Being present to one another and to God. By Steve Givens

About a month or so ago I began volunteering for a local hospice organization. My job is pretty basic: I visit with Margaret (not her real name) about once a week. We sit a foot apart, she in her wheelchair and I in a straight-backed chair. We look each other straight in the eyes and we talk. It’s pretty simple and Margaret makes it easy on me, as she’s quite the talker.

But our relationship is different from any other I have ever had and here’s why: From visit to visit Margaret doesn’t remember me, although she’s always enthusiastic about having someone to talk to. Like many older adults (Margaret is going to be 98 this year!), her memory is not good and so she often asks me the same questions multiple times during the hour of our visit.

And, of course, she tells me the same stories every time I visit because, after all, she’s never met me before. So I get to hear again and again about her early life in North St. Louis, about walking through Fairgrounds Park to get to the then-new Beaumont High School (where my parents would also attend a few years later), about her wanting to be a dancer but her mother refusing to allow her daughter to “take to the stage,” about her father calling her “tin ear” because she would be so engrossed in a book she didn’t hear him calling her to dinner. She talks about her two marriages (one of 40-something years and the other, later in life, of about ten years). She tells me of her two sons, one who died in his 40s and one who lives in Florida now. Or maybe Texas. That part of the story sometimes changes.

I’m not poking fun of her memory, for I know it’s just a matter of time before that very fate may befall me or someone I love. “And so it goes,” as Kurt Vonnegut once so famously wrote.

But what I’ve come to learn during my short time with Margaret is this: I’m not visiting her and listening to her stories so we can build a relationship, for we don’t grow closer each time we meet; we just start over. So it’s not our relationship that matters to Margaret, it’s just my presence. It’s just that moment, that hour or so of having someone willing to listen, to lay a hand on her hand, to laugh at her jokes. Who doesn’t want and need that?

I had to learn to let go of the notion that we tell each other stories in order to build a friendship. For that’s how we generally make true friends. We share enough of ourselves over time through our stories that we become intimate and integral parts of each other’s lives. But not so for Margaret and me. For us, there’s just one hour and then we start again.

But that period of being authentically present to one another is enough. It must be. It’s all Margaret can muster right now. But it’s worth it. Her eyes sparkle when she tells me her stories, enthralled once more at the notion of taking to the stage with her dancing instructor, of skimming across the surface of the frozen lake at Fairgrounds Park, of finding love once again late in life. My presence is all that matters to her, and it’s all I have to offer. Margaret doesn’t know she’s a part of a hospice program, although she knows she’s 98 and time is short.

This morning, just as I was considering writing about my time with Margaret, I received a beautiful reflection written by my friend Karen Jessee on the gospel reading from this weekend’s liturgy (John 15:9-17). As always, Karen (an insightful writer and person of deep prayer) hit the nail right on the head. Her reflection includes this thought:

What does it mean for us to “lay down our lives for our friends?” How does Jesus “make our joy complete” when he instructs us to do this as the greatest act of love? Laying down our lives means remaining fully present in our encounters with others, offering our complete attention, our compassion, our wholehearted companionship without thought of ourselves in that moment. True listening may be the greatest gift of love.

Lighting one candle instead of cursing the dark. By Steve Givens

The essence of love is giving without thought of remuneration, of listening without regard to what we get out of the conversation. If we can give nothing else to another person, we can give them our attention. We can turn off our cell phones and computers and televisions and just sit a foot apart, look into each other’s eyes and listen to one another.

Meeting Margaret drove that home to me. I’m the one who feels visited and blessed, so I wonder as I walk out the door of the nursing home and head back to my car: Who’s serving who here? And then I quickly realize that there is something more than Margaret and me at work in the room. There is the gentle movement of an undemanding God who has promised: “When two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst.”

