joy Archives - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Pulley, Bucket & Bell

From the tree house porch
an epic, peony-pink
10-gallon bucket
plummets,
only to rise, refilled
with surprises, hoisted,
hand over hand
in glee: Let’s call it
High Tea, in a Tree,
today’s unexpected
feast, with multiple courses.

Mastermind a whimsical hour for children? One of my favorite ways to re-quicken my youth.

Kids inhabit delight. Cheeky freedom. Wholehearted, irrepressible freshness.

The older I get, the tighter my focus to sustain wellness. Personal triage revs. So many good-for-us life hacks worth shoehorning into a day!

My list might resemble yours: reading, prayer, meditation, exercise, healthy food, supplements, family time, career, research, brainiac puzzles, breathwork, further education, more exercise, volunteering, chores . . . oops,

. . . Not Have-tos but Get-tos.

STILL, I shadow box fears, juggle the weight of a future ever shifting.

How? Try to be faithful. Generous. Do all things for the love of God.

Plus, gag the craven, inner miser — lest I lose touch with mirth.

“What if we content our souls with too little?”

Lay-brother Lawrence of the Resurrection posed this question over 400 years ago. Known for his lifelong, moment-by-moment conversations with God, Lawrence’s letters speak across the centuries of God’s infinite treasures . . . earmarked for us:

Daily bread
Divine companionship
Rescues
Windfalls

I get sidetracked by duty, fatigue, empathy overload, denial, bootstrap positivity. Tree house Time seems frivolous.

I forget to “kiss the joy as it flies.”*

Then, a jolly, bright pink bucket injects a note of humor.

A pulley, by definition, alters the direction of force.

My granddaughter can pull in — or play out — the rope. She can steady the bucket once it reaches her, bow over the rim to unpack the savory goodness prepared for her.

Or she can cross her arms, stamp and pout. Boycott joy.

Friends, I share small, everyday sitings of grace to encourage myself in the Lord — as King David did when down on his luck. His example inspires me:

Cherish every reminder that God remains kindly mindful of us.

Describing a minor windfall, my soul peals with wonder. Translation: I forget to feel sorry for myself.

There, I’ve said it. What I write likely affects me most. And yet you keep reading. Praying alongside in solidarity. Some unsubscribe. Others chime in.

With compound pulleys, you can halve the weight by pulling down, together, as gravity helps lift the load.

Sounds like fellowship, doesn’t it?

I don’t have a tree house, and inside my soul’s hidden, dimly lit bell tower, sometimes my lone pulley squeals.

Then again, one tug on the rope moves ponderous bronze toward music.

I will give you the treasures of darkness and the riches hidden in secret places, so that you may know that I am the Lord . . . who calls you by name (Isaiah 45:3).

Known (and chosen anyway!),
feasted afresh each day,
when we’re left dangling,
let’s encourage ourselves in the Lord,
stay available, free to be filled
and used, like a swinging bell
or a bright pink bucket . . .

Friends, what might be rising to meet your readiness?

Side project:

No grands? Borrow a few kids for an afternoon.
No tree house? Stage a No-fuss High Tea under a Tree.

Tie plastic $-store pails or baskets holding edibles to tree branches.
Spread a rug or blanket beneath.
Stash costumes (hats, bow ties, wacky glasses, jewelry) and disposable tableware in nearby tubs or baskets.

Here’s what we served:

First Course: Cheesy Goldfish crackers and red grapes
Second Course: Summer sausage, pickles, peewee carrots, String Cheese, World’s Teeniest Muffins (Muffin King), and Arnold Palmer Iced Tea (half lemonade)
Third Course: Ice Cream Bars
Fourth Course: $-Store Bubbles & Wands

*“. . . kiss the joy as it flies.” William Blake

Photo by Ries Bosch on Unsplash

Double Pulleys Photo by Jay Heike on Unsplash

Runaway

by Laurie Klein 26 Chiming In

So of course, we ran away, Dreamer & I & Vinny the dog.

For a whole week.

To escape the diagnosis.

To relish each other and lakeside walks, books and sunsets and daylong fires in a rented cabin.

No phones or WiFi. No laptop.

No clue the heavens would download epic hail . . .

. . . pummeling us, pelting the dog.

Afterward, curled into dry clothes again, I glanced out the window.

Foregrounding the far island,
as if levitating
off Priest Lake, the tail end
of a rainbow’s arc
hovered — curtailed,
yet luminous,
timeless and true as a small ark
of runaway light,
for maybe a minute: Dreamer saw it too.

Heaven bridging earth? Friends, it felt personal. You know what I mean: the future looms, relentless as death. Then one day we glimpse a bright strand or two of God’s handiwork, brief as a tail light’s wink in the dark, already moving beyond our sight.

“Jesus is going ahead of you. Tell others.” So said the angel to women clustered beside the tomb.

Here is a Paschal mystery. How on earth do we endure as well as emulate Christ in our own sorrowful hours . . . for the joy set before us?

Or, as a fellow pilgrim prayerfully put it, after her diagnosis, “Ohhh, I see. This is what we’re doing now: You, Lord, & my love & I.”

The most daunting aspect? Perhaps it was God’s confidence in their whispered assent.

Or so it feels to me sometimes.

There is always a reckoning.

And a beckoning.

In the garden on Easter Mary Magdalene would have clung to the man she cherished — had he allowed it. She thought she’d lost him. Perhaps she had, but only in the ways she had always known him.

