Steve – Page 331 – Unfolding Light

A prayer for compassion

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

A prayer for compassion (based on Romans 12)

Our response to the violence in the world, and to the the terrorist attacks of ten years ago, begins in prayer. We worship a God who sees the suffering of the oppressed and comes to set them free, and calls us to join in this great work. We follow Jesus, who calls us to take up our cross and be gentle in the face of violence and fear. Therefore we pray:

God of love, by your mercy we present our whole lives to you as a living sacrifice, seeking not to be conformed to this world but to be transformed by the renewal of our mindfulness, so that we may discern what is your delight, what is good and life-giving and whole.

Therefore let our love be genuine. May we turn from what is evil, and hold fast to what is good; may we love one another with mutual affection and outdo one another in honoring others. May we not lag in zeal, but be ardent in spirit, serving you. By your grace may we rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer. Help us by your Spirit to contribute to the needs of the saints and extend hospitality to strangers.

We bless those who persecute us; we bless and do not curse them. We rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep. We desire to live in harmony with one another; we seek not to be above others but to associate with the lowly, not claiming to be wiser than we are. We will not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. By your grace, we will live peaceably with all. We take no part in vengeance: if our enemies are hungry, we will feed them; if they are thirsty, we will give them something to drink. We will not be overcome by evil, but by your grace we shall overcome evil with good.

This is our spiritual worship, and our faith. For this we give you thanks, and we ask your blessing. Amen.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

I have seen… I have heard… I have come

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.


Then the Lord said, “I have seen the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey.”
         —Exodus 3. 7-8

Today, in the wilderness you wander,
in the slave quarters you inhabit,
in each task and every moment,

you are accompanied,
not merely observed from afar,

by One who sees you,
and hears your silent cries,

who sees what oppresses you,
sees through the illusions that confine you,

who knows your suffering,
who shares your experience,
who lives in your flesh,

who comes to set you free
to bring you out of what diminishes your life,
out of your old self,

into a broad and fertile place,
a new life.

All this, today.
And again tomorrow.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Take up your cross

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.


         If you want to become my followers,
         deny yourselves
         and take up your cross
         and follow me.”
                  —Matthew 16.24

The aunt who annoys you is not your “cross to bear.”
The cross is not an annoyance,
nor something thrust upon you.
It is your free, willing and unresentful choice
to be gentle,
to be nonviolent for the sake of justice,
to be vulnerable for the sake of healing,
to open yourself to other people’s suffering,
to enter into the shame of the world
with the enormous grace of God.

To take up your cross
is to enter into God’s fierce longing
for healing and justice,
even at your own loss,
confident that being wrapped in God’s love,
even amidst the suffering of the world,
is heaven.

To take up your cross is to trust
that God alone is our security and our power,
that grace is absolute and death is relative,
that the world can get along without us
but not without our love,
that forgiveness is more powerful than force,
that love is stronger than fear,
more lasting than death,
more real than anything else.

To take up your cross is not to go alone,
but to follow the Humble One,
the Trusting One, the Gentle One,
the one who already bears your cross,
your sin, your suffering, your death,
who wants to bear your light,
your blessing, your soul, in love.

To take up your cross is to die with Christ
and to rise with Christ
into a new life that can’t be killed,
in which you can suffer but not be hurt
and die but not be dead,
in which you are truly alive,
because it is no longer you but God living in you—
wholly present and infinitely loving,
and deeply joyful.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Burning bushes

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.


Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”
         — Exodus 3.1-3

How many bushes are aflame about us
and we do not see?
A human heart opening before us,
a child with expectant eyes,
a fleeting thought of joy rising
beyond the wilderness of our minds,
the look in the eyes of the mother
of the starving child, pleading with us
to enter this life we share,
the clump of grass cemented in, undaunted,
the angel appears in a flame of fire
in the old guy on the bus
whose life is afire with God
though he does not know it.

Maybe God walks through our lives with matches.
Or maybe in reaching out for us
the Glorious One brushes up against things
and they catch fire.
Or maybe
everything in this world comes from God
and is an entrance to God
and shines with God
and sometimes we notice.

It’s not just show, mere impressiveness.
It’s a question, an invitation, a reaching out.

How odd that we seek God’s attention, yet
never suspect Someone seeking ours,
even now, as we ramble
across the mountain of God
without wonder
leaving behind us bushes intact
and a wake of smoke.

To avoid being lost, regard lightly
where you think you must go.
Repeat these directions in the wilderness:
“I must turn aside and look.”
Keep the eyes of your heart open,
and it will seem that, even in the dark,
things light up.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

A living sacrifice

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.


I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.
         — Romans 12. 1-2

God of mercy, source of love,
I give you myself today.

My desires, my treasures, I lay before you,
until they are transformed
into your desires, the yearnings of life,
the energy of blessing that is you,
that is within me.

The desires of the world,
and its expectation that I conform,
I renounce,
that I may be transformed
into the body of your love.

May all I do today
by a living sacrifice,
a gift to you of who I am,
consumed and changed in the fire of your grace.

