thanksgiving

Today’s Word: Gratitude

Steve · November 28, 2013 · 7 Comments

noah — Grateful for Noah. Photo by Ellen Sala.

It’s hard to believe how quickly time flies. Today marks the fourth anniversary of this blog. I started it on a crisp Thanksgiving Day at the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri in 2009, feeling extremely grateful for everything and everyone around me. Not much has changed on that front, except that life just keeps getting better and fuller with every passing day and year.

These four years have brought disease and healing, and they have given us new family members, including Jenny’s boyfriend Zach, our beautiful daughter-in-law Jess and, of course, the new keeper of our hearts, our grandson Noah. We treasure the time with older family members and friends and learn to lean in a little closer when they tell stories that we want to make sure we never forget. Our friends — both old and new — become all the more precious to us as the years pass, and the opportunity to spend time with all those we love is a blessing beyond measure. When you face any kind of serious health issue you learn this fast: It is the presence of those special people that enriches our lives, and everything we have or own pales in comparison to the gift of that time together.

Sunset — Grateful for each passing day. SJG photo.

And so we learn to live in gratitude and come to know that “thank you, God” can be the most important and deepest prayer we can ever say. For “thank you, God” means, “I’m paying attention.” It means, “This is not all just about me.” It means, “Everything is gift.” With Noah in our family, we have a fresh and beautiful reminder of the gift of life, a little divine nudge that we should never take any of this for granted, but rather embrace it all with gratitude.

Ask yourself in silence: For what am I grateful today that I couldn’t even have imagined four years ago?

Today’s Word: Harvest

Steve · August 2, 2013 · 5 Comments

I am no farmer and not much of a gardener. Sue and I grow annuals in flowerpots and once in a while grow some tomatoes, but that’s about it. Something in me would like to be, but I’m not sure I’m up to the commitment it takes to care for the potential harvest, however small. I grew up in urban St. Louis, but even there my father found the time and the space in our backyard to plant (mostly from seed) a healthy, organically grown crop of tomatoes, onions, lettuce, peppers and more. Today, I have friends who participate and work hard in community gardens, and I love the harvest at our local Farmer’s Market.

So I love the harvest (what’s better than a fresh tomato or strawberry?) and stand in awe and gratitude of all those farmers who bring us our daily fruits and vegetables. I am thankful for the often-underpaid farmworkers who plant and pick the produce that ends up in our supermarkets. And, as always, I worship the Creator who waters the fields and blesses the ground with nutrients. I adore the Lord who makes tomatoes taste heavenly and strawberries better than just about anything should be allowed to taste. We too easily take all this for granted. We just go down the produce aisle and there they all are, lined up and waiting for us, freshly misted. Today, let’s remember all those who bring us our food and the God who gives everything that is good: “The earth has yielded its harvest; God, our God, blesses us.” (Psalm 67:7)

Ask yourself in silence: Can our eating (and our gathering together to eat) become an act of worship and prayer?

The Hard Spiritual Work of Gratitude

Steve · October 14, 2012 · 4 Comments

francis — St. Francis in prayer. Photo by SJG

With November on the horizon, our thoughts almost naturally turn to ideas of the Thanksgiving holiday and, soon after, advent and Christmas. It’s a beautiful time of year, filled with family gatherings, wonderful food, parties and gifts. But let’s be truthful: it’s also a time of almost unrelenting schedules and stress.

How are we going to get all the shopping done, prepare for the onslaught of relatives, attend parties and school concerts, clean the house, take care of end of the year business, and on and on and on? It’s a time of year when we have so much to be thankful for and, in reality, so little time to spend being thankful.

Later Thanksgiving day, November 25, 2009

Steve · December 1, 2009 · 3 Comments

Autumn leaf... — One last leaf of autumn, Missouri Ozarks, 2009. Photo by Steve Givens

As I head toward turning 50 just after the first of the year, I sometimes sense what feels like creative energy and a multitude of ideas mixed with a touch of fear bubbling up inside me. The creative energy is good, of course. The fear might be good, too, but it can be crippling. The fear, I guess, is that I won’t be able to act on all the energy and ideas. That’s a stupid fear. Just push forward. Forget the fear.