“I should do myself a favor and memorize this line: To reach for God is to reach God….I should trust that God is present to me anytime I stretch out my feeble little spiritual arms.” -Fr. Mark Thibodeaux, SJ (from “Armchair Mystic”)

Meeting Myself on the Path, Steve Givens

“To reach for God is to reach God.” Those are words of hope and optimism. For when it comes to prayer, we can sometimes think, “I just don’t know where to begin,” or perhaps, “What if I’m doing this wrong?” Fr. Thibodeaux’s quote is a good reminder that we can’t go wrong, if we only just reach out. God will see our effort and draw us the rest of the way to his presence.

So finding solitude in the midst of our busy lives is, first and foremost, always an intentional activity. We must choose to go away to a place in the country, to a retreat house, to a to a chapel, to a walking trail. Or we must choose to create a space of sacred solitude within our everyday lives, which is where we find ourselves most of the time. Those are the places that I write about today.

I have my places of solitude. In the colder months, my place of solitude is my armchair beside the fireplace in the living room, a candle burning beside me to remind me (and others in the house) that this is a sacred time and place. In the warmer months (can’t wait!) I make my way outside to the back deck, which looks out over a small stand of woods between my house and the ones across the way. It’s still suburbia, but I’ve made the space holy by entering it with the mindset of getting away and opening myself to God. Perhaps a hermitage in the middle of the Kentucky woods or a walk on the beach would be better, but we need to find spaces that are close by and available to us all year ‘round.

And as I have written before, I have nearby places where I walk and discover silence and solitude, entering the cover of the trees as if it was the roof over a hidden chapel. Walking this winding path through the woods allows me to see myself and the world in a slightly different light each time I walk it. Same path, different light.

As our desire for solitude and a silent place to pray grows in us, we will find that we can find these places all around us, if we but only look. I have found it by simply choosing to drive to work with the radio off. I have found it on a business trip when I choose to embrace the quiet of the hotel room instead of turning on the television.

Back in the days when I was receiving chemotherapy, I even found solitude in the middle of the transfusion room. There I discovered that solitude is as much a state of mind as it is a place and time. We make solitude when we remove ourselves from the noise of the world and place ourselves ever so gently in the arms of God.

A Woman in Her Space, Lamma Island, Steve Givens

Like any good blogger, I need to include a “top ten list” in my entries from time to time. (Or else they might take away my blogger’s license…)  So here it is, ten ideas to take home with you…ten ways to begin to create and use your own “lonely space” to quiet the world, still your soul, and connect with the living God who is available to us all if we just take the time to listen.

1. Know that solitude is essential for your overall health and for your relationship with God. It’s not a luxury and not an “add on” thing to your already busy life.  You need and deserve it.

2. See solitude, like your relationship with God, as central to your life, a fountain from which everything else flows. We become better friends, better partners, better writers, better friends, when we take the time to enter into solitude and make ourselves more spiritually healthy.

3. Make and take the time for solitude. You will never “find” the time if you don’t.

4. Find a place or places where you can be silent and alone.  You can’t reinvent the wheel every time you want to go be alone. Create your own space and ritual.

5. Separate your need for solitude (and communion with God) from the idea of being lonely or alone. This is prayer.

6. Know that solitude is not just for lonely or introverted people. Nor is it for the overly pious or for those who already seem to have their lives all together. It is for all of us. It is what healthy people do who want to know themselves better and strengthen their relationship with God.

7. Disconnect from the electronic world. Turn off the phone, iPad, iPod, whatever.

8. Don’t worry about “accomplishing” something during your times of solitude.

9. Don’t worry about “experiencing God” during times of solitude. You might accomplish something or experience God, but don’t make your time of prayer all about getting the answers to questions or having a mystical experience because you may become dismayed when things don’t happen. Just be with God.

10. Remember that the goal of solitude is presence – being authentically present to ourselves and to God. Nothing else matters or is required.

“A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive.” – Henri Nouwen

Light at the Center of a California Mission, by Steve Givens

We all need times of solitude in our lives for three interconnected reasons: We need to quiet the world. We need to quiet ourselves. And we need to do both of those things so we can better listen for God as he whispers our names and quietly lets us know just what it is we’re supposed to be doing with our lives.

