Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Gratitude: develop, break free, generate life

Gratitude — if it were a color, which one would it be today?

When I spotted this Japanese Maple seedling, its assertive color stopped me. Tree bling, albeit a little tattered at the edges. That the earth offers this rich, saturated hue delights me. It matches my mother’s favorite Christmas dress, worn yearly throughout my childhood.

Then there’s the seedling’s shape: flamboyant, open. A diva seedling. Botanists use the word samara for this winged shape. I like how that sounds, rolling off my tongue: Sah – mar’ – ah.

Notice the built-in transportation. When the stem lets go, the samara spontaneously whirly-gigs through the air.

Each seed has its mission: develop; break free; generate life

The longer I look, the more I see and the more I am moved by detail. Symbol. Potential applications to daily life. Insight develops. I need these small pauses. The wonder I absorb leads me to gratitude.

And being grateful defuses my fears when circumstances overwhelm me. [Read more…]

Today’s Election, Each Day’s Path

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

Path, rut, trail . . . which way next?

You may recall my previous post about the Merciless Great Red Masticator (MGRM). We hired its owner to fell half our forest last summer, which was ravaged by bark beetles.

Talk about thrashing and crashing! Insult and chaos. A long-loved landscape is now one I barely recognize.

Like American politics.

Where is the path?

For 25 years, I’ve walked, jogged, skied, and snow-shoed the same narrow path through woods, past the pond, then across the meadow. A rotation of dogs accompanied me. Plus a host of thoughts. Songs. Questions. And always, prayers.

For 25 years I kept faith with those eight-or-so wild acres. My trail hardened to beaten earth, eventually sunk two inches deep. The path shaped itself to my sole. And soul.

The MGRM obliterated my path, left behind land scored with wheel ruts. Barren dirt and broken boughs. Holes I call sprains-in-waiting.

Amid the new ugliness, I lost my bearings. Lost heart. Gave up on my walk.

For similar reasons I quit following debates and political news. I lost hope. Felt helpless. Pictured America circling the drain, waning like past civilizations.

And then the rain

Last week’s rain kept me indoors. A few stirring posts (written by others) reminded me what a redemptive, endlessly inventive God watches over our broken world.

Behind the scenes and amid toxic rhetoric and upheaval, greed, deceit, and ruinous lies, God keeps working . . . in and through people.

Was I going to knuckle under to dismay? Or renew my hope?

Meanwhile

Thanks to rain, a haze of tender green started sprouting out back. I can’t explain it, but the new grass has revealed sections of my former path, as if it’s still there, under the wreckage of all that has fallen, beckoning me through the shambles toward water, leading me toward wide skies and meadow.

Each day now, I align broken branches along sections I recognize. And Uncle Tanner, our dog, helps me tamp down the new stretches.

The land wants to thrive.

The rut that keeps on giving

My old prayer path is (partly) viable. And prayer still moves heaven, and earth—even the Everest of disillusionment. No matter who wins the elections.

Our God can work through anyone. (See Balaam and the ass: Numbers 22.)

We make a difference as we always have: one voice, one person, one act at a time. No matter who’s in the oval office. No matter what crises befall our nation.

My pastor, Eric Peterson, said that as believers in a world both suffused with God’s presence and ravaged by evil we’re called to embody “extreme love that speaks truth to terror.”

The path of faith we’ve signed up for may not be easy to find; it will be meaningful—no matter who runs roughshod over the land.

This is what the LORD says: Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.

But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ (Jeremiah 6: 16 NIV)

Each day’s election, every day’s choice

It’s not just how I vote this week, but how I hope. And what I elect to do, and believe, each day, for one person or many, one truthful, loving, act at a time.

What path is calling you?

Amazing Grace: Cyber-refresh

by Laurie Klein 22 Chiming In

Amazing grace . . .

Most parents I know occasionally second-guess the way they raised (or are raising) their kids. I still do.

Or we regret career decisions. Broken relationships. There’s wreckage‚ despite our best intentions. Damage is done.

When we experience God’s amazing grace, it becomes easier to extend grace to others. And to ourselves.

Sometimes, though, I forget how lost I once was—and how transformed I am now, by comparison.

Recently, I had the chance to co-create something special with my adult daughter, Kristin—for each of us, a newly amazing grace.

What we did

Last week Kristin and I collaborated on a music/movement/spoken-word piece, then shared it at her church, Liferoads.

