Small Wonders Archives - Page 2 of 6

Change: Brought to You Today by the Letter “R”

Two vases, cast off
by their owners,
stand side by side
in my greenhouse window.

My Jack Sprat-and-wife of the pottery world.

Both came from yard sales, several years apart, and I enjoy them every day. But this morning … I see them a-fresh.

Last year, you could say my life resembled the tall vase: shapely and capacious, with an easy, upward outlook. Familiar, much-loved dimensions.

Then I got scary sick.

Talk about crushing. It was like being squashed into the squat, bulbous vase: squeezed, compressed, diminished. My personal soundtrack underwent change, too, from carefree humming to yelps, groans, the occasional whimper.

In the words of Jeremiah the prophet, I was being emptied from vessel to vessel.

Without my permission.

“The people of Moab,” Jeremiah said, “are like wine left to settle; they have never been emptied from one jar to another.”

Dregs are so repulsive.

And no one wants to be forced into shape-shifting change. So we pray, rebel, scout silver linings. We whine, rage, then pray some more.

Panicky at being out of control, we pursue compulsions. (Why yes, I did solve 31 jigsaw puzzles and 413 crosswords.)

Sometimes we make lists: Things I Can Still Do.

We binge. Then pay. Grieve. Pray harder.

And all the while, friends—like you!—keep showing up. You pray, send cards, emails, puzzles, and gifts. You prepare healing foods and assist with errands.

The goodness of God shown through loving, practical grace has kept me hopeful, tensile. Malleable.

Little by little, I’ve found peace in the awkward new shape of my days.

“Through love all pain will turn to medicine” (Rumi).

Friends, after five long months my new favorite word begins with the letter “R.” I am officially in Remission. End. Of. Siege. No more Abominable Abdominal C. diff!

Now begins the slow, stretching efforts of trial-and-error diet, to heal the interior damage.

Perhaps I need a third vase.

Have you been disrupted, too? Emptied from vessel to vessel?

I would love to pray for you.

You might also like Kissing — Actual, Metaphorical — Changes All

Thank you to Cris DiNoto for Railroad Crossing photo (on Unsplash)

Please Pass the Salt

by Laurie Klein 25 Chiming In

Today I drink bone broth straight
from the white mug
a friend gave me, years ago,
inscribed with lyrics, in red:
“I Love You, Lord” . . .
(and I lift my mug).

No kidding. Someone made a mug of my song.

Is it soup yet?

Four months of daily chicken soup translates to gallons. I’m a leaky vessel, swamped in broth. Still sick.

And still curious. How can I make this taste better?

Varying fresh herbs and aromatic veges subtly alters the taste. Chicken and rice enrich nutrition and texture. Peas add a jolt of green.

But it’s salt—cheap, elemental salt—that unlocks all the hidden flavors.

My mother once read me a tale built around an insecure father’s question, and his youngest daughter’s unforgettable answer.

“How much do you love me?” he asked.

“As meat loves salt, ” she replied.

Years passed before he finally understood what she meant.

Even longer ago, Jesus told his followers, “You are the salt of the earth.”

In a long season short on answers I understand this as never before. Salt offers a foretaste of heaven.

Salt mingles. It balances unwanted sweetness; it also suppresses bitterness. Too much kills.

The right amount evokes nuance and satisfaction.

Blah, bland, blashly

For 60-some years I’ve disliked broth. Too boring. In a word, blashly.

Go back 200 years and you’ll find blashly describes overcooked veges and thin soup.

However.

Sometimes what heals us … at first, repels us

“If you arrive at a place in life that is miserable,” Anne Lamott writes,
“it will change, and something else about it will also be true.”

Who knew a mess of used bones
plus the right herbs and aromatics
would (eventually)
generate healthy craving?

Refilling my mug, I give thanks for curiosity—seemingly hard-wired into our psyches.

And there’s this: Salt plus sound displays singular, hidden magic.

Curious?

Click here to watch this brief video: Using a tone generator, the experimenter shakes table salt over a vibrating metal plate. As the pitch rises, the salt granules form new, increasingly complex patterns, for each tone, a different design.

Here’s to the hidden dance of salt.

You only get one life.

Please. Be the salt.

Photo: Dan Michael Sinadjan on Unsplash

Cymatics Demo

Read “As Meat Loves Salt” (also known as Cap O’ Rushes)

More about the marvels of salt, by Margaret Feinberg

Stitches, by Anne Lamott

You might also like “Learn to Sing out on a Limb”

Reset: Notes from a Backward Sabbatical

by Laurie Klein 50 Chiming In

Reset: A fresh start. A return to zero.

We humans reset our clocks & lottery jackpots,
bowling pins & broken bones,
odometers, iPhones & circuit breakers,
alarms, passwords & user names,
devices & diamonds & letterpress type.

I’ve been sick for 100 days. I am undergoing a reset. Disease has streamlined my life. Food, elimination, exercise, rest—I feel pared down to the basics. Vulnerable as a newborn.

Painfully aware of Self.

Self-interest
Self-pity
Self-deception

To name a few.

God seems to be tinkering with my innermost clockwork.

A God who is beyond great, must, by definition, work in ways that are beyond our understanding.

So says Ann Voskamp.

I believe I’ll recover—perhaps with a new normal. But for now grace meets me, again and again, despite my ailing body’s fussy demands and dismal, unending commentary. Grace inches open a door.

Like the evening I’m ladling out soup. Yet another bowl of bone broth. And the phone rings. My friend Robert must rush his wife to E.R. It’s 3:00 a.m. in England and all their friends are asleep. Will I pray?

