Daily Reflections and Worship Resources
Perfect silence, hold me still.
Forgiving grace, set me free.
Infinite mercy, fill me gently.
Courageous love, bear me over.
Ridiculous joy, let’s do this.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:39 — 910.7KB)
The Holy One is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
The Holy One is good to all,
and God’s compassion is over all that God has made.
—Psalm 145.8-9
This gospel is repeated over and over in scripture.
Some want to modify it, qualify it, compromise it,
or dilute it with some kind of divinely justified meanness.
But that’s not God; that’s just meanness.
There are two religions. One is the Religion of Being Right.
“Get it right,” God says, “or I’ll punish you.”
The other is the Religion of Being in Love.
“I love you,” God says. “Don’t you want to live like that?”
You can’t have both. If you follow all the rules,
sooner or later you’ll hurt somebody. If you love everybody,
sooner or later you’ll break a rule.
They’re both in the Bible. But see which one Jesus chooses,
over and over. “I desire mercy, not performing sacrifices.”
Even God’s judgment is not punishment, but love.
The greatest goal of our faith is to perfect our love,
that it be untainted by anger or self-righteousness.
This is not a discipline of trying harder, but of accepting
more deeply, more freely, the perfect love we are given.
Shed the anger, your own and God’s,
and let God be perfectly compassionate
so that you may be perfectly compassionate.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:05 — 2.9MB)
Let these leaves be in you, rich
in the loveliness of their renunciation.
Let the gracious confidence of trees be yours,
who offer without the smallest sense of loss.
This is simply the day it is, and the season.
There is no argument, no clinging
to leaves, or the need for leaves; no more
resistance to their falling than to their budding.
The trees do not protest, or even hope.
They calmly stand and sow their gentle
flecks of color in the woods.
What happens is perfectly all right.
Whatever departs from you will shine,
bathed in the light of your release.
Let these leaves be in you, who in the varied
radiance of their surrender say simply, “Yes.”
________________
Weather Report
Loss;
moderate winds of time,
increasing throughout the day,
will blow most everything away,
except the sunlight,
which remains stoutly unaffected.
Expect a warming trend,
and increasing humility.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:38 — 2.3MB)
Sometimes when I feel inadequate
I come here, where I have erected my monument.
A brass plaque declares
my accomplishments, my deserving.
It’s a tourist trap. An old castle, king long dead.
A deserted mall. A ghost town.
Nobody lives here.
I abandon these ruins.
I come home to you.
In the candle light
there is bread at the table,
and talk late into the night.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 0:42 — 980.5KB)
They asked: In the resurrection,
whose wife will the woman be?
—Luke 20.33
Jesus says: No one’s.
We are all children of the resurrection,
children of God—siblings.
What that means for us after we die,
we’ll have to see.
But even now: we are all siblings,
all one, which the final revealing will reveal.
In the Real Life, masked by this one,
we are not divided by families,
even marriage, but united:
married to everyone, to all Creation.
We are to love, honor and cherish
no one any less than our beloved spouse.
Stand among trees and say “We are kin.”
Go to a river and greet your sister.
Behold the crowd on the street
and declare “I am yours.”
Thus will you know a bit
of the mystery of resurrection.
__________________
Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net
Listen to the audio recording:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:23 — 1.9MB)