creation

Today’s Word: Migratory

Steve · October 12, 2013 · 2 Comments

riverlands — Just passing through. Riverlands Bird Sanctuary, West Alton, Mo. SJG photo.

One of the things I like best about autumn and winter in the Midwest is watching the migratory birds that pass through on their way to Mexico and Central and South America. Here in St. Louis, near the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers, clouds of birds fill the sky on any given day, moving, weaving and blending together like vast schools of fish. Even as scientists and naturalists study and better understand these migratory patterns and flyways, what they really can’t fully comprehend is this: What exactly pulls these birds to fly these long routes, which remain virtually the same over years and generations of birds? What is it within them that pulls them like a magnet to their winter homes and then back to their summer habitats? It’s a mystery, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

And what is it that over and over pulls us toward this thing — this power, this presence — that we call God? No matter how much we love this life and the world around us, this pull is a gentle yet powerful reminder that we are more than what makes us human. We are migratory, souls passing through our bodies on our way to somewhere else. Like birds flying the long trip for the first time, we cannot even imagine what it is we are traveling toward, but we continue to fly, drawn by a force we can only sense as being there, as being love. It’s a mystery, but that doesn’t make it any less real.

Ask yourself in silence: In these moments of silence, can I sense the pull of God? Am I willing to lean into this pull and follow?

Today’s Word: Consider

Steve · October 8, 2013 · 1 Comment

lily — Consider the lilies of the field. SJG photo.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus encourages us to “consider the lilies of the field” as a model for our lives. They don’t worry much about their lives, and neither should we, we are told. But let’s consider these lilies a little more. Consider these things: The lily does not choose where it stands in the field, or which weeds and thorns grow up around it. It cannot control the weather or how much sunlight it receives. In short, it cannot change the things it cannot change, like what kind of lily it is or what color. What it can do is stand and endure. It can “bloom where it is planted” and become the lily it was meant to become. It cannot become a tulip or an oak tree. The lily is beautiful on its own, as are we all in the sight of God.

In a recent Ignatian prayer exercise, I was asked to consider these lilies and, in doing so, to consider “how much of me is mine and how much is God’s.” It’s not an easy question, for some things seem to come from neither God nor me. Unless I abuse or don’t take care of my body, I don’t really “choose” health or illness, and neither does God choose for us illness or violence against us. Nevertheless, the choices we make, the will of God, and the things that just “happen” to us as humans in an imperfect world intermingle to become what we think of as our “lives.”

What we are called to do in the midst of all this imperfection is the punch line of this particular parable: “Seek God first and the rest will fall into place.” Like the lily, we cannot change where and how we were raised or how well we were nurtured. To a great extent we cannot control our health, although we are certainly called to care for ourselves and respect our bodies and what we put into them or do with them. Our greatest desire – wherever we are in life – should be responding to the will of the gardener and master planter, the sower of the seed.

Ask yourself in silence: What are the things I most worry about? Do I worry about things I cannot change? How often do I seek God first?

Today’s Word: Peace

Steve · September 20, 2013 · 1 Comment

Such an overused, overworked word is peace. Whether between nations, between individuals or within us, peace does not come easy, quickly or simply. Peace, William Butler Yeats wrote in his poem, The Lake Isle of Innisfree, “comes dropping slow, dropping from the veils of morning to where the cricket sings.” The peace of mind, soul and heart that we seek within ourselves takes its time and comes, not upon demand like so much else in our lives, but when we slowly and deliberately open ourselves to its possibility as a gift. It is a treasured commodity, a gift of highest worth, and so we must seek and work for peace. We must apply ourselves to peace. We must leave ourselves open and wait for peace.

Peace, like God, is ours for the taking, for the acceptance, for the willingness on our part to seek it out and find it. For most of us, that means seeking time in silence, whether in the quiet of a small room or chapel or in the hush of nature. Yeats sought this peace on his beloved Irish island, where he knew it would be quiet enough to “hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore…in the heart’s deep core.” We need to get away, to hear the water lapping, to listen to the quiet voice that whispers in our heart’s deep core. For we cannot be fully ourselves, cannot be fully aware of all that is present in our lives, without this peace that comes by abandoning ourselves to the silence of prayer and time alone with God.

Ask yourself in silence: When and where will I make time today to listen to my heart’s deep core?

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: Clay

Steve · September 16, 2013 · 4 Comments

pot — Like a river through the soft earth. SJG photo

The thing about potters and their clay is that it’s all about relationship. A little pinch here and a fledgling pot becomes something entirely different. A little more pressure or a repositioning of the potter’s hands on the ever-spinning vessel and the clay takes on a new shape. Hold a knife to the still-soft creation and spirals cut into the body like a river through the soft earth. Relationship. No pot without the potter, no need for the potter without the pot.

And so as we circle around to begin each day anew, we must ask ourselves: are we open to the touch of the potter? Do we allow ourselves to be shaped — manipulated — by the One who made us and is continuing to make us? Are we willing to surrender our self-conceived idea of purpose and “shape” to the will of the master artisan who knows us better than we know ourselves? Are we willing to say, “yes, I thought I was going to be this…but perhaps I am being changed and I am become something else?”

Ask yourself in silence: All the questions above!

Congratulations to my friend and loyal reader Kathleen Matson of Massachusetts, who has just launched her own blog of daily reflections! Check out her site, Heavenly Light.