Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Call of the Wind

by Laurie Klein 16 Chiming In

Call of the Wind

Alarm

Picture David’s royal bed,
his oldest lyre suspended, vertically,
overhead . . . all night

an eerie, braided hum-m-m
roused by wind at play
among the strings. Chilled,

dream-stalled,
blinking — did he
burrow down? We know

cold blooms within
our bones in lonely hours.
Watch with me, as he

rises, lights the hanging lamp,
scrapes away the sand of sleep.
Kneels. Unfurls the Scroll.*

+++

Yours truly, on the other hand, chronic night owl, has finally found a natural cure for my insomnia. A little protein before turning in helps me sleep, at last, in heavenly peace.

And yet.

Rising in the darkness to meditate appeals to my yen for the mystical: solitude, breath prayers, listening silence.

I could hang Dreamer’s Celtic harp from the ceiling fan . . .

Safer by far to ask Ruach, wind of the Spirit, to occasionally nudge me awake. The older I get, the more I want to spend what hours remain meaningfully.

“Awareness needs constant refreshing,” author Rick Rubin writes.

Call of the Wind

Jesus often got up in the wee hours to listen and pray. Like King David before him, he traversed a world ravaged by terrors and keening need.

Think of it. The same Spirit that breathed on celestial harps and angel choirs at the Savior’s birth later called Jesus to rise, meditate by night in deserts and gardens, on perilous seas and mountainsides.

What was it like that night in Bethlehem, unearthly music filling the air?

Shepherds left their bedding. Lit a torch. Robes furled against the cold, they sought Torah’s promised Messiah: the Living Word.

Emmanuel.

Creaking knees, a groan, the crackle of flattening straw. Then . . . timelessness: the breath of God, tiny lip-smack and gulp. A hiccup. The baby’s sigh.

All the adults must have stilled in wonder, their mindsets expanding, outlooks extending.

In our day, imagining those small sounds enlarges my soul’s inscape, urging love’s outgrowth.

This Advent, amid our war-torn world — overrun and undermined by outrage, greed, and hype — I am listening for Ruach. Trying to breathe in sync.

O to become a psalm: wind-swept, humming . . .

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.

*Jewish midrash tradition honors David’s lyre-as-alarm-clock, and his tender response.

Quotation, Rick Rubin, The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

Hear a Celtic harp (similar to Dreamer’s) played by wind blowing across an Irish cliff.

Hear a box wind harp.

Rabbi Israel Goldfarb plays a replica of King David’s lyre here and another song here. (May take a few seconds to download, but so interesting)

You might also enjoy this post from the archives.

Sleeping man photo by Lucas Andrade on Unsplash
Windblown blue fabric photo by Daniele Levis Pelusi on Unsplash

Open Sesame

by Laurie Klein 21 Chiming In

Open Sesame . . .

Hand your children a treasure hunt clue — to open last — on Christmas Day:

Find the one space in our house
you’ve never discovered;
the next clue is waiting,
under the covers.

Off they run, room to room, upstairs and down . . .

Seeking

that hidden, under-the-eaves place
behind their bedroom wall, where
you knelt, while they were at school,
nailing plywood to joists,
unrolling the red oriental rug
to cushion their small bare feet — that open
space, where you crowned the vent pipe
with twisted, brown-paper limbs
and colored leaves that
tremble, each time the door opens.

A secret room.
With posters for windows.
With a cupboard brimming with books. Wooden houses that nest like Russian dolls. Repainted toys.

Year-round peace, goodwill to all who stoop to enter.

This year I imagine telling our grandkids, again, about no room in the inn.

“But where did the room go?” “Did somebody take it?” “Why didn’t they share? (We always have to.)”

Christmas approaches. I want them to experience hiddenness. Marvel. Creative spaciousness, born of spirit.

So, I’m starting early, by savoring stories, essays, poems, and secret rooms you may not have thought about.

“It takes childlike faith to believe in a reality beyond the grim one we know so well,” Philip Yancey writes, “and to keep celebrating regardless.”

Do you believe we can recover innocence? If so, how do we begin? Can it be sustained? Shared?
Ideas?

P.S. Daniel Taylor says, “A story that still bothers you sixty years after it happened might be a story to pay attention to.”

Friends, thank you for praying! My new poetry collection, House of 49 Doors: entries in a life, will be published by The Poeima Poetry Series, in 2024! Within these linked poems, a family secret—stifled for six decades—unfurls: relived by my preteen self, named Larkin, and revisited in the present-day by Eldergirl. Amid vivid memories of my eccentric childhood home (and the wild creatures living nearby), long overdue healing and gratitude finally rise.

Which reminds me: Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. About that Advent book I’ve been savoring. Here’s the link.

