grace Archives - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Listening to You Breathe

by Laurie Klein 26 Chiming In

“Found a dog . . . on Craigslist,” Dreamer said. “But the ad’s a month old.”

A month ago, I couldn’t imagine initiating a rescue.

But things changed with Dreamer’s diagnosis.

Might a loyal, eloquent-if-non-speaking, waggery companion shadowing our steps help us face the future?

We emailed the owners, somehow won their hearts, then drove to Rosalia, Idaho, for the hand-off.

Within the first minute, “Vinnie” licked Dreamer’s face. Think power wash.

Then, tail thumping, he leapt into our car, and he snuggled my beloved all the way home.

Vinnie is a tawny, 4-year-old Husky/Rottweiler. He’s sweet-tempered, patient, and well-trained. After a worrisome three-day hunger strike—despite our elderly charm campaign and wheedling dog-dish charades (plus a dear friend’s prayers)—hunger won out.

The Vinster consented to eat.

Consent denotes willingness to embrace change: You seem nice; sure, I’ll sleep by your bed—while also maintaining a measure of control—Kibbles? I can snarf ‘em or leave ‘em. Watch me.

Consent, even canine, can be withheld. Given. Withdrawn.

Assent, on the other hand, cedes power differently. Factual circumstances may not change—in our case, despite fervent pleading with God.

Like Vinnie, re-homed, Dreamer and I can’t change where we find ourselves now. But God’s grace can change us in profound, unforeseen ways.

Moment by lurching moment, we are learning to say yes to this new chapter unfolding before us.

“Be it unto me according to your word,” Mary told the angel Gabriel. Her willing, wholehearted assent embraced a life radically reshaped, from that moment, forward.

Author Sarah Clarkson writes, “You don’t have to assent or agree with what is before you, and often you ought not to; but if you do, [your assent] is something offered, a yielding to a story you perhaps didn’t choose and don’t yet fully understand.”

Which sounds really spiritual.

Yet often, we’re sad and scared. Or mercifully distracted. There are also moments we struggle to breathe through the sneaker wave of desolation.

Some nights, I distract myself with a crossword puzzle. Other nights, it’s enough to simply listen to Dreamer breathing beside me. Still here.

As well as the random snurffle from Vinnie, snoozing beside our bed.

Our days fill with prayers and research and learning the ways of our new companion. We are a threesome now. With a dog who just barfed, twice. Once on the carpet.

Didn’t see that coming.

Post-cleanup, barricaded in the kitchen, Vinnie somehow Houdini-es through one corner of the canvas folding screen. Turns out Velcro tabs do not deter 70 pounds of lonesome, panting, disoriented mind, muscle, and heart.

He misses his old life. As we miss ours.

Dementia can be erratic, unbearably cruel. Our Healer-Redeemer never sleeps, is ever-present, unchanging, compassionate. It is to God’s unending love we say yes, not to the disease—trusting that what tears us open is already, by grace, deeply at work within us, and will continue, ultimately forging a healing path forward.

“. . . Jesus is going ahead of you,” the angel at the tomb tells the women gathered there in sorrow, fear, and confusion.

Talk about a lifeline.

Perhaps you’re enduring events likely to unravel your heart or ravage the life of someone you love. Friends, let’s pray for each other, seeking the grace to surrender to God all we are and have and will one day be.

P.S.

Here’s a “5 – 5 – 8” breathwork stress-buster we find calming, a small, real-time rescue when panic looms:

five-count inhale
hold breath for five counts
exhale audibly for eight counts

I’ve added words and motion, which help dispel late-night anxiety spikes):

(inhale for 5) As if playing a keyboard, palms down, moving left pinky first, sequentially tap each finger, praying: “We trust you, Jesus.” (Or: “We love you, Jesus.”)
(hold breath for 5) Right thumb to pinky, sequentially tap each finger, praying: “Have mercy on us.”
(exhale for 8) Left pinky to right middle finger, one tap each: “All that we have and are is yours.”

Repeat, as needed.

You might also enjoy “Catch Your Breath Here” (from the archives.)

I highly recommend Sarah Clarkson’s book, Reclaiming Quiet.

Photo of Sleeper by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Which Way

by Laurie Klein 22 Chiming In

Which Way?

Picture a big hollow stump, underwater: flat rim, heart rotted out. Two barefoot girls can straddle the edge, toes curled. They must steady each other when fish eggs slime the surface, catch hold of each other when waves wash in.

Using the stump as a platform, my childhood friend and I invented a game: “Spur-of-the-Moments.”

Hold your breath
Submerge, jackknifing knees
Rocket skyward, striking multiple poses (points for the zaniest)
Ta-da! Splashdown

Failure to stick the landing meant flailing through milfoil, and muck, snootfuls of billowing silt, moments of sputtering.

Twisting, mid-leap, sometimes I lost my bearings. Which way was home?

Jump cut to current politics: nationwide waves of dismay, hope, anger, dread, triumph, loss. An old tongue twister comes to mind: A skunk sat on a stump. The skunk thunk the stump stunk; but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.

Which way is up?

My pastor reminds me, “What God builds will last.”

Despite urgency, transitory players, perceived obstacles. Despite hollow declarations and erosive backchat. Threats and reprisals. Fluid truth.

Generous God, give me the long view.

For me, yearning for what’s eternal means trust plus action:

eschew fear,
enact contagious kindness,
emulate bold hope.

In other words, align with the life and teachings of Christ, whose earthly days among friends and foes alike both inspire and challenge me. Sometimes hourly.

The old stump game was wildly impulsive: hasty, unthinking, rash. Also . . . fun. Somewhere between my best impulse and worst reactions there must be a potent, if precarious, balance point. A shot at delight. Freedom from feeling grieved, angry, jaded. Daily diminished by worry.

Perhaps a prayer for graced spontaneity?

Dear Maker and Lover of Trees, grow my integrity—minus distortion and irony. Grant me taproot faith when the figurative waters around me deepen and roil.

Here’s how The Message voices the Savior’s concern for us:

“Are you tired? Worn out? . . .
Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it.
“Learn the unforced rhythms of grace” (Matt. 11:28-29).

Harder times ahead seem inevitable. How I appreciate upbeat friends like you! Your comments and presence buoy my spirits—no matter what fellow voters decide or who wins public office.

Sediment happens. Amid the campaign muckraking, let’s point each other toward calm waters. No need to be sucked under. Let’s seek wisdom. Love well. Then, take the next leap.

“And let us consider how we may spur one another on
toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together,
as some are in the habit of doing,
but encouraging one another—and all the more
as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24-25 NIV).

Amid candidates out stumping and hair-trigger tensions smoldering, which way is home? What helps you, en route, to sustain balance?

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

My Christmas in Asia

by Laurie Klein 16 Chiming In

Christmas is coming . . . amid epic humidity. Über-hot spices. Unusual plumbing.

Dreamer and I feel like aliens in this small Thai village. They call us farangs: big noses, ghosts, white people. It’s December 2000, and we’re here with a short-term mission team. There’s so much to unlearn!

Culture shock flattens me. Think fallen arches of the soul.

Plus . . . deadly fire ants. Spiders big as hands. And roadside cobras.

I spent my entire 50th birthday getting here, crossing the international date line where time hiccoughs, then replays itself.

“Good thing we’re headed east,” Dreamer said. “Or you’d be 100.”

Friends, GodSpaceLight published this true story of mine last year. Pour yourself a tea or coffee and join me?

Today, wandering the winding, red-dirt village lanes, my feet feel a century old. Everyone else wears flip flops or sandals. Am I the only one wearing socks? Chronic nerve pain afflicts one foot, so I wear tennis shoes for support and micro crews for cushioning warmth. No shoes are allowed indoors, and red dust stains my socks — despite nightly scrubs in the tiny sink.

