Creativity

First ‘Creative Spirit’ Retreat Announced for October 11-12 in St. Louis

Steve · August 31, 2019 · Leave a Comment

I am very pleased to announce my first-ever retreat on the intersection of spirituality and creativity. If you live near the St. Louis area, think about joining me on Friday evening, October 11, and all day Saturday the 12th at Mercy Center to explore what happens at that very special place where God, prayer and our own creative activities meet.

My friends and musical collaborators John Caravelli and Phil Cooper will join me for a performance on Friday night and will help me sprinkle in some music throughout the weekend. The retreat flyer is included below, but email me at givenscreative@gmail.com if you have any questions or want me to email you a flyer.

Bring a camera, notebook, sketchbook, musical instrument or whatever tool, media or craft materials you use to create. Come enjoy the beautiful grounds and some time away to create and contemplate…

What’s Inside?

Steve · August 10, 2019 · 10 Comments

I see you. Faust Park greenhouse. SJG photo.

What’s inside, everyone wants to know
what’s inside? And I’ve always told them,
but I feel something needs to change.
You wanna know what’s inside?
I could tell you if I wasn’t hiding.
My whole life is in here,
in this kitchen, baking.
What a mess I’m making.

Sara Bareilles, “What’s Inside,” from Waitress.

I had the privilege a few years ago of seeing the musical Waitress on Broadway with its original Jenna, the remarkable Jessie Mueller (who also portrayed Carole King in the original Broadway cast of Beautiful). What Jenna is hiding inside is, on the surface, the ingredients in her delectable pies. But on a deeper level, she is hiding her insecurities, a bad marriage, an unwanted pregnancy, and her stifled dreams. And the mess she’s making? Oy vey. Go see the play.

We’re all hiding something inside, and we’re all making a mess of it from time to time. We’re multilayered people, all of us, onions (to shift the food metaphor) that need to be peeled away if we’re ever going to get at our centers.

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A ‘New Road or a Secret Gate’

Steve · March 31, 2019 · 22 Comments

Still around the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the moon or to the sun.

from “Upon the Hearth the Fire is Red”
from The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

End of Maintained Trail...keep walking. Sedona, AZ. SJG photo

The poem above is a piece of a larger lyric, sung by Hobbits as a “walking song”’ in J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings. It has been many years now since I first made my way through Middle Earth with Bilbo, Frodo and the gang, but I admit to thinking of them often when I am out for a hike, especially if the path is not clear or if I am walking it for the first time. For while they knew the general direction they were headed (southeast toward Mordor), the path and the turns were often uncertain. Some turns led to glorious adventure — usually fraught with battles to be fought with the likes of giant spiders or orcs — but adventures nonetheless.

I am very close to beginning a new walk, as retirement from my position at the university looms large (target date: June 14). The question I hear most frequently, you might imagine, is “what are you going to do?” It’s a fair question since, at age 59, I am not technically retirement age (especially when it comes to the intricacies of health insurance…) I get a plethora of advice from those who know me well and those who don’t. Thanks for all that. I hear you all.

Playing in the Wild Garden of Childhood

Steve · January 25, 2019 · 12 Comments

FOD BAll — At the "Field of Dreams," Dyersville, Iowa. SJG photo.

I recently came across this line of poetry from the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda: “Everything is ceremony in the wild garden of childhood.” And, of course, that’s right.

Take, for example, the pick-up games of some variation of baseball (fuzz ball, Indian ball, Wiffle® ball, cork ball, kickball, step ball) of my childhood in North St. Louis in the early ‘70s. These were “wild gardens” in the very best sense, meaning they required no adults, no official field dimensions, no uniforms and very few rules, other than the ever-evolving ones that existed only in our collective consciousness as 12-year-olds.

Appreciating the Small and the Now

Steve · September 29, 2018 · 9 Comments

“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”
– Jon Kabat-Zinn

When I was a young man, I think I lived day to day waiting for the “big thing” to happen. I raced to the mailbox at the end of the day (imagine relying on such an antiquated source of information and news!) to see what it might hold for me that might change my life — a letter from an editor wanting to publish something I’d written or a breakthrough song, perhaps, one great hit to be recorded by the likes of Garth Brooks or Tricia Yearwood.