Month: February 2012

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
        

 
He was transfigured before them,
and his clothes became dazzling white,
such as no one on earth could bleach them.
                  —Mark 9.2-3

The disciples were having no strange vision,
nor the evangelist concocting a tableau
for the delight of Renaissance painters.
It was simply this: for a moment
Jesus’ friends were seeing truly,
seeing him as he was,
seeing a human being as we all truly are,
shining with the whole glory of Creation,
stardust that we are.
They saw through the scruff and dirt
that this rough world leaves on us,
saw past the judgments and appearances,
the masks and costumes and shrouds
that we throw on each other:
they saw the heaven within a person,
the image of God.
If only they hadn’t been so shocked
they would have noticed it in themselves.
Jesus had to tell them later:
“You are light for the world.”
God shines in you,
gleams with the splendid light of heaven.
Beyond any smudge this world can put on you,
or any human word or deed can remove,
you are dazzling, radiant with newborn light.
Right now, sitting there reading this,
you breathe God’s light in and out.
Your nerves spark with life.
Your eyes light up the world.
Let this light fill you, the fire of God.
Be mindful of this radiance.
Look for the light in all whom you meet.
Trust the light. Give thanks for the light.
Even in your sleep, the light closes its eye,
but breathes deeply, calmly, faithfully.

________________
Weather Report

Light,
refracted from the rising Son,
increasing throughout the day
as it condenses within each living being,
until, even after nightfall,
all glimmers with wonder.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

A hawk glides through the air,
they wrap their arms around each other,
the air carries the bird steadfastly,
deftly opens and closes its hands,
sending her along her way.

Frozen soil holds the slender seed tightly,
not crushing it, just waiting
for the great gentling, when her tender
root hairs will caress its dark questions
and they will change each other into green.

The ocean flings its ribbons on the shore
in joy at the creatures it is given.
The meadow treasures its grasses,
the planet built as a nest bit by bit
by the pure energy of attraction.

And you, walking along the street on your way
to something clicking away in the future,
picking your way among the unkind words,
the deserts and disappearances,
suspect no more than a sleeping child

that the Source of all that is delights in you deeply,
whose desire for you is your own heartbeat,
in passion who wraps your flesh around you,
wanting you forever. Let any pleasant thing,
the smallest breath, be your valentine.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

I am reading in my study at the church. Next door in the parlor a women’s group is doing a bible study. I hear the sound of paper whispering, the heat register clicking, my breathing, the clock tapping its fingers on the bookshelf. Somewhere a door closes. Then through the gentle silence comes another sound: women’s voices, in deep and harmonious unison, rising and falling in brief phrases. I can’t hear their words through the wall, but I can tell by the cadence: they are praying the Lord’s Prayer together. The sound is like waves rolling onto a shoreline, rising and falling, utter and pause, utter and pause. It is like the breathing of the world. I breathe with it. The waves of prayer lay themselves on the beach, wave after wave. They join the sea of prayers, waves moved by all the world’s winds and all its movements, resounding across the ocean, touching every shore. They wash the world. They make it one, a single island surrounded by a sea of prayer. The final little splashes, “the kingdom and the power and the glory,” and there is silence. It is the whole universe’s ocean of silence. And the silence is deep and flowing, and it is in me, and it is full of dark, living mysteries, and I am not alone, and the world is alive.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, “If you choose, you can make me clean.” Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.
                  —Mark 1. 40-42

What do we mean by the healing that we pray for? Sometimes bodies are made well, disease is vanquished, hearts are mended, reconciliation happens, disaster is averted. And sometimes not: the condition continues, the pain stays, the brokenness persists, the marriage falls apart, the person dies. Sometimes the healing of an old sick person is their death, not their recovery. When obvious recovery doesn’t happen, is there still some kind of healing? If so, what is it? What is this healing we pray for?

I don’t know. But I do know that God’s will is only healing; God always chooses blessing. I know there s a deeper fabric to our lives than the state of our bodies, a deeper covenant we belong to than the human relationships we are in, a deeper reality than what we see. Maybe it’s our presence with God that is healed. Maybe we are re-integrated into the weave of life, gathered again into God’s grace, reconnected with God. Our suffering, whatever kind it is, tends to take all our attention and lead us to think of ourselves as isolated beings defined by our affliction. But in deepening our openness to God’s grace, we are re-rooted in the Beautiful Mystery that transcends our flesh and even our hearts; we are given life that runs deeper than pain or separation or even death.

Maybe our affliction, or the suffering of those we pray for, is transformed when we put ourselves in harmony with God’s loving presence, and even if nothing seems to change, it changes everything. Maybe deep trust in the unseen bond of life and grace opens up channels in us through which the power of that grace flows and changes people. Even as bodies fail, hearts break or relationships crumble, love prevails. We are connected with Infinite Life. Maybe what it means that we are healed is not that we feel better but that we belong.

I don’t really know. But I pray for healing. And I see it, even invisibly, happen.
         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

A leper knelt, a mass of sores,
a sacrament of wounds confessed to God,
a soul with failing skin,
a fragile screen between the inner world
and all that lies beyond.

