Steve

Prayer Time: Waiting for My Return

Steve · July 2, 2020 · 10 Comments

Father’s Day 2020 on the Meramec River in the northern Ozarks.

Today I awoke to a cool and refreshing morning that I know will sizzle and steam away as St. Louis-in-July heat and humidity takes hold of the rest of the day. On the back porch I watched the goldfinches visit their feeder and waited for the doe and two fawns to take their daily stroll through the property behind me.

I need this time in the morning, a time to slow and quiet down, a chance to regather my thoughts and point myself in the direction of Creator and creation. I slipped on my headphones and listened to my friend and musical collaborator Phil Cooper’s beautiful solo piano piece aptly called “Prayer Time,” composed back in 2005. I listened again and again, and the images that appeared were ones of flowing water — refreshing, cleansing, new and as ever-present and ever-changing in our lives as the great unchanging changer we call God. These lines came to me:

You are a stream running through me
flowing forth from deep within
seeping in like some ancient spring
hidden in the grass by the corner of the field.

Even in dry seasons you remain
a trickle of nourishment and hope in my dryness
never fully gone, only lost in the tall grass for a spell
still ever present and watching, waiting for my return.

The images and emotions of this running water kept coming, so I spent the rest of the morning creating the video below for Phil’s music. You need and deserve these three minutes.

Grace and peace to you. Grab some silence and solitude for yourself. God will show up.

With the Faith of a Child (with video)

Steve · June 11, 2020 · 2 Comments

Jason Parker Deffenbaugh. He smiles when I sing to him, and that can be the best part of my day.

Earlier this week, I was holding my youngest grandson, Jason. He was born prematurely back in January and weighed in at less than four pounds. Five months later, he is up over eleven pounds and doing well. As I held him, I thought about what it means to have the kind of “childlike faith” that Jesus asks of us. What does it really mean?

I don’t think it means unquestioning or naïve faith, first of all, nor does it mean blind faith that leaves no room for reason and a developed mind that questions. The faith of a child, I think, is about living in abundance and potential. It’s about trusting that we will be provided for and that from that abundance comes the belief that all things are possible through Christ.

Children believe they can accomplish anything they set their minds to because they haven’t yet been given a false sense of their own limitations. That will come soon enough. But while they are children, their “enough” is being held and fed, comforted and protected, playing and sharing and quickly forgiving, even when they don’t understand the world and all it holds.

And isn’t that the kind of faith Jesus wants us to have?

Today, I offer a new song and video created just this week with my songwriting partner and friend John Caravelli. Between us, we have eleven granddaughters, and this is a song for them, their joy, their resilience, their faith.

Content being branches, bearing fruit

Steve · June 1, 2020 · 10 Comments

Last week, on my drive home from a long walk at a nearby county park, I noticed a sign at a local farm announcing that strawberries were ripe and ready for sale. I had been watching and waiting and hoping for this sign. I pulled onto the gravel road, drove the short distance between the fields from highway to shed, and parked the car.

I donned my mask as we all must do these days, but I think the woman behind the till could still see the smile on my face as I picked out a few cartons and paid. “I’ve been waiting for this,” I told her.

Back in the car, I set the strawberries on the seat next to me, already googling a recipe for shortcake and planning a nice surprise for our evening meal. But before I put the car in reverse and left the farm, I reached over and grabbed a plump red berry and bit into it. Still warm from the sun, it melted in my mouth and I couldn’t help but think about the goodness of God’s brown and green earth. I offered a prayer of gratitude for sun and earth and farmer and field.

Even in the midst of pandemic and racial injustice and unrest, even when we are confused and not sure what comes next, we have a gentle reminder from John’s gospel that sometimes the very best thing we can do is to hold tight to the one who created us: “I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit.” (John 15:5)

Over the next few days I was drawn back to that scripture passage and to others that still speak to us of this unique relationship we have (mere branches to the vine of God’s presence) and the responsibility we have because of that position in God’s great plan. For if we’re going to claim a place on God’s vine, we have the duty to bear fruit that will draw others to God. We have an obligation to be the kind of fruit that brings broad smiles to others (even behind their masks) and makes them wonder what kind of master farmer produces such goodness.

