emergence Archives - Laurie Klein, Scribe

First-timer: Never too late

First-timer?

Think amateur: “one who ardently engages in something, for love.

Of course, it also means “skill set in progress.”

Do you remember Ted Mack’s mid-century “Amateur Hour?” If not, imagine “America’s Got Talent” meets “So You Think You Can Dance” — but in black and white, mono vs stereo, with minimal sets and lighting. Each hopeful celebrant steps up, giving their all despite first-timer heebie-jeebies. Jim-jams. Screaming meemies.

Love the lingo, if not the sensation. But public emergence? Me? Not so much. As you may have read in my last post, God seems to be coaxing me out of my cave. In the process, I get to practice learning to laugh at, about, and with myself. Sometimes, almost beside myself.

So maybe we should switch out “emergence” for effervescence. After all, we’re to rejoice in the Lord our God in everything we put our hand to (Deut. 12:18b).

In that spirit, I’m sharing the link to my first podcast — on camera: an interview with Riley Bounds, calm, genial, thoughtful editor of Solum.

The interview during which I discover . . .

a new soapbox sturdy enough, perhaps, to support the weight of a growing passion,

and

how to look 30 years younger for 38 minutes and 53 seconds (thank you, Zoom!).

The same interview after which I learn . . .

how vain I still am,

and

why a person must laugh over accidentally channeling a slo-mo, dashboard bobblehead (we all have a visual go-to-focus, while thinking: mine’s upward and to the left; what’s yours?).

I also learned when to exchange chairs minutes before going live (never!): your carefully rehearsed eye contact skews and you will earnestly address everyone’s hairline.

BUT: if you wonder how “I Love You, Lord” rolled into this world, then crossed and re-crossed it, multiple times, over 48 years,

or why every creature in my latest book speaks, including the house,

or c’mon, why poetry? . . .

. . . this one’s for you.

“It’s out there,” a beloved father figure once explained to me, “as long as there are electrons.”

First-timer, amateur effort notwithstanding.

Friends, much as I hope to stir your heart and meet your gaze . . . your hairline may tingle, ever so slightly.

Click here to listen only.

Friends, if you’re stepping up to, or into, something uncomfortable, how might I pray for you?

P.S. In the high-tech swirl of “algae-rithms,” a click or comment makes a difference, even if you only have time to watch part of the podcast. Fellow writers, my favorite moment? It’s Riley’s: time stamp 38:13.

Photo by Marcela Rogante on Unsplash

Author photo by Dean Davis Photography

Chrysalis

by Laurie Klein 38 Chiming In

Chrysalis

Every so often God lovingly summons me to spin myself a figurative chrysalis, a timeout from the rhythms of normal life.

“In soul-making we can’t bypass the cocoon,” author Sue Monk Kidd says. “There’s always the husk of waiting somewhere in the corner.”

In other words, we’re invited to both embrace and endure a season of claustrophobic dark where transformation occurs — sometimes atom by atom.

To weather being set apart “involves weaving an environment of prayer,” Kidd adds. “It’s not about talking and doing and thinking. It’s about postures of the Spirit . . . turning oneself upside down so that everything is emptied out and God can flow in.”

Some will equate this process with conversion. Others believe it’s a recurring experience meant to enhance a new stage of faith, not a onetime event.

Me? I’m a serial cocoon-ist.

Regardless of where you land, here are a few secrets I find heartening.

For instance, the physical anchoring point of the butterfly pupa to the twig is a tiny, built-in hook. It’s called the “cremaster.” The creature relies on this attachment to survive the cold as well as the winter winds.

I’m thinking spiritual velcro.

CHRYSALIS PRAYER . . . IS WAITING PRAYER — aka dis-assemble-ment. Nobody’s favorite.

But how awesome that grace, at every turn, meets our expectant, if feeble, vigilance. And how sobering that this same grace may reduce us to goo.

God reconfigures us while we wait . . . in the dark . . . often clueless.

Waiting prayer is a thorny yet sacred wonder: wrenching as that ambush of tears we can’t explain; alarming as finding ourselves in fetal position; raw as our candid “Who cares? I’m outta here.”

THESE, TOO, ARE PRAYERS.

Still, don’t we fear that those we love may turn away, dismayed by how changed we are?

“Where there’s no risk, there’s no becoming. And where there’s no becoming, there’s no real life.
So we give people time, accept their resistance by listening to their fears, speak honestly of our path, and go on quietly finding our new wingspan.” —Sue Monk Kidd

Saying Yes multiple times to a life newly curtailed? This is courage, resolutely embodied.

I’m thinking of Jesus . . .

“Afterward, taking his body, Joseph and Nicodemus wrapped it in strips of linen, then laid him in the garden tomb.

