illness

A call for guest bloggers: Writing as a true spiritual discipline

Steve · May 11, 2013 · 3 Comments

“When I see your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars that you set in place...SJG photo.

“Writing,” Henri Nouwen wrote, “can be a true spiritual discipline. Writing can help us to concentrate, to get in touch with the deeper stirrings of our hearts, to clarify our minds, to process confusing emotions, to reflect on our experiences, to give artistic expression to what we are living, and to store significant events in our memories. Writing can also be good for others who might read what we write.”

So…I’m embarrassed to see that I’ve not posted anything here since December 29. Ach! I have no real excuses, other than a busy work schedule, a couple of graduate classes (I’m completing a graduate certificate in Spiritual Direction at Aquinas Institute of Theology here in St. Louis…) and, oh yeah, I’m about to become a grandpa for the first time! (Although, admittedly, I had very little to do with that last one and I can’t blame him or her for my blog-crastination. Watch for a photo soon!

I’m planning a regular (hopefully weekly) summer series of short blogs, the theme of which I’m still considering and mulling over. In the meantime, I thought I’d give some of you a chance to share your writing on this site. (And I know from hearing from some of you that there are some very good writers out there among my subscribers).
[Read more…] about A call for guest bloggers: Writing as a true spiritual discipline

What We Have to Offer Each Other: Our Presence

Steve · May 12, 2012 · 4 Comments

candle1 — Being present to one another and to God. By Steve Givens

About a month or so ago I began volunteering for a local hospice organization called Heartland Hospice. My job is pretty basic: I visit with Margaret (not her real name) about once a week. We sit a foot apart, she in her wheelchair and I in a straight-backed chair. We look each other straight in the eyes and we talk. It’s pretty simple and Margaret makes it easy on me, as she’s quite the talker.

But our relationship is different from any other I have ever had and here’s why: From visit to visit Margaret doesn’t remember me, although she’s always enthusiastic about having someone to talk to. Like many older adults (Margaret is going to be 98 this year!), her memory is not good and so she often asks me the same questions multiple times during the hour of our visit.

And, of course, she tells me the same stories every time I visit because, after all, she’s never met me before. So I get to hear again and again about her early life in North St. Louis, about walking through Fairgrounds Park to get to the then-new Beaumont High School (where my parents would also attend a few years later), about her wanting to be a dancer but her mother refusing to allow her daughter to “take to the stage,” about her father calling her “tin ear” because she would be so engrossed in a book she didn’t hear him calling her to dinner. She talks about her two marriages (one of 40-something years and the other, later in life, of about ten years). She tells me of her two sons, one who died in his 40s and one who lives in Florida now. Or maybe Texas. That part of the story sometimes changes.

Your one wild and precious life

Steve · June 26, 2011 · 31 Comments

sunrise — Sunrise at Daytona, by Steve Givens, 2011

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?– Mary Oliver

As I have written previously, this summer I was scheduled to undergo a stem cell transplant to fight what had been diagnosed as myelodysplastic syndrome (see my postings from March 27, April 2 and April 13). This syndrome, which is all too close a cousin of leukemia, was caused by last summer’s chemotherapy treatments for another rare blood disease. Anyway…

A Rebuilding Year: Shooting for Perfection

Steve · April 13, 2011 · 7 Comments

spring1 — Spring 2011. Photo by Steve Givens

“Again I will build you, and you shall be built.” Jeremiah 31:4

If all goes as planned, sometime this summer I will be rebuilt, remade and renewed when the flow of someone else’s stem cells enters my bloodstream and makes its way, literally, to the marrow of my bones. So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be rebuilt from the metaphorical ground up. And, well, it’s spring and all that.

Standing at thresholds and forks in the road

Steve · April 2, 2011 · 16 Comments

Way Leads Upon Way. Temple doorways in Malaysia. Photo by Steve Givens, 2011.

If we live our lives well (at least this is the way I define “well”) then we live not in numbness and lethargy and apathy, but fully alive and feeling, aware of the sacred around us, and with an ongoing commitment to living an examined life — one centered on the presence of God, the teachings of Christ, and the power of the individual to change the world in some way, however small. And if we live that way, we should often find ourselves standing at metaphorical thresholds and forks in the road wondering which way to move, for there should always be choices to be made. A life lived well should never be lived on autopilot. To me, the worst kind of life would be one where I felt I had no options.

So here I stand on the threshold of so many decisions and life choices, as well as facing some health challenges and life changes over which I have little or no control, at least on the surface. Of course, we all have choices to make, even if the choice is about how we accept those things that have been thrust upon us.