Prayer

The Hard Spiritual Work of Gratitude

Steve · October 14, 2012 · 4 Comments

francis — St. Francis in prayer. Photo by SJG

With November on the horizon, our thoughts almost naturally turn to ideas of the Thanksgiving holiday and, soon after, advent and Christmas. It’s a beautiful time of year, filled with family gatherings, wonderful food, parties and gifts. But let’s be truthful: it’s also a time of almost unrelenting schedules and stress.

How are we going to get all the shopping done, prepare for the onslaught of relatives, attend parties and school concerts, clean the house, take care of end of the year business, and on and on and on? It’s a time of year when we have so much to be thankful for and, in reality, so little time to spend being thankful.

Playing Hide and Seek with God

Steve · September 30, 2012 · 2 Comments

“So I said, ‘here I am.’” Psalm 40:8

Railroad tracks in North St. Louis. SJG photo.

Childhood memories are strange and powerful things.

Visiting with a woman in hospice care earlier this year, she could vividly recollect ice skating across Fairgrounds Park’s frozen lake in North St. Louis in the 1920s, even though she couldn’t tell me what she had for lunch an hour before I arrived. Perhaps sometimes God gives us just the memories we need, those that bring a little peace and joy.

God’s Eyes are on His Beloved

Steve · September 22, 2012 · 7 Comments

“But you do see; you take note of misery and sorrow;you take the matter in hand.” Psalm 10:14

JOn — My favorite photo of toddler Jon (about 1990). SJG photo.

I can still vividly recall the scene. I am watching from a distance as my son, Jon, who is two or three, is running around on a playground. He is so immersed in his play that I can see joy oozing from his pores. He is beginning to experience the wonder and power of independence from the parental units, a chance to be on his own and test his own abilities as a human. How fast can I run, he wonders. How high can I climb?

But then he falls hard, tripped up by an untied shoelace or perhaps just the clumsy feet of a toddler. He gets up and looks around. Seeing no one, he resumes playing, unwilling to give up his freedom. But as I walk toward him he sees me and, you guessed it, begins crying and pointing at his knees. Apparently, he didn’t know he was hurt until he saw someone who cared, someone who would scoop him up and take care of him.

Solitude: Finding your own space and time

Steve · March 10, 2012 · 12 Comments

(The third of a three-part posting about seeking times and places of solitude in the midst of our busy lives)

“I should do myself a favor and memorize this line: To reach for God is to reach God….I should trust that God is present to me anytime I stretch out my feeble little spiritual arms.” -Fr. Mark Thibodeaux, SJ (from “Armchair Mystic”)

Shadow — Meeting Myself on the Path, Steve Givens

“To reach for God is to reach God.” Those are words of hope and optimism. For when it comes to prayer, we can sometimes think, “I just don’t know where to begin,” or perhaps, “What if I’m doing this wrong?” Fr. Thibodeaux’s quote is a good reminder that we can’t go wrong, if we only just reach out. God will see our effort and draw us the rest of the way to his presence.

So finding solitude in the midst of our busy lives is, first and foremost, always an intentional activity. We must choose to go away to a place in the country, to a retreat house, to a to a chapel, to a walking trail. Or we must choose to create a space of sacred solitude within our everyday lives, which is where we find ourselves most of the time. Those are the places that I write about today.

Solitude: Quieting the world and ourselves (part two)

Steve · March 3, 2012 · 6 Comments

(The second of a three-part posting about seeking times and places of solitude in the midst of our busy lives)

“A life without a lonely place, that is, a life without a quiet center, easily becomes destructive.” – Henri Nouwen

churchlight — Light at the Center of a California Mission, by Steve Givens

We all need times of solitude in our lives for three interconnected reasons: We need to quiet the world. We need to quiet ourselves. And we need to do both of those things so we can better listen for God as he whispers our names and quietly lets us know just what it is we’re supposed to be doing with our lives.

Many years ago, I attended a retreat given by a Marianist priest and writer named Quentin Hakenewerth. With one simple lesson and a flip chart showing a set of concentric circles, he taught me something I have never forgotten and which has largely shaped my approach to prayer and seeking the will of God for the past 30 years.

He said, in essence, that the world (the outermost and largest circle on his chart) is a big, busy, noisy place. It screams at us to pay attention. With the general noise pollution of the world and with a constant barrage of advertising and media and angry, yelling people of all sorts, the world just never shuts up. Never. And we do it to ourselves, too. We fill every possible moment of silence with noise – with mindless talk, with music, with phone calls and emails and texts and tweets and Facebook postings. Even if some of these things make no audible sound, they are noise nevertheless and obstacles to our solitude and peace.