August 2011 - Givens Creative

In my reading this morning for a class I begin next week, I read the following, which brought me up short because I had forgotten it, even though I read the book mentioned many years ago (and saw the movie):

In [Alice Walker’s novel] The Color Purple, the heroine, Celie, had never been introduced to any image of God other than the old white man with a beard, legalistic and authoritarian. Her friend Shug is much more awakened. Celie is astonished: she says to Shug, “You telling me God love you, and you ain’t never done anything for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that?” But Shug’s God is a lover who is “always wanting to share a good thing,” who is “pissed off if we walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it.” (from The Art of Spiritual Guidance, Carolyn Gratton)

This is the first in an occasional series of travelogue/photo essays on seeing and experiencing intersections of faith, history and culture — on seeing new and old communities of faith.

cover — "Lasset uns Beten!" 1908, photo by Steve Givens

On Friday, Sue and I drove around the Missouri River Valley of Central Missouri just east of our state capital of Jefferson City, an area settled and farmed largely by 19^th– and 20^th-century German immigrants. They were drawn to the area, in large part, by its fertile river valley and its similarities to their homeland, and the marks they left on the landscape are still present in the cleared and plowed fields, a few old stone buildings, and their churches — both Catholic and Protestant – whose spires spring up from the land as you approach any village or town on the narrow, winding roads. Always, there is a church steeple signaling the existence of a community.

We hit just a few towns on this short road trip. When I see the town of Frankenstein on the map, I know we have to go see it. Besides the intrigue of the name, I have been there before many years ago when I was a child, as friends of our family owned a “country place” not far away up Highway 100 in Osage County. There’s not much to see now in Frankenstein, if there ever was, but its Catholic Church – Our Lady, Help of Christians – is a

On the presence of God and the color purple

On the Road: Discovering Missouri’s 19th-century German communities of faith

Archives for August 2011