Many years ago, I attended a retreat given by a Marianist priest and writer named Quentin Hakenewerth. With one simple lesson and a flip chart showing a set of concentric circles, he taught me something I have never forgotten and which has largely shaped my approach to prayer and seeking the will of God for the past 30 years.

He said, in essence, that the world (the outermost and largest circle on his chart) is a big, busy, noisy place. It screams at us to pay attention. With the general noise pollution of the world and with a constant barrage of advertising and media and angry, yelling people of all sorts, the world just never shuts up.  Never. And we do it to ourselves, too. We fill every possible moment of silence with noise – with mindless talk, with music, with phone calls and emails and texts and tweets and Facebook postings. Even if some of these things make no audible sound, they are noise nevertheless and obstacles to our solitude and peace.

So if we just live in this world and make no attempt at a more interior life, we will rarely if ever find ourselves in a completely quiet place, and that’s a bad place to be if we’re trying to listen for God.

The next circle in on Fr. Quentin’s chart represented the noise we make all on our own – the noise of our selves, our minds and psyches. We make a lot of noise just by being who we are. We worry, we continually plan our lives, we lust after people and things, we internally justify the things we do or don’t do, and we constantly place ourselves in the company of others so we don’t have to be alone. This is the internal noise of our lives, and it, too, blocks our ability to listen for the voice of God.

Finally, there’s a small inner circle on the chart, which points to the spot where God dwells in us. The problem is, God doesn’t shout. God doesn’t scream or demand our attention. God whispers, and in order to hear God, we need to quiet the world (we need to physically get away to someplace quieter), and then we need to quiet ourselves (we need to pour ourselves into prayer and contemplation and quiet our inner demons). We need silence. We need solitude to find and experience God. We need to empty ourselves so we can be filled with God’s presence. We need to get out of our own way, and solitude gives us the opportunity to do just that.

There are a couple of stories that illustrate this need for quiet and solitude well. The first comes from way back in the Old Testament, in the Book of I Kings. Here we find Elijah standing on a mountain, waiting for the Lord to “pass by.” First a strong violent wind passes by, tearing up the mountain and crushing rocks as it goes, but God is not in the wind. After the wind comes an earthquake, but God is not in the earthquake. After earthquake comes a fire but, you guessed it, God is not in the fire. God is not in any of these big, bold brash things. God is not in the noise and chaos. Finally, Elijah hears the Lord in what is described as a “light, silent sound,” and he knows at last that he has experienced God. He hides his face and stands at the entrance to the cave, waiting for God to speak to him. He finds God in the near-silence of a “still, small voice.”

Lighting the Way in a California Mission, by Steve Givens

My other favorite story about seeking God in the silence of prayer is attributed to St. John Vianney, a 19^th century French parish priest from the hamlet of Ars, not far from Lyon. He tells the story of a man who comes to church every day and sits alone in silence. Vianney finally asks him, “What is it you do here every day?” The man answers: “I look at God, God looks at me, and we enjoy one another’s company.” Ah, that’s the power of seeking God in a quiet place and in the silence of our hearts. We get to enjoy God’s company.

In solitude, in the company of God alone, we have the opportunity to become a wrung-out sponge, as St. Ignatius describes us. In solitude we stand before God empty and naked, our most authentic and true selves, completely open to being filled up by the presence and will of Christ. And that is our all in all.

Next Saturday: Some practical tips for making the place and time for solitude in our lives.

“In the morning, long before dawn, he got up and left the house, and went off to a lonely place and prayed there.” Mark 1: 35

Sunset in Sedona, 2011, Steve Givens

What surrounds this short piece of scripture In Mark’s gospel is a description of just how hectic Jesus’ life was. He was constantly on the move, walking from town to town, preaching in the synagogues, healing the sick, casting out demons, and dealing with impatient disciples. But in the midst of all this activity, he knew the importance of getting away and being quiet for a while. It’s an important lesson for us all to learn.

