Author: Steve

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
                  
Underneath the noise of the city
and its traffic, the voice of its need,
the sound of its striving,
is my singing.

Underneath my song
is my breath
and the singing of birds,
the hum of the forest,
the vast applause of the sea.

Underneath that
is the Great Silence,
speaking us forth,
holding us until we are ready
to return.

         
         
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

         
         
         

O Beloved, our hearts sing out to you!
         May our lives be your praise.
O you who answer prayer,
         to you all living beings come.

When our sins overwhelm us,
         you forgive us so tenderly.
O you who answer prayer,
         to you all living beings come.

What a blessing, that you invite us
         to live here in your house.
O you who answer prayer,
         to you all living beings come.

Your presence is our deepest joy,
         your goodness in this world,
         this present moment.
O you who answer prayer,
         to you all living beings come.

The beauty of this world
         is your presence overflowing.
The river of God is full of water.
         The river of God is full of water.
O you who answer prayer,
         to you all living beings come.

                  —Psalm 65.1-4, 9
         
         

__________________
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.
         
         
         
I cut myself
a little stripe,
a single lash.

I wondered
at the gap,
the opening of myself.

Then over time
my skin returned,
cheek to cheek,

since after all
both sides are
the same flesh.

Somehow
it knew how to sew
how to weave

how to wrap itself
around the emptiness,
how to heal.

This wisdom is in you.
An amazing gift, no?
It’s in there.

         
         
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.
         
         

You are a bell
that rings
in another world.

You are a flower
that blooms
only when you are asleep.

Your soul is a bird that flies away
and in your grief you cannot see
how God delights in its return.

         
         
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 Beloved says:

You are no lowly sinner, and no great saint.
Confess: you don’t even know the difference.

        I don’t care. I only want you.

Your prayers are ordinary and distracted,
neither base nor lofty, and more for you than for me.

        I don’t care. I like the sound of your voice.

Your desire for me is weak and impure,
but it is the heat of my lips upon your heart.
Your keening for me is the very song I sang you;
your love is mine, not yours, not yours at all.

        But I don’t care. I only want you to return,
        my heart in yours, my body burning inside yours.
        I want you to take off your price tag and be mine.

Let this mountain rise in you, a thousand angels singing;
this bright sun burn within you, burn away your paper prayers,
until your shadow disappears and you are light, my light.

        Forget yourself. I want you.

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.
         
         

Walking among trees being stripped,
the graveyard of colors at my feet,

branches above slowly being robbed,
air chilling, reaching farther into me,

I can’t shake the gentle dread
that something more will be required,

something taken, or outgrown,
requiring a reckoning of grief,

no loss God wants to save me from,
no turning that I want to miss,

a coming free that will not feel like such,
a birth resembling autumn’s lovely death.

I know no other passage through these woods.
The small path reaches out to me.

I feel my breathing, steady, slow and small.
The forest turns around me as I go.

Mist rises from the farm field to the west,
that slowly fills with yellow morning light.

         
         
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.

        

When you close your eyes you see Me.
I am the darkness in your eyes
into which the light pours to make sight.

I am the silence in which you hear all things.
I am the emptiness that creates your breath
when you are sleeping.

I am the urge, the dark arising, the lack
that becomes you in the burning day,
the anguish calmed by your prefect flesh.

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.         
         
Yesterday Beth and I visited the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston. One fragment I kept coming back to was from a scroll of the Psalms, likely written in the First Century. It was written in Hebrew, except that the name of God was written in an older language that the ancients thought was the “original language” of scripture. God’s name was too holy to write in ordinary, everyday language. I can recognize it. So there’s one word in the scroll that I can actually read.

I’m reading a scrap of parchment that’s two thousand years old! Actually reading and understanding it. True, I’m only understanding one word of it— but that single word dances on the page every time it occurs. (It occurs a lot.) It draws me in, has me reading whole lines, the whole piece of parchment, knowing only the translation provided but not the individual words, except one. The rest is mystery. In fact even that one word is mystery. Isn’t that just like all my prayers? After all my words and thoughts, all I really know is… “God.” The rest I take on faith.

