vocation

Holy as a Day is Spent: Our Awareness of the Sacred Around Us

Steve · July 1, 2012 · 5 Comments

flower — The fecundity of life, by Steve Givens

I got out this morning for a walk in the woods near my house before I found myself in the midst of yet another scorching, humid St. Louis summer day. The temperature peaked at 108 the last few days, and more of the same is promised for today.

I was accompanied on my walk this morning by the music of singer-songwriter-teacher-activist Carrie Newcomer, with whom I have had the pleasure to work and learn a few times. As I entered the canopy of the woods, I was greeted in my ear buds with Carrie’s beautiful hymn to the sacred all around us, “Holy as a Day is Spent,” a song that never ceases to make me stop and consider where I am and how I’m taking up space on the earth at the moment. More than anything else, though, the song asks us to see the sacred in the ordinary, beautiful things of daily life. Near the end of the song, Carrie sings:

Holy is the place I stand
To give whatever small good I can
The empty page, the open book
Redemption everywhere I look

Unknowingly we slow our pace
In the shade of unexpected grace
With grateful smiles and sad lament
As holy as a day is spent.

What We Have to Offer Each Other: Our Presence

Steve · May 12, 2012 · 4 Comments

candle1 — Being present to one another and to God. By Steve Givens

About a month or so ago I began volunteering for a local hospice organization called Heartland Hospice. My job is pretty basic: I visit with Margaret (not her real name) about once a week. We sit a foot apart, she in her wheelchair and I in a straight-backed chair. We look each other straight in the eyes and we talk. It’s pretty simple and Margaret makes it easy on me, as she’s quite the talker.

But our relationship is different from any other I have ever had and here’s why: From visit to visit Margaret doesn’t remember me, although she’s always enthusiastic about having someone to talk to. Like many older adults (Margaret is going to be 98 this year!), her memory is not good and so she often asks me the same questions multiple times during the hour of our visit.

And, of course, she tells me the same stories every time I visit because, after all, she’s never met me before. So I get to hear again and again about her early life in North St. Louis, about walking through Fairgrounds Park to get to the then-new Beaumont High School (where my parents would also attend a few years later), about her wanting to be a dancer but her mother refusing to allow her daughter to “take to the stage,” about her father calling her “tin ear” because she would be so engrossed in a book she didn’t hear him calling her to dinner. She talks about her two marriages (one of 40-something years and the other, later in life, of about ten years). She tells me of her two sons, one who died in his 40s and one who lives in Florida now. Or maybe Texas. That part of the story sometimes changes.

Patience: Treasuring the Ground on Which We Stand

Steve · January 8, 2012 · 13 Comments

Patience is not a waiting passivity until someone else does something. Patience asks us to live the moment to the fullest, to be completely present to the moment, to taste the here and now, to be where we are. When we are impatient we try to get away from where we are. We behave as if the real thing will happen tomorrow, later and somewhere else. Let’s be patient and trust that the treasure we look for is hidden in the ground on which we stand.

– Henri Nouwen

time — Sundial at Jewel Box, Forest Park in St. Louis (photo by Steve Givens)

So often over the years I have found myself the impatient person described above, especially when it comes to waiting for God to act. I wanted to believe that the “real thing,” the better thing, my true purpose, was always just around the corner, just over the horizon, just about to happen.

I think the most fervent and continuously prayed prayer of my adult life has been some version of this: “Show me your will for my life, God, and I’ll go do it. Just show me. Make it clear.” And then I would add parenthetically: “It would be nice if you would do that soon, please. But not TOO soon because I still have this and this and this to take care of…”

On the Road: A house built on solid rock

Steve · September 17, 2011 · 7 Comments

The next in an occasional series of travelogue/photo essays on seeing and experiencing intersections of faith, history and culture — on seeing new and old communities of faith.

butte — Outside Sedona. Photo by Steve Givens

Sue and I just returned from a week in Sedona, Arizona, celebrating our 31^st anniversary surrounded by some of God’s very best handiwork. Located in Arizona’s high desert country under the southwestern rim of the Colorado Plateau, Sedona is situated at the mouth of spectacular Oak Creek Canyon and surrounded by massive red-rock formations. It was a glorious week of rest and walking the area’s myriad hiking trails that drew us right up to the bases of the rock formations with names like Bell Rock, Courthouse Butte and Boynton Canyon.

But located between Sedona and the Village of Oak Creek is one of the region’s manmade (and woman-designed!) wonders: The Chapel of the Holy Cross. We had been through here once before when the kids were…well…kids. We had stopped at the chapel then, too, but this time we had more time to savor the beauty of the chapel and its setting, and even experience a beautifully simple Taize ecumenical prayer service.

Although operated by the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix and St. John Vianney Parish of Sedona (our parish home for the week), the church is open to all and is not an operating Catholic church. The story behind its design and creation is the story of one artist’s vision, a nagging dream and her desire to find the spirit of Christ in her art.

chapel1 — Chapel of the Holy Cross. Photo by Steve Givens

Your one wild and precious life

Steve · June 26, 2011 · 31 Comments

sunrise — Sunrise at Daytona, by Steve Givens, 2011

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?– Mary Oliver

As I have written previously, this summer I was scheduled to undergo a stem cell transplant to fight what had been diagnosed as myelodysplastic syndrome (see my postings from March 27, April 2 and April 13). This syndrome, which is all too close a cousin of leukemia, was caused by last summer’s chemotherapy treatments for another rare blood disease. Anyway…