Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Hai*Pho — No, it’s not a new entree . . .

What on earth is Hai*pho? A fleeting, luminescent marriage: poem and image. Pho-to + Hai-ku.

“So much depends on the light, and the way you squint.” (Margaret Atwood’s astute observation.)

Welcome, friends, to my growing, mid-pandemic gallery. Here’s my first arranged engagement.

MARCH

Snowstorm on the way.
Hope takes a morning ramble
among buttercups.

Matchmaking with lens and keyboard prompts my imagination during our current lockdown. It propels me outside, clad in battery-heated sweatshirt (thank you, Dreamer!) and polka-dot mud boots.

And one blustery day . . . snow boots.

FIRST ROBIN

Cheerio, chirr-up . . .
Icy lacework of twigs and snow—
how the world rallies.

During these surreal times, it’s stimulating to focus on the diminutive Japanese art form. Haiku is nature-based, 3-lines, 17-syllables, arranged thus: 5, then 7, then 5.

It’s terse. Evanescent. Hopefully, memory inducing. And thought provoking.

LIKE US

A pond, locked in ice,
dreams of open water. Oh,
how we need the sun!

Hai*pho aims to grasp the come-hither hem of beauty and truth. Mercurial moods and possible meanings simmer beneath everyday surfaces that surround us.

Break the word down and voila! — a cultural marriage. Hai is Japanese, for “hello” and “yes.” Pho is Vietnamese for “soup.”

Hello . . . soup. O YES!

The pond shot above does have a soupy look. Perhaps hai*pho IS an entree. A little something to nourish hope . . .

EQUINOX

He summons the night
to dance with the dawn: shadows
elbowing sunlight.

How merciful that our hopes and prayers for healing across the wide world coincide with the equinox, emblematic of balance, and Spring, and Lent . . . everything quietly pointing toward Easter.

NEST EGGS

Shells. The fearful crack.
The soft, extended wing. Then . . .
beaks. Songs. All-new songs!

What creative endeavors are keeping you lively during the pandemic? I hope you’ll share in the comments. Who knows what you might spark in the mind and life of another?

“I will show them my wonders.”

—Micah 7:15

Regarding Spin

by Laurie Klein 32 Chiming In

Regarding Spin

Yes, I’m in stuttering health, creatively stalled, and a stranger to my former equilibrium.

Shall I blame ongoing writer’s block?
The pressing needs of loved ones in crisis?
A cherished pet’s decline?

Or, today’s news?
The silent ballot, awaiting my mark?

So many ways to spin it.

Is there such a thing as vertigo of the soul?

If this notion arrests you,
join me in imagining yourself

CLAY, ruthlessly wedged,
kneaded, those oh-so-persuasive
hands of the Potter
pinpointing your wayward grit,
and my hidden bubbles of air,
every last, extraneous gasp
p-r-e-s-s-e-d out, until
we are dense, compressed.
Warmed, and waiting.

Quieted. Secretive.

For here’s the geological truth: clay
stores up forgotten light
(so many small deaths, over time,
enriching the soil).

There’s only one way
to get clay on the wheel. Splat!

Kickstart and rotation ensue.
There is wobble and slippage,
exertion and whirl.

Discarded sludge.

And all the while, God’s muddied
palms enclose and imprint us,
with seemingly merciless thumbs.

Yet notice one wrenching,
centrifugal truth:
out-of kilter
clay, by its nature, wants
to fly off the wheel.

Ask any potter. Clay has a mind of its own.

I resist,
muscle my way
toward my own reinvention.

“Oh, good save,” friends say,
as if we can salvage, well,
almost anything.

Here’s another spin:

Today, the word of the LORD comes—
“Like clay in the hand of the potter,
so are you in my hand”—words
echoed by physics:
and we’re talking stillness now,
stillness perfected in motion.

For see how the clay finally rests,
with nary a wobble:

centered,
balanced,
perfectly earthed.

Adios, ego.

Hello, promise.

Dear Shaper of Clay,
temper today’s pressures and
questions and dizzy thrum.
May grace evoke nothing
less than
surrender, as the wheel spins.

Friends, your prayers for our daughter’s surgery and subsequent recovery were wonderfully answered. Thank you, again!

Photo: Quino Al on Unsplash

Sketchy Directions

by Laurie Klein 33 Chiming In

I follow the GPS cues
exactly (leaving home
early, just in case).

