Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Double-dog-dare-you

Double-dog-dare-you . . .

or What Rocked Me Most, on our getaway
at The River Cove B&B

Poised

This glassy cove
reflects a perilous
slab of rock, upended;
the yellow dog barks,
paces the rim,
pauses,
all crouch and hunker;
tail flag,
scrabble of paws . . .
Watch everything
swell, then distill
and gather—sinew,
breath, time: one
fizzing, defiant vault!

≈≈≈

Friends, I laughed out loud over that leap. Sheer canine ecstasy. The headlong ker-splash ricocheted between rocky shores, ripples fanning outward. Then inward.

Can I do that?

Next day: same river, black Lab, sodden tennis ball.

Check it out: Double-dog-dare-youIMG-9336

Seems I’ve lost touch with springs, hardwired into my limbs and spirit.

Teetering, on edge, I typically freeze. Or flail. Misgauging danger, I’m all toes, gripping the brink, and leaning, leaning back as fear overbalances flesh.

Hello, bum-plant.

Faltering in full view, confidence flat-lined, I scramble for footing, often forget to laugh.

Friends, wherever you’re currently poised, what is the invitation today: caution, or risk? Either choice can be sacred; both take courage.

What helps you heed that whispered “Now” or “Wait”?

PS. My big project — mentioned in a recent post — seems to be underway. Thanks for your prayers! More about this in a future post . . .

Double-dog-dare-you video: Bill Klein

The River Cove Bed & Breakfast: “Sublime setting, sensational cuisine, superior service.” —yours truly, in their guestbook.

Small Dog, Big Attitude Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash

Weight and Wait: More than a Homonym

by Laurie Klein 19 Chiming In

It starts with a nudge.

A trusted friend, moved to pray for me, did so. A single word came into his mind. No explanation.

Wait or weight? he wondered.

Another listening pause. Both, he thought.

Soon afterward, his email lights up my inbox. I feel like a glass tube holding noble gas — stirred by a steady glow within and aware of humming, spiritual voltage: a prayer akin to neon.

I feel seen.

I’ve been awaiting someone’s decision. Unsure how to proceed, I’ve let the weight of not knowing siphon away my joy.

My friend pledges to “pray for the weight of glory to be revealed in and through [me].”

Times of waiting — so common in crises, relationships, and big projects—can short-circuit our outlook. Song, meditation, prayer, the Word — we flick our go-to switches yet often fail to discern what’s next.

An aspect of life as we’ve known it sputters and dims.

Perhaps God will generate something new?

You will have heard about the mythic firebird, the phoenix that rises from the ashes, soaring to new life.

Have you heard of “Phoenix regeneration”? It’s the final stage in a tree’s lifecycle.

According to arborist William Bryant Logan, when roots atrophy, water stutters through trunk and limbs. Eventually depleted, the tree surrenders its crown first. Ninety-some feet or more of a once-vibrant life topples.

But afterward . . . little images of itself may sprout from the lower trunk or even from the root flare, wherever a living connection between root and branch survives.

Does this rejuvenation suggest grace, incognito?

If new rootlets take hold, traces of the original tree will reemerge. You could almost call it immortal. Arborist Logan does, then goes on:

It is as though a person rested her arm on the dirt, spread out her palm, and two perfect new arms emerged from her lifeline, complete with all the muscles and tendons and circulation, the hands, palms, fingers, and fingernails.

O the Good Spirit loves an inside job.

Meanwhile, we really can shrug off the weight of having to perform. The gradual outworking of God’s holy perfection, already indwelling our souls, will reproduce traces of God’s nature in and through us.

In other words, be of good courage. No matter the present weight, wait. Providence will appear.

As if to underline the point: yesterday a sparrow careened into our window, then plummeted to our front step, seemingly dazed. Those bright eyes blinked, but the body, still standing, albeit hunched and ruffled, seemed paralyzed.

En route to church, we tiptoed past her, sharply recalling God’s eye rests with love on every creature. Surely she’d be gone by the time we returned, having regathered her strength.

Home we came. She’d moved several inches to the right, her downy head now leaning into a dead leaf. Would she keel over?

I brought birdseed and water, prayed she would rise. I wanted so badly to stroke her soft back, but caution checked my impulse.

Often it’s best to forgo interrupting what we don’t understand.

Maybe you or someone you love feels like that downed bird: stalled out, too shocked to regroup. May I pray?

Lord of All, restore and renew each person reading these words, wherever they feel depleted, uprooted, or fallen. Comfort them. Deepen their hope amidst the unknowns, even as you prepare their upward trajectory. Amen.

A tree. A bird. A God of Light who loves the living back into motion, by stages.

How do you cope with the weight of waiting? I hope you’ll share with us . . .

