Steve – Page 339 – Unfolding Light

Love builds up

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.
—1 Corinthians 8. 1

God of love, by your grace
I seek to be wise and courageous,
to speak the truth boldly,
to stand for the good.
May I do so in your Spirit,
gently and humbly present for others.
By your grace may I desire
to be loving instead of being right,
to listen instead of talking,
to support instead of dominating,
to build others up instead of surpassing them,
to let others be heard instead of saying my piece,
to remember that they are as beloved as I,
to offer what they need
instead of getting what I want.
God of Resurrection, may I love others
with the same self-giving compassion
with which you love me,
and love all the world.
Amen.

__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Ten years

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

A decade ago I was campus pastor at Montana State University-Billings. I occasionally e-mailed news updates to interested students. After a while the messages evolved into a daily reflection that I called Unfolding Light. The earliest piece I can trace was on January 16, 2002. I’ve been doing it ever since. So I guess this is our 10th Anniversary. Think of that. Some of you have been reading this for ten years. Thanks for hanging in there. (And thanks to my family, who’ve patiently endured the time and money I spend doing this.)

I’ve posted two thousand, two hundred and sixty-nine blurbs, written and sent from home (three homes in three states) and occasionally on the road, in airports, in church basements, retreat centers, and, yes, on the backs of envelopes. And you’ve read them, passed them on, responded, used them in worship, argued with me, thanked me, critiqued my poetry, sent prayer requests, gotten your mother on the mailing list, challenged my theology, pleaded with me to publish, end even occasionally visited my church in order to meet me. But mostly, you’ve quietly received and read and pondered. I never know where these words go, who they might touch, how they will live their own lives. But you have been there.

I used to know everybody on my list, but now there are over a thousand of you in seven countries. (I have to use six different email addresses to get around spam limits. I’ve got to streamline that.) Some have left the list; some have let me know when they get accidentally dropped off the list. Some of you are friends; some are just email addresses. And I don’t know how many read this on the web site I started a couple of years ago, or your sister forwards it to you every day, or how many innocent bystanders see it quoted in some church newsletter. But I know you’re there. I think of you. And I think of you as “my people.” I often pray for you. And I thank you. This has been an important part of my prayer discipline, and every weekday morning I know there are people waiting for this. It keeps me at it. Thank you for being there.

It’s like preaching: there are folks who are willing to listen. But it’s also like praying, and this is as true for you as for me: your prayers go somewhere. They are heard. They are received. You don’t know where your prayers end up, or what effect they have. But there are unseen multitudes who hear them. Your prayers go out into the world like seeds, and they spring to life and bless this world in ways you can never know. Prayer can sound one-sided. (I wish I could be as attentively silent as God.) But it’s a conversation.

I give thanks for the mystery by which we are in this together. And I rejoice that whether or not you have an electronic audience, you are heard. Your prayers matter to The One Who Listens, who waits eagerly for them every day. Have courage. Keep at it.

Deep Blessings,

Pastor Steve

__________________

Steve Garnaas-Holmes
Unfolding Light
www.unfoldinglight.net

Psalm 111

God! You! Glory!

I thank you in my deepest guts,
echoed by the whole tribe of God!

Your magic amazes me,
         confounds anyone who tries to understand.
Your miracles, brilliant and vast,
         come from such tender, loving hands!
The universe shimmers with grace,
         glows with your gentle mercy.

We are in awe: you feed us;
you are steadfastly thoughtful toward us.
We see your grace in all that you do,
mighty Creator, tender nursemaid.

Your love and justice sing through the world.
         When we hear it we know how to dance.
The song is eternal.
         To live is to sing it, sing it out loud,
         with eyes closed.

The bound ones you set free;
the abandoned ones you marry.
This is your holiness,
what sets you apart.

(Wisdom is rooted in awestruck wonder,
overwhelmed by God.
Practice wonder,
and you will know what you need to know.)

Lovely One, the universe is your praise.
Infinite Beauty!
Infinite Glory!

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

Praying for someone

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

When I pray for someone I don’t ask God to do certain things. God is already doing more than I know. God does not need to be informed or convinced of anything, nor is God taking a vote. And I don’t know exactly what needs to happen, anyway—what the best outcome is, or the consequences of my desires. God is present with life-giving grace in every person, place and situation, and God will be present in the future. My prayer does not change that. What my prayer changes is me.

What I do when I pray is open my heart to others and to God. I am mindful of God’s gracious presence, the Loving One who dwells in each of us, and mindful of God’s blessing, God’s hope. I am mindful of the person I am praying for. I give them room in my heart, a place for their being to find blessing and rest. And I surrender my spirit to God on their behalf. I make my love and blessing available for them. I allow myself to be deeply connected to them in God, as if we are both children in God’s arms, or twins in God’s womb. I pray so that something might happen in the harmony of our spirits that couldn’t happen in them alone. In this way I can pray even for my enemies. I pray to be as lovingly present to them as God is. In fact I offer up my love for God to use in any way, even for some other person or purpose I know nothing about. I pray simply to be a part of God’s love, to participate in loving kindness.

I don’t know how this affects the person I pray for, or the world or the future, but I trust that it does. By a spiritual butterfly effect, my being lovingly present touches other spirits, which touch others, and the web of the world’s consciousness changes. As I become more mindful of the Loving Presence, and more lovingly present myself, I am changed. And when you change one note, you change the chord. When you change anybody, even yourself, you change the world.

So I pray, and trust the unknowable power of God. And grace happens.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

My soul in silence waits

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

For you my soul in silence waits.

