Creativity

A call for guest bloggers: Writing as a true spiritual discipline

Steve · May 11, 2013 · 3 Comments

“When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place...SJG photo.

“Writing,” Henri Nouwen wrote, “can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.”

So…I’m embarrassed to see that I’ve not posted anything here since December 29. Ach! I have no real excuses, other than a busy work schedule, a couple of graduate classes (I’m completing a graduate certificate in Spiritual Direction at Aquinas Institute of Theology here in St. Louis…) and, oh yeah, I’m about to become a grandpa for the first time! (Although, admittedly, I had very little to do with that last one and I can’t blame him or her for my blog-crastination. Watch for a photo soon!

I’m planning a regular (hopefully weekly) summer series of short blogs, the theme of which I’m still considering and mulling over. In the meantime, I thought I’d give some of you a chance to share your writing on this site. (And I know from hearing from some of you that there are some very good writers out there among my subscribers).
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On the Road: A house built on solid rock

Steve · September 17, 2011 · 7 Comments

The next in an occasional series of travelogue/photo essays on seeing and experiencing intersections of faith, history and culture — on seeing new and old communities of faith.

butte — 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.

chapel1 — Chapel of the Holy Cross. Photo by Steve Givens

Want to hear a good story? Listen to your elders…

Steve · May 31, 2011 · 4 Comments

IMG_8437_2 — Daytona Beach, photo by Steve Givens, June 2011

Out on the beach today, I saw an old guy sitting in a wheelchair, staring out at the surging ocean. The waves off Daytona Beach were crashing loudly just 50 feet out, but by the time they reached the wheels of his chair they were just harmless bubbles and foam. He sat there for some time, and I wondered what was going through his mind.

Likely, he was wondering how it has all come to this – sitting in a chair and staring at the ocean instead of plunging headlong into the oncoming waves. Perhaps he had been a championship swimmer or a surfer dude in the 1950s. Perhaps he stormed a beach in France and can never shake those gruesome memories. No doubt he saw the hard, fit bodies of the young men and women running and playing around him and remembered his own halcyon days of summer. But I’ll never know what he was thinking because I didn’t ask him. I just saw him as “an old guy in a wheelchair.”

Trapped in History: The Strange Case of Levi Dust

Steve · October 21, 2010 · 3 Comments

“People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.” — James Baldwin

One day back in the mid-1980s, I was walking through the Missouri Historical Society’s History Museum in St. Louis’ Forest Park. On display was an exhibit of paintings by 19^th-century St. Louis artists. They were very nice, I guess. But one painting reached out and grabbed me by the lapels, shook me violently and said, “Pay attention here!” The person portrayed in the painting, Levi Dust, has been with me ever since and has played a key role in several creative endeavors.

The painting, by artist Matthew (Mat) Hastings, showed an older African-American man in the middle of a dirt street, children running around him and tugging at his clothes. In his upraised hand he held a handbell. I was intrigued. What was going on in this picture? I leaned in. How could I not?

Same Path, Different Light

Steve · May 16, 2010 · 3 Comments

daisy — Daisy fleabane. Photo by Steve GIvens

“A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.” – Dorothea Lange

I heard this quote about a month or so ago on NPR during a great feature on Dorothea Lange, the influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Google her and look at some of her images – they are simply amazing and you will no doubt recognize one or two of them from history textbooks and documentaries about the Depression. But her quote about “learning to see” is what stuck with me most after I finally turned the radio off (it was one of those “driveway moments” that NPR brags about).