Blog - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Sustain

by Laurie Klein 27 Chiming In

Sustain

Beeline with me to the solarium: weathered brick, hardwood. An echo chamber.

One whole room for a lonesome grand piano.

And you.

(Not musical? Immaterial. Welcome to Daydream Central.)

The lid, when raised, tilts like a raven’s wing. Ivories glow. Go on, ease onto the bench. Limber your hands. Now . . .

Pick a note, any note. And depress the sustain—that rightmost pedal‚ outlined in gold.

Sustain captures the sound of each key we touch, moving the dampers away from the strings, letting them ring and ring until the final vibration recedes into silence. With each struck note all the strings sympathetically vibrate.

Sustain blends and extends sound (and time) beyond what fingers can humanly reach in a given moment.

And sustain responds to our singular touch.

George Bernard Shaw once said, “Most people go to their grave with their music inside them.”

BUT you—yes you—are already a psalm of water that shivers with light.

“Notes all, we ring, sustained, vibrating forever.
All of everything is a symphony,
and no created thing has ever heard the fullness of it.”*

Poet/theologian Paul J. Pastor wrote those words. Creating a litany of evidence in response seems fitting.

Maestro of All, I have heard You . . .

… in the riff of a robin, the bubbling anthems of quail

… in autumn wind, and the patter of leaves

… in the faithful hum as the furnace kicks on in the dark

… in the welcoming mirth of dogs

… in my granddaughter’s version of “God Bless America” . . . dad that I love; stand beside her, in a diaper . . .

… in my father’s “Well done”; my mother’s “You’re home!”; my quiet sibling’s “I forgive you”

… in the poems of Susan Cowger

… in that hollow, answering thump of a warm, yeasty loaf

… in the predawn gargle of roosters in rural Thailand

… in the holy hush of former East Germans, after sharing aloud in a group without fear of reprisal

Dear Maestro, we listen as numberless sounds blend, sustained by grace, underscoring our lives.

The litany never ends. How will you sustain it?

Friends, will you chime in with a new line?

You might also like this from the archives: Shelf Life: First Edition

Photo by Denny Müller on Unsplash

Photo by Ebuen Clemente Jr on Unsplash

*Paul J. Pastor’s book, The Face of the Deep, inspired this post. He enumerated places he has seen glimpses of God. What if we list inspiring instances of taste? Touch? Scent? Will you try your own litany?

Start with a Girl

by Laurie Klein 18 Chiming In

Start with a girl
given to wondering:
add one mirror,
a sigh, her What if
as she teeters
upon the mantel,
and then . . .

I feel invisible, young Alice thinks, having tumbled through the Looking Glass. “It’s so very lonely here!”

O how the individual world upends when least expected. Say our loved one dies. The morning mirror throws back a reflection we scarcely recognize. Our equilibrium stutters.

Who will ever stop wishing for one more day with the beloved? We wander terrain made strange by their absence.

September has been strange.

A dear friend is in mourning. I listen to her stories and bow my head. What an honor to be a safe place for her sorrow. Wait. Did I almost recognize the name of her mentor?

But no, having so recently bade farewell to my own, empathy is uppermost.

Still, something niggles — an elusive, quivering thread I can’t quite place. (I’m also mostly steamrolled by COVID-19, so I give up; the noggin’s too full to process anything else.)

A week later, a longtime friend tells me her cherished brother-in-law passed. Over four decades I’ve often prayed for his wife and for him, at her request. Some prayers feel fiber optic: a flexible tendril of caring stretches forth on behalf of someone we’ve never met. Little pulses of light traveling through a line.

Yet I am increasingly mystified.

Each friend’s loss encompasses a faithful, richly loving and wise influence, lavished on them by a fabulous human being for nearly half a century. Again, like my own experience.

Far as I know, they’ve have not met. Except. One day, a conversational aside grabs my attention. So I ask each woman separately for the deceased’s surname.

And lo, the mentor and brother-in-law are one and the same person.

My raveled breathing smooths for a moment, an uncoiling of awe.

How tender yet tensile the weave of history among those who love God. Strand by strand, seen and unseen, myriad joinings surround, enfold, and uphold us. They glint like spider silk across air we thought was empty — and with such substance. Stronger than steel, we’ve been taught.

