Givens Creative

Life at the intersection of faith, nature, history and art

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The Creative Spirit: Cultivating the Earth and Ourselves

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My cilantro...our salsa. SJG photo.

I am not much of a grower of things. I almost typed, “I am not much of a farmer” but that would be even less true. Maybe someday I will be. For now, a few containers on my deck grow a small selection of my favorite herbs (rosemary, cilantro, parsley and basil) along with a couple of jalapeno pepper plants and some green onions. I’m looking forward to homemade salsa and pesto as the summer lingers on.

My father was an urban backyard farmer in North St. Louis in the 1960s and 1970s, planting short rows of lettuce, onions, tomatoes, green peppers, radishes and carrots in the poor soil (made organically better by him) beneath our old unused swing set in the back of the yard by the alley. He ran a hose up the uprights of the swing set and secured a sprinkler to the crossbar, creating an easy and gentle “rain” on the garden that supplied us with fresh salads and vegetables, which I didn’t really appreciate at the time, I am sure. Today, I wish I had him nearby to share his knowledge and passion for a small plot of earth, as well as his collection of old copies of Organic Gardening Magazine. Oh, the things we lose and throw away.

All this reminded me this morning of songwriter David Mallett’s, “The Garden Song,” which I first learned from a John Denver album back when I was a teenager and which I have performed for many years since:

Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow.
All it takes is a rake and a hoe and a piece of fertile ground.
Inch by inch, row by row, someone bless these seeds I sow,
Someone warm them from below ‘til the rain comes tumbling down.

The song has been recorded by many artists over the years, including Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary in addition to Denver, but I was delighted to find this YouTube version of Dave performing it himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m0LewjkO4s

Lenz House garden, New Harmony, Indiana. SJG photo.

Growing a garden is an act of faith and an acknowledgement of gratitude. It is a gesture of creativity and hope — that what we begin and nurture “with a rake and hoe” can become something else, something bigger and more, something that can be shared around a table. A garden beckons family and community to come together in thanksgiving. A garden is a reminder of our obligation to use what we have been given to help others and offer praise to the ultimate giver of life and sustenance.

In response to my last post on finding the extraordinary in our ordinary life I received a wonderful and beautifully written note from a REAL farmer who reminded me of the healing and spiritual power of just sinking our hands into the soil and urging things to grow up from the ground. Ordinary, sure, but it’s also extraordinary at the same time if we allow it to be. Jan owns a fruit farm in Winnebago County, Illinois with her husband Thomas. Sunrise Market Farm is just a mile from the Wisconsin state line and grows blueberries, raspberries and pumpkins. Jan wrote:

I have practiced prayer when I work outdoors with our plants and growing things but the best practice by far seems to be a focus on exactly what is at hand, seeing the beauty even in the weed that needs to be pulled as well as in the plump blueberry that needs to be picked. To breathe deeply of the perfume of the soil and the newly cut clover. And I think “Jesus is here” and my task is a task of love for Him and there is peace and joy. Best of all, there is a further chipping away of the old me, the me I was never meant to be, and a growing of the real me, the one that the One created me to be.

In Carol's Garden, New Harmony, Indiana. SJG photo. CLICK for a larger view.

We can find God wherever we look for God, and sometimes, too, in places where we never expected to experience the Divine. We create from what we have been given. We live by what we cultivate in ourselves and in our lives.

Ask yourself in silence: What am I cultivating in my life? By what fruits will I be known?

The Creative Spirit: Finding the Extraordinary in the Ordinary

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Scarecrow: Folk art or innovation? Faust Historical Park, St. Louis. SJG photo.

I’m up early this Sunday morning, searching the quiet of the new day for a spark of inspiration; not only inspiration for writing this — although that’s part of it — but inspiration for the day, the week, the moments that lie ahead. Inspiration to not just get through these times but to actually live through and with them, to embrace the gift of the ordinary that fills our lives and do something productive and creative with what I see and experience.