“If you are willing,” said the man,
renouncing self and choice and will.
“You can,” he said, forsaking “might”
or “won’t” or “ought” or “must.”

And Christ reached out and touched
his untouched hands, and laid an arm
around his blistered shoulders,
and with tender ease embraced him chest
to chest, and held a moment,
wide with grace, his seething flesh
in his, his trembling thirst, his failing hope,
his tears disguised as sweat,
his hidden loveliness, until
all flesh was one, all skin dissolved,
and that thin, deep abyss between them bridged,
two joined in mercy, healed in something
like a home.

He stood, and outwardly appeared
as inwardly he was: beloved,
whole, and blessed by grace
not gained but purely given,
free of worthiness, received,
and uncontained by flesh.
“Now go your way, and show yourself
to wondering priests,” Christ said,
“and let them close their eyes
and see true purity for once.”

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

The Beloved beside me
and the Beloved within
call out to one another.

Which is the Holy One
and which the wanderer?

Ah, I will make them both
a cup of tea,

and we will sit,
the three of us,
without words

while they make eyes at each other.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and peace to you.

      A leper came to him begging him,
      and kneeling he said to him,
      “If you choose you can make me clean.”
      Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand
      and touched him.
                     –Mark 1.40-41

Who are the lepers who beg for our compassion,
whom no one will touch?

Are they the prisoners, who frighten us, or nursing home folks?
Those who are depressed, or transgendered or angry,
the drunk mumbling in the doorstep,
the guy with the cardboard sign at the stoplight,
the dying, before whom we stutter and stall?
The mentally ill, kidnapped from their own minds,
that we are afraid to speak to?
The kid with piercings, tattoos and blue hair,
immigrants who any moment will be hauled off,
people who are chronically poor and grumpy about it?
Who are we afraid to touch, to be touched by?

Don’t think we have no Untouchables
in our closely guarded caste system.
They live within you.
We are the ones with the dis-ease, who afflict them
with our refusal to reach out to them, to connect, to admit
that we are just like them.

What healed the leper was no magical power.
It was the willingness of a compassionate heart
to embrace.
We can do miracles in this world
with our own two hands.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

________________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and peace to you.

Those who wait for the Lord
shall renew their strength.
They will mount up with wings like eagles.
They will run and not be weary;
they will walk and not faint.
–Isaiah 40.31

Those who have no hope but God,
dragged out, drugged out and beaten down,
those who have to wait,
wait in line, wait for the check, wait for a place,
those who have surrendered everything,
the homeless and hopeless and harried,
the prostitute, the destitute, the dullest,
the single mom, the kid in the radio factory,
the woman trooping in for chemo
and the husband who drives her and the kids,
the prisoner in his solitary hell,
the native organizer at the mine in Chile,
the newly bewildered retiree,
the suburban housewife slowly drowning,
the kids of abuse and orphans with parents,
those who trust in something that has to be a mystery–
they will go on.
They will last the week, make the trek, bear the load.
They will beat the odds, they will defy the crowds,
they will overcome.
They will soar above their troubles.
They will be larger than their lives.
They will triumph, and be given victory.
Not by strength or will, not by brains or guts,
though they will need them all,
but because they are borne tenderly by the One
who created them. The Holy One lives in them, mightily.
Even angels are in awe. And they will prevail.

Don’t you know? Haven’t you heard?
The Holy One who gives life never misses.
Into those from whom this world has sucked all the life,
God pours infinite life, life that sings,
life that soars up, life that shines forever.
They are themselves in God,
and that will save them.
Those who wait for the Lord
will run and not be weary,
they will walk and not faint.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

________________________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up.
Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
—Mark 1.31

Bible stories are tales of transformation. God heals us, forgives us, calls us, gives us new vision, turns us into new people. Grace doesn’t just come to us; it flows through us and keeps moving. It leads us from being to becoming, and from receiving blessing to blessing others. When Jesus heals Peter’s mother-in-law, she doesn’t just feel better: she gets up and serves them. Her healing goes somewhere.

Whatever the Good News is in your life, it’s not just that God is nice. God has changed you. God has acted decisively in your life to heal, to bless, to save, to create, to give life. And that blessing wants to move on.

• How has God blessed you, healed you, changed you?

• How will you pass on that blessing today?

God’s grace flows through you for the sake of the healing of the world.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

         
         
Gentle One,
I have too much to do today,
tasks and deadlines swarming,
wave after wave of demands,
and under every bridge the ogres
of people’s fears and expectations.
The monster of my failure lurks.

Loving One,
give me grace to step outside of this illusion.
To see through the smoke and mirrors
of pressure and anxiety.
To get out of other people’s fairy tales.
Let me see only what is real,
what matters, what heals.
Let me fall in love with you on the elevator.

Present One,
may my only desire today
be to be lovingly present in you,
to seek and to live your delight,
to do one thing at a time,
with attentiveness and grace.
May I walk gently with you
through this pleading and anxious world
with courage and healing in my heart.

Peaceful One,
the stones and arrows approach—
and on your face
a little smile.

         
         

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