Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Island Centerpiece, Soul Download

Centerpiece:

A landing place for the jaded gaze

A scenic interruption of the mundane

A visual invitation

For 10 glorious days Maui offered us multiple, exotic cameos (and a perfect getaway despite coming home pale as ever, 3 pounds heavier).

A centerpiece can surprise or transport us, like these top-lit, dream-state jellyfish.

A centerpiece can appear anywhere, at any time, arresting our attention, like these patterns formed by loosening plastic film on window panes.

For me, creating a centerpiece feels like making an altar. It awakens the senses. Lifts the spirit. Mom taught me this.

A “found” centerpiece, like these photos, offers unique spontaneous pleasures—no work involved.

Best of all, we don’t need a tropical island to create an island of calm in our day.

What’s in a name?

Centerpiece — imagination toys with the spelling:

Scenter piece
Sent her peace
Centaur peas

I grin, yet feel a small ache. Could this be code for something worth naming?

For centuries spiritual seekers have zeroed in on a word or phrase they long to deeply experience.

A verbal centerpiece.

I’m describing a shirt-tail cousin to Lectio Divina, the monastic practice of daily reflecting on a word or phrase gleaned from scripture or other spiritual texts.

Dwelling for a day beneath a word like a banner feels bracing. A mental upgrade.

Annually, I choose a word or phrase for the coming year. Not because I’m hyper-spiritual.

No. Call me The Distraction Magnet. My soundest intentions are easily foiled. Plus I’m forgetful. I need Cliffs Notes for more aware living — preferably the haiku version. Abridged.

Words with variable interpretations nurture, guide, and challenge me.

If they pull double duty as noun and verb, all the better.

Centerpiece Word for the Year: Delight — My 2015 word

To keep things fresh, I sometimes substitute new words. Write them on jaunty place cards and sticky notes, then affix them to dashboards and mirrors. Handlebars. Calendars. Closet shelves. Cupboard doors.

I fold them into wallets and tuck them inside books I’m reading.

Like cheeky cartoon captions, well-chosen words re-focus me, streamline my thoughts. Refresh my intention.

The briefest soul download . . . in a single glance.

Sometimes they affect my Yays and Nays. They help me:

organize possibilities
curate opportunities
cull old nemeses

Centerpiece living vs feature creep

During childhood my brother craved those fluffy corner pieces on bakery cakes, inch-deep in piped ridges and clustered roses.

I preferred middle pieces, choir-girl modest beneath a skim of white icing.

Too much of anything jangles me, be it whipped lard-and-sugar, caffeine, or excess input—including Costco and media touting myriad products, ever-breaking news and images.

Give me the gist. The essence. The heart of the matter, where I can briefly rest.

And catch those small messages hidden in plain sight.

Today I want to sense the crux of things . . .

in decor and diet
personal study
conversations, letters, emails
prayers, poems, and blog posts
events and interactions

And tonight, recount each centerpiece of the day—those created, and those found.

“It’s simple,” Mom said. “Just do this, often”:

Any “found centerpieces” in your day so far? I’d love to hear about them.

Why not create one for your desk or table? Or your screen saver?

Longing: What It Wants, Where It Points

by Laurie Klein 28 Chiming In

Longing: What does it want from me? This insistent ache, at night, weighting the chest like an X-ray apron.

This unfocused energy, jangling as a florescent tube on the fritz.

[Read more…]

Epiphany and the Epic Icicle

by Laurie Klein 42 Chiming In

Rowdy wind rocks our trees. It strums our Corinthian wind chimes (Tuned to a C chord, they’re gorgeous).

I raise Dreamer’s cell phone (mine’s not as smart). With a click, I’m recording the chimes.

Flash Forward. By midnight, this list will describe my day:

Mop up dog barf
Accidentally break favorite bowl
Shovel snow
Make a nice lunch for Dreamer (which makes him sick)
Struggle with blog post
Struggle with “chimes video” (which won’t upload)
Mutter bad words
Bite tongue
Accidentally shatter the “Peace” (Marquee falls off mantel)

Get car stuck in driveway

And that would be the really long driveway I already spent several days clearing, shovelful by shovelful. (Did I mention our plow’s on the fritz?)

Snow’s still coming down. And I will shovel again. Very soon.

Earlier today, with ice-flurries biting like buckshot, no let-up in sight and my stamina gone, can you picture me slumping over my shovel? Never mind I grew up in Wisconsin.

Now imagine an icicle. Measured against me, it’s taller (also gradually thickening), and it weeps a little, into a drift: A Kleincicle, stout as a thigh bone.

Seems the Epic Icicle is taxing the eaves. Posing a threat to anyone walking nearby—not unlike envy, frustration, an urge for revenge—sadly, my latest temptations.

Must I really knock it down?

