Creativity

The Creative Spirit: An Open, Aware Heart

Steve · June 11, 2016 · 9 Comments

“Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film.” – Ansel Adams

What the great nature photographer Ansel Adams knew and showed us in his haunting, elegant black and white photographs is that there is so much to be seen and experienced in the world if we only slow down and pay attention — not only to the image in front of us but to the light and shadows that surround, encompass and overlay what we see. Adams would hike miles, laden with his heavy equipment and supplies, to get to the perfect place at the perfect time of day. Then it became his job, to paraphrase the renowned words of the poet Mary Oliver, to “stand still and learn to be astonished.”

There’s lesson in that for us somewhere, surely.

Living Extraordinary Lives Begins with Gratitude

Steve · May 1, 2016 · 15 Comments

It’s an ordinary time on an ordinary day,
It’s the simple things we do that take our breath away.
And the more we pay attention to every day that fills our eyes
The more we live extraordinary lives.

– “Extraordinary Lives,” by Steve Givens and Phil Cooper

sunrise — Day's Beginning: Surprise me. SJG photo.

Gratitude, it seems to me, is the starting point for our lives of prayer, creativity and living well among others. But gratitude is easy to say and harder to live by because it’s hard work. Saying “thank you” to God and to others around us is the simplest thing to do and, yet, we so often forget to do it. Or don’t make time to do it. Or don’t make it a part of our daily experience.

Today I offer a short reflection, a brief, two-pronged approach to a life of gratitude, followed by a new song called “Extraordinary Lives,” composed with my friend and co-creator Phil Cooper. [The song will be on the forthcoming CD by the Mo Bottom Project, scheduled for release this summer. If you’d like to reserve a copy shoot me an email!]

The Creative Spirit: Working from Memory

Steve · May 31, 2015 · 3 Comments

candle — University of Notre Dame grotto. SJG photo.

“Now will I recall God’s works; what I have seen, I will describe.”
–Sirach 42:15

Memory, it seems, plays a crucial role in the lives of those of us who create. For what we recall and have seen, to paraphrase the wisdom of Sirach, we are called to describe to others. The memory might be from just yesterday (an overheard conversation becomes a story, the setting sun hitting the side of a tree becomes a poem or a painting) or it might be something much older (the sound of our mother’s voice becomes a song, a remembered Christmas morning becomes dialogue for our invented characters). Even remembered tastes and smells can be grist for the mill of our imaginations.

And this is especially true (and all the more important), with our recollections of how God has moved and worked in our lives, of the moments when God seemed so real and present that we could not NOT tell others. To experience the love of God and not be inclined to retell the story — in some way — is akin to seeing the Grand Canyon and forgetting to take a photo or send a postcard. Just who could do that? We see, we experience something majestic and grand, and we feel a deep desire to say, “Let me tell you about the time…” or “let me show you something.”

The “trick,” of course, is that we need to set ourselves up to remember. We need to live lives with time for reflection and contemplation built in to the fabric. Whether daily or weekly, this time to remember fuels our creativity in ways we could never imagine. When I write, and when I reflect back, I remember things that have remained buried for days, months, years, even decades. But the act of writing, for me, raises them from the ashes.

An example, right here and right now. None of what I’m about to write have I thought about or mulled over…it’s all spilling forth as my fingers slip across the keys:

prayer — Praying at California mission. SJG photo.

It’s about 1973, I think. I’m 13 and a friend has invited me to Holy Saturday mass at the (it seems to me) massive Holy Cross Catholic Church in the Baden neighborhood of North St. Louis. I’ve never been in a Catholic Church before, except maybe for a wedding of some family friends. I’m a little scared. I’m scared of being out of place and not knowing the drill. Raised a Protestant, I’ve heard the stories and the jokes — stand, kneel, sit, stand, kneel, sit. Religious calisthenics. I don’t quite know what to expect.

My senses are assaulted as I come through the huge oaken doors. It is dim in the pews where we sit, the altar aglow with candlelight. It’s crowded, pews already filling with older people and large families. I slide into a pew with my friend and his family (they genuflect but I did not know how), including his 16-year-old sister Theresa, who I always had a bit of a crush on, and his younger brother Mark, who would die the following year in a car crash in Arizona that almost took out the whole family during a vacation. They kneel so I kneel, something we didn’t do in my church. And yet it felt right and proper to do so here, felt like a holy thing to do, like there was something going on here that needed to be bowed to. I didn’t fully understand that, of course. I just sensed it.