A Radiant Birth: Advent Readings for a Bright Season. It’s a Christmas treasury and it includes both quotes above. Morning by morning, the pages beckon me toward discovery. Entries read like clues. I step into a fresh dimension, thoughtfully arranged for a seeker, revealing aspects of alternate worlds within our familiar one.

Photo by Leyre Labarga on Unsplash

From the archives: Sometimes the Gift Tears You Open

Rich in mercy

by Laurie Klein 28 Chiming In

Uh-oh. I spot the unmarked,
four-inch ridge of pavement
a smidgeon too late …

But I’ve jump-cut ahead.
Flash backward with me —
before the detour.

My husband, Dreamer, and I go cycling most evenings. We wear black tights and neon-yellow jerseys (plus neon argyles, for yours truly).

Picture two elderly bumblebees.

Dreamer rides a high-tech, acid green trike; I pedal a black recumbent. Seated roughly two feet above the ground, we count on our strobing head- and tail-lights as well as flapping pennants to alert drivers of our presence.

Perhaps passersby think we’re “spry.” It’s hard to miss Dreamer’s white beard.

Tonight, while powering through a neighborhood construction zone that includes a long stretch of gravel, I collide with the small, aforementioned, asphalt cliff.

The bike jolts.
Bones judder.
Adrenalin surges;
my tire collapses.

I wobble … but don’t fall.

“Everything okay?” A man out walking pauses to ask.

Dreamer carries a pump and patch kit. “Got it covered,” he calls.

“Thank you for asking,” I add.

By the light of the setting sun, innertube removal commences. Always a challenge.

Then, Dreamer’s pump fails to work. By now the pedestrian’s long gone. Streetlights bloom around us.

SOS phone calls to family ring … and ring … unanswered.

What now?

“I could hoist the front end,” I venture. “Walk the bike home.”

Dreamer frowns. “Five miles?”

“Oh.” I feel hope waver, thready as smoke from a guttering candle.

As if in response, a bright blue truck pulls alongside. “Hey, I couldn’t stop thinking about you. Came back to check.”

It’s the walker who stopped earlier. Glory be. I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.

“Brought my pump, just in case.”

The guy, an avid cyclist, brims over with rescue stories. He’s funny and kind and generous. Four bike-savvy hands complete the task.

Then, in with the good air …

Long ago, Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury said, “Our charity [for others] is so little fervent, yet you, Lord, are so rich in mercy.”

Would I have stopped? Twice?

A long hiss-s-s-s. My newly patched, re-inflated tire goes flat. Again. We stare in dismay.

“Nearly dark,” the man observes, “and getting cold.”

As if we haven’t noticed.

“Let me give you a lift.”

We don’t even know his name.

Turns out Dreamer’s trike won’t fit beside my recumbent.

“Hop in,” the stranger says to me.

By myself? I wonder if it’s safe. And then: How dare I suspect such largesse? I want to say, Okay, but let us pay you. But I know my offer would disappoint him.

I clamber into the passenger seat.

“We’ll follow your husband,” he says. And at 12 miles per hour, we do. He even offers to go back to his place to get Dreamer a jacket. Breathtaking kindness, rich in mercy.

Our rescuer reminds me a little of One who arrives — in various guises — asking: “Need any help?” The same One who smiles when we mention our self-sufficiency. And who returns, despite nightfall, with our welfare in mind.

The One who sees us safely home.

You are my help in the darkness, the psalmist says. “I will rise to give you thanks” (Ps. 119:62).

Before our new friend pulls away, we learn his name is Rich.

Friends, who’s restoring your faith in humanity?

Photo by Chris Becker on Unsplash

Stealth: Is There a Good Kind?

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

Stealth

Within our valiant pines
bark beetles
gnaw the inner life. Left
unaddressed, they will
riddle the heartwood.
Their labyrinths glisten
with eggs that hatch
and hatch—over time,
the infiltration, fatal.

Here on the ground, among our kind, a similar fate looms. Chronic negativity may infect our sense of self, our family members, even our projects; it eats away at our moods, impairing growth.

In a heartbeat, online interactions veer into all-cap shouting. Name calling. Threats.

Who will soothe the raveled temper with a cheeky bon mot?

One dictionary translates the French expression to mean a “good word”; another defines it as “a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter.”

Think charm.

Generosity.

Genial wit.

Do you, like me, long to somehow counter the chronic, insidious sowing of doubt—the kind that kills rather than spurs constructive debate?

I often miss the moment. During heated conversations, I retreat. Hours later the sparkling comeback arrives. No matter. I can still make a call, send an email or text, perhaps mail that droll card I’ve been saving. Or write a blog post.

In increasingly uncivil settings, at work or at church, in the family or in the public square, we can still alter an atmosphere—one word, one byte—at a time.

Call it a disarming enactment of upbeat stealth.

“A word spoken in due season, how good it is!” Proverbs 15:23

A joke won’t save an infested tree. An invitation to shared laughter just might defuse a human standoff—perhaps preserve a relationship.