We’re all busy and our lives are chock-full of “stuff.” This stuff is mostly necessary, no doubt. We need to do the things we need to do, like go to work, take care of our homes and children and spouses, contribute to our communities and churches, volunteer to help others and good causes, and spend time with our favorite people. It’s all good. But it’s exhausting.

Like Jesus, we need to have our “lonely place,” that quiet sacred space we can go, not just to get away from the world and its busy-ness, but to prepare ourselves more fully for our engagement in the world.

Some of my favorite spiritual writers, like Henri Nouwen and Thomas Merton, have written much about solitude and its place in their spiritual lives. For Merton, who lived virtually his entire adult life in a monastery and much of that as a hermit, living alone out in the woods, solitude was his way of life and the fountain from which his spirituality and writing flowed. Other than his writing, he was called to a life filled more with solitude than action, although he constantly struggled with that balance, as his journals show. His life and approach to prayer is fascinating and insightful for all of us who seek a deeper relationship with God, but very few of us are called to that kind of extreme solitude.

Henri Nouwen, the renowned Dutch theologian and spiritual writer, lived a more balanced life of solitude, interaction and engagement with the world. He writes eloquently about our need for solitude as a primer for our action in his brief book, “Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life”:

Seeking solitude in Sedona

“Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our lives are in danger. Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure. Somewhere we know that without a lonely place our actions quickly become empty gestures. The careful balance between silence and words, withdrawal and involvement, distance and closeness, solitude and community forms the basis of the Christian life and should therefore be the subject of our most personal attention.”

The solitude to which God calls people like you and me is just the kind described in Mark’s gospel. It is that special, lonely place where we can go to spend time with ourselves and with God. It is prayer, whether or not a word is spoken. Solitude is time alone, in quiet, in the presence of God. Solitude is about being comfortable with ourselves and our relationship with God. It is about going to the deep well where God lives and where we are our most authentic selves. It is about being more fully aware of our presence in the world and of God’s presence in our lives.

Next Saturday: More on why we need solitude and some places I have found mine…

- Henri Nouwen

Sundial at Jewel Box, Forest Park in St. Louis (photo by Steve Givens)

So often over the years I have found myself the impatient person described above, especially when it comes to waiting for God to act. I wanted to believe that the “real thing,” the better thing, my true purpose, was always just around the corner, just over the horizon, just about to happen.

I think the most fervent and continuously prayed prayer of my adult life has been some version of this: “Show me your will for my life, God, and I’ll go do it. Just show me. Make it clear.” And then I would add parenthetically: “It would be nice if you would do that soon, please. But not TOO soon because I still have this and this and this to take care of…”

Whatever it lacks, this kind of prayer is still a prayer of faith. But the problem, as Henri Nouwen points out, is that this kind of faith seems to deny the importance of who I am and what I am supposed to be doing right now, on “the ground on which we stand.” It says, “I’m getting impatient here, God, and where I am right now can’t possibly be where you want me to be…there has to be something better.”

To be sure, there’s nothing wrong in asking God for direction. And there’s nothing wrong in telling God that you are open to his call for your future. Our ongoing journeys of discerning God’s will are the most important things we do as mature Christians. Nevertheless, if we continually ask God, “what do you want me to do?” we may be ignoring what’s in front of our eyes. Right now, we’re called to respond to the life God has given and the situation into which God has placed us. Good or bad. Healthy or unhealthy. Successful or not. We are called to embrace the present, to be aware of God’s movement right now, to act in response to our current circumstances and not just wish for better days somewhere in the future when we will have a clearer sense of purpose and call. We are called to be patient.

Woman on Lamma Island, near Hong Kong (photo by Steve Givens)

So I’m asking myself today (on my 52^nd birthday!): How am I responding (or not responding) to those around me? How am I caring for (or ignoring) those in need? What social injustice has slipped off my radar screen because I’m too busy asking God what he wants me to do some day down the road? How much of the beauty of today will I miss because I’m impatient or anxious about tomorrow?

