Today's Word

Today’s Word: Glory

Steve · January 30, 2015 · 1 Comment

clarinet — Glory: Live your life like this. New Orleans musician Doreen Ketchens. SJG photo.

It’s not a word — glory —that most of us use much on a daily basis, I suppose. It’s a bit old fashioned, perhaps, and reserved for a few special things. The wonders of nature tend to be “glorious,” and the flag of my country is sometimes referred to as “Old Glory.” At church we’re likely to hear and sing it often. We might think about “glorifying God” by our words and actions, but how exactly do we go about doing that and does God even need us to glorify him? “Glory, glory,” as some of my elders used to say in exasperation…where to begin?

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Today’s Word: Self-Image

Steve · December 28, 2014 · 2 Comments

mile — Mile High footbridge, Grandfather Mountain, NC. SJG photo.

It’s that time of year again. We gaze into the mirror and, with the prospect of a new year and a new opportunity for beginning again facing us, we start to think of all the ways we can improve ourselves. And I’m all for it. I’ve lost some weight the past six months and gotten into better eating habits and an exercise routine I enjoy. Taking care of ourselves — physically, mentally, spiritually, professionally — is important.

But even as I think about how much more weight I want to lose and what my exercise goals for the next year should look like, I am nudged deep inside by a voice that says, “there’s more.”

Okay, I think. More. Hmm. So I start making a self-improvement list. A class perhaps. Cook more, eat out less. See family more often. Start that journal again. Walk further. Maybe get back on the bike. The list can grow long, as we all know. But then I hear a voice once again, and this time it whispers, “Maybe less would be better.”

Self-care is critical if we want to spend many healthy years with the ones we love and if we want time to do the work to which we feel called. The danger, so to speak, is not letting ourselves slide down the slippery slope toward a self-image that is based entirely on, well, ourselves. For we are more than what we look like in the mirror and how far we walk or run. We are more than our educations and professional relationships. We are more than what we appear to be.

Mile High Footbridge, Grandfather Mountain, NC. SJG photo

We are at our best when we give ourselves to others in service. We are at our best when we are able to empty ourselves of the bounty and noise of life and focus on the still, small voice of the One who calls us to be more (and less) in different ways than the mirror or the scale could ever show us. For God sees us differently than we can ever see ourselves.

Today, even as I think of ways I can improve my health in the coming year, I recall the words of St. Francis of Assisi who said, “I am who I am in the eyes of God—nothing more and nothing less.”

Ask yourself in silence: As I make my New Year’s resolutions, where’s God?

Today’s Word: Broken

Steve · December 14, 2014 · 1 Comment

guitar — Looks like an A-minor. Photo by Jon Givens.

It is perhaps a bit cliché to speak of “grasping the moment,” but like all good clichés, there’s some truth and wisdom at the bottom of this one. Especially right now, as we enter the third week of advent, we are reminded that “now” is our time. We may be “waiting” for Christmas, but God and Jesus are here and available to be experienced right now — no waiting required.

And so it goes with the moments that come and go in our lives, waiting to be truly recognized and experienced by us. This is perhaps especially true of the difficult times when we feel lost, broken, abandoned or alone. The Christmas season is a time of joy for many, but for others, it can be a tougher period. As some struggle to get by, as they see what so many others have (and buy, buy, buy…) and as they cope with the memories of those no longer with them, advent can be a time of just waiting for it all to be over. Advent can be a season of sensing our brokenness.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite Christmas stories — the tale of how that most beloved of all Christmas carols came to be written. By some accounts — we can’t be sure of the truth here, however — “Silent Night” was created out of brokenness. The story goes that a young priest, Fr. Joseph Mohr of Oberndorf, Austria, wrote the lyrics to “Stille Nacht” in 1818 and gave it to a friend and local musician, Franz Gruber, asking him to compose a simple melody to be played on guitar, as the organ in St. Nicholas Church was broken. The song was first performed on Christmas Eve and the rest, as they always say, is history. From brokenness springs beauty.

