enter new states of grace. As we witness each other’s experience, no matter how temporarily bitter, we vicariously strengthen one another, thus sweeten the cup set before us.

As a kid, what did you collect? Do you see any connections to your life today?

You might also enjoy this musical offering from the archives, on gratitude

Or this post: Gratitude: Develop, Break Free, Generate Life

Fern photo: Mario Dobelmann on Unsplash

Faces photo: Soroush Karimi on Unsplash

Switchboard

by Laurie Klein 23 Chiming In

I wasn’t on duty that night.

It was summer, 1967. Our hospital’s leading surgeon strode into the office, flipped off the paging switch, ripped the unit from the wall, then stalked away.

A broken circuit. A bent plug. A whiff of char.

My friend, running switchboard, stared at the metal-tipped cord meant to connect Dr. E. with his caller. Um, no, the doctor was not available. Could she take a message?

I know the feeling.

Socially, I’m feeling awkward these days. Not fully available. Seems I’ve misplaced my knack for navigating multiple, incoming signals.

My weekly Zoom conversation with five laughing women (often talking over each other’s words) can overload my senses — especially when my internet connection proves unstable and the audio cuts out.

I can’t keep all the lines sorted.

Fifty-some years ago, when I trained on the hospital switchboard, if I moved responded too slowly, calls would bottleneck. The insistent beeps and flashing lights overwhelmed me.

Verbal triage demands concentration. While directing telephone traffic, I’d ask, “Is this an emergency?”

Then I’d pause for a deep breath. Now, who did I put on hold? And what on earth did they want?

This past week I planned a small, pandemically sensitive, airport sendoff for cherished friends moving to Maui. We sang lyrics customized for the occasion — through masks — and yours truly busted a few Hula moves.

Laughter. Cheers. Cellphone captures. Words of remembrance and love. A-lo-HA!

Our friends beamed. After a year, it was heady being together again, even briefly.

And yet. I felt an odd sense of suspension, like a caller not yet plugged into the desired source. Inner switchboard, jammed. It caught me off guard.

From our earliest hours onward, touch fosters thriving. Sure, elbow bumps offer contact, the shared chuckle. Eyes may communicate soul but don’t always reveal nuance. Something vibrant seems lost. Or tabled.

Unused, my social skills have languished; my small talk sounds rusty. Too many days touched by sorrow and sameness can weary the spirit, fray generosity, erode compassion.

Isolation can also tutor us in the ever-deepening riches of creative solitude.

Dreamer assures me I’ll readapt, with practice. Will I reenter public gatherings fully? Gratefully?

Poet Angela Alaimo O’Donnell writes:

. . . You feel less lonely
when you’re part of a posse and still
your named and singular self.

St. Benedict writes: Always, we begin again.

Meanwhile, I’ll savor my ongoing pen pal endeavors, offer what ease I can to others. My lapse in social fluency may or may not dissipate. I’m okay with that. Going forward, from somewhere deep within command central God may switch my assignment, redirect my connections, as needed.

My job? Stay available.

How about you? What short-circuits your availability?

***

Excerpt, “The River,” Angela Alaimo O’Donnell, Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O’Connor

Photo by Museums Victoria on Unsplash

Resilience

by Laurie Klein 29 Chiming In

Resilience: After eating together, Dreamer and I update the blank book we use as a gratitude journal. As we verbalize and record the day’s visitations of grace, our threadbare souls experience modest repair.

We are coping with holes in our lives. Sometimes we feel worn as ancient parchment: our moods uneven, our hopes brittle and thoughts torn.

Back in medieval times, a parchment maker’s knife often slipped while smoothing animal hides for the written word, leaving behind small gouges and tears.

Frugal scribes threaded needles, then zigzagged back and forth, bridging the gap. They redeemed a deficiency with color and texture (see image here).

Raw edges were sometimes sutured, like a heart patient after a bypass.

A gash might be darned, like a sock. Or latticed with parchment strips.

Mid-page in a gospel or treatise, repairs might resemble a doily or dreamcatcher (see image).

