Givens Creative

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

Today's Word

Today’s Word: Patience

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Waiting, on Lamma Island, near Hong Kong, 2008. SJG photo.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin once wrote:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a very long time.

(to read the entire poem, visit IgnatianSpirituality.com)

When I was young, I was not a patient person. If I had an idea, I wanted to act on it. If a gift was coming I wanted it as soon as possible. And I couldn’t possibly see into the future to the time when I could do all the things I knew I wanted to do — meet the perfect girl, graduate from high school, go to college, start a family and career…

But time and faith have shown me over and over, as Robert Frost reminds us, that “way leads on to way.” Our job is to get up every day and pay attention, watching for the directional signs and fellow travelers that God puts into our lives. For inherent in this idea of being patient with God and with our lives is the idea of trust. If we’re going to wait, if we’re going to place our lives and our futures in the hands of someone we cannot see, we have to trust that, in fact, that someone is present in our lives, caring and moving and working in us and through us. God is there pointing the way, if we are quiet and still enough to notice.

Ask yourself in silence:  What am I waiting for in my life? Do I trust enough to be patient in God’s “slow work?”

Today’s Word: Morning

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"Morning Calls," by b. burk

I remember being a young adult on retreat in the late ‘70s at the Marianist retreat center just outside of St. Louis. Each morning we were awakened to the sound of Dan Fogelberg singing through the speakers in our rooms: “And it’s going to be a day/there is really no way to say ‘no’ to the morning…” But we tried (to say no)! I’m still not a morning person, and it was only in the past year or so that my wife and I committed to getting up (most) mornings to attend daily mass at 7. It’s still not easy to pry myself out of bed, but once I’m up I’m good to go for the day. It’s a blessing, however bleary-eyed.

That engagement with the morning is exactly the reason that Deacon Bruce Burk published his book: “Morning Calls.” Published by Railroad Street Press and available for sale online, the book is a simple, eloquent, seven-day retreat leading to greater awareness of self and God. Bruce’s short reflections for each day embrace the daily cycle of sunrises as an opportunity for a fresh restart – a chance to begin again. Each day’s reflection is accompanied by one of his sunrise photos, each seemingly more dazzling than the last. The photos capture the warm welcome of the sun while the text guides the reader into an introspective approach to the day. He writes in the book’s introduction:

Morning allows one to start fresh, a new start, after yesterday’s missed opportunities. It’s a gift that many miss. It is the time to smile and say, “Today I can do it.” It’s a time to reflect and start anew, a time to make a mental list or plan. Morning is that opportunity to put our reflections into action. It is the time to celebrate what went right the day before and perhaps do it again. It is the perfect time to “be.”

Indeed, there’s no way to say “no” to the morning, but there is a way to embrace it and welcome it. This little book is a nice introduction to doing just that.

Ask yourself in silence: How do I welcome each day?

Today’s Word: Prayer

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Angel in prayer, St. Louis Basilica Cathedral. SJG photo.

Prayer is a big word with a myriad of meanings. St. Ignatius Loyola wrote that, “everything that turns a person in the direction of God is prayer.” So what turns me toward God? Let me count the ways: Silence, of course, but also great music, which is just about opposite of silence (although there’s lots of silence in a great piece of music). Good spiritual reading, whether scripture or something more contemporary. A walk in the woods. Staring at the night sky. Going to church. Both being alone and being with good friends. Quietly contemplating my life and God’s movement in it. Singing at the top of my lungs. Holding my wife or children or grandchild. Reciting prayers I have known for years and which have been prayed for hundreds or even thousands of years. Or just talking to God as if he was an old friend sitting beside me on the couch — someone who knows me better than I know myself.

I’ve talked to people who tell me they do not know how to pray or that they “can’t pray.” But that is perhaps because they think there is some way that they are “supposed” to pray. To that I say (one of my favorite words): Balderdash. Prayer, to play off Ignatius’ thought, is turning your attention to God while doing something that you probably already enjoy doing — walking, listening to music, writing in your journal, sitting quietly. That part’s up to you. God doesn’t care. Perhaps the best piece of advice on prayer I ever heard came from the English priest and writer, John Chapman. He wrote (and oh, how this makes sense): “Pray as you can, not as you can’t.”

Ask yourself in silence: What am I doing when I feel closest to God? How can I pray?

Today’s Word: Beloved

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Noah Joseph Givens, SJG photo.

Today my first grandson, Noah Joseph Givens, was baptized. He was, of course, surrounded by everyone who loves him — his parents, godparents, grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and friends he doesn’t know he has yet. These are all people who will love and support him for the rest of their lives. Noah is, indeed, beloved.

A baptism is a blessing in the trust sense of the word. Take Jesus’ own baptism, for instance. He comes out of the water of the River Jordan and a voice from heaven says, “you are my Son, the Beloved; my favor rests on you.” (Mark 1:11) This, Henri Nouwen once wrote, “was the blessing that sustained Jesus during his life. Whatever happened to him — praise or blame — he clung to his blessing; he always remembered that he was the favorite child of God.”

No voice came from heaven today, but certainly the blessing flowed. Noah, like all of us, is a favored child of God — God’s beloved. No doubt he will be sustained by this day in many ways over the coming years. Like us all, he will be — perhaps unknowingly — nudged and beckoned by a gentle spirit to follow an ancient way that leads to renewed life. All because he is beloved.

Ask yourself in silence:  Do I try to live the baptismal promises that others made for me? Am I willing to believe that I am beloved and live my life in response to that love?

Today’s Word: Irresistible

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Starting something new: With today’s post I’m trying out a new idea. Knowing how pressed we all are for time — and equally aware of how much “stuff” comes into all of our mailboxes each day asking to be read — today during prayer I asked a simple question of God: What do I have to give or say to you that could possibly rise above the noise of our everyday lives? The answer I sensed perhaps should have been obvious to me: Give them less and invite them into silence.

As I have written before, silence is perhaps one of the best tools we have to draw closer to God and continue to make some sense of our lives. So while I may still post the occasional longer entry about something on my mind or something I have read, I’m going to try to write more often and shorter (about the length of one of my Living Faith devotions), all the while inviting you to spend some time in silence, where the God of all of our wants and desires dwells and waits for us. We can find God there, in the midst of family crises, illness, work problems or loneliness, if we only enter in and reach out for the One who created us. “Reaching out for God is reaching God,” as Mark Thibodeaux, SJ, has written so eloquently.

So I’m going to be living and praying each day, searching for one word upon which I can briefly reflect, a word that will also beckon you to spend some time in silence, searching for that word’s unique meaning for you in your journey of faith.

Today’s Word: Irresistible

Dragonfly on my finger. SJG Photo.

I heard this word today somewhere — irresistible. Now there are lots of senseless things that can sometimes be irresistible to us, such as television, eating too much of the wrong things or other such vices. That perhaps is a subject for another time. But the immediate sense of this word that I felt today is a comforting and peaceful notion: We are irresistible to God. God cannot get enough of us.

But we have a hard time believing this, don’t we? Why, we ask, would God want to spend time with us? Why would God care one way or another if we turn toward Him and say, “here I am?” But we also know the answer if we care to take the time to think about it. We are irresistible to God because God made us, and He made us to be in relationship with Him. The beauty and grace of all this is that when we don’t respond, when we forget to turn toward God, God is still there, waiting for us. God never grows weary of waiting because we are precious and perfect creatures of His own imagination and love. God waits because He cannot possibly resist the urge to do so. So believe it: You are irresistible.

Ask yourself in silence: Am I willing to believe this? If so, how do I respond? How does it change my life?

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