Reading this text, I am connected to an ancient soul, reading what he wrote. He reaches out to me across twenty centuries. Somehow, gazing at that word, in his handwriting, I feel the presence of the writer himself. And also the Mystery. In that little bit of ink I feel held in the same hands, the same Awe, as the writer. In all our various languages and religions, in all that we do not understand or share, there is this that we have in common: “the LORD.” The Holy One. We are one in God. The mystery is too great for us to be able to use it to divide us. It connects us.

Maybe all our prayers ultimately boil down to our most primitive language, whatever tongue is before and beneath the one we utter. Maybe every prayer is actually just: “Thou!” The rest is mystery; and even what we say is too holy to describe.
         
         
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.
         
         
                  Jesus told a parable about their need to pray always
         and not to lose heart.
                  In a certain city there was a judge
         who neither feared God nor had respect for people.
         In that city there was a widow
         who kept coming to him and saying,
         “Grant me justice against my opponent.”
                  For a while he refused; but later he said to himself,
         “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone,
         yet because this widow keeps bothering me,
         I will grant her justice,
         so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.”
         …
                  Will the Human One,
         when coming on earth, find faith?
                  —Luke 18.1-8

O you who judge,
when you have no awe of God
nor compassion for people,
who do not hear her voice,
her demand for justice—
you think you need not listen to her,
as if she is merely a poor annoying widow
and you have more important matters.
But she is eternal, and she will wear you down
with her continual coming.
Despite your deafness, your callous heart,
she will come to you faithfully.
She will not judge you or come in enmity,
but she will not abandon you.
For a while you will refuse,
but she will come to you at odd hours,
her voice rise in the inner chambers of your heart,
echo among your pronouncements,
until you come to do justice,
to hear her voice among the voiceless,
to listen always,
and not lose the heart of your heart.
Then God in human form
going through this life
will find receptive souls.

         
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.
         
         
         All scripture is inspired by God
         and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction,
         and for training in righteousness,
         so that everyone who belongs to God
         may be proficient, equipped for every good work.
                  —2 Timothy 3. 16-17

This doesn’t mean all scripture is dictated by God. It means that the Spirit is present in its writing, and in its reading. Listen to some authors of inspired scripture: “I decided… to write…” (Lk. 1.2-3). “I say to you—I, and not the Lord…” (1 Cor. 7.12). “I suppose…” (Jn. 21.25). Scripture, though inspired, comes from very human authors. That is, of course, the way grace always comes to us: in ordinary and even flawed means, in crummy situations and through regular, broken, imperfect people.

As we read scripture, and as we “read” life, we don’t merely take the words we hear at face value. Sometimes people—even biblical writers— are mistaken; yet in their struggles, in their voice, there is grace to receive, there is truth to discern. But we have to discern it. The serpent may lie to Eve; prophets may say “peace, peace,” when there is no peace; armies who slaughter whole villages may claim God told them to; faithful people may argue two different sides; the Psalmist may examine God’s absence to discern God’s presence. Even Jesus said some things that “ain’t necessarily so,” to get us to wonder, to invite us to discern. We do not blindly follow any of these voices or take their words literally: we discern God’s voice among and beneath and beyond them, even when they are wrong. Sometimes the truth is not in the answer but in the struggle. We can see God’s leading in the footprints of the Israelites in the wilderness, even when they were lost. We would not follow their 40-year route, but every step was inspired. God led them. All scripture is inspired: the Spirit was present in the original experiences, and in the writing, so we allow it to be present in our reading. Ultimately it’s not the authors we want to hear; it’s God.

Your life is inspired. The Spirit is present, even when you understand or believe wrongly, even when you do not understand or believe at all. Read scripture with the Spirit’s help, and live each moment as if you are reading scripture. Listen beneath the literal words for the Living Word. Even in the most ungodly carryings-on, listen for God’s grace. Listen for what will equip you for every good work.
         
         
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