Immersions Archives - Page 21 of 31

Epiphany and the Epic Icicle

Rowdy wind rocks our trees. It strums our Corinthian wind chimes (Tuned to a C chord, they’re gorgeous).

I raise Dreamer’s cell phone (mine’s not as smart). With a click, I’m recording the chimes.

Flash Forward. By midnight, this list will describe my day:

Mop up dog barf
Accidentally break favorite bowl
Shovel snow
Make a nice lunch for Dreamer (which makes him sick)
Struggle with blog post
Struggle with “chimes video” (which won’t upload)
Mutter bad words
Bite tongue
Accidentally shatter the “Peace” (Marquee falls off mantel)

Get car stuck in driveway

And that would be the really long driveway I already spent several days clearing, shovelful by shovelful. (Did I mention our plow’s on the fritz?)

Snow’s still coming down. And I will shovel again. Very soon.

Earlier today, with ice-flurries biting like buckshot, no let-up in sight and my stamina gone, can you picture me slumping over my shovel? Never mind I grew up in Wisconsin.

Now imagine an icicle. Measured against me, it’s taller (also gradually thickening), and it weeps a little, into a drift: A Kleincicle, stout as a thigh bone.

Seems the Epic Icicle is taxing the eaves. Posing a threat to anyone walking nearby—not unlike envy, frustration, an urge for revenge—sadly, my latest temptations.

Must I really knock it down?

Better to first stamp a row of holes in the snow, little burial spots. (Sometimes I need a visual.) In goes envy. Then angst. Meanness. Hurt.

The flakes fall faster now. I fill in each void with a confession, a boot scuff: the lug sole of gratitude.

Ahhh, newness, white as snow.

Then I wield the shovel. Crack! Chunk by knobbly chunk, down she goes, the once-proud column in ruins.

Back indoors, that image of ruin stays with me.

Epiphany

In The Broken Way, Ann Voskamp writes: “Let love break into you and mess with you and loosen you up and make you laugh and cry and give and hurt because this is the only way to really live. . . . Don’t waste a minute on anything less . . .”

In other words: Kiss the curmudgeon! Serve up those Tums on a silver dish. Cut loose with a Bigfoot ballet and a sweeping bow. Squirrel away dish shards: make a mosaic later.

I don’t know about your day, or your past year, but I hit some rough terrain: cold, hard, heartsore places that blurred my outlook. Froze my hopes.

So lately, I’m leaning into a personal epiphany via this thought from Ann Voskamp (my paraphrase):

**Every morning we get to rise (“get to?” . . . I get to rise).**

**God believes in us (now I’m speechless),**

believes in His stories being written through us . . .

Epiphany, traditionally

The Magi followed a chunk of ice screwed into the sky. A blinking Marquee bulb, proclaiming “Peace”—despite how often we’d break it.

Did those who searched the heavens for signs ever sense that Heaven believed in them, was writing the Story through them?

And after they knelt before their new God, beside those famous three gifts, I wonder what else they left behind.

What will you leave behind in this New Year?

What chosen word or phrase will guide you?

click to hear the Klein wind chimes

Soul Mimosa — Photos, Music

by Laurie Klein 24 Chiming In

Soul Mimosa time — from our studios to you!

I’ve assembled autumn and winter images from nature for your enjoyment. Click below to hear Bill perform the traditional Czech “Carol of the Drum” (~ 1800s) on Celtic harp, recorders, and drum as you scroll.

Enter the wonder. Absorb the hush . . .

Merry Christmas, friends! We hope you enjoyed our collaboration. May Peace and Presence enfold you, and yours, now and always.

“Carol of the Drum,” traditional tune from the 1800s. Celtic harp, recorders, and snare drum played by Bill Klein

Photos, Laurie Klein

Special thanks to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for permission to photograph their Living Nativity, 2016.

Holidays, Saying Yes to Unexpected Gifts

by Laurie Klein 15 Chiming In

Holidays, here they come . . .

And I’ve already blown it. Big time. Boy, am I sorry.

In the Christmas month when we reflect on Mary’s humble surrender to God, I unleashed an emotional vortex.

Personal desolation freighted each word I spoke. In return, hard-hitting truths were spoken to me. Pain—both past and present—collided, blinding me to how my words were hurting the other person. I made it all about me.

Conversation became an eruption. And later, when I was alone, an implosion.

Thank God. (Wait. Did she really just say that?)

Yes. Severe mercy was at work.

Professor Randy Pausch, in The Last Lecture, describes chronically disappointing his boyhood football coach. One day, the coach lit into him. The coach’s assistant, trying to encourage young Pausch, said this:

When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.

Dutch Uncle

Someone cared enough to tell me the hard truth. Such a person was once called a Dutch Uncle: one who speaks directly, even sternly to instruct, inspire, or admonish someone.

I was a wreck. Now God was offering me the chance for deep emotional healing through the words of the very person I’d wounded. Would I accept?