Sounds cocoon-ish to me.

“The third day, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene saw that the stone had been removed.”

At the right time the cremaster, or seal, gives way to resurrection energy.

“Who is it you are looking for?” Jesus asks Mary. For she does not recognize him. Resurrection is transformation.

“I have seen the Lord!” Mary tells the others.

Our Savior — “for the joy set before him” — embraced separation, transformation, and emergence. Now, he intercedes for us.

ARE WE BORN TO SOAR?

In Hope for the Flowers, by Tricia Paulus, a caterpillar tells its curious pal, “I’m making a cocoon. It looks like I’m hiding, I know, but a cocoon is no escape. It’s an in-between house where the change takes place . . . the becoming . . . takes time.”

But did you know some caterpillars resist the chrysalis? Preferring larval life, they suspend their development, cling to what is known and familiar. Scientists call this the “diapause.”

Sometimes I resist the urgent press of life within: I shrink back from the call. Distract or numb myself. Justify my inaction.

My friend Pamela suggests it helps to view dread as a unit of neutral energy. Which I can aim. Hopefully, toward growth.

“Every time we face the light, the shadows fall behind us,” Kidd says.

Separation.
Transformation.
Emergence.

“Behold,” God says, “I make all things new” (Rev. 21:5).

Friends, which stage are you in, or perhaps nearing, at present?

You might also enjoy Butterflies Worth Befriending, from the archives

Chrysalis: Photo by Ikhsan Fauzi on Unsplash

Butterfly on orange flower: Photo by Yuichi Kageyama on Unsplash

A Respect for Emergence

by Laurie Klein 16 Chiming In

Of all the nerve. A moose plunged through our snowy wonderland.

The neighborhood Bullwinkle gouged the back forty trail. My trail. I have slogged a reliable floor on snow shoes by compressing numberless, nearly weightless flakes — bound together by weather and gumption.

Moose tracks boggle my sense of proportion. Those hoof prints could be family-size canned hams.

And those gouges compromise balance: a boot teeters, an ankle gives way. No wonder my usually mellow soul bristles.

Overnight, the gentle herbivore collapsed whole sections of trail I have carved and re-carved, daily, over four months. Through sleet and sunlight and once, near whiteout.

Come spring, I mean to jog again. A gear junkie would buy snow shoes designed for running. I’m too cheap. For now, dogged phlogg-ing fuels my training regimen:

pitch body forward
trust metal claws
let poles swing, plant, propel

Rhythm cuts the trail.

Most days something pent up inside hollers, Move it! Make your way through this booby-trapped world.

But what about the wilderness carried within? Some of us crave drama. Others dodge it. How to navigate those unexpected sinkholes that compromise footing?

Weight wise, a bull moose is the equivalent of a grand piano. In the midst of deep drifts, the toes splay — akin to snow shoes. Each hoof’s surface area increases, which minimizes how far those long legs can sink.

The hoof is a hardworking trinity. There are compacted shock absorbers. Two cloven toes function like our middle and ring finger. A dew claw becomes weight bearing and enhances agility, like our pointer and pinky.

Ingenious.

And . . . almost heart-shaped. A terrible magnificence has cratered my sacred aisle, through bowed-over knapweed, through powder and windswept ripples and hummocks of ice.

Caprice? Necessity? Irreversible ruin?

Poet Molly Peacock writes about sustaining “a respect for emergence.” Bound to be awkward. Guaranteed to counter preferred rhythms.

Ideally, perhaps we navigate the intrusive by remaining attentive. Patient.

What if we welcome unwanted traffic on our perceived turf? What if something gentle yet powerful we’ve yet to identify calls to us now, from below the surface?

Lord, be our balance, our surefooted joy.

Friends, what keeps you nimble in challenging times?

P.S. You might enjoy this poem I wrote (many thanks to publisher Katie Manning, Whale Road Review)

Tracks

1
Loneliness moves by stab
and creak over winter hills—

crossbite of straps,
cunning hoops with teeth. Like prayer,

snowshoes re-float the body,
distribute its burden.

Wood or aluminum,
baskets-and-poles —

be our wings. Our boats.
Surrogate bones.

2
Fences run with the hills.
Snow fleas pepper the snow

beneath spruce. Skitter of mice
in whiskery lines, strut

and splay of the wild turkey.
Beneath my flat blue shadow

and, deeper down, the memory
of bared soles, mingled

with fossils. Today:
practice not sinking.

*****

“. . . yet I will rejoice in the LORD . . . my strength . . . he enables me to tread on the heights” (Habakkuk 3:18, 19a, NIV).

From the archives, you might also enjoy: Lessons from a Moose

*Quote, Molly Peacock, A Friend Sails in on a Poem.

Photo by Ivars Krutainis on Unsplash