With thanks to Maria Popova, of The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings)

Quotations taken from Old Growth — selected poems and essays from Orion Magazine, including pieces by Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Pollan, and others.

Photo of clock between tree trunks by Yaniv Knobel on Unsplash

Photo of sparrow by yours truly

You might also enjoy this post from the archives: Waiting Grace, Hearts on Ice

Whistle Pig

by Laurie Klein 28 Chiming In

May’s winding down. I’ve launched a passel of heart-wrung essays and poems into cyberspace and now await editors’ yeas or nays. Waiting. Waiting. Yes, I get twitchy.

“Good Spirit,” I prayed this morning, “have your way. And please, send a blog idea.”

A marmot arrived.

In our front yard.

Think upsized squirrel, with teeth that keep growing
Think savvy trickster with a droll silhouette
Intrepid tunneller / whistler / survivor of storms

Turns out these pudgier cousins to groundhogs and woodchucks arise, in May, from six months of hibernation. Seeking a mate.

Well, this one’s gonna be lonesome. After 32 years in our cedar house on the hill, this is our first visitation.

In nearby Spokane, there are colonies of them, downtown, near the river. Out here? Never.

The nickname whistle pig (for the distinctive warning call) feels undignified for an animal viewed as a wisdom keeper by some Native American tribes. Some Africans view them as agents of healing.

Christians feature them in their artwork and literature; they also malign them as symbols of gluttony.

(Gulp. While researching the critters, I binge-ate four lunch bag servings of Cheetos today.)

So. Perhaps, a heaven-sent warning?

BUT THIS . . . stopped me:

An encounter with a marmot can be read
as a sign of forthcoming assistance
in a big endeavor.

Fanciful? Perhaps. But I’m on the cusp of submitting a full-length manuscript of poems to a most excellent editor. Except . . . I’ve stalled out. Several hundred hours have gone into this project already over the past year. If the publisher accepts it, then there’s the expected undertaking of marketing and publicity—undertaking, as in engaging with certain death. I am abysmal at business.

Since the marmot feels “sent,” might this be a good-humored nudge to . . . finish up already, and hit “Send”?

“The Marmot is also a reminder that we should never give up on our dreams and goals,” writes Andy Willis, “no matter how difficult they may seem.”

Now that I can take on board. How about you? Can I join you in prayer for your current undertaking?

How do you cope with looming expectations when you feel inadequate for the task? I could really use help on this. And prayer!

P.S. Speaking of fanciful, here’s a poem I wrote several years ago, from a marmot’s point of view.

Whistle Pig Polka Beneath the Monroe Street Bridge

My fellow tunnel junkie, old twinkle-toes Hans,
warms up in our downtown digs. Too bad
Spokane’s first wooden bridge turned itself
into cinders, sifting across the gorge. These days
reinforced concrete, blithe as a skipped stone,
curves across the river like marmot ears. All-day
roar of the waves plus traffic—who hears the small
footfalls, dancing across our triple arch stage
long as 448 of us, laid out, snout to tail?

Ask any oompah-loving rodent playing the tuba,
or mini-concertina (wheezing beneath the cars
with Bohemian flair): hop-steps, close-steps,
claw-foot twirl—duple time fires the blood!
As to those chewed car wires, and the occasional
neighborhood landscape binge, Hans decrees
we all carb load. Half our lives are spent
dreaming up choreography during hibernation.
Some of us want to believe a bridge is forever.

Appeared in Spokane Writes, 2017

Whistle Pig on the Run — Dreamer’s Action Capture

Feature Photo by Eli Allan on Unsplash

Classic pose with log Photo by Miguel Teirlinck on Unsplash

“On the run,” courtesy of Dreamer, who first spotted our guest

Flourish!

by Laurie Klein 19 Chiming In

Flourish . . .

The amaryllis bulb was an Advent gift: scarlet lilies-in-waiting. Yet this one, the size of my fist, was dirt-less and nearly airless, sheathed in beige wax.

Would it grow?

Forced blooms perform out of season, indoors, often far from their natural habitat. Over the years, I’ve tended potted amaryllis. During months of overcast skies, they suggest Spring will again effervesce.

Within days, the first leaf knifed upward. A green bulge followed atop a stem that eventually separated into four elongated buds at right angles, each one shapely as a calligrapher’s flourish.

Red petals flared, a visual fanfare like living fireworks.

Then . . . a second stem, another quartet of six-pointed stars. It seemed a parable-in-progress: as in, we carry within what we need to blossom.

I lopped off wilt but left the waxy coating intact: one bulb, no water, nothing to feed on — save itself.

A few weeks later, six (6!) additional buds crowned stem number three. That’s rare!

Lately, my heroic bulb — now tamped into soil — is eking out rootlets, launching new leaves.