And isn’t that often how creativity and innovation occurs? I hear birdsong outside my door and think of flutes and the trills of a violin. I hear the natural rhythm of the birds and the crickets and the frogs and I sense not just noise but the percussion of the world around me. Noise becomes music, as it has for so many composers and musicians throughout the ages. From great classical composers to jazz innovators to those who carry forward the folk traditions of aboriginal and old-world music as it reflects the beauty and intricacy of the world around them, the ordinary becomes extraordinary when we put our hands and our minds to work. Do we hear birdsong in the flute or the flute in the birdsong?

The green of the leaves on the trees out my back door is radiant with the early sun’s glancing blows and the lingering wetness of last night’s rain, and although trees don’t move from their rooted stations they move before our eyes, of course, whether slow and subtle in a gentle breeze or ecstatic and tortured in a storm. Ordinary? Of course, but don’t tell that to Monet and so many other artists who made the trees and gardens and their movement come alive for us.

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God,” as Hopkins wrote, but within the ordinary grandeur of our lives are the seeds of our own human innovation and art. Flowers are flowers, spores are spores, but they also contain multitudes — healing medicines and hope for cures when creative scientific minds look beyond the ordinary in search of extraordinary ways to improve our lives. Someone saw a bird fly and began to wonder how we could fly ourselves. And we eventually did.

The radiance of nature. SJG photo.

Our DNA hasn’t changed all that much in thousands of years, but we know now how to look closely enough to notice the changes that bring about disease, so we can begin to bring about healing. A miracle? Perhaps, but only in the sense that we have learned to capture the ordinary to bring about the extraordinary. Perhaps that’s what the writer of Genesis had in mind when he said that God gave man dominion over the earth. We have far too often used that Biblical narrative as an excuse to do whatever we wanted to the earth around us — often to the detriment of the world we are called to protect and nurture — when, perhaps, we should have just been paying closer attention.

And, indeed, many have been doing this for a long time. The history of our art, our music, our science and engineering breakthroughs more often than not springs from our ability to pay attention to the world around us. The ordinary world, from its molecules and atoms to the grandest of canyons and the vastness of oceans, continues to inspire and motivate change, innovation and art.

So what is our response? How do we fit in? What contribution do we have to make? Don’t be confused or disheartened by my examples. We all don’t have the training and the wherewithal to find a cure for cancer, to paint a masterpiece worthy of Monet, to compose music that will reflect the beauty of the world back to its Maker. Or maybe we do.

We all have the ability to transform the ordinary in extraordinary ways. We plant and fertilize and nurture and a garden is born, a gift to those who see it even at a glance or taste its fruits. We write a poem or a letter to a friend who needs to hear that they are remembered and extraordinary. We sketch, we draw, we doodle. We make up stories and games to keep our children amused. We hum an old hymn in the ear of an elderly friend and we cradle a newborn and calm her tears with a whispered lullaby. We solve a business or societal problem by emulating how nature takes care of itself. We pay attention. We get off our duffs and act. We believe we have something to contribute.

Last week, one of my reflections appeared in the Living Faith daily devotional, and I ended it with this:

Einstein said, “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.” We can see each sunrise, each newborn child, each encounter with beauty and chalk them all up to chance, or we can stand back in wonder at these daily miracles and choose to see the hand of God. The first option is a yawn; the second is a gasp. You choose.”

Ask yourself in silence: What one thing can you do today to pay attention and act, to respond to your call as creator and reflector of the divine, creative spark?

Challenge: Write and tell me what you did!

Today’s Word: Available

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Chronos. St. Louis Cathedral, New Orleans. SJG photo.

Evidently, the vast majority of Americans believe that the phrase “God helps those who help themselves” comes from the Bible. In fact, it was uttered by the wise old founding father Ben Franklin who, although clever and all that, is hardly a reliable source for Christian social teaching. For Franklin’s witticism is not only non-biblical; it’s counter-biblical. Indeed, it could not be further from the call to service and love that we find in the gospels.

For if we profess to be Christian, we have no choice but to love and care for those around us. And who is “around us?” Who is our neighbor? As the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10) teaches us, our neighbor is anyone who is in need. So we must ask ourselves today: Is there anyone in need around us? If we say no, we’re either looking with half-closed eyes or our world is far too narrow.

