Immersions Archives - Page 2 of 29 - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Epiphany

EPIPHANY, January 6, 2025:

Enter Dreamer, one daughter, three grandkids, and yours truly . . .

PLUS . . . a visitation. No, not the Magi.

We began our day scouting Christmas Eve treats the children left out, last month, for the neighborhood wildlings. The leftovers were re-scattered close to the house.

Then we shivered our way to the front stoop where Dreamer, by turns, hoisted each child high. Following an ancient custom, they chalked the door lintel with the new year’s numerals and three letters: 20 + C + M + B + 25.

The letters represent three wise strangers from afar, traditionally named Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. They also coincide with the Latin phrase meaning “Christ, bless this house: Christus Mansionem Benedicat.

Our grandkids, ages eight and nine, must miss being carried. Grasping the chalk, they sure took their time writing. Who wouldn’t, held safely aloft by a gentle giant?

C + M + B . . . Dreamer might have thought “Courage, my biceps.”

Afterward, we made Star Cake for tea time. While it baked, the kids rushed to the bay window, hopping and chirping like sparrows.

A wild turkey! Eating their leftover seeds!

Looking up, I clattered a pan.

“Aanie,” they hissed, “SHHH!”

So I tiptoed over to join them.

It was Gladys, the Stalker. (So named by Dreamer.) The homely hen, seemingly exiled from her group, had lately been foraging solo.

Or was she a scout? A rafter of twenty-pounders can damage a house and yard. Should we have chased her away? We still had mixed feelings.

“Aanie, she LOVES my seeds!”

Sure enough, beak in overdrive, Gladys scratched and gobbled. Bark chips flew.

Bird-struck, the kiddos leaned closer, fogging the glass.

I witnessed the kind of rapt “celebration that roots us moment by moment in [a] deep watchful quiet that ushers us into the presence of God.” Sarah Clarkson wrote that, and her words capture the moment, a seeming fulfillment of our chalked prayer: Christ, bless this house.

Then the timer beeped.

Why didn’t I linger at the window? Too focused on icing and slicing. “Martha, Martha”—there I stood, messing with details, missing the true feast.

I love wholehearted celebrations, gladly embrace each fiddly, trivial detail. Post-party that day, our newly blessed home showed the chaos of a happy invasion. As well as the avian visitation.

During cleanup . . . another epiphany. So I made a decision. Next time, the cake can wait. As the old saying goes, What we behold . . . we become.

Why curtail magical moments with those I love?

Sometimes, I’m the turkey; sometimes, a child, surprised into breathless stillness.

Can we sustain wholehearted readiness to experience God’s love for the quirky? The potentially troublesome? If so, how?

And, in view of current events, how do we embody God’s love for those who are not like us?

Reclaiming Quiet, Sarah Clarkson.

Chalking the Door: “An Epiphany Tradition”

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

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Black Sheep: Between Noels, Part IV

by Laurie Klein 6 Chiming In

Black sheep? Moi? Oh yes. Sometimes.

During childhood I cradled my stuffed counterpart, complete with music box.

Amid adolescence I perched it atop the desk handed down from my mother.

Seven decades later, it sits near my keyboard, flop ears and button eyes cocked my way.

Twist the oval brass ring in its belly and the song still plays, almost as if, once again, Mom croons the lullaby words of Brahms. One night, an insecure new mama myself, I asked to hear it again, her voice by then crackly with age.

Sleepyhead, close your eyes.
Mother’s right here beside you.

Do we ever outgrow the childlike longing to be held? Rescued?

Re-wind with me . . .

to a distant, long-ago night. A swaddled infant’s gaze locks on his mother’s brimming eyes.

Perhaps Mary sings:

Guardian angels are near,
So sleep on, with no fear.

From starlit Bethlehem, slip further back in time. A month will do. Picture slopes and valleys partially blanketed in wool, as if fallen clouds rest on the earth. These sheep are specifically raised for temple sacrifice.

And King David’s descendants keep watch.

Farther afield, a grizzled shepherd bows over a feed trough. He swaddles a flailing newborn lamb. The birth rags will protect spindly new legs from harm. Little eyes close, the damp body nestled in warmth.

Does the shepherd pipe a tune?

I’ll protect you from harm,
You will wake in my arms.

What of this motherless lamb? And that bleating ewe, over yonder, grieving a stillborn body?

How gently the shepherd nudges the bereaved aside. How painstakingly he bathes the orphan in the dead lamb’s placental blood.

And then, how wondrous, the milk of recognition, the miracle of adoption!