Here’s a simple guitar and voice recording that my daughter Jenny and I made a few years ago:

01 Silent Night

As we near Christmas, we recall both the woundedness of our lives and the joy of the birth of the Christ, who came to bind up our wounds, heal our brokenness and fill the empty spaces. This is the Christ who heals, who forgives, who makes whole. A child in a manger, yes, but more importantly the Word of God set in the midst of us not just 2000 years ago but even today. Especially today. This is ours to grasp, this is our moment to seize. This is heavenly peace for our lives right here.

Ask yourself in silence: Where am I broken? What beauty can spring from it? Where is my peace?

Today’s Word: Other

Steve · November 22, 2014 · 8 Comments

“You are loved / and so are they.”
(From Old Turtle and the Broken Truth, by Douglas Wood)

This is what we so often forget, even if we don’t consciously realize it. This is what we need to remember and rekindle. This is the kind of life to which we are called, one in which we walk and talk and act and plan as if the other is as loved by God as we are.

But we forget. Sitting in the comfort of our homes (here I am on an early Saturday morning with a laptop on my lap, a cup of coffee in my hand and a fire in the hearth), we can feel safe, warm and content. If we are people of faith, we can feel loved by the God we think of as Creator and Lord. If we are Christians, we can feel loved by the grace and peace of Jesus. All’s good, we say. I’m loved, we think. I have everything I need right here, we feel deep inside.

And that’s a good thing, to be so secure in this love that God has for us. This is as it should be.

But we need to be careful. For sometimes, in our assurance of our own belovedness, we begin to think that we (our group, our tribe, our church, our denomination, our country, our race) has a monopoly on God’s love and we begin to create in our minds “the other.”

The other lives far away, or maybe just in another part of the city. The other looks different than we do. The other prays and worships differently, or maybe they don’t pray or worship at all. The other speaks a different language or with inflections and accents strange to our ears. The other is darker or lighter than us. The other sometimes laughs and cries at different things than we do. The other is too loud or much too quiet. And we begin to fear the other because the safety of our own sense of belovedness begins to falter and crack.

If we’re so loved by God, we say to ourselves, how can the other, who is so different, be loved too? So we build fences and walls and otherwise put distance between ourselves and the other. We build up armies to protect ourselves from the armies of the other and, indeed, these are often necessary. For the other fears us as much as we fear them.

The thing is, we’ve got this all wrong. We don’t get to choose who God loves.

Ask yourself in silence: Who is my other?

Today’s Word: Planted

Steve · November 16, 2014 · 4 Comments

Richard Rohr has written that, “The whole point of religion is to let you know that what you’re drawing upon is already planted within you.” And I retype those words fully aware that, for many, the whole problem with the idea of God — that which is already planted within them — is, in fact, the whole religion part. The challenge of modern faith, it seems, has become for many the problem of finding God in organized religion because organized religion (of all different sorts and sects) has often let so many people down.

God can certainly be found in religion and religious practices, just as God can be found in quiet moments of solitude and prayer, in walks through the woods and in times of joy and ecstasy as we experience glimpses of God in art, nature, loving relationships with others, in the poor and in the sacramental moments of our own religion, if we have one of those.

But what’s most crucial, it seems, is that we don’t flip-flop the equation. We don’t draw upon what’s planted within us to find religion; we draw upon religion to find what’s planted within us. Even that well-worn phrase, “he’s found religion,” seems to be missing the point. It’s not religion God wants us to have but rather the deeply found relationship of looking within ourselves and finding God there waiting for us, so deeply implanted that we might not even have seen him there…nurturing, gently leading, making our lives richer and fuller and whole.

To give up on a religion that has let us down — or that never attracted us in the first place because of the imperfect people who make up that religion — makes perfect sense, it seems. Gandhi once said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

If we are Christians, it’s our call then to look inside to find this deeply planted God, to resurrect in our lives what it means to be like Christ, and present that to world when it comes looking for a reason for our faith. Maybe they will even come to like our religion. It’s on us, not them.

Ask yourself in silence: What’s most deeply planted in my life?