Laurie Klein, Scribe

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Exclamation Points in a Story, a Season, a Life

by Laurie Klein 20 Chiming In

Slight as a cat’s eyelash,
one black mark
graces the page,
piquing my curiosity. O
how it pulses, as if
rendered in neon—
this exclamation point
humans assigned
to an angel,
in the gospel of Luke.

Printers call these marks gaspers, screamers, startlers. Many editors view them as lazy shortcuts. Or overkill. “Never expect punctuation to animate flabby prose.”

As a writer, this is my world. Render passion, yes; but ration those exclamation points. Say, one every six months. (Or every book and a half, as Elmore Leonard advises.)

In the NIV translation, Gabriel gets one—but not where we might expect it.

“Greetings,” he says.

This salutation alone—from a celestial being—seems worthy of emphasis. However, rigorous scholars inserted a comma, then continued the sentence: “. . . you who are highly favored!”

For Mary, a knee-quaking moment.

For you and me, millennia later,
it’s breathtaking,
soul-shaking,
hope-making news.

That’s because highly favored means “to make graceful, to endow with grace.”

Mary embodied in-the-moment receptiveness to God.

As we welcome God, we too become highly favored, our lives affirmed. Transformed. Made grace-full.

Exclamation points, over time . . .

First used in English in the 15th century, they were considered “notes or signs of admiration,” perhaps from the Latin root for wonderment.

In the Greek word for joy, io, the “i” is written above the “o.” The forerunner, perhaps?

In our day exclamation points proliferate in online communications and may indicate surprise, excitement, anger, and other strong emotions. Peruse Luke (in the NIV version) and you’ll find them accentuating promises, warnings, complaints, interjections, exhortations, chastisements, praises, and pleas.

I counted 36 in all—again, not always where I expected them. Surprisingly, the humble period appears when Jesus cleanses the temple. And when the entire heavenly host sings “Glory to God in the highest.”

To this day, consulting scholars, clergy, and other professionals continue to translate the Bible. They peer into, and pore over, the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek manuscripts.

They parse grammar. Argue semantics. Assign emphasis.

No matter how we punctuate
this story, older than our world
yet still fresh as the rain,
how radically Love arrives, to upend,
upset, even overturn
our sense of self,
our hopes, and
our flawed expectations.

Where are the living exclamation points appearing in your life this month? Wonderment is contagious. I hope you’ll share one . . .

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You might also enjoy the Smithsonian’s take on the exclamation mark

And speaking of strong emotions: Holidays, Saying Yes to Unexpected Gifts!

There’s even a blog about them: Excessive Exclamation!!

“Yes” Photo: John Tyson on Unsplash.

 

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: exclamation points, expectations, gaspers/screamers/startlers, grace, highly favored, yes December 17, 2019

Yes & No Answers

by Laurie Klein 12 Chiming In

Yes. Those 3 letters brim with promise.
Yes can encompass zest
or solemnity,
courtesy, courage or compromise.

Yes can mean guilt,
resignation,
or quiet acceptance—
depending on when and how and why I say it.

Yes may mean “I’m afraid to say No.”

Yes & No

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“To allow oneself to be carried away
by a multitude of conflicting concerns,

to surrender to too many demands,
to commit oneself to too many projects,
to want to help everyone in everything,
is to succumb to the violence of our times.”

So said Thomas Merton.

Then I read this:

“One faces the devil’s bargains frequently when planning the structure of one’s day. How much can one crowd into the day?” asks Robert Johnson.

Violence and devil’s bargains—isn’t this hyperbole? Spiritual hype?

Johnson’s meddlesome “how much” question chafes.

How casually I attribute my productive pace to:

  • Personality
  • Birth order
  • Childhood’s family work ethic

All gifts, I would add … that can be abused. When ticking boxes off lists I feel heroic, almost prolific.

Currently, I’m packing for travel. Bustling ensues. I toggle between fast-forward and pause.

There must be fresh ways to sanely pursue the essential—lest I mortgage my reserves into the next decade.

“Listen deeply to your body’s longings for movement and stillness, saying yes to them in whatever way is appropriate for you,” writes Christine Valters-Paintner.

Discernment sometimes begins in the body.