Even Mary, confronted with the angel Gabriel speaking for God, faced wrenching, unimaginable change. Probably trembling, she asked, “How will this be?”

The angel’s answer was cryptic.

Mary still said Yes.

A personal New Year

Yes, ache and frustration spewed that day. I discovered a place so raw only Love would care to, and dare to, lay it bare. Breathe on it. Ease it. Which felt awful, and right.

My meltdown bridged Thanksgiving and my birthday. For years I’ve followed Madeleine L’Engle’s custom of using her birthday (a date we share) to launch her personal New Year.

Today, having said my “Yes” to the healing process, having resolved to change, I’m heading toward 2017 with a new mindset, hoping blessings will follow.

Poet Adrienne Rich once said:

When a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Holidays: from the depths to the heights

We know emotions spike during holidays. We miss those no longer with us. We try to delight those who are still here. We hope for peace in our world, peace in our families. Our churches. Our places of work.

And we both bless and blow it.

Despite our mistakes, new life keeps heading toward us. In my case, literally. We will soon welcome our fourth windfall grandchild. The due date? New Year’s Eve.

Such is the love of God that new life is always on its way. It’s heading for our doorsteps even now.

Will we make room for change in our lives?

Make room for Him?

How might these holidays usher in healing for you?

Gratitude: develop, break free, generate life

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

Gratitude — if it were a color, which one would it be today?

When I spotted this Japanese Maple seedling, its assertive color stopped me. Tree bling, albeit a little tattered at the edges. That the earth offers this rich, saturated hue delights me. It matches my mother’s favorite Christmas dress, worn yearly throughout my childhood.

Then there’s the seedling’s shape: flamboyant, open. A diva seedling. Botanists use the word samara for this winged shape. I like how that sounds, rolling off my tongue: Sah – mar’ – ah.

Notice the built-in transportation. When the stem lets go, the samara spontaneously whirly-gigs through the air.

Each seed has its mission: develop; break free; generate life

The longer I look, the more I see and the more I am moved by detail. Symbol. Potential applications to daily life. Insight develops. I need these small pauses. The wonder I absorb leads me to gratitude.

And being grateful defuses my fears when circumstances overwhelm me. [Read more…]

Today’s Election, Each Day’s Path

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

Path, rut, trail . . . which way next?

You may recall my previous post about the Merciless Great Red Masticator (MGRM). We hired its owner to fell half our forest last summer, which was ravaged by bark beetles.

Talk about thrashing and crashing! Insult and chaos. A long-loved landscape is now one I barely recognize.

Like American politics.

Where is the path?

For 25 years, I’ve walked, jogged, skied, and snow-shoed the same narrow path through woods, past the pond, then across the meadow. A rotation of dogs accompanied me. Plus a host of thoughts. Songs. Questions. And always, prayers.

For 25 years I kept faith with those eight-or-so wild acres. My trail hardened to beaten earth, eventually sunk two inches deep. The path shaped itself to my sole. And soul.

The MGRM obliterated my path, left behind land scored with wheel ruts. Barren dirt and broken boughs. Holes I call sprains-in-waiting.

Amid the new ugliness, I lost my bearings. Lost heart. Gave up on my walk.

For similar reasons I quit following debates and political news. I lost hope. Felt helpless. Pictured America circling the drain, waning like past civilizations.

And then the rain

Last week’s rain kept me indoors. A few stirring posts (written by others) reminded me what a redemptive, endlessly inventive God watches over our broken world.

Behind the scenes and amid toxic rhetoric and upheaval, greed, deceit, and ruinous lies, God keeps working . . . in and through people.

Was I going to knuckle under to dismay? Or renew my hope?

Meanwhile

Thanks to rain, a haze of tender green started sprouting out back. I can’t explain it, but the new grass has revealed sections of my former path, as if it’s still there, under the wreckage of all that has fallen, beckoning me through the shambles toward water, leading me toward wide skies and meadow.

Each day now, I align broken branches along sections I recognize. And Uncle Tanner, our dog, helps me tamp down the new stretches.

The land wants to thrive.

The rut that keeps on giving

My old prayer path is (partly) viable. And prayer still moves heaven, and earth—even the Everest of disillusionment. No matter who wins the elections.

Our God can work through anyone. (See Balaam and the ass: Numbers 22.)

We make a difference as we always have: one voice, one person, one act at a time. No matter who’s in the oval office. No matter what crises befall our nation.

My pastor, Eric Peterson, said that as believers in a world both suffused with God’s presence and ravaged by evil we’re called to embody “extreme love that speaks truth to terror.”

The path of faith we’ve signed up for may not be easy to find; it will be meaningful—no matter who runs roughshod over the land.

This is what the LORD says: Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.

But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ (Jeremiah 6: 16 NIV)

Each day’s election, every day’s choice

It’s not just how I vote this week, but how I hope. And what I elect to do, and believe, each day, for one person or many, one truthful, loving, act at a time.

What path is calling you?