I’ve enrolled in an evening workshop: “Reflections and Intentions.” En route, I’m haunted by a Jan Richardson poem.

Travel the most ancient way of all, Richardson writes.
. . .
No map
but the one
you make yourself.

“Your destination,”
my GPS voice intones
(digitally confident and
almost smug),
“is on your left.”

Actually, no. It is not there.

Nor is it kitty-corner, adjacent, or around the back.

I cruise nearby alleys. Now what?

Welcome detours as doors deeper in.

Well, the most promising building in the vicinity contains numerous offices.

Once inside the building, I wander down halls seeking the combined classroom, Suites 101 and 102.

And there they are: on the other side of a windowed door with a keypad lock.

You have looked
at so many doors
with longing,
wondering if your life
lay on the other side.

How easily the door swings open.

Six doors flank the new hallway. I head for Suites 101-102. Then, an ominous click as the door I just came through, now one way only, automatically locks behind me.

I turn the handles of Suite 101, then 102—then give them each a hard shake. Locked. So, right room numbers, wrong building. Unless class is cancelled?

Even the outside Exit is locked.

Help, I’m trapped in a Metaphor for Life.

Wait, one door’s slightly ajar. A restroom.

Oh, please. Would YOU feel like resting?

A person can leave home in good faith.
You’ve done this, haven’t you?
You allow ample travel time,
follow directions, and end up . . . stranded.

And there you are, praying. I recently learned the most ancient prayer of all.

Richard Rohr reminded me that the Hebrew consonants used to spell God’s name—so sacred it is never to be spoken aloud—are visually rendered “YHWH.”

When correctly pronounced, Rohr adds, these consonants do not require movement of the tongue and lips. The gentle sounds replicate breath: (YH) inhalation, then (WH) exhalation. Each breath, lightly sketched. A different, deeper kind of direction.

“The first name you spoke, upon birth, was God’s name,” Rohr declares.

“The last breath you take will be the name of God. It’s the one thing you’ve done constantly.” (See video clip, below)

Friends, this is the most calming prayer I know. And every in-between, stuck place seems an ideal setting for it.

For today, choose the door
that opens to the inside.

Not too long afterward, a barista engaged in after-hours clean-up discovers me. She ushers me through the closed coffee shop. She Googles a map on her phone, then kindly points me in the right direction, not far after all.

Once again, the way forward proves unexpected. And, ultimately, timely.

What calms and re-centers you when you’re surrounded by closed doors?

Friends, last week I shared the YHWH prayer with our daughter, Kristin, who was hospitalized for acute, undiagnosed pain. I’ll be praying it again this coming week, Monday, January 20th, as she undergoes yet another surgery.

We’d be grateful for your prayers.

Let me know how I can pray for you?

“The Map You Make Yourself,” Jan Richardson, Circle of Grace

Listen to Richard Rohr here: “Becoming Stillness” (begin at 45:52 on videotape)

Photo: Mark Cruz on Unsplash

Exclamation Points in a Story, a Season, a Life

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

Slight as a cat’s eyelash,
one black mark
graces the page,
piquing my curiosity. O
how it pulses, as if
rendered in neon—
this exclamation point
humans assigned
to an angel,
in the gospel of Luke.

Printers call these marks gaspers, screamers, startlers. Many editors view them as lazy shortcuts. Or overkill. “Never expect punctuation to animate flabby prose.”

As a writer, this is my world. Render passion, yes; but ration those exclamation points. Say, one every six months. (Or every book and a half, as Elmore Leonard advises.)

In the NIV translation, Gabriel gets one—but not where we might expect it.

“Greetings,” he says.

This salutation alone—from a celestial being—seems worthy of emphasis. However, rigorous scholars inserted a comma, then continued the sentence: “. . . you who are highly favored!”

For Mary, a knee-quaking moment.

For you and me, millennia later,
it’s breathtaking,
soul-shaking,
hope-making news.

That’s because highly favored means “to make graceful, to endow with grace.”

Mary embodied in-the-moment receptiveness to God.

As we welcome God, we too become highly favored, our lives affirmed. Transformed. Made grace-full.

Exclamation points, over time . . .

First used in English in the 15th century, they were considered “notes or signs of admiration,” perhaps from the Latin root for wonderment.