Yes is worth the wait

 

If amid hubbub I can wait with expectation, discerning my “Yes” may also entail speaking a holy “No.” Perhaps out loud. Perhaps, repeatedly.

The words yes and no even trigger arguments among grammarians trying to classify them into conventional parts of speech. Small and slippery, they can be nouns, adverbs, interjections, even minor sentences.

No wonder I’m conflicted.

While I’m away (sans laptop), I hope those of us pondering this will more easily discern when and how and why we say, “Yes.” And “No.”

Meanwhile, you might enjoy my offering in Jenneth Glaser’s winsome Poetry as Therapy celebration. Daily, for the month of June only, Jenneth features stunning photography, music, meditations, affirmations, poems, and prayers. Click the link below to catch up on earlier posts.

https://mailchi.mp/8d4d29876d22/welcome-to-day-15-of-the-poetry-as-therapy-online-retreat-2018?e=408e5c4767

You might also enjoy my e e cummings photo mediation: Natural … infinite …

And this article, by Natasha L. Robinson (especially the list at the bottom)

I’d love to get your take on saying Yes and No. I’ll respond as soon as I can, depending on computer availability.

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Photos: detail of collage, by Laurie Klein, and our scummily artful birdbath, beneath the eave.

Filed Under: Small Wonders Tagged With: essential, expectation, listen, No, yes June 27, 2018

Holidays, Saying Yes to Unexpected Gifts

by Laurie Klein 15 Chiming In

Holidays, here they come . . .

Holiday weeping

And I’ve already blown it. Big time. Boy, am I sorry.

In the Christmas month when we reflect on Mary’s humble surrender to God, I unleashed an emotional vortex.

Personal desolation freighted each word I spoke. In return, hard-hitting truths were spoken to me. Pain—both past and present—collided, blinding me to how my words were hurting the other person. I made it all about me.

Holidays' dark side

Conversation became an eruption. And later, when I was alone, an implosion.

Thank God. (Wait. Did she really just say that?)

Yes. Severe mercy was at work.

Professor Randy Pausch, in The Last Lecture, describes chronically disappointing his boyhood football coach. One day, the coach lit into him. The coach’s assistant, trying to encourage young Pausch, said this:

When you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they’ve given up on you.

Dutch Uncle

Someone cared enough to tell me the hard truth. Such a person was once called a Dutch Uncle: one who speaks directly, even sternly to instruct, inspire, or admonish someone.

I was a wreck. Now God was offering me the chance for deep emotional healing through the words of the very person I’d wounded. Would I accept?

Even Mary, confronted with the angel Gabriel speaking for God, faced wrenching, unimaginable change. Probably trembling, she asked, “How will this be?”

Holidays, angst

The angel’s answer was cryptic.

Mary still said Yes.

A personal New Year

Yes, ache and frustration spewed that day. I discovered a place so raw only Love would care to, and dare to, lay it bare. Breathe on it. Ease it. Which felt awful, and right.

My meltdown bridged Thanksgiving and my birthday. For years I’ve followed Madeleine L’Engle’s custom of using her birthday (a date we share) to launch her personal New Year.

Today, having said my “Yes” to the healing process, having resolved to change, I’m heading toward 2017 with a new mindset, hoping blessings will follow.

Poet Adrienne Rich once said:

When a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility for more truth around her.

Holidays lit by hope

Holidays: from the depths to the heights

We know emotions spike during holidays. We miss those no longer with us. We try to delight those who are still here. We hope for peace in our world, peace in our families. Our churches. Our places of work.

And we both bless and blow it.

Despite our mistakes, new life keeps heading toward us. In my case, literally. We will soon welcome our fourth windfall grandchild. The due date? New Year’s Eve.

Such is the love of God that new life is always on its way. It’s heading for our doorsteps even now.

Will we make room for change in our lives?

Make room for Him?

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How might these holidays usher in healing for you?

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: Dutch uncle, healing, holidays, Mary, truth, unexpected gifts, yes December 5, 2016

Windfall: Urgent, Instant, Demanding Joy

by Laurie Klein 24 Chiming In

Windfall —”an unexpected gain” — who wouldn’t want one?

Oh, have I got a story for you, a tale worth a roomful of candles and cake . . . windfall of candles

S.O.S.

