Creative Spirit

First ‘Creative Spirit’ Retreat Announced for October 11-12 in St. Louis

Steve · August 31, 2019 · Leave a Comment

I am very pleased to announce my first-ever retreat on the intersection of spirituality and creativity. If you live near the St. Louis area, think about joining me on Friday evening, October 11, and all day Saturday the 12th at Mercy Center to explore what happens at that very special place where God, prayer and our own creative activities meet.

My friends and musical collaborators John Caravelli and Phil Cooper will join me for a performance on Friday night and will help me sprinkle in some music throughout the weekend. The retreat flyer is included below, but email me at givenscreative@gmail.com if you have any questions or want me to email you a flyer.

Bring a camera, notebook, sketchbook, musical instrument or whatever tool, media or craft materials you use to create. Come enjoy the beautiful grounds and some time away to create and contemplate…

Playing in the Wild Garden of Childhood

Steve · January 25, 2019 · 12 Comments

FOD BAll — At the "Field of Dreams," Dyersville, Iowa. SJG photo.

I recently came across this line of poetry from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: “Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.” And, of course, that’s right.

Take, for example, the pick-up games of some variation of baseball (fuzz ball, Indian ball, Wiffle® ball, cork ball, kickball, step ball) of my childhood in North St. Louis in the early ‘70s. These were “wild gardens” in the very best sense, meaning they required no adults, no official field dimensions, no uniforms and very few rules, other than the ever-evolving ones that existed only in our collective consciousness as 12-year-olds.

Goldfinches and God Arrive

Steve · June 10, 2018 · 12 Comments

IMG_8991 copy copy — A Lesser Goldfinch, photographed a few years ago in Jerome, Arizona. SJG photo.

“Beauty is the harvest of presence.” David Whyte

I have been up early the last few mornings enjoying the cooler early day before the heat and humidity of St. Louis summer kicks in. You have to grab the cool while you can get it these days.

Bird-watching and listening from my screened porch (where I seem like the one in the cage and the birds are free to fly) are especially fruitful in the morning, for the birds know what I know about the cool of the day. About a week ago I put up a new feeder just outside my backdoor for the American Goldfinches (Spinus tristis) that I occasionally see in the neighborhood. I hung it where it can be easily viewed from where I sit to read and pray and write, a place where I wait for God to show up just as I now awaited the arrival of my first visitors. Sure enough, yesterday morning I caught sight of my first pair of goldfinches.

The Creative Spirit: The Human Necessity of ‘Being Moved’

Steve · August 27, 2017 · 8 Comments

Over the past week, I have been reading Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’ve seen the B movies and a very good theatrical version years ago at the St. Louis Repertory Theatre, but I’ve never read the book. It was assigned reading this year for all the first-year students at the university where I work, so I thought I would join the throng of readers.

We all read books, poems and sacred texts with different mindsets and personal histories, of course, so these words purposefully and creatively strung together by the authors affect each person differently. As regular readers of my blog no doubt know, I write often on the idea of paying attention to the world around us, of leaving ourselves open to being moved by the things in our lives and, ultimately, by the looming presence of God. So I was delighted to read this passage below, spoken by Dr. Frankenstein about his hike through the woods and mountains, during which he observed the desolation after an avalanche, dangerous and deep ravines, “somber” pines, the distant valley with mist rising off the river and the mountain summits shrouded in clouds. In short, he was paying attention and was deeply aware of the human necessity of being moved. He says:

The Creative Spirit: Conversation and Storytelling

Steve · August 21, 2017 · 3 Comments

IMG_1153 - Version 2 — Opening the door to conversation and storytelling. SJG photo.

If you read my blog regularly, you’ll certainly see a few repeating themes, among them the importance of living in awareness and gratitude of God and the critical nature of silent, contemplative prayer to do that. But there’s more, of course. As much as we need our times of silence, we need times of conversation and storytelling with friends new and old.

I received an email from L’Arche St. Louis this morning that helped drive this idea home for me, for the email contained this quote from Henri Nouwen, who lived in a L’Arche community for many years:

“Pay attention to the people God puts in your path if you want to discern what God is up to in your life.”