God of mercy, source of love,
each moment
I lay myself on the altar of the world.
Take me.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Riches

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

Love, you are not elsewhere.
Soul, you are God’s.
Indwelling joy, you Are.

•

This moment is my wealth.
Coming to awareness is my inheritance.
Being present, I am rich beyond measure.

•

May I not forget to walk around this palace,
not be shy to feel at home among its wonders,
not be mean and forget to invite my friends.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

God on vacation

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

We’re back from a couple of weeks of vacation. People ask, “What did you do?” Well, mostly we drove our son and his stuff from D.C. to Minnesota for grad school. (Yeah, lots of driving. And, just having moved ourselves, we did a lot of moving in. Painting and cleaning, just for something new.) But the best part was that for a few days we sat around with two of the boys at a lake cabin and did nothing. No hiking, jet-skiing, shopping, sightseeing, or even watching TV—that would have been too much work. Just sleeping, sitting around, reading books, napping, playing games, and being with each other. Sort of like Sabbath.

That’s what vacation is: vacancy, empty time. Time in which you’re not doing, just being. This is the meaning of Sabbath. The sixth day of creation was not the last time God took a vacation. Oh, my gosh! Is that why my prayers don’t get answered? No, listen: when God rested on the sixth day, God did not cease to be the Creator. God was still being God. God’s being is not dependent on any kind of doing. When Moses asked God’s name, God said, “I don’t have a name, a handle, a description. I just AM. I BE.” God’s nature is Sabbath: Being, without the need for doing at all. Just as God is still creating every day, God is also resting every day. At the heart of all that God is doing, God is most profoundly simply being.

When we take a vacation or a day off, unless we fill up the time, we can enter into that Sabbath Being. In fact, we can do that any time. We can pause and take a breath. We can simply be present. That’s what prayer is: not entering into some activity of talking, but entering into the pure being of God. Right this moment, sitting there reading this computer screen, you are not “dong” anything, just being here, sitting with God. You are entering into that sacred space, that sanctuary of God’s nature and God’s presence, purely being with God. That’s the holy of holies.

If today is a work day for you, I hope you get something done. But I also hope that, at least a little, you get nothing done. Do nothing, and do it well! Simply be present, and be with God. Let that being infuse all of your doing as well, until you are perfectly present.

Some time today, have a great vacation.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

And now some silence

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and peace to you.

I’m going to be off for a couple of weeks. I’ll resume in mid-August. Meanwhile, Unfolding Light will be all silence. After all, silence is God’s native tongue.

In fact it’s yours, too. You’ve just forgotten it. We all come from a land of silence and early on are taught speaking as a second language. If we sit in silence long enough we begin to hear what was spoken in us in the beginning.

We often listen for angels but complain that we never hear them—not knowing that actually we hear them fine, we just don’t understand them, since the language they sing in is silence.

But listen. They’re singing even now.

Deep Blessings,

Pastor Steve

Blessing

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”
—Genesis 32.24-28

We trust a dark God
who seizes us in lonely places,
who comes to us in travail
who births us only in great labor.
There is no struggle in which
blessing is not enfolded in the mystery.
There is no tribulation in which
God is not reworking the clay.

Therefore the prayer of the faithful
is not that my life be easy,
but always and only this:
“I will not let you go until you bless me.”

Your own poor choices
renounce the moment you see.
But of the struggles life thrusts upon you
do not let go
until you get from them a blessing,
and become a new person with a new name.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

Israel

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.



Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”
         —Genesis 32.24-28

I find it significant that the nation who worshiped Yahweh did not name themselves after Abraham, the father of us all, or Moses the great liberator, or David, the great king. They took the name Israel, Jacob’s new name that means “God-wrestler.” We are distinguished not by our superior faith or our unique land or even our particular history. We are distinguished as the people who wrestle with God.

We argue, we doubt, we cry out when God seems unjust or inattentive, we make impetuous demands, we bargain, and sometimes when God jumps us we even just plain fight back. (In the Bible, just thinking about God doesn’t count as theology: you have to get down and dirty and actually wrestle with God.)

God is no “unmoved mover.” God is a wrestling partner, one who challenges us, draws us into serious and sometimes even desperate struggle, a God who engages us. Moses and the prophets often bargained with God, disagreed, complained, criticized, and called God names. God seems to have loved it. God is the one who jumps into our darkness when we are left alone and says, “Bring it on.”

But God is not our enemy. God’s challenge is not to destroy us, diminish us or take away our power. It’s to get us going, like a sparring partner who gets a boxer to fight better. It’s to trick us into wrapping our arms around life, and laying our hands on God.

I don’t mean that God does mean things to us. It’s that in all of our struggles it’s really God we’re wrestling with. No matter what our struggles, our deepest anxiety is about our identity, our Source, our meaning, our future, our worth… which means we’re really wrestling with the One from whom those things come. This is good news, because as much as it may appear that the difficulties of our lives are our enemies, at their heart is a God who is our ally and deepest friend and companion.

God comes to us in dark, lonely places, in struggles and mystery. So grapple vigorously with this life and its Creator. Trust the grace that lurks in the night. You’ll be surprised how often God lets us win.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve