grace Archives - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Lilt: Stepping Gently toward Easter via Lent

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

Strain

by Laurie Klein 24 Chiming In

One jillion tiny red currants,
already simmered, fill
Mama’s jelly bag, slung
on its tripod — summer
reduced, overnight . . . drip
by drip . . . until piquant,
translucent juice
brims in the metal bowl:
suspense, at its sweetest.

Time plus fruit, gently filtered through fabric open enough to permit the passage of light, creates a domestic trifecta. The upshot? Shimmering jelly, to later be spread like jewels across winter toast.

Just typing those words makes my mouth water. The image offsets weightier meanings of “strain” — as both noun and verb.

With the Delta variant on the rise, with wrenching losses and lockdowns barely behind us, escalating fatigue and fear plus diverse opinions can erode our peace.

“There is a physics of friction,” essayist Tim McCreight writes. “Things push against each other.”

Derived from the Latin stringere, “to stretch something to an extreme or damaging degree,” strain takes on different meanings in diverse areas, such as music, medicine, lineage, and biology.

Strain is a shape-shifter. Who knows where it will appear next?

My head lifts, as I catch a Celtic tune’s familiar strain,
or my neck bows over the sink, as I strain a batch of dubious gravy.

Perhaps appetite stages a binge, numbing a mind and nerves strained by too many housebound days spent avoiding excessive heat and smoky air.

Ears strain to decode an accented voice on the phone.

After a 4-mile run, strained muscles benefit from massage.

And memory offers the fraying thrum of rope straining through a pulley, my father winching our boat from lake to trailer. (Oh, the suspense: Would the rope hold?)

In My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers writes: “The strain of life is what builds our strength.”

When we face it—head-on and heart-foremost—we can overcome doubt, dare that next step forward. And as we do, grace closes the gap, supplies us with nourishing fortitude — sometimes, through other people.

Dare I view strain as an invitation?

“If you do this, and God so commands you, you will be able to stand the strain, and all these people will also go to their homes in peace” (Exodus 18:23, International Standard Version).

Thinking again of Mama’s jelly process, I make a plan . . .

Let faith, rather than dread, simmer.
Maintain the tools (prayer, worship, the Word).
Make friends with time.
Welcome prolonged suspense.
Savor the juice of simple goodness.

Then feast on a bagel smeared with jelly.

Friends, what is strain teaching you? I could use a few tips . . .

You might also enjoy “Catch Your Breath Here”

Photo of woman by Keenan Constance on Unsplash

Bagel photo by Douglas Bagg on Unsplash

Resilience

by Laurie Klein 29 Chiming In

Resilience: After eating together, Dreamer and I update the blank book we use as a gratitude journal. As we verbalize and record the day’s visitations of grace, our threadbare souls experience modest repair.

We are coping with holes in our lives. Sometimes we feel worn as ancient parchment: our moods uneven, our hopes brittle and thoughts torn.

Back in medieval times, a parchment maker’s knife often slipped while smoothing animal hides for the written word, leaving behind small gouges and tears.

Frugal scribes threaded needles, then zigzagged back and forth, bridging the gap. They redeemed a deficiency with color and texture (see image here).

Raw edges were sometimes sutured, like a heart patient after a bypass.

A gash might be darned, like a sock. Or latticed with parchment strips.

Mid-page in a gospel or treatise, repairs might resemble a doily or dreamcatcher (see image).

Rather than discard the parchment or try to disguise the flaw, patient hands beautified the damage.

Defect as Art.

No matter how riven or riddled we feel, the Living Word keeps tossing us lifelines . . . for every gap, every absence, each gaping wound.

Sturdy, vivid, resilient — grace (and gratitude) mend us.

Let’s embrace each strand, no matter how small:
when we sleep, or kneel, when we mourn with a friend,
reset the mousetraps, scour the sinks,
mask up (or not), re-brush the dog,
make lists, make love, make sincere amends,
recycle, pay bills, exercise,
tithe, take the stairs, sanitize hands,
binge, commute, argue, pray,
zoom, google, sing in the shower,
cha-cha, chop onions, shop online,
change diapers, change lanes,
send faxes, do taxes . . .

Thank God, there’s always one more holy, holistic way to practice resilience.

Where are you torn, and how will you treat the hurt place today?

You might also like “Holes and Holiness”

Here, a scribe leveraged three page holes to create a laughing face.

FROM THE ARCHIVES: You might also enjoy Crossing the Gap

Photo of spools by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Hands and thread photo Conor O’nolan on Unsplash.

Lessons from a Moose

by Laurie Klein 30 Chiming In

Heartsick and hunkered under a lap quilt, I light my prayer candle. The votive flickers within its chunky glass holder, a treasured, fire-in-ice gift from my lifelong friend. Yesterday, she was diagnosed with cancer.

Oh, friend. Oh shit. Merciful God, please intervene!

I yearn to help. And I want to bolt, escape to the woods, outrun heartbreak.

Beyond my window Indian Summer burnishes the aspen’s heart-shaped leaves to quavering gold.

Hold on. Those movements exceed a passing breeze. Branches thrash.

Camera in hand, I edge onto our deck: grunts … rustles … CRACK! — massive jaws are tearing off limbs.

