Laurie Klein, Scribe

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Sometimes, the Gift Tears YOU Open

by Laurie Klein 32 Chiming In

Gift? Or Riddle?

Joseph wakes her, by lantern-light. “We have to go. It’s not safe here.”

All Ears, their rickety donkey, snuffles. Joseph carefully settles Mary behind those elderly, twitching ears. Hands up the child.

Does she look back? Perhaps a kindly local woman supervised the swaddling, nursing, burping.

“Best to leave quietly,” Joseph murmurs. “Avoid questions about our destination.”

It’s cold. Mary misses her mother. Over the stony ground they plod, under uncountable stars—Mary’s longest night yet.

Riddle

  • Where will they live?
  • Can she trust an Egyptian doctor?
  • Will Joseph find work?

She shifts her son, easing cramped arms. Daily trips to a new village well will demand safely balancing him and the brimming water jar.

Can she do this?

Gift

You carry God’s gift wherever you must—Mary might say to us—each small goodness divinely implanted, whether within your arms or your mind or deep in your belly.

Over nine months, Mary has apprenticed her soul to the quiet arts: nurturing hope, pondering Mystery, carrying on.

The gift tears you open, she might add. There will be scars.

Mary’s endurance instructs me, as Dreamer and I continue seeking housing and medical answers.

Cherish each moment. Every good gift starts leaving your care long before you feel ready.

Perhaps we never fully comprehend that which God births within and through us. Child or brainchild, creation is God-breathed. Offer yourself and your work to this world, believing God will reanimate a fraction of its lost hope.

Head out into the unknown, friends, step-by-step.

“Living into the mystery of things helps us to release our hold on needing to know the answers.”*

https://lauriekleinscribe.com/wp-content/uploads/What-Child-is-This.mp3

“What Child Is This?” —acoustic guitar, Bill (Dreamer) Klein

Dreamer’s symptoms persist. He had more tests today, results next week, follow-up in 6 months. Our daughter is recovering well from surgery. Thank you for your prayers! We wish you all a wildly fruitful, delectable New Year!

*Final quote: Christine Valters-Paintner, from her marvelous New Year’s Eve post

 

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Filed Under: Small Wonders Tagged With: answers, Gift, mystery, scars December 31, 2018

What to Do with Yearning

by Laurie Klein 16 Chiming In

Yearning expression on stone scupture of child

Yearning does not phone ahead.

No heads-up email, or text. No forwarded ETA. Amid tinsel and candy and LED stars, yearning arrives like a long shiver: down-in-the-bone lonely. An awkward Soul-guest. Seemingly hungry.

But not lost. No.

Across its imaginary palm, scrawled in blue ink, the address is yours, and mine. Deliberate, then, this surprise visit.

What we do next will determine more than our mood.

“Present” day

Has yearning knocked at your door lately? A longing you can’t quite name?

It woke me on my birthday. Interrogation failed: I hazarded guesses as to its source but failed to define my sense of loss and incompleteness (and thus dismiss it).

It’s with me, still. Maybe it wants a hand to hold?

Or a handout?

Or a hand up, to heave itself free from past disappointments—because it aches, this inward sigh.

So what now?

Here’s what I suspect (and I hope you’ll share your insights, in the comments below)

Yearning arrives as the teacher—a timeless gift—when the learner is ready.

 Past time, passed forward

What if yearning sent the travel-stained child named Mary to visit Elizabeth?

Trembling, Mary nears her kinswoman’s windowless door feeling mostly awed, slightly bewildered. She’s thirsty and maybe a little bit dreamy, having walked so far. Having carried such secrets.

Elizabeth’s work-worn hands pull her over the threshold. She barely contains the leaping within! She is loud with her blessing.

And puzzled to be her Lord’s host. Why her? Why here?

Sure as the almond tree is the first to bloom and the last to lose its leaves, Elizabeth sees Mary’s faith. She strokes that teenage face lit with hopes and dread and a hundred questions.

There is singing and sighing, and prophesying. There’s probably soup. And honey, drizzled across unleavened bread.

There are weeks of rising and working, then resting together, stroking their bellies as night comes on. John is a kicker, a roller, a swimmer of rivers; Jesus has yet to fidget or turn. He is quiet. Contained.

The two friends gaze at each other, and maybe they think:

Something never-before-this-Real wants to be born, through us.

Welcome yearning

Mary and Elizabeth differ from us. Their enigmas were already named: John, and Jesus. The long yearned for son and never-dreamed-of boy arrived, as gifts, clearly labeled.

Cream colored door ajar, revealing white lightWe who have yet to understand our restless Soul-guest can learn from St. Benedict’s Rule: “Let everyone that comes be received as Christ.”

“‘Lord, when did . . . we see you a stranger and invite you in . . . ?’ The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’”  —Matthew 25:38-40 (NIV)

Like Elizabeth, we extend our hands toward mystery.

And if the riddle is me?

Yearning also invites us to welcome estranged parts of ourselves. What talents, dreams, or personality traits have we shelved, or dismissed?

Exiled, or denied?

Mary, at Elizabeth’s door, might have ached to feel reassured. Scripture tells us she spent three months with Elizabeth.

Yearning is a timeless gift, worth opening slowly.

Like Mary and Elizabeth, we work alongside our yearning, and rest with it quietly at day’s end. We trust it will name itself, in good time.

Maybe yearning concerns something we’ve left undone. Or something yet to declare itself.

Welcome—be it inward only, or outward—begins long before the heart swings wide.

Green sprouts form a clump of dirt cupped in two hands

Welcome starts small,

a seed, shaped first in the mind,

which grows into the beckoning gesture,

soothing as soup, yeasty as bread, irresistible as the outstretched hand.


This is what I know, so far, about yearning.

What can you add?

 I hope you’ll consider sharing this post with others.

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: mystery, Soul-guest, yearning December 11, 2015

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Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography

Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography
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