From these hills we can look toward Bethlehem or, five miles north, toward Jerusalem; from incarnation to eventual crucifixion.

Among these grasslands hundreds and hundreds of lambs — black sheep, white sheep — were once raised for twice-daily sacrifices in the temple.

Thousands more of them met the priestly blade at Passover. BUT . . .

. . . before that feast of remembrance, each household brought their best lamb into their home for several days. Hand-fed it. Treated it as family. Maybe the children named it.

Everyone knew that when they presented their gift to the priest, he would ask them one question: “Do you love this lamb?”

Spotless, tenderly cherished lambs led to the temple.

My threadbare black sheep on my desk.

Heaven’s Lamb — who loves us.

Now and forever NOEL, noel, noel . . .

Black sheep, white sheep: Photo by Megan Johnston on Unsplash

Close-up, white sheep Photo by Sam Carter on Unsplash

Lamb: Photo by Bill Fairs on Unsplash

Brahms Lullaby, Celine Dion

Lullaby lyrics

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-trp-001&ei=UTF-8&hsimp=yhs-001&hspart=trp&p=celine+dion+brahms+lullaby&type=Y235_F163_217427_042622#id=1&vid=150f47cd4fb7c8d9305ca40e9f5ccbe2&action=click

Between Noels: Part III

by Laurie Klein 10 Chiming In

Welcome to “Between Noels: Part III”

Have you seen my alter-ego? I call her Eeyore, after the classic Pooh character: a morose, self-pitying donkey ever-expecting the worst. Think: forgotten birthdays, cold rain and sodden dejection. Thistles and limp balloons.

Lord knows, I’m a gloomster at times. Even at Christmas. When pessimism feeds on fresh dread and old disappointments, I take on the splayed, dug-in stance of those braying creatures in old westerns: mulish, stubborn, un-budgeable.

Turns out, my intel’s outdated. As are my assumptions.

Donkeys are intuitively sensitive to threat and actively protect one another.

They also safeguard livestock. Picture snapping teeth, sensational back-kicks deflecting coyotes and wolves.

Once, during Bible times, a donkey outwitted her stubborn master, who was so obsessed with his agenda that he missed the sword-wielding angel of God blocking their way! The stouthearted ass veered. Three times. Each time, her rider, blind to their shared peril, beat her with his staff. (You can read her cagey reproof in Numbers 22, roundly amen-ed by the angel.)

So here’s to God’s gentle, vigilant beasts of burden.

May I be more like them. Guide a blind herd mate to water? Oh yes. Transport what I’m called to carry without complaint? Only by grace. May I emulate the self-aware donkey, uniquely able to view all four hooves at one time, thus nimbly traverse deserts and crumbling mountain switchbacks.

Joseph’s donkey, perhaps going silver around the muzzle, carried Jesus to Bethlehem. A stranger’s donkey bore Christ through Jerusalem.

Joyous Noels and Hosannas can be lovely, optimistic, but fleeting. “Bear one another’s burdens,” Paul said, “and so fulfill the law of Christ.”

My default personality suddenly seems more promising. Still, lonesome blues will set in again, and sometimes, a feeling of doom. What do we do when heartache overwhelms hope?

Remember with me ancient Israeli families, commanded to sacrifice the firstborn male of all their flocks. The donkey, considered unclean, got a pass.

“Redeem with a lamb every firstborn donkey … ”(Ex. 13:13, emphasis mine).

A sobering, deep-down amen, to the perfect Lamb, once and for all sacrificed, in our place.

Friends, how has someone helped shoulder your burden lately?

Donkey Photo by Luis Palicio on Unsplash

Lamb, in enclosure Photo by Daniel Sandvik on Unsplash

Oasis: Between Noels, Part II

by Laurie Klein 14 Chiming In

Dear friends, we are between Noels, past and pending. Welcome to “Oasis: Between Noels, Part II.”

Errands . . . gatherings . . . holiday lists . . . To misquote Hamlet, “To do or not to do, that is the question.”

Dare I multitask? Count hurry a virtue, knowing the word “haste” once meant “violence”?

A slower pace might evoke peace.

Consider the camel. Measured, intentional steps plod across shifting dunes, thus prevent the body from sinking.

When I married Dreamer, unresolved childhood sorrows sometimes buried me. “Tell me a story,” I said one day, desperate for a distraction.

Enter “Luigi the Camel.” Dreamer launched what would become a tradition.

For instance: Accidentally kidnapped one day, hapless Luigi headlined the visiting circus. On a wintry eve in December, Luigi gate-crashed the school Christmas pageant.