We blended verses from Psalm 88 (The Message) with two poems I adapted for the occasion from my book, Where the Sky Opens, and the moving song, “Grace Flows Down,” by Christy Nockels.

Kristin’s friend, Laura Fodey, joined us on violin. Thanks to Laura’s quick-thinking husband and his cell phone, along with Troy masterminding sound, we can offer you this casual capture here.

https://youtu.be/g2JRpQ9Rzek

Grace, as gift, multiplies, then keeps on giving each time we receive it from God, and each time we extend grace to others, as well as ourselves.

Here’s the text, for anyone interested.

Amazing Grace . . . I once was lost, and now am found.
What does it mean, being “lost?” Do you remember?
Psalm 88 says it this way:

God, you’re my last chance of the day . . .
Put me on your salvation agenda,
take notes on the trouble I’m in.
I’m camped on the edge of hell,
written off as a lost cause,
one more statistic, a hopeless case.
Abandoned as one already dead
and not so much as a gravestone—
I’m a black hole in oblivion.
I call to you, God; all day I call.
Why . . . why do you make yourself scarce?
The only friend I have left is Darkness.

—Psalm 88, The Message

Amazing! Grace covers me . . .

What might being “found” by God look like, feel like, sound like? Pretty hard to put into words.

Perhaps a poem and some body language gives us a glimpse:

The lone dove at dusk echoes
every day’s hope,

each note a psalm of a self,
a white blossom

where rests fall between sounds
like petals. See the way God

cups each face that he loves, and
his light strikes the hollow

curve of each throat, leaving us
speechless.

And having been lost,
and now, so amazingly found,
how then shall we live?

I am going to start living
larger, looser—
stripped down
to my sapling self, leaning,
leaning toward
that leafless tree Messiah loved
enough to die on.

Because Grace flows down
and covers me,
my knee goes down.
My brow touches earth until,
moved by hosannas, echoing
deep inside stones,
I rise. Forgiven. Free.
Then the tight turn,
lifting fingers and limbs,
my soul like a white blossom—
all the thorns, delicately removed.

Then the wide turn,
leaning toward the next sapling self,
lost, leafless, filled with longing.
Maybe it’s you, or you, or you.

—Adapted from “She Can Only Try to Compose Herself” and “Yes,” from Where the Sky Opens

Natural . . . infinite . . . yes: photo meditation

by Laurie Klein 29 Chiming In

Natural, infinite, yes—what images do these words conjure for you?

Scouting the Natural World

Last weekend Dreamer and I attended photography classes in Stehekin, Washington.

A four-hour boat trip up Lake Chelan launched the last leg of our journey. Dreamer sat on the deck absorbing scenery. Anticipating camera jargon I wouldn’t know, I sat inside at a table to (finally) read my camera manual (well, part of it).

After the first class, we bundled up in our rain gear, then explored the local harvest festival, cameras ready.

Time seemed to slow down despite the dank weather as I scouted unusual natural images.

Like this sundial faithfully doing its work. In the rain.

My goal was to “receive” the images rather than “take” them, a photography method I learned from Christine Valters-Paintner.

Time became elastic as I paid close attention to my surroundings. Perhaps I can offer you a taste. Will you join me in a visual meditation today?

Visio Divina

Visio Divina is a way of seeing, an ancient spiritual practice which invites the viewer to be fully present, attentive to imagery and its possible messages to the viewer’s spirit.

Perhaps these photos will beckon you toward rest. Contemplation. Memory. I’ve interwoven them among lines of a favorite e. e. cummings poem.

i thank You God for most this amazing day

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky

and for everything which is natural

which is infinite

which is yes

(I who have died am alive again today: and this is the sun’s birthday

this is the birthday of life

and of love

and wings

and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

When did you last encounter a natural, infinite yes? Were you seeking the experience, or did it come as a gift?

“i thank You God for most this amazing” by E.E. Cummings, from 100 Selected Poems. © Grove Press, 1994. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Butterflies Worth Befriending

by Laurie Klein 6 Chiming In

So much depends on the angle of light, and the way you squint.
—Margaret Atwood

Butterflies, for instance . . .

How would you caption this photo?

Little bug, big attitude? Walk softly, and cast a long shadow? Dracu-fly wannabe with serious Cape Envy?

I almost missed this miniature drama at my feet. Dreamer noticed the lone butterfly. I chose where I would stand in relation to the light (a mindset I hope to keep cultivating).

Photo-ops surround us, waiting to be absorbed. Received, rather than taken.

Even for rookies, like me. [Read more…]