Sometimes we mortals seem to blossom overnight. We call this a breakthrough. An epiphany. A veil lifts, and fresh insight bowls us over, perhaps via glimpses of mercy, mirth, beauty, or truth. The revelation is quick.

We use the word “quickening” to describe that first stirring of the fetus curled in the womb. In a moment, life ignites. As with plants, so with people: verve generates roots and blooms.

But then come the gradual, wearing forces of heartbreak, soul erosion, physical breakdown. What then?

We may feel deprived, perhaps curtailed as my holiday bulb. Yet hope beckons. We learn new ways to weather impediments, outlast their strictures. A season of imposed limitations can also evoke unexpected creativity, break us open in glorious ways.

Will we also store up strength for the future?

My amaryllis bulb must endure being sidelined, for months, to flower again — some fortitude required.

Writer Mark Nepo says, “We are worn to who we are meant to be.”

Not born, but worn. Our personal growth curve benefits from subtractions as well as additions. The old equation holds: he must increase, but I must decrease. No fanfare. No fireworks. Thus, are we conformed to Christ.

This is one way we begin to behold — in ourselves, in our world, and in one another — what is tender and vibrant, if also fleeting.

Eternally drawn through seasons of rest and nourishing grace, we flourish anew.

Lord of Life, you never force us. Instead, you equip us, then coax us to show forth your colors. Remind us you’re still at work—even when nothing remotely green seems to be rising.

Friends, where are you in the cycle: Newly abloom? Temporarily shelved? Somewhere in between?
What is the invitation? Where are you feeling stifled? Is it time for a small fanfare?

Photo by Vincenzo Tabaglio on Unsplash

You might also enjoy this, from the archives:

A Respect for Emergence

by Laurie Klein 16 Chiming In

Of all the nerve. A moose plunged through our snowy wonderland.

The neighborhood Bullwinkle gouged the back forty trail. My trail. I have slogged a reliable floor on snow shoes by compressing numberless, nearly weightless flakes — bound together by weather and gumption.

Moose tracks boggle my sense of proportion. Those hoof prints could be family-size canned hams.

And those gouges compromise balance: a boot teeters, an ankle gives way. No wonder my usually mellow soul bristles.

Overnight, the gentle herbivore collapsed whole sections of trail I have carved and re-carved, daily, over four months. Through sleet and sunlight and once, near whiteout.

Come spring, I mean to jog again. A gear junkie would buy snow shoes designed for running. I’m too cheap. For now, dogged phlogg-ing fuels my training regimen:

pitch body forward
trust metal claws
let poles swing, plant, propel

Rhythm cuts the trail.

Most days something pent up inside hollers, Move it! Make your way through this booby-trapped world.

But what about the wilderness carried within? Some of us crave drama. Others dodge it. How to navigate those unexpected sinkholes that compromise footing?

Weight wise, a bull moose is the equivalent of a grand piano. In the midst of deep drifts, the toes splay — akin to snow shoes. Each hoof’s surface area increases, which minimizes how far those long legs can sink.

The hoof is a hardworking trinity. There are compacted shock absorbers. Two cloven toes function like our middle and ring finger. A dew claw becomes weight bearing and enhances agility, like our pointer and pinky.

Ingenious.

And . . . almost heart-shaped. A terrible magnificence has cratered my sacred aisle, through bowed-over knapweed, through powder and windswept ripples and hummocks of ice.

Caprice? Necessity? Irreversible ruin?

Poet Molly Peacock writes about sustaining “a respect for emergence.” Bound to be awkward. Guaranteed to counter preferred rhythms.

Ideally, perhaps we navigate the intrusive by remaining attentive. Patient.

What if we welcome unwanted traffic on our perceived turf? What if something gentle yet powerful we’ve yet to identify calls to us now, from below the surface?

Lord, be our balance, our surefooted joy.

Friends, what keeps you nimble in challenging times?

P.S. You might enjoy this poem I wrote (many thanks to publisher Katie Manning, Whale Road Review)

Tracks

1
Loneliness moves by stab
and creak over winter hills—

crossbite of straps,
cunning hoops with teeth. Like prayer,

snowshoes re-float the body,
distribute its burden.

Wood or aluminum,
baskets-and-poles —

be our wings. Our boats.
Surrogate bones.

2
Fences run with the hills.
Snow fleas pepper the snow

beneath spruce. Skitter of mice
in whiskery lines, strut

and splay of the wild turkey.
Beneath my flat blue shadow

and, deeper down, the memory
of bared soles, mingled

with fossils. Today:
practice not sinking.

*****

“. . . yet I will rejoice in the LORD . . . my strength . . . he enables me to tread on the heights” (Habakkuk 3:18, 19a, NIV).

From the archives, you might also enjoy: Lessons from a Moose

*Quote, Molly Peacock, A Friend Sails in on a Poem.

Photo by Ivars Krutainis on Unsplash

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