We are called to make ourselves available to others. In Ignatian spirituality, this is referred to as “apostolic availability.” We must be there for others. We must be the healing and comforting Christ for others. We are called to bring the “good news” of the Gospel to others, but with the knowledge that salvation comes in different forms. We tell of a Jesus who saves and promises life to come, yes. But we are also called to bring the good news of the here and now. I love this from Dean Brackley, SJ:

Jesus proclaims “Good News to the poor.” What is this Good News? Ask 
the poor — you will get clear and immediate answers: health, shelter,
food, opportunity, jobs, education.

The challenge of responding to this call to service is that our lives often make us so UN-available. We fill our lives with so many things — including many good things — that we leave no time to just be available if someone needs us, no time to go looking for someone who might need us, no time to call someone up and say, “do you need anything?”

Kairos. Jackson Square, New Orleans. SJG photo.

This is the difference between the Greek ideas of chronos time and kairos time. Chronos time rules our days. It is ordered time — seconds, minutes, hours — and it is a demanding taskmaster from the moment the clock goes off in the morning. It’s necessary, of course. But it is not all. Kairos, on the other hand, lies outside of this sequential time of clocks and calendars. It is the time that slips by in moments of quiet contemplation and prayer. It passes without notice in moments of service to others. It is fleeting in moments of creation and joy, when time seems to stand still. It is time outside of time.

We need chronos, of course, or nothing would run on time and the world would run amok. But we need times of kairos in a chronos world. We need big chunks of time when we’re not watching the clock, when we’re not worried about the next appointment. We need this time to be available to God and available to others. This availability — this love — doesn’t come free or even cheap. It will cost us something. As Sarah Thebarge, author of The Invisible Girls, writes:

Love will cost you dearly.
And it will break your heart.
But in the end, it will save the world.

Ask yourself in silence: To whom can I be available today? What will it cost me? Will it be worth it?

Sitting at the Feet of Elders

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Memorial Stone in New Orleans cemetery. SJG photo.

About a month ago at St. Francis Xavier (College) Church at Saint Louis University, I had the opportunity to attend an event for the L’Arche community in St. Louis featuring Sue Mosteller, CSJ, a sister of St. Joseph for 65 years and a long-time friend, colleague and literary executrix of Henri Nouwen. Nouwen, who died in 1996, was one of the great spiritual writers of the 20th century and one of my own personal inspirations and heroes, although I never had the opportunity to meet him.

So when I had the opportunity to hear Sue Mosteller, who has done so much to preserve and continue to publish Nouwen’s work, I knew this might be as close as I ever might get to Nouwen. And I was not disappointed. Sitting on a folding chair with a few hundred others, I was reminded of something I recently read (wish I could remember where!), that “sitting at the feet of wise elders is like listening to the Holy Spirit.”

Although I took notes while I was there, I wasn’t sure I would ever do anything with them. But as I reviewed those notes yesterday, I realized the depth of the wisdom and knew I needed to share it. So with apologies to Sue if I get anything a little wrong from faulty note taking, here are a few things I learned sitting before this particular elder, this person willing to allow the Spirit to work through her as she told us about listening for the “inner voice of love.” I didn’t put quote marks around everything below because I wasn’t sure of my accuracy, but be assured that the thoughts and ideas are hers, not mine…

She began by telling a story of accompanying Nouwen to a museum, where he placed himself before a Van Gogh painting. She waited with him…5 minutes…10 minutes…15 minutes until finally she asked him, “What are you doing?”

His nonchalant reply: “I’m walking around in the south of France, aren’t you?” He had stepped into the painting, was appreciating it. And the lesson: We cannot be spectators when it comes to our faith.

Sue Mosteller, from Wikipedia.

So where is this “inner voice of love?” First of all, she urged us to be careful about those words, for there is no “voice.” The inner voice of love, the voice of God, comes to us through others, and often from the most unlikely of teachers. John the Baptist, one unlikely teacher [just think about what he must have looked and smelled like!] came to point to the light of the world. “Not me, it’s him,” he said.  “There is the lamb of God.” We need John the Baptists who will point us in the right direction. We hear that voice, but it is Jesus we follow and encounter, and it is with Jesus that we abide. In that encounter we are transformed. In that encounter we discover the voice of love.