Love and compassion ignite. Purpose courses through me. I’m needed—by someone a continent away. God moves in their lives and in mine as well. Hope shimmers, a devotional reset.

O I could tell you so many 100-day stories!

Instead, fresh off the altar, here’s a new song, fitting for resurrection week. My gifted friend Bryan Bogue composed the music, and I wrote the lyrics.

NO MORE SORROW

Another night is gone, and nothing like the dawn seems to be breaking.
You lie in bed and pray, just aching for that final day of waking
light years from here, beyond all fear.
Faith used to be so clear; now it’s elusive as a cure.
Nothing feels sure.

When clouds look like a bruise, and early morning news inflames your spirit,
the steep and winding Way feels more remote each day, and still you choose it.
Bodies grow frail, and memories fail.
Passions wax cold and stale. Ready your mind, your soul, your core.
Here’s what’s in store . . .

No more sorrow. No If onlys. Lonely nights will cease.
No more weeping. Grieving wanes as pain gives way to peace.

The world looks on and jeers, the fleeting gift of years can be deceiving.
Our pipe dreams run aground and don’t always rebound. We stop believing.
Vanities pall, as empires sprawl,
prey on the weak and small.
Call to mind promises foretold. Rise and take hold . . .

No more sorrow. No If onlys. Lonely nights will cease.
No more weeping. Grieving wanes as pain gives way to peace.

No more sorrow. No tomorrow cancels grace today.
God will stroke each lifted face and wipe each tear away.

No more sorrow, Solace calls. Lift your face as mercy falls . . .

Clockworks photo: Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash
Watch reset photo: Luke Chesser on Unsplash
Song credits: Bryan Bogue (keyboard, composer/arranger/conductor), Scotty Ingersoll (lead vocal), Gage Homburg (back-up vocals), Ted Swenson (bass), Tana Bachman-Bland (violin, viola), Cheryl Carney (cello), and Keith Thomas (oboe)

Stepping Out amid 100 Questions

by Laurie Klein 25 Chiming In

Stepping out …

Quail: roughly the size of a man’s fist.
Sleeping, they splay;
roused, they leap into the air,
like popcorn kernels hitting hot oil.

The females lay eggs on the run. All of them poop on the run.

One breeder says every time she leaves, her quail cry. A sound somewhere between a mew and a moan.

That’s me lately, writhing with undiagnosed infection. I doze in weird positions, then leap up for, well, the facilities.

Grousing: a verb

Twice, in the ancient Hebrew wilderness, God lavished quail on the Israelites—despite their ingratitude. Tired of manna, they demanded meat. The Almighty practically flung quail into their faces.

There. See the BLESSING?

A sign

Today, quail huddle in gangs beneath our spreading juniper shrubs, before stepping out. They make a break for it, get out of Dodge. I want out too.

I spell mad: B.R.A.T.
Broth
Rice
Applesauce
Tea

For now, no tangerines, no Mae Ploy sauce, no Honey Dijon chips.

And no escape from the smallest room in the house. No stepping out. Because no one knows if my immune system is functioning.

What eccentric blessing is staring me down?

And then in the wee hours, words from Isaiah:

In all their distress, [God too] was distressed,
and the angel of his presence saved them.
In his love and mercy he … lifted them up
and carried them all the days of old.

Even here. Tonight. Alone, on cold linoleum.

I want to know how to see blessings …

Quail make me laugh.

They dither. Their topknots bobble. Their heads are like spastic question marks.

So I have questions too …

how to send roots down into hope until I feel the sap rise
how to turn enigmas into love: valentines, worthy of stamps
how 100 questions might whirl like lassos, aiming for heaven

I want to know gratitude’s face when it roams—homeless, in my neighborhood.

I want to know What you want to know …

Raining quail story here

Sometimes, the Gift Tears YOU Open

by Laurie Klein 32 Chiming In

Gift? Or Riddle?

Joseph wakes her, by lantern-light. “We have to go. It’s not safe here.”

All Ears, their rickety donkey, snuffles. Joseph carefully settles Mary behind those elderly, twitching ears. Hands up the child.

Does she look back? Perhaps a kindly local woman supervised the swaddling, nursing, burping.

“Best to leave quietly,” Joseph murmurs. “Avoid questions about our destination.”

It’s cold. Mary misses her mother. Over the stony ground they plod, under uncountable stars—Mary’s longest night yet.

Riddle

Where will they live?
Can she trust an Egyptian doctor?
Will Joseph find work?

She shifts her son, easing cramped arms. Daily trips to a new village well will demand safely balancing him and the brimming water jar.

Can she do this?

Gift

You carry God’s gift wherever you must—Mary might say to us—each small goodness divinely implanted, whether within your arms or your mind or deep in your belly.

Over nine months, Mary has apprenticed her soul to the quiet arts: nurturing hope, pondering Mystery, carrying on.

The gift tears YOU open, she might add. There will be scars.

Mary’s endurance instructs me, as Dreamer and I continue seeking housing and medical answers.

Cherish each moment. Every good gift starts leaving your care long before you feel ready.

Perhaps we never fully comprehend that which God births within and through us. Child or brainchild, creation is God-breathed. Offer yourself and your work to this world, believing God will reanimate a fraction of its lost hope.

Head out into the unknown, friends, step-by-step.

“Living into the mystery of things helps us to release our hold on needing to know the answers.”*

“What Child Is This?” —acoustic guitar, Bill (Dreamer) Klein

Dreamer’s symptoms persist. He had more tests today, results next week, follow-up in 6 months. Our daughter is recovering well from surgery. Thank you for your prayers! We wish you all a wildly fruitful, delectable New Year!

*Final quote: Christine Valters-Paintner, from her marvelous New Year’s Eve post