Our ability to be both truly present to one another and aware of God’s presence in our lives is a gift unto itself. It is our calling. There’s nothing more important we can do today.

Christian Brothers Cemetery at LaSalle, Glencoe, Mo.

Walking through cemeteries, I have learned over the years, is a lesson in awareness. We are reminded, of course, that we are dust and to dust we shall return. But we also learn the power of quiet, of stillness, of non-busyness. It’s hard to hurry through a graveyard, and why would we want to? If we’re in a cemetery that bears the remains of our own ancestors, we become perhaps all the more acutely aware that we are not alone, that our little, short lives are not the be-all and end-all, that we are a flash in the pan of the flintlock rifle of human existence. We are merely a thread in the larger strand of life that includes the fibers of so many other lives.

I did not come to this awareness early or easily. I grew up in North St. Louis very near the huge and infamous Calvary (Catholic) and Bellefontaine (Protestant) cemeteries, home to massive Gothic mausoleums and St. Louis’ most notorious ghosts, or so we believed, fueled by Saturday matinees at the nearby Rio movie theater.  The two adjacent burial grounds, separated by the (obviously) haunted Calvary Drive (beware of Hitchhiking Annie!), contain the graves of civil war soldiers, cholera victims, and a bevy of St. Louis’ and America’s elite, including explorer William Clark and Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman. In short, this was territory ripe for scaring the holy bajeezus out of 12-year-old boys. I stayed away, even though we all knew where the gaps were in the tall, wrought-iron fence.

My love for cemeteries came later and was a gift of my wife and, more specifically, from her mother, Carrol, a gifted and prolific genealogist and historical researcher who has spent many, many days searching for the truth of history in the faded stones of Missouri’s rural cemeteries. For that gift I will be forever thankful. I learned there was nothing to be afraid of and much, much to learn.

So I enjoy a stroll through a good cemetery as often as possible, whether or not I’m visiting departed friends or family. I go to my parents’ grave infrequently, I have to admit. I like to think about them when I’m there, of course, but the truth of the matter is that I don’t “find” them there. The souls of my parents and several sets of grandparents are not hanging around Memorial Park Cemetery waiting for me to show up.

In Ronald Rolheiser’s beautiful book, “The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality,” the Canadian Oblate priest asks this poignant question: “How do we find our loved ones after death separates them from us?”

The answer lies in what we have been celebrating these past 8 days of the Christmas season – the incarnation of Christ. It lies in the Word of God made flesh and living among us, not just 2,000 years ago but right now. As Christians, as believers in this miracle and gift of incarnation, we participate in the ongoing life of Jesus “among us,” and not even our physical death separates us from that life.

His last words...Christian Brothers Cemetery, Glencoe, Mo.

It all began, Rolheiser writes, on that first Easter morning. Mary Magdala rushes to the tomb hoping to anoint the dead body of her friend, only to find it empty and an angel who says to her: “Why do you seek the living among the dead?” Rolheiser writes:

Curious words? Not really. In effect, the angel is telling her that cemeteries are not the real place where we find people who have passed from this world but are now alive in a new way. We do not find our deceased love ones in their graves, good though it be to visit graves. Invisible angels sit there, at the graves of our loved ones, and send us back into life to seek for them at other places…. We will meet the ones we can no longer touch when we put ourselves in situations where their souls once flourished…. Simply put, we find our deceased loved ones by entering into life, in terms of love and faith, in the way that was most distinctive to them…when we pour ourselves into life as they did.

If we believe that the ones we love are, in fact, alive in Christ and part of the communion of saints and the ongoing word and flesh of  “God with Us,” then we must seek them where we can find them and where they flourish, not among the dead.

I find my mother when I hold a child, any child, for her life was a life of caregiving and selfless love.

I find my father in the quiet of a good book or a walk through the woods, two places where his restless and often desperate heart found some peace.

Memorial Park Cemetery, St. Louis, Mo.

I find my paternal grandmother in a simple hummed melody or a game of rummy, two ways in which she soothed my young fears.