I let go of all thought of control,
I let go of all thought,
I let go.

I am waiting to be made whole in you,
I am waiting in you,
I am in you.

Pour yourself into me,
you who are already in me,
I who am still.

A bare tree,
blue stillness,
the moon rises.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Psalm 62

Psalm 62.5-11, a paraphrase

For you alone my soul in silence waits.
         In you alone my confidence is rooted.
God, you are my steadiness, my solid ground.
         In you I find my resolute steadfastness.
You are my only security, my truest strength.
         You are where I belong.

People, notice where you put your trust:
root it in God, not some other fluff.
Let your heart and God flow into each other.
It’s where we all belong.

The way we judge and compare people
is a complete delusion.
A noble person, a lowlife—it’s a sham.
Who made this up? Who believes it?

Don’t think your life will be enriched
by getting your way, or having stuff.
Learn to see through the shimmer
to what really matters, what really is.

Pay attention: it keeps coming up:
God is the only power.
And God, you are the only Love,
No matter what we do.

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

Leaving the nets

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.


As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him.
         —Mark 1.16-18

Each moment God calls us
to let go of what we’d thought was so important
to go with the movement of God through our lives
and to connect more deeply with others,
especially those who are removed from our lives.

You don’t need to change jobs.
It happens immediately, moment by moment.

Even as you are bent to your work
a shadow of light passes over,
a net with the world in it.

Are you coming?

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

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

Calling

Among the clamoring voices
in your littered marketplace,
the shouting and hungers and choices,
the complaints and the advice,
the ones that cry, “You need this!”
and “You must!” and “This is so,”
you’ll only buy hurry and madness.
Stay calm, and let them go.
Walk down to the lake and the fishermen,
and the light, and the bark of the gulls,
and the sound of the waves again and again,
and the water patting the hulls.
Listen there for a calling
—not a plea or a pitch or demand—
like breathing, rising and falling,
like someone’s hand in your hand,
a leaning toward something within you,
not a dream of a far-off prize,
the voice of mercy, of Someone
who gives you mercy’s eyes,
who opens your windows for seeing
with a question whose answer is you,
who speaks you into being—
follow that one, and be made new.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

Nonviolence and resurrection

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

Under even the greatest oppression, a select few people have what they need. But this is not true justice. True justice is a whole society that is just; therefore there is no justice until there is justice for all. For this reason the struggle for justice is never-ending; there will always be setbacks, but never a reason to give up.

Even under the worst tyrant, there may be a powerful few who are free to act as they choose. But this is not true freedom. True freedom is a society in which everyone is free; therefore there is no freedom until all are free. For this reason the struggle for freedom must always set people free; freedom can never be achieved by coercion.

Injustice is always hidden, disguised as the way things ought to be, protected by social habits and assumptions that we never question or confront. Seeking justice always requires that we dismantle existing social structures. Those who seek justice will always meet resistance, but it is a struggle of truth against fear, and truth is stronger.

The freedom and justice God intends for us (part of what Jesus called the Kingdom of God) is not a far-off fantasy; it is a gift implanted within us at our very creation. It arises as a gift when we treat one another with reverence. It can’t be enforced or manipulated or brought about by fear, violence or threat. It can only be set free in us. It can only be achieved by nonviolence.

Reverence overpowers coercion. It may take great time and sacrifice, but it will not fail. Even in offering its opponents the freedom to reject it, nonviolence has succeeded in setting all parties free. Even God does not threaten, coerce or manipulate us, but offers us grace and reverence. The cross is God’s nonviolence.

Our reverence toward others, including our enemies, regardless of the cost to us, even the cost of our lives, unleashes the infinite, world-changing, life-giving power of God’s grace in us. Just as an exploding bomb releases itself into the area around it with destructive force, a loving person releases herself into the world with creative power. This is the mystery of resurrection.

Martin Luther King, Jr. lived the resurrection life. Give thanks today for all those who have given of themselves for the sake of freedom and justice. And pray that you may have the courage, faith and compassion to stand among them, to join in the sacred struggle for “justice and liberty for all.”

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve

Fully known

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.


O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.
         —Psalm 139. 1, 4

When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.”
—John 1.47-48

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.
— 1 Corinthians 13.12

Even the most secret place in my soul,
the darkest hidden cave in me
where I know God has never been,
the dreams I’ve not yet had,
their meanings layered in murk and mystery,
the things I don’t know I know,
locked and buried beneath a mantle of ignorance,
the most well-veiled secret prison cell within me,
the remotest, most desolate moon of my thoughts
that surely God could never imagine,
even the things I will never have guts to consider,
even the absolutely unknowable in me
God already knows like a nest,
thought of first, saw how it got that way,
knows where the blessings are.

Jesus is scary to follow,
because I know in his gaze
I’m going to see
more of myself than I want to.

III

Who knows what unseen forces pull on us,
what invisible wounds we protect,
what untold stories have given us our place and our name,
what tyrants we fear,
what side effects of ourselves we suffer,
what twisted ways seem in our blindness
the path of nobility?

We can’t translate the poetry of our own cries.

But the author of our souls sees, blesses,
misses nothing.

The struggle between good and evil
is mostly a struggle
between awareness and unawareness.

Maybe I would judge less
if I knew how much of myself
is invisible to me.

Maybe I would wound less often
if only I saw how much mystery
entangles even the simplest gesture.

Maybe I would fear less
if I had the eyes of the One Within
who sees all and never recoils, but leans close,
who sees even my most awfulness,
tiny as it is amidst so much glory.

Deep Blessings,
Pastor Steve