Comfort ye

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


Comfort, O comfort my people,
says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem,
and cry to her that she has served her term....
A voice cries out: "In the wilderness
prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert
a highway for our God....”
See, the Lord God comes with might...
he will feed his flock like a shepherd;
he will gather the lambs in his arms,
she will carry them in her bosom,
and gently lead the mother sheep.
—from Isaiah 40.1-11

Isaiah brings good news to people in exile. He imagines a smooth, level road in the desert on which the exiles can return home. We are in our own kind of exile, separated from our truest selves. Our lives sometimes seem like high tension wires strung between disturbances and obligations. The call of Advent, this promise of comfort, cries out in the wilderness of our noise and haste, where we are held captive by our tasks and obligations, our fears and desires, our addictions and attachments, our willfulness, our slavery to being defined by how we are judged and how we have pleased others. The prophet calls us home from this exile, home to our own lives, to our simple Belovedness.

The voice comes to us in quiet and darkness and silence. The road through the wilderness is the road of being still, evening out the mountains and valleys of our days. The road home, the way to re-enter our own lives, leads us through silence and darkness, through our not knowing, not having anything to say. It leads us through mystery, in which we dwell with the promise, without words for it, or ways to manage it. The way home is not an arduous journey. In fact the promise of Advent is that One is coming who will lead us, carry us, feed us, bring us home.

Listen in these days for the voice that calls you home. Prepare a way, a way of silence and stillness amidst the busyness, a way of not knowing but waiting. Wait for the presence of the One who speaks tenderly to your soul, who leads you in loving gentleness, who whispers in the darkness, “Comfort, O comfort my people...”



Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

New moon

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.





New moon,
inlaid in darkness
as smooth as polished stone,

skinny girl of light
bending over empty trees,
smiling, eyes closed,

ear of heaven
leaning toward my silence,
hearing more than I,

you welcome me to this time
of not knowing,
my mind with empty hands,

my heart like you,
so little seen,
like all the world, waxing,

pregnant with light,
turning gently,
what is, becoming.

Already, beyond my certainty
you are full and whole
and shining.






Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Live hoipefully

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


In accordance with God's promise,
we wait for new heavens and a new earth,
where righteousness is at home.
—2 Peter 3.13


What are your deepest, holiest hopes? Hopes for your life? For your family? Your community? Your world? The universe? Imagine those hopes fulfilled. Give your heart to your hopes. This is faith.

Don't think that your hopes are too audacious. God’s hopes for the world are even more audacious than you can imagine. Mary thought it audacious that God should choose her to carry God’s hope for the world, but it was true. The same is true of us.

It might seem that your life is too messed up, the world too much in the grip of evil, for there to be much hope. But our hope doesn't come from wishful thinking, or from the world or its condition. It comes from God. Hope rises from the love that is at the heart of all things. It comes from trust that the love that created the world can transform the world. Of course there is evil in the world, and failure in our own lives, but we don't live under its spell. We choose to live by the light of God's promise, not the world's threats and disappointments. Exercise the muscles of hope, not despair, for despair holds the door open for evil, while hope holds the door open for God.

Attend to your hope. Listen to it. Bring it to mind. Envision the fulfillment of your hope. Let it be real. Live as if your trust it. Imagine it coming to pass. Live as if it is coming to pass even now. Live as if Christ is actually coming.

God moves this world not by force but by the Spirit. By participating in God’s hope for the world, like Mary did, we help it to come to fruition — no matter how many generations it takes. This Advent season, give voice to your hope, and live by its light. Be awake. Live hopefully.



Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

______________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Black Friday

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and peace to you.


Today is the biggest shopping day,
but Sunday is the beginning of Advent.

•

On Black Friday
when merchants go into the black,
      go into the black.

Enter the mystery.
      Wait for what you do not know.
While others are checking off items on their lists
      chuck out your list.

While others are shopping,
      wait to receive.
While others seek satisfaction
      seek patience.

While others join the rush
      join the stillness.
While others fill their carts
      empty your heart.

While others take advantage of a limited supply
      know that an infinite grace is prepared for you,
that what is promised you
      can't be taken away from you,

and that what you are given infinitely
      you can infinitely give.
Find peace not in finding, but in waiting,
      and befriend not knowing.