I find my brother in the faces of his four beautiful daughters and their energetic pack of children (all boys but one!), the fruit of his life and work and sacrifice. In their presence he was always most alive, so why search elsewhere now?

Each person, Rolheiser reminds us, shapes not only his or her own life and that of those around him or her, but the very presence of God for others, the continuing “word becoming flesh.” We are Christ for those around us. That is both our call and our gift as Christians, as people of the Word.

Happy New Year.

MIssion Churchyard Cross, Steve Givens 2010.

He was but two,

the age they call “terrible,”

the age that elicits terrible questions too.

He stood at the crib at the church’s entrance;

he glanced up at the cross in the church’s sanctuary.

Then Aidan asked his mother,

“How can Jesus be both here and there?”

from “Aidan’s Question” by Bishop Robert Morneau, A Splash of Sunshine and Other Glimpses of Grace, Orbis Books, 2011.

Aidan’s question resonates deeply in me in these days leading up to Christmas. For especially now we Christians face this great, painful and glorious paradox of the wood – the wood of the stable and the wood of the cross. Back in my undergraduate days, I wrote this (very) short poem:

Word

turned flesh

falling from above

finding rest

in a cross-stitched world

of straw

and wood.

Cross-stitched we are, indeed. We are sewn and bound together in faith by these two images, one of the Baby Jesus lying in the manger and the other of a full-grown 30-something man hanging on a cross. In both he is held by the things of earth, by the texture and smell of wood and soil and iron.

Yet he is God from God, light from light, present at the creation. He is both the voice that speaks the words, “Let there be light,” and he is the Word itself.  And yet he cries out to his mother, holds out his arms to find her breast in the dark of the stable.

He is the promised of nations, the Prince of Peace, Lord of Light and Lord of All. And yet he sleeps soundly in his puzzled father’s arms.

Ours is a faith built on these paradoxes of wood, and many others as well.

We place our faith, our very lives, in something we cannot see. We sing, we pray, we worship a God while some scoff at us for addressing thin air.

We hold out our hands and accept small pieces of flat bread and tiny sips of wine because we believe them to be the very real presence of Christ’s body and blood. Two disparate things seemingly in the same place at the same time.

Mission Churchyard Cross #2, Steve Givens, 2010

This is life for us searching and questioning souls living here on earth. And the truth is, we need the mystery of being “here and there at the same time.” We need it somewhere deep down, some place too far away to reach and, yet, there it is out of the corner of our eye. We need to know God is above us, watching over us, guiding the universe, but we need to know that God is right here, right now, as close as a whispered prayer.

For we belong both here and there. We are both here and there. We are soul and we are body. Although I like C.S. Lewis’ version of this theology better:

“You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.”

——–

Previous thoughts on advent and Christmas:

Waiting for Christ with Bright Eyes

Just What are We Waiting For?

A Light in Darkness: A Christmas Villanelle

Look him in the eyes.

They are the faces in the crowd, some standing on tiptoe to get a glimpse of this condemned prophet or rabble-rouser, take your pick, as he stands mute before the authorities, as he flinches but never complains against the searing heat of the lashes, as he bears the weight of the beam across his shoulder blades and feels the bite of the sheer mass and the splintered wood.

Some are mere spectators, while others have roles to play. The

The centurion.

centurion keeps watch and sneers under his breath about this crazy Jew and his zealous, ignorant followers. A group of women tag along, scuttling and shuffling in the dusty road to keep up and occasionally offer an encouraging word, a tear of compassion or a cloth to wipe his sweaty, bloody face.

A man stands at a distance, wondering if he should or can intervene. Finally, futilely, he dashes to catch the crossbar before it drives this wounded, gentle teacher to his knees yet again. He is rewarded for his concern by being pressed into service by the soldiers to carry the cross the rest of the way up the hill while the bruised and battered rabbi lags behind.

Hail Mary, full of grace...