Better to first stamp a row of holes in the snow, little burial spots. (Sometimes I need a visual.) In goes envy. Then angst. Meanness. Hurt.

The flakes fall faster now. I fill in each void with a confession, a boot scuff: the lug sole of gratitude.

Ahhh, newness, white as snow.

Then I wield the shovel. Crack! Chunk by knobbly chunk, down she goes, the once-proud column in ruins.

Back indoors, that image of ruin stays with me.

Epiphany

In The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp writes: “Let love break into you and mess with you and loosen you up and make you laugh and cry and give and hurt because this is the only way to really live. . . . Don’t waste a minute on anything less . . .”

In other words: Kiss the curmudgeon! Serve up those Tums on a silver dish. Cut loose with a Bigfoot ballet and a sweeping bow. Squirrel away dish shards: make a mosaic later.

I don’t know about your day, or your past year, but I hit some rough terrain: cold, hard, heartsore places that blurred my outlook. Froze my hopes.

So lately, I’m leaning into a personal epiphany via this thought from Ann Voskamp (my paraphrase):

**Every morning we get to rise (“get to?” . . . I get to rise).**

**God believes in us (now I’m speechless),**

believes in His stories being written through us . . .

Epiphany, traditionally

The Magi followed a chunk of ice screwed into the sky. A blinking Marquee bulb, proclaiming “Peace”—despite how often we’d break it.

Did those who searched the heavens for signs ever sense that Heaven believed in them, was writing the Story through them?

And after they knelt before their new God, beside those famous three gifts, I wonder what else they left behind.

What will you leave behind in this New Year?

What chosen word or phrase will guide you?

click to hear the Klein wind chimes

Soul Mimosa — Photos, Music

by Laurie Klein 24 Chiming In

Soul Mimosa time — from our studios to you!

I’ve assembled autumn and winter images from nature for your enjoyment. Click below to hear Bill perform the traditional Czech “Carol of the Drum” (~ 1800s) on Celtic harp, recorders, and drum as you scroll.

Enter the wonder. Absorb the hush . . .

Merry Christmas, friends! We hope you enjoyed our collaboration. May Peace and Presence enfold you, and yours, now and always.

“Carol of the Drum,” traditional tune from the 1800s. Celtic harp, recorders, and snare drum played by Bill Klein

Photos, Laurie Klein

Special thanks to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for permission to photograph their Living Nativity, 2016.

Holidays, Saying Yes to Unexpected Gifts

by Laurie Klein 15 Chiming In

Holidays, here they come . . .

And I’ve already blown it. Big time. Boy, am I sorry.

In the Christmas month when we reflect on Mary’s humble surrender to God, I unleashed an emotional vortex.

Personal desolation freighted each word I spoke. In return, hard-hitting truths were spoken to me. Pain—both past and present—collided, blinding me to how my words were hurting the other person. I made it all about me.

Conversation became an eruption. And later, when I was alone, an implosion.

Thank God. (Wait. Did she really just say that?)

Yes. Severe mercy was at work.

Professor Randy Pausch, in The Last Lecture, describes chronically disappointing his boyhood football coach. One day, the coach lit into him. The coach’s assistant, trying to encourage young Pausch, said this:

When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.

Dutch Uncle

Someone cared enough to tell me the hard truth. Such a person was once called a Dutch Uncle: one who speaks directly, even sternly to instruct, inspire, or admonish someone.

I was a wreck. Now God was offering me the chance for deep emotional healing through the words of the very person I’d wounded. Would I accept?

Even Mary, confronted with the angel Gabriel speaking for God, faced wrenching, unimaginable change. Probably trembling, she asked, “How will this be?”

The angel’s answer was cryptic.

Mary still said Yes.

A personal New Year

Yes, ache and frustration spewed that day. I discovered a place so raw only Love would care to, and dare to, lay it bare. Breathe on it. Ease it. Which felt awful, and right.

My meltdown bridged Thanksgiving and my birthday. For years I’ve followed Madeleine L’Engle’s custom of using her birthday (a date we share) to launch her personal New Year.

Today, having said my “Yes” to the healing process, having resolved to change, I’m heading toward 2017 with a new mindset, hoping blessings will follow.

Poet Adrienne Rich once said:

When a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Holidays: from the depths to the heights

We know emotions spike during holidays. We miss those no longer with us. We try to delight those who are still here. We hope for peace in our world, peace in our families. Our churches. Our places of work.

And we both bless and blow it.

Despite our mistakes, new life keeps heading toward us. In my case, literally. We will soon welcome our fourth windfall grandchild. The due date? New Year’s Eve.

Such is the love of God that new life is always on its way. It’s heading for our doorsteps even now.

Will we make room for change in our lives?

Make room for Him?

How might these holidays usher in healing for you?