Imagine that you will receive
      what you can't expect.
Believe that what you've always wanted
      you've never imagined.

Go into the black, and wait there
      for the dawn, for the angel,
      for the child.
In the black, in the silent mystery
      is the holy.


Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve
______________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Hands open

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Come into this day with your hands open,
with your hands open like eyes to the world,
like a morning meadow swept of darkness
ready for the sun to be poured in thick.
Come into this day with your hands open
with the surprise of gratitude,
ready to receive all that's lavished on you,
and you know, the whole world is lavished,
the day with its touchings and releasings,
the night with its abundance of darkness,
stars in their billioned waves, poured out for you
even when you can't see them,
and time, handed to you
just as regular and steady as a heartbeat,
and everything in it, poured out and piled up
and falling all around you and into your open hands.
Come into this day with your hands open
like wounds unafraid to be healed.
Come into this day with your hands open,
open for letting go, open to give all your gifts,
to give and receive until they are the same.
Come into this day and the next with your hands open
wide enough for ol' Mama Life to come give you
one of her hugs, light as air, sure as earth,
long as the rest of your days.
Come into this day with your hands open
and keep them like that 'till death closes them.
Come into this day with your hands open
wide enough to say with all you mean
please and thank you and thank you again,
hands open enough to be empty,
and they will be full of light.



         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Practive gratitude

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
It feels so good to complain— to hide behind my powerlessness, to focus on someone else's fault, to give significance to my opinions, to protect myself with a shield of negativity. But complaining is a way of picking at a wound, and making others bear my pain. Whining is a weed in the garden of the spirit. It steals energy from compassion, sucks the nourishment out of the soil of my mindfulness, and chokes my willingness to be lovingly present. It prevents me from entering into the vulnerability of acceptance, reverence and forgiveness.

So like giving up something for Lent, I'm giving up complaining for Thanksgiving. I will notice when I'm tempted to whine, and instead practice gratitude. Instead of voicing my complaint I will follow it inward and observe the pain it comes from. When I am drawn to fiddle with a wound by complaining, instead I will exercise compassion toward myself and others by seeking healing. Instead of becoming attached to my opinions, I will be lovingly present. Instead of whining I will bless. In all things, I will practice gratitude. And when I can't muster the spirit to be grateful, I will turn to the deep wisdom of silence.

I trust that it will not always be easy, that gratitude is a practice, not a feeling, and that it will indeed take practice. But I will practice diligently. For what better way is there for my life to be filled with blessings than for my heart to be filled with gratitude?


         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

It's Monday

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


It's Monday and you're back—
at work, in class, in line, in step and all,
your back against the wall, back in the dodge-and-lurch,
but you want to go back, back to yesterday, in church,
even though most of it you don't really want—
the part where they looked past you, stained glassed you,
surpassed you with faces all photographic,
when their words went flying by like traffic,
when they said all these holy things
that you weren't buying and then left them lying
on the ground like cheap scripture candy wrappers,
no, not that part.
And not the part when the preacher,
over-happy over-reacher, said that stuff
that made God sound so high, so far, so wee,
so dense, without much sense, without much feel,
without some touch, some place where you could fall,
where you could rest, where you could just
get in— no, not that part at all.

No, it was in that part you didn't see coming,
a baby's noise, maybe, or a mistake,
or maybe the look on the kid's face trying so hard
to light the candle and it just wouldn't,
and people tried not to laugh but they couldn't,
though it wasn't funny, and he kept on, so serious,
until he got it lit, and for a flash, a bit, a flame,
you saw it: as if God was there inside him all along and you
didn't know why the look on his face made you light
up like the candle, so odd—but you did. And now
it's Monday and you want it back, that moment, that kid,
that light, that God.

Oh, darling, don't go where those Monday others went
and giggle at the mystery, the ones who struggle hard
to keep their skin on tight— but go on, step into that light,
that mapless place where hapless souls discover God
inside you, there, not hiding, no, but so deep down
it's hard to see, so holy, you, that it's invisible
unto the human eye.

