Category: Reflections

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.
      
         

                  

Today beauty will haunt me

prayer will seek me

justice will need me

love will weave me

joy will find me.

         
         
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 unfoldinglight8(at)hotmail.com

Dearly Beloved,
Grace and Peace to you.

In Matthew 21.33-43 Jesus tells a parable about tenants who withhold the vineyard’s harvest from the landowner. He asks religious leaders what the owner would do and they say, “Kill them and lease the vineyard to people who will hand over a harvest.” Jesus doesn’t agree with them but simply says, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone.”

Maybe: If you are not faithful God will punish you and throw you out. That seems to be what some people believe.

Maybe: The Jews botched real religion, so God gave it to the Christians, even though the Jews rejected them. That seems to be what some early believers thought.

Maybe: Institutional leaders—people with power and privilege responsible for the “vine” of God’s people— have botched it, and their response to the story reveals how judgmental like them they think God is, without grasping that their judgment is on themselves . That seems to be what Jesus’ hearers would have noticed.

Maybe: The forces of commerce and empire always lead to violence. God invites us to choose another way, a way rejected by others. That seems to be borne out in the news.

Maybe: The Church has done a lousy job of bearing God’s love into the world, and we are experiencing the consequences of our failure, while other people outside the church are picking up the slack. That seems to be what’s happening in many churches.

Maybe: I am an unfaithful steward of my own life, keeping my divine gifts to myself instead of sharing them. When I consider this, I expect God to be angry with me—a fear the religious leaders voice, though Jesus does not agree. Instead, though I judge and “reject” myself, God makes me the cornerstone of my life, and entrusts me with my life and its gifts anyway. Maybe God asks for fruitfulness and offers mercy. That seems to be what God is inviting me with.

What is God saying to 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.

I All is One. (There is only one thing, One Being. Don’t settle for anything less than The One. “Have no other gods.”)

II The Beloved is greater than your knowing. (Let go of your understanding of reality and simply behold it. Let go of your image of the Beloved and just love. “Have no graven image.”)

III You can love God, but not use God. (God is beyond your controlling or defining. “Don’t use God’s name.”)

IV Life is a gift. (Let go. Stop playing God. Even God does not play God. Be nothing, powerless and empty-handed. Let God be God. Take time to stop doing and be. “Honor the Sabbath.”)

V You belong. (You receive great gifts from those who have come before you, and who surround you, and all the living beings who provide for you, simply because you are here. Show gratitude. “Honor your elders.”)

VI Life is sacred. (Life itself is the presence of the Holy One. Do what gives life. Refrain from all that diminishes life. “Do not kill.”)

VII The heart of life is faithful love. (God is faithful. All of life is a Covenant. Be faithful. “Don’t commit adultery.”)

VIII We are all in this together. (Possession is an illusion. Resist the temptation to think of yourself as separate from others, or of others as a resource, or yourself as more deserving than they. Seek to bless others rather than to take anything from them. See to it that all have what they need. “Don’t steal.”)

IX Illusion is powerful, but truthfulness is more so. (To free yourself from the power of illusion, be truthful in all things. “Don’t bear false witness.”)

X You are a source, not an end point. (Relinquish possessiveness. Let go of things. Be giving instead of grasping. Share. “Don’t covet.”)

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.

Geese are flowing south.

My eyes are hungry for these fall colors,
not satisfied, grazing, feeding.
A hunger, an appetite leans, reaches.

The love you crave,
the presence you long for,
the voice of the One
is right there. Reach out for it.

Not a possessing, but a lending forth,
a receiving, a giving, an embrace.

The trees will pay all their leaves for it,
the river spends itself to come closer.

The hawk lays all of its weight on the air
circling for it.

The vines with their ripened berries
take on their dying colors
to become something new.

Don’t starve yourself.
Stop thinking it silly
to yearn for what you yearn for.

Why trudge from town to town,
slouch from bar to bar,
with a newspaper clipping
searching for your lost lover?
(When we don’t know we’re drunk
we do stupid things.)

The Beloved is here in this room,
closer than your thoughts.

Undress from your mastery.
Take off the uniform of understanding.

Breathe in, breathe out.
That longing, that seeking,
even the sadness
is the Holy One
reaching for you.

 

I write a love poem
and they read it.

I say my lover’s eyes are oceans, or galaxies
and they understand.

I say I long for the feel of the curve of her waist
and their hands feel empty.

I say her comfort is my earth
and they smile inwardly.

I say she is larger than the world
and they grow confused.

I say she is older than music
and they become wary.

I say she is God
and they sigh and put the book down.

What can I do but sing of my love,
her hands like fields of wheat?

So I will not tell them the secret part,
only that her mouth is a river I kneel and drink from,

her love makes dawn arise in me,
her voice is like rain.

 

Early morning, I walk in the woods.
I grow roots, my lungs are green.
After I return I am still here.

I sit in prayer.
I become my candle, light slipping out.
After I rise I am still here.

I rest in your presence.
You overflow in me.
Even when I forget, I am still here.

In the meeting, in the city,
under the fluorescent lights,
I am still with you,
overflowing with you,
bathed in your light,
sheltered by trees.

 

The voice of Christ
rings out like a great bell,
a round and solid sound,
fading miraculously slowly,
ringing out through the air,
through the silence,
through my body,
my lungs vibrating,
a singing bowl,
down the bones of this city,
out over the waiting fields,
over the roads and fences,
down into the yearning
and swelling of things,
ringing, singing, fading
as slowly as my time,
still, if you are quiet, ringing,
if you listen,

if you lean close,

still ringing…
 

 

      
         The chief priests and the elders of the people
         came to him as he was teaching, and said,
         “By what authority are you doing these things,
         and who gave you this authority?”
                  —Matthew 21.23

         The Lord said to Moses, “Strike the rock,
         and water will come out of it,
         so that the people may drink.”
                  —Exodus 17.6

         
Grace flows through you
from the heart of God.

It is stronger than stone,
than fear, than death.

You don’t need a diploma,
a badge, a ruling.

Strike the rock of your life
and let the water of God flow.

Others or voices within will say
“Who do you think you are?”

Those who question your authority
are only crying with thirst.

Let your only reply be
to give them a cup.

The spring of living water
will speak for itself.

You will endure. You will thrive.
You will do miracles.

 

The impassable narrows,
forbidding expanse.
The dry places. Cement.
And sand, but mostly cement.
Heat but no verbs here,
no movement or possibility.

Looking back on the wrong turns,
speculation is useless,
on the losses and betrayals,
explanation is the shadow of sand.

But.

The burning sun in the stone
is also in you.
Divine energy hides even
in hearts as hard as stone.
Let yours be struck open.
Behold with such force
it shakes what you behold.
Smack the being of the world
with the being of your being.
Be so fully present
even in outrage
that the stone weeps.

Enough to shatter yourself,
but instead flows sweet, pure water.

In the desert to come
it will be easier to believe
in the hard sun, the dry stone.
But the water will flow,
as constant as the rock.

 

Green things change,
become the color of surprise,

the color of gratitude,
the color of morning.

Bees still buzz quietly
but it is the color of letting go.

The color of something inside you.
An eye opens, and closes.

A reckoning, even as leaves fall:
not subtracting, but adding up.

Seed pods lift their empty hands
and blacken, become still.

Trees tunnel down into themselves.
Garden plants become song.

They are not dying, not giving up.
They are getting ready for something new.

________________________
Weather Report

A day also otherwise,
as even mourning bears joy,
and the beginning of autumn here
signals in the Southern Hemisphere,
where also our beloved live,
Spring’s splendid revival.