Spirituality

With the Faith of a Child (with video)

Steve · June 11, 2020 · 2 Comments

Jason Parker Deffenbaugh. He smiles when I sing to him, and that can be the best part of my day.

Earlier this week, I was holding my youngest grandson, Jason. He was born prematurely back in January and weighed in at less than four pounds. Five months later, he is up over eleven pounds and doing well. As I held him, I thought about what it means to have the kind of “childlike faith” that Jesus asks of us. What does it really mean?

I don’t think it means unquestioning or naïve faith, first of all, nor does it mean blind faith that leaves no room for reason and a developed mind that questions. The faith of a child, I think, is about living in abundance and potential. It’s about trusting that we will be provided for and that from that abundance comes the belief that all things are possible through Christ.

Children believe they can accomplish anything they set their minds to because they haven’t yet been given a false sense of their own limitations. That will come soon enough. But while they are children, their “enough” is being held and fed, comforted and protected, playing and sharing and quickly forgiving, even when they don’t understand the world and all it holds.

And isn’t that the kind of faith Jesus wants us to have?

Today, I offer a new song and video created just this week with my songwriting partner and friend John Caravelli. Between us, we have eleven granddaughters, and this is a song for them, their joy, their resilience, their faith.

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.

A Week of Psalms

Steve · May 23, 2020 · 6 Comments

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.

Kindness must follow faith

Steve · May 16, 2020 · 4 Comments

This originally appeared as a “Faith Perspectives” column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on May 15, 2020.

During a safe and appropriately socially distanced online gathering recently, singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer had this to say about what is required during this time of fear, confusion and isolation: “Kindness is love’s country cousin. It shows up and does the dishes without asking. Kindness —not grand gestures — will save the world. Love is big and hard to get our arms around. Kindness is human sized and changes everything.”

I paused for several weeks before considering how I might write about all that is going on (and not going on) in the world right now. After all, what could I say about the Corona virus and its effects on society that hasn’t been said in a hundred different ways by a thousand different writers? After a few days of such pondering, I landed on the need for the kind of kindness that is “human sized and changes everything.”

“Being kind” is, on one hand, obvious and simple. We teach it to both our toddlers and our dogs. But it is, on the other hand, perhaps the very best we have to offer right now, and it seems to be showing up in abundance. People are finding creative and appropriate ways to reach out in kindness and care for each other, even though they are — and must be — isolated from each other. Social media, for all its shortcomings, is at least giving us access to these moments of light right now. We are seeing nearly constant examples of those who are doing what they can to make the world a little brighter and connected in a time of uncertainty and distance.

Musicians are posting free “concerts” from their living rooms and kitchens. Publications are giving free access to content. People are supporting local restaurants and other businesses while maintaining that safe and critical distance. Churches and ministers are offering worship services, counseling and spiritual direction virtually, and the flock is lining up to use them.

And, of course, there are those who continue to provide direct services to those in need because they continue to respond to their chosen vocations, even knowing that it puts them and their families at risk. First responders and medical professionals head up that list, but those who stock our grocery stores, take away our trash, keep us informed and repair our infrastructure also deserve our gratitude. The next time we are tempted to complain about what’s not on the shelves, let’s look around and see everything that is. And let’s remember to leave enough for the next person in line.

For Christians, “being kind” is an imperative response to the gift of love we say we have received through Jesus. If we really believe that the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our hearts, souls and minds and to love our neighbors as much as (or more than) we love ourselves, then we must be prepared to do the very best and most kind things we can do right now. For most of us, that means staying inside and using the technology we have to stay in touch, to deliver comfort, to be creative and shed a little light on a world that has grown a little darker.

For those who must leave home and family to serve the rest of us, know that our gratitude and prayers go with you into the dark recesses of the human pain and suffering you must encounter and touch. We could use a few grand gestures of love and change right now, but let’s not give up on the small kindnesses that will continue to save the world.

So stay where you need to be. Wash your hands. Follow the rules. Feel our prayers, and be held in the palm of God’s hand.

