Life force

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


I could feel it this morning out in the woods, even in late summer when life has begun to turn its head. I could feel the life force in things, drawing trees up out of earth, turning leaves toward the sun, flinging grasses up out of the meadow, throwing sparks all around, grasses that reached for my ankles, my thighs, chest. Trees billowed up out of the meadow toward the morning light. I could hear it in the forest, birds murmuring, yelling at each other, making their announcements, and in the meadow, in the clicking, buzzing, whining of unseen insects. I could see it on the path, in little turds of various critters happily digesting and going on their ways. All the living things offered shade, shelter, fruit, favors and praise to each other. The elder oaks and the little bugs all did their part.

Life is happening, throbbing in every living creature. It imposes no judgment, no demands, no conditions. It just fills and lifts and motivates and empowers. It makes things blossom and sing and grow and reach toward the light and bear all kinds of fruit. It makes things diverse and beautiful. It is never disappointed in living beings, but only delights. It never punishes, only gives gifts. Even in the dying, the falling and rotting and becoming something new, there is life-giving transformation. In all things, each in its own way and fashion, there is beauty, and some kind of joy.

What if God is like this, and has nothing of the stern laws and demands and the aloof character of the gods carved on the pediments of our great buildings? What if God's laws are life, beauty, delight, growth and giving-and-receiving? What if God is not far above us but within us? What if righteousness is less like moral superiority more like organic symbiosis? What if we are living beings, and there is a life force in us yearning for light, pulsing with beauty and gifts to give, urging us to grow, to love, to offer ourselves in praise? What if we are alive, and God is that life in us? How then would you live this day?


Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve


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Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
unfoldinglight@hotmail.com