It's Monday and you want to reach for God
who seems so high, so far, so wee, but look and see:
God isn't there, hung up in someone's reaching place,
but here, inside your hands, your face,
the place that's broken, truth unspoken,
your doubt, your woundedness, your tired out,
your burned out, kept out, inside out,
your dangling threads, your dead, your left unsaid,
your dreads, your didn't know, your danger.
God's in the hungry, thirsty ones inside you,
in the homeless, in the stranger,
in the sick, imprisoned self, the one you've kept
back on the shelf because she couldn't get the candle lit,
but God was in her anyway.
That's where God is. Never shoved away
beyond some should, but in the anyway,
the nonetheless, the here to stay.

It's Monday and your life's a mess—go on, confess,
'cause God is in you anyway, with no unless,
without condition, cause or testiness, just there,
like Monday, in your face, your hands, your heart,
with love and tenderness and grace,
enjoying, hanging out. Don't do that Monday doubt
and think you have to reach for God—
oh, God is rooted deep inside and reaching out for you
like blood that reaches from your heart and oozes up
to every throbbing part, like flame that uses you
for a candle, like earth that refuses to let you go,
but opens up her arms, and all you have to do is fall,
that's all.

It's Monday and your God is here, and loving it,
your second coming, perfecting you from inside out,
and not expecting anything from you but you,
just being here, and watching, humming, resurrecting.






Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Prayer to my sovereign

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


God has raised Christ from the dead and seated him at God's right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come, and has put all things under his feet.
—Ephesians 1. 20-22


Merciful Sovereign, Mighty Lover,
you are ruler of the universe.
You hold all Creation in your care;
you reign in glory from among the poor.
All this world's evil, powerful as it seems,
strains under your feet.

You who are sovereign of all things,
be the tender ruler of my heart.
I surrender myself to your grace.
I am utterly subject to your gentleness,
obedient to your forgiveness and your delight.
I am at the mercy of the resurrecting power
that you stir up in me.
Your grace overthrows my will;
your presence overpowers my doubt;
your joy subdues my fear.
As darkness is powerless against the light,
I am defenseless against your love.

I am not my own Emperor. My life is yours.
You conquer all that would enslave me,
and you alone set me free.
Therefore I submit myself,
my attachments and addictions
my insistence and refusals, to your control.
Save me from my private kingdom,
and restore me to your loving Realm.
May I be obedient today to your sovereignty,
my desires subservient to your grace,
and all grasping banished by your loveliness.
Trusting in your unconquerable tenderness
that rules the world,
your grace that subdues the nations,
I submit myself to your delight
and devote myself to your service.
All-loving One, I bow to you.
Your will be done.
Rule my heart, and make of my life
your heavenly Realm.




Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

A blessing (Ephesians 1.15-23)

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         Ephesians 1.15-23— a paraphrase



Beloved,
the Lord of Love shines out through you
and your love of others radiates
so clearly I can see it from here.
I am grateful for you,
and I hold you in the arms of my prayers.

I pray that God,
whom our Master of Love revealed to us,
the Womb of Beauty,
may give you a spirit of wisdom and clarity of vision.
I pray that you come to know God
more and more deeply.
May the eyes of your heart be bright.
May you find yourself in the place of hope
that God has prepared for you.
May you discover the glorious riches
that God gives all her precious children.
May God's power amaze you
as it works within you through your trust in God—
it's the same power with which God
raised Christ from the dead!

Christ's love reigns with God at the heart of all things.
This love is greater than any human power,
greater than all systems and dominions and empires,
and renders them pointless.
Christ's love saturates all that is,
and all that is to come.
God has given everything over to love.

The Church is the embodiment of this love,
Christ's risen body, Christ's fulfillment,
filling everything
until everything
is love.


         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Morning walk

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
Each morning I begin the day with a walk in the woods. It's not for exercise, though I sometimes go quite a distance, nor to walk the dog, though he comes along. It's to begin the day by being on the earth, being in a body, being alive. I practice being there, and not being somewhere else in my head. I use my senses, taking in what is around me. I look at everything and notice stuff. I notice the trees, the colors and textures and shapes and shades. I notice the air, and how warm or cold it is, the wind, the clouds, the moon. I notice gravity, and how my body works with it. I feel my breathing. I listen to the little sounds, the conversations of the grasses, the birds, the brooks beneath the other sounds of distant traffic and planes. I'm not analyzing, judging or thinking. I am simply mindful of being a mammal moving across the ground, moving through the presence of God, being alive.

