Nature

Watching for Wisdom

Steve · November 8, 2020 · 10 Comments

I don’t know about you, but I could use a little wisdom. I’m sitting on my back porch this Sunday morning, enjoying the last remnants of warmer weather, relishing the chance to sit out here just a little longer before the days get colder and I have to stay inside for my time of morning coffee, reading and prayer.

It’s the day after the national election results and, no matter which side you were on or how your candidate did, you’re likely feeling some of the same uneasiness I’m feeling today. The battle will likely go on for a while. Social, racial and political unrest will continue. Violence and war rage. COVID continues its march across the world and seems to be resurging in some areas, including mine. My 29-year-old daughter, Jenny, and her husband and nine-month-old baby tested positive this week and are making their way through it. Sue and I would appreciate your prayers for Jenny, Zach and little Jason, who came into the world prematurely back in January and has been making steady progress ever since. He’s a fighter.

The world just seems a little disheveled these days. Maybe it always has been. But eight months of masking up and hunkering down are taking their toll on us all in myriad ways. I awoke (thankfully) this morning from a dream in which I had lost all control of my ability to make my own way through the world, and I’m still a little shaken by the whole ordeal. You don’t have to be Freud to figure out where those kinds of dreams come from.

No politician on either side of the aisle is going to make our lives right. Scientists, given time and the freedom to do their work, will ultimately bring us a vaccine, but it’s going to take some time. The country and the world can heal, but no one person or party is going to get us there. That job of healing belongs to us, and it is found in the ways each of us arise each day and set about our own work of moving and working in the world.

And where do we begin? Today’s reading from the Book of Wisdom is a start. Wisdom — deep understanding and knowledge — is not as elusive as we might believe. Rather, presented as a woman, she is ”resplendent, unfading and readily perceived”:

Resplendent and unfading is wisdom,
and she is readily perceived by those who love her,
and found by those who seek her.
She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire;
Whoever watches for her at dawn shall not be disappointed,
for he shall find her sitting by his gate.

I don’t have a “gate” these days but sitting on my back porch on this warm autumn day, I can yet imagine her out there among the falling leaves, beckoning for me to come a little closer. As I do, she offers me a seat beside her and gently reminds me where wisdom lies. For it is not the wisdom of the world and its leaders that we yearn and thirst for. That wisdom is always flawed and fleeting. Rather, her wisdom is a “knowing” that that lies deep within and comes only from the Creator. Wisdom lies in the beauty and truth of ancient scripture, yes, but also and perhaps more importantly in our deepest selves and in the sacredness of quiet times of solitude and prayer. Wisdom is not earned, nor can it be bought, sold or elected.

Wisdom is a gift that, like the peace in William Butler Yeats’ poem, “The Lake Isle of Innisfree,” comes, “dropping slow” for those wise enough to pause and wait.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

Wisdom is not to be found in the flurry of social media and a 24-hour news cycle, but it can be found by those who look for it in faith and in the knowledge that we are not it. It’s right there by the garden gate, next to the pile of red and yellow leaves.

Looking for Hope in all the Wrong Places

Steve · October 30, 2020 · 18 Comments

Sunset in southern Illinois. Photo by SJG.

It’s a cold and sunny day
here in St. Louis, following a number of days of cold and wet. Fall is sinking fast and winter is lurking in a tree somewhere not too far off, ready to sweep in like a red-tailed hawk on us unsuspecting varmints just doing our best to gather enough energy for the long road ahead.

On top of all that seasonal analogy, of course, is the general state of the world. We’re still hunkered down and masked up (at least we are in my family and circle of friends) against a sneaky and unforgiving virus that scientists are still struggling to understand and create a vaccine for. The national election is a few days off and, no matter which side you choose and vote for, you are likely feeling a sense of foreboding and even fear about the results and what it will mean for the United States in the foreseeable future. The country and the world seem to be in a state of unrest, incivility and hopelessness that many of us have never experienced.

It’s easy to lose hope, and perhaps it’s even easier to place our hope in the wrong things and people. I’m not here to tell you what’s right and what’s wrong. But since the theme of this blog has always been — broadly defined — about the intersection of God in our lives, I would like to make a few observations today and then leave you with a song and prayer of hope written by one of my very close friends and creative collaborators.

First, a few observations about hope:

No elected official and no political party’s platform will restore hope to us; we will have to find a way to do that ourselves.
If we hope for a better and more civil society, we will need to begin with the way we treat everyone around us and not look to leaders to emulate it. They will undoubtedly let us down.
If we hope to count ourselves among the friends of Jesus, we need to remember that when Jesus was asked about the greatest commandment, he didn’t lay out a complicated set of rules that told us if we could be in his inner circle or not. He just said: “Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” There’s hope in that.
And if you’re not sure who your neighbor is or think it is just those people who live in your neighborhood and look, love, believe and act like you, remember again the words of Jesus in the parable of the good Samaritan: “Our neighbors are those in need.”

There is, despite all evidence to the contrary, reason for hope right now, but only if we are are willing to recommit ourselves to the teachings and love of Christ and only if we’re willing to do the hard spiritual work of using those teachings of love, forgiveness and grace as the foundation for the way we interact with the world.

Still, we may find it hard to hope right now.

My friends and collaborators John Caravelli, left, and Phil Cooper, working out the arrangement of “It Looked Like Hope.”

“We have all been there,” writes my friend and collaborator John Caravelli. “You may call it emptiness, a dry spell or a dark night of the soul. Many of us are feeling that way right now and for good reason. We are in the midst of a deadly pandemic. This election season has been filled with uncivil discourse, reported to us incessantly via social media and a 24-hour news cycle. We are experiencing the consequences of racial divisions and climate change. Whatever the reason, we can all find ourselves feeling lost, angry or sad for periods in our lives.”

