Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Knots & Pearls — A Cry for Connection

Knots: They show up in myriad ways.

Accusations. Crippling rhetoric. Foundations, seemingly crumbling.

And then, my own vengeful thoughts, silting over with toxic sludge. I read the news and frustration stifles compassion.

Grief as well as grievance chafe. The combined grit penetrates my protective shell.

Where, oh where are the pearls of wisdom?

In childhood
the sandbar rose
like a tableland catching
the light — a rough altar
under the water, framed
by acres of menacing
milfoil, leaning
ever more westward,
awash in the current.

Only once did I find shells on that sandbar: enclosed emblems of mystery. To a kid raised on fairy tales, shells meant pearls. And pearls meant CA$H!

Daydreams ensued. Then died.

Shells, by one definition, are empty things.

Human opinion may likewise hinge on mere wish. Trying to fathom our shifting culture my hopes falter, emptied by doubt. Or stymied by fear. Clear reasoning gives way to knots.

Knots, however, by one definition, attest to worth.

Unlike artificial pearls, the real ones are fragile, so jewelers painstakingly knot them, individually, on a strand of silk. This way they don’t abrade each other, growing dull or partially crumbling to powder.

If the thread breaks, a single bead drops away, leaving its neighbors intact.

Practicality
guards the precious
via the strategic twist.

What if knots are a form of grace?

“[Christ] is before all things,” Paul wrote, “and in him all things hold together.” No matter how different they are.

Bona fide pearls also vary, in shape and color. And, like enduring belief, the imperfect gems epitomize patience. Boundaries imposed from within produce an eventual radiance.

Did you know that the knots lovingly tied between pearls were once reliable proof that the gems were authentic?

Unfortunately, these days wily vendors intersperse knots among fakes. A small test exposes the sham. Genuine pearls, slightly sandy in texture, sound different when rubbed together.

Oh, for a thought life that sounds different — one that resonates with love.

No mental wallowing in toxic sludge. Tenderly hemmed in by faith’s small protective ties, we can, if we choose, embody God’s strategic wisdom.

Yes, divisive thoughts still surface. But author Brennan Manning heartens me as he bemoans his failures to effect lasting personal change:

“Intellectually I was constantly trying
to think myself into a new way of living
instead of loving myself
into a new way of thinking.”

Might he mean, in part, that trusting the knots God lovingly ties around us will, ultimately, reveal a more luminous authenticity?

Little by little, I’m seeing how our Maker pinpoints the various bits that carry a shine, then lovingly arranges them, showing me, the pearl-dreamer-kid still hopeful within — showing us all if we care to pause — how to connect the dots . . .

Any recent Shine Sightings at your place? I’d love to hear about it . . .

Simple tests to identify real pearls

A Cure for Regret

by Laurie Klein 28 Chiming In

My mother entrusted me
with the frayed string
that held Nana’s pearls.

How does a legacy born of wounding morph into what I hold now?

Born on her birthday, I was Nana’s first grandchild, destined to alter her world with my wants and needs. How quietly she would alter the minutiae of mine, task by task.

Picture your grandmother’s youthful hands, rounded and smooth, that cool touch on your brow when you were sunburned or feverish.

I remember slender fingers, nails finely-ridged as grasscloth.

Those hands . . .

. . . counted pennies into my palm for each dandelion I beheaded
. . . patted my back when I slept over and city sirens scared me
. . . rewove the heels of my socks with tender grids
. . . let down my hems, mended my jeans

Each effort glowed with love never mentioned: affection enacted.

But the young and self-absorbed — what do they notice?

Her small, patient labors seemed like busywork, and her folksy, repeated stories chafed, straining my patience. Then, while I was away at college, Nana inherited my bedroom. Resentment simmered. I never rewove things between us, never mended the distance. She kept sending me cards.

After her pearls passed to me, I pushed them into the back of a drawer. Not my style. Nor did I realize frequent contact with the oils in human skin keeps the living gems burnished. Like faithfulness, touch revives the inherent hues — true to the being that once fashioned marvel from harm.

Stashed away, luminosity languished.

If mollusks can spin a history of pain into nacreous beauty, perhaps I can, too. Oswald Chambers writes, “We are not meant to be seen as God’s perfect, bright-shining examples, but to be seen as the everyday essence of ordinary life exhibiting the miracle of His grace.”

So, I tried on Nana’s pearls. The string broke. Half the strand scattered. Tossing them felt disrespectful, so I restrung them, repurposing some guilty gratitude into a bracelet of prayer beads.

Now my fingers, with their inherited nails, ridgy as grasscloth, quietly thumb the pearls clockwise, prayer by prayer, akin to Nana patting my back when worry invades me.

Have you repurposed an heirloom? I’d love to hear about it . . .

Photo by Tiffany Anthony on Unsplash

You might also enjoy Grace: in media res

Make your own prayer beads

Benediction in Blue

by Laurie Klein 14 Chiming In

Just like that, I am swept
into the bluebird’s orbit,
captivated by color
that suggests fibers
raveled from heaven’s hem.

It feels like a benediction. Memory leaps to internalize this feathered streak that signals spring.

In response, I drape a shawl the changing colors of sky around my shoulders and throat. Even sing a little, heart lifting. The moment feels Oz-like—minus any pressure to soar over somewhere’s elusive rainbow.

My mother knit the shawl lavishly; I enwrap myself, twice. When events sap my spirits, when someone I’ve trusted fails someone I love, when anxiety rises, I envelop myself in the blues that love wrought.

Is it misguided to reach for peace through a tangible semblance of nature’s garments?

. . . blue of the sea or distant hills
. . . skeins of mist, overhanging a pond
. . . quirky nests strewn with blue plastic foraged by Satin Bowerbirds

In his sermon on the mount, Jesus urged us to notice the birds in his father’s care, reminding us worry takes us nowhere.

So, is donning the shawl a small act of faith? I hope I’m expressing wonder over the bluebird; I also wonder if I’m just playing dress up.

Or worse, giving in to a gimmick: Accessorize, to distract the mind and resist dismay.

When I read about the dusk-to-dawn eyesight of deer, who perceive blue 20 times better than we do, wonder reclaims me.

“It is an amazing thing,”
a Puritan wrote, addressing God,
“to see that thy many gifts and creatures
are but thy hands taking hold of me.”

Through the natural world the Infinite downsizes and then distills itself. It beckons us closer, inviting personal contact. Enfolding us.

Perhaps our response resizes the wild to suit our domestic realm. Human hands seek things scaled to their grasp—like the bent-over woman who reached for the Savior’s hem, then rose, standing erect for the first time in years, arrayed in wholeness.

A robe, a shawl, a bluebird — perhaps these are placeholders: stand-ins, until the next occasion we sense God’s touch.

“Existence has greater depths of beauty, mystery, and benediction than the wildest visionary has ever dared to dream.”
—Frederick Buechner, The Magnificent Defeat

Have you experienced a nature-based benediction you might consider sharing here?

You might also enjoy this: Blues Apprentice: True-blue Confessions

Photo: Photo by Noah Rosenfield on Unsplash

First quote from In The Valley of Vision

Both Sides Now

by Laurie Klein 18 Chiming In

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 McCreight 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