Christian

Today’s Word: Well

Steve · September 27, 2013 · 2 Comments

“You do not even have a bucket and the cistern is deep…” John 4:11

When I was a child, we spent many weekends at a “country place” owned by friends. This was back in the 1960s and early ‘70s, and the simple cabin on 80 acres in Gasconade County, Missouri didn’t have indoor plumbing or running water. So if we wanted water, we had to pump it from the old red cistern well, a crank-type contraption that usually required eight or nine good turns before water would come flowing from the spigot. I can still feel the handle in my hands; can still count the turns in my mind. You had to go deep, but it was worth the work and the wait. The water was cool, fresh and clean. I couldn’t wait until I was old enough to fetch water on my own, for that was a sure sign that I was growing up.

In John’s gospel, Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well and asks her for a drink, even though he had no bucket in which to catch the water. This story is really about Jesus offering her “living water,” that will make her never thirst again, but within that story, for me, is this idea of the well as prayer, as a place that we must go as we mature in Christ, a place that takes a little work and some patience, a place that delivers Jesus himself, becoming for us both the water and the well, the sustenance and the source. We must go to this source often, armed with a bucket to catch the life-giving water that comes from deep within, left there for us to fetch by the giver, the creator, the spirit of life. Or if not a bucket, at least outstretched hands ready to receive.

Ask yourself in silence: How often do I go to the well? What’s keeping me from going deep?

Today’s Word: Dust

Steve · September 18, 2013 · 2 Comments

According to Genesis, we’re supposed to remember that we are made of dust and to dust we will return. It’s a humbling, earthy thought, a reminder that our physical selves are little more than the stuff of earth. And according to Carl Sagan and other such trustworthy scientists, the dust we’re made of is actually stardust or “star stuff,” as Sagan once said. Every single atom in our bodies, it seems — including the calcium in our bones, the carbon in our genes, and the iron in our blood — was created in a star “billions and billions” of years ago. We live today because stars died, and I’m cool with that. The science of the earth is a reinforcement of my faith in a Creator-God, not a deterrent.

But we’re also more than this very old stardust because we are more than the physical bodies given to us so we can walk the earth and marvel at the beauty of it all. The Psalmist says that we have been made “little less than gods” and reminds us that God is “mindful” of us. We are, in fact, more “souls with bodies” than we are “bodies with souls,” although I realize that’s a bit of a word game. As believers, we are stuck with this duality of being both animal and beloved by God. Both natural and supernatural. A being of the earth and a child of God. Dust in the wind and heir of the Creator. In faith, we can embrace the two dimensions of our being and stand in awe and worship of a God who knows our dusty selves and loves us anyway.

Ask yourself in silence: Where’s my home? Do I feel more like a soul or a body?

Today’s Word: Labyrinth

Steve · September 15, 2013 · 8 Comments

Yesterday, while at an ecumenical day of reflection for spiritual directors, I had the opportunity to walk a labyrinth at Mercy Center in St. Louis. I’ve heard and read about labyrinths, but this was my first time experiencing one. Unlike an English garden maze, which I have experienced (and it was frustrating and a little scary…) a labyrinth offers only one path and it’s not out to trick you or get you lost. There are no high hedges to hem you in, only parallel rows of white rocks and a mulched walkway. There’s only one way in and one way out. So setting my own pace and simply following the path, I was moved — however rambling — toward the labyrinth’s peaceful center under a tree.

There’s nothing inherently mystical or sacred about a labyrinth, for it’s the intention and attention of the walker that makes the path holy. But I found it to be a gentle, guiding tool for meditation on the movement of God in my life, a meaningful melding of the spiritual and the physical.

labyrinth1 — Labyrinth at Mercy Center, St. Louis. SJG photo

It is, of course, an apt metaphor for our spiritual journey, for only by continuing to walk and trusting the path we are on and its Creator can we reach the center where God waits for us, patient as a friend and lover. And like the labyrinth, God is not out to trick us or set traps for us, for when following the way of Christ (“I am the way, the truth and the life…”) we do not need to worry about which way to turn, as long as we keep to the path. The call of the labyrinth, like the call of God, is to quiet our minds, to trust our steps and to move ever forward to the center, the unmoving mover of all.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I trust the path I am walking? If not, am I on the wrong path?

Today’s Word: Watching

Steve · September 7, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Watching for the Other. SJG photo

“Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus Deus Aderit.” (“Bidden or not bidden, God is present.”)
– Dutch theologian, humanist and priest Desiderius Erasmus

What does it say about us that we spend our lives looking for something that cannot be seen? How many times have I said or written, “watch for the movement of God in your life?” Some might think it means I’m a little off my rocker, or perhaps that I’m well intentioned but, of course, dead wrong. Foolish. Sadly mistaken. In some ways, I guess I can see their point. I might be wrong, after all. Perhaps there is no God to be found. No God to be seen or present in our lives.

So why waste my breath or blog space talking about all this God stuff and God’s movement in our lives? Because I can fathom no other way of living a loving, creative life. Because this “God,” this “other” keeps showing up in my life and in the lives of those around me. Because — rooted in divine love and the example of Christ — we choose to live lives of faith, hope and love, lives that take us beyond ourselves and embed us in the love and grace of the unmoved mover and the giver of life. We choose life in Christ, we choose belief in God, because we know it to be true by our own experiences. We know it somewhere deep.

God is not just a good idea, created by humans to indulge and comfort us. Neither is God “out there.” God — bidden or not bidden — is here and now, and if we are watchful we will catch glimpses of the Other as we walk and work through life. So we slow down, we pay attention, and we wait for those fleeting, sacred glances that sustain.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I watch for God in my life? When did I last see God?

Today’s Word: Seed

Steve · September 2, 2013 · Leave a Comment

harvest — Ferguson Farmer's Market, St. Louis. SJG photo.

My father used to grow vegetables from seed. Beginning in the dead of winter, he would plant seeds (some purchased from the Burpee catalog, some gathered from last year’s harvest) in small containers in our basement, lit and warmed from above by fluorescent lights. By spring, the plants were big enough to be replanted in our backyard garden. This was my first lesson in patience and growth. If we want to see the fruit (and vegetables) of our lives, we have to plant the seeds and wait. Or we have to care for the seeds that someone else has planted.

In his book, A Search for Solitude, Thomas Merton wrote: “Every moment and every event of man’s life on earth plants something in his soul. For just as the wind carries thousands of invisible and visible winged seeds, so the stream of time brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in the minds and wills of men. Most of these unnumbered seeds perish and are lost, because men are not prepared to receive them…”

God plants these “spiritual seeds” in our lives every day. They are the seeds that may grow into an abundant harvest — a cornucopia of increased prayer, spiritual wisdom, service to others and other fruits of the spirit. These seeds land on us each day, looking for fertile soil that has been prepared by our participation in prayer, worship, scripture and sacraments. Our part in all of this is one of awareness and perception. For being aware that the people and opportunities that enter our lives very well may be gifts and seeds from God, we are better prepared to respond and nurture these seeds into fruitfulness.

Ask yourself in silence: What seeds have settled into my life today? What seemingly insignificant and barely visible moments and people may be calling me to increased faith and prayer? What happened to me today?