We’re here to assist the resident missionary. I secretly call her the Advocate. She mediates questions, cultural quagmires, and occasional quarrels, so she’s often unavailable to translate for us.

We all hone our pantomime skills.

Party

An all-day Christmas celebration to honor Jesus — that’s what the Advocate envisions. We have three weeks to prepare. And no budget.

In addition to Western games and prizes and goodies, our event will include an evening performance. For Buddhists. Who don’t speak English.

Will I please oversee the whole shebang, she asks.

I’d rather clear rocks from her field for the games. Then I think of the Virgin Mary’s willingness to shoulder what seemed overwhelming.

“Yes,” I say. Reluctantly.

The Advocate also asks me to mentor an Earnest Young Convert (I’ll call him Eyc). He doesn’t speak much English, but she tells me he wants an open mic session, ceremonial dances, and a children’s sign language choir complete with white gloves and spotlight. He’ll also write a play.

Days go by. Eyc declines to discuss the script with me. Or anything else.

I should not take this personally. But I am (supposedly) in charge. Stateside, I have directed numerous performances. Here, amid impossible circumstances, I feel painfully responsible for the event’s outcome.

But Eyc, independent and buzzing with ideas, keeps dodging me. I probably seem 100 years old to him.

One day, he makes an effort to connect. Or is it a dare? He hands me a stick crowned with a steaming knob of meat. Mmm-Mmm, barbecued rat.

I tell myself it tastes like chicken. Might he trust me now?

I begin to understand the three Wise Men braving foreign cuisine, day after day. Did they endure heartburn? Anxiety? Nausea?

Lord, show me the way forward here. And help me tread gently.

Into the jungle

Mary endured the donkey’s lurching gait. Despite increasing discomfort, she sallied forth.

Today, map-less, I roam the jungle. I’ve been sent to ask a stranger to make traditional costumes for the mystery play. If only I had a translator. How dare I impose? It feels like white entitlement. I dread being misunderstood, resented, judged. The errand gnaws at my pride.

But I keep walking. I’m toting yards of colorful cloth. Once I find the seamstress, I’ll resort to charades. But how does one act out, “Please, you don’t know me but will you make traditional costumes, for free, so that children you don’t know can dramatize a Western story you probably don’t want to hear?”

The wind kicks up. All the palm trees look the same. If I get lost, who will point me back to the village?

I think of Joseph trudging mile after mile among strangers.

Breathe, I tell myself. Pray. And watch for snakes.

The clearing . . .

At last! I find the seamstress. I smile and act out my errand — several times.

She studies the fabric. Then me. A level, assessing gaze, which feels weightier every second. But she nods. I give her all the colors I’m holding. I wish I could pay her.

As if sensing my discomfort she smiles, and it’s dazzling as well as contagious. God has preceded me here, preparing each of us for this exchange. I tent my hands, in grateful respect. She returns the gesture.

Then she points out another red dirt path. I hope it’s a shortcut.

The show must go on

Daily, Eyc rehearses his program. Nightly, I wash his youth choir’s white gloves. Ah, the irony. Leader demoted to laundress: socks and gloves, socks and gloves.

My ego rankles. Chagrined, I ask Dreamer and my friends for prayer.

“We love you,” they say.

“All is grace,” the Advocate adds. “Nothing to earn. Nothing to prove.”

I try to absorb this. Jesus, the ultimate leader, served God by serving others, with love, no matter what. Born in obscurity, he not only survived, he flourished — despite the struggling economy, local politics, and limited resources. Much like this village.

I begin to understand Nazareth.

“Aha!”

I feel less forsaken, but still displaced until . . . an idea arrives. Eyc prefers working on his Christmas play with the Advocate. Fine. I’ll create a life-size creche.

I scavenge scrap lumber for a stable. A teammate builds walls and roof line, guy-wires them to the Advocate’s house.