When God wanted to save us he didn’t send a book; he sent a person, Jesus. And this Jesus is delicate and respectful. He doesn’t begin by saying, “repent and be saved.” He says, gently, “What are you looking for? Can you give me a drink? Would you like to be healed?” This is the voice of love. The voice of love asks questions of the other.

Jesus says, “As the Father has loved me, so I love you.” We have to claim this. We have to say, “yes.” We are beloved, with all of our beauty and darkness. The earth has seen 34.5 billion years of evolution and…then…there was the perfect time for you and me to be born. So that we could be here right now, doing what we are doing. Jesus came to “pitch his tent among us.”

We need to stay close to the wise voices that are guiding us, that are telling us that we are loved. For the call of love is to become like Jesus. Our call is to become what we are — mothers and fathers of whatever kind — and take responsibility to show and guide others to the realization that they are beloved.

Jesus was vulnerable to others — he kneels and washes their feet. So we need to ask: What is my role, my primary name? Do we give people a moment of heaven in the midst of their hell? To do so, we must be aware of what is happening around us.

Sue ended by telling the story of a prostitute in Paris, depressed and suicidal, who stopped by a church to pray one last time before going off to kill herself. A minister saw her there and sat beside her while she wept.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“No,” she replied. “I’m on my way to die. There is no redemption for me and I hate men.”

“Could I say one thing?” the minister asked. “I hear you and I know you are suffering. But do you know that you are a virgin?”

She scoffed.

“There is a secret place in your heart, a hidden, privileged chapel, a place to which only you and God have access. In that place, you are a virgin.”

She wept more.

Can we believe there is such a place for all of us? A place where God dwells and waits for our return? A place where God says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love?” We need to claim this truth. We are beloved. We are all broken and waiting to be transformed.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I believe I am beloved, that there is a place where God and I can meet, a place where God awaits my return, no matter what I’ve done?

One more question: Leave a comment and tell me about a time you sat at the feet of an elder and felt the pull of the Holy Spirit. Who was it and what did you learn?

The Creative Spirit: Waiting

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Waiting for spring. SJG photo.

It’s a cold, cold, cold morning here in America’s Midwest, and the snow and ice outside my window are begging me to stay inside today, nudging me toward my chair by the fire, toward a time of prayer and waiting.

So much of prayer, like so much of the creative process, is in fact about waiting. But it is not a passive waiting as much as it is a time of expectation that something will happen, a hidden promise that revelation or inspiration will come if we leave ourselves open to that secret and mystical movement of God in our lives.

And yet, sometimes it just doesn’t seem to work. Sometimes we sit and wait and nothing happens. No words, no ideas. Our hands won’t move across the keyboard, the pen sits idle in our grasp, the paintbrush remains dry.

So what do we do when our prayer life or our creative process come up dry? Rather than wringing our hands or — even worse — giving up, our call is to something gentler and more faithful. God asks us to sit and wait, to keep coming back with the knowledge and expectation that the divine presence remains, whether we sense it or not, whether our time of prayer or creativity seems fruitful or not. With a very loud silence, God reminds us that our time together is not about what gets accomplished; it’s about our time together, our shared and intermingled presence.

I was reminded of all this upon reading a poem this week by Rev. Tom Schoenherr, a retired Lutheran pastor, spiritual director, and inspired writer and blogger. Tom’s poem, below, speaks to this “gnawing at the soul” that we can sometimes feel in the depth of dark and cold winter. You can check out more of his writing at his website, The Deeper Journey.

Today,
Snow blankets the scenery,
White smoke pours from chimneys,
Writing gnaws at my soul,
No words to pray
Today.
Longing for peace-filled thoughts,
Hoping for new life,
Doubting your presence,
No words to pray
Today,
Where comes the Spirit?
Where come the sighings?
Where lie deep thoughts?
Where comes the crying?
Today,
My mind settles in,
My spirit centers my soul,
I rest my open hands upon
My knees. I wait,
I listen.
You are here
Today.

Welcome, Kate. SJG photo.

Speaking of waiting, yesterday Sue and I welcomed our second grandchild. She is perfect in every way and the spitting image of her big brother, Noah. Welcome to the world Kate Olivia Givens, we’ve been waiting for you…

Ask yourself in silence: How do you cope with those times when God and inspiration seem distant?

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