Msgr. Martin Hellriegel (from website cited)

The mass began with a long procession, the altar boys (only boys back then) and the priests making their way up the center aisle. One of the altar boys who I knew from baseball was swinging the censor back and forth and filling the space with incense. (There are so many words here that I didn’t know or understand back then I now realize…mass, procession, censor…). I don’t ever remember my sense of smell coming into play during worship before. This was something new. I swooned a bit, I think, the combination of the incense and this new act of kneeling. The priest, I would learn and appreciate a decade later, was Monsignor Martin Hellriegel, a liturgical pioneer and hymn composer who wrote “To Jesus Christ our Sovereign King,” which is still sung in churches around the world.

But back then, I didn’t hear or understand much (Oh, to go back and listen!) and this was just a long, tedious service for someone so young. Three hours of readings, the retelling of salvation history interspersed with psalms and songs, with the incense hanging in the air as a reminder of the presence of God when we pray, that our prayers rise like the smoke rose to the arched ceiling of the grand sanctuary.

Okay, enough of that memory for now. But that’s the power of memory. When we give ourselves some time and some promptings to remember, we can recall images and stories, and stories and images can change lives, can turn people toward God who waits for our turning. For most of us, these stories and pictures speak louder than proclamations. Remember your stories and fold them into lessons. Infuse them into art. Move them into music and dance. Stitch them into fabric.

A challenge: Sit down with pen and paper or your computer and ask yourself these questions: What is one of my earliest memories of faith, of church, of God? What do I remember of that moment…the sights, sounds, smells, touches, tastes? Now just write (or draw!) for ten minutes. Don’t stop to edit and don’t pause long to think. Let your fingers do the work; allow the buried truth (even if your memories are a bit tarnished by time) to flow from you onto the page or the sketchpad. If you’re so inclined, post what you created in the comments section.

Ask yourself in silence: What memories am I missing because I’m not taking the time to recall them?

The Creative Spirit: Cultivating the Earth and Ourselves

Steve · May 23, 2015 · 3 Comments

cilantro2 — My cilantro...our salsa. SJG photo.

I am not much of a grower of things. I almost typed, “I am not much of a farmer” but that would be even less true. Maybe someday I will be. For now, a few containers on my deck grow a small selection of my favorite herbs (rosemary, cilantro, parsley and basil) along with a couple of jalapeno pepper plants and some green onions. I’m looking forward to homemade salsa and pesto as the summer lingers on.

My father was an urban backyard farmer in North St. Louis in the 1960s and 1970s, planting short rows of lettuce, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, radishes and carrots in the poor soil (made organically better by him) beneath our old unused swing set in the back of the yard by the alley. He ran a hose up the uprights of the swing set and secured a sprinkler to the crossbar, creating an easy and gentle “rain” on the garden that supplied us with fresh salads and vegetables, which I didn’t really appreciate at the time, I am sure. Today, I wish I had him nearby to share his knowledge and passion for a small plot of earth, as well as his collection of old copies of Organic Gardening Magazine. Oh, the things we lose and throw away.

All this reminded me this morning of songwriter David Mallett’s, “The Garden Song,” which I first learned from a John Denver album back when I was a teenager and which I have performed for many years since:

Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow.
All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground.
Inch by inch, row by row, someone bless these seeds I sow,
Someone warm them from below ‘til the rain comes tumbling down.

The song has been recorded by many artists over the years, including Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary in addition to Denver, but I was delighted to find this YouTube version of Dave performing it himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m0LewjkO4s

Garden2 — Lenz House garden, New Harmony, Indiana. SJG photo.

Growing a garden is an act of faith and an acknowledgement of gratitude. It is a gesture of creativity and hope — that what we begin and nurture “with a rake and hoe” can become something else, something bigger and more, something that can be shared around a table. A garden beckons family and community to come together in thanksgiving. A garden is a reminder of our obligation to use what we have been given to help others and offer praise to the ultimate giver of life and sustenance.

In response to my last post on finding the extraordinary in our ordinary life I received a wonderful and beautifully written note from a REAL farmer who reminded me of the healing and spiritual power of just sinking our hands into the soil and urging things to grow up from the ground. Ordinary, sure, but it’s also extraordinary at the same time if we allow it to be. Jan owns a fruit farm in Winnebago County, Illinois with her husband Thomas. Sunrise Market Farm is just a mile from the Wisconsin state line and grows blueberries, raspberries and pumpkins. Jan wrote:

I have practiced prayer when I work outdoors with our plants and growing things but the best practice by far seems to be a focus on exactly what is at hand, seeing the beauty even in the weed that needs to be pulled as well as in the plump blueberry that needs to be picked. To breathe deeply of the perfume of the soil and the newly cut clover. And I think “Jesus is here” and my task is a task of love for Him and there is peace and joy. Best of all, there is a further chipping away of the old me, the me I was never meant to be, and a growing of the real me, the one that the One created me to be.

