Month: February 2014

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         You have heard it said, “You shall not murder,”
         but I say to you that if you insult a brother or sister,
         you will be liable.
         So when you are offering your gift at the altar,
         if you remember
         that your brother or sister has something against you,
         leave your gift there before the altar and go;
         first be reconciled to your brother or sister,
         and then come and offer your gift.
                  —Matthew 5.21-24

The law of God
is not a gate you make it through,
not a finish line you attain.
It is the road toward relationships
of healing, blessing and justice.

The law of God
is not a target you can hit or miss.
It is the bow that shoots you
toward perfect love.

The law of God
is a metaphor
for awe
which you wonder about out loud
until you become
a metaphor for love.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

         
         I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.
         Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.
                  —Deuteronomy 30.19

It’s not a game show with two doors,
a test with a right and a wrong answer.
There’s no reward or punishment.
It’s life, and we have to choose it,
embrace life or ignore it, receive it or not,
choose to give life or to diminish life,
to extend blessing or curse.
Life is not the reward for picking the right answer;
it’s the thing that itself is worth picking.

Your life is part of all of Life.
Choose to be a part of it instead of being separate.
Choose all of Life, not just your own little lifelet.

The choices are seldom two, right or wrong.
They are manifold, a thicket of tangled roots,
a thousand ways to harm a neighbor,
bless a stranger, set someone free.

When you see life, any life, notice it. Bow to it.
When you have the chance to enrich a life, choose that.
When someone has hurt you, give blessing, not curse.

Where there is injustice, anything that diminishes life,
choose what gives life instead.
It will not always be easy to live out that choice.
But the choosing will make you strong.

The life that is given to you, freely and without limit—
choose it, or you’ll miss it entirely.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
            
I love watching Olympic athletes do the amazing things they do. (I’m glad they’re doing it so we don’t have to.) It’s inspiring to see someone do something they’re really good at. But prayer is different. There’s no such thing as being “good it it.” There’s just doing it. Just being there with God. God doesn’t need us to be “good” at it. God just wants us to be there.

When we pray our minds wander, we have selfish thoughts, we fall asleep. And then we return. That’s all right; it’s all a part of prayer. It is true that some aspects of prayer become easier with practice, and over time our prayer takes us deeper and deeper. It is true that a life of disciplined prayer has a different quality than a life of haphazard inattentiveness to the sacred. But when we’re praying, there’s nothing to be “good at.” We’re just there paying attention.

Maybe the best model for our prayer lives at the Olympics is not the ice dancers who have such artistic grace, or the skiers and snowboarders who have such ridiculous midair courage, or the speed skaters with such power, but the audience. In prayer we just sit and watch God be graceful and powerful and wholly present in us and in the world, and we are in awe. And for God, that’s perfect.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Holy One,
I am your meadow,

filling up
with your snow,

becoming
more full,

more lovely,

more silent.

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

An ordinary day, nothing special,
no big events planned, nothing on the calendar,
not going anywhere, doing anything.

Resist the temptation to think of it as dull.
Renounce the desire to be entertained.
This is a day you are needed:

to be attentive, to listen deeply,
to give God some loving company,
to extend loving mercy to the world.

Enter the monastery of your life.
Let the whole day be prayer and praise,
a meditation on the presence of God.

Let every ordinary thing you do,
the meeting, lunch, and the dishes,
be an act of devotion, of becoming light.

Let this day be holy, a gift from God,
and be deeply present to every bit.
Thank God that this grace is the usual thing.

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail
write to me at unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com.

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
                  

The love of God
is what you’re made of.
Stay true to that.
Be authentic.

Let yourself be thrown
into this world’s good soup
to bring out the amazing flavor
of God in it.

Let yourself dissolve.
Your resurrection
will be the most delectable feast
only God could fully enjoy.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         

         In the beginning was the Word.
         In the Word what has come into being was life,
         and the life was the light of all.
                  —John 1.1, 4

         You are the light of the world.
         Let your light so shine before others,
         that they may see, and give glory to God.
                  —Matthew 5.14,16

Maybe Jesus doesn’t mean some special light—
your faith, your righteousness, your goodness.
Maybe he just means you. Your self.
Who you are, your creatureliness,
fashioned by God’s delight,
coming into being through the Word,
granted life, the light of all.
God said, “Light,” and it came forth
in the little paths of your nerves,
the villages of your hands,
the beauty in your eyes,
the continents of your mind,
the great sea of your soul.
(Once, every bit of you burned in stars.)

Let the light of yourself shine, he says,
all of who you are,
created by light.
Shine in people’s darkness,
so they can see, and glorify God.

And even if they don’t see
(he came to his own and they did not know him)
still God sits there,
the light on her face, smiling.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To receive Unfolding Light as a daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

Something happened to me last week. In the course of a poetry and prayer weekend, as I led people in practices of deep listening, and preached about Jesus calling the disciples, I myself heard a call. It wasn’t as bold as Jesus’ invitation to the disciples to leave their nets; it wasn’t as clear as guidance into a new career. But it was a call, a call to follow, a call that echoes and haunts me as I listen to what it means. It was a voice saying, “I am here. Come be with me.” I could easily conclude it’s a call to move, though I won’t, or merely a call to lead more workshops, though I will, or even to quit the ministry and do poetry full time (now there’s a way to make more money). The call is more inward.

Jesus’ call isn’t usually a career path. But it is a vocation, a vocalization, a spoken invitation, a voice asking you to come closer. You don’t have to go off to Africa and become a missionary, though you might. It’s seldom a call to leave the place you are. No, it’s a call to go deeper. Christ calls you deeper into what you are here to do. Deeper into the present moment, deeper into relationships, deeper into the life you are already living. Deeper into the truth that is already before you. Deeper into the Presence that is already within you. It is most often not a call to go elsewhere but a call to be otherwise, to become new, to allow yourself to be transformed.

Like the fishermen and tax collectors I have made a comfortable place for myself in my life. Now Jesus calls me to let go of that familiar place and move deeper, to go on an unknown adventure on an untraveled road right where I am. It may lead me to other changes, but it will certainly lead me to a new awareness, a new way of being, a new sense of my calling, which is Christ calling to me— and so a clearer sense that I am not on my own; I am called; I am led. My life is a continual journey, an unending discovery that what I think of as “where I am” is actually “how I am being led.”

Listen for that call. It’s quiet. But it will not leave you or forsake you. It comes over and over. The Beloved wants you near, while traveling that road deep into your own life; and you must follow.

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail,
write to me at unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com.

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
                  

Sometimes it seems
I am being carried in the dark
in steady, gentle arms
upstairs after the long car ride
to my blue-quilted bed,
and I am already asleep,
already dreaming.

         
         
Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

To subscribe to Unfolding Light by daily e-mail write to unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com