Steve

Wonder as the Foundation of Prayer

Steve · August 31, 2025 · 3 Comments

Earlier this summer, I read the book, “Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life,” by Dacher Keltner, an expert on human emotion and a professor of psychology at UC-Berkeley, where he serves as the director of the university’s Greater Good Science Center. In the book, Keltner sets out to define what we mean by “awe” and illustrates the experience of awe through dozens of individual stories gathered from around the world.

And, indeed, it’s the global experience of awe that makes this book worth reading. We are all moved, he writes, by experiences that make us draw in a sharp breath and let out the slow sound of “awe” or maybe “wow” or “woah.” In this sense, in what moves us, we all speak the same language, and there is something very important about understanding that.

For the purpose of the book and drawn from his own deep research, Keltner defines awe as: “The feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” It is about “our relation to the vast mysteries of life.” These experiences, he writes, come from the “eight wonders of life,” which can be classified into a “taxonomy of awe.” They are, in order of their commonality around the world:

Moral Beauty – other people’s courage, kindness, strength and overcoming.
Collective Effervescence – those moments when, as part of a crowd (whether at church or a sports stadium) we feel we are part of a collective self or tribe – an experience of “we.”
Nature – not surprisingly, our experience in and of nature can often leave us speechless and with a sense of “something bigger” at work.
Music – and its ability to transport us to “new dimensions of symbolic meaning.”
Visual Design – art and architecture and its power to open our minds to new ways of perceiving the world and “locate ourselves” within the cultural systems that surround us.
Stories of Spirituality and Religion – and the way they transform, transcend, and give us hope for something more.
Stories of Life and Death – are common around the world and lead to awe at such moments as first and last breaths.
Moments of Epiphanies – times when we suddenly understand essential truths about life and experience “philosophical insights, scientific discoveries, metaphysical ideas, personal realizations, mathematical equations, and sudden disclosures that transform life in an instant.”

While you likely won’t find Keltner’s book on the “spirituality or religion” section of your local bookstore or online category, I found it to be a great tool for my regular prayer of reflection and examination of my day – my “examen,” as it known in Ignatian spirituality. Keltner’s “eight mysteries” opened my mind to looking for and finding God in an ever-wider array of my life experiences.

Shortly after finishing the book, I began to wonder: What if I paid a little closer attention every day to what astounds me and fills me with awe and wonder? What might I see and experience each day because I am looking for the awe? What if I expanded my time of reflection to look more broadly and consider those eight areas of mystery? What if this was the way I ended each day, with this examen of awe?

At this point in time, I am two months into a project to record one such moment of awe each day. What I am finding thus far is a much wider set of experiences, all of which cause me to either catch my breath, drop me to my knees, or stand in quiet reflection and gratitude.

Here are two examples:

July 13 – Today Sue and I walked a half-mile loop trail that lead to the Akaka Waterfall on the east side of the Big Island of Hawai’i near Hilo. As it finally came into view, this long, 400-foot ribbon of water took my breath away — a sudden and short intake of breath that amounts to “awe.” It plunged over the edge like an Olympic diver, cutting like a knife into the pool beneath it. Perfect in form, a quiet and perfectly straight line into the folding water. And so I prayed: “Cut me like a knife, O Lord, sever me from myself to allow you in. Pierce my heart and allow me to feel the height and depth of your love and compassion for me. Fill me, just as this water continually fills the bowl that rests beneath the falls like open hands.”

August 30 – This morning we went to a funeral for our friend’s 94-year-old father. We didn’t know him or were not even sure we had ever met him. We were there because we believe it’s important to “show up” for people in their times of grief and need. We believe in the beauty and sanctity of the “last rites” of the Catholic Church, that they are fitting ways to celebrate the end of earthly existence and be present as something new begins. I was awed by the flow of music, scripture, ritual, words of remembrance, all encouraging me to consider my own life and death. With the responsorial Psalm, drawn from the oft-used 23^rd Psalm, we sang: “Shepherd me, O God, beyond my wants, beyond my fears, from death into life.” And I think that this is what I want most when my time comes – for God to show up and shepherd me home, surrounded by the presence of those I knew and loved, and maybe a few others who show up to be there for my family, even if they have never met me. There’s awe in the way we humans (and the church) care for each other.

So here’s my challenge to you today: Pay attention to what catches your heart, your breath, your sense of being in the world, for God is in that moment.

We are the Leftover Fragments

Steve · June 23, 2025 · Leave a Comment

They all ate and were satisfied. And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets. Luke 9:17

At mass yesterday for the Feast of Corpus Christi, we listened to the well-known and oft-told story from Luke’s gospel of the feeding of 5,000 hungry people who had gathered near the town of Bethsaida to hear Jesus preach. I’ve heard the story many times, of course, and I’m guessing you know it well, too.

