encouragement

The Creative Spirit: Savoring the Moment

Steve · January 1, 2015 · 21 Comments

noah — Savor your life like a first birthday cake. SJG photo

I’m up early on New Year’s Day and contemplating the new year that now faces me. These new years, it seems, come in rapid-fire succession the older I get, and every year I sit in this place with this computer on my lap and wonder: What happened in the past year and what will happen in the year ahead?

The first question (what happened last year?) is a tricky and important one. For the issue at hand is not simply remembering as much as it is appreciating, what sunk in and affected me because I was made more aware of it. How many good meals do I remember, how many stimulating conversations with family and friends, how many pieces of music did I allow to seep into my soul and change me? Which books struck, inspired and challenged me? Perhaps most importantly, how did I allow God into my life in the past year? How often did I sit quietly and savor the presence of God in the quiet of this room, in the holiness of liturgy and the sacraments, in the company of friends, relatives, colleagues and strangers?

Most of us would likely say we appreciate these things. But we are called to a higher standard. We are called to savor them for what they are — gifts of the spirit, sent to make our lives richer and more meaningful and to draw us closer to the sender. All too often, and through no conscious decision as much as unconscious living, we miss all these things. They still happen to us (these meals, these conversations, these sacraments) but we haven’t noticed them and thanked the sender. We’re missing the moment and forgetting the gratitude.

hymnal — Count Your Blessings. SJG photo.

So all this leads us to the coming year, a chance (as always) to begin again, to live more purposefully, more authentically, more aware of the gifts given and the call to respond and share. For those called to the creative life, in whatever form, this is a call to recognize those gifts and transform them into something others can see, hear, taste, experience.

Today I’m beginning a challenge and throwing it out there to see if anyone wants to join me — a year of living in higher awareness and gratitude for the gifts around me. For me, this will take the physical form of a new journal (provided as a gift from my good friend Jill Stratton) in which I will be recording the blessings and moments and opportunities that come my way this year, in hopes that I will be more thankful, more aware, more creative in turning those blessings around and giving them to others. A year of savoring each day a little more intensely, a year of appreciating every gift that comes my way. The journal is just for me, but I have no doubt it will fuel and enrich my writing, my music, my photography and art, my cooking, my service to others.

I can’t help but be reminded of the old hymn:

Count your many blessings name them one by one.
And it will surprise you what the Lord hath done.

Ask yourself in silence: How aware of my blessings and gifts am I?

Today’s Word: Self-Image

Steve · December 28, 2014 · 2 Comments

mile — Mile High footbridge, Grandfather Mountain, NC. SJG photo.

It’s that time of year again. We gaze into the mirror and, with the prospect of a new year and a new opportunity for beginning again facing us, we start to think of all the ways we can improve ourselves. And I’m all for it. I’ve lost some weight the past six months and gotten into better eating habits and an exercise routine I enjoy. Taking care of ourselves — physically, mentally, spiritually, professionally — is important.

But even as I think about how much more weight I want to lose and what my exercise goals for the next year should look like, I am nudged deep inside by a voice that says, “there’s more.”

Okay, I think. More. Hmm. So I start making a self-improvement list. A class perhaps. Cook more, eat out less. See family more often. Start that journal again. Walk further. Maybe get back on the bike. The list can grow long, as we all know. But then I hear a voice once again, and this time it whispers, “Maybe less would be better.”

Self-care is critical if we want to spend many healthy years with the ones we love and if we want time to do the work to which we feel called. The danger, so to speak, is not letting ourselves slide down the slippery slope toward a self-image that is based entirely on, well, ourselves. For we are more than what we look like in the mirror and how far we walk or run. We are more than our educations and professional relationships. We are more than what we appear to be.

Mile High Footbridge, Grandfather Mountain, NC. SJG photo

We are at our best when we give ourselves to others in service. We are at our best when we are able to empty ourselves of the bounty and noise of life and focus on the still, small voice of the One who calls us to be more (and less) in different ways than the mirror or the scale could ever show us. For God sees us differently than we can ever see ourselves.

Today, even as I think of ways I can improve my health in the coming year, I recall the words of St. Francis of Assisi who said, “I am who I am in the eyes of God—nothing more and nothing less.”

Ask yourself in silence: As I make my New Year’s resolutions, where’s God?

Today’s Word: Broken

Steve · December 14, 2014 · 1 Comment

guitar — Looks like an A-minor. Photo by Jon Givens.

It is perhaps a bit cliché to speak of “grasping the moment,” but like all good clichés, there’s some truth and wisdom at the bottom of this one. Especially right now, as we enter the third week of advent, we are reminded that “now” is our time. We may be “waiting” for Christmas, but God and Jesus are here and available to be experienced right now — no waiting required.

And so it goes with the moments that come and go in our lives, waiting to be truly recognized and experienced by us. This is perhaps especially true of the difficult times when we feel lost, broken, abandoned or alone. The Christmas season is a time of joy for many, but for others, it can be a tougher period. As some struggle to get by, as they see what so many others have (and buy, buy, buy…) and as they cope with the memories of those no longer with them, advent can be a time of just waiting for it all to be over. Advent can be a season of sensing our brokenness.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite Christmas stories — the tale of how that most beloved of all Christmas carols came to be written. By some accounts — we can’t be sure of the truth here, however — “Silent Night” was created out of brokenness. The story goes that a young priest, Fr. Joseph Mohr of Oberndorf, Austria, wrote the lyrics to “Stille Nacht” in 1818 and gave it to a friend and local musician, Franz Gruber, asking him to compose a simple melody to be played on guitar, as the organ in St. Nicholas Church was broken. The song was first performed on Christmas Eve and the rest, as they always say, is history. From brokenness springs beauty.