Oh, I'm not Thich Nhat Hanh. My mind wanders. I think of the coming day, or imagine some silly scene, or carry on some argument with an imaginary person. But then, by grace, I return. I come back into the woods. I return to the present. Sometimes it takes a while, but I get there.

I've discovered you can do this anywhere, whether or not you have woods. In cities and suburbs, alone or in crowds, you can pay attention. You can begin the day by being mindful, paying attention, returning moment by moment to the present, here and now. Even in this moment, siting at your computer, you can stop and look around, or close your eyes and breathe. You can be alive. Sometimes that is enough. Sometimes it is important that that is enough.


         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

The Soverign who truly reigns

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


The King will say, “I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” And they will reply, “Lord, when did we see you...?”
—Matthew 25.42-44

The story of the Great Judgment obviously invites us to care for the poor. (If you believe in a literal hell, pay attention: the only criterion for getting there that Jesus offers is not your doctrine, or your moral purity, but how you treat the poor.)

This is also a story about how we perceive God. We think of God as all-powerful—but our view of power is distorted. We think of power as the capacity to coerce, to force something to happen or someone to do something. It is the capacity to impose one's will upon another, which is inherently violent. And we imagine that God has that kind of power: God can make anything happen. But Jesus does not worship that kind of power. His image of God is not a king who imposes his will, but a father who gives his love. What if God's power is love, not violence? What if God is not “all-powerful” but all-loving, all-present? Then we need to repent of our idolatry of violence. (Can't you feel it? Don't you want God to be violently powerful?) And we need to be saved—converted—and come to believe in the very different kind of power that Jesus shows us in love.

Jesus tells a parable in which the most powerful one, the King, is among the poor and vulnerable, the needy and those unable to force their will upon others—and we don't see God there. This is not just a tale about a prince in pauper's clothing. That is God's clothing. God has not left her usual place to temporarily hide among outsiders. God is love, and God comes from among the poor. But we don't see God there because they don't have the trappings of power.

This Sunday is the Sunday of the Reign of Christ, the culmination of the church year, and symbolically the culmination of the life of Christ: Christ has lived and died, been raised again, given the Spirit to the church, and ascended to the throne of God to reign over all Creation. That seems like wishful thinking to us, because Jesus is clearly not in power—not imposing his will. But why do we worship that kind of power? What if God is love, not violence? What if reigning does not mean imposing his will but being present in love? Then in fact Christ does reign, and is all-present, and is most clearly visible not in people and nations and corporations who can impose their will on others, but in people who are free from such trappings. Christ's power is the power of love, not coercion. And that power truly reigns over all Creation.

Christ, the Sovereign of the Universe, is present. Open your eyes.


Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Hold me

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

O Thou Mysterious Love,
         hold me.

When I cannot stand,
         be the ground that holds me.
When I have fallen apart
         be the gravity that binds my pieces.

You are the Presence I do not see, can not feel,
         the Steadiness that lets me tremble.
You are the darkness I stumble through;
         you are the way and the not knowing.

You are the well of my tears,
         the soft place for me to fall.
You guard my tenderness,
         and defend my wholeness.

You are the fiber of my making,
         the love that brings me through.
You keep me in your hands;
         you bear me on your hip.

Hold my shattered fragments in your hands,
         until I am ready to be made new.
Wrap my unknowing in your arms of darkness
         until my dawn is ready to rise.

Holy One, Creating One,
         I am your Beloved.
I am yours.
         I am yours.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Veterans Day

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


He was wounded for our transgressions.
—Isaiah 53.5

Today, on Veterans Day, we honor those who have served in our military. Today we will romanticize them. Tomorrow we will forget them. The next day we will deny them medical care, housing and mental health benefits. The day after that we will ignore them while they suffer the wounds of war, the ravaging effects of doing and witnessing brutal violence, the mixed feelings of having served their country by killing people. We will debate the finer legal points of torture, while they bear the deep psychic scars of having participated in inhuman, soul-destroying duty. (It appears that the psychic damage of torture is as great on the perpetrators as on the victims.) They will wrestle with the reality that 90% of our war dead are innocent civilians, and we will tell them they are not guilty, because it's the price of freedom. They will do their best to believe that. They will bear the scars, the wounds and disfigurement, the nightmares, disorientation and loneliness of having borne their nation's insanity into the world. They will suffer the highest suicide rates in the nation. Of course many combat veterans adapt well and find ways to make their peace with what they've been asked to do. But not without psychic cost. We will thank them, because we don't want that blood on our hands.