And that’s the challenge. Sometimes when we know a Gospel story well we inadvertently tune it out. After all, we know it by heart. Yadda yadda yadda. What’s there to learn? So I was sitting with the choir yesterday, half-listening to the Gospel, when God kind-of grabbed me by the lapels and said, “pay attention, you dolt!”

They all ate and were satisfied.

And I thought, here I am, feeling pretty satisfied with myself – making time for mass in the middle of a busy Sunday, singing with the choir, doing that thing I do. Sharing in the body and blood of Christ on this feast day. Satisfied. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s good to be get filled up on Sundays, right?

Not THAT part, God nudged. Listen now:

And when the leftover fragments were picked up, they filled twelve wicker baskets.

Hold on, I thought. When the leftover fragments from the feast were picked up, there was, somehow, more than what they started with? Even after everyone had eaten? I mean, I knew that but…whoah. There’s something else going on here.

And somewhere deep I knew this “something else” to be true and important. It’s the same every Sunday. We come in hungry. We listen to Jesus. We share in the meal we don’t deserve, and we leave satisfied. But we also leave bigger and “more” than what we were when we came in. We are like the fragments of the meal, collected to be used again. Collected to be used to feed others.

We’re the leftovers from the feast. We are the fragments of the body of Christ. We’re not called to just be satisfied. We’re called to be more.

So what do you need me to do today, Lord?

Does Faith Leave Us Open to Change?

Steve · June 10, 2025 · 2 Comments

Last week, Sue and I were up early on our last full day in the San Diego area, prowling the relatively empty streets of the historic Gaslamp District for a breakfast place. We ducked into 6^th & G Breakfast Company, conveniently located a few blocks from our hotel on the corner of, well, 6^th and G Streets.

As we sat down, I found myself facing some of the restaurant’s evocative graffiti-like art, including the art shown above with the words, Amor Fati. My Latin is not what it should be so, of course, I Googled it. According to that veritable font of all wisdom, Wikipedia, Amor Fati is, “a Latin phrase that may be translated as “love of fate. It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one’s life, including suffering and loss as a good or, at the very least, necessary.”

As I pondered the phrase and its meaning, my mind kept going to another piece of “art,” a little plaque that hangs on our screened porch back in St. Louis. It says, simply, “It is what it is.” That little saying, we believe, is an act of faith and a way of God-centered living. It’s a willingness to accept change as it comes and welcome the little daily surprises that arise as being, as Wikipedia described Amor Fati, “good or, at the very least, necessary.” Within the framework of Ignatian spirituality where I spend a good chunk of time as a spiritual director, writer and administrator, the phrase is a reminder that we can, indeed, “find God in all things.” Not just in the good and the beautiful and the obviously divine and holy. In ALL things. Faith requires us to be open to change and to find God in all those shifting moments.

All of this reminded me of another piece of street art that we saw earlier in the week just north of San Diego in the historic beach town of Carlsbad. The 18-foot-tall mural, shown above, is called “Catnap,” and was created by a local artist named Michael Summers. It features two large black and white tigers beneath rain-like drips of vibrant color. One is sheltered by an umbrella, while the other sleeps peacefully, allowing the colorful rain to change it into something new. A third tiger, a small cub, hasn’t made up its mind yet. And that’s exactly the theme of the mural, we were told by a local walking tour guide. Are we willing to allow ourselves to be changed?

Summers, I read in an online article, said the idea for his mural was inspired by a quote from the American Protestant theologian Reinhold Neibuhr, who once wrote: “Change is the essence of life. Be willing to surrender what you are for what you may become.”

While faith might sometimes be described as an unwavering belief in some things that never change — like the idea of a creative and omniscient God — faith also calls us to constantly re-examine our lives and see where change might be both good and necessary. Faith demands that we allow ourselves to be changed by, with, and for God and for those around us. Faith challenges us to see and move beyond the prejudices, hatreds and “isms” that were and still sometimes are baked into lives of those who would call themselves religious. Christianity has historically been a pretty good hiding place, after all, for bigots, racists, and supremacists of all kinds. We are called to change that, even as we change ourselves.

Jim Manney, in his book of daily Ignatian reflections, What Matters Most and Why, echoes these ideas through the lens of Ignatian spirituality. He writes:

One of the hallmarks of an Ignatian approach is flexibility. Plans need to be adjusted if circumstances call for it. New situations need to be studied and understood….This attitude is both liberating and worrisome. It’s liberating because it gives room for creativity and makes it more likely that a suitable solution will be found. It’s worrisome because there’s more room to make mistakes…. But if you believe that God can be found in all things, you don’t have much choice. God is lurking in the new, unexpected situation. To find him, you need to be ready to change your mind and alter your plans.

Discovering Fire (Again): The Innovation of Love

Steve · May 14, 2025 · Leave a Comment

Although I took the bare minimum of science and math courses in both high school and college, I am in these elder days a bit of a science geek. And by that I don’t mean that I understand the underpinnings and the “math” of science as much as I relish and pore over each new issue of National Geographic and Smithsonian magazines as they arrive each month and watch longingly for new episodes of Nature and Nova on PBS. So I’m a spectator scientist, at best.