Here’s a simple guitar and voice recording that my daughter Jenny and I made a few years ago:

01 Silent Night

As we near Christmas, we recall both the woundedness of our lives and the joy of the birth of the Christ, who came to bind up our wounds, heal our brokenness and fill the empty spaces. This is the Christ who heals, who forgives, who makes whole. A child in a manger, yes, but more importantly the Word of God set in the midst of us not just 2000 years ago but even today. Especially today. This is ours to grasp, this is our moment to seize. This is heavenly peace for our lives right here.

Ask yourself in silence: Where am I broken? What beauty can spring from it? Where is my peace?

My blog turns five today: Looking backward and forward

Steve · November 27, 2014 · 6 Comments

time — Sundial at Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburg, VA. SJG photo.

As I awake on this cold, snowy Thanksgiving morning and begin to move about the house, I am immediately grateful for a few days away from the university to have some quiet time to read, write, pray and, of course, cook, eat and spend time with family. There will be a good balance of communal life and solitude this weekend, and I am reminded how important both are to the richness and fullness of life and faith. I thank God for both.

There’s a murder of crows somewhere outside raising a ruckus, which makes me think of my very first blog entries, two of them on Thanksgiving Day, 2009. You can read both of them here and here. (The crows make an appearance in the second post). As I re-read these words, I am grateful for all that has transpired over the past five years, including my times of disease, treatment and healing. However worrying and painful at times, these moments are all part of the one same story, a journey that led, shaped and changed me along the way. I have deep gratitude and joy for the journey and for all of those who have walked it with me.

Five years ago, a similar group of noisy crows helped me kick off the part of this journey that I chronicle here on this website. It’s just a small part of my life, if we measure life in the amount of time we spend doing any one thing, but it’s the place where I have continued to turn to help me make sense of the rest of life. Hopefully, as I write to clarify for myself what this “God stuff” all means, I’ve been able to help you think about your own journey, encouraged you to “ask yourself in silence” how God is moving and working in your life. That’s always been my goal, and I pledge to continue along that good and well-tread path.

As I re-read those first entries, I’m reminded of my original intent, which was to take a special look at the intersection of that place where spirituality and creativity meet. I think I’ve done that to a certain extent, but in the coming year I intend to spend a little more time at that intersection, reflecting on my own creativity as well as that of others, searching for and pointing out the inseparability — at least for me — of those two concepts and practices. Spirituality and creativity, as ideas and as ways of living and acting, both point to the same place, back to the Creator and Spirit that moved across the abyss and created everything out of nothing.

Detail of study desk at George Wythe House, Williamsburg, VA, where Thomas Jefferson studied as a young man. SJG photo.

I know that many of you — I would say all of you — are creative people yourselves, involved in writing and art and music and other forms of expression. And if you’re not, I’d encourage you to ask yourself if there might be some work for you to do. As I move forward into the new year, I’m going to encourage that creativity in those of you who read my blog, even as I encourage you to look deep within for the source of that good work.

For we are, in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien:

Sub-creator, the refracted light
through whom is splintered from a single White
to many hues, and endlessly combined
in living shapes that move from mind to mind.
Though all the crannies of the world we filled
with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build
Gods and their houses out of dark and light,
and sowed the seed of dragons, ’twas our right
(used or misused). The right has not decayed.
We make still by the law in which we’re made.

I’ll continue to suggest that you “ask yourself in silence,” but I’m also going to encourage you through creative “prompts” to delve deep into that silence and come back with something to share. Share your thoughts, prayers and poems with me through the comment button so that everyone else can see them, too. From time to time I may choose some of those to share in one of my posts. If your creative expression takes you to the more visual worlds of art and you wish to share, you can send files or links to me via email to givenscreative@gmail.com for consideration to be shared with others via the site. I can’t and won’t share everything, but I look forward to seeing and hearing about what you are finding and creating from the deep and silent places where the breath of God lives within you.

Peace to you all.

Ask yourself in silence: What’s God saying to me today? What “voice” do I have to share that with the world?

Today’s Word: Planted

Steve · November 16, 2014 · 4 Comments

Richard Rohr has written that, “The whole point of religion is to let you know that what you’re drawing upon is already planted within you.” And I retype those words fully aware that, for many, the whole problem with the idea of God — that which is already planted within them — is, in fact, the whole religion part. The challenge of modern faith, it seems, has become for many the problem of finding God in organized religion because organized religion (of all different sorts and sects) has often let so many people down.

God can certainly be found in religion and religious practices, just as God can be found in quiet moments of solitude and prayer, in walks through the woods and in times of joy and ecstasy as we experience glimpses of God in art, nature, loving relationships with others, in the poor and in the sacramental moments of our own religion, if we have one of those.

But what’s most crucial, it seems, is that we don’t flip-flop the equation. We don’t draw upon what’s planted within us to find religion; we draw upon religion to find what’s planted within us. Even that well-worn phrase, “he’s found religion,” seems to be missing the point. It’s not religion God wants us to have but rather the deeply found relationship of looking within ourselves and finding God there waiting for us, so deeply implanted that we might not even have seen him there…nurturing, gently leading, making our lives richer and fuller and whole.

To give up on a religion that has let us down — or that never attracted us in the first place because of the imperfect people who make up that religion — makes perfect sense, it seems. Gandhi once said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

If we are Christians, it’s our call then to look inside to find this deeply planted God, to resurrect in our lives what it means to be like Christ, and present that to world when it comes looking for a reason for our faith. Maybe they will even come to like our religion. It’s on us, not them.

Ask yourself in silence: What’s most deeply planted in my life?