Prayer

Today’s Word: Turns

Steve · July 2, 2017 · 5 Comments

GARDEN PATH — Garden Path near Santa Fe. SJG photo.

“There are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths.” Mark Nepo

I was talking to a friend recently who is trying to make a big life decision – one of those seemingly huge choices that appear to be riddled with opportunities for both success and failure. In the words of those sage rock ‘n’ roll philosophers from The Clash: “Should I stay or should I go?”

He is going about the discernment process in all the right ways, I believe. He’s talking to trusted friends and advisors. He’s doing his homework on the new place. He’s considering what he will be leaving behind. He’s praying and trying to leave it all in the hands of God, who knows him better than he knows himself. Still, it’s a tough decision. He’s not hearing any voices. He’s not receiving any divine telegraphs. As it so often happens in life, we have to make these decisions for ourselves, hoping and praying that it’s the right one. It can be a scary and confusing time.

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Today’s Word: Silence

Steve · June 10, 2017 · 6 Comments

Growth happens in silence. George Washington's apples, Mt. Vernon. SJG photo.

This morning, we are sharing our outdoor space with a doe, who has been feeding herself on our friend and neighbor Gerry’s decorative grass and lying quietly in the shade of two small maples, paying little attention to the two humans behind the screen. Together, we seem to all be enjoying the silence of the early Saturday morning before the rest of the world wakes up and begins mowing lawns and puttering around doing the things we humans do.

It’s not really silent, of course. The birds are a noisy lot, and then there’s the distant traffic. Not much we can do about that. But relatively speaking, it’s pretty quiet. Silence, we sometimes think or come to believe, is a “nothingness.” It is the absence of noise. It is the hushing of talk. It is the musical void and even the quieting of our inner voices. And so it is. But it is so much more.

Today’s Word: Tempo

Steve · June 4, 2017 · 4 Comments

Slowing down enough to see this. SJG photo.

On this lazy Sunday morning, Sue and I are sitting on the porch doing “nothing,” although that’s never really true, is it? We are reading and writing. We are listening to the birds and staring at the stems of all our flowers that have been eaten by the deer and the rabbits (argh!) We are enjoying a cup of coffee and some fresh fruit. We are being present to one another even when we don’t speak. We are praying and being present to God. Is all that nothing or something? I think it’s something important.

So caught up in the business and busy-ness of our work and lives, we can all sometimes feel guilty about doing “nothing.” But, of course, it is exactly this nothingness that we need. We need time to unplug, time to refuel, time to remove ourselves from the rest of life so that we can be, in fact, better for the rest of life, better for those who need us, better for the work that needs to be done.

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In Chemoworld

Steve · February 8, 2017 · 2 Comments

[An excerpt from my book, “Embraced by God: Facing Chemotherapy with Faith.”]

chemo 1 — Another world: Watkins Glen State Park, New York. SJG photo.

Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer has become impossible and your heart has turned to stone. – Thomas Merton

The moment the elevator door opens on the seventh floor and I enter the treatment center, I feel as if I am in a different world from the one where I spend the rest of my days and nights. It’s different for a number of reasons: the place itself, my fellow travelers in treatment, and my own state of mind and spirit. Chemoworld, I call it.

The center, although part of a massive, modern and sprawling medical center in St. Louis’ urban and trendy central west end, is generally quiet, and the people around me seem (again, generally) pretty unaffected, at least for a time, by the world outside the walls of the center. The economy may be falling apart, political candidates and parties may be railing against each other, and war may be raging in far-flung regions of the world, but for a few hours none of that matters as much as the battle being fought between life and death in our own bodies. As killer chemicals are sent racing and screaming into our bodies like tiny Kamikaze pilots on a mission, we’re in a different world.

I realize that, so far at least, I have been luckier than many in that my treatments are relatively quick affairs. I’m usually in and out within an hour or two and, while the treatments themselves make me weak and achy for a few days, I’m well aware that many others are not as fortunate. All that could change for me tomorrow, of course. For now, though, I am blessed.

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Living with Expectation, Gratitude and Availability

Steve · January 1, 2017 · 14 Comments

“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aids, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.” – Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Somehow, it’s January 1 once again. We have made yet another trip around the sun. I’m not one for making public declarations of my resolutions (although I do need to step up my walking and watch my portions once again…) but today I return to a question that might lead to a good resolution for all of us to consider on this first day of a New Year: How do we begin each day?

The older I get, my biological clock seems to be replacing the digital one beside my bed. On most days I awake a few minutes before the mechanical one goes off. So waking up is not a problem. Especially when you consider the alternative! I used to joke that I rarely saw the sunrise (“You mean to tell me that there are TWO six o’clocks?”) but now on most days I’m up before the day is. The question is, HOW do we wake up?