I raid her Lost and Found. A pillowcase crammed with straw and mounted atop upended bricks makes a fine swine. “Marry a man who owns a pig,” the village grandmothers advise.

Orphaned tube socks become winsome doves, with stray-button eyes.

If I can find black gloves, I’ll stuff them with sand, whisker them with dental floss: voila, two worshipful rats.

My creche will be amazing. Culturally relevant. Or I’ll eat my socks.

I LOVE repurposing castoffs. Surrounded by palm fronds, stick-figures with coconut heads stand in for the holy family. They wear traditional Thai costumes, sewn by the woman I met in the clearing.

Finally, something I can control!

Curious, bedazzled, the village kids handle everything. In their delight, they topple my birds and beasts and figures. Best to zip-tie and guy-wire all of them to the stable. The props, not the children.

Christmas Showtime

Party food and games enliven the day. At dusk, our makeshift stage glows beneath a rented light tree. Open mic begins. The temperature drops. A shivering kid lights a nest of gathered twigs — too close to the crowd. Pals bring armloads of straw; the blaze ignites. What are they thinking? I corral two youngsters, steer them toward safety.

More little arsonists take their place.

Why don’t my teammates intervene? Smoke billows. Flames crackle and leap.

Meanwhile, the gloved sign language choir captivates the crowd. Rapt, they applaud, oblivious to encroaching fire . . .

Luckily, nobody’s hair or clothing goes up in flames. No one suffers burns. The brief inferno peters out when the rascally kids abandon it, to watch Eyc’s play.

And what an opening act! Child actors stagger, feigning drug highs and drunkenness. A sham fight ensues. Good Lord. Is that a hooker, crooking her finger, stage left?

I can’t watch. I escape to the Advocate’s kitchen, toe off my shoes, then stand at the sink in my wretched socks, washing dishes. A teammate enters, her face troubled.

“I think you should know the kids are dismantling —”

Oh no. The creche? My creche? I fling my dishtowel and hurry outside.

They’re tossing my cherished sock doves back and forth. Fighting over the holy family’s attire.

Turns out my teammate cut the guy wires for them.

I have no words. Choked by hurt and fury, I turn away.

An hour later, only a few guests remain. As our team debriefs, a Thai woman seeks out the Advocate. The villager wants the farangs to come to her house and explain Christmas to her husband.

We are amazed. The sole car in the village, the Advocate’s station wagon, can hold nine people.

“Who wants to come?” she asks.

I just want to go home. Instead, I’m stranded among jubilant friends, unable to shag a ride to the place I sleep. Call me the prodigal’s elder brother, but I want no part in the Christmas celebration.

Nor do I want to examine why.

Christmas Eve, an hour later

The team returns, all talking at once. When they’d arrived at the woman’s home, villagers crammed her front room, curious about Jesus. Eyc’s play must have presented the gospel, after all. The Advocate retold the Christmas story and led them in prayer.

Each person there had pledged to follow Jesus.

Luminous now, my teammates turn to me. Isn’t it awesome? How do I feel, they want to know.

Well, for starters, bewildered by news beyond my imagining. And something darker I can’t name. I nod and smile, but I’m saving face. I want out. Dreamer and I head for our nightly commute to the place we live. As if sensing my angst, he gives me space.

Creche, sounds like crush

Dreamer falls asleep smiling. I lie awake, confused. Offended. Which makes me feel guilty and even more left out. I should be ecstatic. But after weeks of feeling dismissed and mistrusted, now I’m ashamed about my fury over the ruined creche.

I groan, place the cool side of the pillow over my face. I begin to understand Herod. Jealous for my private kingdom — and wanting adulation for what I built — I have blinded myself to the reason behind it all: Christmas. God with us.

In my mind’s eye, I kneel, grasp the imagined hem of his robe, picturing traditional Thai cloth in vivid colors. And somewhere in the background, the Buddhist who’d sewn it. For free. Simply because I’d asked.

Lord, forgive me.

And something like relief flows in, leaving my soul “sore amazed.” I begin to understand the shepherds.

