Today's Word

Today’s Word: Psalm

Steve · July 26, 2013 · 3 Comments

Once, when a friend sensed in my voice some pain, he sent me Psalm 61, written for the chief musician and for a stringed instrument. He knew I’d like that. He also knew, as I do but sometimes forget, that we all long to shout: “Hear my cry, God. Listen to my prayer.” My friend is wiser than he sometimes lets on, for he really knows what it means to say: “I will call to you when my heart is overwhelmed.” We all feel overwhelmed from time to time, and for those times, God gives us the Psalms.

I needed my friend’s prayers and this Psalm, and some day he may need mine. This is what makes us Church, the body of Christ, broken yet unbroken. It is this mutual love and care that leads us to a rock higher than we ever could reach on our own. Together and separately we seek refuge there, dwelling under God’s tent and huddling beneath his protective wings, baby birds open-mouthed and hiding from the storm. Singing.

There we stay, sometimes hiding, sometimes peeking out, but always enthroned in the nest of God’s hands. Seeking to be fed. Always singing a psalm of praise or pain, assured that God hears both.

Ask yourself in silence: Do I have the confidence to cry or sing out to God, even in my darkest times?

Today’s Word: Restless

Steve · July 25, 2013 · 10 Comments

In his book, Doing the Truth in Love, Michael J. Himes writes: “at the center of our being is an endlessly nagging sense of, ‘Yes, yes, yes, but more.’” Likewise, St. Augustine famously wrote, at the beginning of his Confessions: “You made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.” We can be a restless people, especially when it comes to our relationship with God. We want more.

As it turns out, this restlessness is a gift. It’s all the nagging, confusing, irritating work of the Spirit. God made us to be restless, made us to be wondering and discontented and wandering about our spiritual lives, because God knew this restlessness would ultimately lead us right back to him. God knew that, with the help of the Spirit, we wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t accept the easy way of just meeting obligations and skimming by on the bare minimum of spiritual living. God knew that contentment can be the death of spiritual growth. So God made us restless.

Ask yourself in silence: Are you restless for God? What is the “more” you want right now?

Today’s Word: Doxology

Steve · July 23, 2013 · 4 Comments

The other night, Sue and I were sitting on the deck at the very end of the day as the light was fading and darkness was just creeping in. The crickets and the frogs were doing their thing incredibly loud, a crescendo of spindly legs and balloon-throated amphibians, a symphony of sound that rose and fell every 30 seconds or so, as if led by an invisible, knowing, baton-wielding hand. But whose?

“The whole of creation comes from God, goes back to God and is in God,” Paul Coutinho writes in his newest book, An Ignatian Pathway. “Creation finds its identity in God and the interconnectedness of all life.”

Ignatius once described the trinity as a three-note chord. And so I wonder, listening to the crickets and frogs, how many individual notes are sounding tonight, all of them resonating with the pure tone of the trinity ringing throughout the universe?

Praise God from whom all music flows. Praise God all singers and players here below. Praise God above the heavenly strains of sound and silence. Glory be to the composer, and to the singer, and to the conductor, one God forever and ever. Amen.

Ask yourself in silence: What do I hear when I take the time to be silent and listen? How does music connect me to God?

Today’s Word: Immanuel

Steve · July 21, 2013 · 4 Comments

pieta — Pieta at St. John Vianney Church, Sedona, Arizona. SJG photo.

Immanuel, as one of those words that scripture (both the old and new testaments) gives us for Jesus, gets pretty short shrift in our prayer life. We sing about Immanuel during advent, “ransoming captive Israel” and all that. We hear the name a few times during the Christmas season. But by the New Year the word seemingly disappears and gets put away in the attic with the rest of the Christmas decorations, stuffed in between the three wise men and the inflatable Santa.

Immanuel deserves better. In fact, Jesus can be best defined by this one word, Paul Coutinho said this past weekend. Immanuel means “God with us,” and we would be hard pressed to think of a better way to address Jesus in prayer than with this name that reminds us that God is not “up there, somewhere,” but rather right here, with us and in us. It’s a beautiful, prayerful name that flows easily from our lips, reminding us that God is as close to us as our breath itself. It’s time to bring Immanuel out of the attic, dust off the tinsel, and make him a part of our everyday prayer life.

Ask yourself in silence: Where do I picture God when I pray — off in the distance or nearer than my own breath?

Today’s Word: Commingle

Steve · July 20, 2013 · 4 Comments

I just returned from a short two-day retreat led by Paul Coutinho, an internationally recognized Ignatian scholar, author and speaker who brings an Eastern influence to Western Christian spirituality. Suffice it to say I took enough notes that I have plenty of “Today’s Words” already lined up for next week or so. Thanks to Paul Coutinho and the Bridges Foundation for putting on the retreat at the beautiful and historic St. Joseph Sisters of Carondelet Motherhouse in South St. Louis.

Commingled Light. Captured as the rays of the sun came through the stained-glass windows of the chapel at the CSJ Motherhouse in South St. Louis and projected on a nearby wall. SJG photo.

Today’s Word: Commingle

The ultimate goal of prayer, according to Ignatius, is to “commingle with the divine.” What a beautiful way to think about prayer. Prayer is not, with this understanding, about talking to God or praising God or even placing ourselves in the presence of God. It is about being so intertwined with God that you can’t tell us apart, so to speak. This commingling is love, and this love is a mutual exchange between the lover (God) and the beloved (that’s us!) In this exchange we empty ourselves to make room for God, and then God fills us back up with his presence.

Our commingling with God, Coutinho explained, is like looking at the rays of the sun and the sun itself. There is no way to tell the difference because it is all one. In this sense we echo St. Paul’s words to the Galatians: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20) The challenge for us, of course, is whether we are willing to leave ourselves open to such an exchange.

Ask yourself in silence: Am I willing to give up all I hold dear in order to make room for God? Can I pray, “Take, Lord, receive, all I have and possess?”