Laurie Klein, Scribe

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Between Noels: Part III

by Laurie Klein 10 Chiming In

Welcome to “Between Noels: Part III”


alter-ego

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Turns out, my intel’s outdated.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.

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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

 

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: alter-ego, angel of God, assumptions, beasts of burden, Blues, donkey, Eeyore, gloomster, Hosanna, Noel, pessimism December 14, 2024

Inspiration & Blues

by Laurie Klein 25 Chiming In

Inspiration pops up in the oddest places. I just discovered a new-to-me color: International Klein Blue (aka IKB).

Picture velvety, seemingly bottomless depths of pure ultramarine.

It’s rich. Enigmatic. Alluring.

This pigment, chemically innovative from its beginnings, can appear to hover — as if breathing just above a surface.

Think about Genesis: the Spirit brooding over the waters.

And how “inspiration” also defines a life-giving inhale . . .

This earthly hue was first mixed into existence, midcentury, by French artist Yves Klein.

Some say he wanted to “represent the transcendent.”

A life inspiration!

In three words, how would I phrase mine? Turns out, I needed three tries.


Make things beautiful.

Listen, with love.

Repair via prayer.


Yves Klein, at nineteen, went for a walk on the beach and chose the sky as his territory.

At seventy-three, I need a smaller canvas.

When I was seven (the year Yves patented IKB), my parents packed our belongings. We moved to a bigger house, two blocks down the street.

Thanks to my mother’s passion and daring, we were soon entering our new home through a blue “statement” door — vibrant turquoise, to be exact.

Might as well have been neon. Strangers stared; neighbors shielded their eyes and pointed.

SO embarrassing.

How did I miss glimpsing the transcendent beyond when I swung open that blue blue door?

Rainy-day Blues & Inspirations

Now I want to say, “Brava, Mom!”

Friends, how will we color everyday life for those we love in ways that will hover — still vaguely present perhaps, even after we’re gone?

What if this year, no matter our age or resources, we pursue fresh inspiration with the best of our lives?

I’ll be wearing blue, of course.

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Inspiration — wherever we find it, however it finds us — is pure gift. Anyone game to try wrapping three words around it?

I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to hear about it . . .


Read more about Yves Klein and see his famous color here:

You might like this, from the archives: Benediction in Blue

Man with Umbrella Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash

P.S. House of 49 Doors: Entries in a Life (yes, it’s the house with the turquoise door) is now typeset. Hurray!


inspiration

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: Blues, hover, inspiration, International Klein Blue, Mom, transcendent beyond, turquoise January 15, 2024

Ease Your Blues: 3 Surprising Ideas

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

Whatcha-gonna-do with those blues?

Maybe your holidays required endurance. Or avoidance. Now 2016 beckons and you—or those you care about—feel steamrolled by loss: a loved one, a relationship, health, home, transportation, or job.

Worry keeps you awake. Or you’re feeling down without knowing why.

Blues: Alchemy with IciclesThe blues blunt our sensibilities.

They tear at our soul—sometimes jagged, other times, numbing.

They crowd our thoughts and cloud our judgment.

Blues Therapy, of Old

Words attributed to King David say, “I will listen to a proverb; I will express my riddle on the harp.“* King James renders it this way: “I will open my dark saying upon the harp.”

That semi-colon bridges two thoughts. Or, as Merriam-Webster says, “co-ordinates the function between two independent clauses.”

David’s open to hearing wisdom. He must also defuse devastation.

1. Proverbs: take 2, they’re small

way to growIf I keep a green bough in my heart, the singing bird will come (Chinese proverb).

He who refreshes others will himself be refreshed (Prov. 11:25).

Being forgetful, I write wise sayings on sticky notes, post these on mirror and desk, dashboard and fridge.

Can I somehow embody wisdom?

Wearing green subtly reminds me spring follows winter, and even lingering blues grow my soul.

Distracting myself eases my blues. I do something to refresh another person, or I walk our dog, or tend the plants and my mood lifts. The plants thank me by thriving, the dog wags himself silly.

The harp verse in Psalm 49 suggests that King David roused himself with proverbs—a go-to remedy. Except when it didn’t work.

2. Make something of it

David also used his hands to express what baffled him. Buffaloed him. From resonant harp strings, stretched across wood, his lament arose. Anger. Frustration. A drawn-out sigh.

Strings resound when plucked partly because they’re under tremendous tension. They’re already in sympathy with us(!), these strings made of gut.

Twenty years ago, enduring severe clinical depression after my father’s death, I let dozens of houseplants die. Too stricken to think, much less pray or play or sing, my guitar stayed in its case.

Busy hands are happy hands haunted me—one of my mother’s proverbs.

I said “Uncle.” Watered the plants, wrote in my journal. Counseling helped, as did anti-depressants.

I started writing poetry, to process my loss.

My breakthrough? Calligraphy class. Stroke by stroke, I focused on forming each letter of the alphabet. I partnered with movement: the simple, learned grace of it.

I lettered my dark sayings, or “riddle,” with ink and pen. I lettered upbeat proverbs. Still bewildered, now I had something to show for it.

To do this intricate work, I had to keep my eyes on the page.

3. Looking up

On days I let the blues rule, my gaze glues itself to my shoes, and everything slumps. Lifting my head and allowing the body to naturally realign itself jumpstarts relief. As does a walk outdoors.

Blues: there are so many shades when we look around us, or up at the sky. I make up new names for them:

Baby J Eyes, Glacial-lake Jade, April Rain. Baby Blues

Here’s a poem you might like, from my book, Where the Sky Opens.

Blue as Devotion

Some love this world like a secret,
a promise, a sacred tease:
500 shades of blue—sea glass or sky,
kingfisher, cobalt, moonlight. Cool hues
play the rogue, retreat from our squint
while come-hithering, numinous
as the quiet splice of shadows and twilight,

fickle as evening tide’s invocation,
every ebbing, a benediction.
Evening Blues on the Beach

How many ways can one soul taste
what perfumes the mind,
be it jasmine, waterfall, pain?

Scent, you are memory’s journey mate.
Time frays, like next week’s vapor trail,
the past unspools, and earth lovers
wait, gazing upward.

Sky Dancer
See the Sky Dancer?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Please share what works for you when the blues move in . . .

May I ask a favor? If this post speaks to you, would you consider sharing it with others? Thanks!

*Psalm 49:4 (NAS)

Laurie Klein, Scribe

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: Blues, Devotion, look up January 5, 2016

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House of 49 Doors: Entries in a Life

House of 49 Doors: Entries in a Life
Buy This Book Online
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House of 49 Doors: Entries in a Life
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Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography

Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography
Buy This Book Online
Buy from Amazon
Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography
Buy now!

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