To this day, I cannot spell the sounds that camel makes! If laughter is medicine, Luigi reliably shoos away my blues.

Camels, I think, must be optimists. For one thing, a camel instinctively knows how to cope. Escalating heat? No worries; fur reflects light. Plus, the animal’s remarkable countercurrent blood flow cools the body as well as brain.

Fatty tissue stored in the hump can be metabolized into water as well as energy. Ingenious nostrils cradle precious expelled vapor, reabsorb it for later use.

Might these conserving actions relate to treasuring the Word in one’s heart? So many words already fill my holiday lists. I also want to store God’s Word within.

I need an oasis. A daydream. A side-trip, real or not.

I could follow Luigi into Macy’s. Or take a backyard mosey, shoeless, like Moses, padding into the realm of stillness where an eloquent bush might, for a moment, blaze, as if it knows my name.

“So much depends on the light,” Margaret Atwood says, “and the way you squint.”

Give me prayer, practical as a camel’s translucent third eyelid: moving back and forth, sweeping away debris; clearing vision, for close-ups as well as vistas.

Did you know the Arabic word for camel means “beauty”?

Friends, may we step lovely toward the unknown . . .

Here’s a walking prayer I’m using these days, a verbal oasis. In waltz time, hold each line in your mind, or speak or sing it aloud, with each inhale and exhale.

I am Yours,
chosen and known,
evermore,
Yours alone.
Even now,
breath and bone,
Holy Noel,
sing me home.

P.S. In Kenya the Camel Library carries books to far-flung folks, thirsting for stories, poetry, knowledge.

Scout each day’s waiting oasis. Sip. Savor. Absorb, and store up goodness. Will you join me?

“To do, or not to do.” In what ways will you refresh others this season?

Speaking of oases and camels: You might also enjoy: Packing Light: 9 Ways to Reclaim Joy

Photo by Francesco Ungaro on Unsplash

Photo by Roxanne Desgagnés on Unsplash

Little Things: Between Noels, Part I

by Laurie Klein 14 Chiming In

Little things . . . Once upon a yard, I collected maple samaras. Ladybugs. Pea-sized mystery-spheres I found under shrubs — until Dad explained bunny droppings.

To this day, I still watch for meaning amid the miniscule.

Friends, here we are again, between Noels, past and pending. I’ve been reading about creatures that might have shared that long-ago Holy Night. Welcome to “Little Things: Between Noels, Part I (of IV).”

Because little things are a mixed bag.

For instance: Years ago, after our daughter returned from a mission trip tormented by hatching head lice, Dreamer and I spent hours combing sticky nits from strand after strand of her thick hair.

Parental love to the rescue — liberating one cherished, vulnerable scalp.

Aesop said, “No act of kindness no matter how small is ever wasted.”

Do our grown children remember our past, painstaking efforts? To paraphrase Blaise Pascal, When little things afflict us, even small actions can console us.

Two sisters in Holland, arrested for rescuing Jews during WWII, were remanded to Ravensbrück concentration camp. In Barracks 28, the ten Boom girls slept on reeking pallets swarming with fleas. Their prayers of gratitude for being alive and together included repeated pleas for relief from the infestation.

The vermin, however, thrived.

And those blood-sucking parasites? Turns out, they repelled sadistic prison guards. No inspections. No beatings. No rapes.

Compassion to the rescue — paradoxically — via pestilence.

So consider the likelihood of itch mites infesting Bethlehem straw: Some types bite; others burrow beneath the skin and lay eggs, causing a contagious, festering rash.

Did they forgo their nature and leave baby Jesus in peace? Oh, I hope so! And if not, do mites possess any redeeming qualities?

I Google . . . and find . . . no crucial link in the food chain, no rare source of protein, no secret component to help cure disease.

And yet. The utterly despised were granted proximity to Emmanuel, God with us. Compassionate, cherishing Love vulnerably offered to all creation — no matter how repellent or negligible.

Sometimes, it’s the little things. Head lice, fleas, itch mites — one Creator, three ordeals. Head-scratchers, all. Like the teachings of Jesus: If you want to be first, embrace being last. Find yourself by losing yourself.

Truth nips: It gets under our skin and bides its time, hatching later perhaps, as revelation.

Merciful, mysterious God, thank you for your enduring forbearance and endless largesse — embodied for us through, and in spite of, so many little things.

Friend, where might a dash of compassion take you next?

“Anyone who thinks they are too small to make a difference has never tried to fall asleep with a mosquito in the room.” —The Dalai Lama

Flea story here

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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