A woman, his mother, is suddenly at his side, her eyes wide at the horror and helplessness of it all. She is inconsolable but his eyes tell her to let it go, to accept the rest of his journey in the very same, faithful way that she accepted the strange beginning of it. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you…

He nods “yes” to her and she knows well this “yes,” has lived this “yes” over and over and over. Blessed art you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb…

Led like a lamb

At the top, he is pushed to the ground and grabbed roughly by the executioners and guards who, it must be said, are just doing a job. They have no dog in this fight.  Below, at the foot of the hill, the women and the others can see a hammer raised high, can hear the sickening crash of metal to metal to bone to flesh to wood. She hears the scream, the cry she knows so well and has heard for so long, the Word incarnate and light of the world who has always looked to her for food, for warmth, for comfort.

She longs to hold him now, to soothe his face with her tears, her hands, her cloak. Oh, to hold once more this child, this man, this God-child, man-child. It is all still a mystery, even to her. And yet she believes, knows it is all true somehow.

Who will carry the cross?

He is lifted into place and the crossbar finds its notch, jolts him into place. Pain streams through his body and he feels it all, no divine relief available to him now. He must sustain it all, must see this through to the bitter end. His eyes are closed in supplication and in the acceptance of what he knows must be done, what he was created for, what he was formed and named to be. And at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth…

His breath becomes shallow and barely visible, and yet he finds the strength to pray, to think of those faces in the crowd and those who are yet to be born.

The hammer holds

To forgive: Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.

To assure: Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.

To take care of those he loves: Woman, this is your son. This is your mother.

To cry out, to give us a reason to do the same: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

To be fully human: I thirst.

By his wounds we have been healed.

To complete: It is finished. Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.

The faces in the crowd now shrink back in fear and wonder, as a glimmer of understanding flashes through and among them. They begin to discern the injustice, the rash political decision, the utter humility and humanity and gentleness of the man.

And for some, for a select and chosen few, they begin to see the reason, begin to feel the freedom and the grace that emanates from the cross. Begin to see in one clear, shining moment a love that will span the centuries and leave those they will never know in the stunned silence of faith, of adoration and praise. And they know, just as we know, that they will never again be the same. Cannot be the same.

Never again alone. Never again trapped in desperation. Never again lost.

Never again.

Blessed are you among women...

All these images are details from the Stations of the Cross at the LaSalle Retreat Center in Glencoe, Mo., where I attended an ACTS retreat last weekend. This is dedicated to all my ACTS brothers, those who walked the way with me and offered to carry the cross.

The Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, D.C., photo by Steve Givens

On a recent trip to Washington, D.C., I attended morning mass at one of my favorite places, the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle, just a few blocks up from DuPont Circle where I was staying. Because I travel to D.C. a few times a year to attend meetings of higher education public affairs folks like me, and because DuPont Circle is “home territory” for many higher education organizations, I have come to know this area pretty well. And St. Matthew’s has become my parish home when I’m there.

To be honest, in a city filled with architectural gems, from the outside St. Matthew’s has little in its facade that would draw you inside. It lies just a block off busy Connecticut Avenue on Rhode Island, tucked back from the street in such a way that you might miss it if you didn’t look up. But inside, its collection of side chapels, statuary, and mosaics are inspiringly beautiful and prayerful. My favorite mosaic is that of a different gospel writer, St. Mark, elbow on knee and fist beneath his chin, urging us all to enter into conversation with him on the life and death of his friend. The shape of the interior (at least to my untrained eye) is more of a square than a rectangle, drawing all nearer to the altar. (In fact, it is in the shape of a Latin cross, 155 feet long by 136 feet wide). To see more of the Cathedral, visit its online tour.

St. Mark invites us into conversation. Photo by Steve Givens

The Cathedral honors St. Matthew, that iconic tax collector and the patron saint of civil servants, and it plays a major role in the life of Catholics in the nation’s capital. It is the seat of the archbishop, Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass there in 1979 and, in perhaps its most noted moment, it was the place of President Kennedy’s funeral Mass on November 25, 1963, a fact of which I am always reminded whenever I go forward for communion and stand upon an inlaid marble plaque that marks the spot. I breathe a little deeper when I stand there, waiting.

