Category: Reflections

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         Arise, shine; for your light has come,
                  and the glory of God has risen upon you.
         For darkness covers the earth,
                  and thick darkness the peoples;
         but God arises upon you,
                  and God’s glory dawns among you.
                           —Isaiah 60.1-2

How we search for the light,
how we follow the distant star,
how bravely, how poignantly,
always reaching for that little ray,
like magi we go to great lengths—

or we don’t, we let it shine
in its own little corner of darkness;
we have other baubles to seek,
satisfied with unending dusk,

how nobly
either way
we go on

without the light

that is right here

(you,
God’s creature)

inside us.

.
.

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 unfoldinglight(at) gmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

God is with us now,
this being

(our salvation)

unfolding
into being

this divinity
blossoming in
flesh

this love
finally making us
real

tugging our hearts
to life

this child
so dear

in love for whom
our own become
as well

so dear.

__________________

I wish you deep peace
renewed light
and love’s gentle presence
on this day.

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 unfoldinglight(at) gmail.com

         
         

O come thou Mystery,
unseen, unbidden, unfelt,
but so madly needed here.

Come to us
who push you away with our despair,
snare us with wonder.

Come to us, the lonely and broken,
O Small One,
not to solve but to be with.

Come to us who grieve
place or worth or hope,
and find it with us.

Come to us in our smugness
and lay yourself down in the manger
of our secret wounds.

Come to us in our privilege
and let us hang our lives
on a poor little peasant child.

Come to us in our violent fear
and calm us with your tiny voice.
Ask us to love you.

For us who find it hard to love each other,
come and gather us in a circle,
have us care, have us sing.

Come to us, too afraid to need,
be fragile among us,
and let us fall in love.

Neglect our neglect, Emmanuel,
come and be a tiny flame of love among us,
and light our own.

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

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

         
         
My Word is made flesh.
This is how I live.
I am born not once long ago,
but each moment, always.

Will you be my flesh?
Having none of my own,
can I put you on and wear you
into the world?
Will you be born for me?

Walk in the woods for me, will you?
Touch what you can touch for me,
touch with gentle fingers.
Listen for me. Hear so that I may hear.
Smell pine and sage, babies and cities.
Smell for me.

Look with my eyes.
See what I long to see,
one thing at a time.

Be with the lonely for me, will you?
Stay close to the suffering,
dance with the joyful, dance
as only a body can dance.
Let your heart be broken,
as only a beating one can.
Reach out to the despised,
notice the beauty.
Dare to be a child in a rough world.
This is how I come.

You are my flesh now, dear one.
Bear me into this world
and I will always be in you
and in all you meet.
Have an eye for those who don’t know this;
see it in them even when they can’t.

Let me discover
what it is to come to myself
in my own Creation.
Look— even now
I am coming close,
seeking the manger.
Even now I enter.

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

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         
Longest night.
Darkness falls like snow,
falls and falls, deepening.

Older than the universe,
here before it,
and will be after.

Wraps an arm around us
as if we’re old friends.
We are.

Darkness lives in us,
radiates from us.
We speak it.

Darkness is the velvet cloth
where you cherish the gem
of your presence among us,

darkness the womb,
darkness the manger
that cradles your light,

this holy being
that becomes us,
births us.

In the darkness
you do not come to us,
we come from you.

Because you are with and not apart,
even the darkness
is you.

Because you shine in it
the dark is our dark,
none of it unchanged.

Your being our light,
your hereness our life,
shining in the longest night.

____________________
To my friends in the Global South:

As you enter summer take heart:
the darkness, the womb in which life grows,
never deserts you, but even now
is returning for you.

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 unfoldinglight(at) gmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         

         
In the deepening darkness we stand
with our candles lit,
singing of our sorrows and our hopes.
We don’t notice him among us,
         with his candle.

We gather around the empty manger waiting
unaware of new life unfolding in us.
We don’t hear her voice
         blending so well with ours.

In the cold we huddle for warmth.
How could we understand
         how warm we are?

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
God with us,
we cry out
         with your voice.

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 unfoldinglight(at) gmail.com

        My soul sings praise to God,
                  who has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
         God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
                  and lifted up the lowly;
         God has filled the hungry with good things,
                  and sent the rich away empty.
                           —Luke 1.46, 51-53

This dance is not the wrecking ball it sounds like.
It’s only that we’re startled that it’s love not might.

The blossom bursts the stone we live in.
The Almighty naked and small, always, always.

In our vacancies the overwhelming Presence,
granting what we so firmly withhold,

saving what is beyond hope,
undoing our undoing,

lifting up what you despaired of,
putting to rest your own despotic king.

The righting of our upended minds.
Evil we can’t stop, stopped.

The mending of our grasp, and our failure to grasp.
Looking for love in all the right places.

In darkness thick as stone let there be life.
The truth of what is made of dust, or light.

Tyrants spew nightmares,
throw heavy shadows, heavy sounds,

but the poorest child defeats them.
A woman alive in her body shifts mountains.

She sings,
earth trembles.

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

         
         Blessed are you,
                  and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
         And blessed is she who believes
                  that there will be a fulfillment
                  of what was spoken to her by the Lord.
                           —Luke 1.41, 45

My Beloved,
Trust my delight in you.
I have chosen you
and conceived my love in you,
to bear my light into the world.
You are part of something grander
than you can imagine.
You are part of my great work
of the mending of the world,
and though you are small in this world
your love will change it,
because it is I who work through you.
You are pregnant with my love,
and you must bear it.
It will require labor and pain,
but it will be life, unquenchable life.
The world won’t be changed by power from on high,
but by love from within,
however small, however humble.
When you are discouraged or worried,
remember that I am in you;
the holy child you protect protects you.
I will give you a sign: something in you
will leap at the presence of this miracle
unfolding in others as well. You are not alone.
Let your trust in this be your light.
I love you.
God

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

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting,
                  the child leaped in her womb.
                           —Luke 1.41-45

A gift in you not of your own making
         is holy and alive.

                  •

Something deep beyond our mind’s small grasp
         leaps at the holy in another.

                  •

I would not likely take that step
         but my heart already leaps.

                  •

When we come near
         God leaps.

                  •

Blessed are you,
         and blessed is the fruit of your soul.

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 unfoldinglight(at) gmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

In the sixth month already
of the impossible
Gabriel, so usually unseeable—
startling, though you thought him so foreign,
how nearer than you to the seed of your life—
fills the room with his wings,
wraps with his words
this world beside God’s so small,
sets it in the greater one
among stars and you lit by the same light,
and calls forth your trust in heaven’s actual,
—for with God nothing is impossible—
the divine within, inviting your invitation
from even deeper in,
a Word, a world entrusted to you,
your being that by gift and labor blesses,
brought with singing
through the portal of this blood of birth
and that crucial other,
calling to life in your drab littleness
the body of your holiness,
the flesh that God without you cannot have.

Even God waits to see the miracle,
the birth that only you can birth.

There is no test for paradise,
only paradise.

Say yes.

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 unfoldinglight(at) gmail.com