Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Oh Dear

Oh, dear Author of All,
here is my page.

These spontaneous words of prayer anchor me. I sync them with each inhale and exhale as Dreamer and I drive into town. We’re headed for my beloved mentor’s home. She’s 95. For nearly 40 years she has guided me in the ever-compelling, never-mastered art of reading aloud. Shared love of the craft increases our love for words and for each other.

Today will be golden. I’ve written a tandem script for an ongoing audio program that Dreamer and I produce. She’ll give voice to Sonnet 73, by Shakespeare, in response to Sonnet 18, read by yours truly.

I’m so jazzed!

We unload recording equipment, then ring the bell. Oh dear. Turns out she’s leaving for an appointment: a schedule snafu.

We book a new date, then climb into our car — which won’t start. Despite countless attempts. She waves goodbye as we pull out the manual. Next, we try the gear shift override. Multiple times.

Prayer seemingly budges nothing, including the locked steering wheel.

Happy are those with cellphones and insurance. Alas, our towing option is invalid. More calls. Various chains of command. The sky darkens. Flurries commence. Seeking the helpful, we feel less and less hopeful.

Another hour passes. Snow falls harder, and cold seeps through the car and our clothing. We feel powerless.

Finally, a tow truck is promised—sometime within the next hour. We’re hungry. Frustrated. Chilled. A long way from home.

We need, ahem, certain facilities. Swallowing pride, I knock on a neighbor’s door, brush snow from my shoulders. Considering the latest pandemic protocols, will anyone answer? Who opens the door to a stranger these days?

The homeowner not only ushers us in, she offers both bathrooms. Then bottles of water. Or would we prefer soda? Coffee or tea?

“Please,” she says, “Sit. Wait inside where it’s warm. Oh dear, you’re shivering. Blanket?”

She even proposes various snacks.

I recall my earlier prayer, that God would author my day. Taken in, sheltered, cushioned and cared for, I am embarrassed by her spontaneous kindness. She is both stable and manger, an opened door amid the storm.

Today’s fleeting brush with Eternity.

In the fourth century, St. Jerome wrote, “Blessed are they who possess Bethlehem in their hearts and in whose hearts, Christ is born daily.”

Here’s to welcomes—those we give and those we receive—and to room being made, again and again, within the unexpected wayside inns of our common hours.

Emmanuel, you come. You beckon. You shelter us with nourishing care. Oh dear God, thank you. May we do likewise, amen.

Epilogue: The tow truck guy knew a trick. Under his capable hands the engine kicked over. Having parked on a slope, I’d cranked the front wheels toward the curb. More strength on my part would have loosed the steering, allowing ignition.

But we would have missed meeting a neighborhood saint.

Dear friends, in whatever ways you feel stalled or stranded this season, we wish you kindly strangers, revels and reverence, mercies and mirth and healing hope.

Image by Wolfgang Krzemien from Pixabay

Heartspring

by Laurie Klein 18 Chiming In

Hark! the Cricket

Let the cricket wind his heartspring
And draw the night by like a child’s toy . . .

Sounds gentle, doesn’t it. Almost idyllic.

But night falls. Sometimes, crushingly. Which feels worse during holidays.

And who initiates the winding that changes the scene? In the above quote, it’s the lowly cricket at work, back legs cocked like hinges — rubbing, rubbing — its muscular song a vocation: dispelling darkness.

It’s Advent again. For my husband, Dreamer, and I, this year it’s a hard one.

Crèche, sounds like crush

Or kibosh. A long-term dream, just coming into fruition, abruptly ends. With a phone call. The person in charge will be “going a different direction.”

Plans are scrapped. Tickets, cancelled. Months of labor — and now, nowhere to invest it.

Dreamer and I try to lighten our mood. Like the scene-changing cricket, we emulate stage hands. Our living room, awaiting tree and toys for the grandkids, becomes the stage.

We surround our buffet on three sides with a wooden folding screen. Intricately pierced, the eight panels reflect light from the mirror behind the buffet. Glancingly.