But it is. Combat veterans are the victims of our practice of child sacrifice. We offer up their bodies as a sacrifice for our sin, an offering in our religion of war, the illusion that violence is necessary, effective and redemptive, the evil lie that our lives are made better by someone else's suffering. They are the victims of our belief that violence changes anything. As a nation we project our fear of suffering and powerlessness into the evil of war, and they—and all whom they engage in violence—bear the wounds. They are the children whom we have sent to kill some other mother's children. We honor them, but we do not stop sacrificing them.

Today I pray for all who are touched by the violence and inhumanity of war. To all who have given their lives I offer my thanks for their bravery, and their devotion to their country. God grant them rest, and honor their memory. To all who have chosen to serve, and to all who have suffered without choosing, I pray that God will grant mercy, healing and blessing. And in their honor, in the name of the Prince of Peace, who gave his life in nonviolent love, I devote myself to the end of our blood sacrifices, and to the mending of the world.



Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Today

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
The day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. When they say, "There is peace and security," then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labor pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief; for you are all children of light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness. So then let us not fall asleep as others do, but let us keep awake and be sober.
         —1 Thessalonians 5. 2-6


Afraid of dying, we avoid living.
We sleep a sleep of fear,
dark nightmares pulled up around our chins.
Thinking we must survive now,
we wait to live later.

But the present moment is constantly being destroyed,
swept away into the past,
taken by a thief
who leaves another.
Life is transitory.
Each day, in fact, can be our last.

So wake up,
and live in the present moment.

The thief steals only what you have kept,
not what you have spent.

What calls out in your life?
What song needs singing,
what person needs loving,
what risk invites the investment
of all of yourself?

Child, awaken.
Rise to this day.
If you love someone, tell them,
before the moment to do so
is burned in a flash.
If you have a gift,
give it before the moment
vanishes like a dream.


         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Occupy the parable

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.

Since parables are usually about something other than what they seem, you can read one as a metaphor for other things, like our relationship with God or something. But it may also be a once-upon-a-time story that's “about” exactly what it says it's about. Jesus told some stories like that, like in Matthew 25.14-3.

Once there was this guy who had a ton of money. (One of the 1%. Of course Jesus didn't say a “ton,” he said a “talent,” which was a measure of weight-- a lot of it. A talent of money is actually the equivalent of fifteen year's wages.) So he's got about $120 million to play with. (You don't suppose he earned that by his own honest, hard labor do you? Working overtime, maybe? Or was it more likely by using other people, gaming the system, paying the lowest possible wages, oppressing workers, skimping on safety and environmental measures, lobbying for fewer regulations, taking advantage where his money and power allowed him to?...)

Anyway. He lines up his money managers. To one he assigns $75 million, to another $30 million, and to another $15 million. The first two play the game. They invest his money. (In struggling family farms? Probably not. More likely where the real money is: armaments, oil, speculative banking, loan sharking via credit cards...)

But the third manager won't play along. He joins the Occupy Galilee protest. When the rich guy demands his take, the manager returns his $15 million and says, “Do you know how afraid people are of you? You steal money that's not yours. You rake in money you didn't earn. You cut the needy out of your budgets. Well, I'm not going to participate in your economic game. I'm not going to work for you. So I buried your money in a shallow grave, a place of death. Here. Go get an honest job and make your own money.”

God bless the ones with the guts to peak out against injustice. Because, of course, the rich guy fires him. And of course he gives his account to the manager who's made the most money for him, the one who's already deep in the system. The rich get richer, don't they?-- and the poor get poorer. The one who has everything gets more, and from the one who has nothing, even what he has is taken away.

The end.