Sign2 — In Carol's Garden, New Harmony, Indiana. SJG photo. CLICK for a larger view.

We can find God wherever we look for God, and sometimes, too, in places where we never expected to experience the Divine. We create from what we have been given. We live by what we cultivate in ourselves and in our lives.

Ask yourself in silence: What am I cultivating in my life? By what fruits will I be known?

The Creative Spirit: Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Steve · May 10, 2015 · 5 Comments

scarecrow — Scarecrow: Folk art or innovation? Faust Historical Park, St. Louis. SJG photo.

I’m up early this Sunday morning, searching the quiet of the new day for a spark of inspiration; not only inspiration for writing this — although that’s part of it — but inspiration for the day, the week, the moments that lie ahead. Inspiration to not just get through these times but to actually live through and with them, to embrace the gift of the ordinary that fills our lives and do something productive and creative with what I see and experience.

And isn’t that often how creativity and innovation occurs? I hear birdsong outside my door and think of flutes and the trills of a violin. I hear the natural rhythm of the birds and the crickets and the frogs and I sense not just noise but the percussion of the world around me. Noise becomes music, as it has for so many composers and musicians throughout the ages. From great classical composers to jazz innovators to those who carry forward the folk traditions of aboriginal and old-world music as it reflects the beauty and intricacy of the world around them, the ordinary becomes extraordinary when we put our hands and our minds to work. Do we hear birdsong in the flute or the flute in the birdsong?

The green of the leaves on the trees out my back door is radiant with the early sun’s glancing blows and the lingering wetness of last night’s rain, and although trees don’t move from their rooted stations they move before our eyes, of course, whether slow and subtle in a gentle breeze or ecstatic and tortured in a storm. Ordinary? Of course, but don’t tell that to Monet and so many other artists who made the trees and gardens and their movement come alive for us.

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as Hopkins wrote, but within the ordinary grandeur of our lives are the seeds of our own human innovation and art. Flowers are flowers, spores are spores, but they also contain multitudes — healing medicines and hope for cures when creative scientific minds look beyond the ordinary in search of extraordinary ways to improve our lives. Someone saw a bird fly and began to wonder how we could fly ourselves. And we eventually did.

leaf — The radiance of nature. SJG photo.

Our DNA hasn’t changed all that much in thousands of years, but we know now how to look closely enough to notice the changes that bring about disease, so we can begin to bring about healing. A miracle? Perhaps, but only in the sense that we have learned to capture the ordinary to bring about the extraordinary. Perhaps that’s what the writer of Genesis had in mind when he said that God gave man dominion over the earth. We have far too often used that Biblical narrative as an excuse to do whatever we wanted to the earth around us — often to the detriment of the world we are called to protect and nurture — when, perhaps, we should have just been paying closer attention.

And, indeed, many have been doing this for a long time. The history of our art, our music, our science and engineering breakthroughs more often than not springs from our ability to pay attention to the world around us. The ordinary world, from its molecules and atoms to the grandest of canyons and the vastness of oceans, continues to inspire and motivate change, innovation and art.

So what is our response? How do we fit in? What contribution do we have to make? Don’t be confused or disheartened by my examples. We all don’t have the training and the wherewithal to find a cure for cancer, to paint a masterpiece worthy of Monet, to compose music that will reflect the beauty of the world back to its Maker. Or maybe we do.

We all have the ability to transform the ordinary in extraordinary ways. We plant and fertilize and nurture and a garden is born, a gift to those who see it even at a glance or taste its fruits. We write a poem or a letter to a friend who needs to hear that they are remembered and extraordinary. We sketch, we draw, we doodle. We make up stories and games to keep our children amused. We hum an old hymn in the ear of an elderly friend and we cradle a newborn and calm her tears with a whispered lullaby. We solve a business or societal problem by emulating how nature takes care of itself. We pay attention. We get off our duffs and act. We believe we have something to contribute.

Last week, one of my reflections appeared in the Living Faith daily devotional, and I ended it with this:

Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” We can see each sunrise, each newborn child, each encounter with beauty and chalk them all up to chance, or we can stand back in wonder at these daily miracles and choose to see the hand of God. The first option is a yawn; the second is a gasp. You choose.”

Ask yourself in silence: What one thing can you do today to pay attention and act, to respond to your call as creator and reflector of the divine, creative spark?

Challenge: Write and tell me what you did!