The u-shaped walls will shelter our crèche.

Dreamer leaves me to it. “Call if you need me.”

Paging Jiminy Cricket

As a kid, I knew the wishing star was real. Sky’s the limit, my parents said. “Makes no difference who you are,” Disney’s Jiminy sang, “Dreams come true.”

Alone now, leaning into the screen’s hinged embrace, I position the stable. The beasts and the figures. Angels, lights, miniature grasses and date palms.

Greenery blurs the gape of angled joints, a sprung hinge. Dowels placed across the top suggest rafters. A crude dwelling.

Suspended

I enter the hush. Since childhood, this little world poised within the noisy, everyday realm has gathered me in, an irresistible attraction.

Soon little stars made of straw dance on black threads at the merest breath. I stand back, marvel that staggered heights create depth of field.

Then I summon Dreamer.

Yes

We survey our modest act of Advent. The screen shelters the Story like a murmured yes. Like the arms of a mother. Glancingly, wonder percolates. Sadness abates.

Yes bristles around us, chafing our tender places. But as author Brian Doyle once prayed:

… your gentle hand … has sustained me. Thank you for saying yes not once thousands of years ago but all day every day in ways far beyond my ken. Thank you for … the star-furnace of your love.

… Thank you for this moment. Thank you for being in it with me.

Hark! The cricket winding the heartspring — like the Child, himself — both dispelling the darkness: each embodies grace. Within the crux of the cell, the deep core of gristle and bone, the pulse of blood …

… one small, throbbing Noel — newly perceived — at the soul’s hearth.

Any crickets (or their equivalent) at your place?

You might also enjoy: Sometimes, the Gift Tears You Open

* Cricket quote, Robert Siegel, “Rinsed with Gold, Endless, Walking the Fields”

Brian Doyle, “Prayer to the Madonna,” A Book of Uncommon Prayer

Photo: Bill Klein

Transfer Station

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

The transfer station awaits.

Wall-to-wall, in her silver Toyota, ten-gallon buckets brim with trash: batteries and light bulbs, paper and plastic, cardboard, newsprint, cans and glass, everything duly sorted. Time for another recycle run.

A whiff from a milk jug sours the air. She collapses against the driver’s seat, powers down all the windows, then buckles up. Reaching for the key, her door still ajar, she overhears a jarring thought: This is my life.

She swivels to view the refuse of rural existence.

This?

Oh, of course: Be Here Now, etc. etc.

And yet she feels . . . singled out. Clued in. Redirected. As if the boss is calling her into his office, offering her a promotion. Moving forward involves a transfer complete with perks and a moving allowance.

Now she feels unnerved, yet energized, almost weightless, and this cracks open her longings. There’s an inner fizz somewhere near her heart, akin to an electrical charge.

“This is my LIFE!“

A bubble of laughter surprises her. Here she is, still mobile, still independent, a woman empowered by grace to make choices.

She closes the car door. Adios, drudgery. So long, resignation. Away with all she no longer needs! Upending the actual buckets will be cathartic.

She engages the engine, grinning, a little sheepish because she finally gets it.

Each task done in a day can dovetail with God’s will — in itself, a destination. She gets to ride shotgun.

Realigning her will, that’s the real work. Why has navigating this pivot taken her so many years? The idea’s not new, but today it feels like a revelation.

Every task undertaken with God — most likely unnoticed by others — counts. Just as much as writing the next blog post or poem.

En route to offload the used, she feels repurposed. Recharged.

“It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God — but we do not,” Oswald Chambers wrote. “We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people . . . ”

Turns out, this IS the life: Savoring the mundane, we encounter the holy.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

You might also enjoy this, from the archives: A Rut Worth a Second Look

*Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, entry 10/22

Wellspring

by Laurie Klein 22 Chiming In

Fictional heroine Meg Murry trembles, appalled. Evil Echthroi roam the earth, threatening the lives of all. An angelic mentor declares Meg is a Namer, one who knows who people are meant to be.

