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Today’s Word: Self-Image

Steve · December 28, 2014 · 2 Comments

mile — Mile High footbridge, Grandfather Mountain, NC. SJG photo.

It’s that time of year again. We gaze into the mirror and, with the prospect of a new year and a new opportunity for beginning again facing us, we start to think of all the ways we can improve ourselves. And I’m all for it. I’ve lost some weight the past six months and gotten into better eating habits and an exercise routine I enjoy. Taking care of ourselves — physically, mentally, spiritually, professionally — is important.

But even as I think about how much more weight I want to lose and what my exercise goals for the next year should look like, I am nudged deep inside by a voice that says, “there’s more.”

Okay, I think. More. Hmm. So I start making a self-improvement list. A class perhaps. Cook more, eat out less. See family more often. Start that journal again. Walk further. Maybe get back on the bike. The list can grow long, as we all know. But then I hear a voice once again, and this time it whispers, “Maybe less would be better.”

Self-care is critical if we want to spend many healthy years with the ones we love and if we want time to do the work to which we feel called. The danger, so to speak, is not letting ourselves slide down the slippery slope toward a self-image that is based entirely on, well, ourselves. For we are more than what we look like in the mirror and how far we walk or run. We are more than our educations and professional relationships. We are more than what we appear to be.

Mile High Footbridge, Grandfather Mountain, NC. SJG photo

We are at our best when we give ourselves to others in service. We are at our best when we are able to empty ourselves of the bounty and noise of life and focus on the still, small voice of the One who calls us to be more (and less) in different ways than the mirror or the scale could ever show us. For God sees us differently than we can ever see ourselves.

Today, even as I think of ways I can improve my health in the coming year, I recall the words of St. Francis of Assisi who said, “I am who I am in the eyes of God—nothing more and nothing less.”

Ask yourself in silence: As I make my New Year’s resolutions, where’s God?

Today’s Word: Green

Steve · October 12, 2014 · 4 Comments

This morning I almost decided NOT to go on the long Sunday morning walk around Creve Coeur Lake that has recently become my habit. It was gray, dreary and a bit cold after raining much of the night, although it wasn’t raining at the moment as I stared out of my bedroom window at the deck and the yard and the woods beyond. What the heck, I finally thought, the worst that could happen is that I’ll get a little wet. I got dressed and drove the quick few miles to the park.

My soundtrack for much of the walk was Rich Mullins’ wonderful and eclectic “A Liturgy, a Legacy and a Ragamuffin Band” album, which begins with the late-Mullins mumbling into the studio microphone: “Bear with me everybody, I’m barely ready to do this…” I felt sort of the same. But let’s move on, I thought.

The first part of the walk was as dull as the steel-gray lake surface reflecting the cloudy and overcast sky above. “Just keep your head down and walk,” I thought to myself, “it’s good exercise, but not so much about the view today.” I circled my way through the woods along the back stretch, walked the length that runs under the highway overpass and finally came to the long homestretch about three-quarters of the way around the approximately 4-mile loop.

About that time, Mullins’ “The Color Green” came in through my ear buds. It is perhaps my favorite song for walking through nature and includes these picture-painting lyrics:

Be praised for all Your tenderness by these works of Your hands,
Suns that rise and rains that fall to bless and bring to life Your land.
Look down upon this winter wheat and be glad that You have made
Blue for the sky and the color green that fills these fields with praise.

No blue sky today, I thought. But then I looked, perhaps for the first time that day, at the green. The green of the grass and the trees exploded into my vision and I was taken aback by the utter beauty and contrast of the wet green against the coldness of the rest of the landscape. I woke up, it seems. It’s not drab, I thought, it’s just God telling me to remember that beauty lies all around us, all the time, if we’ll only wake up and pay attention.

And then, as if on cue from the great director in the sky (and I kid you not nor do I exaggerate the perfect timing on this), there was a flash of brown and white in the corner of my right eye. I turned my head just in time to see a bald eagle gliding to rest on a tree branch not 50 feet in front of me, clutching in its talons two (two!) approximately two-pound fish, obviously and recently pilfered from the lake. My hand went to my chest. I could not move. Seriously, God?

“Seriously, Steve. This is what I do, day in and day out.”

Ask yourself in silence: When was the last time you were totally caught off guard by the wonder and power of God?

Note: As I was writing this, I searched online for the lyrics to the song to double check them, and while I was there ran across this video of Rich Mullins singing the song while walking through a drab, gray Irish landscape, with contrasting scenes in black and white and vibrant color. Great minds and all that. Enjoy the video by clicking on the highlighted text above.

