Nature

On the presence of God and the color purple

Steve · August 21, 2011 · 10 Comments

In my reading this morning for a class I begin next week, I read the following, which brought me up short because I had forgotten it, even though I read the book mentioned many years ago (and saw the movie):

In [Alice Walker’s novel] The Color Purple, the heroine, Celie, had never been introduced to any image of God other than the old white man with a beard, legalistic and authoritarian. Her friend Shug is much more awakened. Celie is astonished: she says to Shug, “You telling me God love you, and you ain’t never done anything for him? I mean, not go to church, sing in the choir, feed the preacher and all like that?” But Shug’s God is a lover who is “always wanting to share a good thing,” who is “pissed off if we walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it.” (from The Art of Spiritual Guidance, Carolyn Gratton)

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.

The Spirit of a Piece of Land: Nearer My God to Thee

Steve · October 31, 2010 · 2 Comments

Sue and I own a sloping patch of land in central Missouri where we have a small, 50-year-old weekend cabin on the shore of the Lake of the Ozarks, a sprawling, man-made, spider of a body of water, created by the damming of the Osage River back in 1931 and dotted now with houses and jet skis. But it’s a nice quiet getaway, especially this time of year, when the crowds and most of the loud boats have disappeared for the season. It’s our favorite time of year.

The dam created one of the Midwest’s favorite (and most beautiful!) summer playgrounds, but it no doubt took with it the history and culture of those who lived here before, and I do think of that often. What exactly was right here on our little plot before the dam I cannot say. Maybe just a shady corner of a majestic and ancient forest akin to that which still exists as you move in all directions away from the lake, but perhaps more. Maybe someone’s home, someone’s church, someone’s grave.

And before then? Before the coming of the white man? Perhaps where I sit right now typing on my laptop a young tough-skinned Osage Indian crouched in his very first hunt, his bow drawn and his eyes locked on a 16-point buck making its way gingerly through the trees to drink from a sliver of a stream.

The point is this: We don’t really own the land. We are given the blessing of calling bits and pieces of it “home” for a while, but it belongs to the creator and to the lives of all who have touched it and worked it and walked it over the years.

Tim Grimm performing at our house concert series. Photo by Fred Volkmann.

A lesson from the sea: The view from Glass Beach

Steve · August 27, 2010 · 4 Comments

“You make everything glorious. And I am yours. What does that make me?”

– David Crowder

Here’s what I learned today standing on a beach in Fort Bragg, California: Even if time can’t heal all wounds, it at least can make even the seeming dregs of our lives beautiful. Just add water and an overwhelming force.

While it may seem unbelievable in today’s more environmentally conscious society, for many of the decades of the 20^th century, the people of Fort Bragg threw their household garbage over the cliffs and into the sea. They threw their garbage and their old cars and appliances. And they threw their discarded glass bottles. Lots of them.

Same Path, Different Light

Steve · May 16, 2010 · 3 Comments

daisy — Daisy fleabane. Photo by Steve GIvens

“A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.” – Dorothea Lange

I heard this quote about a month or so ago on NPR during a great feature on Dorothea Lange, the influential American documentary photographer and photojournalist best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Google her and look at some of her images – they are simply amazing and you will no doubt recognize one or two of them from history textbooks and documentaries about the Depression. But her quote about “learning to see” is what stuck with me most after I finally turned the radio off (it was one of those “driveway moments” that NPR brags about).