“War and hate are [Echthroi] business,” the angel declares, “and one of their chief weapons is un-Naming — making people not know who they are.”

“But what—”

“Meg, when people don’t know who they are, they are open either to being Xed or Named.”

The ensuing dialogue rattles me. Every time Meg judges, disrespects, or despises someone — even silently — she un-names, or “X’s,” that individual. Denigrating their personhood, she dismisses God’s highest vision for them.

She abets enemy goals.

Now I am appalled. When riled, I sometimes forget we are all equally cherished by God — despite diverging ideas, beliefs, and behaviors. Silent slander poisons my thoughts. I mentally conjure black-humor nicknames. My brain scripts ugly retorts.

Am I alone in this?

We may not malign others aloud, yet how often do we cede responses anchored in love to interior libel?

Recent minefields for me include:

The latest toxic allegations
So-and-so’s idiotic decisions
De-humanizing tweets
Murder, after being asked to wear a mask

⁹With our tongues we praise our Lord and Father. Yet, with the same tongues we curse people, who were created in God’s likeness.

¹⁰Praise and curses come from the same mouth. My brothers and sisters, this should not happen!

¹¹Do clean and polluted water flow out of the same spring? (James 3:9-11, Names of God Bible)

With God as our shared wellspring, how will we Name one another?

I go back to The Manual.

You are God’s child (John 1:12).

You are not condemned (Romans 8: 1-2).

You are a work-in-progress (Philippians 1:6).

You are called by name (Isaiah 43:1b).

You are loved (Colossians 3:12).

Liberal, moderate, or conservative — friends, let us meet again, at the Cross. Let’s begin anew the good work of Naming one another according to God’s truth.

If you wouldn’t mind dipping into your wellspring of wisdom . . .
What helps you bless those who seem like enemies?

Dialogue from A Wind in the Door, by Madeleine L’Engle.

Photo by Senya Zhukavin on Unsplash

Strain

by Laurie Klein 24 Chiming In

One jillion tiny red currants,
already simmered, fill
Mama’s jelly bag, slung
on its tripod — summer
reduced, overnight . . . drip
by drip . . . until piquant,
translucent juice
brims in the metal bowl:
suspense, at its sweetest.

Time plus fruit, gently filtered through fabric open enough to permit the passage of light, creates a domestic trifecta. The upshot? Shimmering jelly, to later be spread like jewels across winter toast.

Just typing those words makes my mouth water. The image offsets weightier meanings of “strain” — as both noun and verb.

With the Delta variant on the rise, with wrenching losses and lockdowns barely behind us, escalating fatigue and fear plus diverse opinions can erode our peace.

“There is a physics of friction,” essayist Tim McCreight writes. “Things push against each other.”

Derived from the Latin stringere, “to stretch something to an extreme or damaging degree,” strain takes on different meanings in diverse areas, such as music, medicine, lineage, and biology.

Strain is a shape-shifter. Who knows where it will appear next?

My head lifts, as I catch a Celtic tune’s familiar strain,
or my neck bows over the sink, as I strain a batch of dubious gravy.

Perhaps appetite stages a binge, numbing a mind and nerves strained by too many housebound days spent avoiding excessive heat and smoky air.

Ears strain to decode an accented voice on the phone.

After a 4-mile run, strained muscles benefit from massage.

And memory offers the fraying thrum of rope straining through a pulley, my father winching our boat from lake to trailer. (Oh, the suspense: Would the rope hold?)

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes: “The strain of life is what builds our strength.”

When we face it—head-on and heart-foremost—we can overcome doubt, dare that next step forward. And as we do, grace closes the gap, supplies us with nourishing fortitude — sometimes, through other people.

Dare I view strain as an invitation?

“If you do this, and God so commands you, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will also go to their homes in peace” (Exodus 18:23, International Standard Version).

Thinking again of Mama’s jelly process, I make a plan . . .