Blessing: For an Early Saturday Morning

Steve · September 20, 2014 · 13 Comments

May the sun, which is yet to show its molten face, greet us today with all the warmth and light we need to bring us fully alive and fully awake, ready to meet our day with purpose and love for those who surround us;

May it cast shadows across our faces and hands to remind us of all that needs to be done, all that needs to be healed, all that needs to be offered up to the giver and taker of life;

May this day bring us what we need and nothing more, for it is often in the excess of desire that we lose our very selves and our connection to the Divine Provider who knows better than we do the difference between want and need, who will give us our daily bread in exact proportion to our reliance and trust of the giver;

May those who enter our lives today — new friends and old, colleagues and strangers — end the day changed for the better because our shadows crossed theirs, because our lives touched in some small, significant way that we may never know.

May we live today knowing this power we hold to make small dents in the armored lives of others, that we possess in our hands and in our words the ability to make change and draw the attention of the world to the source of all light, the one sun who casts shadows too many to count across the surface of our days.

Amen.

Today’s Word: Climb

Steve · February 16, 2014 · 1 Comment

Since I was a child, I Ioved the story in Luke’s gospel (Luke 19: 1-10) of Zacchaeus the tax collector who, because he was so short, ran ahead of the crowd following Jesus and did a surprising, almost childlike thing — he climbed a Sycamore tree so he could get a better view and try to get Jesus’ attention. The child in me could relate, especially because I was a “wee little one” and always one of the smallest in my class until I was about 15 and had a growth spurt. Some of you will, indeed, remember this childhood Sunday School song:

Zacchaeus was a wee little man, a wee little man was he.
He climbed up in a Sycamore tree for the Lord he wanted to see.
And as the Savior passed that way, he looked up in the tree,
And he said, “Zacchaeus, you come down.”
For I’m going to your house today…for I’m going to your house today.

Zacchaeus is rewarded for his effort. Jesus sees him, calls him by name, and then invites himself to Zacchaeus’ house for dinner. This leaves the crowd stunned, for Jesus does something we will see him do over and over in the scriptures: He dines with sinners. He prefers the company of those who need him and his healing and transforming ways to the pious and self-righteous who just want to be seen in his company.

Today, I pray that my inmost desire is still the view from that tree, sitting in that gnarly crook awaiting the one who knows me by name, knows all of my shortcomings and failures and loves and accepts me as I am. It is my passionate desire to hear that voice say, “Come, let’s spend some time together,” because I know that time of presence can take away all my other false and misplaced desires. To hear my name called by the one who created me is to know I am loved; it is to know my purpose, my foundation.

Ask yourself in silence: What do I need to overcome and rise above in order to see Jesus more clearly? What’s blocking my view of God?

Today’s Word: Connection

Steve · December 22, 2013 · 1 Comment

adorationshepherds — The Adoration of the Shepherds, Mattia Preti, 1613-1699.

This event we are about to celebrate we believe to be genuine — a historic moment in time filled with real people and exact places (even if we cannot pinpoint those exact places 2,000 years later). This story of Bethlehem, we believe, is authentic, as filled with truth as it is with the pungent smells of a stable. But why this moment in this time? How and why could this be? The Christmas story is both human and divine, and the divine lies in the “why” of the story. If we cannot fully understand the why, perhaps we can at least kneel in its presence, recognizing the holy — somehow — when we see it.

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“Who’s there?” he calls out, hearing me trip on a loose stone at the side of the stable.

I step into the light of the fire the man has made. They both look at me and smile, for I am just a child and no threat. I am speechless.

“Come closer,” she says, “and see my baby. Have you ever seen a new-born baby?”

I nod. “My little sister,” I say.

“Ah, well this one’s a boy,” the man says. “Just like you. You were like this once.”

I come closer, and as the flames of the fire flicker and dart across their faces, I see the child, his eyes still wet, glistening and open wide, seemingly taking me in just as I am taking him in. He holds my gaze, and I have this sense of connection, as if I know him or need to, even though that makes no sense even to my 12-year-old sense of reason. I can’t move or speak. The old folks in the temple speak of awe, and I realize this might be what they’re talking about.

It’s like watching the sun set over the hills on the outside of town where I tend the sheep with my father and uncles. I don’t know where it goes every night but I know it will rise again in the morning, and I am strangely moved by its beauty, by its ever-different colors and movement. It’s like the splash of cold water on my face or down my throat, more refreshing and life giving than I could ever imagine when I thirst for it. There’s something beyond the ordinary and obvious here.

It’s just the sun. Just a cup of water. Just a baby. But I am at once both afraid and at ease, confused and clarified. I feel as if I belong to this child and he belongs to me, like there is a strand of fine thread, like a spider’s silk, that joins us — so light that it cannot be seen and so strong it can never be broken. And although I can’t say exactly why, I kneel and cry.

Ask yourself in silence: What connects you to God? To Jesus? How can you make this Christmas truly a time to reconnect?