Month: November 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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