Spirituality

Today’s Word: Barefootin’

Steve · August 30, 2013 · Leave a Comment

feet — Barefootin' on Captiva. SJG photo

One of the things I like best about beach vacations is the ability to spend huge swaths of my day barefooted. When I allow myself to think about retirement and the possibility of months at a time without shoes, a big grin spreads across my face and I must look goofy to anyone around me. Oh, well, a big part of paradise for me is no shoes. I think it has something to do with having a more direct connection with the earth. My feet on soft grass or, better yet, with sand between my toes, the waves gently washing over my feet as I walk along the beach. It’s the connection, unencumbered by leather and rubber soles.

It’s an attitude of linking and bonding that has something to teach us about our approach to God, I think. For when we try to approach God encumbered with the stuff of life, the going can be a little tough. It can be hard to find God with our iPhone attached to our ear or the stock market ticker running through our heads. God help us all if the much-ballyhooed computer screen eyeglasses ever become popular. When that happens, some people will never unplug themselves again. And that’s exactly what we need to do. We need to take time to unplug from the stimuli of our lives, to take off our shoes and approach God as if the very ground we walk upon is holy.

Gifts from the sea. SJG photo.

Ask yourself in silence: What are the “shoes” in my life that keep me from making a direct and full connection with God?

Today’s Word: Grandeur

Steve · August 28, 2013 · 7 Comments

sunset2 — Grandeur. Sunset on Ft. Myers Beach, 2013. SJG photo

Sue and I arrived in Fort Myers Beach in southwest Florida this evening for a week away celebrating our 33rd anniversary. We spent our honeymoon just a few hours north of here in 1980 and have been back to the area many times over the years. Our plane was a little late landing, and by the time we rented the car and drove to the beach, the sun was about to set. We rushed into the lobby of the small hotel on Estero Blvd., checked in, and — before we even went to our room — ran to the beach.

We turned the corner at the edge of the building and this is the sunset we encountered, the sky aflame with yellows, reds, oranges, and spotted with dark, ominous clouds. The world can take your breath away at times, as God knows well. So he keeps surprising us, even though we’ve perhaps sat and witnessed hundreds or thousands of sunrises and sunsets in our lives. When you think about it, there’s no reason for all this beauty, really, other than to amaze us, to make us a little weak in the knees and a little more aware of God’s grandeur and majesty. My mind went immediately to Gerard Manley Hopkins’ great poem:

Like shining from shook foil. Ft. Myers Beach, 2013. SJG photo

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed.

And later in the poem…

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs –
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Ask yourself in silence: When was the last time I was made weak in the knees by God’s grandeur?

* * *

I wrote about this same poem a few years back. I was first introduced to it back in college and it comes to mind whenever I find myself face to face with a sunset…

Today’s Word: Story

Steve · August 27, 2013 · 3 Comments

While I hesitate to speak for others and try to never say, “we all” do or say something, I’m going to go out on a limb here and say, “I think we all have a story to tell.” We may not all want to share it publicly or write it down for posterity, but nevertheless there’s this story — this ache, perhaps — inside all of us that is just waiting to come out. Last year, I spent a few months as a volunteer for a local hospice organization, where my only job was to ask people to tell me their stories. Some folks told me they had no story to tell and sat silently until I primed the pump by asking a few questions. Then I just had to sit back and listen.

This power of the word within us is a mysterious and sacred thing, for the stories of our lives are the histories of the movement of God in us over the course of time. To tell these stories of “God within us” is akin to proclaiming the word of God. To listen to another is an act of love and a sign of community, a “holy listening” that tells the other that they are a child of God whose life and story are sacred, distinct and worthy of our time and respect. To listen to another is to give purpose and meaning to their life. The power of our story lies in our place in God’s creation — we are creatures of the Creator and thus capable and called to create our own stories.

Ask yourself in silence: Am I willing to try and find God in the people around me by listening to their stories? Do I respect the stories of those around me as I respect the Word of God?

Today’s Word: Stuff

Steve · August 26, 2013 · 2 Comments

square — Times Square Stuff, New York, New York. SJG photo

We all have stuff. And when I say “stuff,” I mean material possessions as well as all the other “stuff” that fills our lives, like work, meetings, kids’ soccer games, family obligations, hobbies, whatever. Stuff. Lots of it. And there’s nothing wrong with most of these things in and of themselves until they start demanding more attention than is physically, mentally and spiritually healthy to give them. It’s all okay until, as songwriter Rich Mullins sang in his song If I Stand, “the stuff of earth competes for the allegiance I owe only to the giver of all good things.”

And that’s the problem, of course. Stuff just won’t let us be. Stuff asks us to pay attention. And perhaps most dangerously, stuff demands more stuff. So it’s up to us how we view our stuff. We can see it all as our “just rewards,” the stuff we earn through hard work, the stuff that must be protected from others’ greedy hands at all costs. Or we can see our stuff for what it really is – a gift from “the giver of all good things,” objects and opportunities that at their best can enable us to live full, rich lives in response to God’s call and in service to those around us.

Ask yourself in silence: How do I view my stuff and what do I do with it? Does any of my stuff compete with my allegiance to God?

Today’s Word: Journey

Steve · August 25, 2013 · Leave a Comment

For me, the best descriptor of a life of faith has always been “journey.” Like a great road trip along a classic highway like California 1, what happens and what we see along the way of faith is as important as the paradise we discover at the end. So while we’re all shooting for heaven, we have a responsibility (and a privilege) to use the journey to build the kingdom for others and draw ourselves closer to God along the way. Whether we’re cradle Christians or newer to the faith, the journey to and with God is what makes us who we are.

We don’t become Christians in one brief, emotional moment. Neither do we become “complete” in a sacramental instant, however important and meaningful that may be. We are loved by God from our moment of conception, but the journey home to God — our life of faith and family — is the legacy we leave to all those we eventually leave behind. When we arrive home with God at the end of our lives, we will claim our treasure and inheritance as children and heirs of God. But the journey along the way will stand as witness and testimony to the life we have lived and the lives we have touched.

Ask yourself in silence: Where am I in my journey to God? If I died tonight, what would the legacy of my journey be? What do I need to change in my life?