I continued to pray with these images, sitting in silence, enjoying again and again the strawberries from that farmer’s field, and finding in those times of delicious contemplation a few words that helped me, once again, through a rough patch. For what I found (or remembered) is that sometimes the very best we can do is be content with being branches that bear fruit, attached to the vine until that very last moment when someone picks us off because we have become the very thing they need.

A Week of Psalms

Steve · May 23, 2020 · 6 Comments

A few weeks ago, I posted each day on my Facebook page a short poem and photograph inspired by one of the Psalms. [I didn’t post here because I didn’t want to inundate your inbox each day!]

The Psalms, as Fr. Michael Joncas noted in an interview I posted about a month ago, can be doorways to our emotions and deepest held fears and joys. They are “salves,” he noted, precisely because there is nothing new under the sun. The words of the ancient psalmist hit us in our guts — right where we live and breathe — because even though the world has changed immensely, we are still the same as the joyful, lost, questioning, mourning souls who wandered the earth two thousand years ago. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

We try to make sense of what’s going on in our world by singing and crying and shouting and whispering prayers and songs to the One who created us and listens to us still. The Psalms help us do that.

So here are my little offerings…my takes on individual Psalms as they are speaking to me right now during this time of pandemic and change. Read one a day or read them all right now. Most importantly, open your Bible and spend time with your own favorite Psalms that comfort or speak your heart.

Kindness must follow faith

Steve · May 16, 2020 · 4 Comments

This originally appeared as a “Faith Perspectives” column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 15, 2020.

During a safe and appropriately socially distanced online gathering recently, singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer had this to say about what is required during this time of fear, confusion and isolation: “Kindness is love’s country cousin. It shows up and does the dishes without asking. Kindness —not grand gestures — will save the world. Love is big and hard to get our arms around. Kindness is human sized and changes everything.”

I paused for several weeks before considering how I might write about all that is going on (and not going on) in the world right now. After all, what could I say about the Corona virus and its effects on society that hasn’t been said in a hundred different ways by a thousand different writers? After a few days of such pondering, I landed on the need for the kind of kindness that is “human sized and changes everything.”

“Being kind” is, on one hand, obvious and simple. We teach it to both our toddlers and our dogs. But it is, on the other hand, perhaps the very best we have to offer right now, and it seems to be showing up in abundance. People are finding creative and appropriate ways to reach out in kindness and care for each other, even though they are — and must be — isolated from each other. Social media, for all its shortcomings, is at least giving us access to these moments of light right now. We are seeing nearly constant examples of those who are doing what they can to make the world a little brighter and connected in a time of uncertainty and distance.

Musicians are posting free “concerts” from their living rooms and kitchens. Publications are giving free access to content. People are supporting local restaurants and other businesses while maintaining that safe and critical distance. Churches and ministers are offering worship services, counseling and spiritual direction virtually, and the flock is lining up to use them.

And, of course, there are those who continue to provide direct services to those in need because they continue to respond to their chosen vocations, even knowing that it puts them and their families at risk. First responders and medical professionals head up that list, but those who stock our grocery stores, take away our trash, keep us informed and repair our infrastructure also deserve our gratitude. The next time we are tempted to complain about what’s not on the shelves, let’s look around and see everything that is. And let’s remember to leave enough for the next person in line.

For Christians, “being kind” is an imperative response to the gift of love we say we have received through Jesus. If we really believe that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our hearts, souls and minds and to love our neighbors as much as (or more than) we love ourselves, then we must be prepared to do the very best and most kind things we can do right now. For most of us, that means staying inside and using the technology we have to stay in touch, to deliver comfort, to be creative and shed a little light on a world that has grown a little darker.

For those who must leave home and family to serve the rest of us, know that our gratitude and prayers go with you into the dark recesses of the human pain and suffering you must encounter and touch. We could use a few grand gestures of love and change right now, but let’s not give up on the small kindnesses that will continue to save the world.

So stay where you need to be. Wash your hands. Follow the rules. Feel our prayers, and be held in the palm of God’s hand.