Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Wellspring

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 . . .

Let faith, rather than dread, simmer.
Maintain the tools (prayer, worship, the Word).
Make friends with time.
Welcome prolonged suspense.
Savor the juice of simple goodness.

Then feast on a bagel smeared with jelly.

Friends, what is strain teaching you? I could use a few tips . . .

You might also enjoy “Catch Your Breath Here”

Photo of woman by Keenan Constance on Unsplash

Bagel photo by Douglas Bagg on Unsplash

Knots & Pearls — A Cry for Connection

by Laurie Klein 26 Chiming In

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 15 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