Now, research shows spider silk is surpassed in strength by the composite fibers within the teeth of sea snails! Turns out they are thousands of times tougher (and tinier) than our super, man-made nanofibers. Ten percent stronger than one dewy line of a spider web.

The small counts for more than we dare dream.

Start with a girl. A spider. A snail.

Or start with three friends. One God. Felicitous grace.

The connections are there, born of the eternal. Glimpsing them, don’t we feel less alone, less invisible?

Lord of Life, peel back a gauzy corner of the mesh, slender yet hardy as roots, diaphanous as your Northern Lights.

Friends, tell me something you know about sinewy delicacy . . . or mirrors . . .

Read about spiders and sea snails here.

Read about my mentor here.

Watch Alice step through the mirror here.

“There’s no use trying,” Alice wails. “One can’t believe impossible things.”

Her Royal (Peevish) Majesty sighs. “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I practiced half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

Photo by Elisa Photography on Unsplash

Dear Ones, a Gift for You

by Laurie Klein 13 Chiming In

Dear readers, for seven years you have greatly encouraged and inspired me — as well as one another. I want to thank you with a gift.

This past year God has gently redeemed my insomnia. Over time, a series of linked reveries emerged. My genius friend, Sally Mowbray, graphics designer extraordinaire, has beautifully formatted the words with vibrant images captured by Unsplash photographers.

My cherished Writer’s Group urged me to make a recording. To that end, Dreamer and I have worked separately as well as together in his studio, interspersing words with music, most of it composed by my beloved, aka Bill Klein, some of it arranged by our brilliant friend, Chris Lobdell.

Today, with great joy, we’re releasing “Reveries: Matins — a soundscape for respite.”

With three clicks you can download the text with visuals as well as listen to the narrated version with original music —either separately, or simultaneously. (If you choose to experience both at one time, you’ll notice the song “Calvary” replaces the “Trinity-wick Breath Prayer” in the audio version.)

An introductory letter (text version only) suggests several ways you might use the material, if so in-kleined (couldn’t resist).

To view and/or listen, please scroll to the menu bar above and click on “Reveries.” From there you can choose your experience via “Soundcloud” (red arrow) and “view text and photo here” (download PDF).

Dear ones, and you truly are, we hope you enjoy them!

I’m also grateful to have a new poem about insomnia and prayer appear today on a website created by my stellar editor, D. S. Martin. You can read it here.

Photo of gift in pink paper by Ekaterina Shevchenko on Unsplash

Gate photo, Laurie Klein (Filoli, Woodside, CA)

From the archives: You might also enjoy Soul Mimosa — Photos & Music or perhaps this post featuring haikus and photos, Hai*Pho — No, it’s not a new entree . . .

To Gather Paradise

by Laurie Klein 28 Chiming In

Paradise emerges around us in hints and glimpses.

For half my life,
with all my heart
and mind, I have cherished
being schooled, guided,
and loved, in return, by
an incomparable mentor.

In mid-March Associate Professor Emerita of Theatre, Pat Stien, and I celebrated St. Pat’s Day with buttery scones and Irish poems. In her ninth decade, her mastery as an oral interpreter of literature still shone.

A knock interrupted.

Two well-meaning young women, one dressed as a leprechaun, pushed through the door with a rolling cart bearing little sacks of candy. And . . . a very yellow, giant, inflatable, rubber duck.

Are you kidding? I wanted to shout. Do you have any idea who this is?

Pat, however, smiled. Listened carefully. No need to defend or assert her fine intelligence. No desire to establish her reputation or myriad credentials. She may have eyed The Duck but made no comment.

Mildly, she took the sweets they offered. “Thank you so much,” she said, with her trademark chuckle. “My favorites.”

The leprechaun and the keeper of the duck, noticeably calmed by Pat’s gratitude and luminous presence, left.

I remained. Gently instructed, yet again.

This week I read poems and scripture to Pat in Hospice House as she slept. I longed to connect one last time, to meet that clear gaze, to feel the answering squeeze of her narrow hand.

She slept on, peacefully, for which I give thanks. Sometimes we have to trust that the words we speak and the little songs we offer during a vigil register in our loved one’s spirit.

I’ve savored a long, vibrant relationship with Pat. But a role model’s influence on us may be fleeting in actual time — and inspiring, lifelong.

