faith

A Song for the Season: Christmas to Me

Steve · December 13, 2013 · 3 Comments

Dusting — A light dusting of snow. SJG photo

A little something special for the seasons of Advent and Christmas…another song from my Christmas CD, “Home Again with You,” produced a few years back with my friends in the band Nathanael’s Creed.

Next up is our jazzy “Christmas to Me,” inspired by a beautiful poem by the (now) Rev. Katie Cooper Nix and by the Christmas recordings from pop-jazz heroes like Nat King Cole and Tony Bennett. I know it’s early on a Friday morning as I post this, but this one is perhaps best enjoyed in front of a fire with your favorite beverage and your favorite people…

To listen, click here: Christmas to Me

Christmas to Me

Words and music by Phil Cooper, Steve Givens and Jim Russell, based on a poem by Katie Cooper Nix.
© 2007 Potter’s Mark Music (BMI)

Christmas to me, isn’t the lights on the tree
The wrappings and the bows
A reindeer’s glowing nose.

Christmas to me, isn’t so easy to see
In endless games and toys
For little girls and boys.

And no matter where I go
All the trappings and the snow
It just isn’t merry
It just isn’t Christmas
‘Till I am home again with you.

Christmas to me, echoes the mystery
The sacred holy night
A grace so pure and bright.

Christmas to me, lives in the memory
Of family and friends
A love that never ends.

And no matter where I go
All the trappings and the snow
It just isn’t merry
It just isn’t Christmas
‘Till I am home again with you.

The players
Lead vocals: Steve Givens
Guitar: Jim Russell
Piano: Phil Cooper
Percussion: Pat Dillender
Bass: Gerry Kasper
Background vocals: Phil Cooper and Jim Russell (I think!)

[If you’re looking for stocking stuffers, the CDs are available for $15, which includes postage and handling. Drop me an email or send a check to: Steve Givens, 51 High Valley Dr., Chesterfield, Mo. 63017.]

Today’s Word: Odd

Steve · December 1, 2013 · 4 Comments

The improbably odd Daddy Longlegs. SJG photo

On more than one occasion, my former spiritual director said to me, “If it’s odd it might be God.” It’s a funny line, a very short poem perhaps, but nevertheless a grain of wisdom to which we would do well to pay attention. For while we very often — perhaps most often — find God in the plain and ordinary moments of our lives, there are also those odd moments of synchronicity, circumstance and coincidence that cause us to pause and wonder, “what’s going on?” And for those of us who hold tight to God and to our lives of faith, we can find ourselves asking, “what’s God up to?”

You know the moments I’m talking about. The phone rings and it’s the very person you were thinking about or needed to hear from to get you through a rough moment. A song comes on the radio and bears just the message you needed to hear. A scripture reading at church seems meant just for you at that very moment. Your dream job becomes available right when you’re best able to accept it. A series of highly improbable events comes together in perfect fashion, leading you to the place you most need to be. Fill in the blank. We’ve all been there.

We can chalk it all up to pure luck or the roll of the dice. We can “do the math” and come up with the odds. We can just ignore that it happened. Or we can begin paying closer attention to the moments and days of our lives and realize that these things happen more often than we ever realized. We can begin to see God living and moving in our lives and call the whole thing a miracle. When we choose that way of living, we find ourselves filled with hope and faith.

Ask yourself in silence: When was the last time “something odd” turned out to be God?

Today’s Word: Changed

Steve · November 26, 2013 · 2 Comments

Danish philosopher and theologian Søren Kierkegaard once wrote that, “the function of prayer is not so much to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.”

We grow up learning to pray by asking for things – take care of me and my parents, give me things I think I want or need, answer my prayer, hear my prayer, be with me during this difficult time. In short, we pray to try and grab God’s attention and influence God’s will for our lives. If we just pray hard and often enough, we believe, God will certainly bend his ear to us, hear our prayer and give us what we want. And, certainly God can do just that and sometimes does. Scripture, indeed, tells us to ask for what we need: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

We perhaps never give up this approach to prayer entirely, but as we grow in our faith we learn that we are the ones changed by prayer, not God. God is the unchanging changer. We are changed by placing ourselves in the presence of God, by spending time in gratitude and contemplation of all that God is and has done. We are changed not by what we are given, but by the giver of the gift, by the Spirit of God that moves and works and lives in us. We cannot help but be changed when we empty ourselves of our desires and open ourselves to the presence of our loving God, content to be held and sustained by the mere touch of the hand of the giver of all that is good and holy.

Ask yourself in silence: When and how have I been changed by prayer?

Today’s Word: Dwelling

Steve · November 22, 2013 · 1 Comment

While in Arizona a few weeks ago, we visited Montezuma Castle National Monument, with its amazingly preserved Pre-Columbian cliff-dwellings that were built and inhabited by the Sinagua people beginning around 700 AD. Standing far below and looking up at the five-story structure, it’s hard to imagine what life must have been like when the structures were inhabited, hard to believe just how treacherous it would have been to live under such conditions, scampering up and down ladders carrying fish and water from nearby Beaver Creek and clinging to the side of a mountain for shelter from weather and enemies.

cliff2 — Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona. SJG photo

And yet, life remains treacherous even today. Our dwellings may be more sophisticated, but we often still live under the dangerous conditions imposed by both the society around us and the decisions we make that contribute to those dangers. Our streets and roads are as treacherous as any hand-crafted ladder, and we still cling to things because we somehow believe they will protect us in one way or another. And so we must consider just where we place our trust and where we seek our shelter from the spiritual storms and enemies of our lives. Equally important is our ability to provide a place for God to dwell within us, as Paul suggests in his letter to the Ephesians (3:17-19): “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with all the holy ones what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

Our dwelling place is in God and God’s in us. We fit perfectly together, rooted in love, a communion carved of one piece and clinging inseparably together through time.

Ask yourself in silence: To what do I cling?

Today’s Word: Holy

Steve · November 21, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Sacred Heart in Chinandega, Nicaragua market. SJG photo

Sanctus — holy — the brass candleholder gleams,
here in the chapel at noon.
I am making my presence known to the Holy One
and the Holy One to me.
We behold each other
and I know I am not worthy to even be here,
know that mounds of dark failure and sin,
— a life full, day full, moment full —
(it doesn’t matter how much or how little)
should separate me from sanctus but do not.

The stained-glass face on the side window,
above the radiating and sacred heart,
holds my glance like a Word I’ve never seen before
as I try to puzzle out its meaning and source.
And yet this face knows my name, my life,
and never blinks or changes expression,
revealing divine compassion and grace
so abundant I would drown
were it water.

For I am covered in grace, not sin.
Enveloped in hope, not in my past.
Secure in that gaze.
Wrapped in that holy.
Held in that love.
Sanctus. Sanctus. Sanctus.

Ask yourself in silence: Where do I experience the holy and sacred? What holds my gaze and points me to the divine?