I am particularly drawn to the storytelling of scientific innovation — to the documentaries, essays, articles and podcasts that give us insight to those brilliant scientists and thinkers who are addressing the very real problems faced by the world today. Last month’s National Geographic featured profiles of 33 “visionary changemakers who are striving to make the world a better place” in a diverse range of areas such as climate change, wilderness preservation, economic opportunity, and mental health, among others. At a time when it’s easy to turn away from such troubling horizons, editor Nathan Lump writes that these 33 individuals (for the 33 men who founded the National Geographic Society in 1988) are “decidedly not looking away.”

The past century has been a long and broad season of innovation, to be sure. Just consider that the Wright Brothers first got a few feet off the surface of Earth in 1903 and, just 66 short years later, we landed on the surface of the moon. Consider, too, the advances of medicine, technology, energy and architecture. Heck, consider that I’m sitting here on my back porch typing on a laptop computer, checking a few facts (like the date of the Wright Brothers first flight) in an instant on my cell phone. In college, I thought I was dealing with pretty advanced technology with my Smith-Corona portable electric typewriter and a bottle of Wite-Out®.

So we’ve made some great global strides, to be sure. We have found new ways to care for our Earth and those people and creatures that live on it. And yet, it seems we have failed (and keep failing) when it comes to the most elemental thing that God asks of us: To love one another as God loves us. We, as a society, so often fail to love in ways that would put human lives and dignity before wealth, corporate gains and political strength. We measure success in all the easy but wrong ways.

These early morning thoughts bring to mind the wisdom of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a 20^th-century French Jesuit, Catholic priest, scientist, theologian, and teacher. In his 1934 essay, “The Evolution of Chastity,” he wrote: “The day will come when, after harnessing the ether, the winds, the tides, and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And, on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

We’ve done so much in such a short period of time. And, no doubt, some of the world’s greatest innovations were done out of love for the Earth and humanity. But imagine — just imagine — what might be accomplished if everything we did began with the kind of power, influence and great innovation akin to the love that God has for us. The change that kind of power would bring to the world would tower over the elemental innovations like rockets, the wheel and even, as Teilhard writes, fire.

For in the end, it will be on our ability to love and not turn away from those in need that we will be judged, both by God and by those who will circle our coffins and graves trying to speak a few words of remembrance. For it’s not what we accomplish and earn that matters. It’s not the financial or social legacy we leave behind that will endure. It’s how much and how well we loved.

I’ll give the final word today to St. Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador who was martyred while celebrating mass in 1980: “In the evening of life, you will be judged on love.”

Considering Holy Week

Steve · April 13, 2025 · Leave a Comment

This coming week, we are beckoned by liturgy, scripture and prayer to slow down and more fully consider the final days, hours, minutes and moments of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. As Fr. Joe Tetlow, SJ has written, “These are terrible events, and we are keeping a death watch.” For in these intimate instances with Jesus, we are called to walk with him, listen to his words, witness his pain and suffering, and enter into his time and place.

We are called to ponder these moments of his passion and consider, as St. Ignatius of Loyola writes in his Spiritual Exercises, how Jesus chose to “hide his divinity” so that he could more fully experience his humanity. In his translation of the Exercises, Fr. David Fleming, SJ wrote: “At the time of the Passion, I should pay special attention to how the divinity hides itself so that Jesus seems so utterly human and helpless. (Fleming, Draw Me Into Your Friendship, 149; SE 196). So if Jesus seems weak and helpless on the cross, it’s because he chose to be. No one took his life; he gave it freely. (John 10:18) Consider that.

In a recent email exchange with Fr. Tetlow, he confirmed for me something I remembered him once saying at a workshop — that in the Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius uses the word consider (and its equivalents like ponder) almost as many timesas he uses contemplate. For example, Fr. Joe wrote, in the Contemplation for Love near the end of the Exercises, Ignatius suggests that the retreatant, “consider the gifts that God gives, how God remains in His gifts, and how God is actually sharing the divine being with us. These, Ignatius suggests, all be considered.”

This “considering” is not easy work. It’s easier for us to give a cursory glance or to listen with limited attention to the words we hear on Palm Sunday and during the Triduum. After all, we’ve heard them all before, many times. Noah Webster’s old 1828 dictionary does a good job of taking us beyond the modern notion of consider as merely “to think about.” It says, in part, “the literal sense is, to sit by or close, or to set the mind or the eye to; to view or examine with attention.” To consider is not a moment of casual interest. It’s a chance to pull up a chair and engage deeply with the subject at hand.

So this week, don’t take the easy way out. Don’t ignore what you would rather not see. Go deep. For what’s on display on the cross is much more than the pain; it’s the ultimate love of the Father. Stand at the foot of the cross and consider, as the following song by me and my composing partner Phil Cooper suggests, “all that it takes to give in to the way that He died. Then consider the nails.”