surrender Archives - Laurie Klein, Scribe

Homesick? 3 Timely Ways to Experience Healing Restoration

Homesick: who hasn’t felt it?

Once, Autumn meant friction. Snits and pouts. Epic school-shopping wars: my taste vs Mom’s.

“Teal is your color, Laurie. It brings out your eyes.”

Teal: as in, our front door, sofa pillows, and afghan. Napkins. Glassware. Every single kitchen appliance.

Back then, Autumn also meant trips to The City: milkshakes poured from stainless steel cups; orange fruit jelly slices, mid-afternoon; a new hairstyle for school.

Autumn meant sleek binders and cellophaned No. 2 pencils. Glossy, spiral-bound possibility.

And yes, a teal jumper or sweater plus knee socks came home with us in department store bags. Autumn meant surrender.

Autumn meant having Mom to myself.

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Sanctuary

by Laurie Klein 11 Chiming In

Can one person be a bird sanctuary?

June 3rd marks the feast day for Irish monk St. Kevin and his legendary blackbird. T’is a fine time for admiring flight, I’m thinking. Or savoring an omelette.

Celtic legend describes Kevin at prayer in his one-monk hut, an arm extended through the window, his palm raised.

Enter the Emerald Isle’s elite songster: a blackbird (not to be confused with big-mouth American blackbirds).

American blackbirds—especially en masse—can be bullies: strident, messy, a threat to crops and property.

Kevin’s songbird, on the other hand (literally), alighted gently, perhaps on his thumb. Finding his warmth congenial, she settled in, laid eggs.

Motionless, wonder-struck, Kevin offered her sanctuary. Day after day, so the legend goes.

Why sacrifice plans (and personal space) for a bird?

At home in the Temple

Psalm 84:3-4 celebrates those who dwell in God’s sanctuary—including birds. In ancient Israel’s temple, a swallow built her nest near the altar. Religious leaders with opinions and brooms probably gathered.

What message did that nest send? Shoddy upkeep? Lazy priests?

Or perhaps, more inclusively, Creation’s feathered counterpoint to the Levite choir?

The nest remained, an audio/visual for the radical hospitality of the One who knows when a sparrow falls to the ground.

Becoming sanctuary

Kevin’s hand graciously cradled one small bird—his spirit already a sanctuary for God’s presence.

Confined to his hut, the man’s surrender to the unexpected inspires me.

St. Kevin’s Blackbird

Outstretched in Lent, Kevin’s hand
did not expect
the blackbird’s egg, its speckled warmth,

new-laid, in his uplifted palm. Think prayer
as nest: an intimate travail whereby
fledgling hopes, like birds, leave behind

a kind of grave. Amen, seeming
premature, the saint-in-waiting
dovetailed faith with knuckles.

Faithfulness takes time. We knuckle down to wait, in hope, for things as yet unseen.

Cue impatience and hunger and the cramp of muscles and numbness and pins-and-needles. Cue ongoing attitude adjustments.

Had it been me in that hut, Mama Bird would have been relocated ASAP.

Saint Laurie, however, prefers to imagine catching aphids for her with my free hand. Naming her something mystical. Learning her song (while suppressing that niggling yen for applause, modest fame, a personal feast day).

Then, having waved farewell, I would weep (beatifically).

And afterward, did Kevin save those eggshell bits,
adorn his windowsill with each goodbye
the smallest beak ever made?

He never said. Nor will he
know these hearts of ours,
more shell than shelter…

Much as I want to faithfully be a safe place for those God sends my way—human, animal, avian—I’m bound to crack, then lament my frailty.

And then begin again, remembering He who was first broken for us will always lovingly
…know these hearts of ours,
more shell than shelter

as they fissure, let in light enough
for Christ to enter. Yes,
let grief be, with every breath, a readied womb.

How do you practice offering sanctuary? I’d love to know.

Click to hear “Lord, Prepare Me”
(sung by Kent Henry, written by Randy Scruggs/John Thompson)

Click to hear the European blackbird’s song

Click to watch blackbirds feeding their young

“St. Kevin’s Blackbird,” from Laurie’s book, Where the Sky Opens

Impressions: Good/Bad, First, Lasting

by Laurie Klein 2 Chiming In

Impressions: one word, multiple meanings

Comedians aping celebrities: Jimmy Fallon does Trump
Vague notions: Haven’t we met?
Dental molds for inlays, nightguards, dentures (clamp jaws, breathe through nose longer than seems possible)

Alternatively, aren’t lasting, good impressions what we hope to leave after completing the job interview?

We want others to see us in the best light as we shake hands with the leader, the banker or pastor, the mentor or blind date.

Then there’s our significant other’s parents, met that first time . . .

Impressions can be fleeting. Perceptive. Flat-out wrong.

Lasting impressions

Yesterday we visited Fossil Butte National Monument: true lasting impressions.

Showcased under glass, at staggered depths, ancient plant fossils seem to float against dark wood. Smithsonian-worthy, the layout is masterful.

Painstaking work exposed each specimen from layers of rock. Equally rigorous science identified and classified them.

Scientific impressions

May I oversimplify?

Organisms + Habitat + Death x Time = Fossils

Organisms near a waterhole, inland sea, or lake sink into the mud.

Over time, weighty, accruing layers of sediment embed the organisms ever deeper. Water evaporates or moves on, the way water does.

Tissues disintegrate and minerals may penetrate the remains.

Tools for fossil removal

Wooden frames, for marking stone perimeters
Rock saws
Hammers, chisels, brushes
Adhesives
Pneumatic air scribes, picks and needles

Bet you can guess why I like the “air scribe.”

Back in the lab, technicians manipulate the air scribe, a tiny jackhammer, to painstakingly remove the remaining matrix and expose the fossil’s intricate detail.

Good impressions, humanly speaking

How do we make them? Leave them? Recover or rebuild them when things go amiss?

“Look for areas where you need to let go,” I read this morning.* This implies surrender. Leaving something behind.

Every leaf on that fossil wall eventually yielded to forces beyond itself. I find myself reviewing my human interactions on our trip, thus far. Have I left a lasting impression of kindness? Courtesy? Warmth?

I once reviewed a novel for a literary journal. My review’s title? “We Were Here, and We Loved.”

I combed the book for key lines, layers of meaning, and vivid images to support insights I’d gained from reading the story—a painstaking process, not unlike chiseling out fossils.

We Were Here, and We Loved: Isn’t this what we hope our lives, our work, our words communicate?

“Work is love made visible,” poet Kahlil Gibran wrote. Poet Emily Dickinson adds, we all “…dwell in possibility—A fairer House than Prose—”

Maybe there’s an unseen Air Scribe detailing our surrenders and endeavors. And a Curator, who preserves our stories.

Maybe there’s a gallery on the far side of today, and it exhibits the varied depth of our interactions with nature and people: Call it Hi-def, video-in-stone that angels or any celestial passerby can view.

The thought makes me smile. And bite my lip.

What kind of surrender is unfolding in you these days? Will you view your work as love poured out?

*Sarah Young, Jesus Calling, May 17.