Small Wonders Archives - Page 2 of 8

Double-dog-dare-you

Double-dog-dare-you . . .

or What Rocked Me Most, on our getaway
at The River Cove B&B

Poised

This glassy cove
reflects a perilous
slab of rock, upended;
the yellow dog barks,
paces the rim,
pauses,
all crouch and hunker;
tail flag,
scrabble of paws . . .
Watch everything
swell, then distill
and gather—sinew,
breath, time: one
fizzing, defiant vault!

≈≈≈

Friends, I laughed out loud over that leap. Sheer canine ecstasy. The headlong ker-splash ricocheted between rocky shores, ripples fanning outward. Then inward.

Can I do that?

Next day: same river, black Lab, sodden tennis ball.

Check it out: Double-dog-dare-youIMG-9336

Seems I’ve lost touch with springs, hardwired into my limbs and spirit.

Teetering, on edge, I typically freeze. Or flail. Misgauging danger, I’m all toes, gripping the brink, and leaning, leaning back as fear overbalances flesh.

Hello, bum-plant.

Faltering in full view, confidence flat-lined, I scramble for footing, often forget to laugh.

Friends, wherever you’re currently poised, what is the invitation today: caution, or risk? Either choice can be sacred; both take courage.

What helps you heed that whispered “Now” or “Wait”?

PS. My big project — mentioned in a recent post — seems to be underway. Thanks for your prayers! More about this in a future post . . .

Double-dog-dare-you video: Bill Klein

The River Cove Bed & Breakfast: “Sublime setting, sensational cuisine, superior service.” —yours truly, in their guestbook.

Small Dog, Big Attitude Photo by Mitchell Orr on Unsplash

Alteration

by Laurie Klein 17 Chiming In

An alteration? Oh, what a pain. Somebody, spare me. Please.

Despite my chronic aversion to sewing, I offered to take in my grandson’s sweatpants, a Christmas gift from me. They gapped at the waist, and the store couldn’t reorder the correct size. Plus . . . he LOVED them.

He would try them on again; I’d mark the potential tucks.

However, three layers of thick fleece and wide elastic resisted my pins. How would I shove a needle through an inch of fabric? Personal punctures seemed inevitable. Actual pain.

While procrastinating for six weeks, I read there are nine types of fleece, and only one of them, merino wool fleece, involve sheep. For the eight other types, manufacturers meld polyester and recycled plastics with strategic air pockets, sometimes adding natural fibers like cotton or hemp. Voila! Wonder wear: heat-trapping, breathable, wind- and water-resistant, lightweight, long-lasting, affordable, and non-fraying.

There was a lot to read about, which conveniently suited my reluctance to get to work. Unexpected notes of birdsong embroidered the chill beyond my window.

I also read “The Latin root word for ‘rapture means stitch and sing.”*

That fired my imagination.

My mom, genius seamstress and shy soprano, used to say, “A song makes the jobs we don’t like go faster. And better.” She insisted we sing rounds during chores.

Jogged by memories, I carried the oversize sweatpants into my doctor’s waiting room. I still dreaded starting, and failing — possibly bleeding. But my winsome lad is a kid made for cozy. Would I covertly sing?

Well. Every chair was full. The people in them already looked pained.

A tune did not arise in my heart. Not even a hum. But I sensed a solidarity with my mom, and with people, worldwide, who mend and alter. A flush of warmth — beyond the plush fibers I held — pulsed through me, as if a hand of blessing had touched my shoulder in passing.

I threaded my needle and pierced the tripled layers with ease. Something peevish within me relaxed. I settled into the gladness of keeping my word. Being of service.

And the stitches held, like musical thirty-second notes carefully placed, adding up to something worth singing about: an alteration . . . in me.

Are you delaying a needed alteration? What kind of mindset might help you get started?

You might also enjoy: “Lucky: Shelf Life, Third Edition” (Mom sews my prom dress)

Or “Resilience” (the art of mending medieval parchment . . . and more)

Learn about fleece here

*Seven Thousand Ways to Listen, Mark Nepo

Photo by Lisa Woakes on Unsplash

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 . . .

Transfer Station

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

The transfer station awaits.

Wall-to-wall, in her silver Toyota, ten-gallon buckets brim with trash: batteries and light bulbs, paper and plastic, cardboard, newsprint, cans and glass, everything duly sorted. Time for another recycle run.

A whiff from a milk jug sours the air. She collapses against the driver’s seat, powers down all the windows, then buckles up. Reaching for the key, her door still ajar, she overhears a jarring thought: This is my life.

She swivels to view the refuse of rural existence.

This?

Oh, of course: Be Here Now, etc. etc.

And yet she feels . . . singled out. Clued in. Redirected. As if the boss is calling her into his office, offering her a promotion. Moving forward involves a transfer complete with perks and a moving allowance.

Now she feels unnerved, yet energized, almost weightless, and this cracks open her longings. There’s an inner fizz somewhere near her heart, akin to an electrical charge.

“This is my LIFE!“

A bubble of laughter surprises her. Here she is, still mobile, still independent, a woman empowered by grace to make choices.

She closes the car door. Adios, drudgery. So long, resignation. Away with all she no longer needs! Upending the actual buckets will be cathartic.

She engages the engine, grinning, a little sheepish because she finally gets it.

Each task done in a day can dovetail with God’s will — in itself, a destination. She gets to ride shotgun.

Realigning her will, that’s the real work. Why has navigating this pivot taken her so many years? The idea’s not new, but today it feels like a revelation.

Every task undertaken with God — most likely unnoticed by others — counts. Just as much as writing the next blog post or poem.

En route to offload the used, she feels repurposed. Recharged.

“It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God — but we do not,” Oswald Chambers wrote. “We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life, and holy on the ordinary streets, among ordinary people . . . ”

Turns out, this IS the life: Savoring the mundane, we encounter the holy.

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

You might also enjoy this, from the archives: A Rut Worth a Second Look

*Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, entry 10/22