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A Week of Psalms

Steve · May 23, 2020 · 6 Comments

On a recent pandemic walk.

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.

Video Post: Psalm for a Day

Steve · March 23, 2019 · 4 Comments

Almost a year ago (March 31, 2018) I posted a reflection about “waiting” during Holy Week, and that post included a new song I composed and performed with my two musical partners, John Caravelli and Phil Cooper. A year later, we now have a video to go with the song, so I thought I would post it here.

Sit with it, pray with it, let it be a reminder that God is present throughout all of our days and nights…

Psalm for a Day

When the morning sun
Defeats the darkest night
I will hope in you, Lord
I will hope in you.
When the sparrow flies
And the flower blooms
I will hope in you, Lord
I will hope in you.

I will accept the peace beyond
All my understanding
And I will find you there
I will trust in you
I will trust in you.

When the evening calms
And the madness fades
I will look to you, Lord
I will look to you.
When the setting sun
Sheds its final light
I will look for you, Lord
I will look for you.

When the darkness falls
And I close my eyes
I will rest in you, Lord
I will rest in you.
I will rest in you, Lord
I will rest in you.

© 2018 Potter’s Mark Music.

Words and music by John Caravelli, Phil Cooper and Steve Givens.

The Players

John Caravelli, acoustic guitar and BGVs
Phil Cooper, piano and BGVs
Steve Givens, lead vocals

Life and Death on Display: Midwinter at the Missouri Botanical Garden

Steve · January 11, 2019 · 6 Comments

The iconic Climatron and its reflecting pools. Opened in 1960, the Climatron was the first geodesic dome to be used as a plant conservatory. It was built following the principles of R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the geodesic system and has no interior support and no columns from floor to ceiling. It rises to 70 feet in the center, spans 175 feet in diameter at the base, has 1.3 million cubic feet, and encloses approximately 24,000 square feet, according to the Garden’s website. SJG photo.

“When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world.”  – John Muir

As I write this, St. Louis is in the midst of a winter snowfall that could leave somewhere between 6-12 inches of snow on the ground. It’s beautiful and all that, but I’m not amused.

Just a week ago, I spent several hours of an unseasonably warm day walking the grounds of one of our region’s storied treasures — the Missouri Botanical Garden, better and forever known to long-time St. Louisans as Shaw’s Garden. Named for the merchant and botanical enthusiast Henry Shaw, an Englishman who came to St. Louis in 1819 as an 18-year-old in search of customers for his hardware and cutlery business on the edge of the American wilderness, the “Garden” is today world renowned for its botanical richness and beauty, its architecture and the botanical knowledge its scientists continue to uncover on the grounds and at sites throughout the world.

[Read more…] about Life and Death on Display: Midwinter at the Missouri Botanical Garden

Goldfinches and God Arrive

Steve · June 10, 2018 · 12 Comments

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.

[Read more…] about Goldfinches and God Arrive

Pondering as Prayer and an Act of Faith

Steve · June 2, 2018 · 4 Comments

Waiting to Burst Open to the World. Newfields Museum, Indianapolis. SJG photo.

“The most fortunate are those who have a wonderful capacity to appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy.” – Abraham Maslow

A bright red male cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) just came to rest on a post outside the porch where I sit praying and writing this. It immediately grabs my attention, of course, because of its radiance and beautiful angular lines. I know its trilled, two-part call, for it’s a prayer of its own, a hymn of praise to the new day: cheer-cheer-cheer-purty-purty-purty. (Translation: Yay! It’s a beautiful new day!)

[Read more…] about Pondering as Prayer and an Act of Faith

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About the Author

Steve Givens is a retreat and spiritual director and a widely published writer on issues of faith and spirituality. He is also a musician, composer and singer who lives in St. Louis, Mo., with his wife, Sue. They have two grown and married children and five grandchildren.

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