A mentor is a God-given largesse, often many-layered, always divinely timed. In my case, a second mother. Colleague. Friend. Director. Teacher. Sister in Christ.

“When the peaks of our sky come together
my house will have a roof.”

So wrote French poet, Paul Éluard, in Dignes de vivre (lit. “worthy of life”).

Am I a sheltering house of wisdom and encouragement for others? Are you, dear readers?

Pat Stien indelibly communicated God’s love. Every place and time we met, over almost four decades, brimmed with laughter, music, stories, prayers, and the communion of like-minded souls.

Here’s the last poem I read to her, one she loved, by Emily Dickinson. I hope it speaks to you as well.

“I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise – ”

Friends, have you flourished under the rich oversight of a teacher/mentor? The mention of their names and expertise in the comments below would allow us all to thank God with you for their influence in your life.

You might also enjoy my tribute to Pat’s husband, Howard Stien.

Photo by Suzanne Foust

“The Food of Love …”

by Laurie Klein 28 Chiming In

The food of love? Well, we are making cookies today . . .

My granddaughter perches on the kitchen stool, one loose-cannon leg kicking the rungs. She’s chatty, a tad restive. She waves the baby chick cookie cutter above her head. Then, surprisingly, she falls silent, pointing to the decal that spans the soffit. With a five-year-old’s zest she proclaims, “If music be the food of Love, pla-a-ay on.”

“Keira,” I marvel, “you’re reading!”

She grins briefly, then returns to cutting birdies from dough. Keira, aka Kiki, was once a hypersensitive infant we carried around on a pillow. She suffered acute sensory issues. Traumatized in utero by her birth mother’s drug habit, our little fledgling now reads Shakespeare.

Oh, the ageless effervescence of wonder — it tingles all over my body. I’m older than the average grandma, eager to savor each stage of growth while I still can.

As my friend Judi Carlson says, “What piece of our heart did God create to receive this kind of miracle? We adopt fragile children. And those children adopt us.”

Kiki, our impish dynamo, seldom sits long enough to hear a story through to the end. So when did the skill to read click? She’s a girl with places to go, faces to make, boundaries to test.

“All done,” she sings out. “Now what?”

I slide her tray of ginger-bird cutouts into the oven. “Eight minutes,” I say. “Want to see the baby robins?”

We tiptoe to my bedroom window to watch the ramshackle nest on our deck.

Three fledglings yeep and chirr, jostling each other. Then, like harrumphing uncles, they rotate positions.

She wants to know why they are fighting.

“They’re getting too big for the nest,” I say. “And maybe they’re itchy. Look, they’re taking beak-baths.”

[Click & watch] IMG_0548

Chirping, Mama Robin swoops to the lawn, nabs a worm, heads for the nest. She embodies music, the food of Love — countless times each day.

I’ve watched her spread wings and tail over the nest during two hailstorms, her quivering pinions jeweled with ice. She’s giving her young every chance in a world where statistics show only 25% survive their first year.

The oven timer goes off, and we head for the kitchen, Kiki bouncing ahead of me — and off a wall or two. The thought comes to me, she’ll be okay, despite her rough start in life and her madcap ways. The cherishing God who knows when a sparrow falls is with her, and will be, long after I’m gone.

Whoever wrote Psalm 91 knew a thing or two about love: “[God] will cover you with his feathers. He will shelter you with his wings. His faithful promises are your armor and protection.” For now, I’m grateful the Deity shares part of that privilege with me.

Kiki and I frost the cookies and top them with sprinkles. Another gift. The robins, too, seem sent. Vulnerability dressed in feathers chooses my deck. My time. Me. From the nest’s inception to sky-blue eggs to scruffy hatchlings, I’ve eavesdropped on this family-in-progress day after day, for weeks. A living psalm.

Kiki takes bird cookies home to her mama. A few hours later I find the nest empty. Abandoned. I’m surprised by the ache in my chest. And how it spreads.

I would have loved to watch them fly.

Since then, I’ve used this breath prayer throughout the day, the one that’s been singing itself in my head lately, helping me let go.

(inhale) Lord of every     (exhale) quickening,
Watching over     egg and wing,
How you cherish     everything!
Taking flight     or nestling,
I live     to sing
All that you are,     my King.