The Cathedral is attended by Supreme Court justices, members of Congress, Cabinet members, members of the diplomatic corps, and sometimes even the president of the United States. As a history buff, I can’t NOT be affected by these facts. I do not stand in awe of these people, but I am aware of the tremendous burdens they bear in their positions of responsibility. Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail. Sometimes I agree with their decisions and sometimes I do not.

But I appreciate the fact that many of them come here to pray and worship and receive the sacraments, to place themselves into the hands of God, to be no more important at the moment of receiving the body and blood of Christ than me or the person sweeping the floor or a hungry, frightened child in Uganda who might benefit from, say, a wise decision to send aid and U.S. troops to protect them from being pressed into service as child soldiers by the horrifically named “Lord’s Resistance Army.”

JFK marker at St. Matthew's, photo by Steve Givens

We all need a place to pray with others who share our faith or just to be alone with our thoughts and our God. Washington, D.C. has many such places for believers of every kind. And with the weight of the nation and the world on the shoulders of so many of these men and women, it’s a good thing.

Take a moment today to pray for all of those who serve our country as elected officials and civil servants. For a few seconds, forget about party lines and campaign speeches and the scandal of the day. Just breathe. Just pray.

Outside Sedona. Photo by Steve Givens

Sue and I just returned from a week in Sedona, Arizona, celebrating our 31^st anniversary surrounded by some of God’s very best handiwork. Located in Arizona’s high desert country under the southwestern rim of the Colorado Plateau, Sedona is situated at the mouth of spectacular Oak Creek Canyon and surrounded by massive red-rock formations. It was a glorious week of rest and walking the area’s myriad hiking trails that drew us right up to the bases of the rock formations with names like Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte and Boynton Canyon.

But located between Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek is one of the region’s manmade (and woman-designed!) wonders: The Chapel of the Holy Cross. We had been through here once before when the kids were…well…kids. We had stopped at the chapel then, too, but this time we had more time to savor the beauty of the chapel and its setting, and even experience a beautifully simple Taize ecumenical prayer service.

Although operated by the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix and St. John Vianney Parish of Sedona (our parish home for the week), the church is open to all and is not an operating Catholic church. The story behind its design and creation is the story of one artist’s vision, a nagging dream and her desire to find the spirit of Christ in her art.

Chapel of the Holy Cross. Photo by Steve Givens

Marguerite Brunswig Staude first had the idea for a cruciform-shaped church in 1932 while viewing the newly constructed Empire State Building. Years later, she wrote, “When viewed from a certain angle a cross seemed to impose itself through the very core of the structure. What an idea for a church! For days it haunted and obsessed me, insisting on taking shape.”

Later she sketched the church, which she showed to her teacher. That happened to be a guy named Frank Lloyd Wright. He liked the idea and together they interpreted her dream, which they initially envisioned would be built in Budapest on one of the hills overlooking the Danube. World War II put an end to that idea. The idea lay dormant for many years.

In the 1950s, Staude owned a ranch in Oak Creek Canyon, and she wrote that the area around her home seemed to be “calling for the existence of a shrine where God can be worshipped as a contemporary” and where God could be “brought closer to each and everyone of us.” Although much smaller in scale than her original vision, construction on the chapel began in 1955 on a 250-foot-high, twin-pinnacled spur, jutting out of a thousand-foot rock wall, and was completed a year later.

“Just as the soul inhabits a human frame, and the house is built to shelter that frame, it is the mission of the church to shelter and inspire both the soul and body,” she once wrote. “It therefore should not only be a monument to faith, but a spiritual fortress so charged with God that it spurs man’s spirit Godward!

Interior of chapel. Photo by Steve Givens

“As an artist, this is my offering,” she said. “Ad Majorem Dei,” (for the glory of God) in answer to the One who in order to save us stretched out his arms on the cross.”