I inch nearer. A dark, unblinking eye slues in its socket, meeting mine. Abashed, I shift my gaze. Behold, 800 swayback pounds of fur quixotically arranged atop legs like stilts: a moose.

AND her twins.

I study their commandeered buffet — this time, the crab apple.

Does the cow scent human? Have her calves ever seen one?

Stilling breath / bones / muscles … I try to communicate: No threat here and No greens for me today, thanks. After all, a mature moose weighs as much as a car, can charge at 35 miles per hour, and possesses front hooves designed to lash out in any direction.

So, I stay put, snapping breathless photos.

Then … simply watch, rapt. Only God could imagine into bone / joint / sinew-and-hide these stoic, browsing eccentrics. How effortlessly they radiate wildness.

Moose are focused. Adept. Insouciantly unafraid.

Moose: literally, “Eater of Twigs.” De-nuder of trees. And these three are thorough. The ornamentals will soon be whittled to nubs!

Stamping my feet, I shout. Flail. Make noises, mostly unintelligible.

It’s a lot like praying for someone with cancer.

Are such cries disrespectful? Do they communicate? Are they vacant gestures against a disease all-consuming in its hunger?

I mutter prayers anyway, writes author Brian Doyle.

Did they have any weight as they flew?

I don’t know.

But I believe with all my heart that they mattered because I was moved to make them. … believe that the impulse to pray is the prayer, and that the words we use are only envelopes in which to mail pain and joy …

It’s the urge that matters — the sudden Save us that rises against horror, the silent Thank you for joy.

Even the wrenched-out gutterals — ?!#%?&?! — all that is ornamental pared back to the raw shoot.

So, I pray for my friend with cancer. And for others I know, also gravely afflicted with different versions.

I pray for all of us. That we remain focused. Adept in grace. Insouciantly unafraid.

What’s staring you down, eyeball-to-eyeball? I’d gladly add my prayers to yours.

Brian Doyle, Leaping: Revelations and Epiphanies

Felicity, Schmogg & Roofless Minds

by Laurie Klein 22 Chiming In

Felicity: lately, it’s mostly a memory. For the eighth day running . . . I can’t run. Endorphin-deprived, this grounded-for-now body feels loggy. Wistful. S-l-a-c-k.

A run leavens my day; it boosts the spirits as well as the heart rate.

However, we in the West are beset by hazardous air quality due to wildfires. Step outside and nose-wrinkling, eye-blinking, mood-sinking schmogg assaults the senses. Headache ensues.

Housebound, a wonder junkie may forgo her knack for awe, even overlook nature’s wordless felicity.

And while I’m deeply grateful for the roof overhead and walls that keep bad air out, how does one batten down for safety . . . yet keep the soul propped open, the mind and spirit ajar?

These days, seems most everything—most everywhere—is being turned upside down.

Remember the old Sunday School fingerplay?

Here is the church;
here is the steeple;
open the doors to see all the people.

Motion-wise, unlatching thumbs and spreading the hands inverts the building: interlaced “roof fingers” and palms become floor—complete with life line.

Ergo: one steeple-free, miniature open-air temple.

Ancient Greeks designed temples with an uncovered space that housed an image of deity. This required a new adjective: Hypaethral (hī-ˈpē-thrəl: quasi-rhymes with “Hi C thrill,” for all you dear sopranos, reading this post).

Hypo-, means “under or beneath,” and aithēr, “air or heaven.”

So, fellow homebodies under heaven, with our blessedly non-leaking roofs clamped overhead, how do we as living temples—each of us quietly housing the image of God—proceed?

As the runner’s sole hitting pavement depends on friction, so we embrace the chafe of severe mercy. Hard grace. The whole of this whacked-out world is still a house for us all. A house for God. A roofless marvel of intricate connectivity. Delight, blessedness, eloquence, bliss—felicity still abounds.

Perhaps roofless is a state of mind . . .

Amid wildfires and COVID-19, riots and politics, global suffering and local schmogg, it’s still occurring out there, beyond the glass . . . PRAISE, I mean . . .

As Frederick Buechner says:

“The way Psalm 148 describes it, praising God … is about as measured as a volcanic eruption. … The whole of creation is in on the act—the sun and moon, the sea, fire and snow, Holstein cows and white-throated sparrows, old men in walkers and children who still haven’t taken their first step.

“Their praise is not chiefly a matter of saying anything, because most of creation doesn’t deal in words. Instead, the snow whirls, the fire roars, the Holstein bellows, the old man watches the moon rise.

“Their praise is not something that at their most complimentary they say, but something that at their truest they are.

“Watch how the trees exult when the wind is in them. … Learn how to say ‘Hallelujah’ from the ones who say it right.”

Day or night, barefoot or shod, kneeling or running, may we do no less.

What is the gift being offered us now?

Tell me, what metaphorical footwear might you lace on, in preparation?

P.S. If you enjoyed my earlier post on racial reconciliation (found here), here’s an excellent book currently furthering my education. White Awake: An Honest Look at What It Means to Be White, by Daniel Hill.

Day or night, barefoot or shod, kneeling or running, may we do no less.

Daytime low-angle tree shot by Veronica Gomez Ibarra, on Unsplash; Nighttime low-angle tree shot by Dave Hoefler, on Unsplash