Rather than discard the parchment or try to disguise the flaw, patient hands beautified the damage.

Defect as Art.

No matter how riven or riddled we feel, the Living Word keeps tossing us lifelines . . . for every gap, every absence, each gaping wound.

Sturdy, vivid, resilient — grace (and gratitude) mend us.

Let’s embrace each strand, no matter how small:
when we sleep, or kneel, when we mourn with a friend,
reset the mousetraps, scour the sinks,
mask up (or not), re-brush the dog,
make lists, make love, make sincere amends,
recycle, pay bills, exercise,
tithe, take the stairs, sanitize hands,
binge, commute, argue, pray,
zoom, google, sing in the shower,
cha-cha, chop onions, shop online,
change diapers, change lanes,
send faxes, do taxes . . .

Thank God, there’s always one more holy, holistic way to practice resilience.

Where are you torn, and how will you treat the hurt place today?

You might also like “Holes and Holiness”

Here, a scribe leveraged three page holes to create a laughing face.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: You might also enjoy Crossing the Gap

Photo of spools by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Hands and thread photo Conor O’nolan on Unsplash.

IF

by Laurie Klein 13 Chiming In

If only . . . it hadn’t happened.

Today, I wake up grieved by Wednesday’s violence in our nation’s capitol—only to be further dismayed by the media’s name-calling in the guise of news.

When epic troubles escalate, how do we resist the downward spiral of resignation? How do we nurture fresh reasons to hope?

Earlier this week I splurged on a pot of hyacinth bulbs. Buds closed tightly as raised fists lined three fleshy stalks.

This morning, bloom after star-like bloom perfumes the house.

When bulbs are responsibly “forced,”
the wild, greening wellsprings
that infuse creation
surge upward and outward: Now,
marvel transfuses my spirit, triggers
awe, releases a whiff of poetry.

My outlook shifts,
from grainy, film noir desolation
to hi-def, hyper-spectrum joy—each stem
redolent with modest glories. It reminds me
we’re all fiercely loved
by One who makes all things beautiful
in their time—even when growing entails
unspeakable suffering.

For God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.

So, I am scouting evidence of order. Implicit design. Metaphor and deeper meaning.

I am seeking Love quietly lavished in merciful ways around me so that I might go and do likewise.

It’s a plan, albeit a small one . . .

If I do say so myself.

What’s rekindling your experience of beauty? Truth? Humor?

This “IF” quotation made me laugh:

“If I could go to dinner with one person, dead or alive, I think I would choose alive.” — B. J. Novak

You might also enjoy: Hai*Pho — No, it’s not a new entree . . .

And here’s a famous poem about hyacinths:

“What Child Is This?” (Soundings, 3rd Impression)

by Laurie Klein 31 Chiming In

In 1865, William Chatterton Dix,
manager at a Glasgow insurance company,
fell desperately ill: depression,
raging infection, isolation—
this man, dedicated to insuring
the lives and livelihoods of others,
languished, near death.

Then, Dix rallied, experiencing
vibrant spiritual renewal, and
from his suffering he bequeathed us
words for one our cherished carols:
“What Child Is This?”

This Christmas, amid global depression,
raging illness, and isolation,
let’s remind one another
that Emmanuel, God with us,
has come … and will return.

“How beautiful on the mountains
are the feet of those who bring good news,
who proclaim peace,
who bring good tidings …
who say ‘Your God reigns!’

“Watchmen lift up their voices;
together they shout for joy …
for the Lord has comforted his people …
and all the ends of the earth
will see the salvation of our God.

“Jesus himself said, ‘I was born for this:
to tell people about the truth.
That is why I came into the world.’

“How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those who bring good news!”

Isaiah 52: 7-10

Have any good news to share? We’d love to hear it and rejoice with you . . .

Alternatively, this is a season of “mean estate” for millions. We’d be equally honored to pray alongside you . . .

“What Child Is This,” traditional English folk song, lyrics by William Chatterton Dix, 1865. Public domain.
Reading: Laurie Klein
Music arranged and performed by Bill Klein