But . . . it’s harder than this, right? We must also challenge today’s fractious culture that vetoes extending respect. A listening ear.

The beleaguered tree—consumed from within—seems a fitting metaphor. What about metamorphic bias we already harbor? Meta, means “change” and morphe, “form.”

When shocked or frightened or wounded by others, or just plain bugged, sometimes I want to lash out. Might a good word from God’s Word alter my stance by several degrees?

Or will I succumb to a hardening mindset?

Take obsidian: rapidly cooled magma transformed by volcanic heat and pressure becomes natural glass. It’s black. Hard. Glossy and sharp enough to cut someone.

Volatile human interactions lacking respect tend to consume or even calcify hearts and minds.

Hear both sides, I tell myself. Especially when it chafes.
Learn by observing those who can converse with enemies.
Go gently among those with a half-glass outlook, their alter Eeyore expecting the worst.

Pause. Lean into the small silence. Is this the moment to speak?

Perhaps the Spirit will reveal a comic incongruity. Shared laughter reestablishes common ground.

You might also feel nudged to offer a bon mot. Or trust grace amid the shared silence to work in ways beyond comprehension.

Either way, in the moment or afterward, offer a stealth prayer.

Friends, have you overheard a quote or a bon mot that dispelled angst? Do you have one of your own?

Please share in the comments!

Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash

You might also enjoy this one from the archive: Own a Better View

Gaiety . . . to Go

by Laurie Klein 49 Chiming In

“Whoa, pull over!” I cry.

Phone in hand, I scramble past the curb. An entire front yard froths with blooms the size of faces — some of the stems six feet tall! — a sea of lavender, white, and magenta phlox, illumined by westerly light.

Dreamer follows me, and their lingering, sunset perfume envelops us, gauzy as spun sugar.

A door slams, and a slender gentleman exits the house.

“This is amazing,” I call. “May I take pictures?”

“Help yourself,” he says, with a grin. “Let me call the owner,” he adds. “She’ll want to meet you.”

A moment later a petite woman draped in bright colors joins us. She grins. Silvery strands thread her waist-long pony tail. “Perfect timing! I’m so glad you’re here!” she cries. “Walk through the arch and I’ll meet you out back.”

Curious, we turn. A flagstone path beckons. We check our watches.

We were en route to a surprise birthday party — a tad nervous, introverts that we are.

Now, it seems we are stepping right out of time . . . and into a corner of Eden. Birdsong ripples. Sculptural swans and angels peer out between fiery dahlias, towering canna lilies. Snowy datura foregrounds a fence.

A screen door bangs. “Here,” says our hostess. “Put these on. I’m going to take pictures, okay? LOTS of pictures. You’re going to love it! Pick a hat.”

Rakish Dreamer winks, tilting a brim.

“Wrap yourself in this,” she tells me, holding out a vintage sable stole. “And this!” She flourishes a black mid-century cocktail hat. It resembles an oversize mussel shell, pierced with a jaunty feather. “Use the garage door mirror,” she urges. “Get everything just right.”

Seems to me our blithe sprite of a guide, her gaiety both palpable and insistent, must be obeyed.

“Stand here, you two,” she directs. “Beside my sign.”

And I, chronic dodger of cameras, mug for the lens. Picture sweeping gestures. Madcap poses. I inhabit the fur, that fetching hat.

What’s happening here?

Gaiety rises. We laugh amid multiple takes — one, a video, with me proclaiming our 50^th anniversary this month.

Feels like she’s waited — all her life — for us.

As if our arrival has always been her dearest wish.

We’ve not even exchanged names, yet we all exude contagious delight.

Will heaven be like this?

“I’m throwing a garden party,” she says. “Will you come? Say yes!”

Welcome to prevenient grace. Anticipating your hesitation as well as your secret longing, prevenient grace “goes before you to prepare a place for you.”*

So here’s to the Spirit, nudging its agents of whimsy, offsetting our post-pandemic habit of fearing others.
And here’s to the startling largesse of strangers.
Long live felicity! — each of us fractionally grasping the prodigal child’s wonder.

Belatedly, Dreamer and I recall the party we’re now running late for . . .

No. The party we’re now prepared for:

Two aging adults, at sunset,
beyond grateful to be together,
graced by backyard felicity,
eager to spread gaiety
to others who may have forgotten
what it’s like to be young at heart,
utterly welcomed. Wanted.

If you’ve been recently nudged toward joy, how is it changing you?

Meanwhile, let’s watch for the pure in heart, who “may be as shopworn and clay-footed as [we are], but have somehow kept some inner freshness and innocence intact.” —Buechner, Whistling in the Dark

P.S. In the language of flowers, showstopper “phlox represents pure intentions and commitment to a relationship that outlives youthful infatuation.”