Immersions Archives - Page 15 of 31

In the Dark: 1 Old Bird Learns a Few New Licks

No one would choose this.

Enforced seclusion
for the past month (with recurring
C. Diff, a vile intestinal bug)
resembles—viewed hopefully—
a dubious Gift: unwanted,
yet potent as incubation.

And not only pathogenically.

C. Diff is highly contagious. For now, I can’t leave home.

Like embryonic birds trapped inside eggs 24-7, I face confinement.

Waiting in the dark for something to change, the psyche squirms. And, like those chicks, slowly, surely, the soul stretches. And develops.

Emotionally and spiritually, some days there’s not a heck-of-a-lot of light.

How cautiously, then—choice-by-choice—the soul met by grace befriends isolation. Limitation. The ambient darkness.

Good thing I’m not alone.

A process built right into creation

In a landmark 2016 study, ecologists in Australia staked out the nests of superb fairywrens and red-backed fairywrens. Concerned about their predation rates, researchers concealed a microphone beneath each nest. They hoped to record 24-7 avian alarm calls, warning each other of predators.

Later, they replayed the recordings. Parents engaged in lively duets called to their eggs.

And the nestlings, unhatched, called back—from inside their shells!

Learning to sing in the dark

Almost a century before the Australian study, Oswald Chambers wrote about songbirds being taught, over time, to sing in the dark.

Are you in the dark just now in your circumstances, Chambers asked, or in your life with God?

[W]e are put into the shadow of God’s hand, he adds, until we learn to hear Him.

Chops, Riffs & Licks

Songbirds, like humans (and bats), learn to make sounds by imitation. Further Aussie recordings replay fairywren hatchlings mimicking the song of their father.

Tirelessly, the father repeats his signature song. He drills his chicks on introductory notes—even slows them down.

He spaces out phrases, clarifies syllables. Mastery requires a lifetime of practice.

For everything, there is a season: a time to listen. A time to sing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCFwRh4tEkw

What time is it in your life?

As for me. I’m learning a lot. I’m calling my voluntary seclusion Laurie’s Backward Sabbatical. I read, work puzzles, color, and enjoy books-on-tape. I’m perfecting Klein’s Killer chicken broth.

I spend more time than usual in silence, listening for God. Sometimes improvised songs arise (It’s been years since this happened!).

Currently on a two-month tapering regimen of a Big Bucks Medication, I am (mostly) grateful for this cloistered season, and completely thankful for your prayers.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Learn to Sing out on a Limb

Learn more here. And here.

Many thanks to Susan Cowger for pointing me toward Oswald Chambers’ thoughts.

Grace … in media res: (in the middle of things)

by Laurie Klein 18 Chiming In

Grace … in media res

“In the Middle of Things”

Between our creaking dock
and the park’s rocky point,
leaching blue
from Fowler Lake’s surface,
the perilous sandbar lurked.

Rowing across it one day,
I spied my future:
strewn across restless sand,
a scatter of strange shells.

Shells meant PEARLS.

And P.E.A.R.L.S. meant . . . CA$H!

Any kid who loves books
can tell you

• Pearls fall from the sky
when dragons fight, and
• Pearls always match the color
of the host oyster’s lips, and
• Pearls are made of moonlight,
trapped inside dew

The part about salt water?—
completely escaped my notice.

What would I buy first?

Sixty Years later

As a kid obsessed with treasure I’d probably spotted freshwater mussels. My schemes of wealth now seem endearing.

But the wide-open heart, the hope and dreaming … this is still me.

Especially in media res, “in the middle of things.”

It is the hour of pearl, Steinbeck wrote, the interval between day and night when time stops and examines itself.

Isn’t this how we often awaken, half-aware

• the dog wants breakfast
• deadlines loom
• chores clamor
• sellers may reject our bids
• loved ones battle disease
• hopes wane
• relationships fray

Where are the PEARLS?

Pain proves annoyingly democratic:

and almost all shelled mollusks afflicted by broken shells, or parasites, or one measly grain of sand can—incrementally—create a living gem.

… the pearl is the oyster’s autobiography.*

We mortals, too, must process harm and grit and doses of brine, withstand rogue currents and shifting ground—while keeping our (eventual) luster hopefully strung through average days.

Give me room. I’m trying to make pearls here.

No.

I’m trying to save my self.

And I can’t.

Grace is weightless

(So Ann Voskamp writes.)

