Laurie Klein, Scribe

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Lure

by Laurie Klein 16 Chiming In

Same path, same camera pausing again, this time to capture a curled leaf, each serration salted with rime.

lure of a leaf

Nearing the pond, I listen for ducks.

But my viewfinder zooms in on mats of algae, flash-frozen. Glazed and rumpled, here is weather’s awkward marriage of wind and degree.

Friends, I love this trail
meandering through
our neighbor’s woods, where,
with their permission,
I gratefully roam.

Only a week ago,
I traversed it on snow shoes—
which is why today,
after the thaw, I falter.

A rusty, misshapen bicycle someone recently abandoned rivets my gaze.

Whose is it?

kid lure

Beyond, I see the old metal gate—jackknifed open—first time in 29 years.

Then . . . something blue: a child’s scooter, flung down in the grass.

And the ramshackle shed, ever-padlocked, now gapes.

I snap photos. Inch past the scooter. Two rooms with a plywood partition beckon.

In the first room, wheel spokes,
clogged with pine needles—another bike
hunkering amid castoffs: a cracked
Kool-Aid pitcher with its retro grin,
jumble of crockery, blackened tools.

It smells like rust and silt and disappointment.

Can you hear the sinister soundtrack? “Turn back, now!”

A campy movie comes to mind: “I saw something nasty in the woodshed.”

Stifling a shiver, I ease
into the second room.
From ten penny nails,
four human-sized
sacks of black netting sag.
Glint of an eyeball.
A crooked neck.

My breath stutters.
A gulp. A step backward.
A shake of the head, to clear it.

And then, that pesky resolve to know.

I edge forward, peering through gloom.

Duck decoys. Four bags full. Cork versions meant to lure real ducks into settling on the neighbor’s pond.

I too feel lured in. Fooled, and foolish. Relief is a long exhale, a shaky laugh.

O, the lure of the unexplained. Eavesdropping on a forgotten life. Lurking enigmas. Secrets.

We tread the familiar, by rote, sometimes for decades. And one day somebody wrenches open a gate. Someone leaves behind woebegone relics, evidence of a story.

Similarly, there are locked rooms in my heart, littered with ghosts. Misleading notions. I harbor substitute emotions disguising something I don’t want to face.

I am sharply aware, in this moment, of simmering jealousy within, masquerading as applause for a colleague’s recent success. I’ve stuffed it away, feathered my envy with feigned goodwill. This is how I lure myself into believing I’ve mastered festering disappointment.

The Old Testament prophet Hosea heard God say, “I will now allure her. I will lead her into the desert. There I will speak tenderly to her.”

And isn’t this a kindness, after all, being led forward? Braving the musty, looking within, naming what’s still lurking inside the sack?

I head home: same path, same camera, no longer quite the same me.

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Tell us, how do you interpret Hosea’s enigmatic words?

You might also enjoy: Constancy: The Tale of a Trail

Woodshed quote from Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons.

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: decoy, disappointment, lure, path November 5, 2020

Today’s Election, Each Day’s Path

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

Path, rut, trail . . . which way next?

space is made

You may recall my previous post about the Merciless Great Red Masticator (MGRM). We hired its owner to fell half our forest last summer, which was ravaged by bark beetles.

Talk about thrashing and crashing! Insult and chaos. A long-loved landscape is now one I barely recognize.

Like American politics.

Where is the path?

For 25 years, I’ve walked, jogged, skied, and snow-shoed the same narrow path through woods, past the pond, then across the meadow. A rotation of dogs accompanied me. Plus a host of thoughts. Songs. Questions. And always, prayers.

For 25 years I kept faith with those eight-or-so wild acres. My trail hardened to beaten earth, eventually sunk two inches deep. The path shaped itself to my sole. And soul.

The MGRM obliterated my path, left behind land scored with wheel ruts. Barren dirt and broken boughs. Holes I call sprains-in-waiting.

Amid the new ugliness, I lost my bearings. Lost heart. Gave up on my walk.

For similar reasons I quit following debates and political news. I lost hope. Felt helpless. Pictured America circling the drain, waning like past civilizations.

And then the rain

Dew beads on fallen leaf on my pathLast week’s rain kept me indoors. A few stirring posts (written by others) reminded me what a redemptive, endlessly inventive God watches over our broken world.

Behind the scenes and amid toxic rhetoric and upheaval, greed, deceit, and ruinous lies, God keeps working . . . in and through people.

Was I going to knuckle under to dismay? Or renew my hope?

Meanwhile

Thanks to rain, a haze of tender green started sprouting out back. I can’t explain it, but the new grass has revealed sections of my former path, as if it’s still there, under the wreckage of all that has fallen, beckoning me through the shambles toward water, leading me toward wide skies and meadow.

Each day now, I align broken branches along sections I recognize. And Uncle Tanner, our dog, helps me tamp down the new stretches.

path through woods, greening again

The land wants to thrive.

The rut that keeps on giving

My old prayer path is (partly) viable. And prayer still moves heaven, and earth—even the Everest of disillusionment. No matter who wins the elections.

Our God can work through anyone. (See Balaam and the ass: Numbers 22.)

We make a difference as we always have: one voice, one person, one act at a time. No matter who’s in the oval office. No matter what crises befall our nation.

My pastor, Eric Peterson, said that as believers in a world both suffused with God’s presence and ravaged by evil we’re called to embody “extreme love that speaks truth to terror.”

The path of faith we’ve signed up for may not be easy to find; it will be meaningful—no matter who runs roughshod over the land.

This is what the LORD says: Stand at the crossroads and look;
ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it,
and you will find rest for your souls.

But you said, ‘We will not walk in it.’ (Jeremiah 6: 16 NIV)

Each day’s election, every day’s choice

It’s not just how I vote this week, but how I hope. And what I elect to do, and believe, each day, for one person or many, one truthful, loving, act at a time.

shoes for the path

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What path is calling you?

 

 

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: election, hope, path November 6, 2016

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Hi, I’m Laurie.

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Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography

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