Then, I taste Mary’s hushed bliss.

I am 50. I could be 100. I feel newly reborn, broken open by grace. By Story. By Christmas in Asia. Tenderly. Thoroughly. What a strange and wondrous world, where we can briefly take steps in the shoes of others.

All is adventure.

All is grace.

Friends, which character in the Christmas story resonates with you this year?

Poet Mary Oliver asks:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Photo by Kenny Eliason on Unsplash

You might also enjoy this Christmas post from the archives

Soul Mimosa — Photos, Music

Lilt: Stepping Gently toward Easter via Lent

by Laurie Klein 24 Chiming In

Lilt: Stepping Gently toward Easter via Lent

“Lilt” in Lent? Well yes, the word’s synonyms suggest faith on the upswing: spirited, buoyant, springy.

How on earth can I consider those words next to these concerns from the friend of my friend? She’s scared sleepless over her cousins in Ukraine, young mothers whose husbands must enlist. Do they need money? How can she send it? How will grandparents and nieces and nephews safely escape with banks closed, airports occupied, gas stations emptied?

How can I allow weightiness once again to enlarge my heart, carve room for deepening mercy? Those wiser than I claim prayers of lament will, in time, bring transfiguration: glint by glimmer, a luminous trail, the sparks flying upward.

But what in heaven’s name can “lilt” mean in relation to war? I am fed, sheltered, privileged. I am safe. For now.

When the heart is wracked, how do we navigate dissonance?

Faith, we know, watches for holy rescues. Keeps vigils. Fasts and prays. Celebrates God’s provisions, seen and unseen.

This Lent especially calls me to lament and repentance. Can this also invite me toward heart-lightening remembrance?

Here’s what I say to my soul:

Spend time on those knees—in between time spent listening, at His.
Offer up small surrenders in sober reverence and quiet joy.
Engage more deeply with the reality of the Passion so as to embody compassion.
Grab the children and tell them the truest stories—that we are made for God. That we are called toward binding up wounds as well as abounding in grace. Help them understand this:

Dear Lent, you are ashes and daffodils,
fasting and feasting,
foot washing and footloose, resurrection-bound praise cutting a rug.

Here is my Lenten List (I hope you’ll add to it):

Write yourself a note. Tuck it inside your fridge, silverware drawer, medicine cabinet—wherever you’ll come upon it: Hello there, you agent of whimsy. What will you and Perfect Love do next?

Peel a tangerine. Pray over a different country as you savor each segment. Lick your fingers to say Amen.

Talk things over with a local bird, or use this captivating video close-up of a mourning dove: And may the dove who descended upon Christ at the Jordan alight near you and those you love today.

Make a lap. Now remember the lap of someone who held you. Let your Bible fall open, right there on your knees. Read out a fitting word, phrase, or verse(s) in blessing. Then improvise, perhaps sensing you and your someone welcomed anew into God’s embrace.

Do you collect quotes? If not, you could start here: “During the night everything has been remade for you. Merely to breathe is a happy adventure.” —J. B. Priestly, Delight

When rampant darkness between people overwhelms you, browse Photo Ark Wonders, by the “Modern-day Noah,” Joel Sartore, for National Geographic.

I consider “lilt” a relative term. This morning I hobbled around waving a long scarf over my head, like one of those small but undaunted gymnasts armed with banners. In Christ, my soul is a secret Olympian.

Bet yours is too.

What would you add to the list?

P.S. Invite scent to trigger memory. Before making your bed, mist your pillowcase with a scent you enjoy (or tuck a dryer sheet inside it). Anticipate Spirit-led time travel when you tuck yourself in tonight. Then again, the fact of shelter, the bed, and a warm room is already grace, and more than enough.

You might also enjoy Kyrie Eleison: Seeking Mercy

Lilt is a song, a movement, a stance of the spirit — Mourning Dove

Mourning Dove Photo by Joshua J. Cotten on Unsplash