And wait-less, I’d add.

Grace is a gleam in the soul. It soothes and guards us against each day’s irritations and intrusions.

Grace is a pulling force, attracted to tacit fear and each relational shard we secretly harbor, or overlook, the mediocrity chafing our days and thoughts, our loves, and lives.

Grace lurks.

And it shifts, as needed, to meet our next breath.

Singular as each whorl
embossing our fingertips,
every pearl embodies
opalescence alongside
insult and imperfection.

Grace waits for us at the imminent, ravaged ends of hope.

Any pearl sightings at your place lately?

*Frederico Fellini, Italian film director and screenwriter.

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Oyster Photo by Charlotte Coneybeer on Unsplash

Dream House, Take 2

by Laurie Klein 48 Chiming In

Dream House.

Chef heaven. Double ovens, gas range, gorgeous granite countertop—I picture myself ladling out gourmet soup. And if I drop a bowl? No problem. Cork flooring cushions all.

The place is perfect. One-level living, spacious rooms, views of naturalized parkland—we LOVE it! Seizing Dreamer’s hand, I pray aloud, “If this is our house, Lord, hold it for us.”

Next morning, while signing our bid I recognize the owners’ names. Long ago we attended church together.

God must want this for us.

All night I alternate between “Don’t count your chickens” and mentally furnishing every last room.

Come morning, we send the owners a winsome personal letter and our bid—15 K over list price.

God loves us, so things will go well. Right?

Turns out other bids have preceded ours. All day we hope our old friends will choose us.

Nope.

Therapy Option #1: Write

(To the tune of “Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow”)

The Real Estate Song, or Let It Go, Let It Go, Let It Go

with apologies to Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn

Oh, the bidding wars sure are frightful,
And the dream house so delightful.
Our offer turned out too low . . .
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Well, the market is really hoppin’,
And it shows no signs of stoppin’.
I wish we had lots more dough . . .
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

It’s no wonder I sit here cryin’
As our hopes are slowly dying,
But today’s nearly through and so . . .
Let it go, let it go, let it go.

Meanwhile, back at the rancher

I pray.
And pace.
Grieve.
And growl.

Mostly growl.

Therapy Option #2: Bake

Anger spits and sizzles in me like a downed power line. I was so sure the house was meant to be ours. I imagined Dreamer’s faith being renewed in the process of buying the dream house.

Heat works its way up my throat. A hard lump. I swallow it down.

In my one-butt kitchen with its erupting linoleum and elderly laminate counters, I mix cookie dough. Granite and cork are overrated. So are kitchen fans. Around me the air congeals, laden with sugar and fat. I breathe it in. Maybe it will sweeten my thoughts.

Nope.

I slip cookies onto the rack to cool. This, I can control. Unlike crushing dismay.

I am breaking my heart over a house, looking behind me with longing. Like Lot’s wife.

Tears come, briny and fast.

As do reminders of mercy.

No brimstone. No judgment.

Relief, finally, is remembering God is good. And always, always worthy of trust.

Then believing it. Slow work, sometimes.

My knee goes down, my gaze lifts.

I have a goofy song.
Fresh cookies.
And Time.

I eat 6 cookies, still warm and gooey, taste the sweetness, a promise of things to come …

UPDATE: Friends, thank you for your prayers! Parkinson’s has been ruled out. Dreamer recently underwent a brain MRI and will have an EMG on Dec. 21. He’ll consult with an M.D. specialist sometime in the New Year. Both our daughters are also experiencing acute physical challenges, including surgery in December. I’m learning a lot about grace.

We’re dialing back the moving process, for now.

Catch up on our story here.

Photo by Jamie Strett for Unsplash.

Second Thoughts & Horseshoe Crabs

by Laurie Klein 18 Chiming In

There’s a trick to the “graceful exit.”It begins with the vision to recognize
when a job, a life stage, or a relationship is over—
and let it go.

It means leaving what’s over
without denying its validity
or its past importance to our lives.

Including one’s home.

Still downsizing …

If only I had the que sera sera serenity of the horseshoe crab—which literally saunters out of its own skin. Leaves home behind.

How the cuts are made

For years, inside the dark
recording booth, alone,
in the electric halo
of an adjustable lamp,
I narrated audiobooks.

Now I survey my archive—towers of babble—60-some books recorded on tape. Cassette tapes, in our digitized age, seem irrelevant.