Being There: Who Do You Say I Am?

Steve · May 11, 2020 · 3 Comments

In today’s reflection, based on Mark 8, I ask you to imagine yourself one of Jesus’ new followers. You’re not sure about him yet, not sure what it is you’re supposed to believe and feel. But your eyes are wide with wonder and your heart is open. Pray with this reflection, maybe read it a couple of times, and then ask yourself the question that Jesus asks his followers: Who do you say I am?

If you’d like, and if it will aid you in prayer, you can listen to this recording I made reading the reflection: Mark 8 — Who Do You Say I am?

Written and narrated by Steve Givens
Music composed and performed by Phil Cooper

You are not what anyone would call a disciple of this man yet, but here you are trailing along behind him and his followers, listening to his stories and staring open-mouthed and astounded as the most unusual and unbelievable things happen. You don’t know what to believe for sure, but there’s something going on here that is beyond anything you have ever experienced before. Something about him that urges you to follow just to see what happens next. If nothing else, he’s one heck of a teacher and magician. So you guess you’re a follower in that sense. You’re the quiet one at the back of the pack.

Just ahead, you hear his disciples bickering. Evidently, no one remembered to bring any bread to eat and there seems to be some confusion about whose responsibility that was. The teacher turns around and looks at them, disappointment on his face, as if he is dealing with a group of unruly children.

“Why are you worried about bread?” he says to them. “Don’t you know we’re about bigger things here? Don’t you get it? Have you forgotten a few days ago when I took five loaves of bread and fed 5,000 people? Do you not remember the baskets and baskets of leftovers?”

They stand looking at him with sorry, embarrassed eyes.

You remember, you think to yourself. That was your first day with him. Seven baskets of leftovers. That was some trick.

“We didn’t forget,” one of them says, “But we didn’t want to bother you again…”

“We don’t expect miracles every day,” says another, laughing.

“It’s not about the bread,” he responds, his eyes soft now with compassion. “It’s about the trust. Trust me. Every day is a miracle.”

You arrive at Bethsaida. As you have seen happen in just about every town he enters, he is quickly surrounded by people wanting something from him. They want a story. They want to see a miracle. They want to be healed or see him heal. They want proof. As do you. This never gets old, you think.

Up through the crowd comes a trio of people pulling behind them a blind man on a rope. He stumbles behind them, his arms stretched out in front of himself, grasping at air and preparing for any abrupt stop. “Please, heal our friend,” they say.

Jesus turns and looks at the man, compassion and love on his face. First, he unties the rope and takes him by the hand, leading him back out of the village and away from the noise and crowds.

Then he does the most remarkable thing. He spits in his own hands and then gently rubs the spittle into the man’s eyes. He embraces the man’s head, cradling it like a treasure. You inch closer, longing to hear what is being said. Jesus asks the man: “Do you see anything?”

The man looks up and his once-sightless face glows red-orange in the late afternoon soon. “I see men,” he says, looking around at you and the disciples, smiling and trying to find the right words for something he has never seen before but only imagined. “They look like walking trees.”

Jesus smiles at his words and stretches out his arms once again. “I can make it perfect,” he says, once again taking the man’s face into his hands. The man clings to Jesus, as if he doesn’t ever want the embrace to end, afraid that his lack of faith might push him back into darkness.

“Go straight home and show yourself to your family,” Jesus says. “See them perfectly.”

The man backs away from Jesus and the look on his face tells you all you need to know. He sees you. He sees you looking at him. “How can this be?” he whispers to you, and you have no response worthy of what you have just experienced.

You are on the move again, walking in the wilderness and headed out for the villages around Caesarea Philippi. As you and the others pause and gather around him, Jesus asks: “Who do the people say I am?”

One of his disciples answers, “Some are confused and say you are ‘John the Baptizer. Some say Elijah. Others say you are one of the prophets.”

“And you,” he says, looking straight at you, the quiet one at the back of the pack. Who do you say I am?”