Soul Mimosas Archives - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Natural . . . infinite . . . yes: photo meditation

Natural, infinite, yes—what images do these words conjure for you?

Scouting the Natural World

Last weekend Dreamer and I attended photography classes in Stehekin, Washington.

A four-hour boat trip up Lake Chelan launched the last leg of our journey. Dreamer sat on the deck absorbing scenery. Anticipating camera jargon I wouldn’t know, I sat inside at a table to (finally) read my camera manual (well, part of it).

After the first class, we bundled up in our rain gear, then explored the local harvest festival, cameras ready.

Time seemed to slow down despite the dank weather as I scouted unusual natural images.

Like this sundial faithfully doing its work. In the rain.

My goal was to “receive” the images rather than “take” them, a photography method I learned from Christine Valters-Paintner.

Time became elastic as I paid close attention to my surroundings. Perhaps I can offer you a taste. Will you join me in a visual meditation today?

Visio Divina

Visio Divina is a way of seeing, an ancient spiritual practice which invites the viewer to be fully present, attentive to imagery and its possible messages to the viewer’s spirit.

Perhaps these photos will beckon you toward rest. Contemplation. Memory. I’ve interwoven them among lines of a favorite e. e. cummings poem.

i thank You God for most this amazing day

for the leaping greenly spirits of trees

and a blue true dream of sky

and for everything which is natural

which is infinite

which is yes

(I who have died am alive again today: and this is the sun’s birthday

this is the birthday of life

and of love

and wings

and of the gay

great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any—lifted from the no
of all nothing—human merely being

doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and

now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

When did you last encounter a natural, infinite yes? Were you seeking the experience, or did it come as a gift?

“i thank You God for most this amazing” by E.E. Cummings, from 100 Selected Poems. © Grove Press, 1994. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Reflections

by Laurie Klein 15 Chiming In

Just this, for Holy Week . . .

Yes

I am going to start living
larger, looser—
stripped down
to my sapling self, leaning toward
that leafless tree Messiah loved
enough to die on.

Maybe its boughs sheltered him once,
from pelting rain,
spread shade like a cloak,
dropped one late fig, surprising his palm—
one small story uniting and
easing them both
at the end, on that hill like a skull.

My brow touches the earth.
Moved by hosannas, echoing
still, deep inside stones,
I rise. Then the tight turn,
lifting fingers, limbs,
my bird-soft hair—
all the thorns, delicately removed.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

. . . be like the tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.

—Jeremiah 17:8

“Yes,” from Where the Sky Opens, by Laurie Klein

UnShelved: 1 Carol, Just 4 the Joy of it!

by Laurie Klein 33 Chiming In

Here’s to the resounding joy of feeling “unshelved.” After a season of waiting, a person starts to question their shelf life duration and, well, freshness. Rusty as we may feel, it’s heartening (and often humbling) to be called back into service again.

To be divinely sidelined for a season wears on the ego like weather eroding the sheen on a bell. The song’s still there. But we feel useless. Forgotten. Marked—even scarred—by waiting.

Antique dealers charge more for patina. Will we value the incomparable soul patina we acquire in times like these?

Here’s a carol that Bill and I recorded, years ago. Then shelved.

“Christmas Song” was written by Bill, and arranged and produced by our brilliant friend, Chris Lobdell.

Newly unshelved, this song comes with heartfelt hopes for your celebration and the timely fruition of your God-given dreams.

Merry Christmas, friends!

Exposed to Truth, Its Beautiful Sting

by Laurie Klein 3 Chiming In

Held still much lately? Wish you could more often? I do. It’s an abiding passion of mine. And a challenge.

I was the tomboy sentenced to regular “sitting lessons” on my father’s lap. Gripped in Dad’s brawny, freckled arms, a featherweight could only flail so long.

Now I see enforced waiting was meant as a gift. Dad’s discipline established a baseline for social poise through quieter physicality, leaving my mind free to swing through the trees of imagination. To this day my thoughts flit, like the butterfly in overdrive hunting nectar or the rebound of that next silken petal, bobbing under its weight.

So here’s to the mercurial, slightly out-of-focus moment, not so long ago, when something intensely alive alighted on my hand:

butterfly

My breath stuttered. The fingers inching my camera closer trembled, body on high alert . . .

as if each sense was a radar dish, registering color, weight, movement. Texture. And something else, harder to name, and as fleeting as the shadow of an antennae across my belly (which I would only see later, on playback, after the creature had risen and wafted aloft).

In a moment like this, surroundings dim, attention telescopes on sensation. Have you felt it?

butterfly legs

Six multi-jointed legs the size of an eyelash taste with their feet, and when they traverse the human palm, they stab, like a mosquito, or Tom Thumb plying a micro-jeweler’s saw against the skin.

By comparison, I’m huge. How is it that something weighing in at less than one-fifth of an ounce has the muscle to alter my day? My outlook?

Even now, looking back on the photo of that brief encounter, I can ignore how old and homely my hands look; relive, instead, being “tasted,” tattooed by the wild.

“How many are your works, O Lord!” the Psalmist wrote. “In wisdom you made them all; the earth is full of your creatures . . . living things both large and small” (Ps. 104:24, 25b).

The sudden sting of truth: arresting. Evanescent. On that day, beauty sought me out. My part was to sit quietly, take it in.