One week ago the local adoption agency phoned our eldest daughter, mother to our 16-month-old grandson. The agency’s request was urgent, the need, dire.

A struggling newborn in the Deaconess Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) needed someone to help her learn to eat. Hopefully, to thrive. Overworked nurses wanted someone calm and caring to hold one tiny girl, coax her into life. Would our daughter come?

She and her husband weighed the risks. There were many.

Still, she went. Stepped right into miraculous, heart-wrenching chaos for five days. We met our newest little one in NICU that first evening. Ashen and frail, with an awkward feeding port in her skull and cords snaking off to various monitors, she looked like a small electric doll. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: adoption, love, Risk, unexpected, windfall, wonder, yes August 30, 2016

Twice the Passion, Second to None

by Laurie Klein 10 Chiming In

second to none

Second Thoughts

Postcard from the Road #5:  I’m sitting beside an Idaho river, at dusk, feeling unnerved by chores that have piled up in our absence, and fretting over the need to renew my book marketing efforts, once home again.

Worry, I tell myself, is a form of unbelief.

Red-winged blackbirds trill overhead, as if in agreement. The bloom of Russian olive trees smells like childhood. Waves from a passing boat lap the shore, trigger memories.

Russian olive tree in bloom

In the late 1950s, polio besieged my friend, Peter. He did time in an iron lung. Survived, and grew up—on crutches.

Peter never walked on water. He had a boat. By trial and error, he memorized miles of our meandering, oxbow river, even as he navigated days in a twisted body.

Did he ever long to bail out? I might have. Isn’t that my temptation now?

Looking back, I think he jettisoned “what might have been” and accepted—with joy—”what was.” Come summer, he tracked every sandbar’s shifting contours, mentally charted submerged debris and boulders.

Dodging willow boughs, sedge, and cattails, he sped through hairpin turns. I white-knuckled my seat in the bow. Whooping, he shot us between the concrete piers upholding small-town bridges.

Riding the river with Peter was thrilling. A little crazy. Sometimes, down-in-the-bones scary.

Seemingly fearless, he must have believed the bosomy, pin-curled teachers at our Sunday School. He must have taken to heart Philippians 4:13:

“I can do everything through him who gives me strength (NIV).”

Disease did not define him. With his pale, wasted legs and chronically sunburned torso—Peter out-swam, out-dared, out-whooped and out-boated us all.

Remembering his example makes me straighten my back.

Second Wind

“A Man” is a poem I’ve long loved, written by Nina Cassian. She describes a veteran who loses his arm while defending his country. He dreads living out his years “by halves.” He names his griefs

  • he can no longer applaud a performance
  • can reap only half a harvest
  • can only half-hold his love

And yet . . .

. . . he set himself to do
everything with twice the enthusiasm.
And where the arm had been torn away a wing grew.

Tapping passion within, he must have lived a life “second to none.”

Like Peter, he rediscovered thriving, his birthright.

Our birthright, as children of God.

Saying “Yes takes courage,” writes Vinita Hampton Wright, “because yes is automatically a commitment. . . . Yes is gutsy. Yes will stretch you clear out of your original shape.”

Second to none

No matter how stretched we feel at present, there’s always someone, somewhere, showing us how to get on with life despite its ordeals.

Writer Joan Halifax defines equanimity as the “stability of mind that allow us to be present with an open heart no matter how wonderful or difficult conditions are.”

After a car struck his motorbike, Evgeny Smirnov, the award-winning Russian break-dancer, lost his leg to alleged medical negligence.

Perhaps you’ve seen his stunning performance with partner Dascha Smirnova in “Russia’s Got Talent.” If not, please expand your ideas of the possible by watching it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlprYKIrI6Y

What about you? What small step will you take toward thriving this week?

“Dare to commit your developing skills and character to a worthy cause or calling,” Hampton Wright urges.

“[Saying] yes will open up the world to you, one decision, one commitment at a time.”

Laurie Klein, Scribe

“A Man,” by Nina Cassian

Simple Acts of Moving Forward, Vinita Hampton Wright, p. 43

Filed Under: Immersions Tagged With: birthright, second thoughts, second to none, second wind, yes June 7, 2016

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Where the Sky Opens, a Partial Cosmography

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