Category: Reflections

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

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
         
         

Greetings, Beloved.
God is with you.

Do not be afraid.
God delights in you.

In your life
you will embody God’s love.

This divine love will be great,
and fill the world, and have no end.

Don’t doubt this can be true of you,
who are so ordinary and small in the world:

this is the Spirit’s work in you;
what is in you is holy.

Let this be your prayer each day,
each moment, each thought and action:

May it be for me
according to your word.

                  (Luke 1.28-35)

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.
         
         

She lives a beckoning.
Her hands beseech
in drawing water, pounding grain.

An invitation dwells within
the practiced grace of tending to the elders,
the invocations and priestly gestures
of washing pots, of cooking soup,
the welcome of a small dirt floor made clean.

She lays her eyes like hands on things
and consecrates them: cups and stones,
and children, and their tears;
her noticing, her calling to the holy.
She knows no saintliness beyond the plain
embrace of all that is, the feel of walking,
the sacredness of how we’re given, pure,
so confidently to each other here.

She does not question the roughness of her life,
but uses it to scrub her wisdom’s tabletop;
and yet with every breath she begs a question.
Her undemanding silence is a bidding,
her simply being, her vocation here:
to make intimate spaces for eternity to dwell.

The great round pot sits, washed and empty.
And there, beside the broom, as yet unseen,
dear Gabriel smiles at her and draws a breath.

[1998]

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

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

         Beloved, my joy is in you.
         Keep me mindful of my joy always, always.

Let your gentleness be known to everyone.

         Be my gentleness, God,
         gentle in all things.
         

The Lord is near.

         Beloved you are here;
         you are coming anew.

Do not worry about anything,
but in everything
by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God.

         I give you my thanks. …
         I give you my worries. …
         I give you my hopes. …

And the peace of God,
which surpasses all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

         Be my peace, Beloved.
         Your peace guard my heart.
         Your peace guard my mind.

 

__________________
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.
         
         Sing aloud, O daughter Zion…
         Yahweh, your God, is in your midst…
         and will rejoice over you with gladness,
                  and renew you in love.
         and exult over you with loud singing.
                  —Zephaniah 3. 14, 17

God has no doctrine, do you know that?
Only delight.

The Desired One comes to you,
waits outside your house in the morning cold,
seeks you even in the worst neighborhood,
for no fancier reason than this:
the Beloved likes you,
and wants to be with you,
and hopes you will fall in love.

It is only the lost
for whom that is not enough.

Our Lover comes to us
even in our greed and terror
with no more complicated plot in mind
than to spend the awful hours and years
with us
and make them paradise.

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.
         
         
Don’t go near that tree.
It looks fit for a holiday, spangled,
with gifts brightly wrapped,
the fulfillment of our desires.
Don’t be fooled.

An ax waits at its roots,
sharpened for everything
but mercy and justice.
On this tree hangs the Despised One
whose gift is to rob us of our desires
and leave us with only compassion,
to take our coat and food
and make us share them.
He comes to baptize us with fire,
to winnow out our despair,
to burn the chaff of our self-enclosure,
to take our security and our weapons
and leave us with nothing
but the armor of God.

He comes as a poor baby
asking to be fed,
a refugee begging for home,
a prophet toppling our walls,
upending our kingdoms
of exclusion and privilege
that abide lovely presents under the tree
bought with blood and abuse,
that abide black bodies bleeding in streets,
raped in silence, lying in cells.
These kingdoms are doomed
by the unquenchable fire
in that little infant.

Don’t go near the tree. It’s not safe.
The gift under it is repentance.
A winnowing fork. An empty grave.
It’s liable to tip over this world—
only so gently we can’t stop it—
and build a new one
you can’t recognize

                 except
in the eyes of a child,
the song of a mother,
the hope of poor, cold shepherds
on a dark hillside.
Don’t go near—
                 oh, never mind.
It’s coming anyway.

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