Givens Creative

Life at the intersection of faith, nature, history and art

Christian

Today’s Word: Community

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Taizé service at Chapel of the Holy Cross, Sedona. SJG photo

Last week while in Sedona, we attended a Taizé prayer service at the simple yet majestic Chapel of the Holy Cross, built into the side of a mountain just outside of Sedona in the mid-1950s. [For more information on the chapel and its designer — a woman architect who was a student of Frank Lloyd Wright — see an article I wrote when we visited two years ago.] Like the chapel itself, Taizé services are simple in their elegance and designed to draw all Christians into communion with each other and God, regardless of denominational lines. Founded in the aftermath of World War II in Taizé, France, the Taizé community was founded as a “parable of community that wants its life to be a sign of reconciliation between divided Christians and between separated peoples.” The services are simple and employ both silent meditation and simple mantra-style chants that are easily sung regardless of language barriers.

Taizé service at Chapel of the Holy Cross, Sedona. SJG photo

That Monday evening outside Sedona, both locals and visitors filled the small chapel, singing with the guitar-led choir, listening to scripture (Philippians 1:1-7) and, one by one, placing our prayers as small votive candles around a crucifix lying on the floor near the altar. In the presence of these connected strangers, I found that our simplest actions of devotion and prayer can seem the most meaningful. No thundering music or pulpit-pounding preacher this night, but rather uncommon acts of faith and quiet prayer drew and held us together, like a small chapel clinging to the side of an impossibly beautiful landscape, beckoning us to forgive ourselves and one another and bind ourselves to a God who knows us despite our creeds and places of birth. Amen, I whispered, the simplest of words that reminds me to simply believe.

Ask yourself in silence: Where do I find community? Where have I found community in the most unlikely place?

For more information on Taizé, visit their multi-lingual website.

Today’s Word: Balance

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Perfectly balanced Sedona sunset. SJG photo

In a life full of discernment and daily choices — very often involving life or death whether we realize it or not — how do we position ourselves to best make those decisions so they are both in line with God’s will and beneficial for our lives and the lives of those around us?  The answer, St. Ignatius of Loyola tells us in his spiritual exercises, is balance.

That kind of balance requires a steady and sturdy fulcrum. For Christian believers, this solid, centering rock is our Triune — loving, healing and forgiving — God.  This balance and reliance on God demands that we not set our own values and demand that God fall in line with them but, rather, that we hold our lives in balance before all the things we have to choose from — many of them seemingly equally good — allowing God to gently nudge us in one direction or the other. Everything we do, every choice we make and every experience we receive, is a chance to reflect to the world a little of what we have received from God as he leads and directs our lives. How we approach our days, how we respond to difficulties and tough choices, speaks God’s name and professes God’s perfect love. Perfect balance.

Ask yourself in silence: On what is my life centered and balanced? When does my life feel off kilter?

Today’s Word: Fog

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The fog begins to clear on Rice Lake. SJG photo

I woke up yesterday morning on Rice Lake near Whitewater, Wisconsin. Just down the hill from the house I knew there was a beautiful lake with a handful of tiny islands dotting the distant shore. I knew the trees on that far side offered a mosaic of greens, yellows, reds and oranges. I knew fish were jumping and that ducks and geese were still coming and going, slowly making their way south. But I knew all those things from memory and faith in the unseen, for a white veil of fog had fallen in the early morning on the world outside the window and I couldn’t see a thing.

My view from the window yesterday is an apt metaphor for our lives of faith, for “we walk by faith and not by sight” as Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians (5:7). How often — perhaps especially when we’re facing difficulties, stress or sickness — do we feel as if we’re cautiously and haltingly trudging through life blinded by a fog of unknowing? There’s no way to go it alone, no way to safely wander and explore, knowing that we might take a tumble down a nearby hill or off a waiting cliff. Our lives of faith don’t call for foolish bravado; they call for childlike trust, holding the hand of the one who calls us by name and leads us into the fog, who knows every nook and cranny of our lives like the back of his hand.

Ask yourself in silence: When was the last time you felt you were walking in a fog? Could you find God’s hand in the midst of the mist?

Today I ask for special prayers for reader Dotty Z’s husband, Joe, who is suffering in multiple ways right now, including cancer and heart disease. God knows who and where he is, so tonight offer up a prayer for peace and healing. Dotty writes: “If someone out there would just say one little prayer, God will walk us through the tough days ahead. We are praying there will be something to help his weak heart. The tests — echo and stress —were not good but I pray there is enough left to have stints or meds to strengthen the muscle.  Stay well and let’s all pray for each other every day…”

Today’s Word: Poetic

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Looking Jesus in the Eye. SJG photo.

“The Church must be a poetic community,” theologian Walter Brueggemann once wrote, meaning — in my mind anyway — that if we are going to reach the people around us with the Gospel, we’re going to have to move beyond the standard rhetoric and capture their imaginations through our creativity, poetry, music, and art. We must be able to offer more them more than dogma and argument. We must be able to show and tell them who Jesus is in new and creative ways, following the lead of Jesus himself, who taught most effectively not with shouts of indignation but rather with simple parables and gentle acts of hospitality and healing. Jesus taught by feeding people and by looking them in the eye when he spoke. In the Beatitudes, he reached them by giving them a beautifully poetic list of ways they could live more blessed lives. Like a good rabbi, Jesus taught using the power of story.

Jesus can be hard to see and find in our busy, self-centered world. So it’s the job of the Church — that’s us — to prayerfully, gently and clearly bring him into the light of day in the midst of darkness. By telling his story in new ways and by relating the stories of our own lives and the movement of God in them, we stand as poetic, creative witnesses to the life of Christ, professing a loving, forgiving God who is Immanuel, who is “God with us,” who is the Incarnate, living, creative and creating Word.

Ask yourself in silence: How can I tell the story of Jesus in a fresh, creative, artistic way? How can I make Jesus and his good news understandable and attractive to someone who desperately needs to hear the story?

Today’s Word: Creative

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My daughter, Jenny, creating some music with friends Phil Cooper, left, and Gerry Kasper. SJG photo.

When we create art — at whatever level of expertise and of whatever kind — we reflect the work of the Creator, the One who put that creative spark in our gut. I have friends who create music, paintings, photography, quilts, poetry, plays, novels and many other types of work that would just remain ideas if not for the effort and commitment they put into their art and the inspiration that comes from somewhere deep within them. For the creative arts may be “inspired,” but if the idea never comes to life and no one experiences it, then what good is it? It’s like walking through an art museum or gallery and thinking, “I could have done that!” Well maybe so, but you didn’t. Someone else had the idea and took the leap.

"All You Need is Love," acrylic and paper on canvas by Steve Givens.

The creative arts, at least for many of us who profess a Creator God, are acts of faith. When we dare to create, when we “step out the boat,” we move from safety and comfort into an area of uncertainty, for when we begin to create we don’t always know where we are going to end up. The poem begins with a single word or line. The song with a note. The painting with a sketch or with putting brush to canvas. So it’s easy enough to talk ourselves out of creating because we think we’re not talented or creative enough. But our call as artists and people of faith is not to artistic perfection but to genuine and authentic response to the call. We are called to find some glimmer of truth and beauty in the world around us — to capture the movement and color of God — and respond, to reflect that back to those around us. Not everyone finds God in the same way. As artists and creative people, our vocation is to gently lead those who view or read or hear our art to look a little closer at the world around them and see for themselves that something beautiful, loving and eternal is waiting  their notice.

Ask yourself in silence: What could I create today? How can I turn a creative gesture into both prayer for myself and a guidepost to God for others?

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