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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.

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.

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.

Songs of Comfort: On Eagle’s Wings

Steve · April 22, 2020 · 8 Comments

Note: I interviewed Fr. Jan Michael Joncas a few weeks ago about the enduring power and comfort of his song, “On Eagle’s Wings” for Catholic Digest magazine, which went out of print not long after the assignment. So with Fr. Joncas’ permission, I am posting the article here.

Fr. Jan Michael Joncas, courtesty photo.

When Fr. Jan Michael Joncas composed the song “On Eagle’s Wings” four decades ago, he was trying to comfort a friend whose father had just died of a heart attack. He wrote the song on guitar in the days following the death and then performed it at the funeral, and that might have been the end of the story. But God, Fr. Joncas said in a recent interview, had other plans.

“It’s just amazing to me,” said Joncas, 68, a prolific composer, priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and artist-in-residence and research fellow in Catholic Studies at St. Thomas University. “I had no way of knowing, first of all, how it got distributed so that people could use it. But by now, it’s made its way across most of the English-speaking world and into other denominational hymnals.”

Even higher-profile uses of the song include recordings by superstars like Josh Groban and Michael Crawford, as well as its performance at the memorial service for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing victims and at the funeral of opera singer Luciano Pavarotti.

“I never expected anything like this to happen,” said Fr. Joncas, quarantined at home in St. Paul, “but as I’ve grown older, I’ve grown more and more comfortable with it. I tell my friends that to even have written one piece that has allowed this many people to sing their faith is an incredible gift. Even if nothing else I’ve written ever has that same kind of distribution or power, I’m still happy with it. God does what God wants with this stuff. I am just more and more amazed at how God can use things that you might not ever have thought of to advance whatever God’s intentions are.”

And although it’s become one of a handful of contemporary hymns that have become staples at funerals, Fr. Joncas believes its scriptural roots in Psalm 91, as well as in Exodus and the Gospel of Matthew, make it a song of comfort for the many confusing and fearful times of our lives, as well as for ordinary and joyful times like baptisms and weddings.

“I’m going to use my academic background here,” he said, laughing quietly. “It’s the multivalence [ability to have many values and meanings] of any kind of canonical text scriptures that give them really different importance or different meanings based on the context in which they are used. So the context for ‘Eagle’s Wings’ has been in most people’s experience of funerals, but it’s not limited to that.”

The fact that the song can often make people cry – not because it’s sad but because it’s so comforting — is a gift of the Spirit, said Fr. Joncas, who in 2003 was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the nervous system. He was paralyzed for several years and unable to compose. He wrote about his experiences of the disease in “On Eagle’s Wings: A Journey Through Illness Toward Healing,” released in 2017 by Twenty-Third Publications. It was that experience, he says, that allowed him to move beyond his Midwestern stoicism.

“The Eastern traditions talk about the gift of tears, which I think is really accurate,” he said. “I’m a now-beyond-middle-aged, Caucasian Midwesterner, which means that expressions of deep emotion just don’t come to me naturally. After my experience with Guillain-Barré, I found that I’m much more able to trust the feelings, to let them come out, and to connect empathically with people.”

It is, perhaps, the song’s central and vivid image of being “held in the palm of his hand” that gets us every time. It’s a physical impossibility, but it’s the emotional driver of the song. And that’s the power of scripture, Fr. Joncas says.

“One of the things I teach is that psalms are the cries of the human heart, that even though these are ancient Jewish lyrics, they have this wonderful ability to enter very deeply into human experience and then allow that experience to become a way of encountering God.”

At this moment in time, when the world is wracked by disease and the fear of the unknown, Fr. Joncas suggests that leaning on ancient texts like the Psalms can be a healing salve precisely because there’s nothing new under the sun.

“Although this [pandemic] is certainly unprecedented in our memory, there are people who can point to the Spanish influenza right at the beginning of the 20th century. As a historian, I can say, ‘well, it’s not the black death where a third of Europe simply disappeared over the course of a couple of years.’ We’ve faced this kind of difficulty before. But I think the scary part is we’ve got so much good science and technology that we thought we’d be protected from anything like this. So it really pulls the rug out from underneath our expectations.

“When that happens, I think going back to texts from our heritage is important, and songs of comfort remind us of a time when we have already experienced God’s care, and it’s kind of an act of trust that God will continue to care for us.”

In the palm of his hand.