You don't like this story? Well, it's true. What are you going to do about it?


Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve
______________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Moon

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.




Faithful moon,
not always visible,
but always facing me,
circling, dancing,
mystery beauty veiled,
pulling me from the inside,
swaying my tides,
waxing silently--
in your luminous darkness
I step outside
and pray.




Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve
________________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Practice letting go

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


Three slaves are given charge of their master's estate. Two invest their portions and gain a return, but the third says, ”Master, I knew that you were a harsh man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not scatter seed; so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.”
—Matthew 25. 24-25

Fear makes us cling rather than letting go. But clinging only binds us to our fear. It does not set us free. Practice letting go.

Fear inhibits our willingness to be fully, lovingly present each moment. Afraid of the responsibility and uncertainty of investing ourselves in the present moment, we withhold ourselves. Afraid of what might be demanded of us, we do not engage in what is before us. Wishing things were otherwise, we bury ourselves elsewhere. But life is this, not something else. Practice being present.

All that you are and all that you have is God's. You have nothing to lose. Practice giving yourself away.



Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Beatitudes

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Treasured are they who have nothing to offer.
They live in the Realm of God.

Happy are those who know deep sorrow,
for they know deep joy.

Lucky are those who are powerless,
for the world will be given to them.

Beloved are they who hunger and thirst
         to be close to God,
for God alone shall fill their lives.

Blessed are they who are gentle,
for they will always have a soft place to land.

Gifted are they who are transparent to love,
for they will see God in every moment.

Treasured are they who bring reconciliation.
They are children of God.

Warmly embraced are those who suffer in order to love.
They live in the heart of God.



         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Children of God

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.


See what love the Mother-Father has given us, that we should be called God's children. That is who we are! Of course the world does not see this, because the world does not know God. Beloved, in the present moment we are God's children; what we will be in the future has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when God is revealed, we will be like God, for we will see God as God truly is. And all who have this hope in God purify themselves, just as God is pure.
—1 john 3.1-3

God is love. The One at the heart of all being is love—a desire for blessing, well-being and oneness, a delight in our being woven together. We are children of such love: love creates us, and in our very being we bear love into the world. The purpose of life is to be transparent to this love, to live in the present moment in full awareness of the love of God that is our life and being. We do not fret about how we will be judged or what will become of us, because we know that we belong to this love. The more clearly we see the God of love, the more purely we shine with that very love. God's compassion, self-giving and delight becomes our whole life. The struggle in life is to shed the things that impede the perfect love that is inherent in us, to become the pure love that is our nature. A saint is not necessarily someone who is extraordinarily “good,” or made holy in some unique way, but someone who is translucent with love. It is not a stretch to become such a person; you were born so. You only have to reclaim it. May it be your prayer always to return to the present moment, to return to the Loving One, to return to the love that is you.



Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

November blessing

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

May the nakedness of trees
         expose within you strength and beauty.

May deepening darkness
         draw you into a richer mystery.

May frost on grasses
         edge your life,
         speak to you of limits.

May the first snow change your plans,
         and get to used to that.

May changing climate
         give you courage for a new journey.

May every day be a day of giving
         thanks.

And for you in the Southern Hemisphere,
         as others enter one season,
may you always have faith
         to go in another direction.


         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

__________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

The grasses remember

Dearly Beloved,

Grace and Peace to you.
         
         (On All Saints' Day we honor the saints who have gone before)


The grasses in the meadow remember everything.
They don’t need grave markers.
Stones will be ground to sand, dragged to the sea.
But the everlasting grasses keep whispering,
passing along generations the stories, the names.

They have no way to recall the rich and sheltered,
who left monuments of other kinds,
whom they do not know, who have never clung
to them for sustenance, turned to them for beauty,
hidden in them for life, joined them in praise.

They call out the names of the martyrs of the earth,
those who have fallen among grasses,
who pass without fame or memento,
those with courage to flourish then fade, like them,
who join in the song of faith, merely singing.

They are not polished names that shine or ring like brass,
but names of straw, earthy, simple and mortal.
Truth is not a notion, but names. It is not carved in stone,
even in a distant shrine. It is remembered.
The name of God is murmured among the grasses.



         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

______________________
Copyright © Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net