As a writer and songwriter, I can tell my stories and hope and trust that someone will see a grain of truth in them–a semblance of something real that maybe they have felt themselves. If they believe in God they may recognize their own divine experiences in my stories. If they do not or do not yet know if they believe or not, perhaps they will still glean something from me that points them to their own discovery of God and faith. I don’t preach, but I can’t help but reflect what I hold most true.

So back to the lake. All around me the sights and sounds of late autumn remind me that nature takes these last few moments before the onslaught of winter to prepare and gather. Puffy-cheeked chipmunks scamper about me gathering food for the winter. Squirrels glide from tree to tree, building nests and hording sustenance. A noisy murder of crows continually breaks the silence of the fall air. I don’t know whether that has anything to do with the coming winter or not but they seem content to caw and scare away the occasional gull. Whoever said this time of year is dead has never taken the time to look and listen. For I hear and see things now that I never notice during the peak of the lake season. I actually heard the flutter of a sparrow’s wing high above me in the tree as it perched preening itself. I can hear a pair of ducks cutting through the water. I hear a far-off fishing boat long before I see it. The world is intense and intimate and alive during these moments and I am blessed to be here.

As a Christian and a Christian writer, I believe that I am called to two things. First, like all Christians I believe that the world should be able to see Christ in me. That’s a tall order and I certainly do not always succeed. In what I say and what I do (and what I write) they should be able to see that this “Christian stuff” makes a difference–that it’s real and alive and moving, just like the movement of God in my life. As a Christian who is a writer, I believe I’m called to try and make some sense of all of this “God stuff” and “faith stuff” on the page. I don’t want to grab the readers by the scruff of their necks and pull them screaming into the kingdom, but I do want to help them find evidence of the sacred in everyday life. I want them to see what I see, holy moments that may lead them gently into the light and the waiting arms of God. If they see something they like, I hope they will join me in the walk. It’s a good road.

Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 2009

Steve · November 29, 2009 · 5 Comments

Ozark autumn color captured Thanksgiving Day, 2009, photo by Steve Givens

Today I’m down at our small lake cabin on the Lake of the Ozarks in central Missouri for a few days with my wife, Sue, and our children Jon and Jenny. This has been our Thanksgiving tradition for more than a decade now–a small meal for just the four of us, and a chance to kick back and enjoy the day without the commotion of a larger family tradition. We read and talk and watch movies. We eat, too much. It suits us all pretty well. It is also our last trip of the season to this little retreat that we bought when the kids were young, a small red lakefront cabin that can sometimes be a hassle but more often than not feels like salvation.

It is time to get the place ready for winter–to turn off the water and allow the place a few months of hibernation from us. In many ways this is my favorite time of year, because I think it gets me ready for winter, too. We arrived last night and since I awoke this morning I have seen no other people besides my family and a lone fishermen in the distance making his way across the choppy surface of the Gravois (Grav-oy) Arm of the lake. It’s quiet and uncrowded and that’s why this is my favorite time of year.

Of course, I do like the summers, too, what with the swimming and the boating and the fishing and the kids and their friends adding life and enthusiasm to our little place, but this is the best time for me to gather my ideas and begin to put two thoughts together.

I’ve put off starting this blog because I was too busy with work and life and writing other things and because I didn’t think I’d be able to keep up the pace of posting something interesting often enough. But I’m starting nonetheless. My son Jon, almost 23 and a budding social media guru, has warned me to not be too wordy. People like short blogs, he tells me. So I’m trying to heed his advice. I’ve probably written too much already. I promise to keep it shorter in the future. But it’s my first entry so cut me a break and keep reading a little while longer. A foreword to the digital future, of sorts.

In this blog, I will be writing about those ideas and memories and sparks of creativity that come to me in a flash and also the kind that brew and percolate inside me for months at a time. When I teach writing occasionally I tell my students to remember that they should always be writing, even when they are not physically typing or writing. Writing is a full-time job. I’ll be writing, in one way or another, about two things that are most important to me and drive my life and everything in it: creativity and spirituality. Everything else springs forth from these two and, if I’m really accurate, I suppose the two are inseparable. I can’t have one without the other. More on this later. Much more.