“Mary,” he said. “Don’t cling to me. I must ascend to my Father.”

With dementia on our horizon, that could apply to Dreamer and me.

Or possibly you and someone you love.

Dare we taste even a molecule of the cup Jesus drank?

Can we imagine the toxic gradually honeyed? Even effervescent?

Change comes. “Do not cling to the old,” Ronald Rolheiser writes. Instead, “Let it ascend and give you its blessing.”

Here’s part of his poem “Mary Magdala’s Easter Prayer”:

“… if I cling
you cannot ascend and
I will be left clinging to your former self
. . . unable to receive your present spirit.”

For Dreamer and me, home again now, there are moments our runaway minds clamor. It’s tiring. And scary. Even though the same Spirit that raised Christ from the dead dwells in us, loves us.

Ah, don’t I sound wise? I can string words together; I can’t make them live.

For now, I am a woman learning to love
the tail end of a rainbow — incomplete
and evanescent, yes — still
trying to stay safe, or is it open . . .
Friends, how might you allow what is changing your life to ascend . . . and give you its blessing?

Catch up on our story here

Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing

Photo by Harry Quan on Unsplash

Extravagant Gesture en Route

by Laurie Klein 23 Chiming In

One windless night, just beyond my bedroom window, Fowler Lake froze, luminous as mercury glass.

Ever the social caboose of my class, pre-teen me hunkered in bed. Crushing thoughts made it hard to breathe. No grace for being me.

I woke to 99 acres of gleaming ice: no pocks or blisters. Nary a wrinkle. Picture the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. Now picture 12 of them, frozen, side by side, shaved smooth by an epic Zamboni.

I pulled on my figure skates, freestyled across the ultimate playground. Greenish-black depths glinted with bubbles seemingly lit from below.

extravagant gesture in lighting — Okay, it’s a light fixture … but you get the idea

Translucence draws us. The pristine awes us. Who doesn’t want to coast and glide and skim, grab each hem of these shirttail verbs related to wheel and rise and soar?

Who can skate around the whole lake?

How far (and how fast) is enough? [Read more…]

Kissing — Actual, Metaphorical — Changes All

by Laurie Klein 17 Chiming In

Kissing: Can it reboot the soul?

Think of things that disappear . . .

writes poet Naomi Shibab Nye

Things evanescent as infancy, childhood, youth,

a glass of wine,

a kiss.

Think of beings, or moments, that blend in so well we seldom notice them.

You might miss a person, or a pet, whose company you’ve cherished. Perhaps they’re gone now, or changed in some essential way.

You might miss what once defined normal days. Time and circumstance have dumped your files, deleted your template. (Feels that way at our place.)

Biologically alive, like the Greek word, Bios, we’re living, breathing, functioning, coping. Even laughing.

But fully alive?

Fleeting recognition

Centuries ago, William Blake, another poet wrote:

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sunrise

What is “kissing the joy as it flies” if not delighting in the mundane?

“‘Delight‘ is a word that might scare people,” a friend of mine once wrote. “If I heard it in a disengaged conversation in a crowded room, it would probably snap my head around.”

After reading my last post, he (gently) re-sent me his essay. (A friend notices when we lose touch with “kissing the joy as it flies.”)

My friend spoke about “the person who has made a conscious decision to not only find more joy in her own life, but to make her zest available to others, while not jamming it down their throats.”

Recognition flared in me, charged as air after a lightning strike. Point (gratefully) taken.

Puckered up

Into our humdrum, getting-it-done, daily mindsets a small recognition arrives, freighted with meaning. We feel lucky, even rich, having brushed up against Beauty.

Pause, exhale, savor each tiny, once-in-a-blue-moon event.

Zoe, the Greeks call this: vital, abundant, eternal aliveness.

(Poet Nye again:)

Think of what you love best,
what brings tears into your eyes.

Something that said adios to you
before you knew what it meant
or how long it was for.

Last weekend a soap bubble at our grandson’s birthday party kissed my imagination awake: another invitation to Zoe.

. . . Lessons following lessons,
like silence following sound.*

More kissing

The kissing theme re-appeared when I recently read a poem for Seattle NPR: “Maple Grove” describes a kiss (Read, or listen, here, or below.) A year ago, the poem languished in my Compost File. Time plus distance revealed the gap; then, something to fill it.

Poet Nye seconds this observation:

“I have always loved the gaps, the spaces between things, as much as the things. I love staring, pondering, mulling, puttering. I love the times when someone or something is late—there’s that rich possibility of noticing more, in the meantime . . .

“Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.”

Absorb today’s abundance, I tell myself—before it disappears.

What joy is flying past you this week? Might it want to grow into something more?

*”Adios,” by Naomi Shibab Nye

“Eternity,” by William Blake

“Maple Grove,” by Laurie Klein

Packing Light: 9 Ways to Reclaim Joy

by Laurie Klein 11 Chiming In

Packing light? Not my strong suit. Umbrella, snacks, lucky rock—be (over)prepared, that’s my motto. And find someone strong to carry your stuff.

Dreamer (my strong husband) mastered packing, years ago. Born to roam, he craves adventure. Every few months he pries this homebody loose from her office chair.

I grouse about leaving home again, grumble about packing chores. Then we encounter wonders. Risk. Occasional revelations.

[Read more…]