When the studio switched to CDs, many audiobooks were not updated.

I may own the sole remaining copies.

I didn’t always like the stories, but I gave them my all—honest, empathic, vestigial work, as in: “forming a very small remnant of something once greater.”

Words arise, like posterity. Legacy.

I set aside a dozen classics for our grandkids.

Second thoughts

Might Goodwill welcome the rest?

I pack 50-some titles, deliver them before I can change my mind. Employees may toss them, but I won’t be a witness.

More remain. I visit our hulking, rented dumpster, imagine chucking them.

Second thoughts clamor. I’ll decide tomorrow.

Dreamer, on the other hand …

For decades, Dreamer shot slide film. Last week he tossed unused slide carousels. Second thoughts prompted retrieval. Currently curating thousands of slides, he’ll convert them to digital files.

He’s retrofitting: “bringing a proven model up to date.”

Second thoughts allow fresh discernment.

I scan my waiting titles. I could do likewise …

Needless?

Needless can mean obsolete. Redundant. Superfluous.

Seems I never quite believed my achievements would vanish.

Yet into each absence, the One who loves us best still speaks.

And I love a good story …

… especially one from an ever-relevant Book, narrating tales of a remnant people …

and other wonders, like horseshoe crabs and second thoughts and traveling light.

The One who invites me to be need-less delights to meet my needs.

Those remaining tapes?

I feed the dumpster. Offer up ego. Yet again. There are endless ways to voice “Once upon a time.”

[For now, making the graceful exit] …
involves a sense of future,
a belief that every exit line
is an entry, that we are
moving up, rather than out.

―Ellen Goodman

How has a grace-full exit moved you toward an uncommon entrance?

For prayer: Dreamer sees the neurologist next week.

Thanks for sharing this cyber-sojourn.

Depth Perception

by Laurie Klein 40 Chiming In

Depth Perception

“Yell,” Dreamer says,
“when the trailer hitch is exactly
6 inches from the rear wall.”

Six inches?
That’s the length of my hand.

I plaster myself
into the far left corner
of the RV storage unit,
40 feet from the door.
Side margins equal
the space between my elbow
and first set of knuckles.
Which are white.

“What if you can’t hear me?” I holler.

But he’s already revving
our 32-foot Behemoth
up the incline, into the unit.

Half-way in, he brakes,
folds his side mirror flat.

“Driving blind,” he calls.

Success now rests
on his hearing plus
my depth perception.

And I’m nearsighted.

Somehow, by trusting each other, we pull it off.

Backing Up

Even as I daily resolve to move forward, embrace Change, backing up plays a role—especially as we try to downsize 45 years of shared life. Nearly 3 decades in our current house.

Have you read The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, by Margareta Magnusson, aged somewhere between 80 and 100?

Granny-mags, as we fondly call her, urges streamlining. We respect our heirs’ emotions and precious time by downsizing while we’re still able-bodied.

“Death cleaning
is a permanent form
of organization . . .”

Death can be a friendly presence, directing priorities.

Go back. Item by item.
Remember and reflect on
the small joys of a long life.

Tucked within books and yellowing files I find childhood stories our daughters wrote. I find grade school stories by yours truly, saved by my mother.

Depth perception turns fluid—Mom’s behind me now, somehow alive, guiding me as I dismantle home.

Just as Mom might say,
Granny-mags offers this:
“There is always a young person,
starting a new life.”

Growing a home.

So donate. Leave notes in those books you’re giving away.

Bless someone with that desk or table, and share vital or funny things learned or written or served there.

Downsizing

One snippet of history, passed on, provides the needed distance to let go. My vision widens and deepens, the way having two eyes makes depth perception possible.

What is depth perception?

The ability to judge the distance of objects
and the spatial relationship of objects
at different distances.

I’m freeing myself from tunnel vision:
the fear-driven caching of stuff—things
I’ll never miss. Junk.

By day, we downsize.
By night, online, room by room,
we study house after house.
We divvy the list, mostly still feel
we are driving blind
yet joyriding, this time
in a ’78 ragtop Super Beetle,
a fresh wind stirring memories,
thoughts, fears—
all this chaff blowing out the back . . .

Health update: Med-wise, Dreamer’s cardiologist says to “Stay the course.” He sees the hematologist today, October 4th.
We await the referral to a Muscular Dystrophy specialist.

Photo of eye by Daniil Kuželev on Unsplash