Acknowledging all those emotions and yet holding out for something better, John wrote a song not about the darkness but the light, about what we experience when the heaviness lifts.

That’s me, singing. Photo by John Caravelli.

“Very often, it’s not something you can really identify, but you know when it happens,” he says. “Suddenly, you notice more about what is right with the world and not only what is wrong. You see the beauty, the kindness, the love and the blessings. Despair gives way to hope, as it should.”

John wrote the song, “It Looked Like Hope,” about the experience of searching for hope in all the right places — in an autumn day, by the light of a full moon, in the dawning sun, in places where we might least expect to find it — and finding in those still moments not just beauty but the very face of God; of knowing, like Julian of Norwich, that “all will be well and all will be well.” That God is near, no matter how we’re feeling about it.

John let me do the singing while he played guitar, and our friend and third collaborator in the CCG songwriting trio, Phil Cooper, played the keyboard. John and I produced the video below, and I added a quote at the end from John’s favorite saint, St. Therese of Lisieux, which seemed to sum up how we were feeling, or at least hoping:

Above the clouds, the sky is always blue.

It Looked Like Hope

It’s been a long time coming
It’s been a long time tired
I’ve been lost and angry
As if some evil fates conspired.

Dark autumn wind blew all day
There was a hunter’s moon last night
It shone through my bedroom window
My bed glowed in the Lord’s moonlight.

And when the dawning sun broke through the clouds,
From my dream as I awoke,
I believe I saw the face of God
I believe it looked like hope.

But there’s an end to every dark road
The light will shine at last
A song of hope will deliver you
From a helpless lonely past.

I believe I heard the angels sing
A pure and simple song
To relieve me of the mournful tune
I’ve been singing much too long.

And when you least expect it
In a dream that you have, in a song that you hear
It’s then that you know
That all will be well, and all will be well
That your God is near, that your God is near

I believe I heard the angels sing
A pure and simple song
To relieve me of this mournful tune
I’ve been singing much too long.

And when dawning sun broke through the clouds,
From my dream as I awoke,
I believe I saw the face of God
I believe it looked like hope.
I believe I saw the face of God
I believe it looked like hope.

Leadership: Standing Still and Stepping Out

Steve · August 9, 2020 · 12 Comments

(First in a series of posts about being the kind of servant-leaders the world needs.)

Generally speaking, Sue and I enjoy sleeping through a good thunderstorm, but last night Mother Nature put on a display of thunder, lightning, driving wind and incessant downpour that made us jump out of bed a few times just to make sure the world hadn’t come to an end and our house wasn’t floating away.

Luckily, the morning brought some cool and calm, and we spent a good chunk of the morning on the back porch watching the gold and house finches, chickadees and hummingbirds visit our feeders out in their storm-soaked world. They seem no worse for the wear. The squirrels go on as ever, and that’s a story for another time. Someday soon, I intend to write an insightful essay about how to love the pesky “squirrels” in our lives. But as they just recently destroyed another birdfeeder, that time is not yet.

As always, there seems to be a lesson to be learned from the two great works of “scripture” in our lives — nature and the written word of God. Today, both are speaking to me of resilience and of the necessity of finding pieces and places of quiet and solitude in order to be effective leaders — at home, at work, in our churches and other organizations.

Today’s readings (for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time, for those of you who follow the liturgical cycle) give us two stories that resonate with the storm that was thrown at us last night. With last night’s tempest still lingering in the air and in my memory, we get stories from both the Old and New Testaments about finding God in the storm. The lessons are clear, especially for leaders who frequently find themselves trying to navigate themselves and others through the most recent cloudburst. (I almost wrote “unexpected cloudburst” but that would be poor leadership indeed, huh? For the storms, however far apart, will always return.)

In the first reading (1 Kings 19:9-13), we are reminded that sometimes being a leader requires us to channel our inner Elijah, standing at the mouth of a cave (at the front of our organizations?) amid strong winds, crushing rocks and consuming fire and still having the faith and the wherewithal to seek the quiet whisper of God’s voice that says, “Here I am, never mind the storm.” If we’re going to lead others effectively through rough times, we need to put ourselves in the right place to hear that voice. That “place” is a regular return to prayer — to quiet, to solitude, to “silence,” even when the world and those in it seem intent on screaming in our general direction.

In today’s gospel reading from Matthew 14, we read the well-known story of Jesus walking on the water to comfort his friends, stranded as they are in a storm-rocked boat in the Sea of Galilee. Jesus, compassionate leader and teacher that he is, leaves his needed place of quiet and solitude and prayer (see above!) and sets out to help his friends, walking on the waves to prove his point and get their attention. For the floundering, fearful, faltering followers (and future leaders) in the boat (that’s us, too) the lesson is obvious: When we’re getting hit hardest, when we are most confused about what to do, we need to look beyond our abilities to navigate a storm by ourselves. We need to watch for Jesus walking and working in the most unlikely of places — perhaps where we seem least likely to find him even though we ought to know better by now. Like Peter, we need just enough faith to step out of the boat and into the storm instead of cowering in the bow and waiting for it all to pass.

We seek God in quiet. We are nourished and calmed by that presence. But we also must be prepared to wade into the depths and find a hand waiting for us. Alone, it can all seem too much to bear. With that hand in ours, it’s still not a walk in the park on a sunny day. Storms always return. But that hand is enough. We never lead alone.

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.

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.