In the Greek word for joy, io, the “i” is written above the “o.” The forerunner, perhaps?

In our day exclamation points proliferate in online communications and may indicate surprise, excitement, anger, and other strong emotions. Peruse Luke (in the NIV version) and you’ll find them accentuating promises, warnings, complaints, interjections, exhortations, chastisements, praises, and pleas.

I counted 36 in all—again, not always where I expected them. Surprisingly, the humble period appears when Jesus cleanses the temple. And when the entire heavenly host sings “Glory to God in the highest.”

To this day, consulting scholars, clergy, and other professionals continue to translate the Bible. They peer into, and pore over, the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts.

They parse grammar. Argue semantics. Assign emphasis.

No matter how we punctuate
this story, older than our world
yet still fresh as the rain,
how radically Love arrives, to upend,
upset, even overturn
our sense of self,
our hopes, and
our flawed expectations.

Where are the living exclamation points appearing in your life this month? Wonderment is contagious. I hope you’ll share one . . .

You might also enjoy the Smithsonian’s take on the exclamation mark

And speaking of strong emotions: Holidays, Saying Yes to Unexpected Gifts!

There’s even a blog about them: Excessive Exclamation!!

“Yes” Photo: John Tyson on Unsplash.

Have I Failed You?

by Laurie Klein 35 Chiming In

Elegant or squat,
satiny, spongy,
slim or speckled,
the overnight toadstools
shoulder through sodden grass.

Beneath thick skirts
undersides flaunt
pale, multi-pleated,
rice-paper gills.

Trouble is, fungi spread like a devilish rash.

Or a rumor.

Or bad news.

Some have erupted—
their fleshy umbrellas
upended, once-plucky
stems torn and exposed.

And my first reaction?

Poison! So says the girl who grew up on Grimm. These toadstools feel personal. Symbolic. Weirdly prolific.

Born of darkness and damp and demise,
they haunt the shadows
along my path
in the way sorrows emerge, one
after another.

Friends, this has been a sad time.

I wonder: Are people you cherish—as well as strangers the media makes you care about—also braving unthinkable woe? Has hope failed them?

There’s much to grieve.

For one: I failed to meet you here, in October. I sorely regret breaking my monthly commitment to you (and myself). My desire is to encourage readers who feel weary. Beleaguered. Jaded and flayed.

That’s why I started this blog, nearly five years ago.

Truth is, I’ve been too sad to write. Guilt, of course, adds its own poison.

This is where
we get the verb mushroom,
we, who cannot number our worries,
rabid as spores, housed in our heads,
we, who launch prayers, seeding the heavens
beyond what the air can hold.

And then, while walking in the city, I chance upon this—although my camera fails to capture the fierce, almost magical shine. One wet leaf glints at my feet, beaded all over with the tiniest convex mirrors. The longer I look, the more this leaf seems to offer a portrait. The image suggests my soul, holding in all that is uncried.

The names on my prayer list seem as numerous, and tremulous, as November’s tears gracing this fallen leaf.

In her new book my dear friend Gena Bradford writes: “I have learned to ask the Lord about my fear that He [won’t] meet the needs of others . . .

“[and the nagging fear that] I might disappoint someone . . .”

She speaks for me.

“Lord,” she asks, “have I failed You?”

And God answers, “The only way you can fail Me is by not letting Me love you.”

Friends, I wish to encourage you. And myself. For now, Romans 8:1 reminds me there is “no condemnation in Christ Jesus.”

Bradford suggests a radical strategy: What if we fast from condemning ourselves?

I mean to try.

Perhaps, it always begins here:
in a season of falling
apples, and burgeoning
fears that resemble
creeping rot, we behold . . .

. . . all the little mercies, silently shining along our way.

I wonder: what’s mushrooming around you? What mercies have you noticed?

Is there something you need to fast from?

Click here to access Gena Bradford’s new book: I Can’t Rest Now, Lord! I’m Responsible: 30 Days from Burnout to the Heart of God, by Gena Bradford

You might also like this post from my archive: Kyrie Eleison: Seeking Mercy

“I will show them my wonders.”

Regarding Spin

If this notion arrests you, join me in imagining yourself

Here’s another spin:

Exclamation points, over time . . .

I wonder: what’s mushrooming around you? What mercies have you noticed?

Is there something you need to fast from?

If this notion arrests you,
join me in imagining yourself